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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15400-8.txt b/15400-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9917154 --- /dev/null +++ b/15400-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17863 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7), by +John Addington Symonds + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) + +Author: John Addington Symonds + +Release Date: March 18, 2005 [eBook #15400] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF +7)*** + + +E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Turgut Dincer, Leonard Johnson, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +RENAISSANCE IN ITALY + +The Age of the Despots + +by + +JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS + +Author of _Studies of the Greek Poets_, _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, +etc. + + + + + + + +'Di questi adunque oziosi principi, e di queste vilissime armi, sarà +piena la mia Istoria' + +Mach. 1_st_. _Fior_. lib. i. + + + + +New York +Henry Holt and Company + +1888 + + + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +JOHN BEDDOE, M.D., F.R.S., + + +I DEDICATE MY WORK + +ON + +THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. + + +AUTHOR'S EDITION + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. + +Though these books taken together and in the order planned by the author +form one connected study of Italian culture at a certain period of +history, still each aims at a completeness of its own, and each can be +read independently of its companions. That the author does not regard +acquaintance with any one of them as essential to a profitable reading +of any other has been shown by the publication of each with a separate +title-page and without numeration of the volumes, while all three bear +the same general heading of "Renaissance in Italy." + + + + +PREFACE. + + +This volume is the First Part of a work upon the 'Renaissance in Italy.' +The Second Part treats of the Revival of Learning. The Third, of the +Fine Arts. The Fourth Part, in two volumes, is devoted to Italian +Literature. + +Owing to the extent of the ground I have attempted to traverse, I feel +conscious that the students of special departments will find much to be +desired in my handling of each part. In some respects I hope that the +several portions of the work may complete and illustrate each other. +Many topics, for example, have been omitted from Chapter VIII. in this +volume because they seemed better adapted to treatment in the future. + +One of the chief difficulties which the critic has to meet in dealing +with the Italian Renaissance is the determination of the limits of the +epoch. Two dates, 1453 and 1527, marking respectively the fall of +Constantinople and the sack of Rome, are convenient for fixing in the +mind that narrow space of time during which the Renaissance culminated. +But in order to trace its progress up to this point, it is necessary to +go back to a far more remote period; nor, again, is it possible to +maintain strict chronological consistency in treating of the several +branches of the whole theme. + +The books of which the most frequent use has been made in this first +portion of the work are Sismondi's 'Républiques Italiennes'; Muratori's +'Rerum Italicarum Scriptores'; the 'Archivio Storico Italiano'; the +seventh volume of Michelet's 'Histoire de France'; the seventh and +eighth volumes of Gregorovius' 'Geschichte der Stadt Rom'; Ferrari's +'Rivoluzioni d' Italia'; Alberi's series of Despatches; Gino Capponi's +'Storia della Repubblica di Firenze'; and Burckhardt's 'Cultur der +Renaissance in Italien.' To the last-named essay I must acknowledge +especial obligations. It fell under my notice when I had planned, and in +a great measure finished, my own work. But it would be difficult for me +to exaggerate the profit I have derived from the comparison of my +opinions with those of a writer so thorough in his learning and so +delicate in his perceptions as Jacob Burckhardt, or the amount I owe to +his acute and philosophical handling of the whole subject. I must also +express a special debt to Ferrari, many of whose views I have adopted in +the Chapter on 'Italian History.' With regard to the alterations +introduced into the substance of the book in this edition, it will be +enough to say that I have endeavored to bring each chapter up to the +level of present knowledge. + +In conclusion, I once more ask indulgence for a volume which, though it +aims at a completeness of its own, is professedly but one part of a long +inquiry. + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. + +THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. + +Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation +of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediæval +Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provencals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of +Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of +the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance P. 1. + + +CHAPTER II. + +ITALIAN HISTORY. + +The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of +leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The +People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the +Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The +Consuls--The Podestas--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The +Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The +Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been +achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part +played by the Papacy P. 32. + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. + +Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of +Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino da +Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the +Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of +Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-government in +Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The +Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian +Tyrant--Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Descriptions of a Tyrant--The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza +Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino and +the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of the +Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect P. 99. + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE REPUBLICS. + +The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's +Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests +and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of +Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and +Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece +and Italy--Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms P. 193. + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. + +Florence, the City of Intelligence--Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty--Florentine Historical Literature--Philosophical Study of +History--Ricordano Malespini--Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns--The Villani--The Date +1300--Statistics--Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets--Dino +Compagni--Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century--Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini--The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century--Men of Action and Men of Letters; the +Doctrinaires--Florence between 1494 and 1537--Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini--The Political Importance of these +Writers--The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529--State of Parties--Filippo Strozzi--Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians--Their Literary Qualities--Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli--Scientific Statists--Discord +between Life and Literature--The Biography of Guicciardini--His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'--Biography of Machiavelli--His Scheme of a National +Militia--Dedication of 'The Prince'--Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance--The 'Discorsi'--The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence. P. 246. + + +CHAPTER VI. + +'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI. + +The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay--Machiavellism--His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory--Analysis of 'The +Prince'--Nine Conditions of Principalities--The Interest of the +Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy--Critique of +Louis XII.--Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism--Three Ways of +subduing a free City--Example of Pisa--Principalities founded by +Adventurers--Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus--Savonarola--Francesco +Sforza--Cesare Borgia--Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him--Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius--A Sketch of Cesare's +Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d' +Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of +Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a +powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of +National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola P. 334. + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. + +The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas +V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The +Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the +Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in +Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander +VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the +Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of +Gandia--Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius +II.--His violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo +X.--His Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian +VI.--His Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence P. 371. + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE CHURCH AND MORALITY. + +Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between +Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad +Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic +Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General +Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism P. 447. + + +CHAPTER IX. + +SAVONAROLA. + +The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the +Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San +Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His +Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 +and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to +call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial +and Execution of Savonarola P. 497. + + +CHAPTER X. + +CHARLES VIII. + +The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe--Policy of Louis +XI. of France--Character of Charles VIII.--Preparations for the Invasion +of Italy--Position of Lodovico Sforza--Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy +after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici--Weakness of the Republics--Il +Moro--The year 1494---Alfonso of Naples--Inefficiency of the Allies to +cope with France--Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of +Italy by Giuliano della Rovere--Charles at Asti and Pavia--Murder of +Gian Galeazzo Sforza--Mistrust in the French Army--Rapallo and +Fivizzano--The Entrance into Tuscany--Part played by Piero de' +Medici--Charles at Pisa--His Entrance into Florence--Piero Capponi--The +March on Rome--Entry into Rome--Panic of Alexander VI.--The March on +Naples--The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand--Alfonso II. escapes +to Sicily--Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia--Charles at Naples--The +League against the French--De Comines at Venice--Charles makes his +Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli--The Battle of +Fornovo--Charles reaches Asti and returns to France--Italy becomes the +Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance of the +Expedition of Charles VIII. P. 537. + + + * * * * * + +APPENDICES. + +No. I.--The Blood-madness of Tyrants 589 + +No. II.--Translations of Nardi, 'Istorie di Firenze,' lib. l. cap. 4; + and of Varchi, 'Storia Fiorentina,' lib. iii. caps. 20, + 21, 22; lib. ix. caps. 48, 49, 46 592 + +No. III.--The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's + 'Storia Fiorentina,' cap. 27 603 + +No. IV.--Religious Revivals in Mediæval Italy 606 + +No. V.--The 'Sommario della Storia d' Italia dal 1511 al 1527, + by Francesco Vettori 624 + + + + +RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. + + +Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation +of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediæval +Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provençals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of +Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of +the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance. + + +The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended +significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent--the +Revival of Learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the +Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to assign +certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we +cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say--between this year and +that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to +name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended +Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. The +truth is, that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The +evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is +progressive. As in the transformation scene of some great Masque, so +here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at +first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now +the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether +the new scene be finally set up? + +In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to +any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one +department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they +mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution +effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of +antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see +in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for +antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a +correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new +systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the +Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science +will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and +Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation +of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point +which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, +again, has his own answer to the question. The extinction of feudalism, +the development of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of +monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority and the +erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place +the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in +the Revolution; these are the aspects of the movement which engross his +attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal fictions based +upon the false decretals, the acquisition of a true text of the Roman +Code, and the attempt to introduce a rational method into the theory of +modern jurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of international +law. Men whose attention has been turned to the history of discoveries +and inventions will relate the exploration of America and the East, or +will point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of +printing and engraving, by the compass and the telescope, by paper and +by gunpowder; and will insist that at the moment of the Renaissance all +these instruments of mechanical utility started into existence, to aid +the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and +perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither any one of +these answers taken separately, nor indeed all of them together, will +offer a solution of the problem. By the term Renaissance, or new birth, +is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that +characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity for which +at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we +still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of +arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or even of nations. It is the +history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit +manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no +new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The +arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly +became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on +the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not +their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the +intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which +enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then +generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the +modern world. + +How was it, then, that at a certain period, about fourteen centuries +after Christ, to speak roughly, the intellect of the Western races awoke +as it were from slumber and began once more to be active? That is a +question which we can but imperfectly answer. The mystery of organic +life defeats analysis; whether the subject of our inquiry be a +germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the commencement of a new +religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a new phase in +civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to state the +conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point out what +are its manifestations. In doing so, moreover, we must be careful not +to be carried away by words of our own making. Renaissance, Reformation, +and Revolution are not separate things, capable of being isolated; they +are moments in the history of the human race which we find it convenient +to name; while history itself is one and continuous, so that our utmost +endeavors to regard some portion of it independently of the rest will be +defeated. + +A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the +dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no immediate +possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had +deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism: the fragments of Roman +civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated: the Germanic +nations had to receive culture and religion from the people they had +superseded; the Church had to be created, and a new form given to the +old idea of the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern +nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be +formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth +accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of +the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which +fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The +reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy +possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and +commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were still +semi-barbarous. Where the human spirit had been buried in the decay of +the Roman Empire, there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the +Papacy, called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, seated, +throned and crowned, upon the ashes thereof, to some extent bridged over +the gulf between the two periods. + +Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the +Renaissance was intellectual, that it was the emancipation of the reason +for the modern world, we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. +The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration +before the idols of the Church--dogma and authority and scholasticism. +Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by +the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the +outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, +without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, without the +traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state of utter +rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a difficult +hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved during the Middle +Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was done +unconsciously--that it was a gradual and instinctive process of +becoming. The reason, in one word, was not awake; the mind of man was +ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to +think of the mediæval students poring over a single ill-translated +sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole +systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles +hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the +time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and +Aristotle were alive but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the +Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern +mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of +humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but +unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life +down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping the +sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and +with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time within their +breasts and brains the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but +unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which erelong was destined to +restore its birthright to the world. + +Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own work. Slowly and +obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations +and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took +shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters, +and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed. +The qualities which render modern society different from that of the +ancient world, were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, +by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came a further +phase. After the nations had been molded, their monarchies and dynasties +were established. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into various forms of +more or less defined autocracy. In Italy and Germany numerous +principalities sprang into pre-eminence; and though the nation was not +united under one head, the monarchical principle was acknowledged. +France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of which the king +could say, 'L'Etat c'est moi.' England developed her complicated +constitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At the same time +the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation. The +Papacy became more autocratic. Like the king, the Pope began to say, +'L'Eglise c'est moi.' This merging of the mediæval State and mediæval +Church in the personal supremacy of King and Pope may be termed the +special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the +Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary conditions and external +circumstances were prepared. The organization of the five great nations, +and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political +and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of +which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the +Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still +evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea. + +Meanwhile, it must not be imagined that the Renaissance burst suddenly +upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms. +Far from that: within the middle age itself, over and over again, the +reason strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in the twelfth +century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and +words was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the beginning of +the thirteenth century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed that +man, by use of nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora, intermediate +between the two, drank one drop of the cup of prophecy offered to his +lips, and cried that 'the Gospel of the Father was past, the Gospel of +the Son was passing, the Gospel of the Spirit was to be.' These three +men, each in his own way, the Frenchman as a logician, the Englishman as +an analyst, the Italian as a mystic, divined the future but inevitable +emancipation of the reason of mankind. Nor were there wanting signs, +especially in Provence, that Aphrodite and Phoebus and the Graces were +ready to resume their sway. The premature civilization of that favored +region, so cruelly extinguished by the Church, was itself a reaction of +nature against the restrictions imposed by ecclesiastical discipline; +while the songs of the wandering students, known under the title of +_Carmina Burana_, indicate a revival of Pagan or pre-Christian feeling +in the very stronghold of mediæval learning. We have, moreover, to +remember the Cathari, the Paterini, the Fraticelli, the Albigenses, the +Hussites--heretics in whom the new light dimly shone, but who were +instantly exterminated by the Church. We have to commemorate the vast +conception of the Emperor Frederick II., who strove to found a new +society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the +advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were +exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that +the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal +Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus +early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those +headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, in +the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The +nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for +venturing to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Dominicans +preaching crusades against the cultivated nobles of Toulouse; Popes +stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the +masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies +and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity +devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy +sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled +the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations +of the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile. + +Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a work of conscious art, +conceived in a modern spirit and written in a modern tongue, was the +first true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had +shaken off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal, of antique culture +as the everlasting solace and the universal education of the human race, +his lifelong effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and +speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of the +Renaissance--its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After +Petrarch, Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of +freedom. His conception of human existence as joy to be accepted with +thanksgiving, not as a gloomy error to be rectified by suffering, +familiarized the fourteenth century with that form of semi-pagan +gladness which marked the real Renaissance. + +In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recovered the consciousness of +intellectual liberty. What we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived; +but their achievement rendered its appearance in due season certain. +With Dante the genius of the modern world dared to stand alone and to +create confidently after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same genius +reached forth across the gulf of darkness, resuming the tradition of a +splendid past. With Boccaccio the same genius proclaimed the beauty of +the world, the goodliness of youth and strength and love and life, +unterrified by hell, unappalled by the shadow of impending death. + +It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy had +lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire in her Communes of the +thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that +repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last +began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried +the civilization of the old world. Behind stretched the centuries of +mediævalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were +as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who +were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted; +their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of +enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life artificially +preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had sapped the fiber of the men who +were about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to +delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their +capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No +generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them +down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair of +thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses +rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They +yearned for magnificence, and instinctively comprehended splendor. At +the same time the period of satiety was still far off. Everything seemed +possible to their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon +their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and +faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted nor +the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of +wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first +transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable +than the fullness of the life that throbbed in them. Natures rich in all +capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor +was there any limit to the play of personality in action. We may apply +to them what Mr. Browning has written of Sordello's temperament:-- + + A footfall there + Suffices to upturn to the warm air + Half germinating spices, mere decay + Produces richer life, and day by day + New pollen on the lily-petal grows, + And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. + +During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not +seen the beauty of the world or had seen it only to cross himself, and +turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like S. Bernard traveling along +the shores of the Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the +waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the +mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a +thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his mule; even like this +monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of +sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had +scarcely known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. +Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man +fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell +everlasting, heaven hard to win; ignorance is acceptable to God as a +proof of faith and submission; abstinence and mortification are the only +safe rules of life: these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediæval +Church. The Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick +veil which they had drawn between the mind of man and the outer world, +and flashing the light of reality upon the darkened places of his own +nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted culture in +the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man +strove to make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his +privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation +of the reason from a dungeon, the double discovery of the outer and the +inner world. + +An external event determined the direction which this outburst of the +spirit of freedom should take. This was the contact of the modern with +the ancient mind which followed upon what is called the Revival of +Learning. The fall of the Greek Empire in 1453, while it signalized the +extinction of the old order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated +forces of the new. A belief in the identity of the human spirit under +all previous manifestations and in its uninterrupted continuity was +generated. Men found that in classical as well as Biblical antiquity +existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual, by which +they might profit in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in +its own energies when it learned what the ancients had achieved. The +guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of the moderns. The +whole world's history seemed once more to be one. + +The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the +world and the discovery of man.[1] Under these two formulæ may be +classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The +discovery of the world divides itself into two branches--the exploration +of the globe, and that systematic exploration of the universe which is +in fact what we call Science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the +Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar +system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain +statement; for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid +what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is +only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with +the four centuries which have ensued, that we can estimate the magnitude +of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been +added to civilization. In like manner, it is worth while to pause a +moment and consider what is implied in the substitution of the +Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, regarded in old times +as the center of all things, the apple of God's eye, for the sake of +which were created sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to be one +of the many balls that roll round a giant sphere of light and heat, +which is itself but one among innumerable suns attended each by a +_cortège_ of planets, and scattered, how we know not, through infinity. +What has become of that brazen seat of the old gods, that Paradise to +which an ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds, and hidden +for a moment from the eyes of his disciples. The demonstration of the +simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were +most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their +symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the +world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one +proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most +cherished conceptions, to the very core of her mythology. Science was +born, and the warfare between scientific positivism and religious +metaphysic was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshiped under the +forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had been given to +the words: 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him +in spirit and in truth.' The reason of man was at last able to study the +scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to ascertain the +actual laws by which it is governed. Three centuries and a half have +elapsed since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only by +reflecting on the mass of knowledge we have since acquired, knowledge +not only infinitely curious but also incalculably useful in its +application to the arts of life, and then considering how much ground of +this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the +Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force +which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hand of astrology, +geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, +as far as to the present moment she has never ceased to grow. +Progressive and durable, Science may be called the first-born of the +spirit of the modern world. + + [1] It is to Michelet that we owe these formulæ, which have + passed into the language of history. + +Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the one hand the +appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners of the habitable +globe, and on the other the conquest by Science of all that we now know +about the nature of the universe. In the discovery of man, again, it is +possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations, +illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, +illustrated by Biblical antiquity; these are the two regions, at first +apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpenetrative, which the +critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for +investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at +work, art and scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, like +philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless scholasticism--a +frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without +inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected +with the religious feelings of the people, formulæ from which to deviate +would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshiper. +Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and +stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even +had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms +he saw around him. But with the dawning of the Renaissance, a new spirit +in the arts arose. Men began to conceive that the human body is noble in +itself and worthy of patient study. The object of the artist then became +to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the +utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of delineation. He studied from +the nude; he drew the body in every posture; he composed drapery, +invented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures and the +expression of his faces to the subject he had chosen. In a word, he +humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister-frescoes upon which he +worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols, and +brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living +human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently +substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the +principles of the Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for the +display of physical perfection, and to introduce 'un bel corpo ignudo' +into the composition was of more moment to them than to represent the +macerations of the Magdalen. Men thus learned to look beyond the +relique and the host, and to forget the dogma in the lovely forms which +gave it expression. Finally, when the classics came to aid this work of +progress, a new world of thought and fancy, divinely charming, wholly +human, was revealed to their astonished eyes. Thus art, which had begun +by humanizing the legends of the Church, diverted the attention of its +students from the legend to the work of beauty, and lastly, severing +itself from the religious tradition, became the exponent of the majesty +and splendor of the human body. This final emancipation of art from +ecclesiastical trammels culminated in the great age of Italian painting. +Gazing at Michael Angelo's prophets in the Sistine Chapel, we are indeed +in contact with ideas originally religious. But the treatment of these +ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of +Pheidias. Titian's Virgin received into Heaven, soaring midway between +the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to +follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of +humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is +nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of +the Renaissance stop here. It went further, and plunged into Paganism. +Sculptors and painters combined with architects to cut the arts loose +from their connection with the Church by introducing a spirit and a +sentiment alien to Christianity. + +Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the ideas which art +introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought for the modern world +a real resurrection of the body, which, since the destruction of antique +civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts and cerements within +the tomb of the mediæval cloister. It was scholarship which revealed to +men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human thought, the +value of human speculation, the importance of human life regarded as a +thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages a +few students had possessed the poems of Virgil and the prose of +Boethius--and Virgil at Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had actually been +honored as saints--together with fragments of Lucan, Ovid, Statius, +Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. The Renaissance opened to the whole reading +public the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At the same +time the Bible in its original tongues was rediscovered. Mines of +Oriental learning were laid bare for the students of the Jewish and +Arabic traditions. The Aryan and Semitic revelations were for the first +time subjected to something like a critical comparison. With unerring +instinct the men of the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-matter +of scholarship 'Litteræ Humaniores,'--the more human literature, or the +literature that humanizes. + +There are three stages in the history of scholarship during the +Renaissance. The first is the age of passionate desire; Petrarch poring +over a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity +learning Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head of +poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the +Italians with a thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of +acquisition and of libraries. Nicholas V., who founded the Vatican +Library in 1453, Cosimo de Medici, who began the Medicean Collection a +little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and +convents of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers of Greek, +who in the first half of the fifteenth century escaped from +Constantinople with precious freights of classic literature, are the +heroes of this second period. It was an age of accumulation, of +uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshiped by +these men, just as the reliques of Holy Land had been adored by their +great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the Crusades was revived in this +quest of the Holy Grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of Pagan +authors were valued like precious gems, reveled in like odoriferous and +gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes +of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received +an almost equal homage. Criticism had not yet begun. The world was bent +on gathering up its treasures, frantically bewailing the lost books of +Livy, the lost songs of Sappho--absorbing to intoxication the strong +wine of multitudinous thoughts and passions that kept pouring from those +long-buried amphora of inspiration. What is most remarkable about this +age of scholarship is the enthusiasm which pervaded all classes in +Italy for antique culture. Popes and princes, captains of adventure and +peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike became +scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the +temper of the times with singular felicity. On the 18th of April 1485 a +report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a +Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, +engraved with the inscription, 'Julia, Daughter of Claudius,' and inside +the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, +preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. +The bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and +mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. She was +instantly removed, so goes the legend, to the Capitol; and then began a +procession of pilgrims from all the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this +saint of the old Pagan world. In the eyes of those enthusiastic +worshipers, her beauty was beyond imagination or description: she was +far fairer than any woman of the modern age could hope to be. At last +Innocent VIII. feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new +cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his +direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble +coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in +Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was +yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for +the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us +rather use the mythus as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which +prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty +in the tomb of the classic world.[1] + + [1] The most remarkable document regarding the body of Julia + which has yet been published is a Latin letter, written by + Bartholomæus Fontius to his friend Franciscus Saxethus, + minutely describing her, with details which appear to prove + that he had not only seen but handled the corpse. It is printed + in Janitschek, _Die Gesellschaft der R. in It._: Stuttgart, + 1879, p. 120. + +Then came the third age of scholarship--the age of the critics, +philologers, and printers. What had been collected by Poggio and Aurispa +had now to be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. They began +their task by digesting and arranging the contents of the libraries. +There were then no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no +dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology +and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of +classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, +and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. +Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. +The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing +scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose +work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, +to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place beyond the reach of +monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace of humanity +which exists in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field +of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men, +who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the +accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer +in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1513. They then became the +inalienable heritage of mankind. But what vigils, what anxious +expenditure of thought, what agonies of doubt and expectation, were +endured by those heroes of humanizing scholarship, whom we are apt to +think of merely as pedants! Which of us now warms and thrills with +emotion at hearing the name of Aldus Manutius, or of Henricus Stephanus, +or of Johannes Froben? Yet this we surely ought to do; for to them we +owe in a great measure the freedom of our spirit, our stores of +intellectual enjoyment, our command of the past, our certainty of the +future of human culture. + +This third age in the history of the Renaissance Scholarship may be said +to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed +on the torch of learning to the northern nations. The publication of his +"Adagia" in 1500, marks the advent of a more critical and selective +spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining strength +in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and +sifting, is one of the points which distinguish the moderns from the +ancients; and criticism was developed by the process of assimilation, +comparison, and appropriation, which was necessary in the growth of +scholarship. The ultimate effect of this recovery of classic literature +was, once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The modern world was +brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, +and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to +judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in +the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely +from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The +minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediæval +ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew +to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This +extravagance led of necessity to a reaction--in the north to Puritanism, +in the south to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected +under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that +most precious possession of the modern world, was never seriously +imperiled by the classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance; nor, on the +other hand, was the progressive emancipation of the reason materially +retarded by the reaction it produced. + +The transition at this point to the third branch in the discovery of +man, the revelation to the consciousness of its own spiritual freedom, +is natural. Not only did scholarship restore the classics and encourage +literary criticism; it also restored the text of the Bible, and +encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of theological freedom +followed a free philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the +Church. To purge the Christian faith from false conceptions, to liberate +the conscience from the tyranny of priests, and to interpret religion to +the reason has been the work of the last centuries; nor is this work as +yet by any means accomplished. On the one side Descartes and Bacon, +Spinoza and Locke, are sons of the Renaissance, champions of new-found +philosophical freedom; on the other side, Luther is a son of the +Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom. The whole +movement of the Reformation is a phase in that accelerated action of the +modern mind which at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a +mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated phenomenon or as a mere +effort to restore the Church to purity. The Reformation exhibits in the +region of religious thought and national politics what the Renaissance +displays in the sphere of culture, art, and science--the recovered +energy and freedom of the reason. We are too apt to treat of history in +parcels, and to attempt to draw lessons from detached chapters in the +biography of the human race. To observe the connection between the +several stages of a progressive movement of the human spirit, and to +recognize that the forces at work are still active, is the true +philosophy of history. + +The Reformation, like the revival of science and of culture, had its +mediæval anticipations and foreshadowings. The heretics whom the Church +successfully combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia were the +precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way in the fifteenth +century. Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type--Reuchlin in +Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as +a humanist--contribute each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, +incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the +necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity, as +distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the +individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for +himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between the human soul +and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. +Thus the principles involved in what we call the Reformation were +momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of +texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on +the other side with the intolerance of mere authority it led to what has +since been named rationalism--the attempt to reconcile the religious +tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie +the conceptions of the popular religious consciousness. Again, by +promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, and by connecting itself +with national politics, the reformation was linked historically to the +revolution. It was the Puritan Church in England stimulated by the +patriotism of the Dutch Protestants, which established our +constitutional liberty, and introduced in America the general principle +of the equality of men. This high political abstraction, latent in +Christianity, evolved by criticism, and promulgated as a gospel in the +second half of the last century, was externalized in the French +Revolution. The work that yet remains to be accomplished for the modern +world is the organization of society in harmony with democratic +principles. + +Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth to liberty--the +spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of +self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world, and of +the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the +conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and +establishing the principle of political freedom. The Church was the +schoolmaster of the Middle Ages. Culture was the humanizing and refining +influence of the Renaissance. The problem for the present and the future +is how through education to render knowledge accessible to all--to break +down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set between clerk and +layman, and which in the intermediate period has arisen between the +intelligent and ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern world, +in which all men shall enjoy the same social, political, and +intellectual advantages, be realized or not, we cannot doubt that the +whole movement of humanity from the Renaissance onward has tended in +this direction. To destroy the distinctions, mental and physical, which +nature raises between individuals, and which constitute an actual +hierarchy, will always be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the +future no civilized man will lack the opportunity of being physically +and mentally the best that God has made him. + +It remains to speak of the instruments and mechanical inventions which +aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern age. Discovered over +and over again, and offered at intervals to the human race at various +times and on divers soils, no effective use was made of these material +resources until the fifteenth century. The compass, discovered according +to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for +the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in +the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus +to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to +substantiate his theory of the planetary system. Printing, after +numerous useless revelations to the world of its resources, became an +art in 1438; and paper, which had long been known to the Chinese, was +first made of cotton in Europe about 1000, and of rags in 1319. +Gunpowder entered into use about 1320. As employed by the Genius of the +Renaissance, each one of these inventions became a lever by means of +which to move the world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war. The +feudal castle, the armor of the Knight and his battle-horse, the prowess +of one man against a hundred, and the pride of aristocratic cavalry +trampling upon ill-armed militia, were annihilated by the flashes of the +canon. Courage became more a moral than a physical quality. The victory +was delivered to the brain of the general. Printing has established, as +indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property +of every one, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing +cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite, and must occur to +every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the +inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious +calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when +we direct it to the phenomena of the Renaissance. + +In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared. +But it must never be forgotten that as a matter of history the true +Renaissance began in Italy. It was there that the essential qualities +which distinguish the modern from the ancient and the mediæval world +were developed. Italy created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture +and of intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath of the +European races. As the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people of +divine revelation, so may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar +vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in +science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern +intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and France and +England the restored humanities complete. Spain and England have since +done more for the exploration and colonization of the world. Germany +achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has +collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible +energy. But if we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we +find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had +already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and +to set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and +live. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +ITALIAN HISTORY. + + +The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of +leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The +People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the +Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The +Consuls--The Podestàs--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The +Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The +Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been +achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part +played by the Papacy. + + +After a first glance into Italian history the student recoils +as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To fix the moment of +transition from ancient to modern civilization seems impossible. There +is no formation of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France or +England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the Italian races do in +their original type; Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins, +Iapygians, Greeks have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman +rule into a nation that survives political mutations and the disasters +of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lombards, and Franks blend successively +with the masses of this complex population, and lose the outlines of +their several personalities. The western Empire melts imperceptibly +away. The Roman Church grows no less imperceptibly, and forms the Holy +Roman Empire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness in the +sphere of secular authority. These two institutions, the crowning +monuments of Italian creative genius, dominate the Middle Ages, powerful +as facts, but still more powerful as ideas. Yet neither of them controls +the evolution of Italy in the same sense as France was controlled by the +monarchical, and Germany by the federative, principle. The forces of the +nation, divided and swayed from side to side by this commanding dualism, +escaped both influences in so far as either Pope or Emperor strove to +mold them into unity. Meanwhile the domination of Byzantine Greeks in +the southern provinces, the kingdom of the Goths at Ravenna, the kingdom +of the Lombards and Franks at Pavia, the incursions of Huns and +Saracens, the kingdom of the Normans at Palermo, formed but accidents +and moments in a national development which owed important modifications +to each successive episode, but was not finally determined by any of +them. When the Communes emerge into prominence, shaking off the +supremacy of the Greeks in the South, vindicating their liberties +against the Empire in the North, jealously guarding their independence +from Papal encroachment in the center, they have already assumed shapes +of marked distinctness and bewildering diversity. Venice, Milan, Genoa, +Florence, Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Amalfi, Lucca, Pisa, to mention only +a few of the more notable, are indiscriminately called Republics. Yet +they differ in their internal type no less than in external conditions. +Each wears from the first and preserves a physiognomy that justifies our +thinking and speaking of the town as an incarnate entity. The cities of +Italy, down to the very smallest, bear the attributes of individuals. +The mutual attractions and repulsions that presided over their growth +have given them specific qualities which they will never lose, which +will be reflected in their architecture, in their customs, in their +language, in their policy, as well as in the institutions of their +government. We think of them involuntarily as persons, and reserve for +them epithets that mark the permanence of their distinctive characters. +To treat of them collectively is almost impossible. Each has its own +biography, and plays a part of consequence in the great drama of the +nation. Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian literature, +Italian art, is really not the study of one national genius, but of a +whole family of cognate geniuses, grouped together, conscious of +affinity, obeying the same general conditions, but issuing in markedly +divergent characteristics. Democracies, oligarchies, aristocracies +spring into being by laws of natural selection within the limits of a +single province. Every municipality has a separate nomenclature for its +magistracies, a somewhat different method of distributing administrative +functions. In one place there is a Doge appointed for life; in another +the government is put into commission among officers elected for a +period of months. Here we find a Patrician, a Senator, a Tribune; there +Consuls, Rectors, Priors, Ancients, Buonuomini, Conservatori. At one +period and in one city the Podestà seems paramount; across the border a +Captain of the People or a Gonfaloniere di Giustizia is supreme. Vicars +of the Empire, Exarchs, Catapans, Rectors for the Church, Legates, +Commissaries, succeed each other with dazzling rapidity. Councils are +multiplied and called by names that have their origin and meaning buried +in the dust of archæology. Consigli del Popolo, Credenza, Consiglio del +Comune, Senato, Gran Consiglio, Pratiche, Parlamenti, Monti, Consiglio +de' Savi, Arti, Parte Guelfa, Consigli di Dieci, di Tre, I Nove, Gli +Otto, I Cento--such are a few of the titles chosen at random from the +constitutional records of different localities. + +Not one is insignificant. Not one but indicates some moment of +importance in the social evolution of the state. Not one but speaks of +civil strife, whereby the burgh in question struggled into individuality +and defined itself against its neighbor. Like fossils, in geological +strata, these names survive long after their old uses have been +forgotten, to guide the explorer in his reconstruction of a buried past. +While one town appears to respect the feudal lordship of great families, +another pronounces nobility to be a crime, and forces on its citizens +the reality or the pretense of labor. Some recognize the supremacy of +ecclesiastics. Others, like Venice, resist the least encroachment of the +Church, and stand aloof from Roman Christianity in jealous isolation. +The interests of one class are maritime, of another military, of a third +industrial, of a fourth financial, of a fifth educational. Amalfi, Pisa, +Genoa, and Venice depend for power upon their fleets and colonies; the +little cities of Romagna and the March supply the Captains of adventure +with recruits; Florence and Lucca live by manufacture; Milan by banking; +Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, owe their wealth to students attracted by their +universities. Foreign alliances or geographical affinities connect one +center with the Empire of the East, a second with France, a third with +Spain. The North is overshadowed by Germany; the South is disquieted by +Islam. The types thus formed and thus discriminated are vital, and +persist for centuries with the tenacity of physical growths. Each +differentiation owes its origin to causes deeply rooted in the locality. +The freedom and apparent waywardness of nature, when she sets about to +form crystals of varying shapes and colors, that shall last and bear her +stamp for ever, have governed their uprising and their progress to +maturity. At the same time they exhibit the keen jealousies and mutual +hatreds of rival families in the animal kingdom. Pisa destroys Amalfi; +Genoa, Pisa; Venice, Genoa; with ruthless and remorseless egotism in the +conflict of commercial interests. Florence enslaves Pisa because she +needs a way to the sea. Siena and Perugia, upon their inland altitudes, +consume themselves in brilliant but unavailing efforts to expand. Milan +engulfs the lesser towns of Lombardy. Verona absorbs Padua and Treviso. +Venice extends dominion over the Friuli and the Veronese conquests. +Strife and covetousness reign from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. But it is +a strife of living energies, the covetousness of impassioned and +puissant units. Italy as a whole is almost invisible to the student by +reason of the many-sided, combative, self-centered crowd of numberless +Italian communities. Proximity foments hatred and stimulates hostility. +Fiesole looks down and threatens Florence. Florence returns frown for +frown, and does not rest till she has made her neighbor of the hills a +slave. Perugia and Assissi turn the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of +wolves by their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another across the +Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her +Becca Questa in responsive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno +receives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife and fierce +town-rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing satire and insulting epithet, +for no apparent reason but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same +water and to breathe the same air as Florence. It would seem as though +the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended +for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the +indigenous populations of Italy, tamed by antique culture, were +reverting to their primal instincts, with all the discords and divisions +introduced by the military system of the Lombards, the feudalism of the +Franks, the alien institutions of the Germans, superadded to +exasperate the passions of a nation blindly struggling against obstacles +that block the channel of continuous progress. Nor is this the end of +the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with one another, but +they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their +ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the +plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men +of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in +persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half. The exiles +roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their conquerors. +Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow. Again alliances are made +and revolutions accomplished, till the ancient feuds of the towns are +crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness that defies +analysis. Through the medley of quarreling, divided, subdivided, and +intertwisted factions, ride Emperors followed by their bands of knights, +appearing for a season on vain quests, and withdrawing after they have +tenfold confounded the confusion. Papal Legates drown the cities of the +Church in blood, preach crusades, fulminate interdictions, rouse +insurrections in the States that own allegiance to the Empire. Monks +stir republican revivals in old cities that have lost their liberties, +or assemble the populations of crime-maddened districts in aimless +comedies of piety and false pacification, or lead them barefooted and +intoxicated with shrill cries of 'Mercy' over plain and mountain. +Princes of France, Kings of Bohemia and Hungary, march and countermarch +from north to south and back again, form leagues, establish realms, head +confederations, which melt like shapes we form from clouds to nothing. +At one time the Pope and Emperor use Italy as the arena of a deadly +duel, drawing the congregated forces of the nation into their dispute. +At another they join hands to divide the spoil of ruined provinces. +Great generals with armies at their backs start into being from apparent +nothingness, dispute the sovereignty of Italy in bloodless battles, +found ephemeral dynasties, and pass away like mists upon a mountain-side +beneath a puff of wind. Conflict, ruin, desolation, anarchy are ever +yielding place to concord, restoration, peace, prosperity, and then +recurring with a mighty flood of violence. Construction, destruction, +and reconstruction play their part in crises that have to be counted by +the thousands. + +In the mean time, from this hurricane of disorder rises the clear ideal +of the national genius. Italy becomes self-conscious and attains the +spiritual primacy of modern Europe. Art, Learning, Literature, +State-craft, Philosophy, Science build a sacred and inviolable city of +the soul amid the tumult of seven thousand revolutions, the dust and +crash of falling cities, the tramplings of recurrent invasions, the +infamies and outrages of tyrants and marauders who oppress the land. +Unshaken by the storms that rage around it, this refuge of the spirit, +raised by Italian poets, thinkers, artists, scholars, and discoverers, +grows unceasingly in bulk and strength, until the younger nations take +their place beneath its ample dome. Then, while yet the thing of wonder +and of beauty stands in fresh perfection, at that supreme moment when +Italy is tranquil and sufficient to fulfill the noblest mission for the +world, we find her crushed and trampled under foot. Her tempestuous but +splendid story closes in the calm of tyranny imposed by Spain. + +Over this vertiginous abyss of history, where the memories of antique +civilization blend with the growing impulses of modern life in an +uninterrupted sequence of national consciousness; through this +many-chambered laboratory of conflicting principles, where the ideals of +the Middle Age are shaped, and laws are framed for Europe; across this +wonder-land of waning and of waxing culture, where Goths, Greeks, +Lombards, Franks, and Normans come to form themselves by contact with +the ever-living soul of Rome; where Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swiss, and +Germans at a later period battle for the richest prize in Europe, and +learn by conquest from the conquered to be men; how shall we guide our +course? If we follow the fortunes of the Church, and make the Papacy the +thread on which the history of Italy shall hang, we gain the advantage +of basing our narrative upon the most vital and continuous member of the +body politic. But we are soon forced to lose sight of the Italians in +the crowd of other Christian races. The history of the Church is +cosmopolitan. The Sphere of the Papacy extends in all directions around +Italy taken as a local center. Its influence, moreover, was invariably +one of discord rather than of harmony within the boundaries of the +peninsula. If we take the Empire as our standing-ground, we have to +write the annals of a sustained struggle, in the course of which the +Italian cities were successful, when they reduced the Emperor to the +condition of an absentee with merely nominal privileges. After Frederick +II. the Empire played no important part in Italy until its rights were +reasserted by Charles V. upon the platform of modern politics. A power +so external to the true life of the nation, so successfully resisted, +so impotent to control the development of the Italians, cannot be chosen +as the central point of their history. If we elect the Republics, we are +met with another class of difficulties. The historian who makes the +Commune his unit, who confines attention to the gradual development, +reciprocal animosities, and final decadence of the republics, can hardly +do justice to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papacy, which +occupy no less than half the country. Again, the great age of the +Renaissance, when all the free burghs accepted the rule of despots, and +when the genius of the Italians culminated, is for him a period of +downfall and degradation. Besides, he leaves the history of the Italian +people before the starting-point of the Republics unexplained. He has, +at the close of their career, to account for the reason why these +Communes, so powerful in self-development, so intelligent, so wealthy, +and so capable of playing off the Pope against the Empire, failed to +maintain their independence. In other words he selects one phase of +Italian evolution, and writes a narrative that cannot but be partial. If +we make the Despots our main point, we repeat the same error in a worse +form. The Despotisms imply the Communes as their predecessors. Each and +all of them grew up and flourished on the soil of decadent or tired +Republics. Though they are all-important at one period of Italian +history--the period of the present work--they do but form an episode in +the great epic of the nation. He who attempts a general history of Italy +from the point of view of the despotisms, is taking a single scene for +the whole drama. Finally we might prefer the people--that people, +instinctively and persistently faithful to Roman traditions, which +absorbed into itself the successive hordes of barbarian invaders, +civilized them, and adopted them as men of Italy; that people which +destroyed the kingdoms of the Goths and Lombards humbled the Empire at +Legnano, and evolved the Communes; that people which resisted alien +feudalism, and spent its prime upon eradicating every trace of the +repugnant system from its midst; that people which finally attained to +the consciousness of national unity by the recovery of scholarship and +culture under the dominion of despotic princes. This people is Italy. +But the documents that should throw light upon the early annals of the +people are deficient. It does not appear upon the scene before the reign +of Otho I. Nor does it become supreme till after the Peace of Constance. +Its biography is bound up with that of the republics and the despots. +Before the date of their ascendency we have to deal with Bishops of +Rome, Emperors of the East and West, Exarchs and Kings of Italy, the +feudal Lords of the Marches, the Dukes and Counts of Lombard and +Frankish rulers. Through that long period of incubation, when Italy +freed herself from dependence upon Byzantium, created the Papacy and +formed the second Roman Empire, the people exists only as a spirit +resident in Roman towns and fostered by the Church, which effectually +repelled all attempts at monarchical unity, playing the Lombards off +against the Goths, the Franks against the Lombards, the Normans against +the Greeks, merging the Italian Kingdom in the Empire when it became +German, and resisting the Empire of its own creation when the towns at +last were strong enough to stand alone. To speak about the people in +this early period is, therefore, to invoke a myth; to write its history +is the same as writing an ideal history of mediæval Europe. + +The truth is that none of these standpoints in isolation suffices for +the student of Italy. Her inner history is the history of social and +intellectual progress evolving itself under the conditions of attraction +and repulsion generated by the double ideas of Papacy and Empire. +Political unity is everywhere and at all times imperiously rejected. The +most varied constitutional forms are needed for the self-effectuation of +a race that has no analogue in Europe. The theocracy of Rome, the +monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, the democracy of +Florence, the tyranny of Milan are equally instrumental in elaborating +the national genius that gave art, literature, and mental liberty to +modern society. The struggles of city with city for supremacy or bare +existence, the internecine wars of party against party, the never-ending +clash of principles within the States, educated the people to +multifarious and vivid energy. In the course of those long complicated +contests, the chief centers acquired separate personalities, assumed the +physiognomy of conscious freedom, and stamped the mark of their own +spirit on their citizens. At the end of all discords, at the close of +all catastrophes, we find in each of the great towns a population +released from mental bondage and fitted to perform the work of +intellectual emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the essential +characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled and harmonized by an +ideal rhythm of progressive movement.[1] We who are mainly occupied in +this book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in society, +scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most brilliant period of +renascence, may accept this fact of political dismemberment with +acquiescence. It was to the variety of conditions offered by the Italian +communities that we owe the unexampled richness of the mental life of +Italy. Yet it is impossible to overlook the weakness inflicted on the +people by those same conditions when the time came for Italy to try her +strength against the nations of Europe.[2] It was then shown that the +diversities which stimulated spiritual energy were a fatal source of +national instability. The pride of the Italians in their local +independence, their intolerance of unification under a single head, the +jealousies that prevented them from forming a permanent confederation, +rendered them incapable of coping with races which had yielded to the +centripetal force of monarchy. If it is true that the unity of the +nation under a kingdom founded at Pavia would have deprived the world of +much that Italy has yielded in the sphere of thought and art, it is +certainly not less true that such centralization alone could have +averted the ruin of the sixteenth century which gives the aspect of a +tragedy to each volume of my work on the Renaissance. + + [1] See Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28) for an eloquent + demonstration of the happiness, prosperity, and splendor conferred + on the Italians by the independence of their several centers. He is + arguing against Machiavelli's lamentation over their failure to + achieve national unity. + + [2] This was the point urged by Machiavelli, in the _Principe_, the + _Discorsi_, and the _Art of War_. With keener political insight than + Guicciardini, he perceived that the old felicity of Italy was about + to fail her through the very independence of her local centers, + which Guicciardini rightly recognized as the source of her + unparalleled civilization and wealth. The one thing needful in the + shock with France and Spain was unity. + +Without seeking to attack the whole problem of Italian history, two main +topics must be briefly discussed in the present chapter before entering +on the proper matter of this work. The first relates to the growth of +the Communes, which preceded, necessitated, and determined the +despotisms of the fifteenth century. The second raises the question why +Italian differs from any other national history, why the people failed +to achieve unity either under a sovereign or in a powerful +confederation. These two subjects of inquiry are closely connected and +interdependent. They bring into play the several points that have been +indicated as partially and imperfectly explanatory of the problem of +Italy. But, since I have undertaken to write neither a constitutional +nor a political history, but a history of culture at a certain epoch, it +will be enough to treat of these two questions briefly, with the special +view of showing under what conditions the civilization of the +Renaissance came to maturity in numerous independent Communes, reduced +at last by necessary laws of circumstance to tyranny; and how it was +checked at the point of transition to its second phase of modern +existence, by political weakness inseparable from the want of national +coherence in the shock with mightier military races. + +Modern Italian history may be said to begin with the retirement of +Honorius to Ravenna and the subsequent foundation of Odoacer's Kingdom +in 476. The Western Empire ended, and Rome was recognized as a Republic. +When Zeno sent the Goths into Italy, Theodoric established himself at +Ravenna, continued the institutions and usages of the ancient Empire, +and sought by blending with the people to naturalize his alien +authority. Rome was respected as the sacred city of ancient culture and +civility. Her Consuls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed in due +course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric made himself the vicegerent +of the Cæsars rather than an independent sovereign. When we criticise +the Ostro-Gothic occupation by the light of subsequent history, it is +clear that this exclusion of the capital from Theodoric's conquest and +his veneration for the Eternal City were fatal to the unity of the +Italian realm. From the moment that Rome was separated from the +authority of the Italian Kings, there existed two powers in the +Peninsula--the one secular, monarchical, with the military strength of +the barbarians imposed upon its ancient municipal organization; the +other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the undefined ambitions of +S. Peter's See and the unconquered instincts of the Roman people +scattered through the still surviving cities.[1] Justinian, bent upon +asserting his rights as the successor of the Cæsars, wrested Italy from +the hands of the Goths; but scarcely was this revolution effected when +Narses, the successor of Belisarius, called a new nation of barbarians +to support his policy in Italy. Narses died before the advent of the +Lombards; but they descended, in forces far more formidable than the +Goths, and established a second kingdom at Pavia. Under the Lombard +domination Rome was left untouched. Venice, with her population gathered +from the ruins of the neighboring Roman cities, remained in +quasi-subjection to the Empire of the East. Ravenna became a Greek +garrison, ruling the Exarchate and Pentapolis under the name of the +Byzantine Emperors. The western coast escaped the Lombard domination; +for Genoa grew slowly into power upon her narrow cornice between hills +and sea, while Pisa defied the barbarians intrenched in military +stations at Fiesole and Lucca. In like manner the islands, Sicily, +Sardinia, and Corsica, were detached from the Lombard Kingdom; and the +maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta +asserted independence under the shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the +Lombards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed to accomplish, +decided the future of Italy. They broke the country up into unequal +blocks; for while the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while +the great duchies of Spoleto in the center and of Benevento in the south +owned the nominal sway of Alboin's successors,[2] Venice and the +Riviera, Pisa and the maritime republics of Apulia and Calabria, +Ravenna and the islands, repelled their sovereignty. Rome remained +inviolable beneath the ægis of her ancient prestige, and the decadent +Empire of the East was too inert to check the freedom of the towns which +recognized its titular supremacy. + + [1] When I apply the term Roman here and elsewhere to the + inhabitants of the Italian towns, I wish to indicate the indigenous + Italic populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity. The + resurgence of this population and its reattainment of intellectual + consciousness by the recovery of past traditions and the rejection + of foreign influence constitutes the history of Italy upon the close + of the Dark Ages. + + [2] It will be remembered by students of early Italian history that + Benevento and Spoleto joined the Church in her war upon the Lombard + kingdom. Spoleto was broken up. Benevento survived as a Lombard + duchy till the Norman Conquest. + +The kingdom of the Lombards endured two centuries, and left ineffaceable +marks upon Italy. A cordon of military cities was drawn round the old +Roman centers in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Duchy of Spoleto. Pavia rose +against Milan, which had been a second Rome, Cividale against Aquileia, +Fiesole against Florence, Lucca against Pisa. The country was divided +into Duchies and Marches; military service was exacted from the +population, and the laws of the Lombards, _asininum jus, quoddam jus +quod faciebant reges per se_, as the jurists afterwards defined them, +were imposed upon the descendants of Roman civilization. Yet the +outlying cities of the sea-coast, as we have already seen, were +independent; and Rome remained to be the center of revolutionary ideas, +the rallying-point of a policy inimical to Lombard unity. Not long after +their settlement, the princes of the Lombard race took the fatal step of +joining the Catholic communion, whereby they strengthened the hands of +Rome and excluded themselves from tyrannizing in the last resort over +the growing independence of the Papal See. The causes of their +conversion from Arianism to orthodox Latin Christianity are buried in +obscurity. But it is probable that they were driven to this measure by +the rebelliousness of their great vassals and the necessity of resting +for support upon the indigenous populations they had subjugated. Rome, +profiting by the errors and the weakness of her antagonists, extended +her spiritual dominion by enforcing sacraments, ordeals, and appeals to +ecclesiastical tribunals, organized her hierarchy under Gregory the +Great, and lost no opportunity of enriching and aggrandizing her +bishoprics. In 718 she shook off the yoke of Byzantium by repelling the +heresies of Leo the Isaurian; and when this insurrection menaced her +with the domestic tyranny of the Lombard Kings, who possessed themselves +of Ravenna in 728, she called the Franks to her aid against the now +powerful realm. Stephen II. journeyed in 753 to Gaul, named Pippin +Patrician of Rome, and invited him to the conquest of Italy. In the war +that followed, the Franks subdued the Lombards, and Charles the Great +was invested with their kingdom and crowned Emperor in 800 by Leo III. +at Rome. + +The famous compact between Charles the Great and the Pope was in effect +a ratification of the existing state of things. The new Emperor took for +himself and converted into a Frankish Kingdom all the provinces that had +been wrested from the Lombards. He relinquished to the Papacy Rome with +its patrimony, the portions of Spoleto and Benevento that had already +yielded to the See of S. Peter, the southern provinces that owned the +nominal ascendency of Byzantium, the islands and the cities of the +Exarchate and Pentapolis which formed no part of the Lombard conquest. +By this stipulation no real temporal power was accorded to the Papacy, +nor did the new Empire surrender its paramount rights over the peninsula +at large. The Italian kingdom, transferred to the Franks in 800, was the +kingdom founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered +districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which had +guided their emancipation. Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by +Theodoric's veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the +Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement whereby the Pope gave a +new Empire to Western Christendom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime +Republics of the south, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue +their own course of independence; and this is the chief among many +reasons why they rose so early into prominence. Rome consolidated her +ancient patrimonies and extended her rectorship in the center, while the +Frankish kings, who succeeded each other through eight reigns, developed +the Regno upon feudal principles by parceling the land among their +Counts. New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric +and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom. Thus the great +vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against +Pavia. The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious +nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the +last independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of +Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation. + +The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the +Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles +summoned into Italy in 951. When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned +Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy. Thus the +Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital. +Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed +Pontiff and an absent Emperor. The subsequent history of the Italians +shows how they succeeded in reducing both these powers to the condition +of principles, maintaining the pontifical and imperial ideas, but +repelling the practical authority of either potentate. Otho created new +marches and gave them to men of German origin. The houses of Savoy and +Montferrat rose into importance in his reign. To Verona were intrusted +the passes between Germany and Italy. The Princes of Este at Ferrara +held the keys of the Po, while the family of Canossa accumulated fiefs +that stretched from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over the +Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto. Thus the ancient Italy of +Lombards and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, +owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in the +provinces beyond the Alps. At the same time the organization of the +Church was fortified. The Bishops were placed on an equality with the +Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts were created to represent +their civil jurisdiction. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance +of Otho's concessions to the Bishops. During the preceding period of +Frankish rule about one third of the soil of Italy had been yielded to +the Church, which had the right of freeing its vassals from military +service; and since the ecclesiastical sees were founded upon ancient +sites of Roman civilization, without regard to the military centers of +the barbarian kingdoms, the new privileges of the Bishops accrued to the +benefit of the indigenous population. Milan, for example, down-trodden +by Pavia, still remained the major See of Lombardy. Aquileia, though a +desert, had her patriarch, while Cividale, established as a fortress to +coerce the neighboring Roman towns, was ecclesiastically but a village. +At this epoch a third power emerged in Italy. Berengar had given the +cities permission to inclose themselves with walls in order to repel the +invasions of the Huns.[1] Otho respected their right of self-defense, +and from the date of his coronation the history of the free burghs +begins in Italy. It is at first closely connected with the changes +wrought by the extinction of the kingdom of Pavia, by the exaltation of +the clergy, and by the dislocation of the previous system of +feud-holding, which followed upon Otho's determination to remodel the +country in the interest of the German Empire. The Regno was abolished. +The ancient landmarks of nobility were altered and confused. The cities +under their Bishops assumed a novel character of independence. Those of +Roman origin, being ecclesiastical centers, had a distant advantage over +the more recent foundations of the Lombard and the Frankish monarchs. +The Italic population everywhere emerged and displayed a vitality that +had been crushed and overlaid by centuries of invasion and military +oppression. + + [1] It is worthy of notice that to this date belongs the war-chant + of the Modenese sentinels, with its allusions to Troy and Hector, + which is recognized as the earliest specimen of the Italian + hendecasyllabic meter. + +The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as luminous points in the dense +darkness of feudal aristocracy.[1] Gathering round their Cathedral as a +center, the towns inclose their dwellings with bastions, from which they +gaze upon a country bristling with castles, occupied by serfs, and +lorded over by the hierarchical nobility. Within the city the Bishop +and the Count hold equal sway; but the Bishop has upon his side the +sympathies and passions of the burghers. The first effort of the towns +is to expel the Count from their midst. Some accident of misrule +infuriates the citizens. They fly to arms and are supported by the +Bishop. The Count has to retire to the open country, where he +strengthens himself in his castle.[2] Then the Bishop remains victor in +the town, and forms a government of rich and noble burghers, who control +with him the fortunes of the new-born state. At this crisis we begin to +hear for the first time a word that has been much misunderstood. The +_Popolo_ appears upon the scene. Interpreting the past by the present, +and importing the connotation gained by the word _people_ in the +revolutions of the last two centuries, students are apt to assume that +the Popolo of the Italian burghs included the whole population. In +reality it was at first a close aristocracy of influential families, to +whom the authority of the superseded Counts was transferred in +commission, and who held it by hereditary right.[3] Unless we firmly +grasp this fact, the subsequent vicissitudes of the Italian +commonwealths are unintelligible, and the elaborate definitions of the +Florentine doctrinaires lose half their meaning. The internal +revolutions of the free cities were almost invariably caused by the +necessity of enlarging the Popolo, and extending its franchise to the +non-privileged inhabitants. Each effort after expansion provoked an +obstinate resistance from those families who held the rights of +burghership; and thus the technical terms _primo popolo_, _secondo +popolo_, _popolo grasso_, _popolo minuto_, frequently occurring in the +records of the Republics, indicate several stages in the progress from +oligarchy to democracy. The constitution of the city at this early +period was simple. At the head of its administration stood the Bishop, +with the Popolo of enfranchised burghers. The _Commune_ included the +Popolo, together with the non-qualified inhabitants, and was represented +by Consuls, varying in number according to the division of the town into +quarters.[4] Thus the Commune and the Popolo were originally separate +bodies; and this distinction has been perpetuated in the architecture of +those towns which still can show a Palazzo del Popolo apart from the +Palazzo del Commune. Since the affairs of the city had to be conducted +by discussion, we find Councils corresponding to the constituent +elements of the burgh. There is the _Parlamento_, in which the +inhabitants meet together to hear the decisions of the Bishop and the +Popolo, or to take measures in extreme cases that affect the city as a +whole; the _Gran Consiglio_, which is only open to duly qualified +members of the Popolo; and the _Credenza_, or privy council of specially +delegated burghers, who debate on matters demanding secrecy and +diplomacy. Such, generally speaking, and without regard to local +differences, was the internal constitution of an Italian city during the +supremacy of the Bishops. + + [1] It is not necessary to raise antiquarian questions here relating + to the origin of the Italian Commune. Whether regarded as a survival + of the ancient Roman _municipium_ or as an offshoot from the Lombard + _guild_, it was a new birth of modern times, a new organism evolved + to express the functions of Italian as different from ancient Roman + or mediæval Lombard life. The affection of the people for their past + induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility for the + officers and councils of the Commune. Thus a specious air of + classical antiquity, rather literary and sentimental than real, was + given to the Commune at the outset. Moreover, it must be remembered + that Rome herself had suffered no substantial interruption of + republican existence during the Dark Ages. Therefore the free + burghs, though their vitality was the outcome of wholly new + conditions, though they were built up of guilds and associations + representing interests of modern origin, flattered themselves with + an uninterrupted municipal succession from the Roman era, and + pointed for proof to the Eternal City. + + [2] The Italian word _contado_ is a survival from this state of + things. It represents a moment in the national development when the + sphere of the Count outside the city was defined against the sphere + of the municipality. The _Contadini_ are the people of the Contado, + the Count's men. + + [3] Even Petrarch, in his letter to four Cardinals (Lett. Fam. xi. + 16, ed. Fracassetti) on the reformation of the Roman Commonwealth, + recommends the exclusion of the neighboring burghs and all + strangers, inclusive of the Colonna and Orsini families, from the + franchise. None but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the + _colluviet omnium gentium_ deposited upon the Seven Hills by + centuries of immigration he does not clearly say, should be chosen + to revive the fallen majesty of the Republic. See in particular the + peroration of his argument (op. cit. vol. iii. p. 95). In other + words, he aims at a narrow Popolo, a _pura cittadinanza_, in the + sense of Cacciaguida Par. xvi. + + [4] In some places we find as many as twelve Consuls. It appears + that both the constituent families of the Popolo and the numbers of + the Consuls were determined by the Sections of the city, so many + being told off for each quarter. + +In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals, among whom may +be mentioned the houses of Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, +creations of the Salic Emperors, looked with favor upon the development +of the towns, while some nobles went so far as to constitute themselves +feudatories of Bishops.[1] The angry warfare carried on against Canossa +by the Lombard barons has probably to be interpreted by the jealousy +this popular policy excited. At the same time, while Lombardy and +Tuscany were establishing their municipal liberties, a sympathetic +movement began in Southern Italy, which resulted in the conquest of +Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily by the Normans. Omitting all the details of +this episode, than which nothing more dramatic is presented by the +history of modern nations, it must be enough to point out here that the +Normans finally severed Italy from the Greek Empire, gave a monarchical +stamp to the south of the peninsula, and brought the Regno they +consolidated into the sphere of national politics under the protection +of the Pope. Up to the date of their conquest Southern Italy had a +separate and confused history. It now entered the Italian community, and +by the peculiar circumstances of its cession to the Holy See was +destined in the future to become the chief instrument whereby the Popes +disturbed the equilibrium of the peninsula in furtherance of their +ambitious schemes. + + [1] The Pelavicini of S. Donnino, for example, gave themselves to + Parma. + +The greatness of the Roman cities under the popular rule of their +Bishops is illustrated by Milan, second only to Rome in the last days of +the Empire. Milan had been reduced to the condition of abject misery by +the Kings, who spared no pains to exalt Pavia at the expense of her +elder sister. After the dissolution of the kingdom, she started into a +new life, and in 1037 her archbishop, Heribert, was singled out by +Conrad II. as the protagonist of the episcopal revolution against +feudalism.[1] Heribert was in truth the hero of the burghs in their +first strife for independence. It was he who devised the _Carroccio_, an +immense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner of the Commune, with an +altar and priests ministrant, around which the pikemen of the city +mustered when they went to war. This invention of Heribert's was soon +adopted by the cities throughout Italy. It gave cohesion and confidence +to the citizens, reminded them that the Church was on their side in the +struggle for freedom, and served as symbol of their military strength in +union. The first authentic records of a Parliament, embracing the nobles +of the Popolo, the clergy, and the multitude, are transmitted to us by +the Milanese Chronicles, in which Heribert figures as the president of a +republic. From this date Milan takes the lead in the contests for +municipal independence. Her institutions like that of the Carroccio, +together with her tameless spirit, are communicated to the neighboring +cities of Lombardy, cross the Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs +of Tuscany. + + [1] He was summoned before the Diet of Pavia for having dispossessed + a noble of his feud. + +Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal presidency, the cities +now proceeded to claim the right of choosing their own Bishops. They +refused the prelates sent them by the Emperor, and demanded an election +by the Chapters of each town. This privilege was virtually won when the +war of Investitures broke out in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. in +1046, the Emperors resolved to enforce their right of nominating the +Popes. The two first prelates imposed on Rome, Clement II. and Damatus +II., died under suspicion of poison. Thus the Roman people refused a +foreign Pope, as the Lombards had rejected the bishops sent to rule +them. The next Popes, Leo IX. and Victor II., were persuaded by +Hildebrand, who now appears upon the stage, to undergo a second +election at Rome by the clergy and the people. They escaped +assassination. But the fifth German, Stephen X., again died suddenly; +and now the formidable monk of Soana felt himself powerful enough to +cause the election of his own candidate, Nicholas II. A Lateran council, +inspired by Hildebrand, transferred the election of Popes to the +Cardinals, approved by the clergy and people of Rome, and confirmed the +privilege of the cities to choose their bishops, subject to Papal +ratification. In 1073 Hildebrand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and +declared a war that lasted more than forty years against the Empire. At +its close in 1122 the Church and the Empire were counterposed as +mutually exclusive autocracies, the one claiming illimitable spiritual +sway, the other recognized as no less illimitably paramount in civil +society. From the principles raised by Hildebrand and contested in the +struggles of this duel, we may date those new conceptions of the two +chief powers of Christendom which found final expression in the +theocratic philosophy of the _Summa_ and the imperial absolutism of the +_De Monarchiâ_. Meanwhile the Empire and the Papacy, while trying their +force against each other, had proved to Italy their essential weakness. +What they gained as ideas, controlling the speculations of the next two +centuries, they lost as potentates in the peninsula. It was impossible +for either Pope or Emperor to carry on the war without bidding for the +support of the cities; and therefore, at the end of the struggle, the +free burghs found themselves strengthened at the expense of both powers. +Still it must not be forgotten that the wars of Investitures, while they +developed the independent spirit and the military energies of the +Republics, penetrated Italy with the vice of party conflict. The +ineradicable divisions of Guelf and Ghibelline were a heavy price to pay +for a step forward on the path of emancipation; nor was the +ecclesiastical revolution, which tended to Italianize the Papacy, while +it magnified its cosmopolitan ascendency, other than a source of evil to +the nation. + +The forces liberated in the cities by these wars brought the Consuls to +the front. The Bishops had undermined the feudal fabric of the kingdom, +depressed the Counts, and restored the Roman towns to prosperity. During +the war both Popolo and Commune grew in vigor, and their Consuls began +to use the authority that had been conquered by the prelates. At first +the Consuls occupied a subordinate position as men of affairs and +notaries, needed to transact the business of the mercantile inhabitants. +They now took the lead as political agents of the first magnitude, +representing the city in its public acts, and superseding the +ecclesiastics. The Popolo was enlarged by the admission of new burgher +families, and the ruling caste, though still oligarchical, became more +fairly representative of the inhabitants. This progress was inevitable, +when we remember that the cities had been organized for warfare, and +that, except their Consuls, they had no officials who combined civil +and military functions. Under the jurisdiction of the Consuls Roman law +was everywhere substituted for Lombard statutes, and another strong blow +was thus dealt against decaying feudalism. The school of Bologna +eclipsed the university of Pavia. Justinian's Code was studied with +passionate energy, and the Italic people enthusiastically reverted to +the institutions of their past. In the fable of the Codex of the +_Pandects_ brought by Pisa from Amalfi we can trace the fervor of this +movement, whereby the Romans of the cities struggled after resurrection. + +One of the earliest manifestations of municipal vitality was the war of +city against city, which began to blaze with fury in the first half of +the twelfth century, and endured so long as free towns lasted to +perpetuate the conflict. No sooner had the burghs established themselves +beneath the presidency of their Consuls than they turned the arms they +had acquired in the war of independence, against their neighbors. The +phenomenon was not confined to any single district. It revealed a new +necessity in the very constitution of the commonwealths. Penned up +within the narrow limits of their petty dependencies, throbbing with +fresh life, overflowing with a populace inured to warfare, demanding +channels for their energies in commerce, competing with each other on +the paths of industry, they clashed in deadliest duels for breathing +space and means of wealth. The occasions that provoked one Commune to +declare war upon its rival were trivial. The animosity was internecine +and persistent. Life or death hung in the balance. It was a conflict for +ascendency that brought the sternest passions into play, and decided the +survival of the fittest among hundreds of competing cities. The deeply +rooted jealousies of Roman and feudal centers, the recent partisanship +of Papal and Imperial principles, imbittered this strife. But what lay +beneath all superficial causes of dissension was the economic struggle +of communities, for whom the soil of Italy already had begun to seem too +narrow. So superabundant were the forces of her population, so vast were +the energies emancipated by her attainment of municipal freedom, that +this mighty mother of peoples could not afford equal sustenance to all +her children. New-born, they had to strangle one another as they hung +upon the breast that gave them nourishment. It was impossible for the +Emperor to overlook the apparent anarchy of his fairest province. +Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his first +thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after his +election he descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues among the +cities of the North, the one headed by Pavia, the center of the +abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome +and contained within her loins the future of Italian freedom. It is not +necessary to follow in detail the conflict of the Lombard burghs with +Frederick, so enthusiastically described by their historian, Sismondi, +It is enough for our present purpose to remember that in the course of +that contention both leagues made common cause against the Emperor, drew +the Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 1183, after +the victory of Legnano had convinced Frederick of his weakness, extorted +by the Peace of Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was amply +guaranteed and recognized. The advantages won by Milan who sustained the +brunt of the imperial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyrdom +surmounted the petty jealousies of her municipal rivals, were extended +to the cities of Tuscany. After the date of that compact signed by the +Emperor and his insurgent subjects, the burghs obtained an assured +position as a third power between the Empire and the Church. The most +remarkable point in the history of this contention is the unanimous +submission of the Communes to what they regarded as the just suzerainty +of Cæsar's representative. Though they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they +took no measures for closing the gates of the Alps against the Germans. +The Emperor was free to come and go as he listed; and when peace was +signed, he reckoned the burghers who had beaten him by arms and policy, +among his loyal vassals. Still the spirit of independence in Italy had +been amply asserted. This is notably displayed in the address presented +to Frederick, before his coronation, by the senate of Rome. Regenerated +by Arnold of Brescia's revolutionary mission, the Roman people assumed +its antique majesty in these remarkable words: 'Thou wast a stranger; I +have made thee citizen; thou camest from regions from beyond the Alps; I +have conferred on thee the principality.'[1] Presumptuous boast as this +sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved that the Italic nation had +now sharply defined itself against the Church and the barbarians. It +still accepted the Empire because the Empire was the glory of Italy, the +crown that gave to her people the presidency of civilization. It still +recognized the authority of the Church because the Church was the eldest +daughter of Italy emergent from the wrecks of Roman society. But the +nation had become conscious of its right to stand apart from either. + + [1]: 'Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex transalpinis + partibus, principem constitui. Quod meum jure fuit, tibi dedi.' See + _Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronicon_, De Rebus Gestis Frid. i. + Imp. Lib. ii. cap. 21. Basileæ, 1569. The Legates appointed by the + Senate met the Emperor at Sutri, and delivered the oration of which + the sentence just quoted was part. It began: 'Urbis legati nos, rex + optime, ad tuam a Senatu, populoque Romano destinati sumus + excellentiam,' and contained this remarkable passage: 'Orbis + imperium affectas, coronam præbitura gratanter assurgo, jocanter + occurro ... indebitum clericorum excussurus jugum.' If the words are + faithfully reported, the Republic separates itself abruptly from the + Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in honor before the Empire. + Frederick is said to have interrupted the Legates in a rage before + they could finish their address, and to have replied with angry + contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a rhetorical + composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. 'Multa de + Romanorum sapientia seu fortitudine hactenus audivimus, magis tamen + de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba vestra + plus arrogantiæ tumore insipida quam sale sapientiæ condita + sentimus.... Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quondam + dico, atque o utinam tam veracitur quam libenter nunc dicere + possemus,' etc. + +Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Barbarossa, recognized in +their rights as belligerent powers, and left to their own guidance by +the Empire, the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon the +remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learned to know it, was +surrounded by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held still +undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cordon of +fortresses every city with singular unanimity directed the forces it had +formed in the preceding conflicts. At the same time the municipal +struggles of Commune against Commune lost none of their virulence. The +Counts, pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up around them, +adopted the policy of pitting one burgh against another. When a noble +was attacked by the township near his castle, he espoused the +animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by +accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his +natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In +his desperation he emancipated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado +profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This +new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined +period, assuming different characters in different centers; but the end +of it was that the nobles were forced to submit to the cities. They were +admitted to the burghership, and agreed to spend a certain portion of +every year in the palaces they raised within the circuit of the walls. +Thus the Counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the +Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself the relics of +Lombard, Frank, and German aristocracy. Still the gain upon the side of +the republics was not clear. Though the feudal lordship of the nobles +had been destroyed, their wealth, their lands, and their prestige +remained untouched. In the city they felt themselves but aliens. Their +real home was still the castle on the neighboring mountain. Nor, when +they stooped to become burghers, had they relinquished the use of arms. +Instead of building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they filled +its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence they carried on feuds +among themselves and imperiled the safety of the streets. It was +speedily discovered that the war against the Castles had become a war +against the Palaces, and that the arena had been transferred from the +open Contado to the Piazza and the barricade. The authority of the +consuls proved insufficient to maintain an equilibrium between the +people and the nobles. Accordingly a new magistrate started into being, +combining the offices of supreme justiciary and military dictator. When +Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard cities +in the common interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a +foreign judge, called Podestà _quasi habens potestatem Imperatoris in +hâc parte_. This institution only served at the moment to inflame and +imbitter the resistance of the Communes: but the title of Podestà was +subsequently conferred upon the official summoned to maintain an equal +balance between the burghers and the nobles. He was invariably a +foreigner, elected for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in +all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life and death, and +disposing of the municipal militia. The old constitution of the Commune +remained to control this dictator and to guard the independence of the +city. All the Councils continued to act, and the Consuls were fortified +by the formation of a College of Ancients or Priors. The Podestà was +created with the express purpose of effecting a synthesis between two +rival sections of the burgh. He was never regarded as other than an +alien to the city, adopted as a temporary mediator and controller of +incompatible elements. The lordship of the burgh still resided with the +Consuls, who from this time forward began to lose their individuality in +the College of the _Signoria_--called _Priori_, _Anziani_, or _Rettori_, +as the case might be in various districts. + +The Italian republics had reached this stage when Frederick II. united +the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the +utmost moment for Italian independence. Master of the South, Frederick +sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and +Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting +Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The +warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of +Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom. +They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy +and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the +cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was +devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da +Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the +parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable +force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed +by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, +the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the +friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the +naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of +feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with +disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while +the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a +matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war +lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to +possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted +principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the +precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety +of the whole people. A city does not pronounce itself either Guelf or +Ghibelline till half the burghers have been exiled. The victorious +party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself +in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at +home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and +confiscations.[1] The exiles make common cause with members of their own +faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and +Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a +common dualism. In this way we are justified in saying that Italy +achieved her national consciousness through strife and conflict; for the +Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues, or +engaged in merely local conflicts. They were brought together and +connected by the sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which +embraced and dominated the municipalities, set Republics and Regno on +equal footing, and merged the titular leaders of the struggle, Pope and +Emperor, in the uncontrollable tumult. The issue was no vulgar one; no +merely egotistic interests were at stake. Guelfs and Ghibellines alike +interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for +the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse +senses. The Ghibelline heard Italy calling upon him to build a citadel +that should be guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where the +hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais of the Empire, might +dispense culture and civil order in due measure to the people. The Guelf +believed that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds within the +burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, who stood for Christ, the +preacher of equality and peace for all mankind, in order that the +beehive of industry should in course of time evolve a civil order and a +culture representative of its own freely acting forces. + + [1] It is enough to refer to the importance of the _Parte Guelfa_ in + the history of Florence. + +During the stress and storm of the fierce warfare carried on by Guelfs +and Ghibellines, the Podestà fell into the second rank. He had been +created to meet an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement for +arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the title of _Captain of +the People_. Chosen when one or other of the factions gains supreme +power in the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes the lead +in proscribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the +changes introduced into the constitution. The old magistracies and +councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with +the Capitano at its head, takes the lead; and a new member, called the +Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain the +policy of the victorious faction. But the Consiglio del Comune, with the +Podestà, who has not ceased to exercise judicial functions, still +subsists. The Priors form the signory as of old. The Credenza goes on +working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body of privileged +burghers. The party does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, +and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this +clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower classes +of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular +revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now assert +their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the _Arti_ is the chief +social phenomenon of the crisis.[1] Thus the final issue of the conflict +was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood, +because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse +currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in +antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial +and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the +old nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of +earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the +port asserted themselves against the mountain fastness and the +barrackburgh. The several classes of society, triturated, shaken +together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but +few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however +humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism +disappeared; but the constitution of the city itself was confused, and +the Popolo, whether 'primo' or 'secondo or even 'terzo,' was diluted +with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'[2] +The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and +Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante +finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood +aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in +Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never +felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the +skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even +so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other +hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating +from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased +to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed +themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic +colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the +feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines +cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some +Calabrians were murdered by their host, who discovered from their way of +slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. Ghibellines drank +out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore +white, and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing +dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for +distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the +middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ +from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he +turned his face to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city has a tale of +love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into +the region of romance and legend. Florence dated her calamities from the +insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a +broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi +stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. The story +of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into +play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the +ineffectual efforts of the Podestà to curb the violence of party +warfare. + + [1] The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that of + any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in + politics at this epoch of the civil wars. + + [2] This is the sting of Cacciaguida's scornful lamentation over + Florence Par. xvi. + + Ma la cittadinanza, ch' è or mista + Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine, + Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista. + + Tal fatto è fiorentino, e cambia e merca, + Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti, + Là dove andava l' avolo alia cerca. + + Sempre la confusione delle persone + Principio fu del mal della cittade, + Come del corpo il cibo che s' appone. + +So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter the exhaustion, that the +distracted Communes were fain at last to find some peace in tyranny. At +the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the +Popes called Charles of Anjou into Italy. The final issue of that policy +for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this +work. It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da Romano +introduced despotism in its worst form as a party leader of the +Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf +interest. He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the +Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him +as the price of his dictatorship. The republics almost simultaneously +entered upon a new phase. Democratized by the extension of the +franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli's phrase, in their old +organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of +tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of +the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle class for +the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.[1] Placing himself above +the law, manipulating the machinery of the State for his own ends, +substituting the will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile +passions in the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquillity +upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy of the people was conferred +upon him.[2] The Councils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The +aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. Under his rule +commerce flourished; the towns were adorned with splendid edifices; +foreign wars were carried on for the aggrandizement of the State without +regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked the first emergence +of personality supreme within the State, resuming its old forces in an +autocratic will, superseding and at the same time consciously +controlling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses of previous +revolutions. His advent was welcomed as a blessing by the recently +developed people of the cities he reduced to peace. But the great +families and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, as a +reptile spawned by the corruption and disease of the decaying body +politic. In their fury they addressed themselves to the two chiefs of +Christendom. Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a +second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the titles of Marquis of +Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce +Italy to order on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes +invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless march of Henry VII. +Neither Pope nor Emperor was strong enough to control the currents of +the factions which were surely whirling Italy into the abyss of +despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sciarra Colonna, the terrible +Ghibelline's outrage at Anagni, and the Papal Court was transferred to +Avignon in 1316. Henry VII. expired, of poison probably, at +Buonconvento, in 1313. The parties tore each other to fragments. Tyrants +were murdered. Whole families were extirpated. Yet these convulsions +bore no fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was in +despotism--the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as at Florence, or the +despotism of new tyrants in Lombardy and the Romagna.[3] + + [1] Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which took + the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth + century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da + Faggiuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke + of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from + Uguccione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the + Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the basement of Ghibellinism; + while the rebellion of 1343 averted tyranny from Florence for + another century. + + [2] Machiavelli's _Vita di Castruccio Castracane_, though it is + rather a historical romance than a trustworthy biography, + illustrates the gradual advances made by a bold and ambitious leader + from the Captaincy of the people, conferred upon him for one year, + to the tyranny of his city. + + [3] The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of + Italian tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history + of the civil wars: + + Chè le terre d' Italia tutte piene + Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa + Ogni villan che parteggiando viene. + + Those lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy (_Purg._ vi.) where + Dante refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme + authority in Europe. + +Meanwhile the perils to which the tyrants were exposed taught them to +employ cruelty and craft in combination. From the confused and spasmodic +efforts of the thirteenth century, when Captains of the people and +leaders of the party seized a momentary gust of power, there arose a +second sort of despotism, more cautious in its policy, more methodic in +its use of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing the Italian +cities and preparing the great age of the Renaissance. It would be +sentimental to utter lamentations over this change, and unphilosophical +to deplore the diminution of republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The +divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no +other solution of the political problem. All branches of the municipal +administration, strained to the cracking-point by the tension of party +conflict, were now isolated from the organism, abnormally developed, +requiring the combining effort of a single thinker to reunite their +scattered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. The indirect +restraints which a calmer period of municipal vitality had placed upon +tyrannic ambition, were removed by the leveling of classes and the +presentation of an equal surface to the builder of the palace-dome of +monarchy. Moreover, it must be remembered that what the Italians then +understood by freedom was municipal autonomy controlled by ruling houses +in the interest of the few. These considerations need not check our +sympathy with Florence in the warfare she carried on against the +Milanese tyrants. But they should lead us to be cautious in adopting the +conclusions of Sismondi, who saw Italian greatness only in her free +cities. The obliteration of the parties beneath despotism was needed, +under actual conditions, for that development of arts and industry which +raised Italy to a first place among civilized nations. Of the manners of +the Despots, and of the demoralization they encouraged in the cities of +their rule, enough will be said in the succeeding chapters, which set +forth the social conditions of the Renaissance in Italy. But attention +should here be called to the general character of despotic authority, +and to the influence the Despots exercised for the pacification of the +country. We are not justified by facts in assuming that had the free +burghs continued independent, arts and literature would have risen to a +greater height. Venice, in spite of an uninterrupted republican career, +produced no commanding men of letters, and owed much of her splendor in +the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castelfranco, and Verona. +Genoa remained silent and irresponsive to the artistic movement of Italy +until the last days of the republic, when her independence was but a +shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, +while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune. +Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of +Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature. The +art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families. +The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin to Lodovico Sforza, +and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more +than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Next to +Florence, the most brilliant centers of literary activity during the +bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples. +Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its +first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome +remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary +evolution. Thus the facts of the case seem to show that culture and +republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some +historians would seek to make us believe. On the other hand it is +impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were +necessary to the perfecting of art and literature. All that can be +safely advanced upon this subject, is that the pacification of Italy was +demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to +pass through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the +oligarchies of Venice and Florence. It might further be urged that the +Despots were in close sympathy with the masses of the people, shared +their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry. When the classical +revival took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined +this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all +encouragement. To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, +the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an +impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the +development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting +is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes +her magnificence to the despotic Popes. Even the pottery of Gubbio was a +creation of the ducal house of Urbino. + +After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning of the Papal exile at +Avignon, the Guelf party became the rallying-point of municipal +independence, with its headquarters in Florence. Ghibellinism united +the princes in an opposite camp. 'The Guelf party,' writes Giovanni +Villani, 'forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and +is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he +must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline.' Milan, first to +assert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of +despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the +long struggle between Florence and the Visconti. The chronicle of the +Villani and the Florentine history of Poggio contain the record of this +strife, which seemed to them the all-important crisis of Italian +affairs. In the Milanese annals of Galvano Fiamma and Mussi, on the +other hand, the advantages of a despotic sovereignty in giving national +coherence, the crimes of the Papacy, which promoted anarchy in its +ill-governed States, and the prospect of a comprehensive Italian tyranny +under the great house of the Visconti, are eloquently pleaded. The terms +of the main issue being thus clearly defined, we may regard the warfare +carried on by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the interests of +Church and Empire, the splendid campaigns of Egidio d'Albornoz, and the +delirious cruelty of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory +excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main profits of those +convulsions, which drowned Italy in blood during nearly all the +fourteenth century, accrued to the Despots, who held their ground in +spite of all attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses, notably +the Visconti, acquired strength by revolutions in which the Church and +Empire neutralized each other's action. The lesser families struck firm +roots into cities, infuriated rather than intimidated by such acts of +violence as the massacres of Faenza and Cesena in 1377. The relations of +the imperial and pontifical parties were confused; while even in the +center of republican independence, at Florence, social changes, +determined in great measure by the exhaustion of the city in its +conflict, prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny. Neither the Church +nor the Empire gained steady footing in Italy, while the prestige of +both was ruined.[1] Municipal freedom, instead of being enlarged, was +extinguished by the ambition of the Florentine oligarchs, who, while +they spent the last florin of the Commune in opposing the Visconti, +never missed an opportunity of enslaving the sister burghs of Tuscany. +In a word, the destiny of the nation was irresistibly impelling it +toward despotism. + + [1] Machiavelli, in his _Istorie Fiorentine_ (Firenze, 1818, vol. i. + pp. 47, 48), points out how the competition of the Church and + Empire, during the Papacies of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. and the + reign of Louis strengthened the tyrants of Lombardy, Romagna, and + the March. Each of the two contending powers gave away what did not + belong to them, bidding against each other for any support they + might obtain from the masters of the towns. + +In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the +clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must +remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted +burghs, the heroes of the middle classes and the multitude, the quellers +of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers +of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the +praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo +in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:[1] +'He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and +daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue, +was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and +justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which +removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew +in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through +love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his +mantle.' These verses set forth the qualities which united the mass of +the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial +classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of +personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon +the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud +than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers, +brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered +local vanity by continuing the municipal machinery in its functions of +parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their +pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the +burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from +attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the +gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy +height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where +a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the +man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on +his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it +by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political +necessities, an equilibrium of forces, substituted without legal title +for the Church and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic +individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of +consuls, Podestàs, and Captains of the people. The chief danger he had +to fear was conspiracy; and in providing himself against this peril he +expended all the resources suggested by refined ingenuity and heightened +terror. Yet, when the Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of +necessity that the successful conspirator became in turn a tyrant. +'Cities,' wrote Machiavelli,[2] 'that are once corrupt and accustomed to +the rule of princes, can never acquire freedom, even though the prince +with all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish +another; and the city has no rest except by the creation of a new lord, +unless it chance that one burgher by his goodness and great qualities +may during his lifetime preserve its temporary independence.' Palace +intrigues, therefore, took the place of Piazza revolutions, and +dynasties were swept away to make room for new tyrants without material +change in the condition of the populace. + + [1] _Mur. Scr. R. It._ xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote about + Azzo Visconti: 'He conciliated the people to him by equal justice + without distinction of Guelf or Ghibelline.' + + [2] _Discorsi_. i. 17. + +It was the universal policy of the Despots to disarm their subjects. +Prompted by considerations of personal safety, and demanded by the +necessity of extirpating the factions, this measure was highly popular. +It relieved the burghers of that most burdensome of all public duties, +military service. A tax on silver and salt was substituted in the +Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs, +actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country. The +effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions +all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of +Italian powers. The principalities were transformed into great banks, +where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and +calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire +by bargain. At first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, buying +up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when +it had been accomplished. But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to +the sense of their own power, and placed themselves beneath captains who +secured them a certainty of pay with continuity of profitable service. +Thus the Condottieri came into existence, and Italy beheld the spectacle +of moving despotisms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect establishment +upon the weakest, worst-defended points of the peninsula. They proved a +grave cause of disquietude alike to the tyrants and the republics; and +until the settlement of Francesco Sforza in the Duchy of Milan, when the +employers of auxiliaries had come to understand the arts of dealing with +them by perfidy, secret assassination, and a system of elaborate +counter-checks, the equilibrium of power in Italy was seriously +threatened. The country suffered at first from marauding excursions +conducted by piratical leaders of adventurous troops, by Werner of +Urslingen, the Conte Lando, and Fra Moriale; afterwards from the +discords of Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo, incessantly +plotting to carve duchies for themselves from provinces they had been +summoned by a master to subdue. At this period gold ruled the destinies +of Italy. The Despots, relying solely on their exchequer for their +power, were driven to extortion. Cities became bankrupt, pledged their +revenues, or sold themselves to the highest bidder.[1] Indescribable +misery oppressed the poorer classes and the peasants. A series of +obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a +vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become +unbearable. The lower classes of the burghers rose against the 'popolani +grassi,' and a new class of princes emerged at the close of the crisis. +Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on +Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia and the Petrucci on Siena. + + [1] Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country + population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, + upon her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for + 1,500. Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388. + +The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth +century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and +the financial distress which ensued upon the substitution of mercenary +for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, +and marked a new period in the history of despotism. From the date of +Francesco Sforza's entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes +became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious. Having +begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms +themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person +and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and +substituting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare. Gold +still ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery. To the ambitious +military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti succeeded the commercial +cynicism of Cosimo de' Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute +demoralization.[1] The spirit of the age was materialistic and positive. +The Despots held their state by treachery, craft, and corruption. The +element of force being virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained +undivided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli was realized +with more or less completeness in all parts of the peninsula. At this +moment and by these means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of +peace beneath the confederation of her great powers. Nicholas V. had +restored the Papal court to Rome in 1447; where he assumed the manners +of despotism and counted as one among the Italian Signori. Lombardy +remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco Sforza, and Tuscany under +that of the Casa Medici. The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of +Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of enlightened +despotism, while Venice, who had so long formed a state apart, by her +recent acquisition of a domain on terra firma, entered the community of +Italian politics. Thus the country had finally resolved itself into five +grand constituent elements--the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, +Florence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples--all of them, though widely +differing in previous history and constitutional peculiarities, now +animated by a common spirit.[2] Politically they tended to despotism; +for though Venice continued to be a republic, the government of the +Venetian oligarchy was but despotism put into commission. +Intellectually, the same enthusiasm for classical studies, the same +artistic energy, and the same impulse to revive Italian literature +brought the several centers of the nation into keener sympathy than they +had felt before. A network of diplomacy embraced the cities; and round +the leaders of the confederation were grouped inferior burghs, +republican or tyrannical as the case might be, like satellites around +the luminaries of a solar system. When Constantinople was taken by the +Turks in 1453, Italy felt the need of suppressing her old jealousies, +and Nicholas V. induced the four great powers to sign with him a treaty +of peace and amity. The political tact and sagacity of Lorenzo de' +Medici enabled him to develop and substantiate the principle of balance +then introduced into Italian politics; nor was there any apparent reason +why the equilibrium so hardly won, so skillfully maintained, should not +have subsisted but for Lodovico Sforza's invitation to the French in +1494. Up to that date the more recent wars of Italy had been principally +caused by the encroachments of Venice and the nepotism of successive +Popes. They raised no new enthusiasm hostile to the interests of peace. +The Empire was eliminated and forgotten as an obsolete antiquity. Italy +seemed at last determined to manage her own affairs by mutual agreement +between the five great powers. + + [1] I have attempted to analyze Cosimo's method in the article on + 'Florence and the Medici,' _Studies and Sketches in Italy_. + + [2] This centralization of Italy in five great powers was not + obtained without the depression or total extinction of smaller + cities. Ferrari counts seventeen towns, who died, to use his + forcible expression, at the close of the civil wars. _Storia delle + Rivoluzioni d' Italia_, iii. 239. + +Still the ground beneath this specious fabric of diplomacy rung hollow. +The tyrannies represented a transient political necessity. They were not +the product of progressive social growth, satisfying and regulating +organic functions of the nation. Far from being the final outcome of a +slow, deliberate accretion in the states they had absorbed, we see in +them the climax of conflicting humors, the splendid cancers and +imposthumes of a desperate disease. That solid basis of national +morality which grounds the monarch firm upon the sympathies and +interests of the people whom he seems to lead, but whom he in reality +expresses, failed them. Therefore each individual despot trembled for +his throne, while Italy, as in the ominous picture drawn by her +historian, felt that all the elements were combining to devour her with +a coming storm. The land of earthquakes divined a cataclysm, to cope +with which she was unable. An apparently insignificant event determined +the catastrophe. The Sforza appealed to France, and after the disastrous +descent of Charles VIII. the whole tide of events turned. Instead of +internal self-government by any system of balance, Italy submitted to a +succession of invasions terminating in foreign tyranny. + +The problem why the Italians failed to achieve the unity of a coherent +nation has been implicitly discussed in the foregoing pages upon the +history of the Communes and the development of despotism. We have +already seen that their conception of municipal independence made a +narrow oligarchy of enfranchised burghers lords of the city, which in +its turn oppressed the country and the subject burghs of its domain. +Every conquest by a republic reduced some village or center of civil +life to the condition of serfdom. The voices of the inhabitants were no +longer heard debating questions that affected their interests. They +submitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised few in the +ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guicciardini pointed out in his +'Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli,' the subjection of +Italy by a dominant republic would have meant the extinction of +numberless political communities and the sway of a close oligarchy from +the Alps to the Ionian Sea.[1] The 3,200 burghers who constituted +Florence in 1494, or the nobles of the Golden Book at Venice, would by +such unification of the country under a victorious republic have become +sovereigns, administering the resources of the nation for their profit. +The dread of this catastrophe rendered Venice odious to her sister +commonwealths at the close of the fifteenth century, and justified, +according to Guicciardini's views of history, the action taken by Cosimo +de' Medici in 1450, when he rendered Milan strong by supporting her +despot, Francesco Sforza.[2] In a word republican freedom, as the term +is now understood, was unknown in Italy. Municipal autonomy, implying +the right of the municipality to rule its conquests for its own +particular profit, was the dominant idea. To have advanced from this +stage of thought to the highly developed conception of a national +republic, centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time giving +free play to its local energies, would have been impossible. This kind +of republican unity implies a previous unification of the people in some +other form of government. It furthermore demands a system of +representation extended to all sections of the nation. Their very +nature, therefore, prevented the republican institutions won by the +Italians in the early Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence +in a national republic. + + [1] _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28. + + [2] _Ib._ vol. iii. p. 8. + +It may with more reason be asked in the next place why Italy did not +become a monarchy, and again why she never produced a confederation, +uniting the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were combined for mutual +support and self-defense. When we attack the first of these two +questions, our immediate answer must be that the Italians had a rooted +disinclination for monarchical union.[1] Their most strenuous efforts +were directed against it when it seemed to threaten them. It may be +remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to +secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome +they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy +of municipalities governed and directed by the mistress of the globe. +When Rome passed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy, +though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that +joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that +the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in +their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no +fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name +of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them. +Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for +their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was +there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local +independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It +was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that +unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized +armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard +was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection +to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman +culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much +to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem +of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that +of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct +of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a +monarchical state were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of +the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastical Rome. We +have seen how the Goths erred by submitting-to the Empire and merging +their authority in a declining organization. We have seen again how the +Lombards erred by adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling +themselves in the policy of Papal Rome. Both Goths and Lombards +committed the mistake of sparing the Eternal City; or it may be more +accurate to say that neither of them were strong enough to lay hands of +violence upon the sacred and mysterious metropolis and hold it as their +seat of monarchy against the world. So long as Rome remained +independent, neither Ravenna nor Pavia could head a kingdom in the +peninsula. Meanwhile Rome lent her prestige to the advancement of a +spiritual power which, subject to no dynastic weakness, with the +persistent force of an idea that cannot die, was bent on subjugating +Europe. The Papacy needed Italy as the basis of its operations, and +could not brook a rival that might reduce the See of S. Peter to the +level of an ordinary bishopric. Rome therefore, generation after +generation, upheld the so-called liberties of Italy against all comers; +and when she summoned the Franks, it was to break the growing power of +the Lombard monarchs. The pact between the Popes and Charles the Great, +however we may interpret its meaning, still further removed the +possibility of a kingdom by dividing Italy into two sections with +separate allegiances; and since the sway of neither Pope nor Emperor, +the one unarmed, the other absent, was stringent enough to check the +growth of independent cities, a third and all-important factor was added +to the previous checks upon national unity. + + [1] Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ i. 29) remarks: 'O sia per qualche + fato d' Italia, o per la complessione degli uomini temperata in modo + che hanno ingegno e forze, non è mai questa provincia stata facile a + ridursi sotto uno imperio.' He speaks again of her disunion as + 'quello modo di vivere che è più secondo la antiquissima + consuetudine e inclinazione sua.' But Guicciardini, with that defect + of vision which rendered him incapable of appreciating the whole + situation while he analyzed its details so profoundly, was reckoning + without the great nations of Europe. See above, pp. 40, 41. + +After 1200 the problem changes its aspect. We have now to ask ourselves +why, when the struggle with the Empire was over, when Frederick +Barbarossa had been defeated at Legnano, when the Lombard and the Tuscan +Leagues were in full vigor before the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had +confused the mainsprings of political activity, and while the national +militia was still energetic, the Communes did not advance from the +conception of local and municipal independence to that of national +freedom in a confederacy similar to the Swiss Bund. The Italians, it may +be suggested, saw no immediate necessity for a confederation that would +have limited the absolute autonomy of their several parcels. Only the +light cast by subsequent events upon their early history makes us +perceive that they missed an unique opportunity at this moment. What +they then desired was freedom for expansion each after his own political +type, freedom for the development of industry and commerce, freedom for +the social organization of the city beloved by its burghers above the +nation as a whole. Special difficulties, moreover, lay in the way of +confederation. The Communes were not districts, like the Swiss Cantons, +but towns at war with the Contado round them and at war among +themselves. Mutually jealous and mistrustful, with a country population +that but partially obeyed their rule, these centers of Italian freedom +were in a very different position from the peasant communities of +Schwytz, Uri, Untenvalden. Italy, moreover, could not have been +federally united without the consent of Naples and the Church. The +kingdom of the Two Sicilies, rendered definitely monarchical by the +Norman Conquest, offered a serious obstacle; and though the Regno might +have been defied and absorbed by a vigorous concerted movement from the +North and center, there still remained the opposition of the Papacy. It +had been the recent policy of the Popes to support the free burghs in +their war with Frederick. But they did this only because they could not +tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power; and the very +reasons which had made them side with the cities in the wars of +liberation would have roused their hostility against a federative union. +To have encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which they would +have found the Church unarmed and on a level with the puissant towns of +Lombardy and Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. Such a +coalition, if attempted, could not but have been opposed with all their +might; for the whole history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right +when he asserted that the Church had persistently maintained the nation +in disunion for the furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have +furthermore to add the prestige which the Empire preserved for the +Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof +the representative of Cæsar should not be the God-appointed head. Though +the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as +a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than +the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they +regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they +laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial +shadow. To raise up a political association as a bulwark against the +Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an +independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of +scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of +sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been, +theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a +sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the +Wars of Investiture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that +quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to +remove the hope of national unity into the region of things +unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave +external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far +distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every +city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory +principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle +that set neighbor against neighbor on the field of war and in the +market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered +by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 +Italy could only have been united under a tyrant's iron rule. At such an +universal despotism Gian Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague +cut short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest stakes for it. +Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. Machiavelli, at the end of the +_Principe_, when the tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked +it. But even for this last chance of unification it was now too late. +The great nations of Europe were in movement, and the destinies of Italy +depended upon France and Spain. When Charles V. remained victor in the +struggle of the sixteenth century, he stereotyped and petrified the +divisions of Italy in the interest of his own dynastic policy. The only +Italian power that remained unchangeable throughout all changes was the +Papacy--the first to emerge into prominence after the decay of the old +Western Empire, the last to suffer diminution in spite of vicissitudes, +humiliations, schisms, and internal transformation. As the Papacy had +created and maintained a divided Italy, as it had opposed itself to +every successive prospect of unification, so it survived the extinction +of Italian independence, and lent its aid to that imperial tyranny +whereby the disunion of the nation was confirmed and prolongated till +the present century. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. + + +Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of +Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino +da Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the +Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of +Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-Government in +Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The +Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian Tyrant-- +Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Description of a Tyrant--The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza +Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino +and the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of +the Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect. + + +The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be called the Age of the +Despots in Italian history, as the twelfth and thirteenth are the Age of +the Free Burghs, and as the sixteenth and seventeenth are the Age of +Foreign Enslavement. It was during the age of the Despots that the +conditions of the Renaissance were evolved, and that the Renaissance +itself assumed a definite character in Italy. Under tyrannies, in the +midst of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar individuality of +the Italians obtained its ultimate development. This individuality, as +remarkable for salient genius and diffused talent as for self-conscious +and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the Renaissance and +affected by example the whole of Europe. Italy led the way in the +education of the Western races, and was the first to realize the type of +modern as distinguished from classical and mediæval life. + +During this age of the despots, Italy presents the spectacle of a nation +devoid of central government and comparatively uninfluenced by +feudalism. The right of the Emperor had become nominal, and served as a +pretext for usurpers rather than as a source of order. The visits, for +instance, of Charles IV. and Frederick III. were either begging +expeditions or holiday excursions, in the course of which ambitious +adventurers bought titles to the government of towns, and meaningless +honors were showered upon vain courtiers. It was not till the reign of +Maximilian that Germany adopted a more serious policy with regard to +Italy, which by that time had become the central point of European +intrigue. Charles V. afterwards used force to reassert imperial rights +over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the +Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same +time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of +the Empire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized +except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the +House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant the investiture +of the kingdom of Naples to foreigners, the Popes not only struck a +death-blow at imperial influence, but also prepared the way for their +own exile to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second great +authority to which Italy had been accustomed to look for the maintenance +of some sort of national coherence. Moreover, the Church, though +impotent to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power enough to +prevent the formation either by Milan or Venice or Naples of a +substantial kingdom. The result was a perpetually recurring process of +composition, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, of +the scattered elements of Italian life. The Guelf and Ghibelline +parties, inherited from the wars of the thirteenth century, survived the +political interests which had given them birth, and proved an +insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real +significance, to the pacification of the country.[1] The only important +state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however +disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. +The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Of these, +Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was +overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was +destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of +despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the +Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was +illegitimate--based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in +no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or +extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns. + + [1] So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming + (_Orlandino_, ii. 59)-- + + Chè se non fusser le gran parti in quella, + Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella. + +If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we find abundant +proofs of their despotic nature. The succession from father to son was +always uncertain. Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last La +Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in Naples descended from a +bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half-brothers the heritage +of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of +more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of +Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the +same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli +at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to +an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the +wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons +of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was +less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power +once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling +families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed +were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully +established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a +quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or +wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile +the people at large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and +intelligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life peculiar to +political and social centers in a condition of continued rivalry and +change. + +Under the Italian despotisms we observe nearly the opposite of all the +influences brought to bear in the same period upon the nations of the +North. There is no gradual absorption of the great vassals in +monarchies, no fixed allegiance to a reigning dynasty, no feudal aid or +military service attached to the tenure of the land, no tendency to +centralize the whole intellectual activity of the race in any capital, +no suppression of individual character by strongly biased public +feeling, by immutable law, or by the superincumbent weight of a social +hierarchy. Everything, on the contrary, tends to the free emergence of +personal passions and personal aims. Though the vassals of the despot +are neither his soldiers nor his loyal lieges, but his courtiers and +taxpayers, the continual object of his cruelty and fear, yet each +subject has the chance of becoming a prince like Sforza or a companion +of princes like Petrarch. Equality of servitude goes far to democratize +a nation, and common hatred of the tyrant leads to the combination of +all classes against him. Thence follows the fermentation of arrogant and +self-reliant passions in the breasts of the lowest as well as the +highest.[1] The rapid mutations of government teach men to care for +themselves and to depend upon themselves alone in the battle of the +world; while the necessity of craft and policy in the conduct of +complicated affairs sharpens intelligence. The sanction of all means +that may secure an end under conditions of social violence encourages +versatility unprejudiced by moral considerations. At the same time the +freely indulged vices of the sovereign are an example of self-indulgence +to the subject, and his need of lawless instruments is a practical +sanction of force in all its forms. Thus to the play of personality, +whether in combat with society and rivals, or in the gratification of +individual caprice, every liberty is allowed. Might is substituted for +right, and the sense of law is supplanted by a mere dread of coercion. +What is the wonder if a Benvenuto Cellini should be the outcome of the +same society as that which formed a Cesare Borgia? What is the miracle +if Italy under these circumstances produced original characters and +many-sided intellects in greater profusion than any other nation at any +other period, with the single exception of Greece on her emergence from +the age of her despots? It was the misfortune of Italy that the age of +the despots was succeeded not by an age of free political existence, but +by one of foreign servitude. + + [1] See Guicciardini, 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' _Op. + Ined._ vol. ii. p. 53, for a critique of the motives of tyrannicide + in Italy. + +Frederick II. was at the same time the last emperor who maintained +imperial sway in Italy in person, and also the beginner of a new system +of government which the despots afterwards pursued. His establishment of +the Saracen colony at Nocera, as the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill +his orders with scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and customs, +taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects to a state of unarmed +passivity, and to carry on their wars by the aid of German, English, +Swiss, Gascon, Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might be. +Frederick, again, derived from his Mussulman predecessors in Sicily the +arts of taxation to the utmost limits of the national capacity, and +founded a precedent for the levying of tolls by a Catasto or schedule of +the properties attributed to each individual in the state. He also +destroyed the self-government of burghs and districts, by retaining for +himself the right to nominate officers, and by establishing a system of +judicial jurisdiction which derived authority from the throne. Again, he +introduced the example of a prince making profit out of the industries +of his subjects by monopolies and protective duties. In this path he was +followed by illustrious successors--especially by Sixtus IV. and Alfonso +II. of Aragon, who enriched themselves by trafficking in the corn and +olive-oil of their famished provinces. Lastly, Frederick established the +precedent of a court formed upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans, +in which chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of hereditary +nobles, and functions of state were confided to the body-servants of the +monarch. This court gave currency to those habits of polite culture, +magnificent living, and personal luxury which played so prominent a part +in all subsequent Italian despotism. It is tempting to overstrain a +point in estimating the direct influence of Frederick's example. In many +respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in advance of his age; and +what we may be inclined to ascribe to him personally, would have +followed in the natural evolution of events. Yet it remains a fact that +he first realized the type of cultivated despotism which prevailed +throughout Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Italian +literature began in his court, and many Saracenic customs of statecraft +were transmitted through him from Palermo to Lombardy. + +While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively modern tyrants of the +coming age, his Vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, +represented the atrocities towards which they always tended to +degenerate. Regarding himself with a sort of awful veneration as the +divinely appointed scourge of humanity, this monster in his lifetime was +execrated as an aberration from 'the kindly race of men,' and after his +death he became the hero of a fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding +centuries of Italian history his kind was only too common; the +immorality with which he worked out his selfish aims was systematically +adopted by princes like the Visconti, and reduced to rule by theorists +like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his +face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold +to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one +passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood. +Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, he founded his illegal +authority upon the captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by +Frederick. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno made him their +captain in the Ghibelline interest, conferring on him judicial as well +as military supremacy. How he fearfully abused his power, how a crusade +was preached against him,[1] and how he died in silence, like a boar at +bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes had placed to +keep him alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua alone he +erected eight prisons, two of which contained as many as three hundred +captives each; and though the executioner never ceased to ply his trade +there, they were always full. These dungeons were designed to torture by +their noisomeness, their want of air and light and space. Ezzelino made +himself terrible not merely by executions and imprisonments but also by +mutilations and torments. When he captured Friola he caused the +population, of all ages, sexes, occupations, to be deprived of their +eyes, noses, and legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the +elements. On another occasion he walled up a family of princes in a +castle and left them to die of famine. Wealth, eminence, and beauty +attracted his displeasure no less than insubordination or disobedience. +Nor was he less crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends +their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his promises. A +gigantic instance of his scheming was the coup-de-main by which he +succeeded in entrapping 11,000 Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped +the miseries of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of law, his +inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, and his infliction of +plagues upon whole peoples, Ezzelino established the ideal in Italy of a +tyrant marching to his end by any means whatever. In vain was the +humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. Vainly did the +monks assemble pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara to +atone with tears and penitence for the insults offered to the saints in +heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian +imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to +fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves +whether such men are mad--whether in the case of a Nero or a Maréchal +de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not +a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal +are morbid.[2] Is there in fact such a thing as Hæmatomania, +Bloodmadness? But if we answer this question in the affirmative, we +shall have to place how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias, +Farnesi, and princes of the houses of Anjou and Aragon in the list of +these maniacs? Ezzelino was indeed only the first of a long and horrible +procession, the most terror-striking because the earliest, prefiguring +all the rest. + + [1] Alexander IV. issued letters for this crusade in 1255. It was + preached next year by the Archbishop of Ravenna. + + [2] See Appendix, No. I. + +Ezzelino's cruelty was no mere Berserkir fury or Lycanthropia coming +over him in gusts and leaving him exhausted. It was steady and +continuous. In his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, there +was method; he used it to the end of the consolidation of his tyranny. +Yet, inasmuch as it passed all limits and prepared his downfall, it may +be said to have obtained over his nature the mastery of an insane +appetite. While applying the nomenclature of disease to these +exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at +first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing +more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion--lust, violence, +cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less +influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a +greed for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions +in his nature. He then is not unjustly termed a monomaniac. Within the +circle of his vitiated appetite he proves himself irrational. He becomes +the puppet of passions which the sane man cannot so much as picture to +his fancy, the victim of desire, ever recurring and ever destined to +remain unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lunacy than +the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul thirstier than it was before, +the paroxysm of unnatural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave +for it. + +In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant, +we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy. +Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the +people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a +consciousness of tyranny in the minds of irresponsible rulers. + +During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find, roughly speaking, +six sorts of despots in Italian cities.[1] Of these the _first_ class, +which is a very small one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing +from long seignioral possession of their several districts. The most +eminent are the houses of Montferrat and Savoy, the Marquises of +Ferrara, the Princes of Urbino. At the same time it is difficult to know +where to draw the line between such hereditary lordship as that of the +Este family, and tyranny based on popular favor. The Malatesti of +Rimini, Polentani of Ravenna, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli, +Chiavelli of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might claim to +rank among the former, since their cities submitted to them without a +long period of republican independence like that which preceded +despotism in the cases to be next mentioned. Yet these families styled +themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled; and in many instances they +obtained the additional title of Vicars of the Church.[2] Even the +Estensi were made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the +thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the supremacy of the +Papacy. There was in fact no right outside the Empire in Italy; and +despots of whatever origin or complexion gladly accepted the support +which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or the People might +give. Brought to the front amid the tumults of the civil wars, and +accepted as pacificators of the factions by the multitude, they gained +the confirmation of their anomalous authority by representing themselves +to be lieutenants or vicegerents of the three great powers. The _second_ +class comprise those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the +Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in +Lombardy. Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are +illustrious instances. Finding in their official capacity a ready-made +foundation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of +the Empire constituted dynasties. The _third_ class is important. Nobles +charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestàs, by the +free burghs, used their authority to enslave the cities they were chosen +to administer. It was thus that almost all the numerous tyrants of +Lombardy, Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth, +first erected their despotic dynasties. This fact in the history of +Italian tyranny is noticeable. The font of honor, so to speak, was in +the citizens of these great burghs. Therefore, when the limits of +authority delegated to their captains by the people were overstepped, +the sway of the princes became confessedly illegal. Illegality carried +with it all the consequences of an evil conscience, all the insecurities +of usurped dominion all the danger from without and from within to which +an arbitrary governor is exposed. In the _fourth_ class we find the +principle of force still more openly at work. To it may be assigned +those Condottieri who made a prey of cities at their pleasure. The +illustrious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to follow up his +victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, in order that he might cement +his power in Lucca and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of +tyrant. His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of Machiavelli's +romance, is another. But it was not until the first half of the +fifteenth century that professional Condottieri became powerful enough +to found such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco Sforza at +Milan.[3] The _fifth_ class includes the nephews or sons of Popes. The +Riario principality of Forli, the Della Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of +Romagna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species of despotisms; +but all these are of a comparatively late origin. Until the Papacies of +Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of +providing in this way for their relatives. Also, it may be remarked, +there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies. Since they had to be +carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his +son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a +province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to +bestow it on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could not long +have stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the +dynastic possession of Church property. Luckily for the continuance of +the Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in after the sack +of Rome and the great Northern Schism, put a stop to nepotism in its +most barefaced form. + + [1] This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many + of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I + have mentioned. + + [2] See Guicc. _Ist._ end of Book 4. + + [3] John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held + Cotignola and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI. In the second half of + the fifteenth century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect + tyrannies were most frequent. Braccio da Montone established himself + in Perugia in 1416, and aspired, not without good grounds for hope, + to acquiring the kingdom of Italy. Francesco Sforza, before gaining + Milan, had begun to form a despotism at Ancona. Sforza's rival, + Giacomo Piccinino, would probably have succeeded in his own attempt, + had not Ferdinand of Aragon treacherously murdered him at Naples in + 1465. In the disorganization caused by Charles VIII., Vidovero of + Brescia in 1495 established himself at Cesena and Castelnuovo, and + had to be assassinated by Pandolfo Malatesta at the instigation of + Venice. After the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402, the + generals whom he had employed in the consolidation of his vast + dominions attempted to divide the spoil among themselves. Naples, + Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence were in course of time made keenly + alive to the risk of suffering a captain of adventure to run his + course unchecked. + +There remains the _sixth_ and last class of despots to be mentioned. +This again is large and of the first importance. Citizens of eminence, +like the Medici at Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglioni of +Perugia, the Vitelli of Città di Castello, the Gambacorti of Pisa, like +Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (1502), Roméo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna +(1323), the plebeian, Alticlinio, and Agolanti of Padua (1313), Giovanni +Vignate, the millionaire of Lodi (1402), acquired more than their due +weight in the conduct of affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In +most of these cases great wealth was the original source of despotic +ascendency. It was not uncommon to buy cities together with their +Signory. Thus the Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins in 1333; the +Appiani sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza and Imola in 1377. In +1444 Galeazzo Malatesta sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and +Fossombrone to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by the same +family. Franceschetto Cibo purchased the County of Anguillara. Towns at +last came to have their market value. It was known that Bologna was +worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 Lucca 30,000, and so +forth. But personal qualities and nobility of blood might also produce +despots of the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent from a +bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., who was for a long time an +honorable prisoner in Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle +with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy to ability and vigor +in the last years of the fifteenth century. But the neighborhood of the +Papal power, and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold of +this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the case of the Medici and +the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher +families assumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were always +advancing. + +The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth +century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward +tyranny. Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not +answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.' +But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead +of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of +social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for +municipalities at the end of those fierce internal conflicts and +exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli, +with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the +most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom. 'No +accident, however weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan or +Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. This is clear from +the fact that after the death of Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to +regain freedom, she was unable to preserve it.'[1] Whether Machiavelli +is right in referring this incapacity for self-government to the +corruption of morals and religion may be questioned. But it is certain +that throughout the states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice, +causes were at work inimical to republics and favorable to despotisms. + + [1] _Discorsi_, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in the + same passage, 'Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of a + prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince with + all his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to + extinguish another; and the city has no rest except by the creation + of a new lord, unless one burgher by his goodness and his great + qualities may chance to preserve its independence during his + lifetime.' + +It will be observed in this classification of Italian tyrants that the +tenure of their power was almost uniformly forcible. They generally +acquired it through the people in the first instance, and maintained it +by the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do with their claims. +The bastards of Popes, who like Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants +like the Medici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a rich +usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with nobles of the ancient +houses of Este, Visconti, or Malatesta. The chief point in favor of the +latter was the familiarity which through long years of authority had +accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, they had a better +chance of return to power than parvenus, whose party-cry and ensigns +were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty--if indeed +the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established +and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of +doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta. +Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece was democratic. It recruited its +ranks from all classes and erected its thrones upon the sovereignty of +the peoples it oppressed. The impulse to the free play of ambitious +individuality which this state of things communicated was enormous. +Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the chair of S. Peter's, the +meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity, vigor, unscrupulous +crime were the chief requisites for success. It was not till Cesare +Borgia displayed his magnificence at the French Court, till the Italian +adventurer matched himself with royalty in its legitimate splendor, that +the lowness of his origin and the frivolity of his pretensions appeared +in any glaring light.[1] In Italy itself, where there existed no +time-honored hierarchy of classes and no fountain of nobility in the +person of a sovereign, one man was a match for another, provided he knew +how to assert himself. To the conditions of a society based on these +principles we may ascribe the unrivaled emergence of great +personalities among the tyrants, as well as the extraordinary tenacity +and vigor of such races as the Visconti. In the contest for power, and +in the maintenance of an illegal authority, the picked athletes came to +the front. The struggle by which they established their tyranny, the +efforts by which they defended it against foreign foes and domestic +adversaries, trained them to endurance and to daring. They lived +habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies. +Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their +vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or +mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his +brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only +gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and +moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, +scientific in the use of cruelty and terror, employing first-rate +faculties of brain and will and bodily powers in the service of +transcendent egotism, only the _virtuosi_ of political craft as +theorized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their own upon this +perilous arena. + + [1] Brantôme _Capitaines Etrangers_, Discours 48, gives an account + of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds: 'The + king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doubt + how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the + petty Duke of Valentinois.' + +The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. Immured in +strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the +Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops, +protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and +drink lest they should be poisoned. His chief associates were artists, +men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and exiles. He had no real +friends or equals, and against his own family he adopted an attitude of +fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he was +exposed.[1] His timidity verged on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of +Naples, he was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled victims; +like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious fascination of astrology; like +Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at the sound of thunder, and set one +band of body-guards to watch another next his person. He dared not hope +for a quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of a prince: +princes must be poisoned or poignarded.[2] Out of thirteen of the +Carrara family, in little more than a century (1318-1435), three were +deposed or murdered by near relatives, one was expelled by a rival from +his state, four were executed by the Venetians. Out of five of the La +Scala family, three were killed by their brothers, and a fourth was +poisoned in exile. + + [1] See what Guicciardini in his _History of Florence_ says about + the suspicious temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and + philosophical Lorenzo de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent + and penetrating allegory of _Sospetto_, and its application to the + tyrants of Italy in Ariosto's _Cinque Canti_ (C. 2. St. 1-9). + + [2] Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fascinated by + the crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim + on his death-bed:-- + + 'O thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin + To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet + Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl + Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf + Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, + Whilst horror waits on princes.' + + Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred. + Besides those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to + notice the murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at + Mirandola (1533); the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo; + the assassination of Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerino + (1434); Ostasio da Polenta's fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's + fratricide in the next generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga + by his brothers; Gian Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the + poisoning of Francesco Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of + Montalto, with her little girl, by her aunt; and the murder of + Galeotto Manfredi, by his wife, at Faenza (1488). + +To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning families, occurring in the +fifteenth century alone, would be quite impossible within the limits of +this chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more important that any +adequate notion of the perils of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus +Girolamo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli (1488), and +Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo[1] +(1387). At Lodi in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief members of the +ruling house of Vistarini on the public square, and died himself of +poison after a few months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni +Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Visconti in a wooden cage at +Pavia, and beat his brains out in despair against its bars. At the same +epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy of the Cavalcabò family +together in his castle of Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring +their tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards beheaded as a traitor at +Milan (1425). Ottobon Terzi was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola +Borghese at Siena (1499). Altobello Dattiri at Todi (about 1500), +Raimondo and Pandolfo Malatesta at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di +Montefeltro at Urbino (1444).[2] The Varani were massacred to a man in +the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino (1434), the Trinci at Foligno +(1434), and the Chiavelli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day +(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reigning families introduces +one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Italian despotism. +From the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio Cesare, a boy of +two years old, was saved by his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss +of hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. Hardly had she gained +this refuge, when the Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with her +burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There the same scenes of bloodshed +awaited her. A third time she took to flight, and now concealed her +precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was afterwards stolen from the +town on horseback by a soldier of adventure. After surviving three +massacres of kith and kin, he returned as despot at the age of twelve to +Camerino, and became a general of distinction. But he was not destined +to end his life in peace. Cesare Borgia finally murdered him, together +with three of his sons, when he had reached the age of sixty. Less +romantic but not less significant in the annals of tyranny is the story +of the Trinci. A rival noble of Foligno, Pietro Rasiglia, had been +injured in his honor by the chief of the ruling house. He contrived to +assassinate two brothers, Nicolà and Bartolommeo, in his castle of +Nocera; but the third, Corrado Trinci, escaped, and took a fearful +vengeance on his enemy. By the help of Braccio da Montone he possessed +himself of Nocera and all its inhabitants, with the exception of Pietro +Rasiglia's wife, whom her husband flung from the battlements. Corrado +then butchered the men, women, and children of the Rasiglia clan, to the +number of three hundred persons, accomplishing his vengeance with +details of atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. It is +recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their mangled limbs paraded +the streets of Foligno as a terror-striking spectacle for the +inhabitants. He then ruled the city by violence, until the warlike +Cardinal dei Vitelleschi avenged society of so much mischief by +destroying the tyrant and five of his sons, in the same year. Equally +fantastic are the annals of the great house of the Baglioni at Perugia. +Raised in 1389 upon the ruins of the bourgeois faction called Raspanti, +they founded their tyranny in the person of Pandolfo Baglioni, who was +murdered together with sixty of his clan and followers by the party +they had dispossessed. The new despot, Biordo Michelotti, was stabbed in +the shoulders with a poisoned dagger by his relative, the abbot of S. +Pietro. Then the city, in 1416, submitted to Braccio da Montone, who +raised it to unprecedented power and glory. On his death it fell back +into new discords, from which it was rescued again by the Baglioni in +1466, now finally successful in their prolonged warfare with the rival +family of Oddi. But they did not hold their despotism in tranquillity. +In 1500 one of the members of the house, Grifonetto degli Baglioni, +conspired against his kinsmen and slew them in their palaces at night. +As told by Matarazzo, this tragedy offers an epitome of all that is +most, brilliant and terrible in the domestic feuds of the Italian +tyrants.[3] The vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present +another series of catastrophes, due less to their personal crimes than +to the fury of the civil strife that raged around them. Giovanni +Bentivoglio began the dynasty in 1400. The next year he was stabbed to +death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated populace, who thought +he had betrayed their interests in battle. His son, Antonio, was +beheaded by a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the family on their +return from exile suffered the same fate. In course of time the +Bentivogli made themselves adored by the people; and when Piccinino +imprisoned the heir of their house, Annibale, in the castle of Varano, +four youths of the Marescotti family undertook his rescue at the peril +of their lives, and raised him to the Signory of Bologna. In 1445 the +Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popular dynasty, invited +Annibale and all his clan to a christening feast, where they +exterminated every member of the reigning house. Not one Bentivoglio was +left alive. In revenge for this massacre, the Marescotti, aided by the +populace, hunted down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, and +nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the Bentivoglio palace. They +then drew from his obscurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio, +who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool-factory to a throne. +Whether he was a genuine Bentivoglio or not, mattered little. The house +had become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity had been baptized in +the bloodshed of four massacres. What remains of its story can be +briefly told. When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Marescotti +intrigued with him, and eight of their number were sacrificed by the +Bentivogli in spite of their old services to the dynasty. The survivors, +by the help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to witness the +final banishment of the Bentivogli and to take part in the destruction +of the palace, where their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the +Canetoli upon the walls. + + [1] The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their castle + and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds. + + [2] Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back. + Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law. + Raimondo Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as + hermits. Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by + the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate + it--distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament + among themselves. + + [3] See the article 'Perugia' in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_. + +To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled +by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, +would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing +nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic +and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable +by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting +through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the +spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough +however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the +tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever +capable of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well based in its +dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi +offers a long list of terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for +adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the +throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned +by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal +against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life +(1506). Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force +repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by +Tasso lived. + +Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and +timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his +amusement, and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to +extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable +and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs +with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures. +From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for +states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the +utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance. It would +be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this +sort. The saner, better, and nobler among them--men of the stamp of Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico +Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation of their +empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men, +the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the +building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of +conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively +innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo +Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a +scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino, +exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of +culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic +houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and +the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in +the shape of men. The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last +Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici are +among the worst specimens of human nature. + +Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian tyrant in his essay on +Machiavelli deserves careful study. It may, however, be remarked that +the picture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker crimes of the +despots, and draws his portrait almost exclusively from such men as Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino, +and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to establish--that +political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern +brutality--leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined +passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the +excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes. +When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary, +where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and +humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci, +Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. When he writes, 'His +passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their +most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been +accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria +Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. If all +the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and +conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have +taken place. It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth +century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects assumed an +external form of mildness. As Italy mixed with the European nations, and +as tyranny came to be legalized in the Italian states, the despots +developed a policy not of terrorism but of enervation (Lorenzo de' +Medici is the great example), and aspired to be paternal governors. + +What I have said about Italian despotism is no mere fancy picture. The +actual details of Milanese history, the innumerable tragedies of +Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the ascendency of +despotic families, are far more terrible than any fiction; nor would it +be easy for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage +barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's denunciations[1] and +Villani's descriptions of a despot read like passages from Plato's +Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny. +The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be +cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian +thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): 'The crimes of +despots always hinder and often neutralize the virtues of good men. +Their pleasures are at variance with morality. By them the riches of +their subjects are swallowed up. They are foes to men who grow in +wisdom and in greatness of soul in their dominions. They diminish by +their imposts the wealth of the peoples ruled by them. Their unbridled +lust is never satiated, but their subjects have to suffer such outrages +and insults as their fancy may from time to time suggest. But inasmuch +as the violence of tyranny is manifested to all eyes by these and many +other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh. It is enough to +select one feature, strange in appearance but familiar in fact; for what +can be more extraordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustrious +lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of high descent and +time-honored nobility frequenting their tables and accepting their +bounties? Yet if we consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants +often turns to misery and ruin. Who can exaggerate their wretchedness? +They know not where to place their confidence; and their courtiers are +always on the lookout for the despot's fall, gladly lending their +influence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of previous servility. +This does not happen to hereditary kings, because their conduct toward +their subjects, as well as their good qualities and all their +circumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants. Therefore +the very causes which produce and fortify and augment tyrannies, conceal +and nourish in themselves the sources of their overthrow and ruin. This +indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.' + + [1] See the passage condensed from his Sermons in Villari's Life of + Savonarola (Eng. Tr. vol. ii. p. 62). The most thorough-going + analysis of despotic criminality is contained in Savonarola's + _Tractato circa el Reggimento e Governo della Città di Firenze_, + Trattato ii. cap. 2. _Della Malitia e pessime Conditioni del + Tyranno_. + +It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a +Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an +invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of +burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the +censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the +house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction they +conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly concerning the +pernicious effects of their misgovernment.[1] It is to be noticed that +Villani and Matarazzo agree about the special evils brought upon the +populations by their tyrants. Lust and violence take the first place. +Next comes extortion; then the protection of the lawless and the +criminal against the better sort of citizens. But the Florentine, with +intellectual acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of their +rule. They retard the development of mental greatness in their states, +and check the growth of men of genius. Ariosto, in the comparative calm +of the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to the protectorate +of Spain, sums up the records of the past in the following memorable +passage:[2] 'Happy the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless man +gives law! Wretched indeed and pitiable are those where injustice and +cruelty hold sway, where burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid +upon the people by tyrants like those who now abound in Italy, whose +infamy will be recorded through years to come as no less black than +Caligula's or Nero's.' Guicciardini, with pregnant brevity, observes:[3] +'The mortar with which the states of the tyrants are cemented is the +blood of the citizens.' + + [1] Arch. Stor. xvi. 102. See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p. + 84. + + [2] Cinque Canti, ii. 5. + + [3] Ricordi Politici, ccxlii. + +In the history of Italian despotism two points of first-rate importance +will demand attention. The first is the process by which the greater +tyrannies absorbed the smaller during the fourteenth century. The second +is the relation of the chief Condottieri to the tyrants of the fifteenth +century. The evolution of these two phenomena cannot be traced more +clearly than by a study of the history of Milan, which at the same time +presents a detailed picture of the policy and character of the Italian +despot during this period. The dynasties of Visconti and Sforza from +1300 to 1500 bridged over the years that intervened between the Middle +Age and the Renaissance, between the period of the free burghs and the +period during which Italy was destined to become the theater of the +action of more powerful nations. Their alliances and diplomatic +relations prepared the way for the interference of foreigners in Italian +affairs. Their pedigree illustrates the power acquired by military +adventurers in the peninsula. The magnitude of their political schemes +displays the most soaring ambition which it was ever granted to Italian +princes to indulge. The splendor of their court and the intelligence of +their culture bear witness to the high state of civilization which the +Italians had reached. + +The power of the Visconti in Milan was founded upon that of the Della +Torre family, who preceded them as Captains General of the people at the +end of the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, first laid a +substantial basis for the dominion of his house by imprisoning Napoleone +Della Torre and five of his relatives in three iron cages in 1277, and +by causing his nephew Matteo Visconti to be nominated both by the +Emperor and by the people of Milan as imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed +the Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of a prudent Italian +despot. From the date 1311, when he finally succeeded in his attempts +upon the sovereignty of Milan, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor of +his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of character, craft, and +insight, more than by violence or cruelty. Excellent as a general, he +was still better as a diplomatist, winning more cities by money than by +the sword. All through his life, as became a Ghibelline chief at that +time, he persisted in fierce enmity against the Church. But just before +his death a change came over him. He showed signs of superstitious +terror, and began to fear the ban of excommunication which lay upon him. +This weakness alarmed the suspicions of his sons, terrible and wolf-like +men, whom Matteo had hitherto controlled with bit and bridle. They +therefore induced him to abdicate in 1322, and when in the same year he +died, they buried his body in a secret place, lest it should be exhumed, +and scattered to the winds in accordance with the Papal edict against +him.[1] Galeazzo, his son, was less fortunate than Matteo, surnamed Il +Grande by the Lombards. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria threw him into +prison on the occasion of his visit to Milan in 1327, and only released +him at the intercession of his friend Castruccio Castracane. To such an +extent was the growing tyranny of the Visconti still dependent upon +their office delegated from the Empire. This Galeazzo married Beatrice +d' Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, of whom Dante speaks in the +eighth canto of the Purgatory, and had by her a son named Azzo. Azzo +bought the city, together with the title of Imperial Vicar, from the +same Louis who had imprisoned his father.[2] When he was thus seated in +the tyranny of his grandfather, he proceeded to fortify it further by +the addition of ten Lombard towns, which he reduced beneath the +supremacy of Milan. At the same time he consolidated his own power by +the murder of his uncle Marco in 1329, who had grown too mighty as a +general. Giovio describes him as fair of complexion, blue-eyed, +curly-haired, and subject to the hereditary disease of gout.[3] Azzo +died in 1339, and was succeeded by his uncle Lucchino. In Lucchino the +darker side of the Visconti character appears for the first time. Cruel, +moody, and jealous, he passed his life in perpetual terror. His nephews, +Galeazzo and Barnabas, conspired against him, and were exiled to +Flanders. His wife, Isabella Fieschi, intrigued with Galeazzo and +disgraced him by her amours with Ugolino Gonzaga and Dandolo the Doge of +Venice. Finally suspicion rose to such a pitch between this ill-assorted +couple, that, while Lucchino was plotting how to murder Isabella, she +succeeded in poisoning him in 1349. In spite of these domestic +calamities, Lucchino was potent as a general and governor. He bought +Parma from Obizzo d' Este, and made the town of Pisa dependent upon +Milan. Already in his policy we can trace the encroachment which +characterized the schemes of the Milanese despots, who were always +plotting to advance their foot beyond the Apennines as a prelude to the +complete subjugation of Italy. Lucchino left sons, but none of proved +legitimacy.[4] Consequently he was succeeded by his brother Giovanni, +son of old Matteo il Grande, and Archbishop of Milan. This man, the +friend of Petrarch, was one of the most notable characters of the +fourteenth century. Finding himself at the head of sixteen cities, he +added Bologna to the tyranny of the Visconti in 1350, and made himself +strong enough to defy the Pope. Clement VI., resenting his encroachments +on Papal territory, summoned him to Avignon. Giovanni Visconti replied +that he would march thither at the head of 12,000 cavalry and 6,000 +infantry. In the Duomo of Milan he ascended his throne with the crosier +in his left hand and a drawn sword in his right; and thus he is always +represented in pictures. The story of Giovanni's answer to the Papal +Legate is well told by Corio:[5] 'After Mass in the Cathedral the +great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a flashing sword, which he had +girded on his thigh, and with his left hand seized the cross, saying, +"This is my spiritual scepter, and I will wield the sword as my +temporal, in defense of all my empire."' Afterwards he sent couriers to +engage lodgings for his soldiers and his train for six months. Visitors +to Avignon found no room in the city, and the Pope was fain to decline +so terrible a guest. In 1353 Giovanni annexed Genoa to the Milanese +principality, and died in 1354, having established the rule of the +Visconti over the whole of the North of Italy, with the exception of +Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice. + + [1] We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the + 'Purgatory' (canto iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests + against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense + of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the + sentence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of + partisans; yet the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo + Visconti prove how terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences + continued to be. Few had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di + Mirandola, who expired in 1499 under the ban of the Church, which he + had borne for sixteen years. + + [2] This was in 1328. Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins. The vast + wealth of the Visconti amassed during their years of peaceful + occupation always stood them in good stead when bad times came, and + when the Emperor was short of cash. Azzo deserves special + commendation from the student of art for the exquisite octagonal + tower of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta with marble + pilasters, in Milan. It is quite one of the loveliest monuments of + mediæval Italian architecture. + + [3] Lucchino and Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout, + the latter to such an extent as to be almost crippled. + + [4] This would not have been by itself a bar to succession in an + Italian tyranny. But Lucchino's bastards were not of the proper + stuff to continue their father's government, while their fiery uncle + was precisely the man to sustain the honor and extend the power of + the Visconti. + + [5] Storia di Milano, 1554, p. 223. + +The reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a new epoch in the despotism +of the Visconti. They are now no longer the successful rivals of the +Della Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but self-made +sovereigns, with a well-established power in Milan and a wide extent of +subject territory. Their dynasty, though based on force and maintained +by violence, has come to be acknowledged; and we shall soon see them +allying themselves with the royal houses of Europe. After the death of +Giovanni, Matteo's sons were extinct. But Stefano, the last of his +family, had left three children, who now succeeded to the lands and +cities of the house. They were named Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. +Between these three princes a partition of the heritage of Giovanni +Visconti was effected. Matteo took Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, +Bobbio, and some other towns of less importance. Bernabo received +Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo. Galeazzo held Como, Novara, +Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and Alessandria. Milan and Genoa were to be +ruled by the three in common. It may here be noticed that the +dismemberment of Italian despotisms among joint-heirs was a not +unfrequent source of disturbance and a cause of weakness to their +dynasties. At the same time the practice followed naturally upon the +illegal nature of the tyrant's title. He dealt with his cities as so +many pieces of personal property, which he could distribute as he chose, +not as a coherent whole to be bequeathed to one ruler for the common +benefit of all his subjects. In consequence of such partition, it became +the interest of brother to murder brother, so as to effect a +reconsolidation of the family estates. Something of the sort happened on +this occasion. Matteo abandoned himself to bestial sensuality; and his +two brothers, finding him both feeble and likely to bring discredit on +their rule, caused him to be assassinated in 1355.[1] They then jointly +swayed the Milanese, with unanimity remarkable in despots. Galeazzo was +distinguished as the handsomest man of his age. He was tall and +graceful, with golden hair, which he wore in long plaits, or tied up in +a net, or else loose and crowned with flowers. Fond of display and +magnificence, he spent much of his vast wealth in shows and festivals, +and in the building of palaces and churches. The same taste for splendor +led him to seek royal marriages for his children. His daughter Violante +was wedded to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England, who +received with her for dowry the sum of 200,000 golden florins, as well +as five cities bordering on Piedmont.[2] It must have been a strange +experience for this brother of the Black Prince, leaving London, where +the streets were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds laid on +straw, and where wine was sold as medicine, to pass into the luxurious +palaces of Lombardy, walled with marble, and raised high above smooth +streets of stone. Of his marriage with Violante Giovio gives some +curious details. He says that Galeazzo on this occasion made splendid +presents to more than 200 Englishmen, so that he was reckoned to have +outdone the greatest kings in generosity. At the banquet Gian Galeazzo, +the bride's brother, leading a choice company of well-born youths, +brought to the table with each course fresh gifts.[3] 'At one time it +was a matter of sixty most beautiful horses with trappings of silk and +silver; at another, plate, hawks, hounds, horse-gear, fine cuirasses, +suits of armor fashioned of wrought steel, helmets adorned with crests, +surcoats embroidered with pearls, belts, precious jewels set in gold, +and great quantities of cloth of gold and crimson stuff for making +raiment. Such was the profusion of this banquet that the remnants taken +from the table were enough and to spare for 10,000 men.' Petrarch, we +may remember, assisted at this festival and sat among the princes. It +was thus that Galeazzo displayed his wealth before the feudal nobles of +the North, and at the same time stretched the hand of friendly patronage +to the greatest literary man of Europe. Meanwhile he also married his +son Gian Galeazzo to Isabella, daughter of King John of France, spending +on this occasion, it is said, a similar sum of money for the honor of a +royal alliance.[4] + + [1] M. Villani, v. 81. Compare Corio, p. 230. Corio gives the date + 1356. + + [2] Namely, Alba, Cuneo, Carastro, Mondovico, Braida. See Corio, p. + 238, who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu l' ultima roina del + suo stato.' + + [3] Corio (pp. 239, 240) gives the bill of fare of the banquet. + + [4] Sismondi says he gave 600,000 florins to Charles, the brother of + Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount. + +Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother reigned at Milan. Bernabo +displayed all the worst vices of the Visconti. His system of taxation +was most oppressive, and at the same time so lucrative that he was able, +according to Giovio's estimate, to settle nine of his daughters at an +expense of something like two millions of gold pieces. A curious +instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting establishment. Having +saddled his subjects with the keep of 5,000 boar-hounds, he appointed +officers to go round and see whether these brutes were either too lean +or too well-fed to be in good condition for the chase. If anything +appeared defective in their management, the peasants on whom they were +quartered had to suffer in their persons and their property.[1] This +Bernabo was also remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. Together with +his brother, he devised and caused to be publicly announced by edict +that State criminals would be subjected to a series of tortures +extending over the space of forty days. In this infernal programme +every variety of torment found a place, and days of respite were so +calculated as to prolong the lives of the victims for further suffering, +till at last there was little left of them that had not been hacked and +hewed and flayed away.[2] To such extremities of terrorism were the +despots driven in the maintenance of their illegal power. + + [1] 'Per cagione di questa caccia continoamente teneva cinque mila + cani; e la maggior parte di quelle distribuiva alla custodia de i + cittadini, e anche a i contadini, i quali niun altro cane che quelli + potevano tenere. Questi due volte il mese erano tenuti a far la + mostra. Onde trovandoli macri in gran somma di danari erano + condannati, e se grossi erano, incolpandoli del troppo, erano + multati; se morivano, li pigliava il tutto.--Corio, p. 247. + + Read M. Villani, vii. 48, for the story of a peasant who was given + to Bernabo's dogs to be devoured for having killed a hare. Corio (p. + 247) describes the punishments which he inflicted on his subjects + who were convicted of poaching--eyes put out, houses burned, etc. A + young man who dreamed of killing a boar had an eye put out and a + hand cut off because he imprudently recounted his vision of sport in + sleep. On one occasion he burned two friars who ventured to + remonstrate. We may compare Pontanus, 'De Immanitate,' vol. i. pp. + 318, 320, for similar cruelty in Ferdinand, King of Naples. + + [2] This programme may be read in Sismondi, iv. 282. + +Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own portion of the +Visconti domain by his son Gian Galleazzo. Now began one of those long, +slow, internecine struggles which were so common between the members of +the ruling families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to get +possession of the young prince's estate. He, on the other hand, +determined to supplant his uncle, and to reunite the whole Visconti +principality beneath his own sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose +in this encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made no disguise of +his physical cowardice, which was real, while he simulated a timidity of +spirit wholly alien to his temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in +religious observances, and gradually induced his uncle and cousins to +despise him as a poor creature whom they could make short work of when +occasion served. In 1385, having thus prepared the way for treason, he +avowed his intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of +Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body guard of Germans, he passed near +Milan, where his uncle and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian +Galeazzo feigned a courteous greeting; but when he saw his relatives +within his grasp, he gave a watchword in German to his troops, who +surrounded Bernabo and took him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo +marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle in a dungeon, and +proclaimed himself sole lord of the Visconti heirship.[1] + + [1] The narrative of this coup-de-main may be read with advantage in + Corio, p. 258. + +The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this coup-de-main +(1385-1402), forms a very important chapter in Italian history. We may +first see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to trace his aims +and achievements. Giovio describes him as having been a remarkably +sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends +feared he would not grow to man's estate. No pleasures in after-life +drew him away from business. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no +charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the preservation of his +health, read and meditated much, and relaxed himself in conversation +with men of letters. Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect +independence in this prince, who was far above the boisterous pleasures +and violent activities of the age in which he lived. In the erection of +public buildings he was magnificent. The Certosa of Pavia and the Duomo +of Milan owed their foundation to his sense of splendor. At the same +time he completed the palace of Pavia, which his father had begun, and +which he made the noblest dwelling-house in Europe. The University of +Pavia was raised by him from a state of decadence to one of great +prosperity, partly by munificent endowments and partly by a wise choice +of professors. In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred taste +for vast engineering projects. He contemplated and partly carried out a +scheme for turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels, and +for drying up the lagoons of Venice. In this way he purposed to attack +his last great enemy, the Republic of S. Mark, upon her strongest point. +Yet in the midst of these huge designs he was able to attend to the most +trifling details of economy. His love of order was so precise that he +may be said to have applied the method of a banker's office to the +conduct of a state. It was he who invented Bureaucracy by creating a +special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments. Their duty +consisted in committing to books and ledgers the minutest items of his +private expenditure and the outgoings of his public purse; in noting the +details of the several taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of +the whole state revenue; and in recording the names and qualities and +claims of his generals, captains, and officials. A separate office was +devoted to his correspondence, of all of which he kept accurate +copies.[1] By applying this mercantile machinery to the management of +his vast dominions, at a time when public economy was but little +understood in Europe, Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth enormously above +that of his neighbors. His income in a single year is said to have +amounted to 1,200,000 golden florins, with the addition of 800,000 +golden florins levied by extraordinary calls.[2] The personal timidity +of this formidable prince prevented him from leading his armies in the +field. He therefore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and took +into his service all the chief Condottieri of the day, thus giving an +impulse to the custom which was destined to corrupt the whole military +system of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how to choose, he was +himself the brain and moving principle. He might have boasted that he +never took a step without calculating the cost, carefully considering +the object, and proportioning the means to his end. How mad to such a +man must have seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the +chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their +force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the +subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his +character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said +to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. +Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the +following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity: +'False and pitiless, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius for +enterprise, and to immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did +not endeavor to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him +into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers +to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He +seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the +vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense +wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his +cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the +captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from +him, and were ready to return to his service whenever called upon. He +encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; he knew well how to +distinguish, reward, and win their attachment.'[3] Such was the tyrant +who aimed at nothing less than the reduction of the whole of Italy +beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who might have achieved his +purpose had not his career of conquest been checked by the Republic of +Florence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death. + + [1] Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne gli + armari de' suoi Archivi maravigliosi libri in carta pecora, i quali + contenevano d' anno in anno i nomi de' capitani, condottieri, e + soldati vecchi, e le paghe di ogn' uno, e 'l rotulo delle + cavallerie, et delle fanterie: v' erano anco registrate le copie + delle lettere le quali negli importantissimi maneggi di far guerra o + pace, o egli haveva scritto ai principi o haveva ricevuto da loro.' + + [2] The description given by Corio (pp. 260, 266-68) of the dower in + money, plate, and jewels brought by Valentina Visconti to Louis + d'Orleans is a good proof of Gian Galeazzo's wealth. Besides the + town of Asti, she took with her in money 400,000 golden florins. Her + gems were estimated at 68,858 florins, and her plate at 1,667 marks + of Paris. The inventory is curious. + + [3] 'History of the Italian Republics' (1 vol. Longmans), p. 190. + +At the time of his accession the Visconti had already rooted out the +Correggi and Rossi of Parma, the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of +San Donnino, the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabò of +Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the +Brusati of Brescia. Their viper had swallowed all these lesser +snakes.[1] But the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga at +Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house of Scala was in +possession of Verona. Gian Galeazzo's schemes were first directed +against the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of the Visconti, upon the +imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height under the Ghibelline +general Can Grande and his nephew Mastino, in the first half of the +fourteenth century (1312-51). Mastino had himself cherished the project +of an Italian Kingdom; but he died before approaching its +accomplishment. The degeneracy of his house began with his three sons. +The two younger killed the eldest; of the survivors the stronger slew +the weaker and then died in 1374, leaving his domains to two of his +bastards. One of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,[2] and +afterwards fell a prey to the Visconti in 1387. In his subjugation of +Verona Gian Galeazzo contrived to make use of the Carrara family, +although these princes were allied by marriage to the Scaligers, and had +everything to lose by their downfall. He next proceeded to attack Padua, +and gained the co-operation of Venice. In 1388 Francesco da Carrara had +to cede his territory to Visconti's generals, who in the same year +possessed themselves for him of the Trevisan Marches. It was then that +the Venetians saw too late the error they had committed in suffering +Verona and Padua to be annexed by the Visconti, when they ought to have +been fortified as defenses interposed between his growing power and +themselves. Having now made himself master of the North of Italy,[3] +with the exception of Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna, Gian Galeazzo turned +his attention to these cities. Alberto d' Este was ruling in Ferrara; +Francesco da Gonzaga in Mantua. It was the Visconti's policy to enfeeble +these two princes by causing them to appear odious in the eyes of their +subjects.[4] Accordingly he roused the jealousy of the Marquis of +Ferrara against his nephew Obizzo to such a pitch that Alberto beheaded +him together with his mother, burned his wife, and hung a third member +of his family, besides torturing to death all the supposed accomplices +of the unfortunate young man. Against the Marquis of Mantua Gian +Galeazzo devised a still more diabolical plot. By forged letters and +subtly contrived incidents he caused Francesco da Gonzaga to suspect his +wife of infidelity with his secretary.[5] In a fit of jealous fury +Francesco ordered the execution of his wife, the mother of several of +his children, together with the secretary. Then he discovered the +Visconti's treason. But it was too late for anything but impotent +hatred. The infernal device had been successful; the Marquis of Mantua +was no less discredited than the Marquis of Ferrara by his crime. It +would seem that these men were not of the stamp and caliber to be +successful villans, and that Gian Galeazzo had reckoned upon this defect +in their character. Their violence caused them to be rather loathed than +feared. The whole of Lombardy was now prostrate before the Milanese +tyrant. His next move was to set foot in Tuscany. For this purpose Pisa +had to be acquired; and here again he resorted to his devilish policy of +inciting other men to crimes by which he alone would profit in the +long-run. Pisa was ruled at that time by the Gambacorta family, with an +old merchant named Pietro at their head. This man had a friend and +secretary called Jacopo Appiano, whom the Visconti persuaded to turn +Judas, and to entrap and murder his benefactor and his children. The +assassination took place in 1392. In 1399 Gherardo, son of Jacopo +Appiano, who held Pisa at the disposal of Gian Galeazzo, sold him this +city for 200,000 florins.[6] Perugia was next attacked. Here Pandolfo, +chief of the Baglioni family, held a semi-constitutional authority, +which the Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, and +then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his own.[7] All Italy and +even Germany had now begun to regard the usurpations of the Milanese +despot with alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus refused to take +action against him; nay, in 1395 he granted to the Visconti the +investiture of the Duchy of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only +Pavia for himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and in the next +two years the plague came to his assistance by enfeebling the ruling +families of Lucca and Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that +he was now able to take possession of those cities. + + [1] Il Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly given + to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in allusion + to their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth. + + [2] Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio + tried to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his + death in the prosecution of infamous amours. + + [3] Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the Marquisate of + Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir + in a kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in + formidable neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests. + + [4] The policy adopted by the Visconti against the Estensi and the + Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc. iii. 32): + 'quando alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto l' + animo ad uno accordo, non ci è altro modo più vero, nè più stabile, + che fargli usare qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il + qual tu non vuoi che l' accordo si faccia.' + + [5] This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian + Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina, + daughter of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy + the more disgraceful. + + [6] The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty + despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, is + similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the + Vistarini of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the + Ducal house of Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino + Buonacolsi. + + [7] Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed himself + of Perugia in 1400, having paved his way for the usurpation by + causing Biordo Michelotti, the successor of the Baglioni to be + assassinated by his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed + that he proceeded slowly and surely in the case of each annexation, + licking over his prey after he had throttled it and before he + swallowed it, like a boa-constrictor. + +There remained no power in Italy, except the Republic of Florence and +the exiled but invincible Francesco da Carrara, to withstand his further +progress. Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Francesco managed +to return to Padua. Still the peril which threatened the whole of Italy +was imminent. The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood--rich, +prosperous, and full of mental force. His acquisitions were well +cemented; his armies in good condition; his treasury brim full; his +generals highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp respected +the iron will and the deep policy of the despot who swayed their action +from his arm-chair in Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains and +hands that did him service, to keep them mutually in check, and by their +regulated action to make himself not one but a score of men. At last, +when all other hope of independence for Italy had failed, the plague +broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo retired to his isolated +fortress of Marignano in order to escape infection. Yet there in 1402 he +sickened. A comet appeared in the sky, to which he pointed as a sign of +his approaching death--'God could not but signalize the end of so +supreme a ruler,' he told his attendants. He died aged 55. Italy drew a +deep breath. The danger was passed. + +The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo for the enslavement of +Italy, the ability and force of intellect which sustained him in its +execution, and the power with which he bent men to his will, are +scarcely more extraordinary than the sudden dissolution of his dukedom +at his death. Too timid to take the field himself, he had trained in his +service a band of great commanders, among whom Alberico da Barbino, +Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, and +Ottobon Terzo were the most distinguished. As long as he lived and held +them in leading strings, all went well. But at his death his two sons +were still mere boys. He had to intrust their persons, together with the +conduct of his hardly won dominions, to these captains in conjunction +with the Duchess Catherine and a certain Francesco Barbavara. This man +had been the Duke's body-servant, and was now the paramour of the +Duchess. The generals refused to act with them; and each seized upon +such portions of the Visconti inheritance as he could most easily +acquire. The vast tyranny of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a +day. The whole being based on no legal right, but held together +artificially by force and skill, its constituent parts either reasserted +their independence or became the prey of adventurers.[1] Many scions of +the old ejected families recovered their authority in the subject towns. +We hear again of the Scotti at Piacenza, the Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, the Benzoni at Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and +Colleoni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcabò at Cremona. +Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia; +Ottonbon Terzo established himself in Parma. Meanwhile Giovanni Maria +Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria +occupied Pavia. Gabriello, a bastard son of the first duke, fortified +himself in Crema. + + [1] The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian Galeazzo's + death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of these + usurpations. Corio, pp. 292 et seq., contain the details. + +In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, there was a +progressive tendency to degeneration. The strain of tyranny sustained by +force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the +isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a +kind of hereditary madness.[1] In the case of Giovanni Maria and Filippo +Maria Visconti these predisposing causes of insanity were probably +intensified by the fact that their father and mother were first cousins, +the grandchildren of Stefano, son of Matteo il Grande. Be this as it +may, the constitutional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in +Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something akin to madness +in his brother. Gian Maria, Duke of Milan in nothing but in name, +distinguished himself by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his +ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men. All the +criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get denounced as criminals, +even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his +infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to their +duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his +victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.[2] In 1412 some +Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse +into the street. A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses. +Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,[3] who +brought him nearly half a million of florins for dowry, together with +her husband's soldiers and the cities he had seized after Gian +Galeazzo's death. By the help of this alliance Filippo was now gradually +recovering the Lombard portion of his father's dukedom. The minor +cities, purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the +grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and political +tragedies that drenched their streets with blood. Piacenza was utterly +depopulated. It is recorded that for the space of a year only three of +its inhabitants remained within the walls. + + [1] I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a scientific + statement of the theory of madness developed by accumulated and + hereditary vices. + + [2] Corio, p. 301, mentions by name Giovanni da Pusterla and + Bertolino del Maino as 'lacerati da i cani del Duca.' Members of the + families of these men afterwards helped to kill him. + + [3] Beatrice di Tenda, the wife of Facino Cane, was twenty years + older than the Duke of Milan. As soon as the Visconti felt himself + assured in his duchy, he caused a false accusation to be brought + against her of adultery with the youthful Michele Oranbelli, and, in + spite of her innocence, beheaded her in 1418. Machiavelli relates + this act of perfidy with Tacitean conciseness (1st. Fior. lib. i. + vol. i. p. 55): 'Dipoi per esser grato de' benefici grandi, come + sono quasi sempre tutti i Principi, accusè Beatrice sua moglie di + stupro e la fece morire.' + +Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was extremely ugly, and so +sensitive about his ill-formed person that he scarcely dared to show +himself abroad. He habitually lived in secret chambers, changed +frequently from room to room, and when he issued from his palace refused +salutations in the streets. As an instance of his nervousness, the +chroniclers report that he could not endure to hear the noise of +thunder.[1] At the same time he inherited much of his father's insight +into character, and his power of controlling men more bold and active +than himself. But he lacked the keen decision and broad views of Gian +Galeazzo. He vacillated in policy and kept planning plots which seemed +to have no object but his own disadvantage. Excess of caution made him +surround the captains of his troops with spies, and check them at the +moment when he feared they might become too powerful. This want of +confidence neutralized the advantage which he might have gained by his +choice of fitting instruments. Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza +for his general against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But he +could not attach the great soldier of fortune to himself. Sforza took +the pay of Florence against his old patron, and in 1441 forced him to a +ruinous peace; one of the conditions of which was the marriage of the +Duke of Milan's only daughter, Bianca, to the son of the peasant of +Cotignola. Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no male heir. +The great family of the Visconti had dwindled away. Consequently, after +the duke's death in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of +Milan, which he first secured by force and then claimed in right of his +wife. An adverse claim was set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of +Orleans having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of Gian +Galeazzo.[2] But both of these claims were invalid, since the +investiture granted by Wenceslaus to the first duke excluded females. So +Milan was once again thrown open to the competition of usurpers. + + [1] The most complete account of Filippo Maria Visconti written by a + contemporary is that of Piero Candido Decembrio (Muratori, vol. + xx.). The student must, however, read between the lines of this + biography, for Decembrio, at the request of Leonello d' Este, + suppressed the darker colors of the portrait of his master. See the + correspondence in Rosmini's Life of Guarino da Verona. + + [2] This claim of the House of Orleans to Milan was one source of + French interference in Italian affairs. Judged by Italian custom, + Sforza's claim through Bianca was as good as that of the Orleans + princes through Valentina, since bastardy was no real bar in the + peninsula. It is said that Filippo Maria bequeathed his duchy to the + Crown of Naples, by a will destroyed after his death. Could this + bequest have taken effect, it might have united Italy beneath one + sovereign. But the probabilities are that the jealousies of + Florence, Venice, and Rome against Naples would have been so + intensified as to lead to a bloody war of succession, and to hasten + the French invasion. + +The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan blazed forth upon the +death of the last duke. In spite of so many generations of despots, the +people still regarded themselves as sovereign, and established a +republic. But a state which had served the Visconti for nearly two +centuries, could not in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon +itself alone. The republic, feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, was +short-sighted enough to engage Francesco Sforza as commander-in-chief +against the Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy in +Lombardy to push their power west of the Adda. + +Sforza, though the ablest general of the day, was precisely the man whom +common prudence should have prompted the burghers to mistrust. In one +brilliant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond the Adda, burned +their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the Po, and utterly defeated their army +at Caravaggio. Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the +surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their capital, and forced +them to receive him as their Duke in 1450. Italy had lost a noble +opportunity. If Florence and Venice had but taken part with Milan, and +had stimulated the flagging energies of Genoa, four powerful republics +in federation might have maintained the freedom of the whole peninsula +and have resisted foreign interference. But Cosimo de' Medici, who was +silently founding the despotism of his own family in Florence, preferred +to see a duke in Milan; and Venice, guided by the Doge Francesco +Foscari, thought only of territorial aggrandizement. The chance was +lost. The liberties of Milan were extinguished. A new dynasty was +established in the duchy, grounded on a false hereditary claim, which, +as long as it continued, gave a sort of color to the superior but still +illegal pretensions of the house of Orleans. It is impossible at this +point in the history of Italy to refrain from judging that the Italians +had become incapable of local self-government, and that the prevailing +tendency to despotism was not the results of accidents in any +combination, but of internal and inevitable laws of evolution. + +It was at this period that the old despotisms founded by Imperial Vicars +and Captains of the People came to be supplanted or crossed by those of +military adventurers, just as at a somewhat later time the Condottiere +and the Pope's nominee were blent in Cesare Borgia. This is therefore +the proper moment for glancing at the rise and influence of mercenary +generals in Italy, before proceeding to sketch the history of the Sforza +family. + +After the wars in Sicily, carried on by the Angevine princes, had ceased +(1302), a body of disbanded soldiers, chiefly foreigners, was formed +under Fra Ruggieri, a Templar, and swept the South of Italy. Giovanni +Villani marks this as the first sign of the scourge which was destined +to prove so fatal to the peace of Italy.[1] But it was not any merely +accidental outbreak of Banditti, such as this, which established the +Condottiere system. The causes were far more deeply seated, in the +nature of Italian despotism and in the peculiar requirements of the +republics. We have already seen how Frederick II. found it convenient to +employ Saracens in his warfare with the Holy See. The same desire to +procure troops incapable of sympathizing with the native population +induced the Scala and Visconti tyrants to hire German, Breton, Swiss, +English, and even Hungarian guards. These foreign troops remained at +the disposal of the tyrants and superseded the national militia. The +people of Italy were reserved for taxation; the foreigners carried on +the wars of the princes. Nor was this policy otherwise than popular. It +relieved all classes from the conscription, leaving the burgher free to +ply his trade, the peasant to till his fields, and disarming the nobles +who were still rebellious and turbulent within the city walls. The same +custom gained ground among the Republics. Rich Florentine citizens +preferred to stay at home at ease, or to travel abroad for commerce, +while they intrusted their military operations to paid generals.[2] +Venice, jealous of her own citizens, raised no levies in her immediate +territory, and made a rule of never confiding her armies to Venetians. +Her admirals, indeed, were selected from the great families of the +Lagoons. But her troops were placed beneath the discipline of +foreigners. The warfare of the Church, again, had of necessity to be +conducted on the same principles; for it did not often happen that a +Pope arose like Julius II., rejoicing in the sound of cannon and the +life of camps. In this way principalities and republics gradually +denationalized their armies, and came to carrying on campaigns by the +aid of foreign mercenaries under paid commanders. The generals, wishing +as far as possible to render their troops movable and compact, +suppressed the infantry, and confined their attention to perfecting the +cavalry. Heavy-armed cavaliers, officered by professional captains, +fought the battles of Italy; while despots and republics schemed in +their castles, or debated in their council-chambers, concerning objects +of warfare about which the soldiers of fortune were indifferent. The pay +received by men-at-arms was more considerable than that of the most +skilled laborers in any peaceful trade. The perils of military service +in Italy, conducted on the most artificial principles, were but slight; +while the opportunities of self-indulgence--of pillage during war and of +pleasure in the brief intervals of peace--attracted all the hot blood of +the country to this service.[3] Therefore, in course of time, the +profession of Condottiere fascinated the needier nobility of Italy, and +the ranks of their men-at-arms were recruited by townsfolk and peasants, +who deliberately chose a life of adventure. + + [1] VIII. 51. + + [2] We may remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325, + misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members + of the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money + from them as the price of freedom from perilous or irksome service. + + [3] Matarazzo, in his Chronicle of Perugia, gives a lively picture + of an Italian city, in which the nobles for generations followed the + trade of Condottieri, while the people enlisted in their bands--to + the utter ruin of the morals and the peace of the community. + +At first the foreign troops of the despots were engaged as body-guards, +and were controlled by the authority of their employers. But the +captains soon rendered themselves independent, and entered into military +contracts on their own account. The first notable example of a roving +troop existing for the sake of pillage, and selling its services to any +bidder, was the so-called Great Company (1343), commanded by the German +Guarnieri, or Duke Werner who wrote upon his corselet: 'Enemy of God, of +Pity and of Mercy.' This band was employed in 1348 by the league of the +Montferrat, La Scala, Carrara, Este, and Gonzaga houses, formed to check +the Visconti. + +'In the middle of the fourteenth century,' writes Sismondi,[1] 'all the +soldiers who served in Italy were foreigners: at the end of the same +century they were all, or nearly all, Italian.' This sentence indicates +a most important change in the Condottiere system, which took place +during the lifetime of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Alberico da Barbiano, a +noble of Romagna, and the ancestor of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso, +adopted the career of Condottiere, and formed a Company, called the +Company of S. George, into which he admitted none but Italians. The +consequence of this rule was that he Italianized the profession of +mercenary arms for the future. All the great captains of the period were +formed in his ranks, during the course of those wars which he conducted +for the Duke of Milan. Two rose to paramount importance--Braccio da +Montone, who varied his master's system by substituting the tactics of +detached bodies of cavalry for the solid phalanx in which Barbiano had +moved his troops; and Sforza Attendolo, who adhered to the old method. +Sforza got his name from his great physical strength. He was a peasant +of the village of Cotignola, who, being invited to quit the mattock for +a sword, threw his pickax into an oak, and cried, 'If it stays there, it +is a sign that I shall make my fortune.' The ax stuck in the tree, and +Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.[2] After the death of +Barbiano in 1409, Sforza and Braccio separated and formed two distinct +companies, known as the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi, who carried on +between them, sometimes in combination, but usually in opposition, all +the wars of Italy for the next twenty years. These old comrades, who had +parted in pursuit of their several advantage, found that they had more +to lose than to gain by defeating each other in any bloody or +inconveniently decisive engagement. Therefore they adopted systems of +campaigning which should cost them as little as possible, but which +enabled them to exhibit a chess-player's capacity for designing clever +checkmates.[3] Both Braccio and Sforza died in 1424, and were succeeded +respectively by Nicolo Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. These two men +became in their turn the chief champions of Italy. At the same time +other Condottieri rose into notice. The Malatesta family at Rimini, the +ducal house of Urbino, the Orsini and the Vitelli of the Roman States, +the Varani of Camerino, the Baglioni of Perugia, and the younger +Gonzaghi furnished republics and princes with professional leaders of +tried skill and independent resources. The vassals of these noble houses +were turned into men-at-arms, and the chiefs acquired more importance in +their roving military life than they could have gained within the narrow +circuit of their little states. + + [1] Vol. v. p. 207. + + [2] This is the commonly received legend. Corio, p. 255, does not + draw attention to the lowness of Sforza's origin, but says that he + was only twelve years of age when he enlisted in the corps of + Boldrino da Panigale, condottiere of the Church. His robust physical + qualities were hereditary for many generations in his family. His + son Francesco was tall and well made, the best runner, jumper, and + wrestler of his day. He marched, summer and winter, bareheaded; + needed but little sleep; was spare in diet, and self-indulgent only + in the matter of women. Galeazzo Maria, though stained by despicable + vices was a powerful prince, who ruled his duchy with a strong arm. + Of his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the wife of Girolamo Riario, + a story is told, which illustrates the strong coarse vein that still + distinguished this brood of princes. [See Dennistoun, 'Dukes of + Urbino,' vol. i. p. 292, for Boccalini's account of the Siege of + Forli, sustained by Caterina in 1488. Compare Sismondi, vol. vii. p. + 251.] Caterina Riario Sforza, as a woman, was no unworthy inheritor + of her grandfather's personal heroism and genius for government. + + [3] I shall have to notice the evils of this system in another + place, while reviewing the _Principe_ of Machiavelli. In that + treatise the Florentine historian traces the whole ruin of Italy + during the sixteenth century to the employment of mercenaries. + +The biography of one of these Condottieri deserves special notice, since +it illustrates the vicissitudes of fortune to which such men were +exposed, as well as their relations to their patrons. Francesco +Carmagnuola was a Piedmontese. He first rose into notice at the battle +of Monza in 1412, when Filippo Maria Visconti observed his capacity and +bravery, and afterwards advanced him to the captaincy of a troop. Having +helped to reduce the Visconti duchy to order, Carmagnuola found himself +disgraced and suspected without good reason by the Duke of Milan; and in +1426 he took the pay of the Venetians against his old master. During the +next year he showed the eminence of his abilities as a general; for he +defeated the combined forces of Piccinino, Sforza, and other captains of +the Visconti, and took them prisoners at Macalo. Carmagnuola neither +imprisoned nor murdered his foes.[1] He gave them their liberty, and +four years later had to sustain a defeat from Sforza at Soncino. Other +reverses of fortune followed, which brought upon him the suspicion of +bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received +their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his +admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet +clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a +secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with +his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned for +this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been convicted of treason? Was he +being punished for his ill success in the campaign of the preceding +years? The Republic of Venice, by the secrecy in which she enveloped +this dark act of vengeance, sought to inspire the whole body of her +officials with vague alarm. + + [1] Such an act of violence, however consistent with the morality of + a Cesare Borgia, a Venetian Republic, or a Duke of Milan, would have + been directly opposed to the code of honor in use among Condottieri. + Nothing, indeed, is more singular among the contradictions of this + period than the humanity in the field displayed by hired captains. + War was made less on adverse armies than on the population of + provinces. The adventurers respected each other's lives, and treated + each other with courtesy. They were a brotherhood who played at + campaigning, rather than the representatives of forces seriously + bent on crushing each other to extermination. Machiavelli says + (Princ. cap. xii.) 'Aveano usato ogni industria per levar via a se e + a' soldati la fatica e la paura, non s'ammazzando nelle zuffe, ma + pigliandosi prigioni e senza taglia.' At the same time the license + they allowed themselves against the cities and the districts they + invaded is well illustrated by the pillage of Piacenza in 1447 by + Francesco Sforza's troops. The anarchy of a sack lasted forty days, + during which the inhabitants were indiscriminately sold as slaves, + or tortured for their hidden treasure. Sism. vi. 170. + +But to return to the Duchy of Milan. Francesco Sforza entered the +capital as conqueror in 1450, and was proclaimed Duke. He never obtained +the sanction of the Empire to his title, though Frederick III. was +proverbially lavish of such honors. But the great Condottiere, +possessing the substance, did not care for the external show of +monarchy. He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times well, attending +to the prosperity of his states, maintaining good discipline in his +cities, and losing no ground by foolish or ambitious schemes. Louis XI. +of France is said to have professed himself Sforza's pupil in +statecraft, than which no greater tribute could be paid to his political +sagacity. In 1466 he died, leaving three sons, Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, +the Cardinal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro. + +'Francesco's crown,' says Ripamonti, 'was destined to pass to more than +six inheritors, and these five successions were accomplished by a series +of tragic events in his family. Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because +of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his people, before the +altar, in the middle of the sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who +followed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico was +imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.[1] One of his +sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and +exile, was restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been +undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the +recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan. It was +for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and +danger.' In these rapid successions we trace, besides the demoralization +of the Sforza family, the action of new forces from without. France, +Germany, and Spain appeared upon the stage; and against these great +powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless. + + [1] In the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly painted + wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room known + as his prison, with this legend, _Voilà un qui n'est pas content_. + Tradition gives it to Il Moro. + +We have now reached the threshold of the true Renaissance, and a new +period is being opened for Italian politics. The despots are about to +measure their strength with the nations of the North. It was Lodovico +Sforza who, by his invitation of Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated +the age of Foreign Enslavement. His biography belongs, therefore, to +another chapter. But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of +Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an +integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have +hitherto been tracing. In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were +repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice in +particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted +the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded +citizens of a still free city. Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, fifty +chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; a hundred men-at-arms +and five hundred foot soldiers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of +hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him. His suite of courtiers +numbered two thousand on horseback: 200,000 golden florins were expended +on this pomp. Machiavelli (1st. Fior. lib. 7) marks this visit of the +Duke of Milan as a turning-point from austere simplicity to luxury and +license in the manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de' Medici was +already bending to his yoke. The most extravagant lust, the meanest and +the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.[1] He +it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them +alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom he +had made his confidants and friends. The details of his assassination, +in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for +pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral +characteristic of this period which is intimately connected with the +despotism. Three young nobles of Milan, educated in the classic +literature by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had imbibed +from their studies of Greek and Latin history an ardent thirst for +liberty and a deadly hatred of tyrants.[2] Their names were Carlo +Visconti, Girolamo Olgiati, and Giannandrea Lampugnani. Galeazzo Sforza +had wounded the two latter in the points which men hold dearest--their +honor and their property[3]--by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by +depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Abbey of Miramondo. The +spirit of Harmodius and Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they +determined to rid Milan of her despot. After some meetings in the garden +of S. Ambrogio, where they matured their plans, they laid their project +of tyrannicide as a holy offering before the patron saint of Milan.[4] +Then having spent a few days in poignard exercise for the sake of +training,[5] they took their place within the precincts of S. Stephen's +Church. There they received the sacrament and addressed themselves in +prayer to the Protomartyr, whose fane was about to be hallowed by the +murder of a monster odious to God and man. It was on the morning of +December 26, 1476, that the duke entered San Stefano. At one and the +same moment the daggers of the three conspirators struck him--Olgiati's +in the breast, Visconti's in the back, Lampugnani's in the belly. He +cried 'Ah, Dio!' and fell dead upon the pavement. The friends were +unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lampugnani were killed on the +spot; Olgiati was seized, tortured, and torn to death. + + [1] Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 777, + and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures. + See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. + 316. Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with + the vice of unbridled sensuality. + + [2] The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this + time, as also during the French Revolution, fired the + imagination of patriots. Lorenzino de' Medici appealed to the + example of Timoleon in 1537, and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that + of Brutus in 1513. + + [3] 'Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o + nell' onore.... La roba e l'onore sono quelle due cose che + offendono più gli uomini che alcun' altra offesa, e dalle quali + il principe si debbe guardare: perchè e' non può mai spogliare + uno tanto che non gli resti un coltello da vendicarsi; non può + tanto disonorare uno che non gli resti un animo ostinato alla + vendetta.' Mach. Disc. iii. 6. + + [4] See Olgiati's prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87, + and in Mach. Ist. Fior. lib. 7. + + [5] Giovanni Sanzi's chronicle, quoted by Dennistoun, vol. i. + p. 223, describes the conspirators rehearsing on a wooden + puppet. + +In the interval which elapsed between the rack and the pincers, Olgiati +had time to address this memorable speech to the priest who urged him to +repent: 'As for the noble action for which I am about to die, it is this +which gives my conscience peace; to this I trust for pardon from the +Judge of all. Far from repenting, if I had to come ten times to life in +order ten times to die by these same torments, I should not hesitate to +dedicate my blood and all my powers to an object so sublime.' When the +hangman stood above him, ready to begin the work of mutilation, he is +said to have exclaimed: Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memora +facti--my death is untimely, my fame eternal, the memory of the deed +will last for aye.' He was only twenty-two years of age.[1] There is an +antique grandeur about the outlines of this story, strangely mingled +with mediæval Catholicism in the details, which makes it typical of the +Renaissance. Conspiracies against rulers were common at the time in +Italy; but none were so pure and honorable as this. Of the Pazzi +Conjuration (1478) which Sixtus IV. directed to his everlasting infamy +against the Medici, I shall have to speak in another place. It is enough +to mention here in passing the patriotic attempt of Girolamo Gentile +against Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa in 1476, and the more selfish plot of +Nicolo d' Este, in the same year, against his uncle Ercole, who held the +Marquisate of Ferrara to the prejudice of his own claim. The latter +tragedy was rendered memorable by the vengeance taken by Ercole. He +beheaded Nicolo and his cousin Azzo together with twenty-five of his +comrades, effectually preventing by this bloodshed any future attempt to +set aside his title. Falling as these four conspiracies do within the +space of two years, and displaying varied features of antique heroism, +simple patriotism, dynastic dissension, and ecclesiastical perfidy, they +present examples of the different forms and causes of political +tragedies with a noteworthy and significant conciseness.[2] + + [1] The whole story may be read in Ripamonti, under the head of + 'Confessio Olgiati;' in Corio, who was a page of the Duke's and an + eye-witness of the murder; and in the seventh book of Machiavelli's + 'History.' Sismondi's summary and references, vol. vii. pp. 86-90, + are very full. + + [2] It is worthy of notice that very many tyrannicides took + place in Church--for example, the murders of Francesco Vico dei + Prefetti, of the Varani, the Chiavelli, Giuliano de' Medici, + and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The choice of public service, as the + best occasion for the commission of these crimes, points to the + guarded watchfulness maintained by tyrants in their palaces and + on the streets. Banquets and festivities offered another kind + of opportunity; and it was on such occasions that domestic + tragedies, like Oliverotto's murder of his uncle and Grifonetto + Baglioni's treason, were accomplished. + +Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth +century. Neither public nor private morality in our sense of the word +existed. The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the +members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime +in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. +Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, 'He who gives his own +life can take a tyrant's,' had worked itself into popular language. At +this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public +murder which prevailed in Italy. Machiavelli, in the _Discorsi_ iii. 6, +discusses the whole subject with his usual frigid and exhaustive +analysis. It is no part of his critical method to consider the morality +of the matter. He deals with the facts of history scientifically. The +esteem in which tyrannicide was held at Florence is proved by the +erection of Donatello's Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo +Pubblico, with this inscription, _exemplum salutis publicæ cives +posuere_. All the political theorists agree that to rid a state of its +despot is a virtuous act. They only differ about its motives and its +utility. In Guicciardini's Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. pp. +53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide are discussed, and it is +concluded that _pochissimi sono stati quelli che si siano mossi +meramente per amore della libertà della sua patria, a' quali si conviene +suprema laude_.[1] Donato Giannotti (Opere, vol. i. p. 341) bids the +conspirator consider whether the mere destruction of the despot will +suffice to restore his city to true liberty and good government--a +caution by which Lorenzino de' Medici in his assassination of Duke +Alessandro might have profited; for he killed one tyrant in order only +to make room for another. Lorenzino's own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. pp. +283-295) is an important document, as showing that the murderer of a +despot counted on the sympathy of honorable men. So, too, is the verdict +of Boscolo's confessor (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who pronounced that +conspiracy against a tyrant was no crime. Nor did the demoralization of +the age stop here. Force, which had been substituted for Law in +government, became, as it were, the mainspring of society. Murders, +poisoning, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as of +public life.[2] In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an +inconceivably low rate. A man's life was worth scarcely more than that +of a horse. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional +cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the +right of sanctuary. Popes sold absolution for the most horrible +excesses, and granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of +crimes of lust and violence. Success was the standard by which acts were +judged; and the man who could help his friends intimidate his enemies, +and carve a way to fortune for himself by any means he chose, was +regarded as a hero. Machiavelli's use of the word _virtù_ is in this +relation most instructive. It has altogether lost the Christian sense of +_virtue_, and retains only so much of the Roman _virtus_ as is +applicable to the courage, intellectual ability, and personal prowess of +one who has achieved his purpose, be that what it may. The upshot of +this state of things was that individuality of character and genius +obtained a freer scope at this time in Italy than during any other +period of modern history. + + [1] 'Very few indeed have those been, whose motive for tyrannicide + was a pure love of their country's liberty; and these deserve the + highest praise.' + + [2] It is quite impossible to furnish a complete view of + Italian society under this aspect. Students must be referred to + the stories of the novelists, who collected the more dramatic + incidents and presented them in the form of entertaining + legends. It may suffice here to mention Bartolommeo Colleoni, + Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, all of whom owed their start in + life to the murder of their respective fathers by assassins; to + Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were attempted by cut-throats; + to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in each of whose + biographies poison and the knife play their parts. If men of + letters and artists were exposed to these perils, the dangers + of the great and noble may be readily imagined. + +At the same time it must not be forgotten that during this period the +art and culture of the Renaissance were culminating. Filelfo was +receiving the gold of Filippo Maria Visconti. Guarino of Verona was +instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre was educating +the children of the Marquis of Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan +with his music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was pouring +forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino was expounding Plato. +Boiardo was singing the prelude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara. Pico +della Mirandola was dreaming of a reconciliation of the Hebrew, Pagan, +and Christian traditions. It is necessary to note these facts in +passing; just as when we are surveying the history of letters and the +arts, it becomes us to remember the crimes and the madness of the +despots who patronized them. This was an age in which even the wildest +and most perfidious of tyrants felt the ennobling influences and the +sacred thirst of knowledge. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of +Rimini, might be selected as a true type of the princes who united a +romantic zeal for culture with the vices of barbarians.[1] The coins +which bear the portraits of this man, together with the medallions +carved in red Verona marble on his church at Rimini, show a narrow +forehead, protuberant above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow +cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips. The whole face seems +ready to flash with sudden violence, to merge its self-control in a +spasm of fury. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta killed three wives in +succession, violated his daughter, and attempted the chastity of his own +son. So much of him belongs to the mere savage. He caused the +magnificent church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo Alberti +in a manner more worthy of a Pagan Pantheon than of a Christian temple. +He incrusted it with exquisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of +the earliest Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns upon +every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in the building, and +dedicated a shrine there to his concubine--_Divæ Isottæ Sacrum_. So much +of him belongs to the Neo-Pagan of the fifteenth century. He brought +back from Greece the mortal remains of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon, +buried them in a sarcophagus outside his church, and wrote upon the tomb +this epigraph: 'These remains of Gemistus of Byzantium, chief of the +sages of his day, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, +commander in the war against the king of the Turks in the Morea, induced +by the mighty love with which he burns for men of learning, brought +hither and placed within this chest. 1466.' He, the most fretful and +turbulent of men, read books with patient care, and bore the +contradictions of pedants in the course of long discussions on +philosophy and arts and letters. So much of him belonged to the new +spirit of the coming age, in which the zeal for erudition was a passion, +and the spell of science was stronger than the charms of love. At the +same time, as Condottiere, he displayed all the treasons, duplicities, +cruelties, sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which the most +accomplished villain of the age could have aspired. + + [1] For a fuller account of him, see my 'Sketches in Italy and + Greece,' article _Rimini_. + +It would be easy, following in the steps of Tiraboschi, to describe the +patronage awarded in the fifteenth century to men of letters by +princes--the protection extended by Nicholas III. of Ferrara to Guarino +and Aurispa--the brilliant promise of his son Leonello, who corresponded +with Poggio, Filelfo, Guarino, Francesco Barbaro, and other +scholars--the liberality of Duke Borso, whose purse was open to poor +students. Or we might review the splendid culture of the court of +Naples, where Alfonso committed the education of his terrible son +Ferdinand to the care of Lorenzo Valla and Antonio Beccadelli.[1] More +insight, however, into the nature of Italian despotism in all its phases +may be gained by turning from Milan to Urbino, and by sketching a +portrait of the good Duke Frederick.[2] The life of Frederick, Count of +Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 1474 by Pope Sixtus IV., covers +the better part of the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little +corner of old Umbria lying between the Apennines and the Adriatic, +Rimini and Ancona, formed his patrimony. Speaking roughly, the whole +duchy was but forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of +bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor territory became the +center of a splendid court. 'Federigo,' says his biographer, Muzio, +'maintained a suite so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal +household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino in order to learn +manners and the art of war from the most noble general of his day. 'His +household,' we hear from Vespasiano, 'which consisted of 500 mouths +entertained at his own cost, was governed less like a company of +soldiers than a strict religious community. There was no gaming nor +swearing, but the men conversed with the utmost sobriety.' In a list of +the court officers we find forty-five counts of the duchy and of other +states, seventeen gentlemen, five secretaries, four teachers of grammar, +logic, and philosophy, fourteen clerks in public offices, five +architects and engineers, five readers during meals, four transcribers +of MSS. The library, collected by Vespasiano during fourteen years of +assiduous labor, contained copies of all the Greek and Latin authors +then discovered, the principal treatises on theology and church history, +a complete series of Italian poets, historiographers, and commentators, +various medical, mathematical, and legal works, essays on music, +military tactics and the arts, together with such Hebrew books as were +accessible to copyists. Every volume was bound in crimson and silver, +and the whole collection cost upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses +of so large a household, and the maintenance of this fine library, not +to mention a palace that was being built and churches that required +adornment, the mere revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed. +Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a general. Military +service formed his trade. 'In 1453,' says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from +Alfonso of Naples exceeded 8,000 ducats a month, and for many years he +had from him and his son an annual peace-pension of 6,000 in name of +past services. At the close of his life, when captain-general of the +Italian league, he drew in war 165,000 ducats of annual stipend, 45,000 +being his own share; in peace, 65,000 in all.' As a Condottiere, +Federigo was famous in this age of broken faith for his plain dealing +and sincerity. Only one piece of questionable practice--the capture of +Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo +Malatesta--stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the +field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and +merciful.[3] 'In military science,' says Vespasiano, 'he was excelled by +no commander of his time; uniting energy with judgment, he conquered by +prudence as much as by force. The like wariness was observed in all his +affairs; and in none of his many battles was he worsted. Nor may I omit +the strict observance of good faith, wherein he never failed. All to +whom he once gave his word, might testify to his inviolate performance +of it.' The same biographer adds that 'he was singularly religious, and +most observant of the Divine commands. No morning passed without his +hearing mass upon his knees.' + + [1] The Panormita; author, by the way, of the shameless + 'Hermaphroditus.' This fact is significant. The moral sense was + extinct when such a pupil was intrusted to such a tutor. + + [2] For the following details I am principally indebted to 'The + Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,' by James Dennistoun; 3 vols., + Longmans, 1851. Vespasiano's Life of Duke Frederick (Vite di + uomini illustri, pp. 72-112) is one of the most charming + literary portraits extant. It has, moreover, all the value of a + personal memoir, for Vespasiano had lived in close relation + with the Duke as his librarian. + + [3] See the testimony of Francesco di Giorgio; Dennistoun, vol. + i. p. 259. The sack of Volterra was, however, a blot upon his + humanity. + +While a boy, Federigo had been educated in the school of Vittorino da +Feltre at Mantua. Gian Francesco Gonzaga invited that eminent scholar to +his court in 1425 for the education of his sons and daughter, assembling +round him subordinate teachers in grammar, mathematics, music, painting, +dancing, riding, and all noble exercises. The system supervised by +Vittorino included not only the acquisition of scholarship, but also +training in manly sports and the cultivation of the moral character. +Many of the noblest Italians were his pupils. Ghiberto da Correggio, +Battista Pallavicíni, Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, Gabbriello da Cremona, +Francesco da Castiglione, Niccolo Perrotti, together with the Count of +Montefeltro, lived in Vittorino's house, associating with the poorer +students whom the benevolent philosopher instructed for the love of +learning. Ambrogio Camaldolese in a letter to Niccolo Niccoli gives this +animated picture of the Mantuan school: 'I went again to visit Vittorino +and to see his Greek books. He came to meet me with the children of the +prince, two sons and a daughter of seven years. The eldest boy is +eleven, the younger five. There are also other children of about ten, +sons of nobles, as well as other pupils. He teaches them Greek, and they +can write that language well. I saw a translation from Saint Chrysostom +made by one of them which pleased me much.' And again a few years later: +'He brought me Giovanni Lucido, son of the Marquis, a boy of about +fourteen, whom he has educated, and who then recited two hundred lines +composed by him upon the shows with which the Emperor was received in +Mantua. The verses were most beautiful, but the sweetness and elegance +of his recitation made them still more graceful. He also showed me two +propositions added by him to Euclid, which prove how eminent he promises +to be in mathematical studies. There was also a little daughter of the +Marquis, of about ten, who writes Greek beautifully; and many other +pupils, some of noble birth, attended them.' The medal struck by +Pisanello in honor of Vittorino da Feltre bears the ensign of a pelican +feeding her young from a wound in her own breast--a symbol of the +master's self-sacrifice.[1] I hope to return in the second volume of +this work to Vittorino. It is enough here to remark that in this good +school the Duke of Urbino acquired that solid culture which +distinguished him through life. In after years, when the cares of his +numerous engagements fell thick upon him, we hear from Vespasiano that +he still prosecuted his studies, reading Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, +and Physics, listening to the works of S. Thomas Aquinas and Scotus read +aloud, perusing at one time the Greek fathers and at another the Latin +historians.[2] How profitably he spent his day at Urbino may be gathered +from this account of his biographer: 'He was on horseback at daybreak +with four or six mounted attendants and not more, and with one or two +foot servants unarmed. He would ride out three or four miles, and be +back again when the rest of his court rose from bed. After dismounting, +he heard mass. Then he went into a garden open at all sides, and gave +audience to those who listed until dinner-time. At table, all the doors +were open; any man could enter where his lordship was; for he never ate +except with a full hall. According to the season he had books read out +as follows--in Lent, spiritual works; at other times, the history of +Livy; all in Latin. His food was plain; he took no comfits, and drank no +wine, except drinks of pomegranate, cherry, or apples.' After dinner he +heard causes, and gave sentence in the Latin tongue. Then he would visit +the nuns of Santa Chiara or watch the young men of Urbino at their +games, using the courtesy of perfect freedom with his subjects. His +reputation as a patron of the arts and of learning was widely spread. +'To hear him converse with a sculptor,' says Vespasiano, 'you would have +thought he was a master of the craft. In painting, too, he displayed the +most acute judgment; and as he could not find among the Italians worthy +masters of oil colors, he sent to Flanders for one, who painted for him +the philosophers and poets and doctors of the Church. He also brought +from Flanders masters in the art of tapestry.' Pontano, Ficino, and +Poggio dedicated works of importance to his name; and Pirro Perrotti, in +the preface to his uncle's 'Cornucopia,' draws a quaint picture of the +reception which so learned a book was sure to meet with at Urbino.[3] +But Frederick was not merely an accomplished prince. Concurrent +testimony proves that he remained a good husband and a constant friend +throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quickness of temper, +and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age of lax morality he +might have indulged without reproach. In his relations to his subjects +he showed what a paternal monarch should be, conversing familiarly with +the citizens of Urbino, accosting them with head uncovered, inquiring +into the necessities of the poorer artisans, relieving the destitute, +dowering orphan girls, and helping distressed shopkeepers with loans. +Numerous anecdotes are told which illustrate his consideration for his +old servants, and his anxiety for the welfare and good order of his +state. At a time when the Pope and the King of Naples were making money +by monopolies of corn, the Duke of Urbino filled his granaries from +Apulia, and sold bread during a year of scarcity at a cheap rate to his +poor subjects. Nor would he allow his officers to prosecute the indigent +for debts incurred by such purchases. He used to say: 'I am not a +merchant; it is enough to have saved my people from hunger.' We must +remember that this excellent prince had a direct interest in +maintaining the prosperity and good-will of his duchy. His profession +was warfare, and the district of Urbino supplied him with his best +troops. Yet this should not diminish the respect due to the foresight +and benevolence of a Condottiere who knew how to carry on his calling +with humanity and generosity. Federigo wore the Order of the Garter, +which Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan Order of the Ermine, +and the Papal decorations of the Rose, the Hat, the Sword. He served +three pontiffs, two kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The +Republic of Florence and more than one Italian League appointed him +their general in the field. If his military career was less brilliant +than that of the two Sforzas, Piccinino, or Carmagnuola, he avoided the +crimes to which ambition led some of these men and the rocks on which +they struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing duchy, a +cultivated court, a renowned name, and the leadership of the Italian +League to his son Guidobaldo. + + [1] Prendilacqua, the biographer of Vittorino, says that he died so + poor that his funeral expenses had to be defrayed. + + [2] Pius II. in his Commentaries gives an interesting account + of the conversations concerning the tactics of the ancients + which he held with Frederick, in 1461, in the neighborhood of + Tivoli. + + [3] The preface to the original edition of the 'Cornucopia' is + worth reading for the lively impression which it conveys of + Federigo's personality: 'Admirabitur in te divinam illam + corporis proceritatem, membrorum robur eximium, venerandam oris + dignitatem, ætatis maturam gravitatem, divinam quandam + majestatem cum humanitate conjunctam, totum præterea talem + qualem esse oportebat eum principem quem nuper pontifex maximus + et universus senatus omnium rerum suarum et totius + ecclesiastici imperii ducem moderatoremque constituit.' + +The young Duke, whose court, described by Castiglione, may be said to +have set the model of good breeding to all Europe, began life under the +happiest auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear that even in +boyhood he cared only for study and for manly sports. His memory was so +retentive that he could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse +of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what he had resolved to +retain. In the Latin and Greek languages he became an accomplished +scholar,[1] and while he appreciated the poets, he showed peculiar +aptitude for philosophy and history. But his development was precocious. +His zeal for learning and the excessive ardor with which he devoted +himself to physical exercises undermined his constitution. He became an +invalid and died childless, after exhibiting to his court for many years +an example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness under +the restraints of enforced inaction. His wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, one +of the most famous women of her age, was no less a pattern of noble +conduct and serene contentment. + +Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro dynasty.[2] It is +necessary to bear their virtues in mind while dwelling on the +characteristics of Italian despotism in the fifteenth century. The Duchy +of Urbino, both as an established dynasty not founded upon violence, and +also as a center of really humane culture, formed, it is true, an +exception to the rule of Italian tyrannies: yet, if we omitted this +state from our calculation, confining our attention to the extravagant +iniquities of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities of the +Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court of Naples, we should gain a +false notion of the many-sided character of Italy, in which at that time +vices and virtues were so strangely blended. We must never forget that +the same society which produced a Filippo Maria Visconti, a Galeazzo +Maria Sforza, a Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, gave birth +also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da Montefeltro. It is only +by studying the lives of all these men in combination that we can obtain +a correct conception of the manifold personality, the mingled polish and +barbarism, of the Italian Renaissance. + + [1] It is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period intended + by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' in a + Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by these + phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, but + rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin + books to understand allusions and quotations. Poliziano, it may be + remarked, thought it worth while to flatter Guidobaldo in a Greek + epigram. + + [2] After Guidobaldo's death the duchy was continued by the + Della Rovere family, one of whom, Giovanni, Prefect of Rome and + nephew of Sixtus IV., married the Duke's sister Giovanna in + 1474. + +Some more detailed account of Baldassare Castiglione's treatise _Il +Cortegiano_ will form a fitting conclusion to this Chapter on the +Despots. It is true that his book was written later than the period we +have been considering,[1] and he describes court life in its most +graceful aspect. Yet all the antecedent history of the past two +centuries had been gradually producing the conditions under which his +courtier flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he appeared +to the rest of Europe, was such a gentleman as he depicts. For the +historian his book is of equal value in its own department with the +Principe of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and the +Diary of Burchard. + + [1] It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the Aldi + of Venice in 1528. We find an English translation so early as 1561 + by Thomas Hoby. At this time it was in the hands of all the + gentlefolk of Europe. It is interesting to compare the 'Cortegiano' + with Della Casa's 'Galateo,' published in 1558. The 'Galateo' + professes to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the + minute rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the + present century. In manners and their ethical analysis we have + certainly gained nothing during the last three centuries. The + principle upon which these precepts of conduct are founded is not + etiquette or fashion, but respect for the sensibilities of others. + It would be difficult to compose a more philosophical treatise on + the lesser duties imposed upon us by the conditions of society--such + minute matters as the proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin, + being referred to the one rule of acting so as to cause no + inconvenience to our neighbors. + +In the opening of his 'Cortegiano' Castiglione introduces us to the +court of Urbino--refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated, +gentle--confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy. He +brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of +Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of +Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters +in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author +of 'Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to +estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, +of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San +Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to +fame--two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of +Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l' Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the +humorist. These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the +custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four +consecutive evenings. The theme of their conversation is the Perfect +Courtier. What must that man be who deserves the name of Cortegiano, +and how must he conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries us at +once into a bygone age. No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier; +but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to +despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing +pages, the question was one of the most serious importance. Culture and +good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the +intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect +of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite +knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than +in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation +whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to +court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or +even in humbler offices of state. To be able, therefore, to conduct +himself with dignity, to know how to win the favor of his master and to +secure the good-will of his peers, to retain his personal honor and to +make himself respected without being hated, to inspire admiration and to +avoid envy, to outshine all honorable rivals in physical exercises and +the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and retinue, to be +instructed in the arts of polite intercourse, to converse with ease and +wit, to be at home alike in the tilting-yard, the banquet-hall, the +boudoir, and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to live +before the world and yet to keep a fitting privacy and distance,--these +and a hundred other matters were the climax and perfection of the +culture of a gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in which it +was possible for a man of birth and talents to shine, it followed that +the perfect courtier and the perfect gentleman were synonymous terms. +Castiglione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on the character +of the true gentleman as he appeared in Italy. Eliminating all qualities +that are special to any art or calling, he defines those essential +characteristics which were requisite for social excellence in the +sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how unchangeable are the +laws of real politeness and refinement. Castiglione's courtier is, with +one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as +all men of education at the present day would wish to be. + +The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he must be noble. The +Count of Canossa, who proposed the subject of debate, lays down this as +an axiom. Gaspar Pallavicino denies the necessity[1] But after a lively +discussion, his opinion is overruled, on the ground that, although the +gentle virtues may be found among people of obscure origin, yet a man +who intends to be a courtier must start with the prestige of noble +birth. Next he must be skillful in the use of weapons and courageous in +the battle-field. He is not, however, bound to have the special science +of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess unique devotion to +the art of war: that would argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory. +Again, he must excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if +possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill +on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of +display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and +not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he +does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every +form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most +perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to +hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without +effort or deliberation.' This vice of affectation in all its kinds, and +the ways of avoiding it, are discussed with a delicacy of insight which +would do credit to a Chesterfield of the present century, sending forth +his son into society for the first time. Castiglione goes so far as to +condemn the pedantry of far-fetched words and the coxcombry of elaborate +costumes, as dangerous forms of affectation. His courtier must speak and +write with force and freedom. He need not be a purist in his use of +language, but may use such foreign phrases and modern idioms as are +current in good society, aiming only at simplicity and clearness. He +must add to excellence in arms polite culture in letters and sound +scholarship, avoiding that barbarism of the French, who think it +impossible to be a good soldier and an accomplished student at the same +time. Yet his learning should be always held in reserve, to give +brilliancy and flavor to his wit, and not brought forth for merely +erudite parade. He must have a practical acquaintance with music and +dancing; it would be well for him to sing and touch various stringed and +keyed instruments, so as to relax his own spirits and to make himself +agreeable to ladies. If he can compose verses and sing them to his own +accompaniment, so much the better. Finally, he ought to understand the +arts of painting and sculpture; for criticism, even though a man be +neither poet nor artist, is an elegant accomplishment. Such are the +principal qualities of the Cortegiano. + + [1] Italy, earlier than any other European nation, developed + theoretical democracy. Dante had defined true nobility to consist of + personal excellence in a man or in his ancestors; he also called + 'nobiltà' sister of 'filosofia.' Poggio in his 'Dialogue De + Nobilitate,' into which he introduces Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo + de' Medici (Cosimo's brother), decides that only merit constitutes + true nobility. Hawking and hunting are far less noble occupations + than agriculture; descent from a long line of historic criminals is + no honor. French and English castle-life, and the robber-knighthood + of Germany, he argues, are barbarous. Lorenzo pleads the authority + of Aristotle in favor of noble blood; Poggio contests the passage + quoted, and shows the superiority of the Latin word 'nobilitas' + (distinction) over the Greek term [Greek: _eugeneia_] (good birth). + The several kinds of aristocracy in Italy are then discussed. In + Naples the nobles despise business and idle their time away. In Rome + they manage their estates. In Venice and Genoa they engage in + commerce. In Florence they either take to mercantile pursuits or + live upon the produce of their land in idleness. The whole way of + looking at the subject betrays a liberal and scientific spirit, + wholly free from prejudice. Machiavelli ('Discorsi,' i. 55) is very + severe on the aristocracy, whom he defines as 'those who live in + idleness on the produce of their estates, without applying + themselves to agriculture or to any other useful occupation.' He + points out that the Venetian nobles are not properly so called, + since they are merchants. The different districts of Italy had + widely different conceptions of nobility. Naples was always + aristocratic, owing to its connection with France and Spain. Ferrara + maintained the chivalry of courts. Those states, on the other hand, + which had been democratized, like Florence, by republican customs, + or like Milan, by despotism, set less value on birth than on talent + and wealth. It was not until the age of the Spanish ascendency + (latter half of sixteenth century) that Cosimo I. withdrew the young + Florentines from their mercantile pursuits and enrolled them in his + order of S. Stephen, and that the patricians of Genoa carried + daggers inscribed 'for the chastisement of villeins.' + +The precepts which are laid down for the use of his acquirements and his +general conduct, resolve themselves into a strong recommendation of tact +and caution. The courtier must study the nature of his prince, and show +the greatest delicacy in approaching him, so as to secure his favor, and +to avoid wearying him with importunities. In tendering his advice he +must be modest; but he should make a point of never sacrificing his own +liberty of judgment. To obey his master in dishonorable things would be +a derogation from his dignity; and if he discovers any meanness in the +character of the prince, it is better to quit his service.[1] A courtier +must be careful to create beforehand a favorable opinion of himself in +places he intends to visit. Much stress is laid upon his choice of +clothes and the equipment of his servants. In these respects he should +aim at combining individuality with simplicity, so as to produce an +impression of novelty without extravagance or eccentricity. He must be +very cautious in his friendships, selecting his associates with care, +and admitting only one or two to intimacy. + + [1] From many passages in the 'Cortegiano' it is clear that + Castiglione is painting the character of an independent gentleman, + to whom self-culture in all humane excellence is of far more + importance than the acquisition of the art of pleasing. + Circumstances made the life of courts the best obtainable; but there + is no trace of French 'oeil-de-boeuf' servility. + +In connection with the general subject of tact and taste, the Cardinal +Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of +jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of +wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad +taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere +obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many +jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the +essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth +by cleverness, and not by mere tricks and clumsy inventions. + +In bringing this chapter on Italian Despotism in the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries to a conclusion, it will be well to cast a backward +glance over the ground which has been traversed. A great internal change +took place and was accomplished during this period. The free burghs +which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to +tyrannies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and maintained by +force. In the absence of dynastic right, violence and craft were +instruments by means of which the despots founded and preserved their +power. Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large were not unfavorable +to the growth of principalities. On the contrary, the forces which move +society, the inner instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress and +development, tended year by year more surely to the consolidation of +despotisms. City after city lost its faculty for self-government, until +at last Florence, so long the center of political freedom, fell beneath +the yoke of her merchant princes. It is difficult for the historian not +to feel either a monarchical or a republican bias. Yet this internal and +gradual revolution in the states of Italy may be regarded neither as a +matter for exultation in the cause of sovereignty, nor for lamentation +over the decay of liberty. It was but part of an inevitable process +which the Italians shared, according to the peculiarities of their +condition, in common with the rest of Europe. + +In tracing the history of the Visconti and the Sforzas our attention has +been naturally directed to the private and political vices of the +despot. As a contrast to so much violence and treachery, we have studied +the character of one of the best princes produced in this period. Yet it +must be borne in mind that the Duke of Urbino was far less +representative of his class than Francesco Sforza, and that the aims and +notions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti formed the ideal to which an Italian +prince of spirit, if he had the opportunity, aspired. The history of art +and literature in this period belongs to another branch of the inquiry; +and a separate chapter must be devoted to the consideration of political +morality as theorized by the Italians at the end of these two centuries +of intrigue. But having insisted on the violence and vices of the +tyrants, it seemed necessary to close the review of their age by +describing the Italian nobleman as court-life made him. Castiglione +shows him at the very best: the darker shadows of the picture are +omitted; the requirements of the most finished culture and the tone of +the purest society in Italy are depicted with the elegance of a scholar +and the taste of a true gentleman. The fact remains that the various +influences at work in Italy during the age of the despots had rendered +the conception of this ideal possible. Nowhere else in Europe could a +portrait of so much dignity and sweetness, combining the courage of a +soldier with the learning of a student and the accomplishments of an +artist, the liberality of freedom with the courtesies of service, have +been painted from the life and been recognized as the model which all +members of polite society should imitate. Nobler characters and more +heroic virtues might have been produced by the Italian commonwealths if +they had continued to enjoy their ancient freedom of self-government. +Meanwhile we must render this justice to Italian despotism, that beneath +its shadow was developed the type of the modern gentleman. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE REPUBLICS. + + +The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's +Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests +and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of +Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and +Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece +and Italy--Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms. + + +The despotisms of Italy present the spectacle of states founded upon +force, controlled and molded by the will of princes, whose object in +each case has been to maintain usurped power by means of mercenary arms +and to deprive the people of political activity. Thus the Italian +principalities, however they may differ in their origin, the character +of their administration, or their relation to Church and Empire, all +tend to one type. The egotism of the despot, conscious of his selfish +aims and deliberate in their execution, formed the motive principle in +all alike. + +The republics on the contrary are distinguished by strongly marked +characteristics. The history of each is the history of the development +of certain specific qualities, which modified the type of municipal +organization common to them all. Their differences consist chiefly in +the varying forms which institutions of a radically similar design +assumed, and also in those peculiar local conditions which made the +Venetians Levant merchants, the Perugians captains of adventure, the +Genoese admirals and pirates, the Florentines bankers, and so forth. +Each commonwealth contracted a certain physiognomy through the prolonged +action of external circumstances and by the maintenance of some +political predilection. Thus Siena, excluded from maritime commerce by +its situation, remained, broadly speaking, faithful to the Ghibelline +party; while Perugia at the distance of a few miles, equally debarred +from mercantile expansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity. +The annals of the one city record a long succession of complicated party +quarrels, throughout the course of which the State continued free; the +Guelf leanings of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment of +the Popes, while its civic independence was imperiled and enfeebled by +the contests of a few noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner +are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a state of feud and +faction which delivered it bound hand and foot to Florence, the former +after many vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the dominion of a +narrow oligarchy. + +But while recognizing these differences, which manifest themselves +partly in what may be described as national characteristics, and partly +in constitutional varieties, we may trace one course of historical +progression in all except Venice. This is what natural philosophers +might call the morphology of Italian commonwealths. To begin with, the +Italian republics were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek +states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the +privileges of government, together with a larger population, who, +though they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages +of the city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was +hereditary in those families by whom it had been once acquired, each +republic having its own criterion of the right, and guarding it +jealously against the encroachments of non-qualified persons. In +Florence, for example, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.[1] +In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the Golden Book. The +rivalries to which this system of municipal government gave rise were a +chief source of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor did the +burghers see far enough or philosophically enough to recruit their +numbers by a continuous admission of new members from the wealthy but +unfranchised citizens.[2] This alone could have saved them from the +death by dwindling and decay to which they were exposed. The Italian +conception of citizenship may be set forth in the words of one of their +acutest critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors +in a state:[3] 'Non dico tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti +quelli che hanno grado; cioè che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli +antichi loro, facultà d'ottenere i magistrate; e in somma che sono +_participes imperandi et parendi_.' No Italian had any notion of +representative government in our sense of the term. The problem was +always how to put the administration of the state most conveniently +into the hands of the fittest among those who were qualified as +burghers, and how to give each burgher his due share in the government; +not how to select men delegated from the whole population. The wisest +among their philosophical politicians sought to establish a mixed +constitution, which should combine the advantages of principality, +aristocracy, and democracy. Starting with the fact that the eligible +burghers numbered some 5,000, and with the assumption that among these +the larger portion would be content with freedom and a voice in the +administration, while a certain body were ambitious of honorable +distinctions, and a few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they +thought that these several desires might be satisfied and reconciled in +a republic composed of a general assembly of the citizens, a select +Senate, and a Doge. In these theories the influence of Aristotelian +studies[4] and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it +is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 +who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the +city.[5] The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like +that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's +speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, +with which we Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth century, +or that again of the rights of men, on which the democracies of France +and America were founded. The right contemplated by the Italian +politicians is that of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for their +advantage. As a matter of fact, Venice was the only Italian republic +which maintained this kind of oligarchy with success through centuries +of internal tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a series of +revolutions which ended at last in their enslavement. + + [1] Villari, _Life of Savonarola_, vol. i. p. 259, may be consulted + concerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, + Aggravezzati, at Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. + Consult Appendix ii. + + [2] It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting deserving + individuals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine + Constitution of 1495. The principle was not, however, recognized at + large by the republics. + + [3] On the Government of Siena (vol. i. p. 351 of his collected + works): 'I say not all the inhabitants of the state, but all those + who have rank; that is, who have acquired, either in their own + persons or through their ancestors, the right of taking magistracy, + in short those who are participes imperandi et parendi.' What has + already been said in Chapter II. about the origin of the Italian + Republics will explain this definition of burghership. + + [4] It would be very interesting to trace in detail the influence of + Aristotle's Politics upon the practical and theoretical statists of + the Renaissance. The whole of Giannotti's works; the discourses of + de' Pazzi, Vettori, Acciaiuoli, and the two Guicciardini on the + State of Florence (_Arch. St. It._ vol. i.); and Machiavelli's + _Discorso sul Reggimento di Firenze_, addressed to Leo X., + illustrate in general the working of Aristotelian ideas. At + Florence, in 1495, Savonarola urged his Constitution on the burghers + by appeals to Aristotle's doctrine and to the example of Venice [see + Segni, p. 15, and compare the speeches of Pagolo Antonio Soderini + and Guido Antonio Vespucci, in Guicciardini's _Istoria d' Italia_, + vol. ii. p. 155 of Rosini's edition, on the same occasion]. Segni, + p. 86, mentions a speech of Pier Filippo Pandolfini, the arguments + of which, he says, were drawn from Aristotle and illustrated by + Florentine history. The Italian doctrinaires seem to have imagined + that, by clever manipulation of existing institutions, they could + construct a state similar to that called [Greek: _politeia_] by + Aristotle, in which all sections of the community should be fairly + represented. Venice, meanwhile, was a practical instance of the + possible prosperity of such a constitution with a strong + oligarchical complexion. + + [5] These numbers, 100,000 for the population, and 5,000 for the + burghers, are stated roundly. In Florence, when the Consiglio + Maggiore was opened in 1495, it was found that the Florentines + altogether numbered about 90,000, while the qualified burghers were + not more than 3,200. In 1581 the population of Venice numbered + 134,890, whereof 1,843 were adult patricians [see below, p. 209]. + +Intolerant of foreign rule, and blinded by the theoretical supremacy of +the Empire to the need of looking beyond its own municipal institutions, +each city in the twelfth century sought to introduce such a system into +the already existing machinery of the burgh as should secure its +independence and place the government in the hands of its citizens. But +the passing of bad laws, or the non-observance of wise regulations, or, +again, the passions of individuals and parties, soon disturbed the +equilibrium established in these little communities. Desire for more +power than their due prompted one section of the burghers to violence. +The love of independence, or simple insubordination, drove another +portion to resistance. Matters were further complicated by resident or +neighboring nobles. Then followed the wars of factions, proscriptions, +and exiles. Having banished their rivals, the party in power for the +time being remodeled the institutions of the republic to suit their own +particular interest. Meanwhile the opposition in exile fomented every +element of discontent within the city, which this short-sighted policy +was sure to foster. Sudden revolutions were the result, attended in most +cases by massacres consequent upon the victorious return of the outlaws. +To the action of these peccant humors--_umori_ is the word applied by +the elder Florentine historians to the troubles attendant upon +factions--must be added the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity +of intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, +the treason and the egotism of mercenary generals, and the false foreign +policy which led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany or +Spain. Little by little, under the prolonged action of these disturbing +forces, each republic in turn became weaker, more confused in policy, +more mistrustful of itself and its own citizens, more subdivided into +petty but ineradicable factions, until at last it fell a prey either to +some foreign potentate, or to the Church, or else to an ambitious family +among its members. The small scale of the Italian commonwealths, taken +singly, favored rapid change, and gave an undue value to distinguished +wealth or unscrupulous ability among the burghers. The oscillation +between democracy and aristocracy and back again, the repetition of +exhausting discords, and the demoralizing influences of occasional +despotism, so broke the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the +citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were glad to accept +tyranny for the sake of the protection it professed to extend to life +and property. + +To these vicissitudes all the republics of Italy, with the exception of +Venice, were subject. In like manner, they shared in common the belief +that constitutions could be made at will, that the commonwealth was +something plastic, capable of taking the complexion and the form +impressed upon it by speculative politicians. So firmly rooted was this +conviction, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen of Italy +become, partly by the experience of their shifting history, and partly +by their study of antiquity, that the idea of the State as something +possessed of organic vitality can scarcely be said to have existed among +them. The principle of gradual growth, which gives its value, for +example, to the English Constitution, was not recognized by the +Italians. Nor again had their past history taught them the necessity, so +well defined and recognized by the Greek statesmen, of maintaining a +fixed character at any cost in republics, which, in spite of their small +scale, aspired to permanence.[1] The most violent and arbitrary changes +which the speculative faculty of a theorist could contrive, or which the +prejudices of a party could impose, seemed to them not only possible but +natural. + + [1] The value of the [Greek: _êthos_] was not wholly unrecognized by + political theorists. Giannotti (vol. i. p. 160, and vol. ii. p. 13), + for example translates it by the word 'temperamento.' + +A very notable instance of this tendency to treat the State as a plastic +product of political ingenuity, is afforded by the annals of Genoa. +After suffering for centuries from the vicissitudes common to all +Italian free cities--discords between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, +between the nobles and the people, between the enfranchised citizens and +the proletariat--after submitting to the rule of foreign masters, +especially of France and Milan, and after being torn in pieces by the +rival houses of Adorni and Fregosi, the Genoese at last received liberty +from the hands of Andrea Doria in 1528. They then proceeded to form a +new Constitution for the protection of their freedom; and in order to +destroy the memory of the old parties which had caused their ruin, they +obliterated all their family names with the exception of twenty, under +one or other of which the whole body of citizens were bound to enroll +themselves.[1] This was nothing less than an attempt to create new +_gentes_ by effacing the distinctions established by nature and +tradition. To parallel a scheme so artificial in its method, we must go +back to the history of Sicyon and the changes wrought in the Dorian +tribes by Cleisthenes. + + [1] See Varchi, _St. F._ lib. vii. cap. 3. + +Short of such violent expedients as these, the whole history of towns +like Florence reveals a succession of similar attempts. When, for +example, the Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines found +themselves without a working constitution, and proceeded to frame one. +The matter was at first referred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio +Vespucci and Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and against the +establishment of a Grand Council on the Venetian model, before the +Signory in the Palazzo. At this juncture Savonarola in his sermon for +the third Sunday in Advent[1] suggested that each of the sixteen +Companies should form a plan, that these should be submitted to the +Gonfaloniers, who should choose the four best, and that from these four +the Signory should select the most perfect. At the same time he +pronounced himself in favor of an imitation of the Venetian Consiglio +Grande. His scheme, as is well known, was adopted.[2] Running through +the whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and +historians, we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary +alterations of the state. Machiavelli pronounces his opinion that, in +spite of the corruption of Florence, a wise legislator might effect her +salvation.[3] Skill alone was needed. There lay the wax; the scientific +artist had only to set to his hand and model it. + + [1] December 12, 1494. + + [2] Segni (pp. 15, 16) says that Savonarola deserved to be honored + for this Constitution by the Florentines no less than Numa by the + Romans. Varchi (vol. i. p. 169) judges the Consiglio Grande to have + been the only good institution ever adopted by the Florentines. We + may compare Giannotti (_Sopra la Repubblica di Siena_ p. 346) for a + similar opinion. Guicciardini, both in the _Storia d' Italia_ and + the _Storia di Firenze_, gives to Savonarola the whole credit of + having passed this Constitution. Nardi and Pitti might be cited to + the same effect. None of these critics doubt for a moment that what + was theoretically best ought to have been found practically + feasible. + + [3] _St. Fior._ lib. iii. 1. 'Firenze a quel grado è pervenuta che + facilmente da uno savio dator di leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque + forma di governo riordinata.' + +This is the dominant thought which pervades his treatise on the right +ordering of the State of Florence addressed to Leo X.[1] A more +consummate piece of political mechanism than that devised by Machiavelli +in this essay can hardly be imagined. It is like a clock with separate +actions for hours, minutes, seconds, and the revolutions of the moon and +planets. All the complicated interest of parties and classes in the +state, the traditional pre-eminence of the Medicean family, the rights +of the Church, and the relation of Florence to foreign powers, have been +carefully considered and provided for. The defect of this consummate +work of art is that it remained a mere machine, devised to meet the +exigencies of the moment, and powerless against such perturbations as +the characters and passions of living men must introduce into the +working of a Commonwealth. Had Florence been a colony established in a +new country with no neighbors but savages, or had it been an institution +protected from without against the cupidity of selfish rivals, then +such a constitution might have been imposed on it with profit. But to +expect that a city dominated by ancient prejudices, connected by a +thousand subtle ties not only with the rest of Italy but also with the +states of Europe, and rotten to the core in many of its most important +members, could be restored to pristine vigor by a doctrinaire however +able, was chimerical. The course of events contradicted this vain +expectation. Meanwhile a few clear-headed and positive observers were +dimly conscious of the instability of merely speculative +constitution-making. Varchi, in a weighty passage on the defects of the +Florentine republic, points out that its weakness arose partly from the +violence of factions, but also in a great measure from the implicit +faith reposed in doctors of the law.[2] The history of the Florentine +Constitution, he says, is the history of changes effected by successions +of mutually hostile parties, each in its own interest subverting the +work of its predecessor, and each in turn relying on the theories of +jurists, who without practical genius for politics make arbitrary rules +for the control of state-affairs. Yet even Varchi shares the prevailing +conviction that the proper method is first to excogitate a perfect +political system, and then to impress that like a stamp upon the +material of the commonwealth. His criticism is directed against lawyers, +not against philosophers and practical diplomatists. + + [1] The language of this treatise is noteworthy. After discoursing + on the differences between republics and principalities, and showing + that Florence is more suited to the former, and Milan to the latter, + form of government, he says: 'Ma perchè _fare_ principato dove + starebbe bene repubblica,' etc. ... 'si perche Firenze _è subietto + attissimo di pigliare questa forma_,' etc. The phrases in italics + show how thoroughly Machiavelli regarded the commonwealth as + plastic. We may compare the whole of Guicciardini's elaborate essay + 'Del Reggimento di Firenze' (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii.), as well as the + 'Discourses' addressed by Alessandro de' Pazzi, Francesco Vettori, + Ruberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Guicciardini, and Luigi Guicciardini, + to the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, on the settlement of the + Florentine Constitution in 1522 (_Arch. Stor._ vol. i.). Not one of + these men doubted that his nostrum would effect the cure of the + republic undermined by slow consumption. + + [2] _St. Fior._ lib. vi. cap. 4; vol. i. p. 294. + +In this sense and to this extent were the republics of Italy the +products of constructive skill; and great was the political sagacity +educed among the Italians by this state of things. The citizens +reflected on the past, compared their institutions with those of +neighboring states, studied antiquity, and applied the whole of their +intelligence to the one aim of giving a certain defined form to the +commonwealth. Prejudice and passion distorted their schemes, and each +successive modification of the government was apt to have a merely +temporary object. Thus the republics, as I have already hinted, lacked +that safeguard which the Greek states gained by clinging each to its own +character. The Greeks were no less self-conscious in their political +practice and philosophy; but after the age of the Nomothetæ, when they +had experienced nearly every phase through which a commonwealth can +pass, they recognized the importance of maintaining the traditional +character of their constitutions inviolate. Sparta adhered with singular +tenacity to the code of Lycurgus; and the Athenians, while they advanced +from step to step in the development of a democracy, were bent on +realizing the ideal they had set before them. + +Religion, which in Greece, owing to its local and genealogical +character, was favorable to this stability, proved in Italy one of the +most potent causes of disorder. The Greek city grew up under the +protection of a local deity, whose blood had been transmitted in many +instances to the chief families of the burgh. This ancestral god gave +independence and autonomy to the State; and when the Nomothetes +appeared, he was understood to have interpreted and formulated the +inherent law that animated the body politic. Thus the commonwealth was a +divinely founded and divinely directed organism, self-sufficing, with no +dependence upon foreign sanction, with no question of its right. The +Italian cities, on the contrary, derived their law from the common _jus_ +of the Imperial system, their religion from the common font of +Christianity. They could not forget their origin, wrung with difficulty +from existing institutions which preceded them and which still remained +ascendant in the world of civilized humanity. The self-reliant autonomy +of a Greek state, owing allegiance only to its protective deity and its +inherent Nomos, had no parallel in Italy outside Venice. All the other +republics were conscious of dependence on external power, and regarded +themselves as _ab initio_ artificial rather than natural creations. + +Long before a true constitutional complexion had been given to any +Italian State but Venice, parties had sprung up, and taken such firm +root that the subsequent history of the republics was the record of +their factions. To this point I have already alluded; but it is too +important to be passed by without further illustration. The great +division of Guelf and Ghibelline introduced a vital discord into each +section of the people, by establishing two antagonistic theories +respecting the right of supreme government. Then followed subordinate +quarrels of the nobles with the townsfolk, schisms between the +wealthier and poorer burghers, jealousies of the artisans and merchants, +and factions for one or other eminent family. These different elements +of discord succeed each other with astonishing rapidity; and as each +gives place to another, it leaves a portion of its mischief rankling in +the body politic, until last there remains no possibility of +self-government.[1] The history of Florence, or Genoa, or Pistoja would +supply us with ample illustrations of each of these obstacles to the +formation of a solid political temperament. But Siena furnishes perhaps +the best example of the extent to which such feuds could disturb a +state. The way in which this city conducted its government for a long +course of years, justified Varchi in calling it 'a jumble, so to speak, +and chaos of republics, rather than a well-ordered and disciplined +commonwealth.'[2] The discords of Siena were wholly internal. They +proceeded from the wrangling of five successive factions, or Monti, as +the people of Siena called them. The first of these was termed the +_Monte de' Nobili_; for Siena, like all Italian free burghs, had +originally been controlled by certain noble families, who formed the +people and excluded the other citizens from offices of state. In course +of time the plebeians acquired wealth, and the nobles split into parties +among themselves. To such a pitch were the quarrels of these nobles +carried, that at last they found it impossible to conduct the +government, and agreed to relinquish it for a season to nine plebeian +families chosen from among the richest and most influential. This gave +rise to the _Monte de' Nove_, who were supposed to hold the city in +commission for the nobles, while the latter devoted themselves to the +prosecution of their private animosities. Weakened by feuds, the +patricians fell a prey to their own creatures, the _Monte de' Nove_, who +in their turn ruled Siena like oligarchs, refusing to give up the power +which had been intrusted to them. In time, however, their insolence +became insufferable. The populace rebelled, deposed the _Nove_, and +invested with supreme authority twelve other families of mixed origin. +The _Monte de' Dodici_, created after this fashion, ran nearly the same +course as their predecessors, except that they appear to have +administered the city equitably. Getting tired of this form of +government, the people next superseded them by sixteen men, chosen from +the dregs of the plebeians, who assumed the title of _Riformatori_. This +new _Monte de' Sedici_ or _de' Riformatori_ showed much integrity in +their management of affairs, but, as is the wont of red republicans, +they were not averse to bloodshed. Their cruelty caused the people, with +the help of the surviving patrician houses, together with the _Nove_ +and the _Dodici_, to rise and shake them off. The last governing body +formed in this diabolical five-part fugue of crazy statecraft received +the name of _Monte del Popolo_, because it included all who were then +eligible to the Great Council of the State. Yet the factions of the +elder _Monti_ still survived; and to what extent they had absorbed the +population may be gathered from the fact that, on the defeat of the +_Riformatori_, 4,500 of the Sienese were exiled. It must be borne in +mind that with the creation of each new _Monte_ a new party formed +itself in the city, and the traditions of these parties were handed down +from generation to generation. At last, in the beginning of the +sixteenth century, Pandolfo Petrucci, who belonged to the _Monte de' +Nove_, made himself in reality, if not in name, the master of Siena, and +the Duke of Florence, later on in the same century extended his dominion +over the republic.[3] There is something almost grotesque in the bare +recital of these successive factions; yet we must remember that beneath +their dry names they conceal all elements of class and party discord. + + [1] Machiavelli, in spite of his love of freedom, says (_St. Fior._ + lib. vii. 1): 'Coloro che sperano che una repubblica possa essere + unita assai di questa speranza s'ingannano.' + + [2] Vol. i. pp. 324-30. See, too, Segni, p. 213, and Giannotti, vol. + i. p. 341. De Comines describes Siena thus: 'La ville est de tout + temps en partialité, et se gouverne plus follement que ville + d'Italie.' + + [3] Siena capitulated, in 1555, to the Spanish troops, who resigned + it to Duke Cosmo I. in 1557. + +What rendered the growth of parties still more pernicious, as already +mentioned, was the smallness of Italian republics. Varchi reckoned +10,000 _fuochi_ in Florence, 50,000 _bocche_ of seculars, and 20,000 +_bocche_ of religious. According to Zuccagni Orlandini there were 90,000 +Florentines in 1495, of whom only 3,200 were burghers. Venice, according +to Giannotti, counted at about the same period 20,000 _fuochi_, each of +which supplied the state with two men fit to bear arms. These +calculations, though obviously rough and based upon no accurate returns, +show that a republic of 100,000 souls, of whom 5,000 should be citizens, +would have taken distinguished rank among Italian cities.[1] In a state +of this size, divided by feuds of every kind, from the highest political +antagonism down to the meanest personal antipathy, changes were very +easily effected. The slightest disturbance of the equilibrium in any +quarter made itself felt throughout the city.[2] The opinions of each +burgher were known and calculated. Individuals, by their wealth, their +power of aiding or of suppressing poorer citizens, and the force of +their personal ability, acquired a perilous importance. At Florence the +political balance was so nicely adjusted that the ringing of the great +bell in the Palazzo meant a revolution, and to raise the cry of _Palle_ +in the streets was tantamount to an outbreak in the Medicean interest. +To call aloud _Popolo e libertà_ was nothing less than riot punishable +by law. Segni tells how Jacopino Alamanni, having used these words near +the statue of David on the Piazza in a personal quarrel, was beheaded +for it the same day.[3] The secession of three or four families from one +faction to another altered the political situation of a whole republic, +and led perhaps to the exile of a sixth part of the enfranchised +population.[4] After this would follow the intrigues of the outlaws +eager to return, including negotiations with lukewarm party-leaders in +the city, alliances with hostile states, and contracts which compromised +the future conduct of the commonwealth in the interest of a few +revengeful citizens. The biographies of such men as Cosimo de' Medici +the elder and Filippo Strozzi throw the strongest light upon these +delicacies and complexities of party politics in Florence. + + [1] It may be worth while to compare the accurate return of the + Venetian population in 1581 furnished by Yriarte (Vie d'un Patricien + de Venise, p. 96). The whole number of the inhabitants was 134,600. + Of these 1,843 were adult patricians; 4,309 women and children of + the patrician class; Cittadini of all ages and both sexes, 3,553; + monks, nuns, and priests, 3,969; Jews, 1,043; beggars, 187. + + [2] We might mention, as famous instances, the Neri and Bianchi + factions introduced into Pistoja in 1296 by a quarrel of the + Cancellieri family, the dismemberment of Florence in 1215 by a feud + between the Buondelmonti and Amidei, the tragedy of Imelda + Lambertazzi, which upset Bologna in 1273, the student riot which + nearly delivered Bologna into the hands of Roméo de' Pepoli in 1321, + the whole action of the Strozzi family at the period of the + extinction of Florentine liberty, the petty jealousies of the Cerchi + and Donati detailed by Dino Compagni, in 1294. + + [3] Segni, _St. Fior_. p. 53. + + [4] As an instance, take what Marco Foscari reported in 1527 to the + Venetian Senate respecting the parties in Florence (_Rel. Ven._ + serie ii. vol. i. p. 70). The _Compagnacci_, one of the three great + parties, only numbered 800 persons. + +In addition to the evils of internal factions we must reckon all the +sources of mutual mistrust to which the republics were exposed. As the +Italians had no notion of representative government, so they never +conceived a confederation. The thirst for autonomy in each state was as +great as of old among the cities of Greece. To be independent of a +sister republic, though such freedom were bought at the price of the +tyranny of a native family was the first object of every commonwealth. +At the same time this passion for independence was only equaled by the +greed of foreign usurpation. The second object of each republic was to +extend its power at the expense of its neighbors. As Pisa swallowed +Amalfi, so Genoa destroyed Pisa, and Venice did her best to cripple +Genoa. Florence obliterated the rival burgh of Semifonte, and Milan +twice reduced Piacenza to a wilderness. The notion that the great +maritime powers of Italy or the leading cities of Lombardy should +permanently co-operate for a common purpose was never for a moment +entertained. Such leagues as were formed were understood to be +temporary. When their immediate object had been gained, the members +returned to their initial rivalries. Milan, when, on the occasion of +Filippo Maria Visconti's death, she had a chance of freedom, refused to +recognize the liberties of the Lombard cities, and fell a prey to +Francesco Sforza. Florence, under the pernicious policy of Cosimo de' +Medici, helped to enslave Milan and Bologna instead of entering into a +republican league against their common foes, the tyrants. Pisa, Arezzo, +and the other subject cities of Tuscany were treated by her with such +selfish harshness that they proved her chiefest peril in the hour of +need.[1] Competition in commerce increased the mutual hatred of the +free burghs. States like Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, depending for +their existence upon mercantile wealth, and governed by men of +business, took every opportunity they could of ruining a rival in the +market. So mean and narrow was the spirit of Italian policy that no one +accounted it unpatriotic or dishonorable for Florence to suck the very +life out of Pisa, or for Venice to strangle a competitor so dangerous +as Genoa. + + [1] See the instructions furnished to Averardo dei Medici, quoted by + Von Reumont in his _Life of Lorenzo_, vol. ii. p. 122, German + edition. + +Thus the jealousy of state against state, of party against party, and of +family against family, held Italy in perpetual disunion; while +diplomatic habits were contracted which rendered the adoption of any +simple policy impossible. When the time came for the Italians to cope +with the great nations of Europe, the republics of Venice, Genoa, Milan, +Florence ought to have been leagued together and supported by the weight +of the Papal authority. They might then have stood against the world. +Instead of that, these cities presented nothing but mutual rancors, +hostilities, and jealousies to the common enemy. Moreover, the Italians +were so used to petty intrigues and to a system of balance of power +within the peninsula, that they could not comprehend the magnitude of +the impending danger. It was difficult for a politician of the +Renaissance, accustomed to the small theater of Italian diplomacy, +schooled in the traditions of Lorenzo de' Medici, swayed in his +calculations by the old pretensions of Pope and Emperor, dominated by +the dread of Venice, Milan, and Naples, and as yet but dimly conscious +of the true force of France or Spain, to conceive that absolutely the +only chance of Italy lay in union at any cost and under any form. +Machiavelli indeed seems too late to have discerned this truth. But he +had been lessoned by events, which rendered the realization of his +cherished schemes impossible; nor, could he find a Prince powerful +enough to attempt his Utopia. Of the Republics he had abandoned all +hope. + +To the laws which governed the other republics of Italy, Venice offered +in many respects a notable exception. Divided from the rest of Italy by +the lagoons, and directed by her commerce to the Eastern shores of the +Mediterranean, Venice took no part in the factions which rent the rest +of the peninsula, and had comparatively little to fear from foreign +invasion. Her attitude was one of proud and almost scornful isolation. +In the Lombard Wars of Independence she remained neutral, and her name +does not appear among the Signataries to the Peace of Constance. Both +the Papacy and the Empire recognized her independence. Her true policy +consisted in consolidating her maritime empire and holding aloof from +the affairs of Italy. As long as she adhered to this course, she +remained the envy and the admiration of the rest of Europe.[1] It was +only when she sought to extend her hold upon the mainland that she +aroused the animosity of the Italian powers, and had to bear the brunt +of the League of Cambray alone.[2] Her selfish prudence had been a +source of dread long before this epoch: when she became aggressive, she +was recognized as a common and intolerable enemy. + + [1] De Comines, in his _Memoirs of the Reign of Charles VIII._ (tom. + ii. p, 69), draws a striking picture of the impression made upon his + mind by the good government of the state of Venice. This may be + compared with what he says of the folly of Siena. + + [2] See Mach. _1st. Fior._ lib. i. 'Avendo loro con il tempo + occupata Padova, Vicenza, Trevigi, e dipoi Verona, Bergamo e + Brescia, e nel Reame e in Romagna molte città, cacciati dalla + cupidità del dominare vennero in tanta opinione di potenza, che non + solamente ai principi Italiani ma ai Rè oltramontani erano in + terrore. Onde congiurati quelli contra di loro, in un giorno fu + tolto loro quello stato che si avevano in molti anni con infiniti + spendii guadagnato. E benchè ne abbino in questi ultimi tempi + racquistato parte, non avendo racquistata nè la riputazione, nè le + forze, a discrezione d'altri, come tutti gli altri principi Italiani + vivono.' It was Francesco Foscari who first to any important extent + led the republic astray from its old policy. He meddled in Italian + affairs, and sought to encroach upon the mainland. For this, and for + the undue popularity he acquired thereby, the Council of Ten + subjected him and his son Jacopo to the most frightfully protracted + martyrdom that a relentless oligarchy has ever inflicted [1445-57]. + +The external security of Venice was equaled by her internal repose. +Owing to continued freedom from party quarrels, the Venetians were able +to pursue a consistent course of constitutional development. They in +fact alone of the Italian cities established and preserved the character +of their state. Having originally founded a republic under the +presidency of a Doge, who combined the offices of general and judge, and +ruled in concert with a representative council of the chief citizens +(697-1172), the Venetians by degrees caused this form of government to +assume a strictly oligarchical character. They began by limiting the +authority of the Doge, who, though elected for life, was in 1032 +forbidden to associate his son in the supreme office of the state. In +1172 the election of the Doge was transferred from the people to the +Grand Council, who, as a co-opting body, tended to become a close +aristocracy. In 1179 the Ducal power was still further restricted by the +creation of a senate called the Quarantia for the administration of +justice; while in 1229 the Senate of the Pregadi, interposed between the +Doge and the Grand Council, became an integral part of the constitution. +To this latter Senate were assigned all deliberations upon peace and +war, the voting of supplies, the confirmation of laws. Both the +Quarantia and the Pregadi were elected by the Consiglio Grande, which by +this time had become the virtual sovereign of the State of Venice. It is +not necessary here to mention the further checks imposed upon the power +of the Doges by the institution of officials named Correttori and +Inquisitori, whose special business it was to see that the coronation +oaths were duly observed, or by the regulations which prevented the +supreme magistrate from taking any important action except in concert +with carefully selected colleagues. Enough has been said to show that +the constitution of Venice was a pyramid resting upon the basis of the +Grand Council and rising to an ornamented apex, through the Senate, and +the College, in the Doge. But in adopting this old simile--originally +the happy thought of Donato Giannotti, it is said[1]--we must not +forget that the vital force of the Grand Council was felt throughout +the whole of this elaborate system, and that the same individuals were +constantly appearing in different capacities. It is this which makes the +great event of the years 1297-1319 so all-important for the future +destinies of Venice. At this period the Grand Council was restricted to +a certain number of noble families who had henceforth the hereditary +right to belong to it. Every descendant of a member of the Grand Council +could take his seat there at the age of twenty-five; and no new +families, except upon the most extraordinary occasions, were admitted to +this privilege.[2] By the Closing of the Grand Council, as the +ordinances of this crisis were termed, the administration of Venice was +vested for perpetuity in the hands of a few great houses. The final +completion was given to the oligarchy in 1311 by the establishment of +the celebrated Council of Ten,[3] who exercised a supervision over all +the magistracies, constituted the Supreme Court of judicature, and ended +by controlling the whole foreign and internal policy of Venice. The +changes which I have thus briefly indicated are not to be regarded as +violent alterations in the constitution, but rather as successive steps +in its development. Even the Council of Ten, which seems at first sight +the most tyrannous state-engine ever devised for the enslavement of a +nation, was in reality a natural climax to the evolution which had been +consistently advancing since the year 1172. Created originally during +the troublous times which succeeded the closing of the Grand Council, +for the express purpose of curbing unruly nobles and preventing the +emergence of conspirators like Tiepolo, the Council of Ten were +specially designed to act as a check upon the several orders in the +state and to preserve its oligarchical character inviolate. They were +elected by the Consiglio Grande, and at the expiration of their office +were liable to render strict account of all that they had done. Nor was +this magistracy coveted by the Venetian nobles. On the contrary, so +burdensome were its duties, and so great was the odium which from time +to time the Ten incurred in the discharge of their functions, that it +was not always found easy to fill up their vacancies. A law had even to +be passed that the Ten had not completed their magistracy before their +successors were appointed.[4] They may therefore be regarded as a select +committee of the citizens, who voluntarily delegated dictatorial powers +to this small body in order to maintain their own ascendency, to +centralize the conduct of important affairs, to preserve secrecy in the +administration of the republic, and to avoid the criticism to which the +more public government of states like Florence was exposed.[5] The +weakness of this portion of the state machinery was this: created with +ill-defined and almost unlimited authority,[6] designed to supersede the +other public functionaries on occasions of great moment, and composed of +men whose ability placed them in the very first rank of citizens, the +Ten could scarcely fail, as time advanced, to become a permanently +oppressive power--a despotism within the bosom of an oligarchy. Thus in +the whole mechanism of the state of Venice we trace the action of a +permanent aristocracy tolerating, with a view to its own supremacy, an +amount of magisterial control which in certain cases, like that of the +two Foscari, amounted to the sternest tyranny. By submitting to the +Council of Ten the nobility of Venice secured its hold upon the people +and preserved unity in its policy. + + [1] Vol. ii. of his works, p. 37. On p. 29 he describes the + population of Venice as divided into 'Popolari,' or plebeians, + exercising small industries, and so forth: 'Cittadini,' or the + middle class, born in the state, and of more importance than the + plebeians; 'Gentiluomini,' or masters of Venice by sea and land, + about 3,000 in number, corresponding to the burghers of Florence. + What he says about the Constitution refers solely to this upper + class. The elaborate work of M. Yriarte, _La Vie d'un Patricien de + Venise an Seizième Siècle_, Paris, 1874, contains a complete + analysis of the Venetian state-machine. See in particular what he + says about the helplessness of the Doges, ch. xiii. 'Rex in foro, + senator in curiâ, captivus in aulâ,' was a current phrase which + expressed the contrast between their dignity of parade and real + servitude. They had no personal freedom, and were always ruined by + office. It was necessary to pass a law compelling the Doge elect to + accept the onerous distinction thrust upon him. The Venetian + oligarchs argued that it was good that one man should die for the + people. + + [2] See Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 55, for the mention of fifteen, + admitted on the occasion of Baiamonte Tiepolo's conspiracy, and of + thirty ennobled during the Genoese war. + + [3] The actual number of this Council was seventeen, for the Ten + associated with the Signoria, which consisted of the Doge and six + Counselors. + + [4] Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 123. + + [5] The diplomatic difficulties of a popular government, a 'governo + largo,' as opposed to a 'governo stretto,' are set forth with great + acumen by Guicciardini, _Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 84. Cf. vol. iii. p. + 272. + + [6] 'è la sua autorità pari a quella del Consiglio de' Pregati e di + utta la città,' says Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 120. + +No state has ever exercised a greater spell of fascination over its +citizens than Venice. Of treason against the Republic there was little. +Against the decrees of the Council, arbitrary though they might be, no +one sought to rebel. The Venetian bowed in silence and obeyed, knowing +that all his actions were watched, that his government had long arms in +foreign lands, and that to arouse revolt in a body of burghers so +thoroughly controlled by common interests, would be impossible. Further +security the Venetians gained by their mild and beneficent +administration of subject cities, and by the prosperity in which their +population flourished. When, during the war of the League of Cambray, +Venice gave liberty to her towns upon the mainland, they voluntarily +returned to her allegiance. At home, the inhabitants of the lagoons, who +had never seen a hostile army at their gates, and whose taxes were light +in comparison with those of the rest of Italy, regarded the nobles as +the authors of their unexampled happiness. Meanwhile, these nobles were +merchants. Idleness was unknown in Venice. Instead of excogitating new +constitutions or planning vengeance against hereditary foes the Venetian +attended to his commerce on the sea, swayed distant provinces, watched +the interests of the state in foreign cities, and fought the naval +battles of the republic. It was the custom of Venice to employ her +patricians only on the sea as admirals, and never to intrust her armies +to the generalship of burghers. This policy had undoubtedly its wisdom; +for by these means the nobles had no opportunity of intriguing on a +large scale in Italian affairs, and never found the chance of growing +dangerously powerful abroad. But it pledged the State to that system of +paid condottieri and mercenary troops, jealously watched and scarcely +ever trustworthy, which proved nearly as ruinous to Venice as it did to +Florence. + +It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which is +presented by Florence to Venice. While Venice pursued one consistent +course of gradual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained in +perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions or of +party-leaders varied.[1] When the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, +Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted her in the fourteenth century, she +submitted for a while to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, +who were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party. Thence she passed for +a few months into the hands of a despot in the person of the Duke of +Athens (1342-43). After the confirmation of her republican liberty, +followed a contest between the proletariat and the middle classes +(Ciompi 1378). During the fifteenth century she was kept continually +disturbed by the rivalry of her great merchant families. The rule of the +Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the Florentine territory +by numerous conquests, was virtually the despotism of a close oligarchy. +This phase of her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, who +guided her affairs with a show of constitutional equity for four +generations. In 1494, this state of things was violently shaken. The +Florentines expelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their mask +and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they reconstituted their +Commonwealth as nearly as they could upon the model of Venice, and to +this new form of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic +complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.[2] But the internal +elements of the discord were too potent for the maintenance of this +régime. The Medici were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the +shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. and Clement VII., +through the hands of prelates whom they made the guardians and advisers +of their nephews. In 1527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster +on the noblest of Italian cities. The sack of Rome had paralyzed the +Pope. His family were compelled to quit the Medicean palace. The Grand +Council was restored: a Gonfalonier was elected; Florence suffered the +hardships of her memorable siege. At the end of her trials, menaced +alike by Pope and Emperor, who shook hands over her prostrate corpse, +betrayed by her general, the infamous Malatesta Baglioni, and sold by +her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the hereditary +sovereignty of the Medici. It was in vain that Lorenzino of that house +pretended to play Brutus and murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in +1536. Cosimo succeeded in the same year, and won the title of Grand +Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi-Austrian princes. + + [1] 'Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,' says Marco Foscari (as + quoted above, p. 42 of his report). The flux of Florence struck a + Venetian profoundly. + + [2] The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public Palace, in + 1528, to this effect: 'Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi S.F. + decreto electus.' This inscription is differently given. See Varchi, + vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46. Nothing is more significant of the + difference between Venice and Florence than the political idealism + implied in this religious consecration of the republic by statute. + In my essay on 'Florence and the Medici' (_Sketches and Studies in + Italy_) I have attempted to condense the internal history of the + Republic and to analyze the state-craft of the Medici. + +Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and phase of republican +government was advocated, discussed, and put in practice by the +Florentines. All the arts of factions, all the machinations of exiles, +all the skill of demagogues, all the selfishness of party-leaders, all +the learning of scholars, all the cupidity of subordinate officials, all +the daring of conspirators, all the ingenuity of theorists, and all the +malice of traitors, were brought successively or simultaneously into +play by the burghers, who looked upon their State as something they +might mold at will. One thing at least is clear amid so much apparent +confusion, that Florence was living a vehemently active and +self-conscious life, acknowledging no principle of stability in her +constitution, but always stretching forward after that ideal +_Reggimento_ which was never realized.[1] + + [1] In his 'Proemio' to the 'Trattato del Reggimento di Firenze, + Guicciardini thus describes the desideratum: 'introdurre in Firenze + un governo onesto, bene ordinato, e che veramente si potesse + chiamare libero, il che dalla sua prima origine insino a oggi non è + mai stato cittadino alcuno che abbia saputo o potuto fare.' + +It is worth while to consider more in detail the different magistracies +by which the government of Florence was conducted between the years of +1250 and 1531, and the gradual changes in the constitution which +prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny.[1] It is only thus an +accurate conception of the difference between the republican systems of +Venice and of Florence can be gained. Before the date 1282, which may be +fixed as the turning-point in Florentine history we hear of twelve +Anziani, two chosen for each Sestiere of the city, acting in concert +with a foreign Podestà, and a Captain of the People charged with +military authority. At this time no distinction was made between nobles +and plebeians; and the town, though Guelf, had not enacted rigorous laws +against the Ghibelline families. Towards the end of the thirteenth +century, however, important, changes were effected in the very elements +of the commonwealth. The Anziani were superseded by the Priors of the +Arts. Eight Priors, together with a new officer called the Gonfalonier +of Justice, formed the Signoria, dwelling at public charge in the +Palazzo and holding office only for two months.[2] No one who had not +been matriculated into one of the Arti or commercial guilds could +henceforth bear office in the state. At the same time severe measures, +called Ordinanze della Giustizia, were passed, by which the nobles were +for ever excluded from the government, and the Gonfalonier of Justice +was appointed to maintain civil order by checking their pride and +turbulence.[3] These modifications of the constitution, effected between +1282 and 1292, gave its peculiar character to the Florentine republic. +Henceforward Florence was governed solely by merchants. Both Varchi and +Machiavelli have recorded unfavorable opinions of the statute which +reduced the republic of Florence to a commonwealth of shop-keepers.[4] +But when we read these criticisms, we must bear in mind the internecine +ferocity of party-strife at this period, and the discords to which a +city divided between a territorial aristocracy and a commercial +bourgeoisie was perpetually exposed. If anything could make the +Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would be a cool perusal of +the _Chronicle_ of Matarazzo, which sets forth the wretched state of +Perugia owing to the feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the +Baglioni.[5] Peace for the republic was not, however, secured by these +strong measures. The factions of the Neri and Bianchi opened the +fourteenth century with battles and proscriptions; and in 1323 the +constitution had again to be modified. At this date the Signoria of +eight Priors with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the College of the twelve +Buonuomini, and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the companies--called +collectively _i tre maggiori_, or the three superior magistracies--were +rendered eligible only to Guelf citizens of the age of thirty, who had +qualified in one of the seven Arti Maggiori, and whose names were drawn +by lot. This mode of election, the most democratic which it is possible +to adopt, held good through all subsequent changes in the state. Its +immediate object was to quiet discontent and to remove intrigue by +opening the magistracies to all citizens alike. But, as Nardi has +pointed out, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the burghers, +who, when their names were once included in the bags kept for the +purpose, felt sure of their election, and had no inducement to maintain +a high standard of integrity. Sismondi also dates from this epoch the +withdrawal of the Florentines from military service.[6] Nor, as the +sequel shows, was the measure efficient as a check upon the personal +ambition of encroaching party leaders. The _Squittino_ and the _Borse_ +became instruments in the hands of the Medici for the consolidation of +their tyranny.[7] By the end of the fourteenth century (about 1378)the +Florentines had to meet a new difficulty. The Guelf citizens began to +abuse the so-called Law of Admonition, by means of which the Ghibellines +were excluded from the government. This law had formed an essential part +of the measures of 1323. In the intervening half-century a new +aristocracy, distinguished by the name of _nobili popolani_, had grown +up and were now threatening the republic with a close oligarchy.[8] The +discords which had previously raged between the people and the +patricians were now transferred to this new aristocracy and the +plebeians. It was found necessary to abolish the Admonition, which had +been made a pretext of excluding all _novi homines_ from the government, +and to place the members of the inferior Arti on the same footing as +those of the superior.[9] At this epoch the Medici, who neither belonged +to the ancient aristocracy nor y the more distinguished houses of the +_nobili popolani_, but rather to the so-called _gente grassa_ or +substantial tradesmen, first acquired importance. It was by a law of +Salvestro de' Medici's in 1378 that the constitution received its final +development in the direction of equality. Yet after all this leveling, +and in the vehement efforts made by the proletariat on the occasion of +the Ciompi outbreak, the exclusive nature of the Florentine republic was +maintained. The franchise was never extended to more than the burghers, +and the matter in debate was always virtually, who shall be allowed to +rank as citizen upon the register? In fact, by using the pregnant words +of Machiavelli, we may sum up the history of Florence to this point in +one sentence: 'Di Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, +dipoi i nobili e il popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e molte +volte occorse che una di queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise in +due.'[10] + + [1] I will place in an appendix (No. ii.) translations of Varchi, + book iii. sections 20-22, and Nardi, book i. cap. 4, which give + complete and clear accounts of the Florentine constitution after + 1292. + + [2] See Machiavelli, _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. sect. II. The number of + the Priors was first three, then six, and finally eight. Up to 1282 + the city had been divided into Sestieri. It was then found + convenient to divide it into quarters, and the numbers followed this + alteration. + + [3] Machiavelli, _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. sect. 13, may be consulted + for the history of Giano della Bella and his memorable ordinance. + Dino Compagni's _Chronicle_ contains the account of a contemporary. + + [4] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169; Mach. _Ist. Fior._ end of book ii. + + [5] _Archivio Storico_, vol. xvi. See also the article 'Perugia,' in + my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_. + + [6] Vol. iii. p. 347. + + [7] See App. ii. for the phrases 'Squittino' and 'Borse.' + + [8] Of these new nobles the Albizzi and Ricci, deadly foes, were the + most eminent. The former strove to exclude the Medici from the + government. + + [9] The number of the Arti varied at different times. Varchi treats + of them as finally consisting of seven maggiori and fourteen minori. + + [10] Proemio to _Storia Fiorentina_. 'In Florence the nobles first + split up, then the nobles and the people, lastly the people and the + multitude; and it often happened that when one of these parties got + the upper hand, it divided into two camps.' For the meaning of + _Popolo_ see above, p. 55. + +In the next generation the constitutional history of Florence exhibits a +new phase. The equality which had been introduced into all classes of +the commonwealth, combined with an absence of any state machinery like +that of Venice, exposed Florence at this period to the encroachments of +astute and selfish parvenus. The Medici, who had hitherto been nobodies, +begin now to aspire to despotism. Partly by his remarkable talent for +intrigue, partly by the clever use which he made of his vast wealth, and +partly by espousing the plebeian cause, Cosimo de' Medici succeeded in +monopolizing the government. It was the policy of the Medici to create a +party dependent for pecuniary aid upon their riches, and attached to +their interests by the closest ties of personal necessity. At the same +time they showed consummate caution in the conduct of the state, and +expended large sums on works of public utility. There was nothing mean +in their ambition; and though posterity must condemn the arts by which +they sought to sap the foundations of freedom in their native city, we +are forced to acknowledge that they shared the noblest enthusiasms of +their brilliant era. Little by little they advanced so far in the +enslavement of Florence that the elections of all the magistrates, +though still conducted by lot, were determined at their choice: the +names of none but men devoted to their interests were admitted to the +bags from which the candidates for office were selected, while +proscriptive measures of various degrees of rigor excluded their enemies +from participation in the government.[1] At length in 1480 the whole +machinery of the republic was suspended by Lorenzo de' Medici in favor +of the Board of Seventy, whom he nominated, and with whom, acting like a +Privy Council, he administered the state.[2] It is clear that this +revolution could never have been effected without a succession of coups +d'état. The instrument for their accomplishment lay ready to the hands +of the Medicean party in the pernicious system of the Parlamento and +Balia, by means of which the people, assembled from time to time in the +public square, and intimidated by the reigning faction, intrusted full +powers to a select committee nominated in private by the chiefs of the +great house.[3] It is also clear that so much political roguery could +not have been successful without an extensive demoralization of the +upper rank of citizens. The Medici in effect bought and sold the honor +of the public officials, lent money, jobbed posts of profit, and winked +at peculation, until they had created a sufficient body of _âmes +damnées_, men who had everything to gain by a continuance of their +corrupt authority. The party so formed, including even such +distinguished citizens as the Guicciardini, Baccio Valori, and Francesco +Vettori, proved the chief obstacle to the restoration of Florentine +liberty in the sixteenth century. + + [1] What Machiavelli says (_Ist. Fior._ vii. 1) about the arts of + Cosimo contains the essence of the policy by which the Medici rose. + Compare v. 4 and vii. 4-6 for his character of Cosimo. Guicciardini + (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 68) describes the use made of extraordinary + taxation as a weapon of offense against his enemies, by Cosimo: 'usò + le gravezze in luogo de' pugnali che communemente suole usare chi ha + simili reggimenti nelle mani.' The Marchese Gino Capponi (_Arch. + Stor._ vol. i. pp. 315-20) analyzes the whole Medicean policy in a + critique of great ability. + + [2] Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. pp. 35-49) exposes the + principle and the _modus operandi_ of this Council of Seventy, by + means of which Lorenzo controlled the election of the magistracies, + diverted the public moneys to his own use, and made his will law in + Florence. The councils which he superseded at this date were the + Consiglio del Popolo and the Consiglio del Comune, about which see + Nardi, lib i. cap. 4. + + [3] For the operation of the Parlamento and Balia, see Varchi, vol. + ii. p. 372; Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4. Segni says: 'The + Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the Piazza of + the Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to address the + meeting, the piazza is guarded by armed men, and then the people are + asked whether they wish to give absolute power (Balia) and authority + to the citizens named, for their good. When the answer, yes, + prompted partly by inclination and partly by compulsion, is + returned, the Signory immediately retires into the palace. This is + all that is meant by this parlamento, which thus gives away the full + power of effecting a change in the state.' The description given by + Marco Foscari, p. 44 (loc. cit. supr.) is to the same effect, but + the Venetian exposes more clearly the despotic nature of the + institution in the hands of the Medici. It is well known how hostile + Savonarola was to an institution which had lent itself so easily to + despotism. This couplet he inscribed on the walls of the Council + Chamber, in 1495:-- + + 'E sappi che chi vuol parlamento + Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.' + + Compare the proverb, 'Chi disse parlamento disse guastamento.' + +This tyranny of a commercial family, swaying the republic without the +title and with but little of the pomp of princes, subsisted until the +hereditary presidency of the state was conferred upon Alessandro de' +Medici, Duke of Cività di Penna, in 1531. Cosimo his successor, obtained +the rank of Grand Duke from Pius V. in 1569, and his son received the +imperial sanction to the title in 1575. The re-establishment at two +different periods of a free commonwealth upon the sounder basis of the +Consiglio Grande (1494-1512 and 1527-30) formed but two episodes in the +history of this masked but tenacious despotism. Had Savonarola's +constitution been adopted in the thirteenth instead of at the end of the +fifteenth century, the stability of Florence might have been secured. +But at the latter date the roots of the Medicean influence were too +widely intertwined with private interests, the jealousies of classes and +of factions were too inveterate, for any large and wholesome form of +popular government to be universally acceptable. Besides, the burghers +had been reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which ambition +and avarice took the place of patriotism; while the corruption of +morals, fostered by the Medici for the confirmation of their own +authority, was so widely spread as to justify Segni, Varchi, Giannotti, +Guicciardini, and Machiavelli in representing the Florentines as equally +unable to maintain their liberty and to submit to control. + +The historical vicissitudes of Florence were no less remarkable than the +unity of Venice. If in Venice we can trace the permanent and corporate +existence of a state superior to the individuals who composed it, +Florence exhibits the personal activity and conscious effort of her +citizens. Nowhere can the intricate relations of classes to the +commonwealth be studied more minutely than in the annals of Florence. In +no other city have opinions had greater value in determining historical +events; and nowhere was the influence of character in men of mark more +notable. In this agitated political atmosphere the wonderful Florentine +intelligence, which Varchi celebrated as the special glory of the Tuscan +soil, and which Vasari referred to something felicitous in Tuscan air, +was sharpened to the finest edge.[1] Successive generations of practical +and theoretical statesmen trained the race to reason upon government, +and to regard politics as a science. Men of letters were at the same +time also prominent in public affairs. When, for instance, the exiles of +1529 sued Duke Alessandro before Charles V. at Naples, Jacopo Nardi drew +up their pleas, and Francesco Guicciardini rebutted them in the interest +of his master. Machiavelli learned his philosophy at the Courts of +France and Germany and in the camp of Cesare Borgia. Segni shared the +anxieties of Nicolo Capponi, when the Gonfalonier was impeached for high +treason to the state of Florence. This list might be extended almost +indefinitely, with the object of proving the intimate connection which +subsisted at Florence between the thinkers and the actors. No other +European community of modern times has ever acquired so subtle a sense +of its own political existence, has ever reasoned upon its past history +so acutely, or has ever displayed so much ingenuity in attempting to +control the future. Venice on the contrary owed but little to the +creative genius of her citizens. In Venice the state was everything: the +individual was almost nothing. We find but little reflection upon +politics, and no speculative philosophy of history among the Venetians +until the date of Trifone Gabrielli and Paruta. Their records are all +positive and detailed. The generalizations and comparisons of the +Florentines are absent; nor was it till a late date of the Renaissance +that the Venetian history came to be written as a whole. It would seem +as though the constitutional stability which formed the secret of the +strength of Venice was also the source of comparative intellectual +inertness. This contrast between the two republics displayed itself even +in their art. Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the +liberator of his country, adorned the squares and loggie of Florence. +The painters of Venice represented their commonwealth as a beautiful +queen receiving the homage of her subjects and the world. Florence had +no mythus similar to that which made Venice the Bride of the Sea, and +which justified the Doge in hailing Caterina Cornaro as daughter of S. +Mark's (1471). It was in the personal courage and intelligence of +individual heroes that the Florentines discovered the counterpart of +their own spirit; whereas the Venetians personified their city as a +whole, and paid their homage to the Genius of the State. + + [1] Varchi, ix. 49; Vasari, xii. p. 158; Burckhardt, p. 270. + +It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the city of self-conscious +political activity, variable, cultivated, and ill-adapted by its very +freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based +upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and solid at the +cost of some rigidity, with Venice. As in Greece the philosophers of +Athens, especially Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the immobility of +Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the theorists of Florence, +Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, look with envy at the state +machinery which secured repose and liberty for Venice. The parallel +between Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable when we inquire +into the causes of their decay. Just as the Ephors, introduced at first +as a safeguard to the constitution, by degrees extinguished the +influence of the royal families, superseded the senate, and exercised a +tyrannous control over every department of the state; so the Council of +Ten, dangerous because of its vaguely defined dictatorial functions, +reduced Venice to a despotism.[1] The gradual dwindling of the Venetian +aristocracy, and the impoverishment of many noble families, which +rendered votes in the Grand Council venal, and threw the power into the +hands of a very limited oligarchy, complete the parallel.[2] One of the +chief sources of decay both to Venice and to Sparta was that +shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their +ranks by the admission of new families. The system again of secret +justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which +both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will +upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.[3] +Venice in the end became demoralized in politics and profligate in +private life. Her narrowing oligarchy watched the national degeneration +with approval, knowing that it is easier to control a vitiated populace +than to curb a nation habituated to the manly virtues. + + [1] Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty [Greek: _isotyrannos_]. + Giannotti (vol-ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators. We might + bring the struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty into + comparison with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to + make themselves the chiefs of the republic in more than name. + Müller, in his _Dorians_, observes that 'the Ephoralty was the + moving element, the principle of change, in the Spartan + constitution, and, in the end, the cause of its dissolution.' + Sismondi remarks that the precautions which led to the creation of + the Council of Ten 'dénaturaient entièrement la constitution de + l'état.' + + [2] See what Aristotle in the _Politics_ says about [Greek: + _oliganthrôpia_], and the unequal distribution of property. As to + the property of the Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, _Vite dei Duchi_, + Murat. xxii. p. 1194, who mentions the benevolences of the richer + families to the poor. They built houses for aristocratic paupers to + live in free of rent. + + [3] A curious passage in Plutarch's _Life of Cleomenes_ (Clough's + Translation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian + statecraft:--'They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do + supernatural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but + thinking their polity is chiefly kept up by fear ... and therefore + the Lacedæmonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the + Ephors, having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.' + +Between Athens and Florence the parallel is not so close. These two +republics, however, resemble one another in the freedom and variety of +their institutions. In Athens, as in Florence, there was constant change +and a highly developed political consciousness. Eminent men played the +same important part in both. In both the genius of individuals was even +stronger than the character of the state. Again, as Athens displayed +more of a Panhellenic feeling than any other Greek city, so Florence was +invariably more alive to the interests of Italy at large than any other +state of the peninsula. Florence, like Athens, was the center of culture +for the nation. Like Athens, she give laws to her sister towns in +language, in literature, in fine arts, poetry, philosophy, and history. +Without Florence it is not probable that Italy would have taken the +place of proud pre-eminence she held so long in Europe. Florence never +attained to the material greatness of Athens, because her power, +relatively to the rest of Italy, was slight, her factions were +incessant, and her connection with the Papacy was a perpetual source of +weakness. But many of the causes which ruined Athens were in full +operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable +temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed +by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, +fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source +of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of +wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine exiles under the +guidance of Filippo Strozzi (1533-37) became the laughing-stock of Italy +through their irresolution. The Venetian ambassadors agree in +representing the burghers of Florence as timid from excess of +intellectual mobility. And Dante, whose insight into national +characteristics was of the keenest, has described in ever-memorable +lines the temperament of his fickle city (_Purg._ vi. 135-51). + +Much of this instability was due to the fact that Florentine, like +Athenian, intelligence was overdeveloped. It passed into mere +cleverness, and overreached itself. Next we may note the tyranny which +both republics exercised over cities that had once been free. Athens +created a despotic empire instead of forming an Ionian Confederation. +Florence reduced Pisa to the most miserable servitude, rendered herself +odious to Arezzo and Volterra, and never rested from attempts upon the +liberties of Lucca and Siena. All these states, which as a Tuscan +federation should have been her strength in the hour of need, took the +first opportunity of throwing off her yoke and helping her enemies. What +Florence spent in recapturing Pisa, after the passage of Charles VIII. +in 1494, is incalculable. And no sooner was she in difficulties during +the siege of 1329, than both Arezzo and Pisa declared for her foes. + +It will not do to push historical parallels too far, interesting as it +may be to note a repetition of the same phenomena at distant periods and +under varying conditions of society. At the same time, to observe +fundamental points of divergence is no less profitable. Many of the +peculiarities of Greek history are attributable to the fact that a Greek +commonwealth consisted of citizens living in idleness, supported by +their slaves, and bound to the state by military service and by the +performance of civic duties. The distinctive mark of both Venice and +Florence, on the other hand, was that their citizens were traders. The +Venetians carried on the commerce of the Levant; the Florentines were +manufacturers and bankers: the one town sent her sons forth on the seas +to barter and exchange; the other was full of speculators, calculating +rates of interest and discount, and contracting with princes for the +conduct of expensive wars. The mercantile character of these Italian +republics is so essential to their history that it will not be out of +place to enlarge a little on the topic. We have seen that the +Florentines rendered commerce a condition of burghership. Giannotti, +writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the republic,[1] says: +'Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la maggior parte de' nostri, cosi +nobili come ignobili.' To quote instances in a matter so clear and +obvious would be superfluous: else I might show how Bardi and Peruzzi, +Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while they ranked with princes at +the Courts of France, or Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees +and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe. The Palle of the +Medici, which emboss the gorgeous ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, +still swing above the pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great +families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully +asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a +surprising fact that the daughter of the mediæval bankers should have +given a monarch to the French in the sixteenth century. + + [1] _Sulle azioni del Ferruccio_, vol. i. p. 44. The report of Marco + Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, + contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of + illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' + Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a + tradesman. + +A very lively picture of the modes of life and the habits of mind +peculiar to the Italian burgher may be gained by the perusal of Agnolo +Pandolfini's treatise, _Del Governo della Famiglia_. This essay should +be read side by side with Castiglione's _Cortegiano_, by all who wish to +understand the private life of the Italians in the age of the +Renaissance.[1] Pandolfini lived at the time of the war of Florence with +Filippo Visconti the exile, and the return of Cosimo de' Medici. He was +employed by the republic on important missions, and his substance was so +great that, on occasion of extraordinary aids, his contributions stood +third or fourth upon the list. In the Councils of the Republic he always +advocated peace, and in particular he spoke against Impresa di Lucca. As +age advanced, he retired from public affairs, and devoted himself to +study, religious exercises, and country excursions. He possessed a +beautiful villa at Signa, notable for the splendor of its maintenance in +all points which befit a gentleman. There he had the honor on various +occasions of entertaining Pope Eugenius, King Réné, Francesco Sforza, +and the Marchese Piccinino. His sons lived with him, and spent much of +their spare time in hawking and the chase. They were three, Carlo, who +rose to great dignity in the republic, Giannozzo, still more eminent as +a public man, and Pandolfo, who died young. His wife, one of the +Strozzi, died while Agnolo was between thirty and forty; but he never +married again. He was a great friend of Lionardo Aretino, who published +nothing without his approval. He lived to be upwards of eighty-five, and +died in 1446. These facts sufficiently indicate what sort of man was the +supposed author of the "Essay on the Family," proving, as they do, that +he passed his leisure among princes and scholars, and that he played +some part in the public affairs of the State of Florence. Yet his view +of human life is wholly _bourgeois_, though by no means ignoble. In his +conception, the first of all virtues is thrift, which should regulate +the use not only of money, but of all the gifts of nature and of +fortune. The proper economy of the mind involves liberal studies, +courteous manners, honest conduct, and religion.[2] The right use of the +body implies keeping it in good health by continence, exercise and +diet.[3] The thrift of time consists in being never idle. Agnolo's sons, +who are represented as talking with their father in this dialogue, ask +him, in relation to the gifts of fortune, whether he thinks the honors +of the State desirable. This question introduces a long and vehement +invective against the life of a professional statesman, as of necessity +fraudulent, mendacious, egotistic, cruel.[4] The private man of middle +station is really happiest; and only a sense of patriotism should induce +him, not seeking but when sought, to serve the State in public office. +The really dear possessions of a man are his family, his wealth, his +good repute, and his friendships. In order to be successful in the +conduct of the family, a man must choose a large and healthy house, +where the whole of his offspring--children and grandchildren, may live +together. He must own an estate which will supply him with corn, wine, +oil, wood, fowls, in fact with all the necessaries of life, so that he +may not need to buy much. The main food of the family will be bread and +wine. The discussion of the utility of the farm leads Agnolo to praise +the pleasure and profit to be derived from life in the Villa. But at the +same time a town-house has to be maintained; and it is here that the +sons of the family should be educated, so that they may learn caution, +and avoid vice by knowing its ugliness. In order to meet expenses, some +trade must be followed, silk or wool manufacture being preferred; and in +this the whole family should join, the head distributing work of various +kinds to his children, as he deems most fitting, and always employing +them rather than strangers. Thus we get the three great elements of the +Florentine citizen's life: the _casa_, or town-house, the _villa_, or +country-farm, and the _bottega_, or place of business. What follows is +principally concerned with the details of economy. Expenses are of two +sorts: necessary, for the repair of the house, the maintenance of the +farm, the stocking of the shop; and unnecessary, for plate, house +decoration, horses, grand clothes, entertainments. On this topic Agnolo +inveighs with severity against household parasites, bravi, and dissolute +dependents.[5] A little further on he indulges in another diatribe +against great nobles, _i signori_, from whom he would have his sons keep +clear at any cost.[6] It is the animosity of the industrious burgher for +the haughty, pleasure-loving, idle, careless man of blood and high +estate. In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini no one can be +indolent. The men have to work outside and collect wealth, the women to +stay at home and preserve it. The character of a good housewife is +sketched very minutely. Pandolfini describes how, when he was first +married, he took his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all +its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and made her kneel with +him before Madonna, and prayed God to give them wealth, friends, and +male children. After that he told her that honesty would be her great +charm in his eyes, as well as her chief virtue, and advised her to +forego the use of paints and cosmetics. Much sound advice follows as to +the respective positions of the master and the mistress in the +household, the superintendence of domestics, and the right ordering of +the most insignificant matters. The quality of the dress which will +beseem the children of an honored citizen on various occasions, the +pocket money of the boys, the food of the common table, are all +discussed with some minuteness: and the wife is made to feel that she +must learn to be neither jealous nor curious about concerns which her +husband finds it expedient to keep private. + + [1] I ought to state that Pandolfini is at least a century earlier + in date than Casliglione, and that he represents a more primitive + condition of society. The facts I have mentioned about his life are + given on the authority of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The references are + made to the Milanese edition of 1802. It must also be added that + there are strong reasons for assigning the treatise in question to + Leo Battista Alberti. As it professes, however, to give a picture of + Pandolfini's family, I have adhered to the old title. But the whole + question of the authorship of the Famiglia will be fully discussed + in the last section of my book, which deals with Italian literature. + Personally. I accept the theory of Alberti's authorship. + + [2] A beautiful description of the religious temper, p. 74. + + [3] What Pandolfini says about the beauty of the body is worthy of a + Greek: what he says about exercise might have been written by an + Englishman, p. 77. + + [4] Pp. 82-89 are very important as showing how low the art of + politics had sunk in Italy. + + [5] P. 125. + + [6] P. 175. + +The charm of a treatise like that of Pandolfini on the family evaporates +as soon as we try to make a summary of its contents. Enough, however, +has been quoted to show the thoroughly _bourgeois_ tone which prevailed +among the citizens of Florence in the fifteenth century.[1] Very +important results were the natural issue of this commercial spirit in +the State. Talking of the Ordinanze di Giustizia, Varchi observes: +'While they removed in part the civil discords of Florence, they almost +entirely extinguished all nobility of feeling in the Florentines, and +tended as much to diminish the power and haughtiness of the city as to +abate the insolence of the patriciate.'[2] A little further on he says: +'Hence may all prudent men see how ill-ordered in all things, save only +in the Grand Council, has been the commonwealth of Florence; seeing +that, to speak of nought else, that kind of men who in a wisely +constituted republic ought not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the +merchants and artisans of all sorts, are in Florence alone capable of +taking office, to the exclusion of all others.' Machiavelli, less wordy +but far more emphatic than Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This +caused the abandonment by Florence not only of arms, but of all nobility +of soul.'[3] The most notable consequence of the mercantile temper of +the republics was the ruinous system of mercenary warfare, with all its +attendant evils of ambitious captains of adventure, irresponsible +soldiery, and mock campaigns, adopted by the free Italian States. It is +true that even if the Italians had maintained their national militias in +full force, they might not have been able to resist the shock of France +and Spain any better than the armies of Thebes, Sparta, and Athens +averted the Macedonian hegemony. But they would at least have run a +better chance, and not perhaps have perished so ignobly through the +treason of an Alfonso d'Este (1527), of a Marquis of Pescara (1525), of +a Duke of Urbino (1527), and of a Malatesta Baglioni (1530).[4] +Machiavelli, in a weighty passage at the end of the first book of his +Florentine History, sums up the various causes which contributed to the +disuse of national arms among the Italians of the Renaissance. The fear +of the despot for his subjects, the priest-rule of the Church, the +jealousy of Venice for her own nobles, and the commercial sluggishness +of the Florentine burghers, caused each and all of these powers, +otherwise so different, to intrust their armies to paid captains. 'Di +questi adunque oziosi principi e di queste vilissime armi sarà piena la +mia istoria,' is the contemptuous phrase with which he winds up his +analysis.[5] + + [1] Varchi (book x. cap. 69) quotes a Florentine proverb: 'Chiunque + non sta a bottega è ladro.' See above, p. 239. + + [2] Varchi, vol. i. p. 168; compare vol. ii. p. 87, however. + + [3] _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. end. Aristotle's contempt for the [Greek: + _technitai_] emerges in these comments of the doctrinaires. + + [4] To multiply the instances of fraud and treason on the part of + Italian condottieri would be easy. I have only mentioned the notable + examples which fall within a critical period of five years. The + Marquis of Pescara betrayed to Charles V. the league for the + liberation of Italy, which he had joined at Milan. The Duke of + Ferrara received and victualed Bourbon's (then Frundsberg's) army on + its way to sack Rome, because he spited the Pope, and wanted to + seize Modena for himself. The Duke of Urbino, wishing to punish + Clement VII. for personal injuries, omitted to relieve Rome when it + was being plundered by the Lutherans, though he held the commission + of the Italian League. Malatesta Baglioni sold Florence, which he + had undertaken to defend, to the Imperial army under the Prince of + Orange. + + [5] 'With the records of these indolent princes and most abject + armaments, my history will, therefore, be filled.' Compare the + following passage in a letter from Machiavelli to Francesco + Guicciardini (_Op._ vol. x. p. 255): 'Comincio ora a scrivere di + nuovo, e mi sfogo accusando i principi, che hanno fatto ogni cosa + per condurci qui.' + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. + + +Florence, the City of Intelligence--Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty--Florentine Historical Literature--Philosophical Study of +History--Ricordano Malespini--Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns--The Villani--The Date +1300--Statistics--Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets--Dino +Compagni--Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century--Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini--The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century--Men of Action and Men of Letters: the +Doctrinaires--Florence between 1494 and 1537--Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini--The Political Importance of these +Writers--The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529--State of Parties--Filippo Strozzi--Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians--Their Literary Qualities--Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli--Scientific Statists--Discord +between Life and Literature--The Biography of Guicciardini--His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'--Biography of Machiavelli--His Scheme of a National +Militia--Dedication of 'The Prince'--Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance--The Discorsi--The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence.' + + +Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times. Other +nations have surpassed the Italians in their genius--the quality which +gave a superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare and an universal +sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole +population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly +intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, +as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in +quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only +they but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples, were +conscious. Boniface VIII., when he received the ambassadors of the +Christian powers in Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1300, +observed that all of them were citizens of Florence. The witticism which +he is said to have uttered, _i Fiorentini essere il quinto elemento_, +'that the men of Florence form a fifth element,' passed into a proverb. +The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, +scholarship, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy. + +When the struggle for existence has been successfully terminated, and +the mere instinct of self-preservation no longer absorbs the activities +of a people, then the three chief motive forces of civilization begin to +operate. These are cupidity, or the desire of wealth and all that it +procures; curiosity, or the desire to discover new facts about the world +and man; and the love of beauty, which is the parent of all art. +Commerce, philosophy, science, scholarship, sculpture, architecture, +painting, music, poetry, are the products of these ruling +impulses--everything in fact which gives a higher value to the life of +man. Different nations have been swayed by these passions in different +degrees. The artistic faculty, which owes its energy to the love of +beauty, has been denied to some; the philosophic faculty, which starts +with curiosity, to others; and some again have shown but little capacity +for amassing wealth by industry or calculation. It is rare to find a +whole nation possessed of all in an equal measure of perfection. Such, +however, were the Florentines.[1] The mere sight of the city and her +monuments would suffice to prove this. But we are not reduced to the +necessity of divining what Florence was by the inspection of her +churches, palaces, and pictures. That marvelous intelligence which was +her pride, burned brightly in a long series of historians and annalists, +who have handed down to us the biography of the city in volumes as +remarkable for penetrative acumen as for definite delineation and +dramatic interest. We possess picture-galleries of pages in which the +great men of Florence live again and seem to breathe and move, epics of +the commonwealth's vicissitudes from her earliest commencement, detailed +tragedies and highly finished episodes, studies of separate characters, +and idylls detached from the main current of her story. The whole mass +of this historical literature is instinct with the spirit of criticism +and vital with experience. The writers have been either actors or +spectators of the drama. Trained in the study of antiquity, as well as +in the council-chambers of the republic and in the courts of foreign +princes, they survey the matter of their histories from a lofty vantage +ground, fortifying their speculative conclusions by practical knowledge +and purifying their judgment of contemporary events with the philosophy +of the past. Owing to this rare mixture of qualities, the Florentines +deserve to be styled the discoverers of the historic method for the +modern world. They first perceived that it is unprofitable to study the +history of a state in isolation, that not wars and treaties only, but +the internal vicissitudes of the commonwealth, form the real subject +matter of inquiry,[2] and that the smallest details, biographical, +economical, or topographical, may have the greatest value. While the +rest of Europe was ignorant of statistics, and little apt to pierce +below the surface of events to the secret springs of conduct, in +Florence a body of scientific historians had gradually been formed, who +recognized the necessity of basing their investigations upon a diligent +study of public records, state-papers, and notes of contemporary +observers.[3] The same men prepared themselves for the task of criticism +by a profound study of ethical and political philosophy in the works of +Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Tacitus.[4] They examined the methods of +classical historians, and compared the annals of Greece, Rome, and +Palestine with the chronicles of their own country. They attempted to +divine the genius and to characterize the special qualities of the +nations, cities, and individuals of whom they had to treat.[5] At the +same time they spared no pains in seeking out persons possessed of +accurate knowledge in every branch of inquiry that came beneath their +notice, so that their treatises have the freshness of original documents +and the charm of personal memoirs. Much, as I have elsewhere noted, was +due to the peculiarly restless temper of the Florentines, speculative, +variable, unquiet in their politics. The very qualities which exposed +the commonwealth to revolutions, developed the intelligence of her +historians; her want of stability was the price she paid for +intellectual versatility and acuteness unrivaled in modern times. '"_O +ingenia magis acria quam matura_," said Petrarch, and with truth, about +the wits of the Florentines; for it is their property by nature to have +more of liveliness and acumen than of maturity or gravity.'[6] + + [1] Since the Greeks, no people have combined curiosity and the love + of beauty, the scientific and the artistic sense, in the same + proportions as the Florentines. + + [2] See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer + Poggio, in the Proemio to his _Florentine History_. His own + conception of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit + of a nation, is highly philosophical. + + [3] The high sense of the requirements of scientific history + attained by the Italians is shown by what Giovio relates of Gian + Galeazzo's archives (_Vita di Gio. Galeazzo_, p. 107). After + describing these, he adds: 'talche, chi volesse scrivere un' + historia giusta non potrebbe desiderare altronde nè più abbondante + nè più certa materia; perciocchè da questi libri facilissimamente si + traggono le cagioni delle guerre, i consigli, e i successi dell' + imprese.' The Proemio to Varchi's _Storie Fiorentine_ (vol. i. pp. + 42-44), which gives an account of his preparatory labors, is an + unconscious treatise on the model historian. Accuracy, patience, + love of truth, sincerity in criticism, and laborious research, have + all their proper place assigned to them. Compare Guicciardini, + _Ricordi_, No. cxliii., for sound remarks upon the historian's duty + of collecting the statistics of his own age and country. + + [4] The prefaces to Giannotti's critiques of Florence and of Venice + show how thoroughly his mind had been imbued with the _Politics_ of + Aristotle. Varchi acknowledges the direct influence of Polybius and + Tacitus. Livy is Machiavelli's favorite. + + [5] On this point the Relazioni of Italian ambassadors are + invaluable. What dryly philosophical compendia are the notes of + Machiavelli upon the French Court and Cesare Borgia! How astute are + the Venetian letters on the opinions and qualities of the Roman + Prelates! + + [6] Guicc. _Ricordi_, cciii. _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 229. + +The year 1300 marks the first development of historical research in +Florence. Two great writers, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at +this epoch pursued different lines of study, which determined the future +of this branch of literature for the Italians. It is not +uncharacteristic of Florentine genius that while the chief city of +Tuscany was deficient in historians of her achievements before the date +which I have mentioned, her first essays in historiography should have +been monumental and standard-making for the rest of Italy. Just as the +great burghs of Lombardy attained municipal independence somewhat +earlier than those of Tuscany, so the historic sense developed itself in +the valley of the Po at a period when the valley of the Arno had no +chronicler. Sire Raul and Ottone Morena, the annalists of Milan, Fra +Salimbene, the sagacious and comprehensive historian of Parma, +Rolandino, to whom we owe the chronicle of Ezzelino and the tragedy of +the Trevisan Marches, have no rivals south of the Apennines in the +thirteenth century. Even the Chronicle of the Malespini family, written +in the vulgar tongue from the beginning of the world to the year 1281, +which occupies 146 volumes of Muratori's Collection, and which used to +be the pride of Tuscan antiquarians, has recently been shown to be in +all probability a compilation based upon the Annals of Villani.[1] This +makes the clear emergence of a scientific sense for history in the year +1300 at Florence all the more remarkable. In order to estimate the high +quality of the work achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn +the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities which still breathe +the spirit of unintelligent mediæval industry, before the method of +history had been critically apprehended. The naïveté of these records +may be appreciated by the following extracts. A Roman writes[2]: 'I +Lodovico Bonconte Monaldeschi was born in Orvieto, and was brought up in +the city of Rome, where I have resided. I was born in the year 1327, in +the month of June, at the time when the Emperor Lodovico came. Now I +wish to relate the whole history of my age, seeing that I lived one +hundred and fifteen years without illness, except that when I was born I +fainted, and I died of old age, and remained in bed twelve months on +end.' Burigozzo's Chronicle of Milan, again, concludes with these +words:[3] 'As you will see in the Annals of my son, inasmuch as the +death which has overtaken me prevents my writing more.' Chronicles +conceived and written in this spirit are diaries of events, repertories +of strange stories, and old wives' tales, without a deep sense of +personal responsibility, devoid alike of criticism and artistic unity. +Very different is the character of the historical literature which +starts into being in Florence at the opening of the fourteenth century. + + [1] See Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, _Florentiner Studien_, + Leipzig, 1874, Carl Hegel, in his defense of Compagni, _Die + Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung_, Leipzig, + 1875, admits the proof of spuriousness. See the preface, p. v. + The point, however, is still disputed by Florentine scholars of + high authority. Gino Capponi, in his _Storia della Repubblica + di Firenze_ (vol. i. Appendix, final note), observes that while + the Villani are popular in tone the Malespini Chronicle is + feudal. Adolfo Bartoli (_Storia della Lett. It._ vol. iii. p. + 155) treats the question as still open. The custom of + preserving brief _fasti_ in the archives of great houses + rendered such compilations as the Malespini Chronicle is now + supposed to have been both easy and attractive. The Christian + name _Ricordano_ given to the first Malespini annalist does not + exist. It has been suggested that it is due to a misreading of + an initial sentence, _Ricordano i Malespini_. + + [2] Muratori, vol. xii. p. 529. + + [3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 552. Both Monaldeschi and Burigozzo + appear to mention their own death. The probability is that their + annals, as we have them, have been freely dealt with by transcribers + or continuators adopting the historic 'I' after the decease of the + titular authors. + +Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occasion of the +Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the streets of the Eternal City, +he was moved in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of +the discrowned mistress of the world.[1] 'When I saw the great and +ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories and the great deeds of +the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and by +Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other masters of history, who +related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the +Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was +not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the +steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of +the monks at prayer, he felt the _genius loci_ stir him with a mixture +of astonishment and pathos. Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence, +the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great +achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I thought it seemly to relate +in this new Chronicle all the doings and the origins of the town of +Florence, as far as I could collect and discover them, and to continue +the acts of the Florentines and the other notable things of the world in +brief onwards so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in whom by +His grace I have done the work rather than by my poor knowledge; and +therefore in the year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to +compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint John and the praise +of this our city Florence.' The key-note is struck in these passages. +Admiration for the past mingles with prescience of the future. The +artist and the patriot awake together in Villani at the sight of Rome +and the thought of Florence. + + [1] Lib. viii. cap. 36. + +The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the Chronicle which +Giovanni Villani carried in twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348 +he died of the plague, and his work was continued on the same plan by +his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left +the Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 1365. +Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, both as a master of +style and as an historical artist. Matteo is valuable for the general +reflections which form exordia to the eleven books that bear his name. +Filippo was more of a rhetorician. He is known as the public lecturer +upon the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some interesting but meager +lives of eminent Florentines, his predecessors or contemporaries. + +The Chronicle of the Villani is a treasure-house of clear and accurate +delineations rather than of profound analysis. Not only does it embrace +the whole affairs of Europe in annals which leave little to be desired +in precision of detail and brevity of statement; but, what is more to +our present purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal +condition of the Florentines and the statistics of the city in the +fourteenth century. We learn, for example, that the ordinary revenues of +Florence amounted to about 300,000 golden florins,[1] levied chiefly by +way of taxes--90,200 proceeding from the octroi, 58,300 from the retail +wine trade, 14,450 from the salt duties, and so on through the various +imposts, each of which is carefully calculated. Then we are informed +concerning the ordinary expenditure of the Commune--15,240 lire for the +podestà and his establishment, 5,880 lire for the Captain of the people +and his train, 3,600 for the maintenance of the Signory in the Palazzo, +and so on down to a sum of 2,400 for the food of the lions, for candles, +torches, and bonfires. The amount spent publicly in almsgiving; the +salaries of ambassadors and governors; the cost of maintaining the +state armory; the pay of the night-watch; the money spent upon the +yearly games when the palio was run; the wages of the city trumpeters; +and so forth, are all accurately reckoned. In fact the ordinary Budget +of the Commune is set forth. The rate of extraordinary expenses during +war-time is estimated on the scale of sums voted by the Florentines to +carry on the war with Martino della Scala in 1338. At that time they +contributed 25,000 florins monthly to Venice, maintained full garrisons +in the fortresses of the republic, and paid as well for upwards of 1,000 +men at arms. In order that a correct notion of these balance-sheets may +be obtained, Villani is careful to give particulars about the value of +the florin and the lira, and the number of florins coined yearly. In +describing the condition of Florence at this period, he computes the +number of citizens capable of bearing arms, between the ages fifteen and +seventy, at 25,000; the population of the city at 90,000, not counting +the monastic communities, nor including the strangers, who are estimated +at about 15,000. The country districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 +to this calculation. It is further noticed that the excess of male +births over female was between 300 and 500 yearly in Florence, that from +8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls learned to read; that there were six +schools, in which from 10,000 to 12,000 children learned arithmetic; and +four high schools, in which from 550 to 600 learned grammar and logic. +Then follows a list of the religious houses and churches: among the +charitable institutions are reckoned 30 hospitals capable of receiving +more than 1,000 sick people. Here too it may be mentioned that Villani +reckons the beggars of Florence at 17,000, with the addition of 4,000 +paupers and sick persons and religious mendicants.[2] These mendicants +were not all Florentines, but received relief from the city charities. +The big wool factories are numbered at upwards of two hundred; and it is +calculated that from sixty to eighty thousand pieces of cloth were +turned out yearly, to the value in all of about 1,200,000 florins. More +than 30,000 persons lived by this industry. The _calimala_ factories, +where foreign cloths were manufactured into fine materials, numbered +about twenty. These imported some 10,000 pieces of cloth yearly, to the +value of 300,000 florins. The exchange offices are estimated at about +eighty in number. The fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking +were colossal for those days. Villani tells us that the great houses of +the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our King Edward III. more than 1,365,000 +golden florins.[3] 'And mark this,' he continues, 'that these moneys +were chiefly the property of persons who had given it to them on +deposit.' This debt was to have been recovered out of the wool revenues +and other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi had +negotiated a national loan, by which they hoped to gain a superb +percentage on their capital. The speculation, however, proved +unfortunate; and the two houses would have failed, but for their +enormous possessions in Tuscany. We hear, for example, of the Bardi +buying the villages of Vernia and Mangona in 1337.[4] As it was, their +credit received a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered; and a +little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars with the La Scala +family and Pisa, and after the loss of Lucca, they finally stopped +payment and declared themselves bankrupt.[5] The shock communicated by +this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is well described by +Villani.[6] The enormous wealth amassed by Florentine citizens in +commerce may be still better imagined when we remember that the Medici, +between the years 1434 and 1471, spent some 663,755 golden florins upon +alms and public works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo alone. +But to return to Villani; not content with the statistics which I have +already extracted, he proceeds to calculate how many bushels of wheat, +hogsheads of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Florence by the +year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, +40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in +the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines +neglected: the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old +times (about 1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions +introduced by the French in 1342.[8] In addition to all this +miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo +Villani concerning the foundation of the Monte or Public Funds of +Florence in the year 1345,[9] as well as the remarkable essay upon the +economical and other consequences of the plague of 1348, which forms the +prelude to his continuation of his brother's Chronicle.[10] + + [1] xi. 62. + + [2] x. 162. + + [3] xi. 88. + + [4] xi. 74. On this occasion a law was passed forbidding citizens to + become lords of districts within the territory of Florence. + + [5] xi. 38. + + [6] xi. 88. + + [7] xi, 94. + + [8] vi. 69; xii. 4. + + [9] iii. 106. + + [10] i. 1-8. + +In his survey of the results of the Black Death, Matteo notices not only +the diminution of the population, but the alteration in public morality, +the displacement of property, the increase in prices, the diminution of +labor, and the multiplication of lawsuits, which were the consequences +direct or indirect of the frightful mortality. Among the details which +he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the +enormous bequests to public charities in Florence--350,000 florins to +the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, +and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The poorer population +had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds +were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by +mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is +also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this +calamity. + + [1] Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, + which seems to have been well managed. + +The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediæval +literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how +far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this +period.[1] Dante's aim is wholly different. Of statistics and of +historical detail we gain but little from his prose works. His mind was +that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient +characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity +in his account of facts. I need not do more than mention here the +concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, +of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise 'De Monarchiâ' we +possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in +constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave +birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the +cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner +the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized +and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations. In the 'De +Monarchiâ' Dante bases a theory of universal government upon a definite +conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity. Amid the anarchy +and discord of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and +where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were but cloaks for party +strife, Dante endeavors to bring his countrymen back to a sublime ideal +of a single monarchy, a true _imperium_, distinct from the priestly +authority of the Church, but not hostile to it,--nay, rather seeking +sanction from Christ's Vicar upon earth and affording protection to the +Holy See, as deriving its own right from the same Divine source. +Political science in this essay takes rank as an independent branch of +philosophy, and the points which Dante seeks to establish are supported +by arguments implying much historical knowledge, though quaintly +scholastic in their application. The Epistles contain the same thoughts: +peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common head, the duty of the +chief to his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, are urged +with no less force, but in a more familiar style and with direct +allusion to the events which called each letter forth. They are in fact +political brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude to the +chief actors in the drama of history around him. Nor would it here be +right to omit some notice of the essay 'De Vulgari Eloquio,' which, +considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and +indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise 'De +Monarchiâ.' It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member +of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several +dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation of a +common literary tongue for Italy. Though Dante was of course devoid of +what we now call comparative philology, and had but little knowledge of +the first beginnings of the languages which he discusses, yet it is not +more than the truth to say that this essay applies the true method of +critical analysis for the first time to the subject, and is the first +attempt to reason scientifically upon the origin and nature of a modern +language. + + [1] We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and Stow, + were later by two centuries than the Villani. + +While discussing the historical work of Dante and the Villani, it is +impossible that another famous Florentine should not occur to our +recollection, whose name has long been connected with the civic contests +that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his native +city. Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to deal with the question +of Dino Compagni's Chronicle--a question which for years has divided +Italian students into two camps, which has produced a voluminous +literature of its own, and which still remains undecided. The point at +issue is by no means insignificant. While one party contends that we +have in this Chronicle the veracious record of an eye-witness, the other +asserts that it is the impudent fabrication of a later century, composed +on hints furnished by Dante, and obscure documents of the Compagni +family, and expressed in language that has little of the fourteenth +century. The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient only in +minor details of accuracy. The other stigmatizes it as a wholly +untrustworthy forgery, and calls attention to numberless mistakes, +confusions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which +place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility. After a careful +consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro del +Lungo's arguments, it seems to me clearly established that the Chronicle +of Dino Compagni can no longer be regarded as a perfectly genuine +document of fourteenth-century literature. In the form in which we now +possess it, we are rather obliged to regard it as a _rifacimento_ of +some authentic history, compiled during the course of the fifteenth +century in a prose which bears traces of the post-Boccaccian style of +composition.[1] Yet the authority of Dino Compagni has long been such, +and such is still the literary value of the monograph which bears his +name, that it would be impertinent to dismiss the 'Chronicle' +unceremoniously as a mere fiction. I propose, therefore, first to give +an account of the book on its professed merits, and then to discuss, as +briefly as I can, the question of its authenticity. + + [1] The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in question was + Pietro Fanfani, in an article of _Il Pievano Arlotto_, 1858. The + cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German + authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied on + this subject are, 1. _Florentiner Studien_, von P. + Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2. _Dino Compagni + vendicato dalla Calunnia di Scrittore della Cronica_, di Pietro + Fanfani, Milano, Carrara, 1875. 3. _Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, + Versuch einer Rettung_, von Dr. Carl Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. + 4. _Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift_, + von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 5. The note + appended to Gino Capponi's _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_. 6. + _Dino Compagni e la sua Chronica_, per Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, + Le Mornier. Unluckily, the last-named work, though it consists + already of two bulky volumes in large 8vo, is not yet complete; and + the part which will treat of the question of authorship and MS. + authority has not appeared. + +The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of his descent with Virgil +to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani's +'Chronicle,' is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of +the preface to his work. 'The recollections of ancient histories,' he +says, 'have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and +ill-fated events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered +many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.' +Dino Compagni, whose 'Chronicle' embraces the period between 1280 and +1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in +1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was +therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times. He +died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante's death, +and was buried in the church of Santa Trinità. He was a man of the same +stamp as Dante;[1] burning with love for his country, but still more a +lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere +partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, +profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and +justice. As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one +small but highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate the civic +quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was +brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his +'Chronicle,' although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical +accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its +delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of +its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays bare the +political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable +period which embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the +struggles of the Neri and Bianchi. The comparison of Dino Compagni with +any contemporary annalist in Italy shows that here again, in these +pages, a new spirit has arisen. Muratori, proud to print them for the +first time in 1726, put them on a level with the 'Commentaries of +Cæsar'; Giordani welcomed their author as a second Sallust. The +political sagacity and scientific penetration, possessed in so high a +degree by the Florentines, appear in full maturity. Compagni's +'Chronicle' heads a long list of similar monographs, unique in the +literature of a single city.[2] + + [1] The apostrophes to the citizens of Florence at large, and the + imprecations on some of the worst offenders among the party-leaders + (especially in book ii. on the occasion of the calamities of 1301) + are conceived and uttered in the style of Dante. + + [2] Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of the + Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period + between 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's + attempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's 'Biographies,' + and Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy.' Gino Capponi, born + about 1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 + and 1418; he died in 1421. Giovanni Cavalcanti was a zealous admirer + of Cosimo de' Medici; he composed his 'Chronicle' in the prison of + the Stinche, where he was unjustly incarcerated for a debt to the + Commune of Florence. Vespasiano da Bisticci contributed a series of + most valuable portraits to the literature of Italy: all the great + men of his time are there delineated with a simplicity that is the + sign of absolute sincerity, Poliziano was present at the murder of + Giuliano de' Medici in the Florentine Duomo. The historians of the + sixteenth century will be noticed together further on. + +The arguments against the authenticity of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle' +may be arranged in three groups. The _first_ concerns the man himself. +It is urged that, with the exception of his offices as Prior and +Gonfalonier, we have no evidence of his political activity, beyond what +is furnished by the disputed 'Chronicle.' According to his own account, +Dino played a part of the first importance in the complicated events of +1280-1312. Yet he is not mentioned by Giovanni Villani, by Filippo +Vallani, or by Dante. There is no record of his death, except a MS. note +in the Magliabecchian Codex of his 'Chronicle' of the date 1514.[1] He +is known in literature as the author of a few lyrics and an oration to +Pope John XXII., the style of which is so rough and mediæval as to make +it incredible that the same writer should have composed the masterly +paragraphs of the 'Chronicle.'[2] The _second_ group of arguments +affects the substance of the 'Chronicle' itself. Though Dino was Prior +when Charles of Valois entered Florence, he records that event under the +date of Sunday the fourth of November, whereas Charles arrived on the +first of November, and the first Sunday of the month was the fifth. He +differs from the concurrent testimony of other historians in making the +affianced bride of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti a Giantruffetti instead +of an Amidei, and the Bishop of Arezzo a Pazzi instead of an Ubertini. +He reckons the Arti at twenty-four, whereas they numbered twenty-one. He +places the Coronation of Henry VII. in August, instead of in June, 1312. +He seems to refer to the Palace of the Signory, which could not have +been built at the date in question. He asserts that a member of the +Benivieni family was killed by one of the Galligai, whereas the murderer +was of the blood of the Galli. He represents himself as having been the +first Gonfalonier of Justice who destroyed the houses of rebellious +nobles, while Baldo de' Ruffoli, who held the office before him, had +previously carried out the Ordinances. Speaking of Guido Cavalcanti +about the year 1300, he calls him 'uno giovane gentile'; and yet Guido +had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti in 1266, and certainly +did not survive 1300 more than a few months. The peace with Pisa, which +was concluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalonierate, is not +mentioned, though this must have been one of the most important public +events with which he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and +inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and difficulties of the kind +described abound on every page of the 'Chronicle,' rendering the labor +of its last commentator and defender one of no small difficulty. The +_third_ group of arguments assails the language of the 'Chronicle' and +its MS. authority. Fanfani, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his +destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's style in general +is not distinguished for the 'purity, simplicity, and propriety' of the +trecento[3]; that it abounds in expressions of a later period, such as +_armata_ for _oste_, _marciare_ for _andare_, _acciò_ for _acciocchè_, +_onde_ for _affinchè_; that numerous imitations of Dante can be traced +in it; and that to an acute student of early Italian prose its palpable +_quattrocentismo_ is only slightly veiled by a persistent affectation of +fourteenth-century archaism. This argument from style seems the +strongest that can be brought against the genuineness of the +'Chronicle'; for while it is possible that Dino may have made +innumerable blunders about the events in which he took a part, it is +incredible that he should have anticipated the growth of Italian by at +least a century. Yet judges no less competent than Fanfani in this +matter of style, and far more trustworthy as witnesses, Vincenzo +Nannucci, Gino Capponi, Isidoro del Lungo, are of opinion that Dino's +'Chronicle' is a masterpiece of Italian fourteenth-century prose; and +till Italian experts are agreed, foreign critics must suspend their +judgment. The analysis of style receives a different development from +Scheffer-Boichorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that many +passages of the 'Chronicle,' especially the important one which refers +to the _Ordinamenti della Giustizia_, have been borrowed from +Villani.[4] This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost +always cuts both ways. Yet the German historian has made out an +undoubtedly good case by proving Villani's language closer to the +original _Ordinamenti_ than Compagni's. With regard to MS. authority, +the codices of Dino's 'Chronicle' extant in Italy are all of them +derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to +Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the +Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears +the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the +questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable +suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that the 'Chronicle' must have been +fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly +appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not +uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed +himself to the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nicknamed +_Cronaca Scorretta_ by his Florentine cronies, or one of his +contemporaries, was the forger.[5] An Italian impugner of the +'Chronicle,' Giusto Grion of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as +the fabricator.[6] These hypotheses, however, are, to say the least, +unlucky for their suggestors, and really serve to weaken rather than to +strengthen the destructive line of argument. There exists an elder codex +of which Fanfani and his followers were ignorant. It is a MS. of perhaps +the middle of the fifteenth century, which was purchased for the +Ashburnham Library in 1846. This MS. has been minutely described by +Professor Paul Meyer; and Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile +specimen of one of its pages.[7] By some unaccountable negligence this +latest and most determined defender of Compagni has failed to examine +the MS. with his own eyes. + + [1] This is Isidoro del Lungo's Codex A. The note occurs also in the + Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century. + + [2] On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics + refer the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in + 1251. See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship + of the _Intelligenza_, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer + of the 'Chronicle,' in Borgognini's Essays (_Scritti Vari_, Bologna, + Romagnoli, 1877, vol. i.). With regard to the oration to Pope John + XXII. date 1326, it must be noted that this performance was first + printed by Anton Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness + may be disputed. See Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. 18-22. + + [3] The most important of Fanfani's numerous essays on the Compagni + controversy, together with minor notes by his supporters, are + collected in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds + all bounds of decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant + claims to be considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style. + These claims he bases in some measure upon the fact that he deceived + the Della Crusca by a forgery of his own making, which was actually + accepted for the _Archivio Storico_. See op. cit. p. 181. + + [4] _Die Chronik_, etc., pp. 53-57. + + [5] _Die Chronik_, etc., p. 39. + + [6] See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6. + + [7] See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to + face p. 1. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in + 1840, and sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a + MS. which Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth century spoke of as + 'la copia più antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfini.' + +Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle.' The defenders +of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, +fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author, +from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with +the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's +errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at a later +date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from +general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism. +One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that +the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated. +Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication. +Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' +could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth +century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded +in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery. There is the +further question of _cui bono?_ which in all problems of literary +forgery must first receive some probable solution. What proof is there +that the vanity or the cupidity of any parties was satisfied by its +production? A book exists in a MS. of about 1450, acquires some notice +in a MS. of 1514, but is not published to the world until 1726. +Supposing it to have been a forgery, the labor of concocting it must +have been enormous. With all its defects, the 'Chronicle' would still +remain a masterpiece of historical research, imagination, sympathy with +bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigor, and antiquarian command of +language. But who profited by that labor? Not the author of the forgery, +since he was dead or buried more than two centuries before his +fabrication became famous. Not the Compagni family; for there is no +evidence to show that they had piqued themselves upon being the +depositaries of their ancestors masterpiece, nor did they make any +effort, at a period when the printing-press was very active, to give +this jewel of their archives to the public. If it be objected that, on +the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS. of the 'Chronicle' must have been +divulged before the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce +two plausible answers. In the first place, Dino was the partisan of a +conquered cause; and his family had nothing to gain by publishing an +acrimonious political pamphlet during the triumph of his antagonists. In +the second place, MSS. of even greater literary importance disappeared +in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their +subjects again excited interest in the literary world. The history of +Dante's treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_ is a case in point. With regard to +style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge. Reading the +celebrated description of Florence at the opening of Dino's 'Chronicle,' +I seem indeed, for my own part, to discern a post-Boccaccian +artificiality of phrase. Still there is nothing to render it impossible +that the 'Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of 1450(?) and +1514, may be a _rifacimento_ of an elder and simpler work. In that +section of my history which deals with Italian literature of the +fifteenth century, I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling of +ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was by no means +unfrequent. The curious discrepancies between the _Trattato della +Famiglia_ as written by Alberti and as ascribed to _Pandolfini_ can only +be explained upon the hypothesis of such _rifacimento_. If the +historical inaccuracies in which the 'Chronicle' abounds are adduced as +convincing proof of its fabrication, it may be replied that the author +of so masterly a romance would naturally have been anxious to preserve a +strict accordance with documents of acknowledged validity. Consequently, +these very blunders might not unreasonably be used to combat the +hypothesis of deliberate forgery. It is remarkable, in this connection, +that only one meager reference is made to Dante by the Chronicler, who, +had he been a literary forger, would scarcely have omitted to enlarge +upon this theme. Without, therefore, venturing to express a decided +opinion on a question which still divides the most competent +Italian judges, I see no reason to despair of the problem being +ultimately solved in a way less unfavorable to Dino Compagni than +Scheffer-Boichorst and Fanfani would approve of. Considered as the +fifteenth century _rifacimento_ of an elder document, the 'Chronicle' +would lose its historical authority, but would still remain an +interesting monument of Florentine literature, and would certainly not +deserve the unqualified names of 'forgery' and 'fabrication' that have +been unhesitatingly showered upon it.[1] + + [1] It is to be hoped that the completion of Del Lungo's work may + put an end to the Compagni controversy, either by a solid + vindication of the 'Chronicle,' or by so weak a defense as to render + further partisanship impossible. So far as his book has hitherto + appeared, it contains no signs of an ultimate triumph. The + weightiest point contained in it is the discovery of the Ashburnham + MS. If Del Lungo fails to prove his position, we shall be left to + choose between Scheffer-Boichorst's absolute skepticism or the + modified view adopted by me in the text. + +The two chief Florentine historians of the fifteenth century are +Lionardo Bruni of Arezzo, and Poggio Bracciolini, each of whom, in his +capacity of Chancellor to the Republic, undertook to write the annals of +the people of Florence from the earliest date to his own time. Lionardo +Aretino wrote down to the year 1404, and Poggio Bracciolini to the year +1455. Their histories are composed in Latin, and savor much of the +pedantic spirit of the age in which they were projected.[1] Both of them +deserve the criticism of Machiavelli, that they filled their pages too +exclusively with the wars and foreign affairs in which Florence was +engaged, failing to perceive that the true object of the historian is to +set forth the life of a commonwealth as a continuous whole, to draw the +portrait of a state with due regard to its especial physiognomy.[2] To +this critique we may add that both Lionardo and Poggio were led astray +by the false taste of the earlier Renaissance. Their admiration for Livy +and the pedantic proprieties of a labored Latinism made them pay more +attention to rhetoric than to the substance of their work.[3] We meet +with frigid imitations and bombastic generalities, where concise +details and graphic touches would have been acceptable. In short, these +works are rather studies of style in an age when the greatest stylists +were but bunglers and beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians +of the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and Livy, succeeded +only in becoming lifeless shadows of the past. History dictated under +the inspiration of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of +reproducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had played no +prominent part in the Commonwealth,[4] cannot pretend to the vigor and +the freshness that we admire so much in the writings of men like the +Villani, Gino Capponi, Giovanni Cavalcanti, and many others. Yet even +after making these deductions, it may be asserted with truth that no +city of Italy at this period of the Renaissance, except Florence, could +boast historiographers so competent. Vespasiano at the close of his +biography of Poggio estimates their labor in sentences which deserve to +be remembered: 'Among the other singular obligations which the city of +Florence owes to Messer Lionardo and to Messer Poggio, is this, that +except the Roman Commonwealth no republic or free state in Italy has +been so distinguished as the town of Florence, in having had two such +notable writers to record its doings as Messer Lionardo and Messer +Poggio; for up to the time of their histories everything was in the +greatest obscurity. If the republic of Venice, which can show so many +wise citizens, had the deeds which they have done by sea and land +committed to writing, it would be far more illustrious even than it is +now. And Galeazzo Maria, and Filippo Maria, and all the Visconti--their +actions would also be more famous than they are. Nay, there is not any +republic that ought not to give every reward to writers who should +commemorate its doings. We see at Florence that from the foundation of +the city to the days of Messer Lionardo and Messer Poggio there was no +record of anything that the Florentines had done, in Latin, or history +devoted to themselves. Messer Poggio follows after Messer Lionardo, and +writes like him in Latin. Giovanni Villani, too, wrote an universal +history in the vulgar tongue of whatsoever happened in every place, and +introduces the affairs of Florence as they happened. The same did Messer +Filippo Villani, following after Giovanni Villani. These are they alone +who have distinguished Florence by the histories that they have +written.'[5] The pride of the citizen and a just sense of the value of +history, together with sound remarks upon Venice and Milan, mingle +curiously in this passage with the pedantry of a fifteenth-century +scholar. + + [1] Poggio's _Historia Populi Florentini_ is given in the XXth + volume of Muratori's collection. Lionardo's _Istoria Fiorentina_, + translated into Italian by Donato Acciajuoli, has been published by + Le Monnier (Firenze, 1861). The high praise which Ugo Foscolo + bestowed upon the latter seems due to a want of familiarity. + + [2] See the preface to the _History of Florence_, by Machiavelli. + + [3] Lionardo Bruni, for example, complains in the preface to his + history that it is impossible to accommodate the rude names of his + personages to a polished style. + + [4] Both Poggio and Lionardo began life as Papal secretaries; the + latter was not made a citizen of Florence till late in his career. + + [5] _Vite di Uomini Illustri_. Barbera, 1859; p. 425. + +The historians of the first half of the sixteenth century are a race +apart. Three generations of pedantic erudition and of courtly or +scholastic trifling had separated the men of letters from the men of +action, and had made literature a thing of curiosity. Three generations +of the masked Medicean despotism had destroyed the reality of freedom in +Florence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. Yet, strange to +say, it was at the end of the fifteenth century that the genius of the +thirteenth revived. Italian literature was cultivated for its own sake +under the auspices of Lorenzo de' Medici. The year 1494 marks the +resurrection of the spirit of old liberty beneath the trumpet-blast of +Savonarola's oratory. Amid the universal corruption of public morals, +from the depth of sloth and servitude, when the reality of liberty was +lost, when fate and fortune had combined to render constitutional +reconstruction impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the +intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more than its old +vigor in a series of the most brilliant political writers who have ever +illustrated one short but eventful period in the life of a single +nation. That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. It embraces +the two final efforts of the Florentines to shake off the Medicean yoke, +the disastrous siege at the end of which they fell a prey to the +selfishness of their own party-leaders, the persecution of Savonarola by +Pope Alexander, the Church-rule of Popes Leo and Clement, the extinction +of the elder branch of the Medici in its two bastards (Ippolito, +poisoned by his brother Alessandro, and Alessandro poignarded by his +cousin Lorenzino), and the final eclipse of liberty beneath the +Spain-appointed dynasty of the younger Medicean line in Duke Cosimo. The +names of the historians of this period are Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo +Nardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Giannotti, +Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pitti.[1] In these men the +mental qualities which we admire in the Villani, Dante, and Compagni +reappear, combined, indeed, in different proportions, tempered with the +new philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, and permeated with +quite another morality. In the interval of two centuries freedom has +been lost. It is only the desire for freedom that survives. But that, +after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still a passion. The +rectitude of instinct and the intense convictions of the earlier age +have been exchanged for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean +acceptance' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which in men like +Guicciardini and Machiavelli is absolutely appalling. Nearly all the +authors of this period bear a double face. They write one set of memoirs +for the public, and another set for their own delectation. In their +inmost souls they burn with the zeal for liberty: yet they sell their +abilities to the highest bidder--to Popes whom they despise, and to +Dukes whom they revile in private. What makes the literary labors of +these historians doubly interesting is that they were carried on for the +most part independently; for though they lived at the same time, and in +some cases held familiar conversation with each other, they gave +expression to different shades of political opinion, and their histories +remained in manuscript till some time after their death.[2] The student +of the Renaissance has, therefore the advantage of comparing and +confronting a whole band of independent witnesses to the same events. +Beside their own deliberate criticism of the drama in which all played +some part as actors or spectators, we can use the not less important +testimony they afford unconsciously, according to the bias of private or +political interest by which they are severally swayed. + + [1] The dates of these historians are as follows:-- + + BORN. DIED. + Machiavelli 1469 1527 + Nardi 1476 1556 + Guicciardini 1482 1540 + Nerli 1485 1536 + Giannotti 1492 1572 + Varchi 1502 1565 + Segni 1504 1558 + Pitti 1519 1589 + + [2] Varchi, it is true, had Nardi's _History of Florence_ and + Guicciardini's _History of Italy_ before him while he was compiling + his _History of Florence_. But Segni and Nerli were given for the + first time to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and + Guicciardini's _History of Florence_ in 1859. + +The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year +1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; +that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that +of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509. The prefatory chapters, which in most +cases introduce the special subject of each history, contain a series of +retrospective surveys over the whole history of Florence extremely +valuable for the detailed information they contain, as well as for the +critical judgments of men whose acumen had been sharpened to the utmost +by their practical participation in politics. It will not, perhaps, be +superfluous to indicate the different parts played by these historians +in the events of their own time. Guicciardini, it is well known, had +governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean Popes. He too was +instrumental in placing Duke Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536. +At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the +exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and +advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was +composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni was nephew of the +Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals +during the siege of Florence. Pitti was a member of the great house who +contested the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the +fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the +Palleschi may still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity. +Giannotti, in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace a +spirit no less democratic than Pitti's, was also an actor in the events +of the siege, and afterwards appeared among the exiles. In the attempt +made by the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosimo and the +adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti was chosen as the spokesman for +the latter. He wrote and died in exile at Venice. Nerli again took part +in the events of those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing +himself up with the exiles and acting as a spy upon their projects. All +the authors I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some of +them were members of her most illustrious families. Varchi, in whom the +flame of Florentine patriotism burns brightest, and who is by far the +most copious annalist of the period, was a native of Montevarchi. Yet, +as often happens, he was more Florentine than the Florentines; and of +the events which he describes, he had for the most part been witness. +Duke Cosimo employed him to write the history; it is a credit both to +the prince and to the author that its chapters should be full of +criticisms so outspoken, and of aspirations after liberty so vehement. +On the very first page of his preface Varchi dares to write these words +respecting Florence--'divenne, dico, di stato piuttosto corrotto e +licenzioso, tirannide, che di sana e moderata repubblica, +principato';[1] in which he deals blame with impartial justice all +round. It must, however, be remembered that at the time when Varchi +wrote, the younger branch of the Medici were firmly established on the +throne of Florence. Between this branch and the elder line there had +always been a coldness. Moreover, all parties had agreed to accept the +duchy as a divinely appointed instrument for rescuing the city from her +factions and reducing her to tranquillity.[2] + + [1] 'It passed, I say, from the condition of a corrupt and + ill-conducted commonwealth to tyranny, rather than from a healthy + and well-tempered republic to principality.' + + [2] See _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. xxxv. + +It would be beyond the purpose of this chapter to enter into the +details of the history of Florence between 1527 and 1531--those years of +her last struggle for freedom, which have been so admirably depicted by +her great political annalists. It is rather my object to illustrate the +intellectual qualities of philosophical analysis and acute observation +for which her citizens were eminent. Yet a sketch of the situation is +necessary in order to bring into relief the different points of view +maintained by Segni, Nardi, Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively. + +At the period in question Florence was, according to the universal +testimony of these authors, too corrupt for real liberty and too +turbulent for the tranquil acceptance of a despotism. The yoke of the +Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the pride of the old noble +families; while the policy pursued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created +a class of greedy professional politicians. The city was not content +with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for wealth or ability, were +egotistical, vain, and mutually jealous. Each man sought advantage for +himself. Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean party, or +Palleschi, were either extreme in their devotion to the ruling house, +and desirous of establishing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and +anxious to retain the Medici as the chiefs of a dominant oligarchy. The +point of union between these two divisions of the party was a prejudice +in favor of class rule, a hope to get power and wealth for themselves +through the elevation of the princely family The popular faction on the +other hand agreed in wishing to place the government of the city upon a +broad republican basis. But the leaders of this section of the citizens +favored the plebeian cause from different motives. Some sought only a +way to riches and authority, which they could never have opened for them +under the oligarchy contemplated by the Palleschi. Others, styled +Frateschi or Piagnoni, clung to the ideas of liberty which were +associated with the high morality and impassioned creed of Savonarola. +These were really the backbone of the nation, the class which might have +saved the state if salvation had been possible. Another section, steeped +in the study of ancient authors and imbued with memories of Roman +patriotism, thought it still possible to secure the freedom of the state +by liberal institutions. These men we may call the Doctrinaires. Their +panacea was the establishment of a mixed form of government, such as +that which Giannotti so learnedly illustrated. To these parties must be +added the red republicans, or Arrabbiati--a name originally reserved for +the worst adherents of the Medici, but now applied to fanatics of +Jacobin complexion--and the Libertines, who only cared for such a form +of government as should permit them to indulge their passions. + +Amid this medley of interests there resulted, as a matter of fact, two +policies at the moment when the affairs of Florence, threatened by Pope +and Emperor in combination, and deserted by France and the rest of +Italy, grew desperate. One was that of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who +advocated moderate counsels and an accommodation with Clement VII. The +other was that of the Gonfalonier Carducci, who pushed things to +extremities and used the enthusiasm of the Frateschi for sustaining the +spirit of the people in the siege.[1] The latter policy triumphed over +the former. Its principles were an obstinate belief in Francis, though +he had clearly turned a deaf ear to Florence; confidence in the +generals, Baglioni and Colonna, who were privately traitors to the cause +they professed to defend; and reliance on the prophecies of Savonarola, +supported by the preaching of the Friars Foiano, Bartolommeo, and +Zaccaria. Ill-founded as it was in fact, the policy of Carducci had on +its side all that was left of nobility, patriotism, and the fire of +liberty among the Florentines. In spite of the hopelessness of the +attempt, we cannot now read without emotion how bravely and desperately +those last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the independence of +their city at any cost, and in the teeth of overwhelming opposition. The +memory of Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Ferrucci was +its hero. It failed. It was in vain that the Florentines had laid waste +Valdarno, destroyed their beautiful suburbs, and leveled their crown of +towers. It was in vain that they had poured forth their treasures to the +uttermost farthing, had borne plague and famine without a murmur, and +had turned themselves at the call of their country into a nation of +soldiers, Charles, Clement, the Palleschi, and Malatesta +Baglioni--enemies without the city walls and traitors within its +gates--were too powerful for the resistance of burghers who had learned +but yesterday to handle arms and to conduct a war on their own +account.[2] Florence had to capitulate. The venomous Palleschi, +Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio Valori, by proscription, exile, and +taxation, drained the strength and broke the spirit of the state. Cæsar +and Christ's Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, embraced and made +friends over the prostrate corpse of sold and slaughtered liberty. +Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff +in the sack of Rome. + + [1] Guicciardini, writing his _Ricordi_ during the first months of + the siege, remarks upon the power of faith (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. + 83. Compare p. 134): 'Esemplo a' dì nostri ne è grandissimo questa + ostinazione de' Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del + mondo messi a aspettare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza + speranza di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille + difficultà, hanno sostenuto in quelle mura già sette mesi gli e + serciti, e quali non sì sarebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette + dì; e condotto le cose in luogo che se vincessino, nessuno più se ne + maraviglierebbe, dove prima da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e + questa ostinazione ha causata in gran parte la fede di non potere + perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronimo da Ferrara.' + + [2] See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic + Ferrucci. + +The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties +of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time +historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of +the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the +Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished +narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this +most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. +Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of +handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's +princely relatives by his wealth. Yet though he made a profession of +patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great influence consistently as a +counterpoise to the Medicean authority. It was he, for instance, who +advised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke of Florence. +Distinguished, as he was, above all men of his time for wit, urbanity, +accomplishments, and splendid living, his want of character neutralized +these radiant gifts of nature. His private morals were infamous. He +encouraged by precept and example the worst vices of his age and nation, +consorting with young men whom he instructed in the arts of dissolute +living, and to whom he communicated his own selfish Epicureanism. To him +in a great measure may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine +aristocracy in the sixteenth century. In his public action he was no +less vacillating than unprincipled in private life. After prevailing +upon Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici to leave Florence in 1527, he +failed to execute his trust of getting Pisa from their grasp (moved, it +is said, by a guilty fondness for the young and handsome Ippolito), nor +did he afterwards share any of the hardships and responsibilities of +the siege. Indeed, he then found it necessary to retire into exile in +France, on the excuse of superintending his vast commercial affairs at +Lyons. After the restoration of the Medici he returned to Florence as +the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and abetted in his +juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with Alessandro on the occasion of an +insult offered to his daughter Luisa, and the accusation of murder +brought against his son Piero, he went into opposition and exile, less +for political than for private reasons. After the murder of Alessandro, +he received Lorenzo de' Medici, the fratricide, with the title of +'Second Brutus' at Venice. Meanwhile it was he who paid the dowry of +Catherine de' Medici to the Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen +the house of princes against whom he was plotting, by that splendid +foreign alliance which placed a descendant of the Florentine +bill-brokers on the throne of France. After all these vicissitudes +Filippo Strozzi headed an armed attack upon the dominions of Duke +Cosimo, was taken in the battle of Montemurlo, and finally was murdered +in that very fortress, outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had +counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the +Florentines.[1] The historians with the exception of Nerli agree in +describing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking man, whose many +changes of policy were due, not to conviction, but to the desire of +gaining the utmost license of disorderly living. At the same time we +cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely +bearing, and great courage. + + [1] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this + castle. It should be said that accounts disagree about Filippo's + death. Nerli very distinctly asserts that he committed suicide. + Segni inclines to the belief that he was murdered by the creatures + of Duke Cosimo. + +The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the +ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of +the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the +keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the +failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular +party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and +egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored +now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati--as he calls +them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology--whether they +professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on +self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.[1] +The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy +during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the +same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these +men, called from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the +administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero +Soderini--that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls +him--was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the +other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares +his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more +moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that +section of the Medicean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He had +strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a government of nobles to +the popular democracy which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While +he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that the republic could +not hold its own against both Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the +King of France, who ought to have rendered assistance in the hour of +need, was bound by the treaty of Cambray, and by the pledges he had +given to Charles in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which +Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his +fall--a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the +Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been +restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns. +Varchi, while no less alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was +animated with a more democratic spirit. He had none of Segni's Whig +leanings, but shared the patriotic enthusiasm which at that supreme +moment made the whole state splendidly audacious in the face of +insurmountable difficulties. Both Segni and Varchi discerned the +exaggerated and therefore baneful influence of Savonarola's prophecies +over the populace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the people +kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, after her chastisement, +Florence would bloom forth with double luster, and that angels in the +last resort would man her walls and repel the invaders. There is +something pathetic in this delusion of a great city, trusting with +infantine pertinacity to the promises of the man whom they had seen +burned as an impostor, when all the while their statesmen and their +generals were striking bargains with the foe. Nardi is more sincerely +Piagnone than either Segni or Varchi. Yet, writing after the events of +the siege, his faith is shaken; and while he records his conviction that +Savonarola was an excellent Nomothetes, he questions his prophetic +mission, and deplores the effect produced by his vain promises. Nerli, +as might have been expected from a noble married to Caterina Salviati, +the niece of Leo and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been courtier +to Clement and privy councilor to Alessandro, sustains the Medicean note +throughout his commentaries. + + [1] He goes so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished + to give a liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans + were frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be + oligarchs. See _Arch. Stor_. vol. i. pp. 121,131. The passages + quoted from his 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' relative to Machiavelli, + Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco Guicciardini (_Arch. Stor_. vol. i. + pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very instructive; with such greedy + self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible for the Medicean Popes to + establish any government but a tyranny in Florence. + +Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we +gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a +period when her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all +faculty for centralized or concerted action. In sagacity, in the power +of analysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to +causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper +subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common. He +who has seen Rembrandt's painting of the dissecting-room might construct +for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these +patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of +their native city. Life is extinct. Nothing is left for science but, +scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution. Each +anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady. +Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own +impressions. + +The literary qualities of these historians are very different, and seem +to be derived from essential differences in their characters. Pitti is +by far the most brilliant in style, concentrated in expression to the +point of epigram, and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though deficient in +some of the most attractive characteristics of the historian, is +invaluable for sincerity of intention and painstaking accuracy. The +philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add so much +splendor to the works of Guicciardini are absent from the pages of +Nardi. He is anxious to present a clear picture of what happened; but he +cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at length upon the +matter of his history. At the same time he lacks the _naïiveté_ which +makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips +as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want +of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which +concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and +dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with +Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his +inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the +Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cautious, +preferring always to give an external relation of events, instead of +analyzing motives or criticising character.[2] He is in especial silent +about bad men and criminal actions. Therefore, when he passes an adverse +judgment (as, for instance, upon Cesare Borgia), or notes a dark act (as +the _stuprum_ committed upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of +historians more addicted to scandal is important. Segni is far more +lively than Nardi, while he is not less painstaking to be accurate. He +shows a partisan feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo +Capponi and his prejudice against Francesco Carducci, which gives the +relish of personality that Nardi's cautiously dry chronicle lacks. +Rarely have the entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set +forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style. +Segni is deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, +minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal +for truth which makes Varchi incomparable. His sketches of men, +critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious +than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. +Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language +is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, +and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable +repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the +republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style. +Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those that have been +mentioned; yet some of the particulars which he relates, about +Savonarola's reform of manners, for example, and the literary gatherings +in the Rucellai gardens, are such as we find nowhere else. + + [1] Book ii. cap. 16. + + [2] See lib. ii. cap. 34: 'Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo + far giudizio delle cose incerte, e massimamente della + intenzione e animo segreto degli uomini, che non apparisce + chiara se non per congettura e riscontro delle cose esteriori. + E però stando termo il primo proposito, vogliamo raccontare + quanto più possibile ci sia, la verità delle cose fatte, più + tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.' This is dignified and + noble language in an age which admired the brilliant falsehoods + of Giovio. + +Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too much time has been spent +in the discussion of these annalists of the siege of Florence. Yet for +the student of history they have a value almost unique. They suggest the +possibilities of a true science of comparative history, and reveal a +vivacity of the historic consciousness which can be paralleled by no +other nation. How different might be our conception of the vicissitudes +of Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a similar Pleiad of +contemporary Greek authors! + +Having traced the development of historical research and political +philosophy in Florence from the year 1300 to the fall of the Republic, +it remains to speak of the two greatest masters of practical and +theoretical statecraft--Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli. +These two writers combine all the distinctive qualities of the +Florentine historiographers in the most eminent perfection. At the same +time they are, not merely as authors but also as men, mirrors of the +times in which they both played prominent parts. In their biographies +and in their works we trace the spirit of an age devoid of moral +sensibility, penetrative in analysis, but deficient in faith, hope, +enthusiasm, and stability of character. The dry light of the intellect +determined their judgment of men, as well as their theories of +government. On the other hand, the sordid conditions of existence to +which they were subjected as the servants of corrupt states, or the +instruments of wily princes--as diplomatists intent upon the plans of +kings like Ferdinand or adventurers like Cesare Borgia, privy councilors +of such Popes as Clement VII. and such tyrants as Duke Alessandro de' +Medici--distorted their philosophy and blunted their instincts. For the +student of the sixteenth century they remain riddles, the solution of +which is difficult, because by no strain of the imagination is it easy +to place ourselves in their position. One half of their written +utterances seem to be at variance with the other half. Their actions +often contradict their most brilliant and emphatic precepts; while +contemporaries disagree about their private character and public +conduct. All this confusion, through which it is now perhaps impossible +to discern what either Guicciardini or Machiavelli really was, and what +they really felt and thought, is due to the anomaly of consummate +ability and unrivaled knowledge of the world existing without religious +or political faith, in an age of the utmost depravity of public and +private morals. No criticism could be more stringent upon the +contemporary disorganization of society in Italy than is the silent +witness of these men, sublimely great in all mental qualities, but +helplessly adrift upon a sea of contradictions and of doubts, ignorant +of the real nature of mankind in spite of all their science, because +they leave both goodness and beauty out of their calculations. + +Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1482. In 1505, at the age of +twenty-three, he had already so distinguished himself as a student of +law that he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the +Institutes in public. However, as he preferred active to professorial +work, he began at this time to practice at the bar, where he soon ranked +as an able advocate and eloquent speaker. This reputation, together +with his character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria to +send him on an embassy to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512. Thus +Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and +statesman. We may also conclude with safety that it was at the court of +that crowned hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he +learned his first lessons in political cynicism. The court of Spain +under Ferdinand the Catholic was a perfect school of perfidy, where even +an Italian might discern deeper reaches of human depravity and formulate +for his own guidance a philosophy of despair. It was whispered by his +enemies that here, upon the threshold of his public life, Guicciardini +sold his honor by accepting a bribe from Ferdinand.[1] Certain it is +that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time +forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy +of supporting force by clever dissimulation.[2] Returning to Florence, +Guicciardini was, in 1515, deputed to meet Leo X. on the part of the +Republic at Cortona. Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able men and +making use of them, took him into favor, and three years later appointed +him Governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule. +Clement VII. made him Viceroy of Romagna in 1523, and in 1526 elevated +him to the rank of Lieutenant-General of the Papal army. In consequence +of this high commission, Guicciardini shared in the humiliation +attaching to all the officers of the League who, with the Duke of Urbino +at their head suffered Rome to be sacked and the Pope to be imprisoned +in 1527. The blame of this contemptible display of cowardice or private +spite cannot, however, be ascribed to him: for he attended the armies of +the League not as general, but as counselor and chief reporter. It was +his business not to control the movements of the army so much as to act +as referee in the Pope's interest, and to keep the Vatican informed of +what was stirring in the camp. In 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the +governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the Papal +lord-lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of +Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes at +Florence. In this sketch of his career I must not omit to mention that +Guicciardini was declared a rebel in 1527 by the popular government on +account of his well-known Medicean prejudices, and that in 1530 he had +been appointed by Clement VII. to punish the rebellious citizens. On the +latter occasion he revenged himself for the insults offered him in 1527 +by the cruelty with which he pushed proscription to the utmost limits, +relegating his enemies to unhealthy places of exile, burdening them with +intolerable fines, and using all the indirect means which his ingenuity +could devise for forcing them into outlawry and contumacy.[3] Therefore +when he returned to inhabit Florence, he did so as the creature of the +Medici, sworn to maintain the bastard Alessandro in his power. He was +elected a member of the Senate of eighty; and so thoroughly did he +espouse the cause of his new master, that he had the face to undertake +the Duke's defense before Charles V. at Naples in 1535. On this occasion +Alessandro, who had rendered himself unbearable by his despotic habits, +and in particular by the insults which he offered to women of all ranks +and conditions in Florence, was arraigned by the exiles before the bar +of Cæsar. Guicciardini won the cause of his client, and restored +Alessandro with an Imperial confirmation of his despotism to Florence. +This period of his political career deserves particular attention, since +it displays a glaring contradiction between some of his unpublished +compositions and his actions, and confirms the accusations of his +enemies.[4] That he should have preferred a government of Ottimati, or +wealthy nobles, to a more popular constitution, and that he should have +adhered with fidelity to the Medicean faction in Florence, is no ground +for censure.[5] But when we find him in private unmasking the artifices +of the despots by the most relentless use of frigid criticism, and +advocating a mixed government upon the type of the Venetian +Constitution, we are constrained to admit with Varchi and Pitti that his +support of Alessandro was prompted less by loyalty than by a desire to +gratify his own ambition and avarice under the protective shadow of the +Medicean tyranny.[6] He belonged in fact to those selfish citizens whom +Pitti denounces, diplomatists and men of the world, whose thirst for +power induced them to play into the hands of the Medici, wishing to suck +the state[7] themselves, and to hold the prince in the leading-strings +of vice and pleasure for their own advantage.[8] After the murder of +Alessandro, it was principally through Guicciardini's influence that +Cosimo was placed at the head of the Florentine Republic with the title +of Duke. Cosimo was but a boy, and much addicted to field sports. +Guicciardini therefore reckoned that, with an assured income of 12,000 +ducats, the youth would be contented to amuse himself, while he left the +government of Florence in the hands of his Vizier.[9] But here the wily +politician overreached himself. Cosimo wore an old head on his young +shoulders. With decent modesty and a becoming show of deference, he used +Guicciardini as his ladder to mount the throne by, and then kicked the +ladder away. The first days of his administration showed that he +intended to be sole master in Florence. Guicciardini, perceiving that +his game was spoiled, retired to his villa in 1537 and spent the last +years of his life in composing his histories. The famous Istoria d' +Italia was the work of one year of this enforced retirement. The +question irresistibly rises to our mind, whether some of the severe +criticisms passed upon the Medici in his unpublished compositions were +the fruit of these same bitter leisure hours.[10] Guicciardini died in +1540 at the age of fifty-eight, without male heirs. + + [1] See the 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. + part 2, p. 318. + + [2] For the avarice of Guicciardini, see Varchi, vol. i. p. + 318. His _Ricordi Politici_ amply justify the second, though + not the first, clause of this sentence. + + [3] See Varchi, book xii. (and especially cap. xxv.), for these + arts; he says, 'Nel che messer Francesco Guicciardini si + scoperse più crudele e più appassionato degli altri.' + + [4] Knowing what sort of tyrant Alessandro was, and remembering + 'hat Guicciardini had written (_Ricordi_, No. ccxlii.): 'La + calcina con che si murano gli stati de' tiranni è il sangue de' + cittadini: però doverebbe sforzarsi ognuno che nella città sua + non s'avessino a murare tali palazzi,' it is very difficult to + approve of his advocacy of the Duke. + + [5] Though even here the selfish ambition of the man was + apparent to contemporaries: 'egli arebbe voluto uno stato col + nome d' Ottimati, ma in fatti de' Pochi, nel quale larghissima + parte, per le sue molte e rarissime qualità, meritissimamente + gli si venia.'--Varchi, vol. i. p. 318. + + [6] Guicciardini's _Storia Fiorentina_ and _Reggimento di + Firenze_ (_Op. Ined._ vols. i, and iii.) may be consulted for + his private critique of the Medici. What was the judgment + passed upon him by contemporaries may be gathered from Varchi, + vols. i. pp. 238, 318; ii. 410; iii. 204. Segni, pp. 219, 332. + Nardi, vol. ii. p. 287. Pitti, quoted in _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. + p. xxxviii., and the 'Apologia de' Cappucci' (_Arch. Stor._ + vol. iv. pt. 2). It is, however, only fair to Guicciardini to + record here his opinion, expressed in _Ricordi_, Nos. ccxx. and + cccxxx., that it was the duty of good citizens to seek to guide + the tyrant: 'Credo sia uficio di buoni cittadini, quando la + patria viene in mano di tiranni, cercare d'avere luogo con loro + per potere persuadere il bene, e detestare il male; e certo è + interesse della città che in qualunque tempo gli uomini da bene + abbino autorità; e ancora che gli ignoranti e passionati di + Firenze l' abbino sempre intesa altrimenti, si accorgerebbono + quanta pestifero sarebbe il governo de' Medici, se non avessi + intorno altri che pazzi e cattivi.' + + [7] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 204. 'Che Cosimo ... _succiarsi lo + stato_.' + + [8] Pitti dips his pen in gall when he describes these + citizens: 'Cotesti vogliosi Ottimati; i quali non hanno saputo + mai ritrovare luogo che piaccia loro, sottomendosi ora al + Medici per l'ingorda avarizia; ora gittandosi al popolo, per + non potere a modo loro tiraneggiare; ora rivendendolo a' + Medici, vedutisi scoperti e raffrenati da lui; e sempre mai con + danno della Repubblica, e di ciascuna parte, inquieti, + insaziabili e fraudolenti.'--'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. + Stor._ xv. pt. ii. p. 215. + + [9] Here is a graphic touch in Varchi's _History_, vol. iii. p. + 202. Guicciardini is discussing the appointment of Cosimo de' + Medici: 'Gli dovessero esser pagati per suo piatto ogn' anno + 12,000 fiorini d' oro, e non più, avendo il Guicciardino, + _abbassando il viso e alzando gli occhi_, detto: "Un 12,000 + fiorini d' oro è--un bello spendere."' + + [10] Pitti seems to have taken this view: see 'Apologia de' + Cappucci' (_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. part ii. p. 329): 'Tosto che + 'l duca Cosimo lo pose a sedere insieme con certi altri suoi + colleghi, si adirò malamente; e se la disputa della provvisione + non l' avesse ritenuto, sarebbe ito a servire papa Pagolo + terzo. Onde, restato confuso e disperato, si tratteneva alla + sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove transportato dalla + stizza ritoccò in molte parti la sua Istoria, per mostrare di + non essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, accattó + l' occasione di parere istrumento della Repubblica.' + Guicciardini's own apology for his treatment of the Medici, in + the proemio to the treatise _Del Reggimento di Firenze_, + deserves also to be read. + +Turning now from the statesman to the man of letters, we find in +Guicciardini one of the most consummate historians of any nation or of +any age. The work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is +one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very +intricate period, for subordination of the parts to the whole, for +calmness of judgment and for philosophic depth of thought. Considering +that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the annals of his own +times, and that he had to disentangle the raveled skein of Italian +politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarkable. +The whole movement of the history recalls the pomp and dignity of Livy, +while a series of portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand of +an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid force of Tacitus. Yet +Guicciardini in this work deserves less commendation as a writer than as +a thinker. There is a manifest straining to secure style, by +manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the +unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. +His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and +monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity +without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes +with nature. + +The transcendent merit of the history is this--that it presents us with +a scientific picture of politics and of society during the first half of +the sixteenth century. The picture is set forth with a clairvoyance and +a candor that are almost terrible. The author never feels enthusiasm for +a moment: no character, however great for good or evil, rouses him from +the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criticism. He utters but few +exclamations of horror or of applause. Faith, religion, conscience, +self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of +human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces +which, according to his experience, move the world. That the +strong should trample on the weak, that the wily should circumvent the +innocent, that hypocrisy and fraud and dissimulation should triumph, +seems to him but natural. His whole theory of humanity is tinged with +the sad gray colors of a stolid, cold-eyed, ill-contented, egotistical +indifference. He is not angry, desperate, indignant, but phlegmatically +prudent, face to face with the ruin of his country. For him the world +was a game of intrigue, in which his friends, his enemies, and himself +played parts, equally sordid, with grave faces and hearts bent only on +the gratification of mean desires. Accordingly, though his mastery of +detail, his comprehension of personal motives, and his analysis of craft +are alike incomparable, we find him incapable of forming general views +with the breadth of philosophic insight or the sagacity of a frank and +independent nature. The movements of the eagle and the lion must be +unintelligible to the spider or the fox. It was impossible for +Guicciardini to feel the real greatness of the century, or to foresee +the new forces to which it was giving birth. He could not divine the +momentous issues of the Lutheran schism; and though he perceived the +immediate effect upon Italian politics of the invasion of the French, he +failed to comprehend the revolution marked out for the future in the +shock of the modern nations. While criticising the papacy, he discerned +the pernicious results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he had no +instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and religious regeneration. +His judgment of the political situation led him to believe that the +several units of the Italian system might be turned to profit and +account by the application of superficial remedies,--by the development +of despotism, for example, or of oligarchy, when in reality the decay of +the nation was already past all cure. + +Two other masterpieces from Guicciardini's pen, the _Dialogo del +Reggimento di Firenze_ and the _Storia Fiorentina_, have been given to +the world during the last twenty years. To have published them +immediately after their author's death would have been inexpedient, +since they are far too candid and outspoken to have been acceptable to +the Medicean dynasty. Yet in these writings we find Guicciardini at his +best. Here he has not yet assumed the mantle of the rhetorician, which +in the _Istoria d' Italia_ sits upon him somewhat cumbrously. His style +is more spontaneous; his utterances are less guarded. Writing for +himself alone, he dares to say more plainly what he thinks and feels. At +the same time the political sagacity of the statesman is revealed in all +its vigor. I have so frequently used both of these treatises that I need +not enter into a minute analysis of their contents. It will be enough to +indicate some of the passages which display the literary style and the +scientific acumen of Guicciardini at their best. The _Reggimento di +Firenze_ is an essay upon the form of government for which Florence was +best suited. Starting with a discussion of Savonarola's constitution, in +which ample justice is done to the sagacity and promptitude by means of +which he saved the commonwealth at a critical juncture (pp. 27-30), the +interlocutors pass to an examination of the Medicean tyranny (pp. +34-49). This is one of the masterpieces of Guicciardini's analysis. He +shows how the administration of justice, the distribution of public +honors, and the foreign policy of the republic were perverted by this +family. He condemns Cosimo's tyrannical application of fines and imposts +(p. 68), Piero the younger's insolence (p. 46), and Lorenzo's +appropriation of the public moneys to his private use (p. 43). Yet while +setting forth the vices of this tyranny in language which even Sismondi +would have been contented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no +passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted princes eager for +power, although they crushed the spirit of the people, discouraged +political ardor, extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them +lay to enervate the nation they governed. The scientific statist +acknowledges no reciprocal rights and duties between the governor and +the governed. It is a trial of strength. If the tyrant gets the upper +hand, the people must expect to be oppressed. If, on the other side, the +people triumph, they must take good care to exterminate the despotic +brood: 'The one true remedy would be to destroy and extinguish them so +utterly that not a vestige should remain, and to employ for this purpose +the poignard or poison, as may be most convenient; otherwise the least +surviving spark is certain to cause trouble and annoyance for the +future'(p. 215). The same precise criticism lays bare the weakness of +democracy. Men, says Guicciardini, always really desire their own power +more than the freedom of the state (p. 50), and the motives even of +tyrannicides are very rarely pure (pp. 53-54). The governments +established by the liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande, +for example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its choice of +magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of taxes, scarcely less +prejudiced against individuals than a tyrant would be, and incapable of +diplomatic foreign policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the +relative merits of the three chief forms of government--the Governo +dell' Uno, the Governo degli Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p. +129). Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the third.[1] He +now expresses a strong opinion that the second is the worst which could +be applied to the actual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130). +His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139-41) illustrates his +plan for combining the advantages of the three species and obviating +their respective evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the +sixteenth century--the Governo Misto--a political invention which +fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as +the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last +century.[2] What follows is an elaborate scheme for applying the +principles of the Governo Misto to the existing state of things in +Florence. This lucid and learned disquisition is wound up (p. 188) with +a mournful expression of the doubt which hung like a thick cloud over +all the political speculations of both Guicciardini and Machiavelli: 'I +hold it very doubtful, and I think it much depends on chance whether +this disorganized constitution will ever take new shape or not ... and +as I said yesterday, I should have more hope if the city were but young; +seeing that not only does a state at the commencement take form with +greater facility than one that has grown old under evil governments, but +things always turn out more prosperously and more easily while fortune +is yet fresh and has not run its course,' etc.[3] In reading the +Dialogue on the Constitution of Florence it must finally be remembered +that Guicciardini has thrown it back into the year 1494, and that he +speaks through the mouths of four interlocutors. Therefore we may +presume that he intended his readers to regard it as a work of +speculative science rather than of practical political philosophy. Yet +it is not difficult to gather the drift of his own meaning. + + [1] Cf. _Ricordi_, cxl.: 'Chi disse uno popolo, disse veramente + uno animale pazzo, pieno ni mille errori, di mille confusioni, + sanza gusto, sanza diletto, sanza stabilità.' It should be + noted that Guicciardini here and elsewhere uses the term Popolo + in its fuller democratic sense. The successive enlargements of + the burgher class in Florence, together with the study of Greek + and Latin political philosophy, had introduced the modern + connotation of the term. + + [2] A lucid criticism of the three forms of government is + contained in Guicciardini's Comment on the second chapter of + the first book of Machiavelli's _Discorsi_ (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. + p. 6): 'E non è dubio che il governo misto delle tre spezie, + principi, ottimati e popolo, è migliore e più stabile che uno + governo semplice di qualunque delle tre spezie, e massime + quando è misto in modo che di qualunque spezie è tolto il buono + e lasciato indietro il cattivo.' Machiavelli had himself, in + the passage criticised, examined the three simple governments + and declared in favor of the mixed as that which gave stability + to Sparta, Rome, and Venice. The same line of thought may be + traced in the political speculations of both Plato and + Aristotle. The Athenians and Florentines felt the superior + stability of the Spartan and Venetian forms of government, just + as a French theorist might idealize the English constitution. + The essential element of the Governo Misto, which Florence had + lost beyond the possibility of regaining it, was a body of + hereditary and patriotic patricians. This gave its strength to + Venice; and this is that which hitherto has distinguished the + English nation. + + [3] Compare _Ricordi Politici e Civili_, No. clxxxix., for a + lament of this kind over the decrepitude of kingdoms, almost + sublime in its stoicism. + +The _Istoria Fiorentina_ is a succinct narrative of the events of +Italian History, especially as they concerned Florence, between the +years 1378 and 1509. In other words it relates the vicissitudes of the +Republic under the Medici, and the administration of the Gonfalonier +Soderini. This masterpiece of historical narration sets forth with +brevity and frankness the whole series of events which are rhetorically +and cautiously unfolded in the Istoria d' Italia. Most noticeable are +the characters of Lorenzo de' Medici (cap. ix.), of Savonarola (cap. +xvii.), and of Alexander VI. (cap. xxvii.). The immediate consequences +of the French invasion have never been more ably treated than in Chapter +xi., while the whole progress of Cesare Borgia in his career of villany +is analyzed with exquisite distinctness in Chapter xxvi. The wisdom of +Guicciardini nowhere appears more ripe, or his intellect more elastic, +than in the _Istoria Fiorentina_. Students who desire to gain a still +closer insight into the working of Guicciardini's mind should consult +the 403 _Ricordi Politici e Civili_ collected in the first volume of his +_Opere Inedite_. These have all the charm which belongs to occasional +utterances, and are fit, like proverbs, to be worn for jewels on the +finger of time. + +The biography of Niccolo Machiavelli consists for the most part of a +record of his public services to the State of Florence. He was born on +May 3, 1469, of parents who belonged to the prosperous middle class of +Florentine citizens. His ancestry was noble; for the old tradition which +connected his descent with the feudal house of Montespertoli has been +confirmed by documentary evidence.[1] His forefathers held offices of +high distinction in the Commonwealth; and though their wealth and +station had decreased, Machiavelli inherited a small landed estate. His +family, who were originally settled in the Val di Pesa, owned farms at +San Casciano and in other villages of the Florentine dominion, a list of +which may be seen in the return presented by his father Bernardo to the +revenue office in 1498.[2] Their wealth was no doubt trivial in +comparison with that which citizens amassed by trade in Florence; for it +was not the usage of those times to draw more than the necessaries of +life from the Villa: all superfluities were provided by the Bottega in +the town.[3] Yet there can be no question, after a comparison of +Bernardo Machiavelli's return of his landed property with Niccolo +Machiavelli's will,[4] that the illustrious war secretary at all periods +of his life owned just sufficient property to maintain his family in a +decent, if not a dignified, style. About his education we know next to +nothing. Giovio[5] asserts that he possessed but little Latin, and that +he owed the show of learning in his works to quotations furnished by +Marcellus Virgilius. This accusation, which, whether it be true or not, +was intended to be injurious, has lost its force in an age that, like +ours, values erudition less than native genius. It is certain that +Machiavelli knew quite enough of Latin and Greek literature to serve his +turn; and his familiarity with some of the classical historians and +philosophers is intimate. There is even too much parade in his works of +illustrations borrowed from Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch: the only +question is whether Machiavelli relied upon translations rather than +originals. On this point, it is also worthy of remark that his culture +was rather Roman than Hellenic. Had he at any period of his life made as +profound a study of Plato's political dialogues as he made of Livy's +histories, we cannot but feel that his theories both of government and +statecraft might have been more concordant with a sane and normal +humanity. + + [1] See Villani's _Machiavelli_, vol. i. p. 303. Ed. Le + Monnier. + + [2] See vol. i. of the edition of Machiavelli, by Mess. Fanfani + and Passerini, Florence, 1873; p. lv. Villani's Machiavelli, + ib. p. 306. The income is estimated at about 180_l._ + + [3] See Pandolfini, _Trattato del Governo della Famiglia_. + + [4] Fanfani and Passerini's edition, vol. i. p. xcii. + + [5] Elogia, cap. 87. + +In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici, Machiavelli was +admitted to the Chancery of the Commune as a clerk; and in 1498 he was +appointed to the post of chancellor and secretary to the _Dieci di +libertà e pace_. This place he held for the better half of fifteen +years, that is to say, during the whole period of Florentine freedom. +His diplomatic missions undertaken at the instance of the Republic were +very numerous. Omitting those of less importance, we find him at the +camp of Cesare Borgia in 1502, in France in 1504, with Julius II. in +1506, with the Emperor Maximilian in 1507, and again at the French Court +in 1510.[1] To this department of his public life belong the dispatches +and Relazioni which he sent home to the Signory of Florence, his +Monograph upon the Massacre of Sinigaglia, his treatises upon the method +of dealing with Pisa, Pistoja, and Valdichiana, and those two remarkable +studies of foreign nations which are entitled _Ritratti delle Cose dell' +Alemagna_ and _Ritratti delle Cose di Francia_. It was also in the year +1500 that he laid the first foundations of his improved military system. +The political sagacity and the patriotism for which Machiavelli has been +admired are nowhere more conspicuous than in the discernment which +suggested this measure, and in the indefatigable zeal with which he +strove to carry it into effect. Pondering upon the causes of Italian +weakness when confronted with nations like the French, and comparing +contemporary with ancient history, Machiavelli came to the conclusion +that the universal employment of mercenary troops was the chief secret +of the insecurity of Italy. He therefore conceived a plan for +establishing a national militia, and for placing the whole male +population at the service of the state in times of war. He had to begin +cautiously in bringing this scheme before the public; for the stronghold +of the mercenary system was the sloth and luxury of the burghers. At +first he induced the _Dieci di libertà e pace_, or war office, to +require the service of one man per house throughout the Florentine +dominion; but at the same time he caused a census to be taken of all men +capable of bearing arms. His next step was to carry a law by which the +permanent militia of the state was fixed at 10,000. Then in 1503, having +prepared the way by these preliminary measures, he addressed the Council +of the Burghers in a set oration, unfolding the principles of his +proposed reform, and appealing not only to their patriotism but also to +their sense of self-preservation. It was his aim to prove that mercenary +arms must be exchanged for a national militia, if freedom and +independence were to be maintained. The Florentines allowed themselves +to be convinced, and, on the recommendation of Machiavelli, they voted +in 1506 a new magistracy, called the _Nove dell' Ordinanza e Milizia_, +for the formation of companies, the discipline of soldiers, and the +maintenance of the militia in a state of readiness for active +service.[2] Machiavelli became the secretary of this board; and much of +his time was spent thenceforth in the levying of troops and the +practical development of his system. It requires an intimate familiarity +with the Italian military system of the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries to understand the importance of this reform. We are so +accustomed to the systems of Militia, Conscription, and Landwehr, by +means of which military service has been nationalized among the modern +races, that we need to tax our imagination before we can place ourselves +at the point of view of men to whom Machiavelli's measure was a novelty +of genius.[3] + + [1] Machiavelli never bore the title of Ambassador on these + missions. He went as Secretary. His pay was miserable. We find + him receiving one ducat a day for maintenance. + + [2] Documents relating to the institution of the _Nove dell' + Ordinanza e Milizia_, and to its operations between December 6, + 1506, and August 6, 1512, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be + found printed by Signor Canestrini in _Arch. Stor._ vol. xv. + pp. 377 to 453. Machiavelli's treatise _De re militari_, or _I + libri sull' arte della guerra_, was the work of his later life; + it was published in 1521 at Florence. + + [3] Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military + system, the part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into + effect must not be forgotten. Pitti, in his 'Life of Giacomini' + (_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 241), says: 'Avendo per + dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle fazioni e nelle + battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva troppo + bene conosciuto con quanta più sicurezza si potesse la + repubblica servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.' + Machiavelli had gone as Commissary to the camp of Giacomini + before Pisa in August 1505; there the man of action and the man + of theory came to an agreement: both found in the Gonfalonier + Soderini a chief of the republic capable of entering into their + views. + +It must be admitted that the new militia proved ineffectual in the hour +of need. To revive the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny +and given over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond the +force of even Machiavelli. When Prato had been sacked in 1512, the +Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed +by the excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open +to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his +nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's +marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at +their pleasure. Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean +government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. In +1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo +Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and +tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that he was +innocent. Leo X. released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the +event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to +his farm near San Casciano. + +Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's +biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters a picture of +the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was condemned in +the solitude of the country.[1] Writing on December 10 to his friend +Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am at my farm; and, since my last +misfortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days. I rise with the sun, +and go into a wood of mine that is being cut, where I remain two hours +inspecting the work of the previous day and conversing with the +woodcutters, who have always some trouble on hand among themselves or +with their neighbors. When I leave the wood, I proceed to a well, and +thence to the place which I use for snaring birds, with a book under my +arm--Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, like Tibullus or +Ovid. I read the story of their passions, and let their loves remind me +of my own, which is a pleasant pastime for a while. Next I take the +road, enter the inn door, talk with the passers-by, inquire the news of +the neighborhood, listen to a variety of matters, and make note of the +different tastes and humors of men. This brings me to dinner-time, when +I join my family and eat the poor produce of my farm. After dinner I go +back to the inn, where I generally find the host and a butcher, a +miller, and a pair of bakers. With these companions I play the fool all +day at cards or backgammon: a thousand squabbles, a thousand insults and +abusive dialogues take place, while we haggle over a farthing, and shout +loud enough to be heard from San Casciano. But when evening falls I go +home and enter my writing-room. On the threshold I put off my country +habit, filthy with mud and mire, and array myself in royal courtly +garments; thus worthily attired, I make my entrance into the ancient +courts of the men of old, where they receive me with love, and where I +feed upon that food which only is my own and for which I was born. I +feel no shame in conversing with them and asking them the reason of +their actions. They, moved by their humanity, make answer; for four +hours' space I feel no annoyance, forget all care; poverty cannot +frighten, nor death appall me. I am carried away to their society. And +since Dante says "that there is no science unless we retain what we have +learned," I have set down what I have gained from their discourse, and +composed a treatise, _De Principatibus_, in which I enter as deeply as I +can into the science of the subject, with reasonings on the nature of +principality, its several species, and how they are acquired, how +maintained, how lost. If you ever liked any of my scribblings, this +ought to suit your taste. To a prince, and especially to a new prince, +it ought to prove acceptable. Therefore I am dedicating it to the +Magnificence of Giuliano.' + + [1] This letter may be compared with others of about the same + date. In one (Aug. 3, 1514) he says: 'Ho lasciato dunque i + pensieri delle cose grandi e gravi, non mi diletta più leggere + le cose antiche, nè ragionare delle moderne; tutte si son + converse in ragionamenti dolci,' etc. Again he writes (Dec. 4, + 1514): 'Quod autem ad me pertinet, si quid agam scire cupis, + omnem meae vitae rationem ab eodem Tafano intelliges, quam + sordidam ingloriamque, non sine indignatione, si me ut soles + amas, cognosces.' Later on, we may notice the same language. + Thus (Feb. 5, 1515), 'Sono diventato inutile a me, a' parenti + ed agli amici,' and (June 8, 1517) 'Essendomi io ridotto a + stare in villa per le avversità che io ho avuto ed ho, sto + qualche volta un mese che non mi ricordo di me.' + +Further on in the same letter he writes: 'I have talked with Filippo +Casavecchia about this little work of mine, whether I ought to present +it or not; and if so, whether I ought to send or take it myself to him. +I was induced to doubt about presenting it at all by the fear lest +Giuliano should not even read it, and that this Ardinghelli should +profit by my latest labors. On the other hand, I am prompted to present +it by the necessity which pursues me, seeing that I am consuming myself +in idleness, and I cannot continue long in this way without becoming +contemptible through poverty. I wish these Signori Medici would begin to +make some use of me, if it were only to set me to the work of rolling a +stone.[1] If I did not win them over to me afterwards, I should only +complain of myself. As for my book, if they read it, they would perceive +that the fifteen years I have spent in studying statecraft have not been +wasted in sleep or play; and everybody ought to be glad to make use of a +man who has so filled himself with experience at the expense of others. +About my fidelity they ought not to doubt. Having always kept faith, I +am not going to learn to break it now. A man who has been loyal and good +for forty-three years, like me, is not likely to change his nature; and +of my loyalty and goodness my poverty is sufficient witness to them.' + + [1] Compare the letter, dated June 10, 1514, to Fr. Vettori: + 'Starommi dunque così tra i miei cenci, senza trovare uomo che + della mia servitù si ricordi, o che creda che io possa esser + buono a nulla. Ma egli è impossibile che io possa star molto + così, perchè io mi logoro,' etc. Again, Dec. 20, 1514: 'E se la + fortuna avesse voluto che i Medici, o in cosa di Firenze o di + fuora, o in cose loro particolari o in pubbliche, mi avessino + una volta comandato, io sarei contento.' + +This letter, invaluable to the student of Machiavelli's works, is +prejudicial to his reputation. It was written only ten months after he +had been imprisoned and tortured by the Medici, just thirteen months +after the republic he had served so long had been enslaved by the +princes before whom he was now cringing. It is true that Machiavelli was +not wealthy; his habits of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for +his needs.[1] It is true that he could ill bear the enforced idleness of +country life, after being engaged for fifteen years in the most +important concerns of the Florentine Republic. But neither his poverty, +which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he +found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this +letter. When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of +another exile, who while he tells us-- + + Come sa di sale + Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle + Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale + +--can yet refuse the advances of his factious city thus: 'If Florence +cannot be entered honorably, I will never set foot within her walls. And +what? Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the earth to gaze +upon the sun and stars? shall I not beneath whatever region of the +heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself +ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people? +Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very +letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought +to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the +debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his +shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.' + + [1] See familiar letter, June 10, 1514. + +In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may +be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence. +Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her +citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs +for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of +Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put _to roll a stone by +these Signori Medici_, if only he may so escape from poverty and +dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as +an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo. +Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night +justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him +for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had +disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public +action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came +before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A +treatise _De Principatibus_; in other words, the celebrated _Principe_; +which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or +explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom +in its pages. Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed, +we are in a condition to estimate the proud humility and prostrate pride +of the dedication. 'Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son +of Piero de' Medici:' so runs the title. 'Desiring to present myself to +your Magnificence with some proof of my devotion, I have not found +among my various furniture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of +the actions of great men acquired by me through a long experience of +modern affairs and a continual study of ancient. These I have long and +diligently revolved and examined in my mind, and have now compressed +into a little book which I send to your Magnificence. And though I judge +this work unworthy of your presence, yet I am confident that your +humanity will cause you to value it when you consider that I could not +make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a few hours to +understand what I have learned through perils and discomforts in a +lengthy course of years.' 'If your Magnificence will deign, from the +summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low place, you +will know how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and continued +malice of fortune.' The work so dedicated was sent in MS. for the +Magnificent's private perusal. It was not published until 1532, by order +of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli. + +I intend to reserve the _Principe_, considered as the supreme expression +of Italian political science, for a separate study; and after the +introduction to Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter in +detail into a discussion of the various theories respecting the +intention of this treatise.[1] Yet this is the proper place for +explaining my view about Machiavelli's writings in relation to his +biography, and for attempting to connect them into such unity as a mind +so strictly logical as his may have designed. + + [1] Macaulay's essay is, of course, brilliant and + comprehensive. I do not agree with his theory of the Italian + despot, as I have explained on p. 127 of this volume. + Sometimes, too, he indulges in rhetoric that is merely + sentimental, as when he says about the dedication of the + Florentine History to Clement: 'The miseries and humiliations + of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other + food, the stairs which are more painful than every other + ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. _The most + corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not depraved the + generous heart of Clement._' The sentence I have printed in + italics may perhaps tell the truth about the Church and Popes + in general; but the panegyric of Clement is preposterous. + Macaulay must have been laughing in his sleeve. + +With regard to the circumstances under which the Prince was composed, +enough has been already said. Machiavelli's selfish purpose in putting +it forth seems to my mind apparent. He wanted employment: he despaired +of the republic: he strove to furnish the princes in power with a +convincing proof of his capacity for great affairs. Yet it must not on +this account be concluded that the _Principe_ was merely a cheap bid for +office. On the contrary, it contained the most mature and the most +splendid of Machiavelli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years +of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it embodied the dream of +a philosophical patriot for the restitution of liberty to Italy. +Florence, indeed, was lost. 'These Signori Medici' were in power. But +could not even they be employed to purge the sacred soil of Italy from +the Barbarians? + +If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machiavelli's mind at this +distance of time, we may conjecture that he had come to believe the +free cities too corrupt for independence. The only chance Italy had of +holding her own against the great powers of Europe was by union under a +prince. At the same time the Utopia of this union, with which he closes +the _Principe_, could only be realized by such a combination as would +either neutralize the power of the Church, or else gain the Pope for an +ally by motives of interest. Now at the period of the dedication of the +_Principe_ to Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo X. was striving to found a +principality in the states of the Church.[1] In 1516 he created his +nephew Duke of Urbino, and it was thought that this was but a prelude to +still further greatness. Florence in combination with Rome might do much +for Italy. Leo meanwhile was still young, and his participation in the +most ambitious schemes was to be expected. Thus the moment was +propitious for suggesting to Lorenzo that he should put himself at the +head of an Italian kingdom, which, by its union beneath the strong will +of a single prince, might suffice to cope with nations more potent in +numbers and in arms.[2] The _Principe_ was therefore dedicated in good +faith to the Medici, and the note on which it closes was not false. +Machiavelli hoped that what Cesare Borgia had but just failed in +accomplishing, Lorenzo de' Medici, with the assistance of a younger Pope +than Alexander, a firmer basis to his princedom in Florence, and a grasp +upon the states of the Church made sure by the policy of Julius II., +might effect. Whether so good a judge of character as Machiavelli +expected really much from Lorenzo may be doubted. + + [1] We are, however, bound to remember that Leo was only made + Pope in March 1513, and that the _Principe_ was nearly finished + in the following December. Machiavelli cannot therefore be + credited with knowing as well as we do now to what length the + ambition of the Medici was about to run when he composed his + work. He wrote in the hope that it might induce them to employ + him. + + [2] The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to + Piero Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with + the _Principe_ for the light they throw on Machiavelli's + opinions there expressed. + +These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable. +To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a +worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and +to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled +to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two +realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he +ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the +logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his +adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that +the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy +was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a +political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low +level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of +statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the +clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of +intrigue in which he had been working all his life. Even his keen +insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare +Borgia. + +To have formulated the ethics of the _Principe_ is not diabolical. There +is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply +a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, +where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms +of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought +of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not +regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say, +to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as +horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that +they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate +end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre +at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in +condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni +because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to +crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue +had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one +quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be +combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was +simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram-- + + La notte che morì Pier Soderini + L' alma n' andò dell' inferno alla bocca; + E Pluto le gridò: Anima sciocca, + Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini. + + The night that Peter Soderini died, + His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell: + 'What? Hell for you? You silly spirit!' cried + The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell.' + +As of old in Corcyra, so now in Italy, 'guilelessness, which is the +principal ingredient of genuine nobleness, was laughed down, and +disappeared.'[1] What men feared was not the moral verdict of society, +pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent acts, but the +intellectual estimate of incapacity and the stigma of dullness. They +were afraid of being reckoned among feebler personalities; and to escape +from this contempt, by the commission even of atrocities, had come to be +accounted manly. The truth, missed almost universally, was that the +supreme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abiding honesty, the +doing of right because right is right, in scorn of consequence. Nothing +appears more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this point, while +the Italian novels are full of matter bearing on the same topic. It is +therefore ridiculous to assume that an Italian judged of men or conduct +in any sense according to our standards. Pinturicchio and Perugino +thought it no shame to work for princes like the Baglioni and for Popes +like Alexander VI. Lionardo da Vinci placed his talents as an engineer +at the service of Cesare Borgia, and employed his genius as a musician +and a painter for the amusement of the Milanese Court, which must have +been, according to Corio's account, flagrantly and shamelessly corrupt. +Leo Battista Alberti, one of the most charming and the gentlest spirits +of the earlier Renaissance, in like manner lent his architectural +ability to the vanity of the iniquitous Sigismondo Malatesta. No: the +_Principe_ was not inconsistent with the general tone of Italian +morality; and Machiavelli cannot be fairly taxed with the discovery of a +new infernal method. The conception of politics as a bare art of means +to ends had grown up in his mind by the study of Italian history and +social customs. His idealization of Cesare Borgia and his romance of +Castruccio were the first products of the theory he had formed by +observation of the world he lived in. The _Principe_ revealed it fully +organized. But to have presented such an essay in good faith to the +despots of his native city, at that particular moment in his own career, +and under the pressure of trivial distress, is a real blot upon his +memory. + + [1] Thuc. iii. 83. The whole of the passage about Corcyra in + the third book of Thucydides (chs. 82 and 83) applies literally + to the moral condition of Italy at this period. + +We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for his +_Principe_, the poor thinking it would teach the Medici to take away +their honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, and +both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom.[1] Machiavelli can +scarcely have calculated upon this evil opinion, which followed him to +the grave: for though he showed some hesitation in his letter to Vettori +about the propriety of presenting the essay to the Medici, this was only +grounded on the fear lest a rival should get the credit of his labors. +Again, he uttered no syllable about its being intended for a trap to +catch the Medici, and commit them to unpardonable crimes. We may +therefore conclude that this explanation of the purpose of the +_Principe_ (which, strange to say, has approved itself to even recent +critics) was promulgated either by himself or by his friends, as an +after-thought, when he saw that the work had missed its mark, and at the +time when he was trying to suppress the MS.[2] Bernardo Giunti in the +dedication of the edition of 1532, and Reginald Pole in 1535, were, I +believe, the first to put forth this fanciful theory in print. +Machiavelli could not before 1520 have boasted of the patriotic +treachery with which he was afterwards accredited, so far, at any rate, +as to lose the confidence of the Medicean family; for in that year the +Cardinal Giulio de' Medici commissioned him to write the history of +Florence. + + [1] _Storia Fior._ lib. iv. cap. 15. + + [2] See Varchi, loc. cit. The letter written by Machiavelli to + Fr. Guicciardini from Carpi, May 17, 1521, should be studied in + this connection. It is unfortunately too mutilated to be wholly + intelligible. After explaining his desire to be of use to + Florence, but not after the manner most approved of by the + Florentines themselves, he says: 'io credo che questo sarebbe + il vero modo di andare in Paradiso, imparare la via dell' + Inferno per fuggirla.' + +The _Principe_, after its dedication to Lorenzo, remained in MS., and +Machiavelli was not employed in spite of the continual solicitations of +his friend Vettori.[1] Nothing remained for him but to seek other +patrons, and to employ his leisure in new literary work. Between 1516 +and 1519, therefore, we find him taking part in the literary and +philosophical discussions of the Florentine Academy, which assembled at +that period in the Rucellai Gardens.[2] It was here that he read his +Discourses on the First Decade of Livy--a series of profound essays upon +the administration of the state, to which the sentences of the Roman +historian serve as texts. Having set forth in the _Principe_ the method +of gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in the _Discorsi_ +what institutions are necessary to preserve the body politic in a +condition of vigorous activity. We may therefore regard the _Discorsi_ +as in some sense a continuation of the _Principe_. But the wisdom of the +scientific politician is no longer placed at the disposal of a +sovereign. He addresses himself to all the members of a state who are +concerned in its prosperity. Machiavelli's enemies have therefore been +able to insinuate that, after teaching tyranny in one pamphlet, he +expounded the principles of opposition to a tyrant in the other, +shifting his sails as the wind veered.[3] The truth here also lies in +the critical and scientific quality of Machiavelli's method. He was +content to lecture either to princes or to burghers upon politics, as an +art which he had taken great pains to study, while his interest in the +demonstration of principles rendered him in a measure indifferent to +their application.[4] In fact, to use the pithy words of Macaulay, 'the +Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the +progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the +former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in +the latter to the longer duration and more complex interest of a +society.' + + [1] The political letters addressed to Francesco Vettori, at + Rome, and intended probably for the eye of Leo X., were written + in 1514. The discourse addressed to Leo, _sulla riforma dello + stato di Firenze_, may be referred perhaps to 1519. + + [2] Of these meetings Filippo de' Nerli writes in the Seventh + Book of his Commentaries, p. 138: 'Avendo convenuto assai tempo + nell' orto de' Rucellai una certa scuola di giovani letterati e + d' elevato ingegno, infra quali praticava continuamente Niccolò + Machiavelli (ed io ero di Niccolò e di tutti loro amicissimo, e + molto spesso con loro convirsavo), s' esercitavano costoro + assai, mediante le lettere, nelle lezioni dell' istorie, e + sopra di esse, ed a loro istanza compose il Machiavello quel + suo libro de' discorsi sopra Tito Livio, e anco il libro di + que' trattati e ragionamenti sopra la milizia.' + + [3] See Pitti, 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. + pt. ii. p. 294. + + [4] The dedication of the _Discorsi_ contains a phrase which + recalls Machiavelli's words about the _Principe_: 'Perche in + quello io ho espresso quanto io so, e quanto io ho imparato per + una lunga pratica e continua lezione delle cose del mondo.' + +The Seven Books on the Art of War may be referred with certainty to the +same period of Machiavelli's life. They were probably composed in 1520. +If we may venture to connect the works of the historian's leisure, +according to the plan above suggested, this treatise forms a supplement +to the _Principe_ and the _Discorsi_. Both in his analysis of the +successful tyrant and in his description of the powerful commonwealth he +had insisted on the prime necessity of warfare, conducted by the people +and their rulers in person. The military organization of a great kingdom +is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme +for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. +Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice +maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit of his +theory. + +By this time the Medici had determined to take Machiavelli into favor; +and since he had expressed a wish to be set at least to rolling stones, +they found for him a trivial piece of work. The Franciscans at Carpi had +to be requested to organize a separate Province of their Order in the +Florentine dominion; and the conduct of this weighty matter was +intrusted to the former secretary at the Courts of Maximilian and Louis. +Several other missions during the last years of his life devolved upon +Machiavelli; but none of them were of much importance: nor, when the +popular government was instituted in 1527, had he so far regained the +confidence of the Florentines as to resume his old office of war +secretary. This post, considering his recent alliance with the Medicean +party, he could hardly have expected to receive; and therefore it is +improbable that the news of Gianotti's election at all contributed to +cause his death.[1] Disappointment he may indeed have felt: for his +moral force had been squandered during fifteen years in the attempt to +gain the favor of princes who were now once more regarded as the enemies +of their country. When the republic was at last restored, he found +himself in neither camp. The overtures which he had made to the Medici +had been but coldly received; yet they were sufficiently notorious to +bring upon him the suspicion of the patriots. He had not sincerely acted +up to the precept of Polonius: 'This above all,--to thine own self be +true.' His intellectual ability, untempered by sufficient political +consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:-- + + che non furon ribelli, + Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro. + +The great achievement of these years was the composition of the _Istorie +Fiorentine_. The commission for this work he received from Giulio de' +Medici through the Officiali dello Studio in 1520, with an annual +allowance of 100 florins. In 1527, the year of his death, he dedicated +the finished History to Pope Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary +art, though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy and +superficiality,[2] marks an epoch in the development of modern +historiography. It must be remembered that it preceded the great work of +Guicciardini by some years, and that before the date of its appearance +the annalists of Italy had been content with records of events, personal +impressions, and critiques of particular periods. Machiavelli was the +first to contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace +the operation of political forces through successive generations, to +contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over +which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of +the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively +unimportant details. By thus applying the philosophical method to +history, Machiavelli enriched the science of humanity with a new +department. There is something in his view of national existence beyond +the reach of even the profoundest of the classical historians. His style +is adequate to the matter of his work. Never were clear and definite +thoughts expressed with greater precision in language of more masculine +vigor. We are irresistibly compelled, while characterizing this style, +to think of the spare sinews of a trained gladiator. Though Machiavelli +was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments of rhetoric.[3] His images, rare +and carefully chosen, seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate. +Though a philosopher, he never wanders into speculation. Facts and +experience are so thoroughly compacted with reflection in his mind, that +his widest generalizations have the substance of realities. The element +of unreality, if such there be, is due to a misconception of human +nature. Machiavelli seems to have only studied men in masses, or as +political instruments, never as feeling and thinking personalities. + + [1] See Varchi, loc. cit. + + [2] See the criticisms of Ammirato and Romagnosi, quoted by + Cantù, _Letteratura Italiana_, p. 187. + + [3] I shall have to speak elsewhere of Machiavelli's comedies, + occasional poems, novel of 'Belphegor,' etc. + +Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his son Pietro to +Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of medicine taken at the wrong time. He +was attended on his deathbed by a friar, who received his confession. +His private morality was but indifferent. His contempt for weakness and +simplicity was undisguised. His knowledge of the world and men had +turned to cynicism. The frigid philosophy expressed in his political +Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured +humors, made him unpopular. It was supposed that he had died with +blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human +nature into ridicule. Through these myths, as through a mist, we may +discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. +The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too +arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar +conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation +Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of +virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature +either less genius or a better mind.' + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI. + + +The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay--Machiavellism--His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory--Analysis of the +Prince--Nine Conditions of Principalities--The Interest of the Conqueror +acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy--Critique of Louis +XII.--Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism--Three Ways of subduing a +free City--Example of Pisa--Principalities founded by +Adventurers--Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus--Savonarola--Francesco +Sforza--Cesare Borgia--Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him--Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius--A Sketch of Cesare's +Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d' +Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of +Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a +powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of +National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola. + + +After what has been already said about the circumstances under which +Machiavelli composed the _Principe_, we are justified in regarding it as +a sincere expression of his political philosophy. The intellect of its +author was eminently analytical and positive; he knew well how to +confine himself within the strictest limits of the subject he had +chosen. In the _Principe_ it was not his purpose to write a treatise of +morality, but to set forth with scientific accuracy the arts which he +considered necessary to the success of an absolute ruler. We may +therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of +the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth +century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a +truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the +Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically +pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the _Prince_. But it is +no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate +a theory of government in which the interests of the ruler are alone +regarded, which assumes a separation between statecraft and morality, +which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining +high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct, and +which presupposes the corruption, venality, and baseness of mankind at +large. It was this which aroused the animosity of Europe against +Machiavelli, as soon as the Prince attained wide circulation. Nations +accustomed to the Monarchical rather than the Despotic form of +government resented the systematic exposition of an art of tyranny which +had long been practiced among the Italians. The people of the North, +whose moral fiber was still vigorous, and who retained their respect for +established religion, could not tolerate the cynicism with which +Machiavelli analyzed his subject from the merely intellectual point of +view. His name became a byword. 'Am I Machiavel?' says the host in the +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. Marlowe makes the ghost of the great +Florentine speak prologue to the _Jew of Malta_ thus-- + + I count religion but a childish toy, + And hold there is no sin but ignorance. + +When the Counter-reformation had begun in Italy, and desperate efforts +were being made to check the speculative freedom of the Renaissance, the +_Principe_ was condemned by the Inquisition. Meanwhile it was whispered +that the Spanish princes, and the sons of Catherine de' Medici upon the +throne of France, conned its pages just as a manual of toxicology might +be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers. Machiavelli became the +scapegoat of great political crimes; and during the religious wars of +the sixteenth century there were not wanting fanatics who ascribed such +acts of atrocity as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew to his venomous +influence. Yet this book was really nothing more or less than a critical +compendium of facts respecting Italy, a highly condensed abstract of +political experience. In it as in a mirror we may study the lineaments +of the Italian despot who by adventure or by heritage succeeded to the +conduct of a kingdom. At the same time the political principles here +established are those which guided the deliberations of the Venetian +Council and the Papal Court, no less than the actions of a Sforza or a +Borgia upon the path to power. It is therefore a document of the very +highest value for the illustration of the Italian conscience in relation +to political morality. + +The _Principe_ opens with the statement that all forms of government may +be classified as republics or as principalities. Of the latter some are +hereditary, others acquired. Of the principalities acquired in the +lifetime of the ruler some are wholly new, like Milan under Francesco +Sforza; others are added of hereditary kingdoms, like Naples to Spain. +Again, such acquired states have been previously accustomed either to +the rule of a single man or to self-government. Finally they are won +either with the conqueror's own or with borrowed armies, either by +fortune or by ability.[1] Thus nine conditions under which +principalities may be considered are established at the outset. + + [1] The word Virtù, which I have translated ability, is almost + equivalent to the Greek [Greek: _aretê_], before it had + received a moral definition, or to the Roman Virtus. It is very + far, as will be gathered from the sequel of the _Principe_, + from denoting what we mean by Virtue. + +The short chapter devoted by Machiavelli to hereditary principalities +may be passed over as comparatively unimportant. It is characteristic of +Italian politics that the only instance he adduces of this form of +government in Italy is the Duchy of Ferrara. States and cities were so +frequently shifting owners in the sixteenth century that the scientific +politician was justified in confining his attention to the method of +establishing and preserving principalities acquired by force. When he +passes to the consideration of this class, Machiavelli enters upon the +real subject of his essay. The first instance he discusses is that of a +prince who has conquered a dominion which he wishes to unite as firmly +as possible to his hereditary states. The new territory may either +belong to the same nationality and language as the old possession, or +may not. In the former case it will be enough to extinguish the whole +line of the ancient rulers, and to take care that neither the laws nor +the imposts of the province be materially altered. It will then in +course of time become by natural coalition part of the old kingdom. But +if the acquired dominion be separate in language, customs, and +traditions from the old, then arises a real difficulty for the +conqueror. In order to consolidate his empire and to accustom his new +subjects to his rule, Machiavelli recommends that he should either take +up his residence in the subjugated province, or else plant colonies +throughout it, but that he should by no means trust merely to garrisons. +'Colonies,' he remarks, 'are not costly to the prince, are more +faithful, and cause less offense to the subject states; those whom they +may injure, being poor and scattered, are prevented from doing mischief. +For it should be observed that men ought either to be caressed or +trampled out, seeing that small injuries may be avenged, whereas great +ones destroy the possibility of retaliation; and so the damage that has +to be inflicted ought to be such that it need involve no fear of +vengeance.' I quote this passage as a specimen of Machiavelli's direct +and scientific handling of the most inhuman necessities of statecraft, +as conceived by him.[1] He uses no hypocritical palliation to disguise +the egotism of the conqueror. He does not even pretend to take into +consideration any interests but those of the ambitious prince. He treats +humanity as though it were the marble out of which the political artist +should hew the form that pleased his fancy best. He calculates the exact +amount of oppression which will render a nation incapable of resistance, +and relieve the conqueror of trouble in his work of building up a +puissant kingdom for his own aggrandizement. + + [1] It is fair to call attention to the strong expressions used + by Machiavelli in the _Discorsi_, lib. i. cap. 18 and cap. 26, + on the infamies and inhumanities to which the aspirant after + tyranny is condemned. + +What Machiavelli says about mixed principalities is pointed by a +searching critique of the Italian policy of Louis XII. The French king +had well-known claims upon the Duchy of Milan, which the Venetians urged +him to make good. They proposed to unite forces and to divide the +conquered province of Lombardy. Machiavelli does not blame Louis for +accepting this offer and acting in concert with the Republic. His +mistakes began the moment after he had gained possession of Milan, +Genoa, and the majority of the North Italian cities. It was then his +true policy to balance Venice against Rome, to assume the protectorate +of the minor states, and to keep all dangerous rivals out of Italy. +Instead of acting thus, he put Romagna into the hands of the Pope and +divided Naples with the King of Spain. 'Louis indeed,' concludes +Machiavelli, 'was guilty of five capital errors: he destroyed the hopes +of his numerous and weak allies; he increased the power, already too +great, of the Papacy; he introduced a foreign potentate; he neglected to +reside in Italy; he founded no colonies for the maintenance of his +authority. If I am told that Louis acted thus imprudently toward +Alexander and Ferdinand in order to avoid a war, I answer that in each +case the mistake was as bad as any war could be in its results. If I am +reminded of his promise to the Pope, I reply that princes ought to know +how and when to break their faith, as I intend to prove. When I was at +Nantes, the Cardinal of Rouen told me that the Italians did not know how +to conduct a war: I retorted that the French did not understand +statecraft, or they would not have allowed the Church to gain so much +power in Italy. Experience showed that I was right; for the French +wrought their own ruin by aggrandizing the Papacy and introducing Spain +into the realm of Naples.' + +This criticism contains the very essence of political sagacity. It lays +bare the secret of the failure of the French under Charles, under Louis, +and under Francis, to establish themselves in Italy. Expeditions of +parade, however brilliant, temporary conquests, cross alliances, and +bloody victories do not consolidate a kingdom. They upset states and +cause misery to nations: but their effects pass and leave the so-called +conquerors worse off than they were before. It was the doom of Italy to +be ravaged by these inconsequent marauders, who never attempted by +internal organization to found a substantial empire, until the mortmain +of the Spanish rule was laid upon the peninsula, and Austria gained by +marriages what France had failed to win by force of arms. + +The fourth chapter of the _Principe_ is devoted to a parallel between +Monarchies and Despotisms which is chiefly interesting as showing that +Machiavelli appreciated the stability of kingdoms based upon feudal +foundations. France is chosen as the best example of the one and Turkey +of the other. 'The whole empire of the Turk is governed by one Lord; the +others are his servants; he divides his kingdom into satrapies, to which +he appoints different administrators, whom he changes about at pleasure. +But the King of France is placed in the center of a time-honored company +of lords, acknowledged as such by their subjects and loved by them; they +have their own prerogatives, nor can the king deprive them of these +without peril.' Hence it follows that the prince who has once +dispossessed a despot finds ready to his hand a machinery of government +and a band of subservient ministers; while he who may dethrone a monarch +has immediately to cope with a multitude of independent rulers, too +numerous to extinguish and too proud to conciliate. + +Machiavelli now proceeds to discuss the best method of subjugating free +cities which have been acquired by a prince. There are three ways of +doing it, he says. 'The first is to destroy them utterly; the second, to +rule them in your own person; the third, to leave them their +constitution under the conduct of an oligarchy chosen by yourself, and +to be content with tribute. But, to speak the truth, the only safe way +is to ruin them.' This sounds very much like the advice which an old +spider might give to a young one: When you have caught a big fly, suck +him at once; suck out at any rate so much of his blood as may make him +powerless to break your web, and feed on him afterwards at leisure. Then +he goes on to give his reasons. 'He who becomes the master of a city +used to liberty, and does not destroy it, should be prepared to be +undone by it himself, because that name of Liberty, those ancient usages +of Freedom, which no length of years and no benefits can extinguish in +the nation's mind, which cannot be uprooted by any forethought or by any +pains, unless the citizens themselves be broken or dispersed, will +always be a rallying-point for revolution when an opportunity occurs.' +This terrific moral--through which, let it be said in justice to +Machiavelli, the enthusiasm of a patriot transpires--is pointed by the +example of Pisa. Pisa, held for a century beneath the heel of +Florence--her ports shut up, her fields abandoned to marsh fever, her +civic life extinguished, her arts and sciences crushed out--had yet not +been utterly ruined in the true sense of depopulation or dismemberment. +Therefore when Charles VIII. in 1494 entered Pisa, and Orlandi, the +orator, caught him by the royal mantle, and besought him to restore her +liberty, that word, the only word the crowd could catch in his petition, +inflamed a nation: the lions and lilies of Florence were erased from the +public buildings; the Marzocco was dashed from its column on the quay +into the Arno; and in a moment the dead republic awoke to life. +Therefore, argues Machiavelli, so tenacious is the vitality of a free +state that a prudent conqueror will extinguish it entirely or will rule +it in person with a rod of iron. This, be it remembered, is the advice +of Machiavelli, the the Florentine patriot, to Lorenzo de' Medici, the +Florentine tyrant, who has recently resumed his seat upon the neck of +that irrepressible republic. + +Hitherto we have been considering how the state acquired by a conqueror +should be incorporated with his previous dominions. The next section of +Machiavelli's discourse is by far the most interesting. It treats of +principalities created by the arms, personal qualities, and good fortune +of adventurers. Italy alone in the sixteenth century furnished examples +of these tyrannies: consequently that portion of the _Principe_ which is +concerned with them has a special interest for students of the +Renaissance. Machiavelli begins with the founders of kingdoms who have +owed but little to fortune and have depended on their own forces. The +list he furnishes, when tested by modern notions of history, is to say +the least a curious one. It contains Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. +Having mentioned Moses first, Machiavelli proceeds to explain that, +though we have to regard him as the mere instrument of God's purpose, +yet the principles on which the other founders acted were 'not different +from those which Moses derived from so supreme a teacher.' What these +men severally owed to fortune was but the occasion for the display of +the greatness that was in them. Moses found the people of Israel +enslaved in Egypt. Romulus was an exile from Alba. Cyrus had to deal +with the Persian people tired of the empire of effeminate Medes. Theseus +undertook to unite the scattered elements of the Athenian nation. Thus +each of these founders had an opening provided for him, by making use of +which he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into play. The +achievement in each case was afterwards due solely to his own ability, +and the conquest which he made with difficulty was preserved with ease. +This exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when +we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at +the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator +has to overcome, meanwhile, are enormous. 'He has for passionate foes +all such as flourish under the old order, for friends those who might +flourish under the new; but these are lukewarm, partly from fear of +their opponents, on whose side are established law and right, partly +from the incredulity which prevents men from putting faith in what is +novel and untried.' It therefore becomes a matter of necessity that the +innovator should be backed up with force, that he should be in a +position to command and not obliged to sue for aid. This is the reason +why all the prophets who have used arms to enforce their revelations +have succeeded, and why those who have only trusted to their personal +ascendency have failed. Moses, of course, is an illustrious example of +the successful prophet. Savonarola is adduced as a notable instance of a +reformer 'who was ruined in his work of innovation as soon as the +multitude lost their faith in him, since he had no means of keeping +those who had believed firm, or of compelling faith from disbelievers.' +In this critique Machiavelli remains true to his positive and scientific +philosophy of human nature. He will not allow that there are other +permanent agencies in the world than the calculating ability of resolute +men and the might derived from physical forces. + +Among the eminent examples of Italian founders who rose to princely +power by their own ability or by availing themselves of the advantages +which fortune put within their reach, Machiavelli selects Francesco +Sforza and Cesare Borgia. The former is a notable instance of success +achieved by pure _virtù_: 'Francesco, by using the right means, and by +his own singular ability, raised himself from the rank of a private man +to the Duchy of Milan, and maintained with ease the mastery he had +acquired with infinite pains.' Cesare, on the other hand, illustrates +both the strength and the weakness of _fortuna_: 'he acquired his +dominion by the aid derived from his father's position, and when he lost +that he also lost his power, notwithstanding that he used every endeavor +and did all that a prudent and able man ought to do in order to plant +himself firmly in those states which the arms and fortune of others had +placed at his disposal.' It is not necessary to dwell upon the career of +Francesco Sforza. Not he but Cesare Borgia is Machiavelli's hero in this +treatise, the example from which he deduces lessons both of imitation +and avoidance for the benefit of Lorenzo de' Medici. Lorenzo, it must be +remembered, like Cesare, would have the fortunes of the Church to start +with in that career of ambition to which Machiavelli incites him. Unlike +Francesco Sforza, he was no mere soldier of adventure, but a prince, +born in the purple, and bound to make use of those undefined advantages +which he derived from his position in Florence and from the countenance +of his uncle, the Pope. The Duke Valentino, therefore, who is at one and +the same time Machiavelli's ideal of prudence and courage in the conduct +of affairs, and also his chief instance of the instability of fortune, +supplies the philosopher with all he needed for the guidance of his +princely pupil. With the Duke Valentino Machiavelli had conversed on +terms of private intimacy, and there is no doubt that his imagination +had been dazzled by the brilliant intellectual abilities of this +consummate rogue. Dispatched in 1502 by the Florentine Republic to watch +the operations of Cesare at Imola, with secret instructions to offer the +Duke false promises in the hope of eliciting information that could be +relied upon, Machiavelli had enjoyed the rare pleasure of a game at +political écarté with the subtlest and most unscrupulous diplomatist of +his age. He had witnessed his terrible yet beneficial administration of +Romagna. He had been present at his murder of the chiefs of the Orsini +faction at Sinigaglia. Cesare had confided to him, or had pretended to +confide, his schemes of personal ambition, as well as the motives and +the measures of his secret policy. On the day of the election of Pope +Julius II. he had laid bare the whole of his past history before the +Florentine secretary, and had pointed out the single weakness of which +he felt himself to have been guilty. In these trials of skill and this +exchange of confidence it is impossible to say which of the two +gamesters may have been the more deceived. But Machiavelli felt that the +Borgia supplied him with a perfect specimen for the study of the arts of +statecraft; and so deep was the impression produced upon his mind, that +even after the utter failure of Cesare's designs he made him the hero of +the political romance before us. His artistic perception of the perfect +and the beautiful, both in unscrupulous conduct and in frigid +calculation of conflicting interests, was satisfied by the steady +selfishness, the persistent perfidy, the profound mistrust of men, the +self-command in the execution of perilous designs, the moderate and +deliberate employment of cruelty for definite ends, which he observed in +the young Duke, and which he has idealized in his own _Principe_. That +nature, as of a salamander adapted to its element of fire, as of 'a +resolute angel that delights in flame,' to which nothing was sacred, +which nothing could daunt, which never for a moment sacrificed reason to +passion, which was incapable of weakness or fatigue, had fascinated +Machiavelli's fancy. The moral qualities of the man, the base +foundations upon which he raised his power, the unutterable scandals of +his private life, and the hatred of all Christendom were as nothing in +the balance. Such considerations had, according to the conditions of his +subject, to be eliminated before he weighed the intellectual qualities +of the adventurer. 'If all the achievements of the Duke are +considered'--it is Machiavelli speaking--'it will be found that he built +up a great substructure for his future power; nor do I know what +precepts I could furnish to a prince in his commencement better than +such as are to be derived from his example.' It is thus that +Machiavelli, the citizen, addresses Lorenzo, the tyrant of Florence. He +says to him: Go thou and do likewise. And what, then, is this likewise? + +Cesare, being a Pope's son, had nothing to look to but the influence of +his father. At first he designed to use this influence in the Church; +but after murdering his elder brother, he threw aside the Cardinal's +scarlet and proclaimed himself a political aspirant. His father could +not make him lord of any state, unless it were a portion of the +territory of the Church: and though, by creating, as he did, twelve +Cardinals in one day, he got the Sacred College to sanction his +investiture of the Duchy of Romagna, yet both Venice and Milan were +opposed to this scheme. Again there was a difficulty to be encountered +in the great baronial houses of Orsini and Colonna, who at that time +headed all the mercenary troops of Italy, and who, as Roman nobles, had +a natural hatred for the Pope. It was necessary to use their aid in the +acquisition of Cesare's principality. It was no less needful to humor +their animosity. Under these circumstances Alexander thought it best to +invite the French king into Italy, bargaining with Louis that he would +dissolve his marriage in return for protection awarded to Cesare. The +Colonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the Orsini to be +flattered. Cesare, by the help of his French allies and the Orsini +captains, took possession of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to +overrun Romagna. In this enterprise he succeeded to the full. Romagna +had been, from the earliest period of Italian history, a nest of petty +tyrants who governed badly and who kept no peace in their dominions. +Therefore the towns were but languid in their opposition to Cesare, and +were soon more than contented with a conqueror who introduced a good +system for the administration of justice. But now two difficulties +arose. The subjugation of Romagna had been effected by the help of the +French and the Orsini. Cesare as yet had formed no militia of his own, +and his allies were becoming suspicious. The Orsini had shown some +slackness at Faenza; and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master of +Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the capture of Piombino--which +conquests he completed during 1500 and 1501--Louis began to be jealous +of him. The problem for the Duke was how to disembarrass himself of the +two forces by which he had acquired a solid basis for his future +principality. His first move was to buy over the Cardinal d'Amboise, +whose influence in the French Court was supreme and thus to keep his +credit for awhile afloat with Louis. His second was to neutralize the +power of the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colonnesi, and +partly by superseding them in their command as captains. For the latter +purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the +lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he +collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of +mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him +established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their +own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the +career of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The conspiracy known +as the 'Diet of La Magione' was the consequence. In this conjuration the +Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, +together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Città di Castello, the +Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from +Siena, and Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part. The result of their +machinations against the common foe was that Cesare for a moment lost +Urbino, and was nearly unseated in Romagna. But the French helped him, +and he stood firm. Still it was impossible to believe that Louis XII. +would suffer him to advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as +long as he continued between the French and the Orsini his position was +of necessity insecure. The former had to be cast off; the latter to be +extirpated; and yet he had not force enough to play an open game. 'He +therefore,' says Machiavelli, 'turned to craft, and displayed such skill +in dissimulation that the Orsini through the mediation of Paolo became +his friends again.' The cruelty of Cesare Borgia was only equalled by +his craft; and it was by a supreme exercise of his power of +fascination that he lured the foes who had plotted against him at La +Magione into his snare at Sinigaglia. Paolo Orsini, Francesco Orsini, +duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo were all +men of arms, accustomed to intrigue and to bloodshed, and more than one +of them were stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery. Yet +such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in 1502 he managed to assemble +them, apart from their troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had +them strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the opposition and +enlisted their forces in his own service, Cesare, to use the phrase of +Machiavelli, 'had laid good foundations for his future power.' He +commanded a sufficient territory; he wielded the temporal and spiritual +power of his father; he was feared by the princes and respected by the +people throughout Italy; his cruelty and perfidy and subtlety and +boldness caused him to be universally admired. But as yet he had only +laid foundations. The empire of Italy was still to win; for he aspired +to nothing else, and it is even probable that he entertained a notion of +secularizing the Papacy. France was the chief obstacle to his ambition. +The alarm of Louis had at last been roused. But Louis' own mistake in +bringing the Spaniards into Naples afforded Cesare the means of shaking +off the French control. He espoused the cause of Spain, and by +intriguing now with the one power and now with the other made himself +both formidable and desirable to each. His geographical position between +Milan and Naples enforced this policy. Another difficulty against which +he had to provide was in the future rather than the present. Should his +father die, and a new Pope adverse to his interests be elected, he might +lose not only the support of the Holy See, but also his fiefs of Romagna +and Urbino. To meet this contingency he took four precautions, mentioned +with great admiration by Machiavelli. In the first place he +systematically murdered the heirs of the ruling families of all the +cities he acquired--as for example three Varani at Camerino, two +Manfredi at Faenza, the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigaglia, and others +whom it would be tedious to mention. By this process he left no scion of +the ancient houses for a future Pope to restore. In the second place he +attached to his person by pensions, offices, and emoluments, all the +Roman gentry, so that he might be able to keep the new Pope a prisoner +and unarmed in Rome. Thirdly, he reduced the College of Cardinals, by +bribery, terrorism, poisoning, and packed elections, to such a state +that he could count on the creation of a Pope, if not his nominee, at +least not hostile to his interests. Fourthly, he lost no time, but +pushed his plans of conquest on with utmost speed, so as, if possible, +to command a large territory at the time of Alexander's death. +Machiavelli, who records these four points with approbation, adds: 'He +therefore, who finds it needful in his new authority to secure himself +against foes, to acquire allies, to gain a point by force or fraud, +etc., etc., could not discover an ensample more vigorous and blooming +than that of Cesare.' Such is the panegyric which Machiavelli, writing, +as it seems to me, in all good faith and innocence, records of a man +who, taken altogether, is perhaps the most selfish, perfidious, and +murderous of adventurers on record. The only fault for which he blames +him is that he did not prevent the election of Pope Julius II, by +concentrating his influence on either the Cardinal d'Amboise or a +Spaniard. + +It is curious to read the title of the chapter following that which +criticises the action of Cesare Borgia: it runs thus, 'Concerning those +who have attained to sovereignty by crimes.' Cesare was clearly not one +of these men in the eyes of Machiavelli, who confines his attention to +Agathocles of Syracuse, and to Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand who +acquired the lordship of Fermo by murdering his uncle and benefactor, +Giovanni Fogliani, and all the chief men of the city at a banquet to +which he had invited them. This atrocity, according to Machiavelli's +creed, would have been justified, if Oliverotto had combined cruelty and +subtlety in proper proportions. But his savagery was not sufficiently +veiled; a prince should never incur odium by crimes of violence, but +only use them as the means of inspiring terror. Besides, Oliverotto was +so simple as to fall at last into the snare of Cesare Borgia at +Sinigaglia. Cesare himself supplies Machiavelli with a notable example +of the way in which cruelty can be well used. Having found the cities of +Romagna in great disorder, Cesare determined to quell them by the +ferocity of a terrible governor. For this purpose he chose Messer Ramiro +d' Orco, 'a man cruel and quick of action, to whom he gave the fullest +power.' A story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his temper in +a very bizarre fashion: he one day kicked a clumsy page on to the fire, +and held him there with a poker till he was burned up. Acting after this +fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole +province into comparative tranquillity. But it did not suit Cesare to +incur the odium which the man's cruelty brought on his administration. +Accordingly he had him decapitated one night and exposed to public view, +together with the block and bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena. Of +the art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to order by the cruelty +of his agent, and then avoided the odium of this cruelty by using the +wretched creature as an appalling example of his justice and his power, +Machiavelli wholly approves. His theory is that cruelty should be +employed for certain definite purposes, but that the Prince should +endeavor to shun as far as possible the hatred it inspires. In justice +both to Machiavelli and to Cesare, it should be said that the +administration of Romagna was far better under the Borgia rule than it +had ever been before. The exhibition of savage violence of which +Machiavelli approves was perhaps needed to cow so brutalized a +population. + +In those chapters which Machiavelli has devoted to the exposition of the +qualities that befit a Prince, it is clear that Cesare Borgia was not +unfrequentlv before his eyes.[1] The worst thing that can be said about +Italy of the sixteenth century is that such an analyst as Machiavelli +should have been able to idealize an adventurer whose egotistic +immorality was so undisguised. The ethics of this profound anatomist of +human motives were based upon a conviction that men are altogether bad. +When discussing the question whether it be better to be loved or feared, +Machiavelli decides that 'it is far safer to be feared than loved, if +you must choose; seeing that you may say of men generally that they are +ungrateful and changeable, dissemblers, apt to shun danger, eager for +gain; as long as you serve them, they offer you everything, down to +their very children, if you have no need; but when you want help, they +fail you. Therefore it is best to put no faith in their pretended love.' +This is language which could only be used in a country where loyalty was +unknown and where all political and social combinations were founded +upon force or convenience. Princes must, however, be cautious not to +injure their subjects in their honor or their property--especially the +latter, since men 'forget the murder of their fathers quicker than the +loss of their money.' Under another heading Machiavelli returns to the +same topic, and lays it down as an axiom that, since the large majority +of men are bad, a prince must learn in self-defense how to be bad, and +must use this science when and where he deems appropriate, endeavoring, +however, under all circumstances to pass for good. + + [1] In a letter to Fr. Vettori (Jan. 31, 1514) he says: 'Il + duca Valentino, l' opere del quale io imiterei sempre quando + fossi principe nuove. + +He brings the same desperate philosophy of life, the same bitter +experience of mankind, to bear upon his discussion of the faith of +princes. The chapter which is entitled 'How princes ought to keep their +word' is one of the most brilliantly composed and thoroughly +Machiavellian of the whole treatise. He starts with the assertion that +to fight the battles of life in accordance with law is human, to depend +on force is brutal; yet when the former method is insufficient, the +latter must be adopted. A prince should know how to combine the natures +of the man and of the beast; and this is the meaning of the mythus of +Cheiron, who was made the tutor of Achilles. He should strive to acquire +the qualities of the fox and of the lion, in order that he may both +avoid snares and guard himself from wolves. A prudent prince cannot and +must not keep faith, when it is harmful to do so, or when the occasion +under which he promised has passed by. He will always find colorable +pretexts for breaking his word; and if he learns well how to feign, he +will have but little difficulty in deceiving people. Among the +innumerable instances of successful hypocrites Machiavelli can think of +none more excellent than Alexander VI. 'He never did anything else but +deceive men, nor ever thought of anything but this, and always found apt +matter for his practice. Never was there a man who had greater force in +swearing and tying himself down to his engagements, or who observed them +less. Nevertheless his wiles were always successful in the way he +wished, because he well knew that side of the world.' It is curious that +Machiavelli should have forgotten that the whole elaborate life's policy +of Alexander and his son was ruined precisely by their falling into one +of their own traps, and that the mistake or treason of a servant upset +the calculations of the two most masterly deceivers of their age.[1] +Following out the same line of thought, which implies that in a bad +world a prince cannot afford to be good, Machiavelli asserts: 'It is not +necessary that a prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, +just: nay, I will venture to say, that if he had all these qualities and +always used them, they would harm him. But he must _seem_ to have them, +especially if he be new in his principality, where he will find it quite +impossible to exercise these virtues, since in order to maintain his +power he will be often obliged to act contrary to humanity, charity, +religion.' Machiavelli does not advise him to become bad for the sake of +badness, but to know when to quit the path of virtue for the +preservation of his kingdom. 'He must take care to say nothing that is +not full of these five qualities, and must always appear all mercy, all +loyalty, all humanity, all justice, all religion, especially the last.' +On the advantage of a reputation for piety Machiavelli insists most +strongly. He points out how Ferdinand the Catholic used the pretext of +religious zeal in order to achieve the conquest of Granada, to invade +Africa, to expel the Moors, and how his perfidies in Italy, his +perjuries to France, were colored with a sanctimonious decency. + + [1] Perhaps this is an indirect argument against the legend of + their death. + +After reading these passages we feel that though it may be true that +Machiavelli only spoke with scientific candor of the vices which were +common to all statesmen in his age--though the Italians were so corrupt +that it seemed hopeless to deal fairly with them--yet there was a +radical taint in the soul of the man who could have the heart to cull +these poisonous herbs of policy and distill their juices to a +quintessence for the use of the prince to whom he was confiding the +destinies of Italy.[1] Almost involuntarily we remember the oath which +Arthur administered to his knights, when he bade them 'never to do +outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no means to be +cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of +forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore.' +In a land where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either as an +ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Machiavelli could scarcely +have been published. The Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It +was possible among them for the philosophers to teach the princes that +success purchased at the expense of honor, loyalty, humanity, and truth +might be illustrious. + +It is refreshing to turn from those chapters in which Machiavelli +teaches the Prince how to cope with the world by using the vices of the +wicked, to his exposition of the military organization suited to the +maintenance of a great kingdom. Machiavelli has no mean or humble +ambition for his Prince: 'double will his glory be, who has founded a +new realm, and fortified and adorned it with good laws, good arms, good +friends, and good ensamples.' What the enterprise to which he fain would +rouse Lorenzo really is, will appear in the conclusion. Meanwhile he +encourages him by the example of Ferdinand the Catholic to gird his +loins up for great enterprises. He bids him be circumspect in his choice +of secretaries, seeing that 'the first opinion formed of a prince and of +his capacity is derived from the men whom he has gathered round him.' He +points out how he should shun flattery and seek respectful but sincere +advice. Finally he reminds him that a prince is impotent unless he can +command obedience by his arms. Fortresses are a doubtful source of +strength; against foreign foes they are worse than useless; against +subjects they are worthless in comparison with the goodwill of the +people: 'the best fortress possible is to escape the hatred of your +subjects.' Everything therefore depends upon the well-ordering of a +national militia. The neglect of that ruined the princes of Italy and +enabled Charles VIII. to conquer the fairest of European kingdoms with +wooden spurs and a piece of chalk.[2] + + [1] In the _Discorsi_, lib. i. cap. 55, he calls Italy 'la + coruttela del mondo,' and judges that her case is desperate; + 'non si può sperare nelle provincie che in questi tempi si + veggono corrotte, come è l' Italia sopra tutte le altre.' + + [2] The references in this paragraph are made to chapters + xx.-xxiv. and chapter xii. of the _Principe_. + +In his discourse on armies Machiavelli lays it down that the troops with +which a prince defends his state are either his own, or mercenaries, or +auxiliaries, or mixed. 'Mercenary and auxiliary forces are both useless +and perilous, and he who founds the security of his dominion on the +former will never be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, +ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, truculent to their +friends, cowardly among foes; they have no fear of God, no faith with +men; you are only safe with them before they are attacked; in peace they +plunder you; in war you are the prey of your enemies. The cause of this +is that they have no other love nor other reason to keep the field, +beyond a little pay, which is far from sufficient to make them wish to +die for you. They are willing enough to be your soldiers so long as you +are at peace, but when war comes their impulse is to fly or sneak away. +It ought to be easy to establish the truth of this assertion, since the +ruin of Italy is due to nothing else except this, that we have now for +many years depended upon mercenary arms.'[1] Here he touches the real +weakness of the Italian states. Then he proceeds to explain further the +rottenness of the Condottiere system. Captains of adventure are either +men of ability or not. If they are, you have to fear lest their ambition +prompt them to turn their arms against yourself or your allies. This +happened to Queen Joan of Naples, who was deserted by Sforza Attendolo +in her sorest need; to the Milanese, when Francesco Sforza made himself +their despot; to the Venetians, who were driven to decapitate +Carmagnuola because they feared him. The only reason why the Florentines +were not enslaved by Sir John Hawkwood was that, though an able general, +he achieved no great successes in the field. In the same way they +escaped by luck from Sforza, who turned his attention to Milan, and from +Braccio, who formed designs against the Church and Naples. If Paolo +Vitelli had been victorious against Pisa (1498), he would have held them +at discretion. In each of these cases it was only the good fortune of +the republic which saved it from a military despotism. If, on the other +hand, the mercenary captains are men of no capacity, you are defeated in +the field. + + [1] See chapter xii. of the _Principe._ + +Proceeding to the historical development of this bad system, Machiavelli +points out how after the decline of the Imperial authority in Italy, the +Papacy and the republics got the upper hand. Priests and merchants were +alike unwilling to engage in war. Therefore they took mercenary troops +into their pay. The companies of the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi were +formed; and 'after these came all those others who have ruled this sort +of warfare down to our own days. The consequence of their valor is that +Italy has been harried by Charles, plundered by Louis, forced by +Ferdinand, insulted by the Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the +reputation of their cavalry by depressing the infantry. Being without +dominion of their own, and making war their commerce, a few foot +soldiers brought them no repute, while they were unable to support many. +Therefore they confined themselves to cavalry, until in a force of +20,000 men you could not number 2,000 infantry. Besides this they +employed all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their soldiers of +fatigue and peril, by refraining from slaughter and from taking +prisoners without ransom. Night attacks and sorties were abandoned; +stockades and trenches in the camp were given up; no one thought of a +winter campaign. All these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in +order to avoid, as I have said, fatigue and peril. Whereby they have +reduced Italy to slavery and insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French +troops borrowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged by Julius +II., are even worse. 'He who wants to be unable to win the game should +make use of these forces; for they are far more dangerous than +mercenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is ready made--they +are united together, and inclined to obey their own masters. Machiavelli +enforces this moral by one of those rare but energetic figures which add +virile dignity to his discourse. He compares auxiliary troops to the +armor of Saul, which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his +stone and sling. 'In one word, arms borrowed from another either fall +from your back, or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It remains +for a prince to form his own troops and to take the field in person, +like Cesare Borgia, when he discarded his French allies and the +mercenary aid of the Orsini captains. Republics should follow the same +course, dispatching, as the Romans did, their own citizens to the war, +and controlling by law the personal ambition of victorious generals. It +was thus that the Venetians prospered in their conquests, before they +acquired their provinces in Italy and adopted the Condottiere system +from their neighbors. 'A prince, therefore, should have but one object, +one thought, one art--the art of war.' Those who have followed this rule +have attained to sovereignty, like Francesco Sforza, who became Duke of +Milan; those who have neglected it have lost even hereditary kingdoms, +like the last Sforzas, who sank from dukedom into private life. Even +amid the pleasures of the chase a prince should always be studying the +geographical conformation of his country with a view to its defense, and +should acquire a minute knowledge of such strategical laws as are +everywhere applicable. He should read history with the same object, and +should keep before his eyes the example of those great men of the past +from whom he can learn lessons for his guidance in the present. + +This brings us to the peroration of the _Principe_, which contains the +practical issue toward which the whole treatise has been tending, the +patriotic thought that reflects a kind of luster even on the darkest +pages that have gone before. Like Thetis, Machiavelli has dipped his +Achilles in the Styx of infernal counsels; like Cheiron, he has shown +him how the human and the bestial natures should be combined in one who +has to break the teeth of wolves and keep his feet from snares; like +Hephaistos, he has forged for him invulnerable armor. The object toward +which this preparation has been leading is the liberation of Italy from +the barbarians. The slavery of Israel in Egypt, the oppression of the +Persians by the Medes, the dispersion of the Athenians into villages, +were the occasions which enabled Moses and Cyrus and Theseus to display +their greatness. The new Prince, who would fain win honor in Italy and +confer upon his country untold benefits, finds her at the present moment +'more enslaved than the Hebrews, more downtrodden than the Persians, +more disunited than the Athenians, without a chief, without order, +beaten, despoiled, mangled, overrun, subject to every sort of +desolation.' Fortune could not have offered him a nobler opportunity. +'See how she prays God to send her some one who should save her from +these barbarous cruelties ind insults! See her all ready and alert to +follow any standard, if only there be a man to raise it!' Then +Machiavelli addresses himself to the chief of the Medici in person. 'Nor +is there at the present moment any place more full of hope for her than +your illustrious House, which by its valor and its fortune, favored by +God and by the Church, whereof it is now the head, might take the lead +in this delivery.' This is followed by one of the rare passages of +courtly rhetoric which, when Machiavelli condescends to indulge in them, +add peculiar splendor to his style. Then he turns again to speak of the +means which should immediately be used. He urges Lorenzo above all +things to put no faith in mercenaries or auxiliaries, but to raise his +own forces, and to rely on the Italian infantry. If Italian armies have +always been defeated in the field during the past twenty years, it is +not due so much to their defective courage as to the weakness of their +commanders. Lorenzo will have to raise a force capable of coping with +the Swiss, the Spanish, and the French. The respect with which +Machiavelli speaks at this supreme moment of these foreign troops, +proves how great was their prestige in Italy; yet he ventures to point +out that there are faults peculiar to each of them: the Spanish infantry +cannot stand a cavalry charge, and the Switzers are liable to be +disconcerted by the rapid attack of the wiry infantry of Spain. It is +therefore necessary to train troops capable of resisting cavalry, and +not afraid of facing any foot soldiers in the world. 'This opportunity, +therefore, must not be suffered to slip by; in order that Italy may +after so long a time at last behold her saviour. Nor can I find words to +describe the love with which he would be hailed in all the provinces +that have suffered through these foreign deluges, the thirst for +vengeance, the stubborn fidelity, the piety, the tears, that he would +meet What gates would be closed against him? What people would refuse +him allegiance? What jealousy would thwart him? What Italian would be +found to refuse him homage? This rule of the barbarians stinks in the +nostrils of us all. Then let your illustrious House assume this +enterprise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just enterprises +are begun, that so, under your flag, this land of ours may be ennobled, +and under your auspices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch:-- + + 'Lo, valor against rage + Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long; + For that old heritage + Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong. + +With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the +_Principe_ closes. + +Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has recorded a judgment of +Machiavelli's treatise in relation to the political conditions of Italy +at the end of the mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most +complete apology for the author it is possible to make. 'This book,' he +says, 'has often been cast aside with horror as containing maxims of the +most revolting tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the +necessity of constituting a state which caused him to lay down the +principles on which alone states could be formed under the +circumstances. The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely +suppressed; and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with the +means which he proposes both as the only available and also as wholly +justifiable--including, as these do, the most reckless violence, all +kinds of deception, murder, and the like--yet we must confess that the +despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch +as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly +engrained in them.' + +Yet after the book has been shut and the apology has been weighed, we +cannot but pause and ask ourselves this question, Which was the truer +patriot--Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and corruptions +of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom +it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and +enforcing repentance--Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom +those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of +Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without +a moral reformation no liberty was possible? We shall have to consider +the action of Savonarola in another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much +to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes +like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free. Hypocrisy, +treachery, dissimulation, cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the +enslaved. Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and by his +experience of the present to defend these vices, as the necessary +qualities of the prince whom he would fain have chosen for the saviour +of his country. It is legitimate to excuse him on the ground that the +Italians of his age had not conceived a philosophy of right which should +include duties as well as privileges, and which should guard the +interests of the governed no less than those of the governor. It is true +that the feudal conception of Monarchy, so well apprehended by him in +the fourth chapter of the _Principe,_ had nowhere been realized in +Italy, and that therefore the right solution of the political problem +seemed to lie in setting force against force, and fraud against fraud, +for a sublime purpose. It may also be urged with justice that the +historians and speculators of antiquity, esteemed beyond their value by +the students of the sixteenth century, confirmed him in his application +of a positive philosophy to statecraft. The success which attended the +violence and dissimulation of the Romans, as described by Livy, induced +him to inculcate the principles on which they acted. The scientific +method followed by Aristotle in the Politics encouraged him in the +adoption of a similar analysis; while the close parallel between ancient +Greece and mediaeval Italy was sufficient to create a conviction that +the wisdom of the old world would be precisely applicable to the +conditions of the new. These, however, are exculpations of the man +rather than justifications of his theory. The theory was false and +vicious. And the fact remains that the man, impregnated by the bad +morality of the period in which he lived, was incapable of ascending +above it to the truth, was impotent with all his acumen to read the +deepest lessons of past and present history, and in spite of his +acknowledged patriotism succeeded only in adding his conscious and +unconscious testimony to the corruption of the country that he loved. +The broad common-sense, the mental soundness, the humane instinct and +the sympathy with nature, which give fertility and wholeness to the +political philosophy of men like Burke, are absent in Machiavelli. In +spite of its vigor, his system implies an inversion of the ruling laws +of health in the body politic. In spite of its logical cogency, it is +inconclusive by reason of defective premises. Incomparable as an essay +in pathological anatomy, it throws no light upon the working of a normal +social organism, and has at no time been used with profit even by the +ambitious and unscrupulous. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. + + +The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas +V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The +Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the +Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in +Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander +VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the-- +Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of Gandia +Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius II.--His +violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo X.--His +Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian VI.--His +Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence. + + +In the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries the +authority of the Popes, both as Heads of the Church and as temporal +rulers, had been impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A +new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 1447, and ended during +the pontificate of Clement VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through +the whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs than as +pontiffs, and the secularization of the See of Rome was earned to its +utmost limits. The contrast between the sacerdotal pretensions and the +personal immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor had the chiefs of the +Church yet learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with +suspicion. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal States +had become a recognized kingdom; while the Popes of this later epoch +were endeavoring by means of the inquisition and the educational orders +to check the free spirit of Italy. + +The history of Italy has at all times been closely bound up with that of +the Papacy; but at no period has this been more the case than during +these eighty years of Papal worldliness, ambition, depotism, and +profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption of the European +nations into Italy and by the secession of the Teutonic races from the +Latin Church. In this short space of time a succession of Popes filled +the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety--displaying a pride so +regal, a cynicism so unblushing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so +suicidal as to favor the belief that they had been placed there in the +providence of God to warn the world against Babylon. At the same time +the history of the Papal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the +contradictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We find in the Popes +of this period what has been already noticed in the despots--learning, +the patronage of of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the +refinements of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently combined +with barbarous ferocity of temper and with savage and coarse tastes. On +the one side we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have +scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the other, a seeming +zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time +worshiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins or liberation +from burdensome engagements; at another he is trampled under foot, in +his capacity of sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised +sensuality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy marching to its end by +murders, treasons, interdicts, and imprisonments; the open sale of +spiritual privileges; commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments; +hypocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and perjury reduced to +system--these are the ordinary scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the +Pope is still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. His curse +and blessing carry death and life. He rises from the bed of harlots to +unlock or bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of crime +he believes himself to be the representative of Christ on earth. These +anomalies, glaring as they seem to us, and obvious as they might be to +deeper thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock the mass +of men who witnessed them. The Renaissance was so dazzling by its +brilliancy, so confusing by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions +were obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of new life, a +carnival of liberated energies. The corruption of Italy was only equaled +by its culture. Its immorality was matched by its enthusiasm. It was +not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the fermentation of a new +age coming into life, that bred the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth +and the sixteenth centuries. The contrast between mediæval Christianity +and renascent Paganism--the sharp conflict of two adverse principles, +destined to fuse their forces and to recompose the modern world--made +the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is the first effervescence +of these elements so well displayed as in the history of those Pontiffs +who, after striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity beneath a +cowl, are now the chief actors in the comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus +raising their foreheads once more to the light of day. + +The struggle carried on between the Popes of the thirteenth century and +the House of Hohenstauffen ended in the elevation of the Princes of +Anjou to the throne of Naples--the most pernicious of all the evils +inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed the French tyranny, +under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni. Benedict XI. was poisoned +at the instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was transferred +to Avignon. The Popes lost their hold upon the city of Rome and upon +those territories of Romagna, the March, and S. Peter's Patrimony which +had been confirmed to them by the grant of Rodolph of Hapsburg (1273). +They had to govern their Italian dependencies by means of Legates, +while, one by one, the cities which had recognized their sway passed +beneath the yoke of independent princes. The Malatesti established +themselves in Rimini, Pesaro, and Fano; the house of Montefeltro +confirmed its occupation of Urbino; Camerino, Faenza, Ravenna, Forli, +and Imola became the appanages of the Varani, the Manfredi, the +Polentani, the Ordelaffi, and the Alidosi.[1] The traditional supremacy +of the Popes was acknowledged in these tyrannies; but the nobles I have +named acquired a real authority, against which Egidio Albornoz and +Robert of Geneva struggled to a great extent in vain, and to break which +at a future period taxed the whole energies of Sixtus and of Alexander. + + [1] See Mach. _Ist. Fior_. lib. i. + +While the influence of the Popes was thus weakened in their states +beyond the Apennines, three great families, the Orsini, the Savelli, and +the Colonnesi, grew to princely eminence in Rome and its immediate +neighborhood. They had been severally raised to power during the second +half of the thirteenth century by the nepotism of Nicholas III., +Honorius IV., and Nicholas IV. This nepotism bore baneful fruits in the +future; for during the exile at Avignon the houses of Colonna and Orsini +became so overbearing as to threaten the freedom and safety of the +Popes. It was again reserved for Sixtus and Alexander to undo the work +of their predecessors and to secure the independence of the Holy See by +the coercion of these towering nobles. + +In the States of the Church the temporal power of the Popes, founded +upon false donations, confirmed by tradition, and contested by rival +despots, was an anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though +different, was no less peculiar. While the factions of Orsini and +Colonna divided the Campagna and wrangled in the streets of the city, +Rome continued to preserve, in form at least, the old constitution of +Caporioni and Senator. The Senator, elected by the people, swore, not to +obey the Pope, but to defend his person. The government was ostensibly +republican. The Pope had no sovereign rights, but only the ascendency +inseparable from his wealth and from his position as Primate of +Christendom. At the same time the spirit of Arnold of Brescia, of +Brancaleone, and of Rienzi revived from time to time in patriots like +Porcari and Baroncelli, who resented the encroachments of the Church +upon the privileges of the city. Rome afforded no real security to the +members of the Holy College. They commanded no fortress like the +Castello of Milan, and had no army at their disposition. When the people +or the nobles rose against them, the best they could do was to retire to +Orvieto or Viterbo, and to wait the passing of the storm. + +Such was the position of the Pope, considered as one of the ruling +princes of Italy, before the election of Nicholas V. His authority was +wide but undefined, confirmed by prescription, but based on neither +force nor legal right. Italy, however, regarded the Papacy as +indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome was proud to be called the +metropolis of Christendom, and ready to sacrifice the shadow of +republican liberty for the material advantages which might accrue from +the sovereignty of her bishop. How the Roman burghers may have felt upon +this point we gather from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the +administration of Nicholas: 'The city had become a city of gold through +the jubilee; the dignity of the citizens was respected; all reasonable +petitions were granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, no new +taxes. Justice was fairly administered. It was the whole care of the +Pontiff to adorn the city.'[1] The prosperity which the Papal court +brought to Rome was the main support of the Popes as princes, at a time +when many thinkers looked with Dante's jealousy upon the union of +temporal and spiritual functions in the Papacy.[2] Moreover, the whole +of Italy, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was undergoing a +gradual and instinctive change in politics; commonwealths were being +superseded by tyrannies, and the sentiments of the race at large were by +no means unfavorable to this revolution. Now was the proper moment, +therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill-defined authority into a +settled despotism, to secure themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to +subdue the States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction. + + [1] See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.). + + [2] Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation of + Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas, + contained these reminiscences of the 'De Monarchiá': 'Ut Papa + tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Cæsaris ... tune Papa et + erit et dicetur pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesæ.' + +The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who ascended the Chair of S. +Peter, as Nicholas V., in 1447. One part of his biography belongs to the +history of scholarship, and need not here be touched upon. Educated at +Florence, under the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed those +principles of deference to princely authority which were supplanting the +old republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the +Catholic Church were healed; and finding no opposition to his spiritual +power, he determined to consolidate the temporalities of his See. In +this purpose he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a +Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republican enthusiasm in the +city at the moment of the Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted +against his liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates were +put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope proclaimed himself a +monarch. The vast wealth which the jubilee of 1450 had poured into the +Papal coffers[1] he employed in beautifying the city of Rome and in +creating a stronghold for the Sovereign Pontiff. The mausoleum of +Hadrian, used long before as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now +strengthened, while the bridge of S. Angelo and the Leonine city were so +connected and defended by a system of walls and outworks as to give the +key of Rome into the hands of the Pope. A new Vatican began to rise, and +the foundations of a nobler S. Peter's Church were laid within the +circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, conceived the great +idea of restoring the supremacy of Rome, not after the fashion of a +Hildebrand, by enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but by +establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the architectural +magnificence of the Eternal City, and by rendering his court the center +of European culture. In the will which he recited on his death-bed to +the princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done for the +secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome, explaining his deep +sense of the necessity of securing the Popes from internal revolution +and external force, together with his desire to exalt the Church by +rendering her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. This +testament of Nicholas remains a memorable document. Nothing illustrates +more forcibly the transition from the Middle Ages to the worldliness of +the Renaissance than the conviction of the Pontiff that the destinies of +Christianity depended on the state and glory of the town of Rome. What +he began was carried on amid crime, anarchy, and bloodshed by successive +Popes of the Renaissance, until at last the troops of Frundsberg paved +the way, in 1527, for the Jesuits of Loyola, and Rome, still the Eternal +City, cloaked her splendor and her scandals beneath the black pall of +Spanish inquisitors. The political changes in the Papacy initiated by +Nicholas had been, however, by that date fully accomplished, and for +more than three centuries the Popes have since held rank among the kings +of the earth. + + [1] The bank of the Medici alone held 100,000 florins for the + Pope. Vespasiano, _Vit, Nic. V._ + +Of Alfonso Borgia, who reigned for three years as Calixtus III., little +need be said, except that his pontificate prepared for the greatness of +his nephew, Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment to his +uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been imbittered by the fall of +Constantinople and the imminent peril which threatened Europe from the +Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were directed towards the one end +of uniting the European nations against the infidel. Æneas Sylvius +Piccolomini, as an author, an orator, a diplomatist, a traveller, and a +courtier, bears a name illustrious in the annals of the Renaissance. As +a Pope, he claims attention for the single-hearted zeal which he +displayed in the vain attempt to rouse the piety of Christendom against +the foes of civilization and the faith. Rarely has a greater contrast +been displayed between the man and the pontiff than in the case of Pius. +The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking man of letters and the world +has become a Holy Father, jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on +stirring Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their force three +centuries before. Frederick II. and S. Louis closed the age of the +Crusades, the one by striking a bargain with the infidel, the other by +snatching at a martyr's crown. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was the mirror +of his times--a humanist and stylist, imbued with the rhetorical and +pseudo-classic taste of the earlier Renaissance. Pius II. is almost an +anachronism. The disappointment which the learned world experienced when +they discovered that the new Pope, from whom so much had been expected, +declined to play the part of their Mæcenas, may be gathered from the +epigrams of Filelfo upon his death[1]:-- + + Gaudeat orator, Musæ gaudete Latinæ; + Sustulit e medio quod Deus ipse Pium. + Ut bene consuluit doctis Deus omnibus æque, + Quos Pius in cunctos se tulit usque gravem. + Nunc sperare licet. Nobis Deus optime Quintum + Reddito Nicoleon Eugeniumve patrem. + +and again:-- + + Hac sibi quam vivus construxit clauditur arca + Corpore; nam Stygios mens habet atra lacus. + +Pius himself was not unconscious of the discrepancy between his old and +his new self. _Æneam rejicite, Pium recipite_, he exclaims in a +celebrated passage of his Retractation, where he declares his heartfelt +sorrow for the irrevocable words of light and vain romance that he had +scattered in his careless youth. Yet though Pius II. proved a virtual +failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either backwards to the +ideal of earlier Christianity or forwards on the path of modern culture, +he is the last Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard with +real respect. Those who follow, and with whose personal characters, +rather than their action as Pontiffs, we shall now be principally +occupied, sacrificed the interests of Christendom to family ambition, +secured their sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted +with the infidel, and played the part of Antichrist upon the theater of +Europe. + + [1] Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 321. + +It would be possible to write the history of these priest-kings without +dwelling more than lightly on scandalous circumstances, to merge the +court-chronicle of the Vatican in a recital of European politics, or to +hide the true features of high Papal dignitaries beneath the masks +constructed for them by ecclesiastical apologists. That cannot, however, +be the line adopted by a writer treating of civilization in Italy during +the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He must paint the Popes of the +Renaissance as they appeared in the midst of society, when Lorenzo de' +Medici called Rome 'a sink of all the vices,' and observers so competent +as Machiavelli and Guicciardini ascribed the moral depravity and +political decay of Italy to their influence. It might be objected that +there is now no need to portray the profligacy of that court, which, by +arousing the conscience of Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable +shame, proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. But without +reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding of Italian morality, +and a true insight into Italian social feeling as expressed in +literature, are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this epoch +shrink from his task, even though the transactions he has to record seem +to savor of legend rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains +matter more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted to express a +truth in figures of the fancy, than the authentic well-attested annals +of this period of seventy years, from 1464 to 1534. + +Paul the Second was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who began life as a +merchant. He had already shipped his worldly goods on board a trading +vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that his uncle had been +made Pope under the name of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry +consisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune in the +Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high seas by his wits. +So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the +age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain +to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals +dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as +Paul in 1464. A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic. He +spent enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his tiara alone was +valued at 200,000 golden florins. In all public ceremonies, whether +ecclesiastical or secular, he was splendid, delighting equally to sun +himself before the eyes of the Romans as the chief actor in an Easter +benediction or a Carnival procession. The poorer Cardinals received +subsidies from his purse in order that they might add luster to his +pageants by their retinues. The arts found in him munificent patron. For +the building of the palace of S. Marco, which marks an abrupt departure +from the previous Gothic style in vogue, he brought architects of +eminence to Rome, and gave employment to Mino da Fiesole, the sculptor, +and to Giuliano da San Gallo, the wood-carver. The arches of Titus and +Septimius Severus were restored at his expense, together with the statue +of Marcus Aurelius and the horses of Monte Cavallo. But Paul showed his +connoisseurship more especially in the collection of gems, medals, +precious stones, and cameos, accumulating rare treasures of antiquity +and costly masterpieces of Italian and Flemish gold-work in his +cabinets. This patronage of contemporary art, no less than the +appreciation of classical monuments, marked him as a Mæcenas of the true +Renaissance type.[1] But the qualities of a dilettante were not +calculated to shed luster on a Pontiff who spent the substance of the +Church in heaping up immensely valuable curiosities. His thirst for gold +and his love of hoarding were so extreme that, when bishoprics fell +vacant, he often refused to fill them up, drawing their revenues for his +own use. His court was luxurious, and in private he was addicted to +sensual lust.[2] This would not, however, have brought his name into bad +odor in Rome, where the Holy Father was already regarded as an Italian +despot with certain sacerdotal additions. It was his prosecution of the +Platonists which made him unpopular in an age when men had the right to +expect that, whatever happened, learning at least would be respected. +The example of the Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged +the Romans to found a society for the discussion of philosophical +questions. The Pope conceived that a political intrigue was the real +object of this club. Nor was the suspicion wholly destitute of color. +The conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas, and the Catilinarian riots +of Tiburzio which had troubled the pontificate of Pius, were still fresh +in people's memories; nor was the position of the Pope in Rome as yet by +any means secure. What increased Paul's anxiety was the fact that some +scholars, appointed secretaries of the briefs (Abbreviatori) by Pius and +deprived of office by himself, were members of the Platonic Society. +Their animosity against him was both natural and ill-concealed. At the +same time the bitter hatred avowed by Laurentius Valla against the +temporal power might in an age of conjurations have meant active malice. +Leo Alberti hints that Porcari had been supported by strong backers +outside Rome; and one of the accusations against the Platonists was that +Pomponius Lætus had addressed Platina as Holy Father. Now both Pomponius +Lætus and Valla had influence in Naples, while Paul was on the verge of +open rupture with King Ferdinand. He therefore had sufficient grounds +for suspecting a Neapolitan intrigue, in which the humanists were +playing the parts of Brutus and Cassius. Yet though we take this trouble +to construct some show of reason for the panic of the Pope, the fact +remains that he was really mistaken at the outset; and of the stupidity, +cruelty, and injustice of his subsequent conduct there can be no doubt. +He seized the chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned them, put +them to the torture, and killed some of them upon the rack. 'You would +have taken Castle S. Angelo for Phalaris' bull,' writes Platina; 'the +hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent young men.' No +evidence of a conspiracy could be extorted. Then Paul tried the +survivors for unorthodoxy. They proved the soundness of their faith to +the satisfaction of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing remained but to +release them, or to shut them up in dungeons, in order that the people +might not say the Holy Father had arrested them without due cause. The +latter course was chosen. Platina, the historian of the Popes, was one +of the _abbreviatori_ whom Paul had cashiered, and one of the Platonists +whom he had tortured. The tale of Papal persecution loses, therefore, +nothing in the telling; for if the humanists of the fifteenth century +were powerful in anything it was in writing innuendoes and invectives. +Among other anecdotes, he relates how, while he was being dislocated on +the rack, the inquisitors Vianesi and Sanga held a sprightly colloquy +about a ring which the one said jestingly the other had received as a +love-token from a girl. The whole situation is characteristic of Papal +Rome in the Renaissance. + + [1] See _Les Arts à la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le XVI. + Siècles_, E. Müntz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie. M. Müntz has + done good service to æsthetic archæology by vindicating the + fame of Paul II. as an employer of artists from the wholesale + abuse heaped on him by Platina. It may here be conveniently + noticed that even the fierce Sixtus IV. showed intelligence as + a patron of arts and letters. He built the Sistine Chapel, and + brought the greatest painters of the day to Rome--Signorelli, + Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and Ghirlandajo. + Melozzo da Forlì worked for him. One of that painter's few + remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican, + which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries--a + magnificent piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw the + Vatican library open to the public, and In his days the + Confraternity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of + design. Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe + building, by Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. Maria del + Popolo and S. Maria della Pace. Innocent VIII. added the + Belvedere to the Vatican after Antonio del Pollajuolo's plan, + and commenced the Villa Magliana. Alexander VI. enriched the + Vatican with the famous Borgia apartments, decorated by + Pinturhicchio. He also began the Palace of the University, and + converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the Castle of S. + Angelo. These brief allusions must suffice. It is not the + object of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons; + but it should not be forgotten that, having accepted a place + among the despots of Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to + art and learning in the spirit of contemporary potentates. + + [2] Corio sums up his character thus: 'Fu costui uomo alla + libidine molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie + appresso di lui. Del giorno faceva notte, e la notte ispediva + quanto gli occorreva.' Marcus Attilius Alexius says: 'Paulus + II. ex concubiná domum replevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta + est sedes Barionis.' See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. vii. p. + 215, for the latter quotation. + +Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth led people to +anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after +supping on two huge watermelons, _duos prægrandes pepones_. His +successor was a man of base extraction, named Francesco della Rovere, +born near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to +be thought noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house of +Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals' hats, and proclaimed +himself their kinsman. Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an azure ground +which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in +compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Having bribed the most venal +members of the Sacred College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, +and assumed the name of Sixtus IV. He began his career with a lie; for +though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul who had spent his time in +amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found +5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by +the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his +nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which +were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope's nephews and upon the +nature of his weakness for them. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered +the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of +these men recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus.[1] We +may, however, dwell upon the principal features of his nepotism; for +Sixtus was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system for +pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to principalities. The +weakness of this policy has already been exposed[2]: its justification, +if there is any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no +legitimate or hereditary succession. The names of the Pope's nephews +were Lionardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of +his brother Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his +sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister married to +Giovanni Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere,[3] +these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a +certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical +dignities thrust upon some of them. Lionardo was made prefect of Rome +and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano +received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous warfare with the +intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso +was created Cardinal of San Crisogono in 1477, and died in 1507. +Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza. +For him the Pope in 1473 bought the town of Imola with money of the +Church, and, after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a Duke. He was +murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 1488, not, however, +before he had founded a line of princes. Pietro, another nephew of the +Riario blood, or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since +believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at the age of +twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, Patriarch of Constantinople, +and Archbishop of Florence. He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but +his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant +profligacy of his own life to recommend him to the notice of posterity. +All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. His +official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden florins; but in his +short career of profligate magnificence he managed to squander a sum +reckoned at not less than 200,000. When Leonora of Aragon passed through +Rome on her way to wed the Marquis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch +erected a pavilion in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli for her +entertainment.[4] The square was partitioned into chambers communicating +with the palace of the Cardinal. The ordinary hangings were of velvet +and of white and crimson silk, while one of the apartments was draped +with the famous tapestries of Nicholas V., which represented the +Creation of the World. All the utensils in this magic dwelling were of +silver--even to the very vilest. The air of the banquet-hall was cooled +with punkahs; _ire mantici coperti, che facevano continoamemte vento_, +are the words of Corio; and on a column in the center stood a living +naked gilded boy, who poured forth water from an urn. The description of +the feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a +minute list of the dishes--wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted +whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for +washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought +in pastry--_tutte in vivande_. We are also told how masques of Hercules, +Jason, and Phædra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders, +played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of _San Giovan +Battista decapitato_ and _quel Giudeo che rosfi il corpo di Cristo_. The +servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of +richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet. +Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wine from golden +goblets. The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, meanwhile, +moved among his guests 'like some great Cæsar's son.' The whole +entertainment lasted from Saturday till Thursday, during which time +Ercole of Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in S. +Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the intervals of games, +dances, and banquets of the kind described. We need scarcely add that, +in spite of his enormous wealth, the young Cardinal died 60,000 florins +in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in +January 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and +Venice as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never well +authenticated, that the Venetians helped his death by poison.[5] The +sensual indulgences of every sort in which this child of the +proletariat, suddenly raised to princely splendor, wallowed for +twenty-five continuous months, are enough to account for his immature +death without the hypothesis of poisoning. With him expired a plan which +might have ended in making the Papacy a secular, hereditary kingdom. +During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with the Duke, by the +terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza was to be crowned king of Lombardy, +while the Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the Papal +throne.[6] Sixtus, it is said, was willing to abdicate in his nephew's +favor, with a view to the firmer establishment of his family in the +tyranny of Rome. The scheme was a wild one, yet, considering the power +and wealth of the Sforza family, not so wholly impracticable as might +appear. The same dream floated, a few years later, before the +imagination of the two Borgias; and Machiavelli wrote in his calm style +that to make the Papal power hereditary was all that remained for +nepotism in his days to do.[7] The opinion which had been conceived of +the Cardinal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence may be +gathered from the following couplets of an epigram placed, as Corio +informs us, on his tomb:-- + + Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynædus, + Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italiâ: + Namque illa Ausonii pestis scelerata senatûs, + Petrus, ad infernas est modo raptus aquas. + +After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last nephew, Giovanni della +Rovere, into like favor. He was married to Giovanna, daughter of +Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of Sinigaglia. +Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, upon the death of his brother +Lionardo. This man founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Urbino. +The plebeian violence of the della Rovere temper reached a climax in +Giovanni's son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's +lover with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed the Papal +Legate to death in the streets of Bologna at the age of twenty, and +knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during +a council of war in 1526. + + [1] The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part + be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to + epigrams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura, + Burchard, and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two + Popes such traits of character and such abominable actions as + render the worst calumnies probable. Infessura, though he + expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry + chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his + own eyes, Burchurd was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies, + who reported the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander + with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of + whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more valuable + than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman + emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors, again, + are trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political + intention and not for the sake of gossip. + + [2] See ch. iii. p. 113. + + [3] As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet + even Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power. + Jacobus Volaterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: 'Vir est + naturæ duriusculæ, ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturæ.' + + [4] For what follows read Corio, _Storia di Milano_, pp. + 417-20. + + [5] Mach. _1st. Fior_. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420. + + [6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned + the Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out. + + [7] _1st. Fior_, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38. + +Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy +life without some youthful protégé about his person. Accordingly in 1463 +he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and +Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a +young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless +though stupid character. + +With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally +short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his +coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each +of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with +rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be +considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege +within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise +money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our +heaven, our very God, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time; +while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen +and ink to get what sum he wants.'[2] The second great financial +expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. +Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine +prices; good grain was sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in +exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores, +and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces. +Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south. +It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men +condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have +spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume +it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the +State.'[3] + + [1] The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this + market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia + Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183. + + [2] Baptista Mantuanus, _de Calamitatibus Temporum_, lib. iii. + + Venalia nobis + Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronæ, + Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque. + + Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, + writes: 'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., + che al papa bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro, + per avere quella somma che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. _Ep_. + i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam + et ipsæ manus impositiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur, + nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.' + + [3] Infessura, _Eccardus_, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex + dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e + ex necessitate comedebatur, ex quo sæpenumero in civitate + morbus viguit.' + +But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who +trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of God, to +squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy +was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same +worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of +Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly +planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all +the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils +was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,[1] rushed with wild +delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole +Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all +the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called +the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting +for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he +died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury +because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the +sake of a favorite nephew. + + [1] This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) + relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat + 'a steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be + fought by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose + the Piazza of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared + at a window, blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a + signal for the battle to begin. We who think the ring, the + cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's + engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato + chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura + writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, + puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii + and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, + quæ circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It + was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused + Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of + abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year. + +The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the +Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the +Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year +1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi +family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had +driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his +banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with +Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political +reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy +the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in +Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their +views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a +plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private +foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well +affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was +to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the +young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then +proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed +in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of +blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate +Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1] +The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place +selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was +to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced +Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat +of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen, +arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before +the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the _religio loci_ +dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such +silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was +found, who, _being a priest_, was more accustomed to the place and +therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.' This, however, spoiled +all. The priests, though more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less +used to the trade of assassination. They failed to strike home. +Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo Bandini and +Francesco de' Pazzi at the very moment of the elevation of Christ's +body. But Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole +conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people of +Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with +Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others among the principal +conspirators, were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For +this act of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest, +Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime of mingled treason, +sacrilege, and murder, ex-communicated Florence, and carried on for +years a savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when the +descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him tremble for his own safety, +that he chose to make peace with these enemies whom he had himself +provoked and plotted against. + + [1] His 'Confession,' printed by Fabroni, _Lorenzi Medicis + Vita_, vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the + hatching of the plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that + Montesecco exculpates him of the design to murder the Medici. + He only wanted to ruin them. + + [2] It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian + tyrannicides took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano + were murdered during a solemn service in 1435; the sentence of + the creed 'Et incarnatus est' was chosen for the signal. Gian + Maria Visconti was killed in San Gottardo (1412), Galeazzo + Maria Sforza in San Stefano (1484). Lodovico Moro only just + escaped assassination in Sant' Ambrogio (1484). Machiavelli + says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was attempted by Batista + Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see _1st. Fior._ book viii. near + the end). The Bagliani of Perugia were to have been massacred + during the marriage festival of Astorre with Lavinia + Colonna(1500). Stefano Porcari intended to capture Nicholas V. + at the great gate of S. Peter's (1453). The only chance of + catching cautious princes off their guard was when they were + engaged in high solemnities. See above, p. 168. + +Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus deserves special +mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition +was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and +Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000 +victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of +ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning--a new Aceldama--was +set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were +committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual +imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In +Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their +inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the +Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were +bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold +or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables +was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was +given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the +persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the +payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand +and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ +for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for +the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left +Spain[1]--some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their +bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and +deflowered their women--some for Portugal, where they bought the right +to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and +daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as +slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the +bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and +sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with +famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the +Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died +by hundreds in the harbor.[2] Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence +along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000 +persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn specters, the +victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere +rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox +rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato +with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of +the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so +extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words +we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first +sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; +yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as +beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God.' A critic of this century can +only exclaim with stupefaction: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!_ +Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell +upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The +very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free +thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily +throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was +destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her +manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color +of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom. + + [1] This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his + _History of the Inquisition_ (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and + 400,000; he also speaks of 170,000 _families_ as one + calculation. + + [2] Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is + truly awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The + passage may be read in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, + chapter 17. + +Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus--indulging his lust and pride +in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with +masterpieces,[1] rending Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of +favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting +money from starved provinces, plotting murder against his enemies, +hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences, +refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Christendom against the +Turk--yet meanwhile thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by +myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious +Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the +blood of others, to burn his own vices in the _autos da fé_ of Seville, +and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to +secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.[2] This is not the +language of a Protestant denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the +Roman Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, that august and +venerable monument of immemorial antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to +the contradictions between practice and pretension upon which the +History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so lurid. + + [1] Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of + Michael Angelo, it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the + arraignment of the Popes who built and beautified that chapel, + when the Christ, whose blood they sold, should appear with His + menacing right arm uplifted, and the prophets should thunder + their denunciations: 'Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow + yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock, for the + days of your slaughter and your dispersions are accomplished.' + + [2] The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose + bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution + directed against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in + the _Malleus Maleficarum_, mentions that in the first year + after its publication forty-one witches were burned in the + district of Como, while crowds of suspected women took refuge + in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. Cantù's _Storia + della Diocesi di Como_ (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be consulted + for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica. + Cp. Folengo's _Maccaronea_ for the prevalence of witchcraft in + those districts. + +After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular name was Giambattista +Cibo. The sacred College, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into +thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his creation of scandalous +Cardinals, might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn obligations on +the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, to every +member of the conclave, that he would maintain a certain order of +appointment and a purity of election in the Church. No Cardinal under +the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's own blood, none +without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, and +so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them +all as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair. +Engagements made by the man might always be broken by the Pope. Of +Innocent's Pontificate little need be said. He was the first Pope +publicly to acknowledge his seven children, and to call them sons and +daughters.[1] Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base +favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the +scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced a step +even beyond Sixtus, by establishing a Bank at Rome for the sale of +pardons.[2] Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the +convenience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were poured into the +Papal coffers; the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This +insignificant princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was +purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and +spending money. He was small of stature and tame-spirited: yet the +destinies of an important house of Europe depended on him; for his +father married him to Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in +1487. This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal's hat at the +age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in +the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and +by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence +fast.[3] The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in +theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands and assassins.[4] +Travelers and pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped and murdered on +their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people +were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the +Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and +Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy +Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to +reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid +veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were +sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He +adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judæus quidem +aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope +reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem in +Innocentiâ meâ ingressus sum.' + + [1] 'Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit, + primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenæos + celebravit.' Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, + vol. vii. p. 274, note. + + [2] Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why + criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, + answer: 'God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that + he should pay and live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, + forged bulls by which the Pope granted indulgences for the + commission of the worst scandals. His father tried to buy him + off for 5,000 ducats. Innocent replied that, as his honor was + concerned, he must have 6,000. The poor father could not scrape + so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and + Dominico was executed. A Roman who had killed two of his own + daughters bought his pardon for 800 ducats. + + [3] Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the + Pope for his ally, was able to create that balance of power in + Italy which it was his chief political merit to have maintained + until his death. + + [4] It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary + (Eccardus vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed + debauchery and violence of Rome at this time can be formed. + +Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The tedious leisure of +Innocent's long lethargy was employed by them in active simony. Simony, +it may be said in passing, gave the great Italian families a direct +interest in the election of the richest and most paying candidate. It +served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose +that laid such eggs, before he killed it--in other words, to take the +bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while deferring for a future time his +own election. All the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo +Borgia,[1] were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. Having bought +their hats with gold, they were now disposed to sell their votes to the +highest bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, wisest, and most +worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what the price of each +suffrage would be, and laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio +Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of +Vice-Chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia +Palaces at Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal +Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The +Cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto with +its palace stocked with choice wines. The Cardinal of Parma would take +Nepi. The Cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in +Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave sold themselves for +gold; to meet their demands the Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules +laden with coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in proper +portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained +implacable and obdurate. In the Borgia his vehement temperament +perceived a fit antagonist. The armor which he donned in their first +encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce war with the whole brood of +Borgias at Ostia, at the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and whenever +he found opportunity.[2] He and five other Cardinals--among them his +cousin Raphael Riario--refused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia, +having corrupted the rest of the college, assumed the mantle of S. Peter +in 1492, with the ever-memorable title of Alexander VI. + + [1] Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope + Calixtus III., by her marriage with Joffré Lenzuoli. He took + the name of Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal, + and to share in his uncle's greatness. + + [2] The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura, + the daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long + after the Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a + curious and unexplained incident. + +Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself in festival array, +exhibiting on every flag and balcony the Bull of the house of Borgia, +and crying like the Egyptians when they found Apis:-- + + Vive diu Bos! Vive diu Bos! Borgia vive! + Vivit Alexander: Roma beata manet. + +In truth there was nothing to convince the Romans of the coming woe, or +to raise suspicion that a Pope had been elected who would deserve the +execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only +saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal +carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, +a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and ecclesiastic +parade--qualities which, though they do not suit our notions of a +churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in +triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits +upon a snow-white horse,' writes one of the humanists of the century,[1] +'with serene forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distributes his +blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon him, and all hearts +rejoice. How admirable is the mild composure of his mien! how noble his +countenance! his glance how free! His stature and carriage, his beauty +and the full health of his body, how they enhance the reverence which he +inspires!' Another panegyrist[2] describes his 'broad forehead, kingly +brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 'the heroic beauty +of his whole body' was given him by nature in order that he might 'adorn +the seat of the Apostles with his divine form in the place of God.' How +little in the early days of his Pontificate the Borgia resembled that +Alexander with whom the legend of his subsequent life has familiarized +our fancy, may be gathered from the following account:[3] 'He is +handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with +honeyed and choice eloquence; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are +cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more +powerfully than the magnet influences iron.' These, we must remember, +are the testimonies of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan sentiments +of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in the advent of a Pope who +would, they hoped, make Rome the capital of luxury and license. +Therefore they require to be received with caution. Yet there is no +reason to suppose that the majority of the Italians regarded the +elevation of the Borgia with peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given +proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud. +Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues. If he was the +father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had +been Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little in an age when +the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular +potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was +not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the +thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church. A few men of +discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered. 'The king of +Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the +queen, his wife, with tears--tears which he was wont to check even at +the death of his own sons--that a Pope had been made who would prove +most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal +Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by +whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's +jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides, +there was in Italy a widely spread repugnance to the Spanish +intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who +crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption +like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of +all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in +1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for +during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were +created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias. + + [1] See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. _Lucrezia Borgia_, p. + 45. + + [2] Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, _Stadt Rom._ p. 314, note. + + [3] Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom._ p. 208, note. + +It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of +Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at +the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was +afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his +Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son +Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life, +which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century. +This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date +of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern +nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the +glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his +conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like +all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects. + +Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and +to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the +Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two +conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The +Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual +insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and +terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of +the Middle Ages--Hildebrand and Boniface--had displayed the extreme of +spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous +and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they +had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable. +To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as +unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame +and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is +justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of +which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and +imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was +rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected on it from the +unquenched furnace of a godless life. The universal conscience of +Christianity is revolted by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood +and festivals of lust, which were enjoyed in the plenitude of his green +and vigorous old age by this versatile diplomatist and subtle priest, +who controlled the councils of kings, and who chanted the sacramental +service for a listening world on Easter Day in Rome. Rome has never been +small or weak or mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 'that +memorable scene' presented to the nations of the modern world a pageant +of Antichrist and Antiphysis--the negation of the Gospel and of nature; +a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity as it aspires to be at +its best, and humanity as it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by +some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of servants, the +anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant upon earth of Christ, played the +chief part. It may be objected that this is the language not of history +but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions when the legend has +caught the spirit of the truth. + +Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate +predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular +sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and +to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond +belief.'[1] His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old +factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had +raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed +in his Pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed,[2] he laid the +real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a +sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the +throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of +the large European monarchies. The faithlessness and perjuries of the +Pope, 'who never did aught else but deceive, nor ever thought of +anything but this, and always found occasion for his frauds,'[3] when +combined with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, made him a +redoubtable antagonist. All considerations of religion and morality were +subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy +he restrained to two objects--the advancement of his family, and the +consolidation of the temporal power. These were narrow aims for the +ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to +confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his whole strength, +and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes. + + [1] It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in + a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; + private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of + truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment; + insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the + cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons + by any means: of these there were many, and among them--in + order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting + his vicious schemes--one not less detestable in any way than + his father.' _St. d'It._ vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate and + put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander + from the _Storia di Firenze_. + + [2] In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the + _Prince_. + + [3] Mach. _Prince_, ch. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire + i. 208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken + passage on the nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results + for Italy. + +Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and +indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practiced--to such an +extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency: 'Alexander sells the +keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to +sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having +sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with +rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him, +laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. Paolo Capello, the +Venetian Ambassador, wrote in the year 1500: 'Every night they find in +Rome four or five murdered men, Bishops and Prelates and so forth.' +Panvinius mentions three Cardinals who were known to have been poisoned +by the Pope; and to their names may be added those of the Cardinals of +Capua and of Verona.[1] To be a prince of the Church was dangerous in +those days; and if the Borgia had not at last poisoned himself by +mistake, he must in the long-run have had to pay people to accept so +perilous a privilege. His traffic in Church dignities was carried on +upon a grand scale: twelve Cardinals' hats, for example, were put to +auction in a single day in 1500.[2] This was when he wished to pack the +Conclave with votes in favor of the cession of Romagna to Cesare Borgia, +as well as to replenish his exhausted coffers. Forty-three Cardinals +were created by him in eleven promotions: each of these was worth on an +average 10,000 florins; while the price paid by Francesco Soderini +amounted to 20,000 and that paid by Domenico Grimani reached the sum of +30,000. + + [1] See the authorities in Burckhardt, pp. 93, 94. + + [2] Guicc. _St. d'It._ vol. iii. p. 15. + +Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or +energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened. +Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of +the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favor of his children. The +fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to +some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet +and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection +to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving +40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. Innocent VIII. had +been the first to snare this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of +Longinus was sent him as a token of the Sultan's gratitude, and +Innocent, who built an altar for the relique, caused his own tomb to be +raised close by. His effigy in bronze by Pollajuolo still carries in its +hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest of Christendom. + +Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, and held his Moslem Court side by side +with the Pontiff in the Vatican. Dispatches are extant in which +Alexander and Bajazet exchange terms of the warmest friendship, the Turk +imploring his Greatness--so he addressed the Pope--to put an end to the +unlucky Djem, and promising as the price of this assassination a sum of +300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ, presumably that very +seamless coat over which the soldiers of Calvary had cast their +dice.[1] The money and the relique arrived in Italy and were intercepted +by the partisans of Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before the bargain +with the Sultan had been concluded by the murder of Djem, was forced to +hand him over to the French king. But the unlucky Turk carried in his +constitution the slow poison of the Borgias, and died in Charles's camp +between Rome and Naples. Whatever crimes may be condoned in Alexander, +it is difficult to extenuate this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal +from the powers of Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the peril to the +Western world was still most serious, he stands attained for high +treason against Christendom, of which he professed to be the chief; +against civilization, which the Church pretended to protect; against +Christ, whose vicar he presumed to style himself. + + [1] See the letters in the 'Preuves et Observations,' printed + at the end of the _Mémoires de Comines_. + +Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the spirit and the +interests of Christianity with zeal for dogma. He never flinched in +formal orthodoxy, and the measures which he took for riveting the chains +of superstition on the people were calculated with the military firmness +of a Napoleon. It was he who established the censure of the press, by +which printers were obliged, under pain of excommunication, to submit +the books they issued to the control of the Archbishops and their +delegates. The Brief of June 1, 1501, which contains this order, may be +reasonably said to have retarded civilization, at least in Italy and +Spain. + +Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his +life.[1] This, together with his almost insane weakness for his +children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all +the crimes which he committed. At the same time, though sensual, +Alexander was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, +remarks: 'The Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disagreeable +to have to dine with him.' In this respect he may be favorably +contrasted with the Roman prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to +Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce, and then +of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia Farnese,[2] surnamed La Bella, the +titular wife of Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowledged. These two +sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving +meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental fashion, he +maintained in the Vatican. An incident which happened during the French +invasion of 1494 brings the domestic circumstances of a Pope of the +Renaissance vividly before us. Monseigneur d'Allegre caught the ladies +Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady Adriana de Mila, who +was employed as their duenna, near Capodimonte, on November 29, and +carried them to Montefiascone. The sum fixed for their ransom was 3,000 +ducats. This the Pope paid, and on December 1 they were released. +Alexander met them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black jerkin +trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round his waist by a Spanish +girdle, from which hung his dagger. Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what +had happened, remarked that it was weak to release these ladies, who +were 'the very eyes and heart' of his Holiness, for so small a +ransom--if 50,000 ducats had been demanded, they would have been paid. +This and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope's expense, make us +understand to what extent the Italians were accustomed to regard their +high priest as a secular prince. Even the pageant of Alexander seated in +S. Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia on one side of his throne and his +daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other, moved no moral indignation; nor +were the Romans astonished when Lucrezia was appointed Governor of +Spoleto, and plenipotentiary Regent of the Vatican in her father's +absence. These scandals, however, created a very different impression in +the north, and prepared the way for the Reformation. + + [1] Guicciardini (_St. Fior._ cap. 27) writes: 'Fu + lussoriosissimo nell' uno e nell' altro sesso, tenendo + publicamente femine e garzoni, ma più ancora nelle femine.' A + notion of the public disorders connected with his dissolute + life may be gained from this passage in Sanuto's Diary + (Gregorovius, _Lucrezia Borgia_, p. 88): 'Da Roma per le + lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone + cossa assai abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra + nato un fiolo di una dona romana maritata, ch' el padre l' + havea rufianata, e di questa il marito invitò il suocero a la + vigna e lo uccise tagliandoli el capo, ponendo quello sopra uno + legno con letere che diceva questo è il capo de mio suocero che + a rufianato sua fiola al papa, et che inteso questo il papa + fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma con taglia. Questa nova + venne per letere particular; etiam si godea con la sua spagnola + menatali per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li venuto.' + + [2] Her brother Alexander, afterwards Paul III., owed his + promotion to the purple to this liaison, which was, therefore, + the origin of the greatness of the Farnesi. The tomb of Paul + III. in the Tribune of S. Peter's has three notable family + portraits--the Pope himself in bronze; his sister Giulia, naked + in marble, as Justice; and their old mother, Giovanna Gaetani, + the bawd, as Prudence. + +The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong wine of Alexander's +paternal ambition. The passion of paternity, exaggerated beyond the +bounds of natural affection, and scandalous in a Roman Pontiff, was the +main motive of the Borgia's action. Of his children by Vannozza, he +caused the eldest son to be created Duke of Gandia; the youngest he +married to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of Aragon, by whom the +boy was honored with the Dukedom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of +this family, was appointed Bishop of Valentia, and Cardinal. The +Dukedoms of Camerino and Nepi were given to another John, whom Alexander +first declared to be his grandson through Cesare, and afterwards +acknowledged as his son. This John may possibly have been Lucrezia's +child. The Dukedom of Sermoneta, wrenched for a moment from the hands of +the Gaetani family, who still own it, was conferred upon Lucrezia's son, +Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took +three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to +two Spanish nobles, Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles, and Don Gasparo da +Procida, son of the Count of Aversa. These contracts, made before her +father became Pope, were annulled as not magnificent enough for the +Pontiff's daughter. In 1492 she was married to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of +Pesaro. But in 1497 the pretensions of the Borgias had outgrown this +alliance, and their public policy was inclining to relations with the +Southern Courts of Italy. Accordingly she was divorced and given to +Alfonso, Prince of Biseglia, a natural son of the King of Naples. When +this man's father lost his crown, the Borgias, not caring to be +connected with an ex-royal family, caused Alfonso to be stabbed on the +steps of S. Peter's in 1501; and while he lingered between life and +death, they had him strangled in his sick-bed, by Michellozzo, Cesare's +assassin in chief. Finally Lucrezia was wedded to Alfonso, crown-prince +of Ferrara, in 1502.[1] The proud heir of the Este dynasty was forced by +policy, against his inclination, to take to his board and bed a Pope's +bastard, twice divorced, once severed from her husband by murder, and +soiled, whether justly or not, by atrocious rumors, to which her +father's and her brother's conduct gave but too much color. She proved a +model princess after all, and died at last in childbirth, after having +been praised by Ariosto as a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues +than the star of regal Rome. + + [1] Her dowry was 300,000 ducats, besides wedding presents, and + certain important immunities and privileges granted to Ferrara + by the Pope. + +History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long +yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colorless. The +legend which made her a poison-brewing Mænad has been proved a lie--but +only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple +northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and +Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a +woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals +perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not hers, +but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her +married life in Rome a byword. She sat and smiled through all the +tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair +port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in the corruption of Papal Rome, +which Lorenzo de' Medici described to his son Giovanni as 'a sink of all +the vices,' consorting habitually with her father's concubines, and +conscious that her own mother had been married for show to two +successive husbands, it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct +at any time with propriety. It is even probable that the darkest tales +about her are true. The Lord of Pesaro, we must remember, told his +kinsman, the Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his divorce +were false, and that the fact was what can scarcely be recorded.[1] +Still, there is no ground for supposing that, in the matter of her +first husband's divorce and the second's murder, she was more than a +passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Cesare. The pleasure-loving, +careless woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of +Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern +conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of +debauchery devised for her amusement.[2] Instead of viewing her with +dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with +contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the +cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the +esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached the whole +state to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the panegyrics of +the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of +note. Foreigners who saw her surrounded by her brilliant Court +exclaimed, like the French biographer of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que, +de son temps, ni beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouvé de plus +triomphante princesse; car elle était belle, bonne douce, et courtoise à +toutes gens.' + + [1] The whole question of Lucrezia's guilt has been ably + investigated by Gregorovius (_Lucrezia Borgia_, pp. 101, + 159-64). Charity suggests that the dreadful tradition of her + relation to her father and brothers is founded less upon fact + than upon the scandals current after her divorce. What Giovanni + Sforza said was this: '_anzi haverla conosciuta infinite volte, + ma chel Papa non gelha tolta per altro se non per usare con + lei_.' This confession of the injured husband went the round of + all the Courts of Italy, was repeated by Malipiero and Paolo + Capello, formed the substance of the satires of Sannazaro and + Pontano, crept into the chronicle of Matarazzo, and survived in + the histories of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. There was + nothing in his words to astonish men who were cognizant of the + acts of Gianpaolo Baglioni and Sigismondo Malatesta; while the + frantic passion of Alexander for his children, closely allied + as this feeling was in him to excessive sensuality, gave them + confirmation. Were they, however, true; or were they a + malevolent lie? That is the real point at issue. Psychological + speculation will help but little here. It is true that Lucrezia + in after-life showed all the signs of a clear conscience. But + so also did Alexander, whose buoyancy of spirits lasted till + the very day of his death. Yet he was stained with crimes foul + enough to darken the conscience of any man, at any period of + life, and in any position. + + [2] See Burchard, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 77 and 78. + +Yet even at Ferrara tragedies which might remind her of the Vatican +continued to surround her path. Alfonso, rude in manners and devoted to +gun-foundry, interfered but little with the life she led among the wits +and scholars who surrounded her. One day, however, in 1508, the poet +Ercole Strozzi, who had sung her praises, was found dead, wrapped in his +mantle, and pierced with two-and-twenty wounds. No judicial inquiry into +this murder was made. Rumor credited both Alfonso and Lucrezia with the +deed--Alfonso, because he might be jealous of his wife--Lucrezia, +because her poet had recently married Barbara Torelli. Two years earlier +another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name of Borgia before the +public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both +Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of +Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to +mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the +loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the +Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and +Alfonso. His plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand of Este on +the throne. The treason was discovered; the conspirators appeared before +Alfonso: he rushed upon Ferdinand, and with his dagger stabbed him in +the face. Both Giulio and Ferdinand were thrown into the dungeons of the +palace at Ferrara, where they languished for years, while the Duke and +Lucrezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and su ny loggie +among their courtiers. Ferdinand died in prison, aged sixty-three, in +1540. Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561. +These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia's married +life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries +of Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the +most part, in the record of the birth of children. Like her mother +Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity +and mercy. After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the +Renaissance saved their souls. + +But to return to the domestic history of Alexander. The murder of the +Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is +related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by +Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies. The Duke with his brother +Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their +mother Vannozza. On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a +lady of their acquaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never seen +again alive. When the news of his disappearance spread abroad, a +boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown +into the river on the night of the Duke's death, the 14th of June; he +had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen 'a +hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no +questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope had the Tiber dragged +for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true +successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of the +Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, one in the throat, the others +in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the +evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that +Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy +of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, +because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do +not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild +beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, +and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets +beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to +have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before +them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission +for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the +storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit from Vannozza, the +mother of his children, wrought a sudden change from fury to +reconcilement. What passed between them is not known for certain; +Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was +indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of +the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of +Gandia. The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took +food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for +Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church. + +Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy to building up the +fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical +obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious +power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this +young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites. +At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own +hand, when the youth had taken refuge in Alexander's arms: the blood +spirted out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.[1] +At another time he employed the same diabolical temper for the +delectation of his father. He turned out some prisoners sentenced to +death in a court-yard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic +clothes, and amused the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals. +They ran round and round the court crouching and doubling to avoid his +arrows. He showed his skill by hitting each where he thought fit. The +Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of +bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, devised for the entertainment of +his father and his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, +can scarcely be transferred to these pages. + + [1] The account is given by Capello, the Venetian envoy. + +The history of Cesare's attempt to found a principality belongs properly +to another chapter.[1] But the assistance rendered by his father is +essential to the biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian +sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and Galeazzo +Maria Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the +imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a prince, +Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of France, promising to annul +his first marriage and to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if +he would undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe induced Louis +to create Cesare Duke of Valence and to confer on him the hand of +Charlotte of Navarre. He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled +Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander and his son in +their conquests was a simple one. They took the capitals and murdered +the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at Camerino in 1502, and +the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year: by his means the +Marcscotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, Rimini, and +Forli had been treated in like manner; and after the capture of Faenpza +in 1501, the two young Manfredi had been sent to Rome; where they were +exposed to the worst insults, drowned or strangled.[2] A system of equal +simplicity kept their policy alive in foreign Courts. The Bishop of +Cette in France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's (1498); +the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain the credit of the Borgias +with Louis XII.; the offer of a red hat to Briçonnet saved Alexander +from a general council in 1494. The historical interest of Alexander's +method consists of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his +power to one end--the elevation of his family. His spiritual authority, +the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an +assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and +openly to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by +foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for +his poisonous son, he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous +alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of +Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction. The two kings +quarreled over their prey: then Alexander fomented their discord in +order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his +operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his breast, whether the +patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate, +was as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by +fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal +policy. + + [1] See Chapter VI. + + [2] Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 + by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death + Guicciardini writes: 'Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni + e di forma eccellente ... condotto a Roma, saziata prima + (secondo che si disse) la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente + insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato della vita.' Nardi + (_Storie Florentine_, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare with the + violation and murder of the boy. How far, we may ask, were + these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological + superstition? This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363) + apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta's assault upon his son, and + Pier Luigi Farnese's violation of the Bishop of Fano. To a + temperament like Alexander's, however, mere lust enhanced by + cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a + sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime. + +It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings. +We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives. The two Borgias, +so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with +the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging +to their host. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they +previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the +contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent, +they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all +contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, +and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became +the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet +Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and +son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his +masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to +apoplexy.[2] The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever +had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written +probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly +mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, _ex hoc +seculo horrendâ febrium incensione absorptum_.[3] Machiavelli, again, +who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career, +gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being +simultaneously prostrated by disease. + + [1] The story is related by Cinthio in his _Ecatommithi_, + December 9, November 10. + + [2] The various accounts of Alexander's death have been + epitomized by Gregorovius (_Stadt Rom_, vol. vii.), and have + been discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani + Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks + the question still open. Villari decides in favor of fever + against poison. + + [3] Reprinted by R. Garnett in _Athenæum_, Jan. 16, 1875. + +At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we +are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether +the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the +poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the +hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not, +however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the +Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice, +was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side, +we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and, +it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio +goes even so far as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had +narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme +terror to counteract the possibility of poison. + +Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his sickness, Alexander +died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp +struggle with the venom he had absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says +Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men +could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent +who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every +demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of +avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had +filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick +bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he +recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in irretrievable +confusion. 'The state of the Duke of Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,[2] +'vanished even as smoke in air, or foam upon the water.' + + [1] 'Morto chel fu, il corpo cominciò a bollire, e la bocca a + spumare come faria uno caldaro al focho, assì perseverò mentre + che fu sopra terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto + che in lui non apparea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza + ala lunghezza del corpo suo era differenzia alcuna' (letter of + Marquis of Mantua). + + [2] _Commentari_, lib, v. + +The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself after Alexander's death +in the legend of a devil, who had carried off his soul. Burchard, +Giustiniani, Sanudo, and others mention this incident with apparent +belief. But a letter from the Marquis of Mantua to his wife, dated +September 22, 1503, gives the fullest particulars: 'In his sickness the +Pope talked in such a way that those who did not know what was in his +mind thought him wandering, though he spoke with great feeling, and his +words were: _I will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while_. +Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained that, after the +death of Innocent, while the Conclave was sitting, he bargained with the +devil for the Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the agreements +was this, that he should hold the See twelve years, which he did, with +the addition of four days; and some attest they saw seven devils in the +room at the moment that he breathed his last.' Mere old wives' tales; +yet they mark the point to which the credit of the Borgia had fallen, +even in Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised his godlike +carriage and heroic mien upon the day of his election. + +Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains--the most +notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the +great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was +reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the +nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been +extirpated.[1] Alexander had proved the old order of Catholicity to be +untenable. The Reformation was imperiously demanded. His very vices +spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the +new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia +to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the +souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the +spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they +illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation +between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that +Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of +the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus +and bastards. + + [1] Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the + cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of + the Church. + +Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account +need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever +opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the +Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the +greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that +of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of +arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful +personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's +and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that +materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the +Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal +Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no +flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His +one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the +Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, +who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the +Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the +heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted +to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But +restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the +peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to +time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, +however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San +Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he +who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the +Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the +Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. Julius, +again, has been variously represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and +as the curse of Italy.[1] He was emphatically both. In those days of +national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify the +Church except at the expense of the nation, and to achieve the purpose +of his life without inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his +countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline. +Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of Louis, +Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of Italy, +a Pope could only play off one against another. + + [1] 'Fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali + d'Italia,' says Guicciardini, _Storia d'Italia_, vol. i. p. 84. + 'Der Retter des Papstthums,' says Burckhardt, p. 95. + +Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, +wearied with the continual warfare of the old _Pontifice terribile_. In +the gorgeous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the +streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these +may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi +before his palace: + + Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors + Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet. + +'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on +her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco +answered with one pithy line: + + Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero: + +'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.' + +This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his +father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in +his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of +Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the +neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of his +period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of +moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding +and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true +doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the +immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time +he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his +zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in +the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable +incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and +his easy epicurean philosophy. + +Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier. +His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the +corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the +praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy, +left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of +Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in +1521. During the heyday of his splendor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly +on presents to his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which +was open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, +cost half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded the +knightly Order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the +conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life to such good +account--extorting from the Cardinal Riario a fine of 5,000 ducats, and +from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000--that Von +Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that dark business +as a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals +in 1517 brought him in above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these +expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined when +he died. The Bini had lent him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the +Ricasoli, 10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; the +Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 150,000.[1] These figures +are only interesting when we remember that the mountains of gold which +they denote were squandered in æsthetic sensuality. + +When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano (Duke of Nemours): 'Let us +enjoy the Papacy since God has given it us--_godiamoci il Papato, poichè +Dio ce l' ha dato_.[2]' It was in this spirit that Leo administered the +Holy See. The keynote which he struck dominated the whole society of +Rome. At Agostine Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apostolic +secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Imperias and smooth-cheeked +singing-boys; fishes from Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were +served on golden platters, which the guests threw from the open windows +into the Tiber. Masques and balls, comedies and carnival processions +filled the streets and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a +mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in hand with luxury. It +seemed as though Bacchus and Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in +their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. +The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of +pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations +of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, +amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, +and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with +wide, astonished, woeful eyes--disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in +a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth +and smite. + + [1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, book xiv. ch. 3. + + [2] 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi, + series ii. vol. iii. p. 51. + +A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with +Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establishing +the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the +previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was +at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother +Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the +latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice +of its rightful owners.[1] With Florence in their hands and the Papacy +under their control, the Medici might have swayed all Italy. Such plans, +however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become +impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake +more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in +temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He +lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him +imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in +war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at +Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he +would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and +comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets, +artists and historians who added luster to his Court; but he brought no +new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, +both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, +bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic +temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half +burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, +dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber +of a sensualist. + + [1] He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an + honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere + family. See the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (_Rel. Ven._ ser. + ii. vol. iii. p. 51). + +It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the +sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus +aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation. +In that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work +of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of +the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious +of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of +the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of +reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome +and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole +attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did. + +The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To +choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was +impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I. +After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of +their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the +Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy, +due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the +electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen +this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the +Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake +to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and +chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed +and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of +the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing +the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's +fury.'[1] Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.[2] He knew +no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent unfamiliar to southern ears. +His studies had been confined to scholastic philosophy and theology. +With courts he had no commerce; and he was so ignorant of the state a +Pope should keep in Rome, that he wrote beforehand requesting that a +modest house and garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw the +Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of +Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for the service of +his stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish valets sufficed for +his personal attendance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for +the expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving woman cooked +his food, made his bed and washed his linen. Rome, with its splendid +immorality, its classic art and pagan culture, made the same impression +on him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers pointed to the Laocoon +as the most illustrious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away +with horror, murmuring: 'Idols of the Pagans!' The Belvedere, which was +fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he walled up and never +entered. At the same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far as +his tied hands and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent +abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three million ducats by the +sale of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 ducats to the +purchasers, and provided places for 2,550 persons. By a stroke of his +pen Adrian canceled these contracts and threw upon the world a crowd of +angry and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to remind them +that their bargain with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts, +however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual +as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which demands blood-letting. The +real corruption of Rome, deeply seated in high places, remained +untouched. Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the North, and +accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful catastrophe for the +guilty city. 'This state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; God grant +we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the ends of the ocean. +I see the downfall of this spiritual monarchy at hand. Unless God help, +it is all over with us.'[3] Adrian met the emergency, and took up arms +against the sea of troubles by expressing his horror of simony, +sensuality, thievery and so forth. The result was that he was simply +laughed at. Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he +would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa +wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on +croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the +dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's +door was ornamented with this inscription: _Liberatori patriæ Senatus +Populusque Romanus_. + + [1] See Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details + about Adriano are chiefly taken from the _Relazioni_ of the + Venetian embassadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120. + + [2] His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, of the Flemish + family, it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a + carpet-maker. Other accounts represent him as a ship's + carpenter. The Pope's baptismal name was Adrian. + + [3] See the passage quoted from the _Lettere de Principi_, + Rome, March 17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note. + +Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was made Pope in 1523. +People hoped that the merry days of Leo would return. But things had +gone too far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give +satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin had delighted: +even the scholars and the poets grumbled.[1] His rule was weak and +vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised its head again and drove +him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political horizon of Italy grew +darker and more sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm. Over Rome +itself impended ruin-- + + as when God + Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison + In the sick air.[2] + +At last the crash came. Clement by a series of treaties, treacheries, +and tergiversations had deprived himself of every friend and exasperated +every foe. Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the +anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of +stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop, +levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with +Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her +apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg--a horde of robbers held +together by the hope of plunder--marched without difficulty to the gates +of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of +Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force +withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apennines to these +marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, +who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. Then Rome for nine +months was abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000 +brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of +insult, violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the +avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the +Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated +palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the +groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and +the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from +its windows he exclaimed with Job:[3] '_Quare de vulvâ eduxisti me? qui +utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret_.' What the Romans, +emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates, +lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long +agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the +barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold, +and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow. +From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never +became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the +glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on +her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded +between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name +this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together +with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy +to the respect of Europe. + + [1] See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni + very powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of + Clement's state-policy. + + [2] See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, _St. Fior._ ii. + + [3] So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome + relates. + +It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of +putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to +restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again +the seat of Empire.[1] But to have done this would have been impossible +under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face +of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome +the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the +determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial +authority in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the +contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he +used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of +his mother-city. + + [1] See the authorities in Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. + 569, 575. + +Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity +of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year +to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the +wrath of God, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of +manners and laws.[1] No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from +returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood +was not a mere mockery and sham.[2] In truth the Counter-Reformation may +be said to date historically from 1527. + + [1] It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of + Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless + city. Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the + Bishop of Fossombrone, one of whose letters gives a really + awful picture of Roman profligacy (_Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni_, + Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abundant testimony to this + persuasion regarding the intolerible vice of Rome, even in men + devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (_La Cortegiana_, end of + Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il castigo, che + l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta + migliore, et è più scellerata che mai.' Bandello (_Novelle_, + Parte ii. xxxvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a + parenthesis, 'benche i peccati di quella città meritassero + esser castigati.' After adducing two such witnesses, it would + weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both of whom + expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal + Rome. + + [2] Compare _Lettere de' Princ._ ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus, + and other testimonies quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. + pp. 568, 578. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE CHURCH AND MORALITY. + + +Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between +Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad +Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic +Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General +Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism. + + +The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral +weakness throughout Italy. This makes the history of the Popes of the +Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the +subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and religion suffered an +almost complete separation in the fifteenth century. The chiefs of the +Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and +the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the +justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness +to the whole nation. + +The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and +their actual worldliness was not so glaring to the men of the +Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, +as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian +in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours. Æsthetic +propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even +of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity +the worst sinners believed they might make peace in time of need with +heaven. Yet there were not wanting profound thinkers who traced the +national decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church. Among +these Machiavelli stands foremost. In a celebrated passage of the +_Discorsi_,[1] after treating the whole subject of the connection +between good government and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery +criticism of the Papacy: 'Had the religion of Christianity been +preserved according to the ordinances of its founder, the states and +commonwealths of Christendom would have been far more united and far +happier than they are. Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of +its decay than by observing that, in proportion as we approach nearer to +the Roman Church, the head of this religion, we find less piety prevail +among the nations. Considering the primitive constitution of that +Church, and noting how diverse are its present customs, we are forced to +judge that without doubt either ruin or a scourge is now impending over +it. And since some men are of opinion that the welfare of Italy depends +upon the Church, I wish to put forth such arguments as occur to my mind +to the contrary; and of these I will adduce two, which, as I think, are +irrefutable. The first is this: that owing to the evil ensample of the +Papal Court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow +infinite troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so +its absence implies the contrary. Consequently, to the Church and +priests of Rome we Italians owe this obligation first--that we have +become void of religion and corrupt. But we also owe them another, even +greater, which is the cause of our ruin. I mean that the Church has +maintained and still maintains Italy divided. Of a truth no province +ever was united and prosperous, unless it were reduced beneath the sway +of one republic or one monarch, as is the case with France and Spain. +And the reason why Italy is not in this condition, but has neither +commonwealth nor monarch for her head, is none other than the Church: +for the Church, established in our midst and exercising a temporal +authority, has never had the force or vigor to extend its sway over the +whole country and to become the ruling power in Italy. Nor on the other +hand has it been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of losing its +temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as a counterpoise in its +defense against those powers which threatened to become supreme. Of the +truth of this, past history furnishes many instances; as when, by the +help of Charlemagne, the Popes expelled the Lombards; and when in our +own days they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and afterwards drove +out the French by calling in the Swiss. So then the Church, being on the +one hand too weak to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too +jealous to allow another power to do so, has prevented our union beneath +one head, and has kept us under scattered lords and princes. These have +caused so much discord and debility that Italy has become the prey not +only of powerful barbarians, but also of every assailant. And this we +owe solely and entirely to the Church. In order to learn by experience +the truth of what I say, one ought to be able to send the Roman Court, +armed with like authority to that it wields in Italy, to take up its +abode among the Swiss, who at the present moment are the only nation +living, as regards religion and military discipline, according to the +antique fashion; he would then see that the evil habits of that Court +would in no long space of time create more disorders than any other +misfortune that could arise there in any period whatever.' In this +scientific and deliberate opinion pronounced by the profoundest thinker +of the sixteenth century, the Papacy is accused of having caused both +the moral depravation and the political disunion of Italy. The second of +these points, which belongs to the general history of the Italian +nation, might be illustrated abundantly: but one other sentence from the +pen of Machiavelli exposes the ruinous and selfish policy of the Church +more forcibly than could be done by copious examples:[2] 'In this way +the Pontiffs at one time by love of their religion, at other times for +the furtherance of their ambitious schemes, have never ceased to sow the +seeds of disturbance and to call foreigners into Italy, spreading wars, +making and unmaking princes, and preventing stronger potentates from +holding the province they were too feeble to rule.' + + [1] Lib. i. cap. 12. + + [2] _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. + +Guicciardini, commenting upon the _Discorsi_ of Machiavelli, begins his +gloss upon the passage I have just translated, with these emphatic +words:[1] 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman Court but +that more abuse would not be merited, seeing it is an infamy, an example +of all the shames and scandals of the world.' He then proceeds to argue, +like Machiavelli, that the greatness of the Church prevented Italy from +becoming a nation under one head, showing, however, at the same time +that the Italians had derived much benefit from their division into +separate states.[2] To the concurrent testimony of these great +philosophic writers may be added the evidence of a practical statesman, +Ferdinand, king of Naples, who in 1493 wrote as follows:[3] 'From year +to year up to this time we have seen the Popes seeking to hurt and +hurting their neighbors, without having to act on the defensive or +receiving any injury. Of this we are ourselves the witness, by reason of +things they have done and attempted against us through their inborn +ambition; and of the many misfortunes which have happened of late in +Italy it is clear that the Popes are authors.' It is not so much however +with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at +present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be +confronted with his illustrious contemporary. In his aphorisms he +says:[4] 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the +priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most +unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on +the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be +combined except in a very extraordinary subject. My position under +several Popes has compelled me to desire their aggrandizement for the +sake of my own profit.[5] Otherwise, I should have loved Martin Luther +like myself--not that I might break loose from the laws which +Christianity, as it is usually interpreted and comprehended, imposes on +us, but that I might see that horde of villains reduced within due +limits, and forced to live either without vices or without power.' + + [1] Guicc. _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 27. + + [2] In another place (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini + describes the rule of priests as founded on violence of two + sorts; 'perchè ci sforzano con le armi temporali e con le + spirituali.' It may be well to collect the chief passages in + Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides those already quoted, + which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian politics. The + most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the _Istoria d' + Italia_ (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be placed + the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's _Istorie + Fiorentine_ (lib. i. cap. 9-25). The eleventh chapter of the + _Principe_ gives a short sketch of the growth of the temporal + power, so framed as to be acceptable to the Medici, but steeped + in the most acid irony. See, in particular, the sentence + 'Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, hanno sudditi e + non li governano,' etc. + + [3] See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. + vii. p. 7, note. + + [4] _Op. Ined. Ricordi_ No. 28. Compare Ariosto, Satire i. + 208-27. + + [5] Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the + Medicean Popes. See back, p. 206. + +These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed +from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like +Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of +Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion. In +one passage of the _Discorsi_ he even pronounces his opinion that the +Christian faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had enfeebled +national spirit.[1] Privately, moreover, he was himself stained with the +moral corruption which he publicly condemned. Guicciardini, again, in +the passage before us, openly avows his egotism. Keen-sighted as they +were in theory, these politicians suffered in their own lives from that +gangrene which had penetrated the upper classes of Italy to the marrow. +Their patriotism and their desire for righteousness were not strong +enough to make them relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived +from the existing state of things. Nor had they the energy or the +opportunity to institute a thorough revolution. Italy, as Machiavelli +pointed out in another passage of the _Discorsi_, had become too +prematurely decrepit for reinvigorating changes;[2] and the splendid +appeal with which the _Principe_ is closed must even to its author have +sounded like a flourish of rhetorical trumpets. + + [1] _Discorsi_, ii. 2, iii. 1. These chapters breathe the + bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised + hatred for its historical development, the intensest rancor + against Catholic ecclesiastics. + + [2] _Discorsi_, i. 55. + +Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to rise above the +conception of a merely formal reformation, or to reach that higher +principle of life which consists in the enunciation of a new religious +truth. The whole argument in the _Discorsi_ which precedes the chapter I +have quoted, treats religion not in its essence as pure Christianity, +but as a state engine for the maintenance of public order and national +well-being.[1] That Milton and Cromwell may have so regarded religion is +true: but they had, besides, a personal sense of the necessity of +righteousness, the fear of God, at the root of their political +convictions. While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished to deprive the +Popes of temporal sovereignty, in order that the worst scandals of their +Court might be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be secured, +Savonarola desired to purge the Church of sin, but to retain its +hierarchy and its dogmas inviolate. Neither the politicians nor the +prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw +clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for +the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government +presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an +engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.[2] + + [1] Mach. _Disc._ i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as + he believed, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts + that, however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness + of religions, it is their duty to maintain them: 'e debbono ... + come che le giudicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.' + + [2] Yet read the curious passage (_Disc_. iii. 1) in which + Machiavelli discusses the regeneration of religion by a return + to its vital principle, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic + had done this in the thirteenth century. It was precisely what + Luther was designing while Machiavelli was writing. + +The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect proceeded from an +intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the +stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of +secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by +the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence +of tyrannies. However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term +_paterino_, originally applied to religious innovators, had become +synonymous in common phraseology with rogue. It was a point of good +society and refined taste to support the Church. Again, the mental +faculties of Italy had for three centuries been taxed to the utmost in +studies wide apart from the field of religious faith. Art, scholarship, +philosophy, and meditation upon politics had given a definite direction +to the minds of thinking men, so that little energy was left for those +instinctive movements of the spirit which produced the German +Reformation. The great work of Italy had been the genesis of the +Renaissance, the development of modern culture. And the tendencies of +the Renaissance were worldly: its ideal of human life left no room for a +pure, and ardent intuition into spiritual truth. Scholars occupied with +the interpretation of classic authors, artists bent upon investing +current notions with the form of beauty, could hardly be expected to +exclaim: 'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, +that is understanding.'[1] Materialism ruled the speculations no less +than the conduct of the age. Pamponazzo preached an atheistic doctrine, +with the plausible reservation of _Salva Fide_, which then covered all. +The more delicate thinkers, Pico and Ficino, sought to reconcile +irreconcilables by fusing philosophy and theology, while they +distinguished truths of science from truths of revelation. It seems +meanwhile to have occurred to no one in Italy that the liberation of the +reason necessitated an abrupt departure from Catholicism. They did not +perceive that a power antagonistic to mediæval orthodoxy had been +generated. This was in great measure due to indifference; for the Church +herself had taught her children by example to regard her dogmas and her +discipline as a convenient convention. It required all the scourges of +the Inquisition to flog the nation back, not to lively faith, but to +hypocrisy. Furthermore, the political conditions of Italy were highly +unfavorable to a profound religious revolution. The thirst for national +liberty which inspired England in the sixteenth century, impelling the +despotic Tudors to cast off the yoke of Rome, arming Howard the Catholic +against the holy fleet of Philip, and joining prince and people in one +aspiration after freedom, was impossible in Italy. The tone of +Machiavelli's _Principe_, the whole tenor of Castiglione's _Cortigiano_, +prove this without the need of further demonstration. + + [1] It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical + culture was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is + very remarkable to note the feeling on this point of some of + the greatest northern scholars. Erasmus, for example, writes: + 'unus adhuc scrupulus habet animum meum, ne sub obtentu priscæ + literaturæ renascentis caput erigere conetur Paganismus, ut + sunt inter Christianos qui titulo pæne duntaxat Christum + agnoscunt, ceterum intus Gentilitatem spirant'--Letter 207 + (quoted by Milman in his Quarterly article on Erasmus). Ascham + and Melanchthon passed similar judgments upon the Italian + scholars. The nations of the north had the Italians at a + disadvantage, for they entered into their labors, and all the + dangerous work of sympathy with the ancient world, upon which + modern scholarship was based, had been done in Italy before + Germany and England came into the field. + +Few things are more difficult than to estimate the exact condition of a +people at any given period with regard to morality and religion. And +this difficulty is increased tenfold when the age presents such rapid +transitions and such bewildering complexities as mark the Renaissance. +Yet we cannot omit to notice the attitude of the Italians at large in +relation to the Church, and to determine in some degree the character of +their national morality. Against the corruption of Rome one cry of +hatred and contempt arises from a crowd of witnesses. Dante's fiery +denunciations, Jacopone's threats, the fierce invectives of Petrarch, +and the thundering prophecies of Joachim lead the chorus. Boccaccio +follows with his scathing irony. 'Send the most obstinate Jew to Rome,' +he says, 'and the profligacy of the Papal Court will not fail to convert +him to the faith that can resist such obloquy.'[1] Another glaring +scandal was the condition of the convents. All novelists combine in +painting the depravity of the religious houses as a patent fact in +social life. Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Bandello, and Masuccio may be +mentioned in particular for their familiar delineation of a profligacy +which was interwoven with the national existence.[2] The comic poets +take the same course, and delight in ridiculing the gross manners of the +clergy. Nor do the ecclesiasties spare themselves. Poggio, the author +of the _Facetiæ_, held benefices and places at the Papal Court. Bandello +was a Dominican and nephew of the General of his order. Folengo was a +Benedictine. Bibbiena became a cardinal. Berni received a Canonry in the +Cathedral of Florence. Such was the open and acknowledged immorality of +the priests in Rome that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding +them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as panders.[3] Among the +aphorisms of Pius II. is recorded the saying that if there were good +reasons for enjoining celibacy on the clergy, there were far better and +stronger arguments for insisting on their marriage.[4] + + [1] We may compare this Umbrian Rispetto for the opposite view. + + A Roma Santa ce so gito anch'io, + E ho visto co'miei occhi il fatto mio: + E quando a Roma ce s'e posto il piede, + Resta la rabbia e se ne va la fede. + + [2] It may not be out of place to collect some passages from + Masuccio's Novelle on the Clergy, premising that what he writes + with the fierceness of indignation is repeated with the + cynicism of indulgence by contemporary novelists. Speaking of + the Popes, he says (ed, Napoli, Morano, 1874): 'me tacerò non + solo de loro scelesti ed enormissimi vizi e pubblici e occulti + adoperati, e de li officii, de beneficil, prelature, i vermigli + cappelli, che all' incanto per loro morte vendono, ma del + camauro del principe San Pietro che ne è gia stato latto + partuito baratto non farò alcuna mentione.' Descending to + prelates, he uses similar language (p. 64): 'non possa mai + pervenire ad alcun grado di prelatura se non col favore del + maestro della zecca, e quelle conviensela comprare all' incanto + come si fa dei cavalli in fiera.' A priest is (p. 31) 'il + venerabile lupo.' The members of religious orders are (p. 534) + 'ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo: (p. 25) + 'piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta + buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza + bruttissima macchia.' It is perilous to hold any communication + with them (p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, + e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against + nature (p. 65), the secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), + the 'fetide cioache oi monache,' choked with the fruits of + infanticide (p. 81), not to mention their avarice (p. 55) and + gross impiety (p. 52), are described with a naked sincerity + that bears upon its face the stamp of truth. + + [3] A famous passage from Agrippa (De Vanitate Scientiarum) + deserves a place here. After alluding to Sixtus IV, he says + that many state officers 'in civitatibus suis lupanaria + construunt foventque, non nihil ex meretricio questu etiam + ærario suo accumulantes emolumenti; quod quidem in Italiâ non + rarum est, ubi etiam Romana scorta in singulas hebdomadas + Julium pendent Pontifici, qui census annuus nonnunquam viginti + millia ducatos excedit, adeoque Ecclesiæ procerum id munus est, + ut una cum Ecclesiarum proventibus etiam lenociniorum numerent + mercedem. Sic enim ego illos supputantes aliquando audivi: + Habet, inquientes, ille duo beneficia, unum curaturn aureorum + viginti, alterum prioratum ducatorum quadraginta, el tres + putanas in burdello, quæ reddunt singulis hebdomadibus Julios + Viginti.' + + [4] Very few ecclesiastics of high rank escaped the contagion + of Roman society. It was fashionable for men like Bembo and La + Casa to form connections with women of the _demi-monde_ and to + recognize their children, whose legitimation they frequently + procured. The Capitoli of the burlesque poets show that this + laxity of conduct was pardonable, when compared with other + laughingly avowed and all but universal indulgences. Once more, + compare Guidiccioni's letter to M. Giamb. Bernardi Opp. vol. i. + p. 102. + +Some of the contempt and hatred expressed by the Italian satirists for +the two great orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic may perhaps be due to +an ancient grudge against them as a Papal police founded in the +interests of orthodoxy. But the chief point aimed at is the mixture of +hypocrisy with immorality, which rendered them odious to all classes of +society. At the same time the Franciscans embraced among their lay +brethren nearly all the population of Italy, and to die in the habit of +the order was thought the safest way of cheating the devil of his due. +Corruption had gone so far and deep that it was universally recognized +and treated with the sarcasm of levity. It roused no sincere reaction, +and stimulated no persistent indignation. Every one acknowledged it; yet +every one continued to live indolently according to the fashion of his +forefathers, acting up to Ovid's maxim-- + + Pro magna parte vetustas + Creditur; acceptam parce movere fidem. + +It is only this incurable indifference that renders Machiavelli's comic +portraits of Fra Alberigo and Fra Timoteo at all intelligible. They are +neither satires nor caricatures, but simple pictures drawn for the +amusement of contemporaries and the stupefaction of posterity. + +The criticism of the Italian writers, so far as we have yet followed it, +was directed against two separate evils--the vicious worldliness of +Rome, and the demoralization of the clergy both in their dealings with +the people and in their conventual life. Contempt for false miracles and +spurious reliques, and the horror of the traffic in indulgences, +swelled the storm of discontent among the more enlightened. But the +people continued to make saints, to adore wonder-working shrines, and to +profit by the spiritual advantages which could be bought. Pius II., +mindful of the honor of his native city, canonized S. Bernardine and S. +Catherine of Siena. Innocent VIII consecrated a chapel for the Lance of +Longinus, which he had received from the Turk as part-payment for the +guardianship of Djem. The Venetian Senate offered 10,000 ducats for the +seamless coat of Christ (1455). The whole of Italy was agitated by the +news that S. Andrew's head had arrived from Patras (1462). The Pope and +his Cardinals went forth to meet it near the Milvian bridge. There Pius +II. pronounced a Latin speech of welcome, while Bessarion delivered an +oration when the precious member was deposited in S. Peter's. In this +passion for reliques two different sentiments seem to have been +combined--the merely superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms, +which caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark so jealously, +and the Neapolitans to watch the liqifaction of the blood of S. +Januarius with a frenzy of excitement--and that nobler respect for the +persons of the mighty dead which induced Sigismondo Malatesta to +transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to Rimini, and which rendered the +supposed coffin of Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to +Mussulman and Christian alike. The bones of Virgil, it will be +remembered, had been built into the walls of Naples, while those of Livy +were honored with splendid sepulture at Padua. + +Owing to the separation between religion and morality which existed in +Italy under the influence of Papal and monastic profligacy, the Italians +saw no reason why spiritual benefits should not be purchased from a +notoriously rapacious Pontiff, or why the penalty of hell should not +depend upon the mere word of a consecrated monster. The Pope as +successor of S. Peter, and the Pope as Roman sovereign, were two +separate beings. Many curious indications of the mixed feeling of the +people upon this point, and of the advantage which the Pope derived from +his anomalous position, may be gathered from the historians of the +period. Machiavelli, in his narrative of the massacre at Sinigaglia, +relates that Vitellozzo Vitelli, while being strangled by Cesare +Borgia's assassin, begged hard that the father of his murderer, the +horrible Alexander, might be entreated to pronounce his absolution. The +same Alexander was nearly suffocated in the Vatican by the French +soldiers who crowded round to kiss his mantle, and who had made him +tremble for his life a few days previously. Cellini on his knees +implored Pope Clement to absolve him from the guilt of homicide and +theft, yet spoke of him as 'transformed to a savage beast' by a sudden +access of fury. At one time he trembled before the awful Majesty of +Christ's Vicar, revealed in Paul III.; at another he reviled him as a +man 'who neither believed in God nor in any other article of religion. +A mysterious sanctity environed the person of the Pontiff. When +Gianpaolo Baglioni held Julius II. in his power in Perugia, he respected +the Pope's freedom, though he knew that Julius would overthrow his +tyranny. Machiavelli condemns this as cowardice, but it was wholly +consistent with the sentiment of the age. 'It cannot have been goodness +or conscience which restrained him,' writes the philosopher of Florence, +'for the heart of a man who cohabited with his sister, and had massacred +his cousins and his nephews, could not have harbored any piety. We must +conclude that men know not how to be either guilty in a noble manner, or +entirely good. Although crime may have a certain grandeur of its own, or +at least a mixture of more generous motives, they do not attain to this. +Gianpaolo, careless though he was about incest and parricide, could not, +or dared not, on a just occasion, achieve an exploit for which the whole +world would have admired his spirit, and by which he would have won +immortal glory: for he would have been the first to show how little +prelates, living and ruling as they do, deserve to be esteemed, and +would have done a deed superior in its greatness to all the infamy, to +all the peril, that it might have brought with it.'[1] It is difficult +to know which to admire most, the superstition of Gianpaolo, or the +cynicism of the commentary, the spurious piety which made the tyrant +miss his opportunity, or the false standard of moral sublimity by which +the half-ironical critic measures his mistake. In combination they +produce a lively impression of the truth of what I have attempted to +establish--that in Italy at this period religion survived as +superstition even among the most depraved, and that the crimes of the +Church had produced a schism between this superstition and morality. + + [1] _Discorsi_, i. 27. This episode in Gianpaolo Baglioni's + life may be illustrated by the curious story told about Gabrino + Fondulo, the tyrant of Cremona. The Emperor Sigismund and Pope + John XXIII. were his guests together in the year 1414. Part of + their entertainment consisted in visiting the sights of Cremona + with their host, who took them up the great Tower (396 feet + high) without any escort. They all three returned safely, but + when Gabrino was executed at Milan in 1425, he remarked that he + only regretted one thing in the course of his life--namely, + that he had not pitched Pope and Emperor together from the + Torazzo. What a golden opportunity to have let slip! The story + is told by Antonio Campo, _Historia di Cremona_ (Milan, 1645), + p. 114. + +While the Church was thus gradually deviating more and more directly +from the Christian ideal, and was exhibiting to Italy an ensample of +worldliness and evil living, the Italians, earlier than any other +European nation, had become imbued with the spirit of the ancient world. +Instead of the Gospel and the Lives of the Saints, men studied Plutarch +and Livy with avidity. The tyrannicides of Greece and the suicides of +the Roman Empire, patriots like Harmodius and Brutus, philosophers like +Seneca and Pætus Thrasea, seemed to the humanists of the fifteenth +century more admirable than the martyrs and confessors of the faith. +Pagan virtues were strangely mingled with confused and ill-assimilated +precepts of the Christian Church, while pagan vices wore a halo borrowed +from the luster of the newly found and passionately welcomed poets of +antiquity. Blending the visionary intuitions of the Middle Ages with the +positive and mundane ethics of the ancients, the Italians of the +Renaissance strove to adopt the sentiments and customs of an age long +dead and not to be resuscitated. At the same time the rhetorical taste +of the nation inclined the more adventurous and passionate natures to +seek glory by dramatic exhibitions of personal heroism. The Greek ideal +of [Greek: _to êalon_], the Roman conception of _Virtus_, agitated the +imagination of a people who had been powerfully influenced by professors +of eloquence, by public orators, by men of letters, masters in the arts +of style and of parade. Painting and sculpture, and that magnificence of +public life which characterized the fifteenth century, contributed to +the substitution of æsthetic for moral or religious standards. Actions +were estimated by the effect which they produced; and to sin against the +laws of culture was of more moment than to transgress the code of +Christianity. Still, the men of the Renaissance could not forget the +creed which they had drawn in with their mothers' milk, but which the +Church had not adjusted to the new conditions of the growing age. The +result was a wild phantasmagoric chaos of confused and clashing +influences. + +Of this peculiar moral condition the records of the numerous +tyrannicides supply many interesting examples.[1] Girolamo Olgiati +offered prayers to S. Ambrose for protection before he stabbed the Duke +of Milan in S. Stephen's Church.[2] The Pazzi conspirators, intimidated +by the sanctity of the Florentine Duomo, had to employ a priest to wield +the sacrilegious dagger.[3] Pietro Paolo Boscoli's last confession, +after the failure of his attempt to assassinate the Medici in 1513, adds +further details in illustration of the mixture of religious feeling with +patriotic paganism. Luca della Robbia, the nephew of the great sculptor +of that name, and himself no mean artist, visited his friend Boscoli on +the night of his execution, and wrote a minute account of their +interview. Both of these men were members of the Confraternità de' Neri, +who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual +counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the +choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of +soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of +Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period +which we possess.[4] What is most striking is the combination of deeply +rooted and almost infantine piety with antique heroism in the young +patriot. He is greatly concerned because, ignorant of his approaching +end, he had eaten a hearty supper: 'Son troppo carico di cibo, et ho +mangiatccose insalate; in modo che non mi pare poter unir Io spirito a +Dio ... Iddio abbi di me misericordia, che costoro m' hanno carico di +cibo. Oh indiscrezione!'[5] Then he expresses a vehement desire for the +services of a learned confessor, to resolve his intellectual doubts, +pleading with all the earnestness of desperate conviction that the +salvation of his soul must depend upon his orthodoxy at the last. He +complains that he ought to have been allowed at least a month's +seclusion with good friars before he was brought face to face with +death. At another time he is chiefly anxious to free himself from +classic memories: 'Deh! Luca, cavatemi della testa quel Bruto, acciò ch' +io faccia questo passo interamente da Cristiano'.[6] Then again it +grieves him that the tears of compunction, which he has been taught to +regard as the true sign of a soul at one with God, will not flow. About +the mere fact of dying he has no anxiety. The philosophers have +strengthened him upon that point. He is only eager to die piously. When +he tries to pray, he can barely remember the Paternoster and the Ave +Maria. That reminds him how easy it would have been to have spent his +time better, and he bids Luca remember that the mind a man makes for +himself in life, will be with him in death. When they bring him a +picture of Christ, he asks whether he needs _that_ to fix his soul upon +his Saviour. Throughout this long contention of so many varying +thoughts, he never questions the morality of the act for which he is +condemned to die. Luca, however, has his doubts, and privately asks the +confessor whether S. Thomas Aquinas had not discountenanced tyrannicide. +'Yes,' answers the monk, 'in case the people have elected their own +tyrant, but not when he has imposed himself on them by force.' This +casuistical answer satisfies Luca that his friend may reasonably be held +blameless. After confessing, Boscoli received the sacrament with great +piety, and died bravely. The confessor told Luca, weeping, that he was +sure the young man's soul had gone straight to Paradise, and that he +might be reckoned a real martyr. His head after death was like that of +an angel; and Luca was, we know, a connoisseur in angels' heads. Boscoli +was only thirty-two years of age; he had light hair, and was +short-sighted. + + [1] For the Italian ethics of tyrannicide, see back, pp. 169, + 170. + + [2] See p. 166. + + [3] See p. 398. + + [4] It is printed in _Arch. Stor_, vol. i. + + [5] 'I am over-burdened with food, and I have eaten salt meats; + so that I do not seem able to join my spirit to God.... God + have pity on me, for they have burdened me with food. Oh, how + thoughtless of them!' His words cannot be translated. Naïf in + the extreme, they become ludicrous in English. + + [6] 'Ah, Luca, turn that Brutus out of my head, in order that I + may take this last step wholly as a Christian man!' + +To this narrative might be added the apology written by Lorenzino de' +Medici, after the murder of his cousin Alessandro in 1536.[1] He relies +for his defense entirely upon arguments borrowed from Pagan ethics, and +by his treatment of the subject vindicates for himself that name of +Brutus with which Filippo Strozzi in person at Venice, and Varchi and +Molsa in Latin epigrams, saluted him. There is no trace of Christian +feeling in this strong and splendid display of rhetorical ability; nor +does any document of the age more forcibly exhibit the extent to which +classical studies had influenced the morality of the Renaissance. +Lorenzino, however, when he wrote it, was not, like Boscoli, upon the +point of dying. + + [1] It is printed at the end of the third volume of Varchi, pp. + 283-95; compare p. 210. A medal in honor of Lorenzino's + tyrannicide was struck with a profile copied from Michael + Angelo's bust of Brutus. + +The last thing to perish in a nation is its faith. The whole history of +the world proves that no anomalies are so glaring, no inconsistencies so +paradoxical, as to sap the credit of a religious system which has once +been firmly rooted in the habits, instincts, and traditions of a race: +and what remains longest is often the least rational portion. Religions +from the first are not the product of logical reflection or experiment, +but of sentiment and aspiration. They come into being as simple +intuitions, and afterwards invade the province of the reason and +assimilate the thought of centuries to their own conceptions. This is +the secret of their strength as well as the source of their weakness. It +is only a stronger enthusiasm, a new intuition, a fresh outburst of +emotional vitality, that can supplant the old:-- + + 'Cotal rimedio ha questo aspro furore, + Tale acqua suole spegner questo fuoco, + Come d'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo.' + +Criticism from without, internal corruption, patent absurdity, are +comparatively powerless to destroy those habits of belief which once +have taken hold upon the fancy and the feeling of a nation. The work of +dissolution proceeds in silence and in secret. But the established +order subsists until the moment comes for a new synthesis. And in the +sixteenth century the necessary impulse of regeneration was to come, not +from Italy, satisfied with the serenity of her art, preoccupied with her +culture, and hardened to the infamy of her corruption, but from the +Germany of the barbarians she despised. + +These considerations will help to explain how it was that the Church, in +spite of its corruption, stood its ground and retained the respect of +the people in Italy. We must moreover bear in mind that, bad as it was, +it still to some extent maintained the Christian verity. Apart from the +Roman Curia and the Convents, there existed a hierarchy of able and +God-fearing men, who by the sanctity of their lives, by the gravity of +their doctrine, by the eloquence of their preaching, by their +ministration to the sick, by the relief of the poor, by the maintenance +of hospitals, Monti di Pietà, schools and orphanages, kept alive in the +people of Italy the ideal at least of a religion pure and undefiled +before God.[1] In the tottering statue of the Church some true metal +might be found between the pinchbeck at the summit and the clay of the +foundation. + + [1] See the life of S. Antonino, the good Archbishop of + Florence. + +It must also be remembered how far the worldly interests and domestic +sympathies of the Italians were engaged in the maintenance of their +Church system. The fibers of the Church were intertwined with the very +heartstrings of the people. Few families could not show one or more +members who had chosen the clerical career, and who looked to Rome for +patronage, employment, and perhaps advancement to the highest honors. +The whole nation felt a pride in the Eternal City: patriotic vanity and +personal interest were alike involved in the maintenance of the +metropolis of Christendom, which drew the suites of ambassadors, +multitudes of pilgrims, and the religious traffic of the whole of Europe +to the shores of Italy. It was easy for Germans and Englishmen to reason +calmly about dethroning the Papal hierarchy. Italians, however they +might loathe the temporal power, could not willingly forego the +spiritual primacy of the civilized world. + +Moreover, the sacraments of the Church, the absolutions, consecrations, +and benedictions which priests dispensed or withheld at pleasure, had by +no means lost their power. To what extent even the nations of the north +still clung to them is proved by our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult +of war with Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resemblance to +the old ritual consistent with the spirit of the Reformation. Far more +imposing were they in their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who +had never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the fountain of +Apostolical privileges in the person of the Pope, and whose southern +temperament inclined them to a more sensuous and less metaphysical +conception of Christianity than the Germans or the English. The dread of +the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, +roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such +words as _leno matris suæ, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius_, yet +the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the +baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last +sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed +against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean +Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly +issued and however manfully resisted. + + [1] Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361. + +The history of the despots and the Popes, together with the analysis of +Machiavelli's political ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in +which crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and cynicism so +deliberate could be accepted as a system. Yet it remains in estimating +the general character of Italian morality to record the judgment passed +upon it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The morality of +races, as of individuals, is rarely otherwise than mixed--virtue +balancing vice and evil vitiating goodness. Still the impression +produced by Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North was almost +wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned from their Italian travels either +horrified with what they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham +writes:[1] 'I was once in Italy myself; but I thank God my abode there +was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more +liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of London in +nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all +punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the +City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear +shoe or pantocle.' Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the +novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels +in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to +declare.'[2] The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these +witnesses, while the proverb, _Inglese Italianato è un diavolo +incarnato_, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how +pernicious to the coarser natures of the north were the refined vices of +the south. What principally struck our ancestors in the morality of the +Italians was the license allowed in sensual indulgences, and the bad +faith which tainted all public and private dealings. In respect to the +latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is +enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: +engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was +aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison +being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or +for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial +integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries of Europe they +carried on the banking business of monarchs, cities, and private +persons. + + [1] _The Schoolmaster;_ edn. 1863, p. 87. The whole discourse + on Italian traveling and Italian influence is very curious, + when we reflect that at this time contact with Italy was + forming the chief culture of the English in literature and + social manners. The ninth satire in Marston's _Scourge of + Villanie_ contains much interesting matter on the same point. + Howell's _Instructions for forreine Travell_ furnishes the + following illustration: 'And being in Italy, that great + limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his + carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and + deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himself, and + become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonnesse.' + + [2] _The Repentance of Robert Greene_, quoted in the memoir to + Dyce's edition of his Dramatic Works. + + [3] See chapter v. + +With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied that the corruption +of Italy was shameful. Putting aside the profligacy of the convents, the +City of Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as many as 6,800 public +prostitutes, besides those who practiced their trade under the cloak of +concubinage.[1] These women were accompanied by confederate ruffians, +ready to stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went +hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be +ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent +VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De +Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could +afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the +eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and +refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston +describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine +played professor.[3] Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola's +sermons give the best picture. + + [1] Infessura, p. 1997. He adds: 'Consideratur modo qualiter + vivatur Romæ ubi caput fidei est.' From what Parent Duchatelet + _(Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris,_ p. 27) has noted + concerning the tendency to exaggerate the numbers of + prostitutes in any given town, we have every reason to regard + the estimate of Infessura as excessive. In Paris, in 1854, + there were only 4,206 registered 'filles publiques,' when the + population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; while those + who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously + computed at 20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000. Accurate + statistics relating to the population of any Italian city in + the fifteenth century do not, unfortunately, exist. + + [2] _Memoirs,_ lib. vii. 'C'est la plus triomphante cité que + j'ai jamais vue, et qui plus fait d'honneur à ambassadeurs et + étrangers, et qui plus sagement se gouverne, _et ou le service + de Dieu est le plus solemnellement faict.'_ The prostitutes of + Venice were computed to number 11,654 so far back as the end of + the 14th century. See Filiasi, quoted by Mutinelli in his + _Annali urbani di Venezia._ + + [3] Satires, ii. + +But the characteristic vice of the Italian was not coarse sensuality. He +required the fascination of the fancy to be added to the allurement of +the senses.[1] It is this which makes the Capitoli of the burlesque +poets, of men of note like Berni, La Casa, Varchi, Mauro, Molsa, Dolce, +Bembo, Firenzuola, Bronzino, Aretino, and de' Medici, so amazing. The +crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished +treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their +cynicism. A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the _Canti +Carnascialeschi_ of Florence, proving that however profligate the people +might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned +with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the +lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness +of personal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of ingenuity or +the avoidance of peril an enhancement of pleasure to the Italians. This +is perhaps one of the reasons why all the imaginative compositions of +the Renaissance, especially the _Novelle,_ turn upon adultery. Judging +by the majority of these romances, by the comedies of the time, and by +the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to believe that such illicit +love was merely sensual, and owed its principal attractions to the scope +it afforded for whimsical adventures. Yet Bembo's _Asolani,_ +Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, and much of the lyrical poetry +in vogue warn us to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment expressed by +the Florentines of the thirteenth century still survived to some extent, +adding a sort of dignity in form at least to these affections. + + [1] Much might be written about the play of the imagination + which gave a peculiar complexion to the profligacy, the + jealousy, and the vengeance of the Italians. I shall have + occasion elsewhere to maintain that in their literature at + least the Italians were not a highly imaginative race; nor were + they subject to those highly wrought conditions of the brooding + fancy, termed by the northern nations Melancholy, which Dürer + has personified in his celebrated etching, and Burton has + described in his _Anatomy._ But in their love and hatred, their + lust and their cruelty, the Italians required an intellectual + element which brought the imaginative faculty into play. + +It was due again in a great measure to their demand for imaginative +excitement in all matters of the sense, to their desire for the +extravagant and extraordinary as a seasoning of pleasure, that the +Italians came to deserve so terrible a name among the nations for +unnatural passions.[1] This is a subject which can hardly be touched in +passing: yet the opinion may be recorded that it belongs rather to the +science of psychopathy than to the chronicle of vulgar lusts. English +poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament, on this as +on so many other points. Shelley in his portrait of Francesco Cenci has +drawn a man in whom cruelty and incest have become appetites of the +distempered soul; the love of Giovanni and Annabella in Ford's tragedy +is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual. It is no excuse +for the Italians to say that they had spiritualized abominable vices. +What this really means is that their immorality was nearer that of +devils than of beasts. But in seeking to distinguish its true character, +we must take notice of the highly wrought fantasy which seasoned both +their luxury and their jealousy, their vengeance and their lust. + + [1] Italian literature is loud-voiced on this topic. The + concluding stanzas of Poliziano's _Orfeo_, recited before the + Cardinal of Mantua, the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, + and some of the _Canti Carnasialeschi_, might be cited. We + might add Varchi's express testimony as to the morals of + Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, Pier Luigi Farnese, and + Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells us about the + brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the Life of + San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano (_Vite di Illustri Uomini_, + p. 186) writes: 'L'Italia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e + aveva lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era più chi + conoscesse Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti + e abbominevoli vizi nefandi! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, + che non temevano nè Iddio nè l'onore del mondo. Maladetta + cecità! In tanto eccesso era venuto ogni cosa, che gli + scellerati ed enormi vizi non era più chi gli stimasse, per lo + maladetto uso che n'avevano fatto ... massime il maladetto e + abominando e detestando peccato della sodomia. Erano in modo + stracorsi in questa cecità, che bisognava che l'onnipotente + Iddio facesse un' altra volta piovere dal cielo zolfo e fuoco + come egli fece a Sodoma e Gomorra.' Compare Savonarola passim, + the inductions to the Sacre Rappresentazioni, the familiar + letters of Machiavelli, and the statute of Cosimo against this + vice (year 1542, Sabellii Summa. Venice, 1715; vol. v. p. 287). + +The same is to some extent true of their cruelty. The really cruel +nation of the Renaissance was Spain, not Italy.[1] The Italians, as a +rule, were gentle and humane, especially in warfare.[2] No Italian army +would systematically have tortured the whole population of a captured +city day after day for months, as the Spaniards did in Rome and Milan, +to satisfy their avarice and glut their stolid appetite for blood. Their +respect for human life again was higher than that of the French or +Swiss. They gave quarter to their foes upon the battle-field, and were +horrified with the massacres in cold blood perpetrated at Fivizzano and +Rapallo by the army of Charles VIII. But when the demon of cruelty +possessed the imagination of an Italian, when, like Gian Maria Visconti, +he came to relish the sight of torment for its own sake, or when he +sought to inspire fear by the spectacle of pain, then no Spaniard +surpassed him in the ingenuity of his devices. In gratifying his thirst +for vengeance he was never contented with mere murder. To obtain a +personal triumph at the expense of his enemy by the display of superior +cunning, by rendering him ridiculous, by exposing him to mental as well +as physical anguish, by wounding him through his affections or his sense +of honor, was the end which he pursued. This is why so many acts of +violence in Italy assumed fantastic forms. Even the country folk showed +an infernal art in the execution of their _vendette_. To serve the flesh +of children up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is mentioned, for +example, as one mode of wreaking vengeance in country villages. Thus the +high culture and æsthetic temperament of the Italians gave an +intellectual quality to their vices. Crude lust and bloodshed were +insipid to their palates: they required the pungent sauce of a +melodramatic catastrophe. + + [1] Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty + in Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma + by Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di + Prato in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. i., and + Cagnola's account of the Spanish occupation of Milan, ib. vol. + iii. + + [2] De Comines more than once notices the humanity shown by the + Italian peasants to the French army. + +The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations for a like reason found +no favor in Italy. It disgusted the Romans beyond measure to witness the +swinish excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality prompted them to a +refined Epicureanism in food and drink; on this point, however, it must +be admitted that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profligacy, +disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy of Vitellius.[1] We trace +the same play of the fancy, the same promptitude to quicken and +intensify the immediate sense of personality at any cost of +after-suffering, in another characteristic vice of the Italians. +Gambling among them was carried further and produced more harm than it +did in the transalpine cities. This we gather from Savonarola's +denunciations, from the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his +_Trattato della Famiglia_ and _Cena della Famiglia_ and also from the +inductions to many of the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_.[2] + + [1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. p. 225: 'E li + cardinali comenzarono a vomitar e cussi li altri,' quoted from + Sanudo. + + [2] One of the excellent characteristics of Alfonso the Great + (_Vespasiano_, p. 49) was his abhorrence of gambling. + +Another point which struck a northern visitor in Italy was the frequency +of private and domestic murders.[1] The Italians had and deserved a bad +reputation for poisoning and assassination. To refer to the deeds of +violence in the history of a single family, the Baglioni of Perugia, as +recorded by their chronicler Matarazzo; to cite the passages in which +Varchi relates the deaths by poison of Luisa Strozzi, Cardinal Ippolito +de' Medici, and Sanga; or to translate the pages of annalists, who +describe the palaces of nobles swarming with _bravi_, would be a very +easy task.[2] But the sketch of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, which +will form part of my third volume, gives so lively a picture of this +aspect of Italian life, that there is no reason to enlarge upon the +topic now. It is enough to observe that, in their employment of poison +and of paid assassins, the Italians were guided by those habits of +calculation which distinguished their character.[3] They thought nothing +of removing an enemy by craft or violence: but they took no pleasure in +murder for its own sake.[4] The object which they had in view prompted +them to take a man's life; the mere delight in brawls and bloodshed of +Switzers, Germans, and Spaniards offended their taste. + + [1] See Guicc. _St. Il._ vol. i. p. 101, for the impression + produced upon the army of Charles by the murder by poison of + Gian Galeazzo Sforza. + + [2] A vivid illustration of the method adopted by hired + assassins in tracking and hunting down their victims is + presented by Francesco Bibboni's narrative of his murder of + Lorenzino de' Medici at Venice. It casts much curious light, + moreover, on the relations between paid _bravi_ and their + employers, the esteem in which professional cutthroats were + held, and their connection with the police of the Italian + towns. It is published in a tract concerning Lorenzino, Milano, + Daelli, 1862. + + [3] See the instructions given by the Venetian government to + their agents for the purchase of poison and the hiring of + secret murderers. See also the Maxims laid down by Sarpi. + + [4] This at least was accounted eccentric and barbarous in the + extreme. See Pontano, _de Immanitate_, vol. i. p. 326, + concerning Niccolo Fortibraccio, Antonio, Pontadera, and the + Riccio Montechiaro, who stabbed and strangled for the pleasure + of seeing men die. I have already discussed the blood-madness + of some of the despots. + +While the imagination played so important a part in the morality of the +Italians, it must be remembered that they were deficient in that which +is the highest imaginative safeguard against vice, a scrupulous sense of +honor. It is true that the Italian authors talk much about _Onore_. +Pandolfini tells his sons that _Onore_ is one of the qualities which +require the greatest thrift in keeping, and Machiavelli asserts that it +is almost as dangerous to attack men in their _Onore_ as in their +property. But when we come to analyze the word, we find that it means +something different from that mixture of conscience, pride, and +self-respect which makes a man true to a high ideal in all the possible +circumstances of life. The Italian _Onore_ consisted partly of the +credit attaching to public distinction, and partly of a reputation for +_Virtù_, understanding that word in its Machiavellian usage, as force, +courage, ability, virility. It was not incompatible with craft and +dissimulation, or with the indulgence of sensual vices. Statesmen like +Guicciardini, who, by the way, has written a fine paragraph upon the +very word in question,[1] did not think it unworthy of their honor to +traffic in affairs of state for private profit. Machiavelli not only +recommended breaches of political faith, but sacrificed his principles +to his pecuniary interests with the Medici. It would be curious to +inquire how far the obtuse sensibility of the Italians on this point was +due to their freedom from vanity.[2] No nation is perhaps less +influenced by mere opinion, less inclined to value men by their +adventitious advantages: the Italian has the courage and the +independence of his personality. It is, however, more important to take +notice that Chivalry never took a firm root in Italy; and honor, as +distinguished from vanity, _amour propre_, and credit, draws its life +from that ideal of the knightly character which Chivalry established. +The true knight was equally sensitive upon the point of honor, in all +that concerned the maintenance of an unsullied self, whether he found +himself in a king's court or a robber's den. Chivalry, as epitomized in +the celebrated oath imposed by Arthur on his peers of the Round Table, +was a northern, a Teutonic, institution. The sense of honor which formed +its very essence was further developed by the social atmosphere of a +monarch's court. It became the virtue of the nobly born and chivalrously +nurtured, as appears very remarkably in this passage from Rabelais[3]: +'En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce que vouldras. Parce +que gens liberes, bien nayz, bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies +honnesties, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui toujours les +poulse à faitctz vertueux, et retire de vice: lequel ils nommoyent +honneur.' Now in Italy not only was Chivalry as an institution weak; but +the feudal courts in which it produced its fairest flower, the knightly +sense of honor, did not exist.[4] Instead of a circle of peers gathered +from all quarters of the kingdom round the font of honor in the person +of the sovereign, commercial republics, forceful tyrannies, and the +Papal Curia gave the tone to society. In every part of the peninsula +rich bankers who bought and sold cities, adventurers who grasped at +principalities by violence or intrigue, and priests who sought the +aggrandizement of a sacerdotal corporation, were brought together in the +meshes of diplomacy. The few noble families which claimed a feudal +origin carried on wars for pay by contract in the interest of burghers, +popes, or despots. Of these conditions not one was conducive to the +sense of honor as conceived in France or England. Taken altogether and +in combination, they could not fail to be eminently unfavorable to its +development. In such a society Bayard and Sir Walter Manny would have +been out of place: the motto _noblesse oblige_ would have had but little +meaning.[5] Instead of Honor, Virtù ruled the world in Italy. The moral +atmosphere again was critical and highly intellectualized. Mental +ability combined with personal daring gave rank. But the very subtlety +and force of mind which formed the strength of the Italians proved +hostile to any delicate sentiment of honor. Analysis enfeebles the tact +and spontaneity of feeling which constitute its strongest safeguard. All +this is obvious in the ethics of the _Principe_. What most astounds us +in that treatise is the assumption that no men will be bound by laws of +honor when utility or the object in view require their sacrifice. In +conclusion; although the Italians were not lacking in integrity, +honesty, probity, or pride, their positive and highly analytical genius +was but little influenced by that chivalrous honor which was an +enthusiasm and a religion to the feudal nations, surviving the decay of +chivalry as a preservative instinct more undefinable than absolute +morality. Honor with the northern gentry was subjective; with the +Italians _Onore_ was objective--an addition conferred from without, in +the shape of reputation, glory, titles of distinction, or offices of +trust.[6] + + [1] Ricordi politici e civili, No. 118, _Op. Ined._ vol. i. + + [2] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la peinture en Italie_, pp. + 285-91, for a curious catalogue of examples. The modern sense + of honor is based, no doubt, to some extent on a delicate + _amour propre_, which makes a man desirous of winning the + esteem of his neighbors for its own sake. Granting that + conscience, pride, vanity, and self-respect are all + constituents of honor, we may, perhaps, find more pride in the + Spanish, more _amour propre_ in the French, and more conscience + in the English. + + [3] Gargantua, lib. 1. ch. 57. + + [4] See, however, what I have already said about Castiglione + and his ideal of the courtier in Chapter III. We must remember + that he represents a late period of the Renaissance. + + [5] It is curious to compare, for example, the part played by + Italians, especially by Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, as + contractors and merchants in the Crusades, with the enthusiasm + of the northern nations. + + [6] In confirmation of this view I may call attention to + Giannotti's critique of the Florentine constitution (Florence, + 1850, vol. i. pp. 15 and 156), and to what Machiavelli says + about Gianpaolo Baglioni (_Disc_. i. 27), 'Gli uomini non sanno + essere _onorevolmente_ tristi'; men know not how to be bad with + credit to themselves. The context proves that Gianpaolo failed + to win the honor of a signal crime. Compare the use of the word + _onore_ in Lorinzino de' Medici's 'Apologia.' + +With the Italian conception of _Onore_ we may compare their view of +_Onestà_ in the female sex. This is set forth plainly by Piccolomini in +_La Bella Creanza delle Donne_.[1] As in the case of _Onore_, we have +here to deal, not with an exquisite personal ideal, but with something +far more material and external. The _onestà_ of a married woman is +compatible with secret infidelity, provided she does not expose herself +to ridicule and censure by letting her amour be known. Here again, +therefore, the proper translation of the word seems to be credit. +Finally, we may allude to the invective against honor which Tasso puts +into the mouths of his shepherds in _Aminta_[2] Though at this period +the influence of France and Spain had communicated to aristocratic +society in Italy an exotic sense of honor, yet a court poet dared to +condemn it as unworthy of the _Bell' età dell' oro_, because it +interfered with pleasure and introduced disagreeable duties into life. +Such a tirade would not have been endured in the London of Elizabeth or +in the Paris of Louis XIV. Tasso himself, it may be said in passing, was +almost feverishly punctilious in matters that touched his reputation. + + [1] _La Raffaella, ovvero Delia bella Creanza delle Donne_ + (Milano, Daelli). Compare the statement of the author in his + preface, p. 4, where he speaks in his own person, with the + definition of _Onore_ given by Raffaella, pp. 50 and 51 of the + Dialogue: 'l'onore non è riposto in altro, se non nella + stimazione appresso agli uomini ... l'onor della donna non + consiste, come t'ho detto, nel fare o non fare, chè questo + importa poco, ma nel credersi o non credersi.' + + [2] This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio's + Novelle (ed. Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost + cynically exposes the inconvenience of self-respect and + delicacy. The situation of two friends, who agree that honor is + a nuisance and share their wives in common, is a favorite of + the Novelists. + +An important consideration, affecting the whole question of Italian +immorality, is this. Whereas the northern races had hitherto remained in +a state of comparative poverty and barbarism, distributed through +villages and country districts, the people of Italy had enjoyed +centuries of wealth and civilization in great cities. Their towns were +the centers of luxurious life. The superfluous income of the rich was +spent in pleasure, nor had modern decorum taught them to conceal the +vices of advanced culture beneath the cloak of propriety. They were at +the same time both indifferent to opinion and self-conscious in a high +degree. The very worst of them was seen at a glance and recorded with +minute particularity. The depravity of less cultivated races remained +unnoticed because no one took the trouble to describe mere barbarism.[1] +Vices of the same sort, but less widely dispersed, perhaps, throughout +the people, were notorious in Italy, because they were combined with so +much that was beautiful and splendid. In a word, the faults of the +Italians were such as belong to a highly intellectualized society, as +yet but imperfectly penetrated with culture, raised above the +brutishness of barbarians, but not advanced to the self-control of +civilization, hampered by the corruption of a Church that trafficked in +crime, tainted by uncritical contact with pagan art and literature, and +emasculated by political despotism. Their vices, bad as they were in +reality, seemed still worse because they attacked the imagination +instead of merely exercising the senses. As a correlative to their +depravity, we find a sobriety of appetite, a courtesy of behavior, a +mildness and cheerfulness of disposition, a widely diffused refinement +of sentiment and manners, a liberal spirit of toleration, which can +nowhere else be paralleled in, Europe at that period. It was no small +mark of superiority to be less ignorant and gross than England, less +brutal and stolid than Germany, less rapacious than Switzerland, less +cruel than Spain, less vain and inconsequent than France. + + [1] Read, however, the Saxon Chronicles or the annals of + Ireland in Froude. + +Italy again was the land of emancipated individuality. What Mill in his +Essay on Liberty desired, what seems every day more unattainable in +modern life, was enjoyed by the Italians. There was no check to the +growth of personality, no grinding of men down to match the average. If +great vices emerged more openly than they did elsewhere in Europe, great +qualities also had the opportunity of free development in heroes like +Ferrucci, in saints like Savonarola, in artists like Michael Angelo. +While the social atmosphere of the Papal and despotic courts was +unfavorable to the highest type of character, we find at least no +external engine of repression, no omnipotent inquisition, no +overpowering aristocracy.[1] False political systems and a corrupt +Church created a malaria, which poisoned the noble spirits of +Machiavelli, Ariosto, Guicciardini, Giuliano della Rovere. It does not, +however, follow therefore that the humanities of the race at large, in +spite of superstition and bad government, were vitiated. + + [1] I am of course speaking of the Renaissance as distinguished + from that new phase of Italian history which followed the + Council of Trent and the Spanish despotism. + +We have positive proofs to the contrary in the art of the Italians. The +April freshness of Giotto, the piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal +purity of the young Raphael, the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the +philosophic depth of Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of Michael Angelo, +the suavity of Fra Bartolommeo, the delicacy of the Della Robbia, the +restrained fervor of Rosellini, the rapture of the Sienese and the +reverence of the Umbrian masters, Francia's pathos, Mantegna's dignity, +and Luini's divine simplicity, were qualities which belonged not only to +these artists but also to the people of Italy from whom they sprang. If +men not few of whom were born in cottages and educated in workshops +could feel and think and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that their +mothers and their friends were pure and pious, and that the race which +gave them to the world was not depraved. Painting in Italy, it must be +remembered, was nearer to the people than literature: it was less a +matter of education than instinct, a product of temperament rather than +of culture. + +Italian art alone suffices to prove to my mind that the immorality of +the age descended from the upper stratum of society downwards. Selfish +despots and luxurious priests were the ruin of Italy; and the bad +qualities of the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, found expression +in the literature of poets and humanists, their parasites. But in what +other nation of the fifteenth century can we show the same of social +urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all classes from the +highest to the lowest? It is true that the sixteenth century cast a +blight upon their luster. But it was not until Italian taste had been +impaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact with the Spaniards +that the arts became either coarse or sensual. Giulio Romano (1492-1546) +and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-70) mark the beginning of the change. In +Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and in the whole school of Bologna, +it was accomplished. Yet never at any period did the native Italian +masters learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals innate +grossness. It remained for Dürer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth to elevate the +grotesque into the region of high art, for Rubens to achieve the +apotheosis of pure animalism, for Teniers to devote distinguished genius +to the service of the commonplace. + +In any review of Italian religion and morality, however fragmentary it +may be, as this indeed is, one feature which distinguishes the acute +sensibility of the race ought not to be omitted. Deficient in profound +intellectual convictions, incapable of a fixed and radical determination +towards national holiness, devoid of those passionate and imaginative +intuitions into the mysteries of the world which generate religions and +philosophies, the Italians were at the same time keenly susceptible to +the beauty of the Christian faith revealed to them by inspired orators. +What we call Revivalism was an institution in Italy, which the Church +was too wise to discountenance or to suppress, although the preachers of +repentance were often insubordinate and sometimes even hostile to the +Papal system. The names of Arnold of Brescia, San Bernardino of Siena, +John of Vicenza, Jacopo Bussolari, Alberto da Lecce, Giovanni +Capistrano, Jacopo della Marca, Girolamo Savonarola, bring before the +memory of those who are acquainted with Italian history innumerable +pictures of multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and +constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and +vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in +sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks +of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with +sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.[1] In the +midst of these melodramatic scenes towers the single form of a Dominican +or Franciscan friar: while one voice thundering woe or pleading peace +dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these +preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in +states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than +merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not +only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of +importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the +sixteenth century in Italy--Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a real +religious vigor in the people corresponding to the preacher's zeal. But +the action of this earnest mood was intermittent and spasmodic. It +coexisted with too much superstition and with passions too vehemently +restless to form a settled tone of character. In this respect the +Italian nation stands not extravagantly pictured in the life of Cellini, +whose violence, self-indulgence, keen sense of pleasure, and pagan +delight in physical beauty were interrupted at intervals by inexplicable +interludes of repentance, Bible-reading, psalm-singing, and visions. To +delineate Cellini will be the business of a distant chapter. The form of +the greatest of Italian preachers must occupy the foreground of the +next. + + [1] I have thrown into an appendix some of the principal + passages from the chronicles about revivals in mediæval Italy. + +Before closing the imperfect and scattered notices collected in this +chapter, it will be well to attempt some recapitulation of the points +already suggested. Without committing ourselves to the dogmatism of a +theory, we are led to certain general conclusions on the subject of +Italian society in the sixteenth century. The fierce party quarrels +which closed the Middle Ages had accustomed the population to violence, +and this violence survived in the too frequent occurrence of brutal +crimes. The artificial sovereignty of the despots being grounded upon +perfidy, it followed that guile and fraud came to be recognized in +private no less than public life. With the emergence of the bourgeois +classes a self-satisfied positivism, vividly portrayed in the person of +Cosimo de' Medici, superseded the passions and enthusiasms of a previous +age. Thus force, craft, and practical materialism formed the basis of +Italian immorality. Vehement contention in the sphere of politics, +restless speculation, together with the loosening of every tie that +bound society together in the Middle Ages, emancipated personality and +substituted the freedom of self-centered vigor and virility (Virtù) for +the prescriptions of civil or religions order. In the nation that had +shaken off both Papal and Imperial authority no conception of law +remained to control caprice. Instead of law men obeyed the instincts of +their several characters, swayed by artistic taste or tyrannous +appetite, or by the splendid heroism of extinct antiquity. The Church +had alienated the people from true piety. Yet no new form of religious +belief arose; and partly through respect for the past, partly through +the convenience of clinging to existing institutions, Catholicism was +indulgently tolerated. At the same time the humanists introduced an +ideal antagonistic to Christianity of the monastic type. Without +abruptly severing themselves from the communion of the Church, and while +in form at least observing all its ordinances, they thought, wrote, +spoke, felt, and acted like Pagans. To the hypocrisies of obsolete +asceticism were added the affectations of anachronistic license. +Meanwhile, the national genius for art attained its fullest development, +simultaneously with the decay of faith, the extinction of political +liberty, and the anarchy of ethics. So strong was the æsthetic impulse +that it seemed for a while capable of drawing all the forces of the +nation to itself. A society that rested upon force and fraud, corroded +with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy recognizing no standard apart +from success in action and beauty in form, so conscious of its own +corruption that it produced no satirist among the many who laughed +lightly at its vices, wore the external aspect of exquisite refinement, +and was delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who understood the +contradictions of the age most deeply were the least capable of rising +above them Consequently we obtain in Machiavelli's works the ideal +picture of personal character, moving to calculated ends by +scientifically selected means, none of which are sanctioned by the +unwritten code of law that governs human progress. Cosimo's positivism +is reduced to theory. Fraud becomes a rule of conduct. Force is +advocated, when the dagger or the poisoned draught or the extermination +of a city may lead the individual straight forward to his object. +Religion is shown to be a political engine. Hypocrisy is a mask that +must be worn. The sanctities of ancient use and custom controlling +appetite have no place assigned them in the system. Action is analyzed +as a branch of the fine arts; and the spirit of the age, of which the +philosopher makes himself the hierophant, compels him to portray it as a +sinister and evil art. + +In the civilization of Italy, carried prematurely beyond the conditions +of the Middle Ages, before the institutions of mediævalism had been +destroyed or its prejudices had been overcome, we everywhere discern +the want of a co-ordinating principle. The old religion has died; but +there is no new faith. The Communes have been proved inadequate; but +there is no nationality. Practical positivism has obliterated the +virtues of a chivalrous and feudal past; but science has not yet been +born. Scholarship floods the world with the learning of antiquity; but +this knowledge is still undigested. Art triumphs; but the æsthetic +instinct has invaded the regions of politics and ethics, owing to +defective analysis in theory, and in practice to over-confident reliance +on personal ability. The individual has attained to freedom; but he has +not learned the necessity of submitting his volition to law. At all +points the development of the Italians strikes us as precocious, with +the weakness of precocity scarcely distinguishable from the decay of old +age. A transition from the point attained in the Renaissance to some +firmer and more solid ground was imperatively demanded. But the fatality +of events precluded the Italians from making it. Their evolution, +checked in mid career by the brilliant ambition of France and the +cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students +are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an +inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof +the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be +an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign +interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional +stage of the Renaissance to a sounder and more substantial phase of +national vitality; or whether, as their inner conscience seems to have +assured them, their disengagement from moral obligation and their mental +ferment foreboded an inevitable catastrophe. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +SAVONAROLA. + + +The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the +Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San +Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His +Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 +and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to +call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial +and Execution of Savonarola. + + +Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts of the Italian +Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also +from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope +Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been +claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired +exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither +shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to +the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free +movement of the modern mind which found its first expression in the arts +and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy. Both toward Renaissance and +Reform he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an +austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other no desire to alter +either the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church. Yet the +history of Savonarola is not to be dissociated from that of the Italian +Renaissance. He more clearly than any other man discerned the moral and +political situation of his country. When all the states of Italy seemed +sunk in peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war, and felt the +imminence of overwhelming calamity. The purification of customs which he +preached was demanded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by the +wickedness of the tyrants. The scourge which he prophesied did in fact +descend upon Italy. In addition to this clairvoyance by right of which +we call him prophet, the hold he took on Florence at a critical moment +of Italian history is alone enough to entitle him to more than merely +passing notice. + +Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.[1] His grandfather +Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had removed to the capital of the +Este princes at the beginning of the fifteenth century. There he held +the office of court physician; and Girolamo was intended for the same +profession. But early in his boyhood the future prophet showed signs of +disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible dislike of the +court. Under the House of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for +its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more +frequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy maintain so much of +feudal magnificence and chivalrous enjoyment. The square castle of red +brick, which still stands in the middle of the town, was thronged with +poets, players, fools who enjoyed an almost European reputation, court +flatterers, knights, pages, scholars and fair ladies. But beneath its +cube of solid masonry, on a level with the moat, shut out from daylight +by a sevenfold series of iron bars, lay dungeons in which the objects of +the Duke's displeasure clanked chains and sighed their lives away.[2] +Within the precincts of this palace the young Savonarola learned to hate +alike the worldly vices and the despotic cruelty against which in +after-life he prophesied and fought unto the death. + + [1] In this chapter on Savonarola I have made use of Villari's + _Life_ (translated by Leonard Horner, Longmans, 1863, 2 vols.), + Michelet's _Histoire de France_, vol. vii., Milman's article on + Savonarola (John Murray, 1870), Nardi's _Istoria Fiorentina_, + book ii., and the _Memoirs_ of De Comines. + + [2] See p. 424. + +Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers only tell us that he +was grave and solitary, frequenting churches, praying with passionate +persistence, obstinately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join his +father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas seem +to have been the favorite masters of his study. In fact he refused the +new lights of the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical training +of the schoolmen. Already at the age of twenty we find him composing a +poem in Italian on the Ruin of the World, in which he cries: 'The whole +world is in confusion: all virtue is extinguished, and all good manners; +I find no living light abroad, nor one who blushes for his vices.' His +point of departure had been taken, and the keynote of his life had been +struck. The sense of intolerable sin that came upon him in Ferrara +haunted him through manhood, set his hand against the Popes and despots +of Italy, and gave peculiar tone to his prophetic utterances. + +The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the storms of the +world, and as a rest from the torments of the sins of others, now began +to sway his mind.[1] But he communicated his desire to no one. It would +have grieved his father and his mother to find that their son, who was, +they hoped, to be a shining light at the court of Ferrara, had +determined to assume the cowl. At length, however, came the time at +which he felt that leave the world he must. 'It was on the 23d of April +1475,' says Villari; 'he was sitting with his lute and playing a sad +melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of divination, turned +suddenly round to him, and exclaimed mournfully, My son, that is a sign +we are soon to part. He roused himself, and continued, but with a +trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute, without raising his +eyes from the ground.' This would make a picture: spring twilight in +the quaint Italian room, with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay +across the open window; the mother looking up with anxious face from her +needlework; the youth, with those terrible eyes and tense lips and +dilated nostrils of the future prophet, not yet worn by years of care, +but strongly marked and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy chords +of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in secular attire. + + [1] Often in later life Savonarola cried that he had sought the + cloister to find rest, but that God had chosen, instead of + bringing him into calm waters, to cast him on a tempest-swollen + sea. See the Sermon quoted by Villari, vol. i. p. 298. + +On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in secret and journeyed to +Bologna. There he entered the order of S. Dominic, the order of the +Preachers, the order of his master S. Thomas, the order too, let us +remember, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to his father +after taking this step is memorable. In it he says: 'The motives by +which I have been led to enter into a religious life are these: the +great misery of the world; the iniquities of men, their rapes, +adulteries, robberies, their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphemies: +so that things have come to such a pass that no one can be found acting +righteously. Many times a day have I repeated with tears the verse: + + Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum! + +I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the blinded people of +Italy; and the more so because I saw everywhere virtue despised and vice +honored.' We see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its origin in a +deep sense of the wickedness of the world. It was the same spirit as +that which drove the early Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid. +Austere and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he had moved +long enough among the Ferrarese holiday-makers. Those elegant young men +in tight hose and particolored jackets, with oaths upon their lips and +deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, were no associates for +him. It is touching, however, to note that no text of Ezekiel or +Jeremiah, but Virgil's musical hexameter, sounded through his soul the +warning to depart. + +In this year Savonarola composed another poem, this time on the Ruin of +the Church. In his boyhood he had witnessed the pompous shows which +greeted Æneas Sylvius, more like a Roman general than a new-made Pope, +on his entrance into Ferrara. Since then he had seen the monster Sixtus +mount the Papal throne. No wonder if he, who had fled from the world to +the Church for purity and peace, should need to vent his passion in a +song. 'Where,' he cries, 'are the doctors of old times, the saints, the +learning, charity, chastity of the past?' The Church answers by +displaying her rent raiment and wounded body, and by pointing to the +cavern in which she has to make her home. 'Who,' exclaims the poet, 'has +wrought this wrong?' _Una fallace, superba meretrice_--Rome! Then indeed +the passion of the novice breaks in fire:-- + + Deh! per Dio, donna, + Se romper si potria quelle grandi ale! + +The Church replies:-- + + Tu píangi e taci: e questo meglio parmi. + +No other answer could be given to Savonarola's impatient yearnings even +by his own hot heart, while he yet remained a young and unknown monk in +Bologna. Nor, strive as he might strive through all his life, was it +granted to him to break those outspread wings of arrogant Rome. + +The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 1482, when he was sent +first to Ferrara and then to Florence on missions by his superiors. But +at neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet has no honor in his +own country; and for pagan-hearted Florence, though destined to be the +theater of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no thundrous burden of +invective to utter. Besides, his voice was sharp and thin; his face and +person were not prepossessing. The style of his discourse was adapted to +cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic distinctions. +The great orator had not yet arisen in him. The friar, with all his +dryness and severity, was but too apparent. With what strange feelings +must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence! In after-days he +used to say that he foreknew those streets and squares were destined to +be the scene of his labors. But then, voiceless, powerless, without +control of his own genius, without the consciousness of his prophetic +mission, he brooded alone and out of harmony with the beautiful and +mundane city. The charm of the hills and gardens of Valdarno, the +loveliness of Giotto's tower, the amplitude of Brunelleschi's +dome--these may have sunk deep into his soul. And the subtle temper of +the Florentine intellect must have attracted his own keen spirit by a +secret sympathy. For Florence erelong became the city of his love, the +first-born of his yearnings. + +In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid libraries by the +liberality of the Medicean princes, he was at peace. The walls of that +convent had recently been decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico, even +as a man might crowd the leaves of a missal with illuminations. Among +these Savonarola meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit and in +contact with the holiday folk of Florence he was ill at ease. Lorenzo +de' Medici overshadowed the whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan +spirit of the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a proper +incarnation, was the very opposite of Savonarola, who had already judged +the classical revival by its fruits, and had conceived a spiritual +resurrection for his country. At Florence a passionate love of art and +learning--the enthusiasm which prompted men to spend their fortunes upon +MSS. and statues, the sensibility to beauty which produced the +masterworks of Donatello and Ghiberti, the thirst for knowledge which +burned in Pico and Poliziano and Ficino--existed side by side with +impudent immorality, religious deadness, cold contempt for truth, and +cynical admiration of successful villainy. Both the good and the evil +which flourished on this fertile soil so luxuriantly were combined in +the versatile genius of the merchant prince, whose policy it was to +stifle freedom by caressing the follies, vices, and intellectual tastes +of his people. + +The young Savonarola was as yet no match for Lorenzo. And whither could +he look for help? The reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to +be expected from the Church. Florence well knew that Sixtus had plotted +to murder the Medici before the altar at the moment of the elevation of +the Host. Excommunicated for a deed of justice after the failure of this +Popish plot, the city had long been at war with the pontiff. If anywhere +it was in the cells of the philosophers, in that retreat where Ficino +burned his lamp to Plato, in that hall where the Academy crowned their +master's bust with laurels, that the more sober-minded citizens found +ghostly comfort and advice. But from this philosophy the fervent soul of +Savonarola turned with no less loathing, and with more contempt, than +from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, +which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens +during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated +theism developed by Platonic students. While the humanists were exalting +pagan license, and while the Church was teaching the worst kinds of +immorality, the philosophers kept alive in cultivated minds a sense of +God. + +But the monk, nourished on the Bible and S. Thomas, valued this +confusion of spirits and creeds in a chaos of indiscriminate erudition, +at a small price. He had the courage in the fifteenth century at +Florence to proclaim that the philosophers were in hell, and that an old +woman knew more of saving faith than Plato. Savonarola and Lorenzo were +opposed as champions of two hostile principles alike emergent from the +very life of the Renaissance: paganism reborn in the one, the spirit of +the gospel in the other. Both were essentially modern; for it was the +function of the Renaissance to restore to the soul of man its double +heritage of the classic past and Christian liberty, freeing it from the +fetters which the Middle Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were Lorenzo +and Savonarola destined to clash. The obscure friar at this time was +preaching to an audience of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while +Poliziano and all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons of Fra +Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This man flattered the taste of +the moment by composing orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to +the Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon its similarity to +Platonism. Who could then have guessed that beneath the cowl of the +harsh-voiced Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years +would inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful enough to destroy +the fabric of the Medicean despotism? + +From Florence, where he had met with no success, Savonarola was sent to +San Gemignano, a little town on the top of a high hill between Florence +and Siena. We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading +frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange +feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone, crowded together within the +narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from +these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and +the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the +slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles +all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked +here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the +grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first +flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola's soul. Here for the +first time he prophesied: 'The church will be scourged, then +regenerated, and this quickly.' These are the celebrated three +conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic +utterances adhered. + +But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak; +his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe, still wavering between +strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward +rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him. +Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had +learned by heart each verse of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering on +their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every +suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the +prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in +wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame +which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze +at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. 'Midway upon +the path of life' he opened the Book of Revelation: he figured to the +people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins +of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to +them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the +interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing +shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they +believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of +Gaston de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia, +her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk. + +As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the +right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of +preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were, +and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration.[1] Fra +Bartolommeo, one of his followers, painted a profile of him in the +character of S. Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of +expression which his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of +the sweet and gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his +nation at the bar of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, +keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait +is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in +the Uffizzi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple +of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore +justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented +faithfully the outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his +peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders. +Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, +rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply +sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye +that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, +with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of +vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is +large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with +massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and +utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent: +between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation +of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the +throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; +and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine +sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit +machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, +beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in +the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary +and a monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The +wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed +over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color +of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive +yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily +overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than +by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were +succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization. +From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up +the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power, +filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his +discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips +of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments +and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of +continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings +severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience tears, at another +freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with prayers +and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very +spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they +advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the +sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,[2] met +and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no +longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece +of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery +crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of +vision, he ascended the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like +Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of +the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The +walls of the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings dominated by one +ringing voice. The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons, +at times breaks off with these words: 'Here I was so overcome with +weeping that I could not go on.' Pico della Mirandola tells us that the +mere sound of Savonarola's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, +thronged through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom: a +cold shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head +stood on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: 'These sermons +caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed +through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.' + + [1] Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in + Harford's _Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti_ (Longmans, 1857 + vol. i.), and also in Villari. + + [2] Nardi, in his _Istorie di Firenze_ (lib. ii. cap. 16), + describes the crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola + preach: 'Per la moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi + bastante la chiesa cattedrale di santa Maria del Fiore, ancora + che molto grande e capace sia, fu necessario edificar dentro + lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto al pergamo, certi gradi di + legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a guisa di teatro, e + così dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e dalla parte + di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.' + +Such was the preacher: and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme +on which he loved to dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is at +hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her +iniquity--for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the +world--for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon +souls--for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young +men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy! Nor did Savonarola +deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid +bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his +hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly +portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity +into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the +bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the +passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on +Italy.[1] You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid +narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the +storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre +of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The +hell within them was revealed. The coming doom above them was made +manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a +generation of vipers, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' +was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration. + + [1] Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils + of Italy was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other + people what was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar + believed implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower + sense, that is, in his power to predict events, such as the + deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, the punishment of + Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc. Pico says: + 'Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the + whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as + time went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he + possessed this faculty. After his trial and execution a very + uncomfortable sense of doubt remained upon the minds of those + who had been witnesses of his life-drama. Upon this topic + Guicciardini, _Stor. Fior., Op. Ined._ vol. iii. p. 179; Nardi, + _Stor. Fior._ lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, may be read with + advantage. + +'I began'--Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of +sermons delivered in 1491--'I began publicly to expound the Revelation +in our Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to +develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church +would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would +strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would +happen shortly.' It is by right of the foresight of a new age contained +in these three famous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves to +be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform: it +did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the +discipline, or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no +founder of a new order: unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he +never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his +successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no +militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for +education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, +he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible +studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became +convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From +that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new +age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that +while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone +felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its +tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very +nostrils of the God of Hosts. + +To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his +prophecies began to fulfill themselves. Within three years after his +first sermon in S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de' +Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new +chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history. The Reform +of the Church was also destined to follow. What Savonarola had foreseen, +here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the +means he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense +of discerning the catastrophe to which circumstances must inevitably +lead, another thing to trace beforehand the path which will be taken by +the hurricanes that change the face of the world. Remaining in his soul +a monk, attached by education and by natural sympathy to the past rather +than the future, he felt in spite of himself the spirit of the coming +age. Had he lived but one century earlier, we should not have called him +prophet. It was the Renaissance which set the seal of truth upon his +utterances. Yet in his vision of the world to be, he was like Balaam +prophesying blindly of a star. + +Sixtus IV. had died and been succeeded by Innocent VIII. Innocent had +given place to Alexander. The very nadir of the abyss had been reached. +Then Savonarola saw a vision and heard a voice: _Ecce gladius Domini +super terram cito et velociter._ The sword turned earthward; the air was +darkened with fiery sleet and arrows; thunders rolled; the world was +filled with pestilences, wars, famines. At another time he dreamed and +looked toward Rome. From the Eternal City there rose a black cross, +reaching to heaven, and on it was inscribed _Crux iræ Dei._ Then too the +skies were troubled; clouds rushed through the air discharging darts and +fire and swords, and multitudes below were dying. These visions he +published in sermons and in print. Pictures were made from them. They +and the three conclusions went abroad through Italy. Again, Charles was +preparing for his expedition. Savonarola took the Ark of Noah for his +theme. The deluge was at hand; he bade his hearers enter the ship of +refuge before the terrible and mighty nation came: 'O Italy! O Rome! I +give you over to the hands of a people who will wipe you out from among +the nations! I see them descending like lions. Pestilence comes marching +hand in hand with war. The deaths will be so many that the buriers shall +go through the streets crying out: Who hath dead, who hath dead? and one +will bring his father, and another his son. O Rome! I cry again to you +to repent, Repent, Venice! Milan, repent!' 'The prophets a hundred years +ago proclaimed to you the flagellation of the Church. For five years I +have been announcing it: and now again I cry to you. The Lord is full of +wrath. The angels on their knees cry to Him: Strike, strike! The good +sob and groan: We can no more. The orphans, the widows say: We are +devoured, we cannot go on living. All the Church triumphant hath cried +to Christ: Thou diedst in vain. It is heaven which is in combat. The +saints of Italy, the angels, are leagued with the barbarians. Those who +called them in have put the saddles to the horses. Italy is in +confusion, saith the Lord; this time she shall be yours. And the Lord +cometh above his saints, above the blessed ones who march in +battle-array, who are drawn up in squadrons. Whither are they bound? S. +Peter is for Rome, crying: To Rome, to Rome! and S. Paul and S. Gregory +march, crying: To Rome! And behind them go the sword, the pestilence, +the famine. S. John cries: Up, up, to Florence! And the plague follows +him. S. Anthony cries: Ho for Lombardy! S. Mark cries: Haste we to the +city that is throned upon the waters! And all the angels of heaven, +sword in hand, and all the celestial consistory, march on unto this +war.' + +Then he speaks of his own fate: 'What shall be the end of our war, you +ask? If this be a general question, I shall answer Victory! If you ask +it of myself in particular, I answer, Death, or to be hewn in pieces. +This is our faith, this is our guerdon, this is our reward! We ask for +no more than this. But when you see me dead, be not then troubled. All +those who have prophesied have suffered and been slain. To make my word +prevail, there is needed the blood of many.' + +These are the prophecies with which Savonarola anticipated the coming of +a foreign conqueror. It is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the +double feeling of the prophet. Desire for the advent of Charles as a +Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the Church, contends with an +instinctive horror of the barbarian. Savonarola, like Dante, like all +Italian patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had been +lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could +not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from +beyond the Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the +violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's +chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened +the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.[1] Had he +taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within, +instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a +far more lasting meed of fame. As it was, together with the passion for +liberty which became a religion with his followers, he strove to revive +the obsolete tactics of an earlier age, and bequeathed to Florence the +weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy bore bitter fruits in +the next century. If it was the memory of the Friar which nerved the +citizens of Florence to sustain the siege of 1528, the same memory bound +them to seek aid from inconsequent Francis, and to hope that at the last +moment a cohort of seraphim would defend their walls.[2] + + [1] Segni, _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of + Savonarola's, _Gigli con gigli dover fiorire_, as one of the + causes of the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in + 1529. + + [2] See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points. + +That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt. They +were in fact, as I have already tried to show, a view of the political +and moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of profound +religious conviction and based upon a theory of the divine government of +the world. But now far he allowed himself to be guided by visions and by +words uttered to his soul in trance, is a somewhat different question. +It is just at this point that a man possessed of acute insight and +trusting to the truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong +devotional excitement to pass the border land which separates healthy +intuition from hallucination. If Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew +prophets inclined him to believe in dreams and revelations, yet on the +other hand the strong logic of his intellect, trained in scholastic +distinctions, taught him to mistrust the promptings of a power that +spoke to him when he was somewhat more or less than his prosaic self. +How could he be sure that the spirit came from God? We know for certain +that he struggled against the impulse of divination and refused at times +to obey it. But it overcame him. Like the Cassandra of Æschylus, he +panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he +cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I +have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into +a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I +wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished +to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be +silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the Lord is in my heart; +and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones. +Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters, +Thy will, be done.' + +At another time he says: 'I remember well that upon one occasion, in +the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my +sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all +allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution. God is my +witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night +I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine. At +daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake, +while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me: "Fool that thou +art, dost thou not see that it is God's will that thou shouldst keep to +the same path?" The consequence of which was that on the same day I +preached a tremendous sermon.' + +These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola's sincerity. +If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that +too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching +examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled +him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the +wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and +diffident, within the toils of ecstasy. + +Returning to the details of Savonarola's biography, we find him still in +Lombardy in 1486. After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he +made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They +continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his +nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote +the Life of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this +time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well +established. Now came the turning-point in his life. Fourteen hundred +and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of +power in Italy. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument +of his recall in this year to Florence. Lorenzo, who, if he could have +foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have +stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and +bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished +so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching +of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could +not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul. +Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as +incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the +monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon +on a passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this commencement he is +reported to have said: 'Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall +preach for eight years.' The Florentines were greatly moved. Savonarola +had to remove from the Church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began +the spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth without +intermission till his death. + +Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this uncompromising monk, +who, not content with moral exhortations, confidently predicted the +coming of a foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of +the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it was no longer easy +to suppress the preacher. Very early in his Florentine career Savonarola +had proved himself to be fully as great an administrator as an orator. +The Convent of San Marco dominated by his personal authority, had made +him Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thorough reform of +all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany. It was usual for the Priors +elect of S. Mark to pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their +patrons. Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom, +omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the discourtesy, is reported to +have said, with a smile: 'See now! here is a stranger who has come into +_my house_, and will not deign to visit me.' He forgot that Savonarola +looked upon his convent as a house of God. At the same time the prince +made overtures of goodwill to the Prior, frequently attended his +services, and dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savonarola +took no notice of him, and handed his florins over to the poor of the +city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola's old +rival, against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a match for +the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was forced to +leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With such unbending haughtiness +did Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be. He had +recognized the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the +opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him as a tyrant. He +would not give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of +civility. In the same spirit he afterwards denounced Alexander, scorned +his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of Christendom for the +convening of a Council. Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme insight +into character, and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore, when +the hour for dying came, and when, true child of the Renaissance that he +was, he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent for +Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest friar he knew. The +magnanimity of the Medici was only equaled by the firmness of the monk. +Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed his sins, +Savonarola said: 'Three things are required of you: to have a full and +lively faith in God's mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained; +to give back liberty to Florence.' Lorenzo assented readily to the two +first requisitions. At the third he turned his face in silence to the +wall. He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was +easier than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without +absolution. Lorenzo died.[1] + + [1] It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on + the facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Poliziano, + who was with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention + them in his letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv. Kal. Jun. 1492). + But Burlmacchi, Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the + Frate's party, agree in the story. What Poliziano wrote was + that Savonarola confessed Lorenzo and retired without + volunteering the blessing. Razzi says the interview between + Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; Pico and + Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the lips + of Savonarola. We have therefore to judge between the testimony + of Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and the + veracity of several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility + toward the Medici, but in direct intercourse with the only man + who could tell the exact truth of what passed--the confessor, + Savonarola, who had been alone with Lorenzo. Villari, after + sifting the evidence, arrives at the conclusion that we may + believe Burlamacchi. The Baron Reumont, in his recent _Life of + Lorenzo_, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some solid reasons for + accepting this conclusion with caution, and Gino Capponi + expresses a distinct disbelief in Burlamacchi's narration. + +The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore liberty to Florence, +not only broke the peace of the dying prince, but it also afterwards for +ever ruled the conduct of Savonarola. From this time his life is that of +a statesman no less than of a preacher. What Lorenzo refused, or was +indeed upon his deathbed quite unable to perform, the monk determined to +achieve. Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the +pulpit. Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration +for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength +and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This work he sealed with +martyrdom. The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans +in Florence was political no less than pious. Whether Savonarola was +right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be +questioned. What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the +maker and destroyer of kings and constitutions? When we call him by +their title, we mean to say that he, like them, controlled by spiritual +force the fortunes of his people. Whether he sought it or not, this +rôle of politician was thrust upon him by the course of events: nor was +the history of Italian cities deficient in precedents of similar +functions assumed by preaching friars.[1] + + [1] It is enough to allude to Arnold of Brescia in Rome, to Fra + Bussolari in Pavia, ami to John of Vicenza. Sec Appendix iv. + +To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de' Medici, who surrendered +the fortresses of Tuscany to the French army. While Savonarola was +prophesying a sword, a scourge, a deluge, Charles VIII. rode at the head +of his knighthood into Florence. The city was leaderless, unused to +liberty. Who but the monk who had predicted the invasion should now +attempt to control it? Who but he whose voice alone had power to +assemble and to sway the Florentines should now direct them? His +administrative faculty in a narrow sphere had been proved by his reform +of the Dominican Convents. His divine mission was authenticated by the +arrival of the French. The Lord had raised him up to act as well as to +utter. He felt this: the people felt it. He was not the man to refuse +responsibility. + +During the years of 1493 and 1494, when Florence together with Italy was +in imminent peril, the voice of Savonarola never ceased to ring. His +sermons on the psalm 'Quam bonus' and on the Ark of Noah are among the +most stupendous triumphs of his eloquence. From his pulpit beneath the +somber dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words of power to +resuscitate the free spirit of his Florentines. In 1495, when the +Medici had been expelled and the French army had gone upon its way to +Naples, Savonarola was called upon to reconstitute the state. He bade +the people abandon their old system of Parlamenti and Balia, and +establish a Grand Council after the Venetian type.[1] This institution, +which seemed to the Florentines the best they had ever adopted, might be +regarded by the historian as only one among their many experiments in +constitution-making, if Savonarola had not stamped it with his peculiar +genius by announcing that Christ was to be considered the Head of the +State.[2] This step at once gave a theocratic bias to the government, +which determined all the acts of the monk's administration. Not content +with political organization, too impatient to await the growth of good +manners from sound institutions, he set about a moral and religious +reformation. Pomps, vanities, and vices were to be abandoned. +Immediately the women and the young men threw aside their silks and fine +attire. The Carnival songs ceased. Hymns and processions took the place +of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs. The laws were remodeled in the +same severe and abrupt spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola +ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of his influence the city for +a moment assumed a new aspect. It seemed as though the old austerity +which Dante and Villani praised were about to return without the +factious hate and pride that ruined medæival Tuscany. In everything done +by Savonarola at this epoch there was a strange combination of political +sagacity with monastic zeal. Neither Guicciardini nor Machiavelli, +writing years afterwards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was +again enslaved, could propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande. +Yet the fierce revivalism advocated by the friar--the bonfire of Lorenzo +di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and +classic poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to +have valued in one heap at 22,000 florins--the recitation of such +Bacchanalian songs as this-- + + Never was there so sweet a gladness, + Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, + As with zeal and love and passion + Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness! + Cry with me, cry as I now cry, + Madness, madness, holy madness! + +--the procession of boys and girls through the streets, shaming their +elders into hypocritical piety, and breeding in their own hearts the +intolerable priggishness of premature pietism--could not bring forth +excellent and solid fruits. The change was far too violent. The temper +of the race was not prepared for it. It clashed too rudely with +Renaissance culture. It outraged the sense of propriety in the more +moderate citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of +the self-indulgent and the worldly. A reaction was inevitable.[3] + + [1] This change was certainly wrought out by the influence of + the friar and approved by him. Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks + clearly on the point, and says that the friar for this service + to the city 'debbe esser messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e + debbe essere amato e onorato da' Fiorentini non altrimenti che + Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli Ateniesi e Licurgo da' + Lacedemoni.' The evil of the old system was that the + Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the + Piazza, was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper + initiative, while the Balia, or select body, to whom they then + intrusted plenipotentiary authority, was always the faction for + the moment uppermost. For the mode of working the Parlamento + and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi, + vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola inscribed this octave stanza on the + wall of the Consiglio Grande: + + 'Se questo popolar consiglio e certo + Governo, popol, de la tua cittate + Conservi, che da Dio t'e stato offerto, + In pace starai sempre e libertate: + Tien dunque l'occhio della mente aperto, + Chè molte insidie ognor ti fien parate; + E sappi che chi vuol far parlamento + Vuol tórti dalle mani il reggimento.' + + [2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169. Niccolo Capponi, in 1527, + returning to the policy of Savonarola, caused the Florentines + to elect Christ for their king, and inscribed upon the door of + the Palazzo Pubblico:-- + + Y.H.S. CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI + POPULI S.P. DECRETO ELECTUS. + + [3] The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat + similar to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war, + the majority of the nation with them. Besides, the English + temperament was more adapted to Puritanism than the Italian, + nor were the manifestations of piety prescribed by Parliament + so extravagant. And yet even in England a reaction took place + under the Restoration. + +Meanwhile the strong wine of prophecy intoxicated Savonarola. His fiery +temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine +affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision +succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were +suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining +enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the +discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a republic, he should +make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the +city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savonarola's +position would become untenable. Parties began to form and gather to a +head. The followers of the monk, by far the largest section of the +people, received the name of Piagnoni or Frateschi. The friends of the +Medici, few at first and cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of +Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but desired to +see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as the +Arrabbiati. + +The discontent which germinated in Florence displayed itself in Rome. +Alexander found it intolerable to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk +who had made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At first he +used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure +Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander +suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same +time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to +reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though +still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his +preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not +intimidate. To the suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered +him, Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of martyrdom. +Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he preached the most fiery of +all his Lenten courses. Of this series of orations Milman writes: 'His +triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 on Haggai and the Psalms. +But it is in the Carême of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher +girds himself to his full strength, when he had attained his full +authority, and could not but be conscious that there was a deep and +dangerous rebellion brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at +Florence, and when already ominous rumors began to be heard from Rome. +He that would know the power, the daring, the oratory of Savonarola, +must study this volume.'[1] + + [1] These sermons were printed from the notes taken by Lorenzo + Violi in one volume at Venice, 1534. + +Very terrific indeed are the denunciations contained in these +discourses--denunciations fulminated without disguise against the Pope +and priests of Rome, against the Medici, against the Florentines +themselves, in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear. +Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in Savonarola's most +impassioned style and heightened by his most impressive imagery, are +political harangues and polemical arguments against the Pope. The +position assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not a strong one, +and the reasoning by which he supported it was marked by curious +self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He +had not the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to the length +of braving Alexander by burning his bulls and by denying the authority +of popes in general. Not daring to break all connection with the Holy +See, he was driven to quibble about the distinction between the office +and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obedience to the Church +whose head and chief he daily outraged. At the same time he took no +pains to enlist the sympathies of the Italian princes, many of whom +might presumably have been hostile to the Pope, on his side of the +quarrel. All the tyrants came in for a share of his prophetic +indignation. Lodovico Sforza, the lord of Mirandola, and Piero de' +Medici felt themselves specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to +extinguish this source of scandal to established governments. Against so +great and powerful a host one man could not stand alone. Savonarola's +position became daily more dangerous in Florence. The merchants, +excommunicated by the Pope and thus exposed to pillage in foreign +markets, grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of +interdiction lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no longer be +administered or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians. +Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called +Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. At last in +March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, or supreme executive of +Florence, suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace +were weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See: nor could any +but his own fanatical adherents anticipate the wars which threatened the +state, with equanimity. + +Savonarola himself felt that the supreme hour was come. One more +resource was left; to that he would now betake himself: he could +afterwards but die. This last step was the convening of a general +council.[1] Accordingly he addressed letters to all the European +potentates. One of these, inscribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched, +intercepted, and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and +warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is +noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but +must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to +confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist +me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the +work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a +just punishment on those who persecute me and would impede its progress. +As for myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May +your Holiness no longer delay but look to your salvation.' + + [1] This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia + had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a + Cardinal's hat to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less + than feared through the length and breadth of Italy. But + Savonarola had allowed the favorable moment to pass by. + +But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the +Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which +Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more +confident in his visions and more willing to admit his supernatural +powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed +him. Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire. +Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.[1] A +Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether +he were of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took +up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. The furnace was +prepared: both monks stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assembled +in the Piazza to witness what should happen. Various obstacles, however, +arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people +had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain, +unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was +but a mere man. The Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's convent +was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day +of his execution by the rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those +last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell +the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the +latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in +1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture before stupid and +malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory +confessions. What he really said and chose to stand by, what he +retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what +was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.[2] Though the spirit +was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be +a martyr. At ten o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth +together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and +brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage +prepared in the Piazza.[3] These two men were hanged first. Savonarola +was left till the last. As the hangman tied the rope round his neck, a +voice from the crowd shouted: 'Prophet, now is the time to perform a +miracle!' The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped +his friar's frock from him, and said, 'I separate thee from the Church +militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and combative even at the +point of death, replied, 'Militant yes: triumphant, no: _that_ is not +yours.' The last words he uttered were, 'The Lord has suffered as much +for me.' Then the noose was tightened round his neck. The fire beneath +was lighted. The flames did not reach his body while life was in it; but +those who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the sign +of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his heart still whole +among the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this day flowers have +been placed every morning of the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza +where his body fell. + + [1] There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was + finally got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the + Signory, who were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of + Savonarola. The Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together + with Fra Domenico was a certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi + calls him Andrea Rondinelli. + + [2] Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of + Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He + says: 'Avendo domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava + delle sue esamine fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che ciò ch' + egli aveva ne' tempi passati detto e predetto era la pura + verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e aveva ritratto, era + tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per la paura + che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e + ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato, + perciò che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel + sopportare i supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the + childish, foul, malignant gossip current in Rome. This may be + read in the 'Preuves et Observations' appended to the _Memoirs_ + of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the Marchese Gino Capponi's + _Storia della Firenze_ (tom. ii. pp. 248-51) for a critical + analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola. + + [3] There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia + which represents the burning of the three friars. The whole + Piazza della Signoria is shown, with the houses of the + fifteenth century, and without the statues which afterwards + adorned it. The spectator fronts the Palazzo, and has to his + extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center of the square is + occupied by a great circular pile of billets and fagots, to + which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left angle + of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to + which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are + suspended. Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the + distant hills above Fiesole complete a scene which is no doubt + accurate in detail. + +Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons and +other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were +struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the +Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange +inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a +contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization +never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office +with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S. +Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even +the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the hearts +of the Florentines. For many years to come his name was the watchword of +their freedom; his prophecies sustained their spirit during the siege of +1528;[2] and it was only by returning to his policy that Niccolo Capponi +and Francesco Carducci ruled the people through those troublous times. +The political action of Savonarola forms but a short episode in the +history of Florence. His moral revival belongs to the history of popular +enthusiasm. His philosophical and theological writings are chiefly +interesting to the student of post-medæival scholasticism. His attitude +as a monastic leader of the populace, attempting to play the old game +whereby the factious warfare of a previous age had been suspended by +appeals to piety, and politicians had looked for aid outside the nation, +was anachronistic. But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a +new era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact in the psychology +of the Renaissance. + + [1] _Officio del Savonarola_, with preface by Cesare Guasti. + Firenze, 1863. + + [2] Guicciardini, in his _Ricordt_, No. i., refers the + incredible obstinacy of the Florentines at this period in + hoping against all hope and reason to Savonarola: 'questa + ostinazione ha causata in gran parte a fede di non potere + perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronirno da Ferrara.' + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CHARLES VIII. + + +The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe--Policy of Louis +XI. of France--Character of Charles VIII.--Preparations for the Invasion +of Italy--Position of Lodovico Sforza--Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy +after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici--Weakness of the Republics--II +Moro--The year 1494--Alfonso of Naples--Inefficiency of the Allies to +cope with France--Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of +Italy by Giuliano della Rovere--Charles at Asti and Pavia--Murder of +Gian Galeazzo Sforza--Mistrust in the French Army--Rapallo and +Fivizzano--The Entrance into Tuscany--Part played by Piero de' +Medici--Charles at Pisa--His Entrance into Florence--Piero Capponi--The +March on Rome--Entry into Rome--Panic of Alexander VI.--The March on +Naples--The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand--Alfonso II. escapes +to Sicily--Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia--Charles at Naples--The +League against the French--De Comines at Venice--Charles makes his +Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli--The Battle of +Fornovo--Charles reaches Asti and returns to France--Italy becomes the +Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance of the +Expedition of Charles VIII. + + +One of the chief features of the Renaissance was the appearance for the +first time on the stage of history of full-formed and colossal nations. +France, Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure their strength. +Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, even Rome, are destined in the period +that is opening for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, incapable +of coping with these great powers, will become the mere arena of their +contests, the object of their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves +were far from being conscious of this change. Accustomed through three +centuries to a system of diplomacy and intrigue among their own small +states, they still thought more of the balance of power within the +peninsula than of the means to be adopted for repelling foreign force. +Their petty jealousies kept them disunited at an epoch when the best +chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly linked together +in one league, or subject to a single prince, the Italians might not +only have met their foes on equal ground, but even have taken a foremost +place among the modern nations.[1] Instead of that, their princes were +foolish enough to think that they could set France, Germany, or Spain in +motion for the attainment of selfish objects within the narrow sphere of +Italian politics, forgetting the disproportion between these huge +monarchies and a single city like Florence, a mere province like the +Milanese. It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure the +tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of Sforza and of Aragon +with the Papal See in the chains of the same interested policy with the +Commonwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodovico Sforza to fancy +that he could bring the French into the game of peninsular intrigue +without irrevocably ruining its artificial equilibrium. The first +sign of the alteration about to take place in European history was the +invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a +hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. +The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of +Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from +north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within +the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which +it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of the politics of +Europe. + + [1] Read, however, Sismondi's able argument against the view + that Italy, united as a single nation under a sovereign, would + have been better off, vol. vii. p. 298 et seq. He is of opinion + that her only chance lay in a Confederation. See chapter ii. + above, for a discussion of this chance. + +The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the counsels of Louis +XI. After spending his lifetime in the consolidation of the French +monarchy, he constructed an inheritance of further empire for his +successors by dictating to the old King Réné of Anjou (1474) and to the +Count of Maine (1481) the two wills by which the pretensions of the +House of Anjou to the Crown of Naples were transmitted to the royal +family of France.[1] On the death of Louis, Charles VIII. became King in +1483. He was then aged only thirteen, and was still governed by his +elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu.[2] It was not until 1492 that he +actually took the reins of the kingdom into his own hands. This year, we +may remark, is one of the most memorable dates in history. In 1492 +Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Roderigo Borgia was made Pope: in +1492 Spain became a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each of these +events was no less fruitful of consequences to Italy than was the +accession of Charles VIII. The discovery of America, followed in another +six years by Vasco de' Gama's exploration of the Indian seas, diverted +the commerce of the world into new channels; Alexander VI. made the +Reformation and the Northern Schism certainties; the consolidation of +Spain prepared a way for the autocracy of Charles V. Thus the +commercial, the spiritual, and the political scepter fell in this one +year from the grasp of the Italians. + + [1] Sismondi, vol. vi. p. 285. The Appendix of Pièces + Justificatives to Philip de Comines' _Memoirs_ contains the + will of Réné King of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated July 22, + 1474, by which he constitutes his nephew, Charles of Anjou, + Duke of Calabria, Count of Maine, his heir-in-chief; as well as + the will of Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, Count of + Provence, dated December 10, 1481, by which he makes Louis XI. + his heir, naming Charles the Dauphin next in succession. + + [2] Her husband was a cadet of the House of Bourbon. + +Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have described the appearance +and the character of the prince who was destined to play a part so +prominent, so pregnant of results, and yet so trivial in the affairs of +Europe. Providence, it would seem, deigns frequently to use for the most +momentous purposes some pantaloon or puppet, environing with special +protection and with the prayers and aspirations of whole peoples a mere +manikin. Such a puppet was Charles. 'From infancy he had been weak in +constitution and subject to illness. His stature was short, and his face +very ugly, if you except the dignity and vigor of his glance. His limbs +were so disproportioned that he had less the appearance of a man than +of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of liberal arts, but he hardly +knew his letters. Though eager to rule, he was in truth made for +anything but that; for while surrounded by dependents, he exercised no +authority over them and preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business +and fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of +prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from +impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, +promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more +often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people +called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and +feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is +more brief: 'The king was young, a fledgling from the nest; provided +neither with money nor with good sense; weak, willful, and surrounded by +foolish counselors.' + +These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls them, 'men of low +estate, body-servants for the most part of the king,' were headed by +Stephen de Vesc, who had been raised from the post of the king's valet +de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by William Briçonnet, +formerly a merchant, now Bishop of S. Malo. These men had everything to +gain by an undertaking which would flatter the vanity of their master, +and draw him into still closer relations with themselves. Consequently, +when the Count of Belgioioso arrived at the French Court from Milan, +urging the king to press his claims on Naples, and promising him a free +entrance into Italy through the province of Lombardy and the port of +Genoa, he found ready listeners. Anne de Beaujeu in vain opposed the +scheme. The splendor and novelty of the proposal to conquer such a realm +as Italy inflamed the imagination of Charles, the cupidity of his +courtiers, the ambition of de Vesc and Briçonnet. In order to assure his +situation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the neighboring great +powers. He bought peace with Henry VII. of England by the payment of +large sums of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resentment he had +aroused by sending back his daughter Margaret after breaking his promise +to marry her, and by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already +engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the cession of provinces. +Ferdinand of Spain received as the price of his neutrality the strong +places of the Pyrenees which formed the key to France upon that side. +Having thus secured tranquillity at home by ruinous concessions, Charles +was free to turn his attention to Italy. He began by concentrating +stores and ships on the southern ports of Marseilles and Genoa; then he +moved downward with his army, to Lyons, in 1494. + +At this point we are called to consider the affairs of Italy, which led +the Sforza to invite his dangerous ally. Lorenzo de' Medici during his +lifetime had maintained a balance of power between the several states +by his treaties with the Courts of Milan, Naples, and Ferrara. When he +died, Piero at once showed signs of departure from his father's policy. +The son and husband of Orsini,[1] he embraced the feudal pride and +traditional partialities of the great Roman house who had always been +devoted to the cause of Naples. The suspicions of Lodovico Sforza were +not unreasonably aroused by noticing that the tyrant of Florence +inclined to the alliance of King Ferdinand rather than to his own +friendship. At this same time Alfonso, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the +throne of Naples, was pressing the rights of his son-in-law, Gian +Galeazzo Sforza, on the attention of Italy, complaining loudly that his +uncle Lodovico ought no longer to withhold from him the reins of +government.[2] Gian Galcazzo was in fact the legitimate successor of +Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who had been murdered in Santo Stefano in 1476. +After this assassination Madonna Bona of Savoy and Cecco Simonetta, who +had administered the Duchy as grand vizier during three reigns extending +over a period of half a century, governed Milan as regents for the young +Duke. But Lodovico, feeling himself powerful enough to assume the +tyranny, beheaded Simonetta at Pavia in 1480, and caused Madonna Bona, +the Duke's mother, on the pretext of her immorality, to quit the +regency. Thus he took the affairs of Milan into his own hands, confined +his nephew in an honorable prison, and acted in a way to make it clear +that he intended thenceforth to be Duke in fact.[3] It was the bad +conscience inseparable from this usurpation which made him mistrust the +princes of the house of Aragon, whose rights in Isabella, wife of the +young Duke, were set at nought by him. The same uneasy sense of wrong +inclined him to look with dread upon the friendship of the Medici for +the ruling family of Naples. + + [1] His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them + Orsini. Guicciardini, in his 'Dialogo del Reggimento di + Firenze' (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 46), says of him: 'sendo nato + di madre forestiera, era imbastardito in lui il sangue + Fiorentino, e degenerato in costumi esterni, e troppo insolenti + e altieri al nostro vivere.' Piero, nevertheless, refused to + accept estates from King Alfonso which would have made him a + Baron and feudatory of Naples. See _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. 347. + + [2] The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493. + + [3] Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation + with the show of legitimate right. He betrothed his niece + Bianca Maria, in 1494, to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower + of 400,000 ducats, receiving in return an investiture of the + Duchy, which, however, he kept secret. + +While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open disturbance in +Lorenzo's balance of power had taken place, Alexander VI. was elected to +the Papacy. It was usual for the princes and cities of Italy to +compliment the Pope with embassies on his assumption of the tiara; and +Lodovico suggested that the representatives of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, +and Naples should enter Rome together in a body. The foolish vanity of +Piero, who wanted to display the splendor of his own equipage without +rivals, induced him to refuse this proposal, and led to a similar +refusal on the part of Ferdinand. This trivial circumstance confirmed +the suspicions of Lodovico, who, naturally subtle and intriguing, +thought that he discerned a deep political design in what was really +little more than the personal conceit of a broad-shouldered +simpleton.[1] He already foresaw that the old system of alliances +established by Lorenzo must be abandoned. Another slight incident +contributed to throw the affairs of Italy into confusion by causing a +rupture between Rome and Naples. Lorenzo, by the marriage of his +daughter to Franceschetto Cibo, had contrived to engage Innocent VIII. +in the scheme of policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, and +Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, Franceschetto Cibo +determined to get rid of Anguillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he +had taken with his father's connivance from the Church. He found a +purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexander complained that the sale was an +infringement of his rights. Ferdinand supported the title of the Orsini +to his new acquisitions. This alienated the Pope from the King of +Naples, and made him willing to join with Milan and Venice in a new +league formed in 1493. + + [1] Piero de' Medici was what the French call a _bel homme_, + and little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best + player at _pallone_ in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and + agreeable in conversation, and excessively vain of these + advantages. + +Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh combinations between +the disunited powers of Italy took place. Lodovico, however, dared not +trust his new friends. Venice had too long hankered after Milan to be +depended upon for real support; and Alexander was known to be in treaty +for a matrimonial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna Sancia of +Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, without a firm ally in Italy, and +with a manifestly fraudulent title to maintain. At this juncture he +turned his eyes towards France; while his father-in-law, the Duke of +Ferrara, who secretly hated him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his +own advantage in the general confusion which he anticipated, urged him +to this fatal course. Alexander at the same time, wishing to frighten +the princes of Naples into a conclusion of the projected marriage, +followed the lead of Lodovico, and showed himself at this moment not +averse to a French invasion. + +It was in this way that the private cupidities and spites of princes +brought woe on Italy: Lodovico's determination to secure himself in the +usurped Duchy of Milan, Ercole d' Este's concealed hatred, and +Alexander's unholy eagerness to aggrandize his bastards, were the vile +and trivial causes of an event which, however inevitable, ought to have +been as long as possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But in +Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor among princes, no +virtue in the Church. Italy, which in the thirteenth century numbered +1,800,000 citizens--that is, members of free cities, exercising the +franchise in the government of their own states--could show in the +fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:[1] and these in Venice were +subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been +enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by party feuds and vulgar +despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived +literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this +indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his +prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them. +Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate +which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as +Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza +the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. Lodovico, +called II Moro, not, as the great historian asserts, because he was of +dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree for his +device,[2] was in himself an epitome of all the qualities which for the +last two centuries had contributed to the degradation of Italy in the +persons of the despots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had +so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of +taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself +the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that +ran: _God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure_, he never +acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable +tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking +ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that +they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of +him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and +the arts by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an +ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the +presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt +that, as Corio tells us,[3] fathers sold their daughters, brothers their +sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word Lodovico, in spite of +his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of Italy and himself by his +tortuous policy, and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute +style of living no little to the general depravity of his country.[4] + + [1] This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must + be taken as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the + facts presented in Ferrari's _Rivoluzioni d' Italia_ will not + think the estimate exaggerated. In the municipal and civil + wars, free burghs were extinguished by the score. + + [2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the _Elogia_ of Paulus + Jovius, who remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair. + His surname, however, provoked puns. Me had, for example, a + picture painted, in which Italy, dressed like a queen, is + having her robe brushed by a Moorish page. A motto ran beneath, + _Per Italia nettar d' ogni bruttura_. He adopted the mulberry + because Pliny called it the most prudent of all trees, inasmuch + as it waits till winter is well over to put forth its leaves, + and Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in choosing the + right moment for action. + + [3] _L' Historia di Milano_, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: 'A quella + (scola di Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi + giovani. I padri vi concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le + mogliere, i fratelli le sorelle; e per sifatto modo senz' alcun + riguardo molti concorreano all' amoroso ballo, che cosa + stupendissima era riputata per qualunque l' intendeva.' + + [4] Guicciardini, _Storia d' Italia_, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up + the character of Lodovico with masterly completeness. + +Amid this general perturbation of the old political order the year +1494, marked in its first month by the death of King Ferdinand, +began--'a year,' to quote from Guicciardini, 'the most unfortunate for +Italy, the very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it opened +the door to numberless and horrible calamities, in which it may be said +that a great portion of the world has subsequently shared.' The +expectation and uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned to the +magnitude of the coming change. On every side the invasion of the +French was regarded with that sort of fascination which a very new and +exciting event is wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians were +inclined to hail Charles as a general pacificator and restorer of old +liberties.[1] Savonarola had preached of him as the _flagellum Dei_, +the minister appointed to regenerate the Church and purify the font of +spiritual life in the peninsula. In another frame of mind they +shuddered to think what the advent of the barbarians--so the French +were called--might bring upon them. It was universally agreed that +Lodovico by his invitation had done no more than bring down, as it +were, by a breath the avalanche which had been long impending. 'Not +only the preparations made by land and sea, but also the consent of the +heavens and of men, announced the woes in store for Italy. Those who +pretend either by art or divine inspiration to the knowledge of the +future, proclaimed unanimously that greater and more frequent changes, +occurrences more strange and awful than had for many centuries been +seen in any part of the world, were at hand.' After enumerating divers +signs and portents, such as the passing day after day in the region +round Arezzo of innumerable armed men mounted on gigantic horses with a +hideous din of drums and trumpets, the great historian resumes: 'These +things filled the people with incredible fear; for, long before, they +had been terrified by the reputation of the power of the French and of +their fierceness, seeing that histories are full of their deeds--how +they had already overrun the whole of Italy, sacked the city of Rome +with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of Asia, and at one time or +another smitten with their arms all quarters of the world.' + + [1] This was the strictly popular as opposed to the + aristocratic feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and + smarting under the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese + princes, expected in Charles VIII. a Messiah, and cried + 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.' See passages quoted in + a note below. + +Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of Naples had the most to +dread; for against him the invasion was specially directed. No time was +to be lost. He assembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli in July and +explained to them his theory of resistance. The allies were Florence, +Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of Romagna.[1] For once the +southern and the middle states of Italy were united against a common +foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he +dreaded the assembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne +he had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that he had already +sent ambassadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most +Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of +undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition +to the French. But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand +was prudent. It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their +unassisted force. This might have been done if Alfonso's plan had been +adhered to. He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, +to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the passes of the Apennines to +the North, while Piero de' Medici undertook to guard the entrances to +Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to +raise Gian Galeazzo's standard in Lombardy. But that absolute agreement +which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and +comprehensive was impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention +should first be paid to the Colonnesi--Prospero and Fabrizio being +secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty. +Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman +territory on the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the +generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into +Lombardy. They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the +Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. The fleet +under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in +Genoa. The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of +Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral +fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the league were further enfeebled +and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the +Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly Piero de' Medici by +his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in +the sequel. This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of +forces--this total inability to strike a sudden blow--sealed beforehand +the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, +Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of +Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the +Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were +not the men to save a nation. Italy was conquered, not by the French +king, but by the vices of her own leaders. The whole history of +Charles's expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing +over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the +disorganization of peoples rendered harmless. The Atè of the gods had +descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief that the +expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.[2] + + [1] Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with + Charles, on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her + engaged. She declined to join the league of Alfonso by saying + it was mad to save others at the risk of drawing the war into + your own territory. Nothing is more striking than the want of + patriotic sentiment or generous concurrence to a common end in + Italy at this time. Florence, by temper and tradition favorable + to France, had been drawn into the league by Piero de' Medici, + whose sympathies were firm for the Aragonese princes. + + [2] This, of course, was Savonarola's prophecy. But both + Guicciardini and De Comities use invariably the same language. + The phrase _Dieu monstroit conduire l'entreprise_ frequently + recurs in the _Memoirs_ of De Comines. + +While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for their safety in the +South, Charles remained at Lyons, still uncertain whether he should +enter Italy by sea or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all. +Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt satisfied with his +achievement and indulged himself in a long bout of tournaments and +pastimes. Besides, the want of money, which was to be his chief +embarrassment throughout the expedition, had already made itself +felt.[1] It was an Italian who at length roused him to make good his +purpose against Italy--Giuliano della Rovere,[2] the haughty nephew of +Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined to succeed +in course of time upon the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, +or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with +taunts and menaces until Charles felt he could delay his march no +longer. When once the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly. +Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the +French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon +infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, +debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on September +19.[3] Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at +almost any point upon the route they might have been at least delayed by +hardy mountaineers until the commissariat of so large a force had proved +an insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback conqueror with +the big head and little legs, the valleys had been exalted and the rough +places had been made plain. The princes whose interest it might have +been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles were but children. The +Duke of Savoy was only twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat +fourteen; their mothers and guardians made terms with the French king, +and opened their territories to his armies. + + [1] 'La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis + d'advis qu'elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit + de rien, et y alla tout l'argent contant que le Roy peut finer + de ses finances: car comme j'ay dit, il n'estoit point pourveu + ne de sens, ne d'argent, oy d'autre chose nécessaire à telle + entreprise, et si en vint bien à bout, moyennant la grâce de + Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi à cognoistre.' De Comines, + lib. vii. + + [2] Guicciardini calls him on this occasion 'fatale instrumento + e allora e prima e poi de' mali d' Italia.' Lib. i. cap. 3. + + [3] I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. + 383), to which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all + attached to the artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, + carpenters, etc. See Dennistoun, _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. i. p. + 433, for a detailed list of Charles's armaments by land and + sea. + +At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole +d' Este. The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes[1] +followed in their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes to +entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken +meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, +what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The +French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by +promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the +small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded +to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement of interests arose. Charles was +bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife +Beatrice d' Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone +Alfonso and to assume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure +the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin[2] the young Giovanni +Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the +beautiful Isabella of Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable +of resisting a woman's tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess +in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend +Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought +him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself? The +situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the +feeble young king. For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to +his petitioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner +had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved to +remove the cause of further vacillation. Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had +his nephew poisoned.[3] When the news of Gian Galeazzo's death reached +the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was +already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible +Italians with whom they had to deal. + + [1] See above, p. 548. + + [2] The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were + sisters, princesses of Savoy. + + [3] Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he + inclines to believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet + raises a doubt about it, though the evidence is such as he + would have accepted without question in the case of a Borgia. + Guicciardini, who recounts the whole matter at length, says + that all Italy believed the Duke had been murdered, and quotes + Teodoro da Pavia, one of the royal physicians, who attested to + having seen clear signs of a slow poison in the young man. + Pontano, _de Prudentiâ_, lib. 4, repeats the accusation. + Guicciardini only doubts Lodovico's motives. He inclines to + think the murder had been planned long before, and that Charles + was invited into Italy in order that Lodovico might have a good + opportunity for effecting it, while at the same time he had + taken care to get the investiture of the Duchy from the Emperor + ready against the event. + +What was this beautiful land in the midst of which they found +themselves, a land whose marble palaces were thronged with cut-throats +in disguise, whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose luxuriant +meadows concealed fever, whose ladies carried disease upon their lips? +To the captains and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared a +splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with +illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to +brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered +men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and +gaze back with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found +themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through +the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with +drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques +with roses that they might not hear the siren's voice too clearly. It +was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance +for the people of the North. _The White Devil of Italy_ is the title of +one of Webster's best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of +sin and death, holding in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good +and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is how Italy struck the +fancy of the men of the sixteenth century. She was feminine, and they +were virile; but she could teach and they must learn. She gave them +pleasure; they brought force. The fruit of her embraces with the nations +was the spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in which we +live. + +Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with what new enemies they +had to deal. Twice at the commencement of the invasion did the French +use the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the sorceress. These +terror-striking examples were the massacres of the inhabitants of +Rapallo on the Genoese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers +and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in the hospitals, were +butchered, first by the Swiss and German guards, and afterwards by the +French, who would not be outdone by them in energy. It was thus that the +Italians, after a century of bloodless battles and parade campaigning, +learned a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of those +Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined to drown the peninsula with +French, Spanish, German, Swiss, and native blood. + +Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, traversing, all through the +golden autumn weather, those plains where mulberry and elm are married +by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of maize and corn. From +Parma, placed beneath the northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, +on the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of Carrara build their +barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, there leads a winding barren mountain +pass. Charles took this route with his army, and arrived in the +beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. Meanwhile we may well +ask what Piero de' Medici had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his +engagement with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be remembered, to +hold the passes of the Apennines upon this side. To have embarrassed the +French troops among those limestone mountains, thinly forested with pine +and chestnut-trees, and guarded here and there with ancient fortresses, +would have been a matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 +Swiss troops during their wars of independence would have laughed to +scorn the whole forces of Burgundy and Austria. But Piero, a feeble and +false tyrant, preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, and +disinclined to push forward into the territory of the Sforza, had as yet +done nothing when the news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of +capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as fast as horses could +carry him to the French camp, besought an interview with Charles, and +then and there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and its citadel, +together with those of Pietra Santa, Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any +one who has followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana can +appreciate the enormous value of these concessions to the invader. They +relieved him of the difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of +land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the +highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in +the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles +would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian +knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and +dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and +Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The +Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular policy, now +rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased +from their memory the name of Medici except for execration. The +unsuccessful tyrant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his +country, and to himself, saved his life by flying first to Bologna and +thence to Venice, where he remained in a sort of polite captivity--safe, +but a slave, until the Doge and his council saw which way affairs would +tend. + +On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny of fifty years, and Pisa +after the servitude of a century, recovered their liberties and were +able to reconstitute republican governments. But the situation of the +two states was very different. The Florentines had never lost the name +of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the freedom of the +inhabitants to exercise self-government than the independence of the +city in relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other hand had been +reduced to subjection by Florence: their civic life had been stifled, +their pride wounded in the tenderest point of honor, their population +decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence was the +enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment of anarchy burned to +obliterate her shame with bloodshed. The French, understanding none of +the niceties of Italian politics, and ignorant that in giving freedom to +Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked on with wonder at +the citizens who tossed the lion of the tyrant town into the Arno and +took up arms against its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm +of the long-suppressed passion for liberty in the Pisans, while we know +how soon they were reduced again to slavery by the selfish sister state, +herself too thoroughly corrupt for liberty. The part of Charles, who +espoused the cause of the Pisans with blundering carelessness, +pretended to protect the new republic, and then abandoned it a few +months later to its fate, provokes nothing but the languid contempt +which all his acts inspire. + +After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of Pisan liberty the King +of France was hailed as saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles +received a magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, +and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of +the Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar conveyed to the +French king a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to enter +their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero +de' Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the tilting yard, and +restoring the freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of +policy and indifferent to the part assigned him by the prophet as he was +before. He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 17, and +took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he informed the +elders of the city that he had come as conqueror and not as guest, and +that he intended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state. + +It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno flowing through her +midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even +more lovely than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls +remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make +resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's +tower and Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction +to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in +their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but +a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as +castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, +refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, +intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old +factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by +flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted +Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke +in a terrestrial paradise of natural and æsthetic beauty. Which of us +who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture +to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, +incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the +Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to +pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces +the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But +in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found +loveliness of which they had not dreamed before. + +Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid +hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with +her--reform the republic--legislate--impose a levy on the citizens, and +lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and +began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He +insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were +written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall +sound my trumpets.' Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.' +Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed +by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a +menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the +tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be +barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by +hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, +covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: _Ah, Ciappon, +Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon!_ The secretaries beat down his terms. +All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with +120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted +Florence. + +Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obstacle. His invasion had +fallen like the rain from heaven, and like rain, as far as he was +concerned, it ran away to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first +scenes in the pageant displayed by Italy before the French army, had +been left behind. Rome now lay before them, magnificent in desolation; +not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built up +from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, but the Rome of the +Middle Ages, the city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still +pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The progress of +the French was a continued triumph. They reached Siena on the second of +December. The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid +down their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their castles: +Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese army and grand constable +of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for himself favorable terms +from the French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to their own +rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. Italy seemed bent on +proving that cowardice and selfishness and incapacity had conquered her. +Viterbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were traversed: the Campagna, +bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud +upon the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty at +the invader's feet. Not a blow had been struck, when he reached the +Porta del Popolo upon the 31st of December 1494. At three o'clock in the +afternoon began the entry of the French army. It was nine at night +before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of torches and +flambeaux, defiled through the gates, and took their quarters in the +streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, +flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, +splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in +their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the +German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, +stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this +memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before +them specimens and vanguards of all those legioned races which were soon +to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling-place. Nothing was +wanting to complete the symbol of the coming doom but a representative +of the grim, black, wiry infantry of Spain. + + [1] The want of money determined all Charles's operations in + this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions + on Piero and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy + princesses, he passed from place to place, bargaining and + contracting debts instead of dictating laws and founding + constitutions. _La carestia dei danari_ is a phrase continually + recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the jewels lent to + Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat at Turin, + de Comines exclaims: 'Et pouvez voir quel commencement de + guerre c'estoit, si Dieu n'eut guidé l'oeuvre.' + +The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Castle of S. Angelo. How would +the Conqueror, now styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of +desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom? At the side of +Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, +urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still closer to +his ear was Briçonnet, the _ci-devant_ tradesman, who thought it would +become his dignity to wear a cardinal's hat. On this trifle turned the +destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate of the Church. +Charles determined to compromise matters. He demanded a few fortresses, +a red hat for Briçonnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, and +Djem, the brother of the Sultan.[1] After these agreements had been made +and ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his castle and receive the +homage of the faithful. + +Charles staid* a month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. The fourth +and last scene in the Italian pageant was now to be displayed. After the +rich plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their rampart of +perpetual snow; after the olive gardens and fair towns of Tuscany; after +the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, +that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends +of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. +The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have +their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more +luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the +villagers are more classically graceful; the volcanic soil is more +fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in +the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist +the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks lost their native +energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies +the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was +tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at +Baiæ, at Pompeii at Capreæ, until the whole region became a byword for +voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and +became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were +softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments +of the southern sorceress. + + [1] See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate + prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive + for the Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was + under engagements with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem + died of slow poison soon after he became the guest of Charles. + The Borgia preferred to keep faith with the Turk. + +Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained +to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her +most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison--the virus of a +fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was +destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove +more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle +Ages.[1] + + [1] Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of + syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von + Hirsch, _Historisch-geographische Pathologie_ (Erlangen, 1860), + and in Rosenbaum _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthum_ + (Halle, 1845). Some curious contemporary observations + concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease in Italy, its + symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo's _Cronaca + di Perugia_ (_Arch. Stor. It._ vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36), + and in Portovenere (_Arch. St._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The + celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for + its fine Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest + works issued from the Aldine press in 1497 was the _Libellus de + Epidemiâ quam vulgo morbum Gallicum vocant_. It was written by + Nicolas Leoniceno, and dedicated to the Count Francesco de la + Mirandola. + +The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent uncertainty which attended +the succession to the throne, as well as the suzerainty assumed and +misused by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing cause of discord +in Italy. The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. +After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and +Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a +bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled +Count Réné of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which +he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the +Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of +the fifteenth century. Historians are never weary of relating his +victories over Caldora and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which +he expelled his rival Réné, and the fascination which he exercised in +Milan, while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria +Visconti.[1] Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of his +virtues, the justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture which +rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of that splendid period.[2] +His love of learning was a passion. Whether at home in the retirement of +his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always attended by +students, who read aloud and commented on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No +prince was more profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo +Fazio received 500 ducats a year for the composition of his histories, +and when, at their conclusion, the scholar asked for a further gift of +200 or 300 florins, the prince bestowed upon him 1,500. The year he +died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of letters alone. This +immoderate liberality is the only vice of which he is accused. It bore +its usual fruits in the disorganization of finance. + + [1] Mach. _Ist. Fior._ lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may + be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at + the commencement of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near + the Isle of Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he + succeeded in proving to Filippo Visconti that it was more to + his interest to have him king of Naples than to keep the French + there. Upon, this the Duke of Milan restored him with honor to + his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest which before he + had successfully opposed. It is a singular instance of the + extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and + reason. + + [2] Vespasiano's _Life of Alfonso_ (_Vite di Uomini Illustri_, + pp. 48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid + delineation. It is written of course from the scholar's more + than the politician's point of view. Compare with it Giovio, + _Elogia_, and Pontanus, _de Liberalitate_. + +The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the +Neapolitans. During the half-century in which so many Italian princes +succumbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, +according to Pontano, 'nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,' +walked up and down unarmed and unattended. 'Why should a father fear +among his children?' he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the +danger of this want of caution. The many splendid qualities by which he +was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of +his private life. Married to Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate +children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in +1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to +be his son by Margaret de Hijar. It was even whispered that this +Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso's brother +Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her +own. Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known +for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret +de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from +that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand's secretary, told a different tale. +He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano +of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by the brusque +contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand. + +It would be terrible to think that such a father could have been the +parent of such a son. In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture +degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place +to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered upon +madness. He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their +misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching +the antics of monkeys.[1] In his hunting establishment were repeated +the worst atrocities of Bernabo Visconti: wretches mutilated for neglect +of his hounds extended their handless stumps for charity to the +travelers through his villages.[2] Instead of the generosity for which +Alfonso had been famous, Ferdinand developed all the arts of avarice. +Like Sixtus IV. he made the sale of corn and oil a royal monopoly, +trafficking in the hunger of his subjects.[3] Like Alexander VI. he +fattened his viziers and secretaries upon the profits of extortion which +he shared with them, and when they were fully gorged he cut their +throats and proclaimed himself the heir through their attainder.[4] +Alfonso had been famous for his candor and sincerity. Ferdinand was a +demon of dissimulation and treachery. His murder of his guest Jacopo +Piccinino at the end of a festival, which extended over twenty-seven +days of varied entertainments, won him the applause of Machiavellian +spirits throughout Italy. It realized the ideal of treason conceived as +a fine art. Not less perfect as a specimen of diabolical cunning was the +vengeance which Ferdinand, counseled by his son Alfonso, inflicted on +the barons who conspired against him.[5] Alfonso was a son worthy of his +terrible father. The only difference between them was that Ferdinand +dissembled, while Alfonso, whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks +had surrounded him with military glory, abandoned himself with cynicism +to his passions. Sketching characters of both in the same paragraph, de +Comines writes: 'Never was man more cruel than Alfonso, nor more +vicious, nor more wicked, nor more poisonous, nor more gluttonous. His +father was more dangerous, because he could conceal his mind and even +his anger from sight; in the midst of festivity he would take and +slaughter his victims by treachery. Grace or mercy was never found in +him, nor yet compassion for his poor people. Both of them laid forcible +hands on women. In matters of the Church they observed nor reverence nor +obedience. They sold bishoprics, like that of Tarento, which Ferdinand +disposed of for 13,000 ducats to a Jew in favor of his son whom he +called a Christian.' + + [1] See Pontanus, _de Immanitate,_ Aldus, 1518, vol. 1. p. 318: + 'Ferdinandus Rex Neapolitanorum præclaros etiam viros conclusos + carcere etiam bene atque abunde pascebat, eandem ex iis + voluptatem capiens quam pueri e conclusis in caveâ aviculis: + quâ de re sæpenumero sibi ipsi inter intimos suos diu multumque + gratulatus subblanditusque in risum tandem ac cachinnos + profundebatur.' + + [2] See Pontanus, _de Immanitate_, Aldus; 1518, vol. i. p. 320: + 'Ferd. R.N. qui cervum aprumve occidissent furtimve palamve, + alios remo addixit, alios manibus mutilavit, alios suspendio + affecit: agros quoque serendos inderdixit dominis, legendasque + aut glandes aut poma, quæ servari quidem volebat in escam + feris ad venationis suæ usum.' + + [3] Caracciolo, _de Varietate Fortunæ_, Muratori, vol. xxii. p. + 87, exposes this system in a passage which should be compared + with Infessura on the practices of Sixtus. De Comines, lib. + vii. cap. 11, may be read with profit on the same subject. + + [4] See Caracciolo, loc. cit. pp. 88, 89, concerning the + judicial murder of Francesco Coppola and Antonello Perucci, + both of whom had been raised to eminence by Ferdinand, used + through their lives as the instruments of his extortion, and + murdered by him in their rich old age. + + [5] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11; Sismondi, vol. vii. p. + 229. Read also the short account of the massacre of the Barons + given in the _Chronicon Venetum_, Muratori, xxiv. p. 15, where + the intense loathing felt throughout Italy for Ferdinand and + his son Alfonso is powerfully expressed. + +This kind of tyranny carried in itself its own death-warrant. It needed +not the voice of Savonarola to proclaim that God would revenge the +crimes of Ferdinand by placing a new sovereign on his throne. It was +commonly believed that the old king died in 1494 of remorse and +apprehension, when he knew that the French expedition could no longer be +delayed. Alfonso, for his part, bold general in the field and able man +of affairs as he might be, found no courage to resist the conqueror. It +is no fiction of a poet or a moralist, but plain fact of history, that +this King of Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso and father of the +Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of accusing dead that rose +to haunt his tortured fancy in the supreme hour of peril. The chambers +of his palace in Naples were thronged with ghosts by battalions, pale +specters of the thousands he had reduced to starvation, bloody phantoms +of the barons he had murdered after nameless tortures, thin wraiths of +those who had wasted away in dungeons under his remorseless rule. The +people around his gates muttered in rebellion. He abdicated in favor of +his son, took ship for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken in a +convent ere the year was out. + +Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation in spite of his father's +and grandfather's tyranny, reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the +situation was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors--by his +whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at Capua, by the German guide at +Naples. Without soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but +the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason to execrate his +race, and with the conquerors of Italy advancing daily through his +states, retreat alone was left to him. After abandoning his castles to +pillage, burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting Don +Federigo together with the Queen dowager and the princess Joanna upon a +quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians +relate that as the shore receded from his view he kept intoning in a +loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 'Except the Lord keep the +city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and +the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there is +only the distance of some seventeen miles. It was in February, a month +of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the +whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one +tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage. +Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley's stern the +king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for +Granada, cried: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but +in vain.' + +There was no want of courage in the youth. By his simple presence he had +intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage +he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of +the island. There he waited till the storm was overpast. Ten times more +a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples +leaving scarcely a rack behind--some troops decimated by disease and +unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor. +Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than +could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle +race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar +yoke.[1] + +Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495. +He was welcomed and fêted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are +more childishly delighted with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual +sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence +and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by +dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his +retinue.[2] Without receiving so much as a provisional investiture from +the Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 12 as sovereign, +with a ball in one hand and a scepter in the other, through the city. +Then he was forced to return upon his path and to seek France with the +precipitancy he had shown in gaining Naples. Alexander, who was witty, +said the French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden +spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before +them to select their quarters. It remained to be seen that the +achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark +is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken. + + [1] The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince + inspire a deep feeling of interest. It is sad to read that + after recovering his kingdom in 1496, he died in his + twenty-eighth year, worn out with fatigue and with the + pleasures of his marriage to his aunt Joanna, whom he loved too + passionately. His uncle Frederick, the brother of Alfonso II., + succeeded to the throne. Thus in three years Naples had five + Sovereigns. + + [2] 'Tous estats et offices furent donnez aux François, à deux + ou trois,' says De Comines. + +While Charles was amusing himself at Naples, a storm was gathering in +his rear. A league against him had been formed in April by the great +powers of Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence of Italy, and +urged by the Sultan, who had reason to dread Charles VIII.,[1] headed +the league. Lodovico, now that he had attained his selfish object in the +quiet position of Milan, was anxious for his safety. The Pope still +feared a general council. Maximilian, who could not forget the slight +put upon him in the matter of his daughter and his bride, was willing to +co-operate against his rival. Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured +themselves in Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re-establish +Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. Each of the contracting +parties had his rôle assigned to him. Spain undertook to aid Ferdinand +of Aragon in Calabria. Venice was to attack the seaports of the +kingdom; Lodovico Sforza, to occupy Asti; the King of the Romans, to +make a diversion in the North. Florence alone, though deeply injured by +Charles in the matter of Pisa, kept faith with the French. + + [1] Charles, by an act dated A.D. 1494, September 6, had bought + the title of Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond from + Andrew Palæologus (see Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 183, ed. Milman). + When he took Djem from Alexander in Rome, his object was to + make use of him in a war against Bajazet; and the Pope was + always impressing on the Turk the peril of a Frankish crusade. + +The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand the Catholic had disembarked +troops on the shore of Sicily, and was ready to throw an army into the +ports of Reggio and Tropea. Alexander had refused to carry out his +treaty by the surrender of Spoleto. Cesare Borgia had escaped from the +French camp. The Lombards were menacing Asti, which the Duke of Orleans +held, and without the possession of which there was no safe return to +France. Asti indeed at this juncture would have fallen, and Charles +would have been caught in a trap, if the Venetians had only been quick +or wary enough to engage German mercenaries.[1] The danger of the +situation may best be judged by reading the Memoirs of De Comines, who +was then ambassador at Venice. 'The league was concluded very late one +evening. The next morning the Signory sent for me earlier than usual. +They were assembled in great numbers, perhaps a hundred or more, and +held their heads high, made a good cheer, and had not the same +countenance as on the day when they told me of the capture of the +citadel of Naples.[2] My heart was heavy, and I had grave doubts about +the person of the king and about all his company; and I thought their +scheme more ripe than it really was, and feared they might have Germans +ready; and if it had been so, never could the king have got safe out of +Italy.' Nevertheless De Comines put a brave face on the matter, and told +the council that he had already received information of the league and +had sent dispatches to his master on the subject.[3] 'After dinner,' +continues De Comines, 'all the ambassadors of the league met for an +excursion on the water, which is the chief recreation at Venice, where +every one goes according to the retinue he keeps, or at the expense of +the Signory. There may have been as many as forty gondolas, all bearing +displayed the arms of their masters upon banners. I saw the whole of +this company pass before my windows, and there were many minstrels on +board. Those of Milan, one at least of them who had often kept my +company, put on a brave face not to know me; and for three days I +remained without going forth into the town, nor my people, nor was there +all that time a single courteous word said to me or to any of my +suite.' + + [1] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 15, pp. 78, 79. + + [2] De Comines' account of the alarm felt at Venice on that + occasion is very graphic: 'They sent for me one morning, and I + found them to the number of fifty or sixty in the Doge's + bedchamber, for he was ill of colic; and there he told me the + news with a good countenance. But none of the company knew so + well how to feign as he. Some were seated on a wooden bench, + leaning their heads on their hands, and others otherwise; and + all showed great heaviness at heart. I think that when the news + reached Rome of the battle of Cannæ, the senators were not more + confounded or frightened.' + + [3] Bembo, in his _Venetian History_ (lib. ii. p. 32), tells a + different tale. He represents De Comines quite unnerved by the + news. + +Returning northward by the same route, Charles passed Rome and reached +Siena on June 13. The Pope had taken refuge, first at Orvieto, and +afterwards at Perugia, on his approach; but he made no concessions. +Charles could not obtain from him an investiture of the kingdom he +pretended to have conquered, while he had himself to surrender the +fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia alone remained in the +clutch of Alexander's implacable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In +Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. The French army desired to +see the liberties of Pisa established on a solid basis before they +quitted Italy. On their way to Naples the misfortunes of that ancient +city had touched them: now on their return they were clamorous that +Charles should guarantee its freedom. But to secure this object was an +affair of difficulty. The forces of the league had already taken the +field, and the Duke of Orleans was being besieged in Novara. The +Florentines, jealous of the favor shown, in manifest infringement of +their rights, to citizens whom they regarded as rebellious bondsmen, +assumed an attitude of menace. Charles could only reply with vague +promises to the solicitations of the Pisans, strengthen the French +garrisons in their fortresses, and march forward as quickly as possible +into the Apennines. The key of the pass by which he sought to regain +Lombardy is the town of Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes on June 29, +the French army, distressed for provisions and in peril among those +melancholy hills, pushed onward with all speed. They knew that the +allied forces, commanded by the Marquis of Mantua, were waiting for them +at the other side upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, if +anywhere, the French ought to have been crushed. They numbered about +9,000 men in all, while the allies were close upon 40,000. The French +were weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad lodgings. The +Italians were fresh and well cared for. Yet in spite of all this, in +spite of blind generalship and total blundering, Charles continued to +play his part of fortune's favorite to the end. A bloody battle, which +lasted for an hour, took place upon the banks of the Taro.[1] The +Italians suffered so severely that, though they still far outnumbered +the French, no persuasions could make them rally and renew the fight. +Charles in his own person ran great peril during this battle; and when +it was over, he had still to effect his retreat upon Asti in the teeth +of a formidable army. The good luck of the French and the dilatory +cowardice of their opponents saved them now again for the last time. + + [1] The action at Fornovo lasted a quarter of an hour, + according to De Comines. The pursuit of the Italians occupied + about three quarters of an hour more. Unaccustomed to the quick + tactics of the French, the Italians, when once broken, + persisted in retreating upon Reggio and Parma. The Gonzaghi + alone distinguished themselves for obstinate courage, and lost + four or five members of their princely house. The Stradiots, + whose scimitars ought to have dealt rudely with the heavy + French men-at-arms, employed their time in pillaging the Royal + pavilion, very wisely abandoned to their avarice by the French + captains. To such an extent were military affairs misconstrued + in Italy, that, on the strength of this brigandage, the + Venetians claimed Fornovo for a victory. See my essay + 'Fornovo,' in _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, for a + description of the ground on which the battle was fought. + +On July 15, Charles at the head of his little force marched into Asti +and was practically safe. Here the young king continued to give signal +proofs of his weakness. Though he knew that the Duke of Orleans was hard +pressed in Novara, he made no effort to relieve him; nor did he attempt +to use the 20,000 Switzers who descended from their Alps to aid him in +the struggle with the league. From Asti he removed to Turin, where he +spent his time in flirting with Anna Soléri, the daughter of his host. +This girl had been sent to harangue him with a set oration, and had +fulfilled her task, in the words of an old witness, 'without wavering, +coughing, spitting, or giving way at all.' Her charms delayed the king +in Italy until October 19, when he signed a treaty at Vercelli with the +Duke of Milan. At this moment Charles might have held Italy in his +grasp. His forces, strengthened by the unexpected arrival of so many +Switzers, and by a junction with the Duke of Orleans, would have been +sufficient to overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate the +faction of Ferdinand in Naples. Yet so light-minded was Charles, and so +impatient were his courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick return +to France. Reserving to himself the nominal right of using Genoa as a +naval station, he resigned that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed +him in the tranquil possession of his Duchy. On October 22 he left +Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps of Dauphiné. +Already his famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of +the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become the shadow of a +name. He had obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, while he +imposed on France a perilous foreign policy, and on Italy the burden of +bloody warfare in the future. + +A little more than a year had elapsed between the first entry of Charles +into Lombardy and his return to France. Like many other brilliant +episodes of history, this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, was more +important as a sign than as an actual event. 'His passage,' says +Guicciardini, 'was the cause not only of change in states, downfalls of +kingdoms, desolations of whole districts, destructions of cities, +barbarous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes of conduct, new +and bloody habits of war, diseases hitherto unknown. The organization +upon which the peace and harmony of Italy depended was so upset that, +since that time, other foreign nations and barbarous armies have been +able to trample her under foot and to ravage her at pleasure.' The only +error of Guicciardini is the assumption that the holiday excursion of +Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the cause of these calamities.[1] +In truth the French invasion opened a new era for the Italians, but only +in the same sense as a pageant may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every +monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of Charles and +forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with greedy eyes +upon the wealth of the peninsula. The Swiss found in those rich +provinces an inexhaustible field for depredation. The Germans, under the +pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites +in the metropolis of Christendom. France and Spain engaged in a duel to +the death for the possession of so fair a prey. The French, maddened by +mere cupidity, threw away those chances which the goodwill of the race +at large afforded them.[2] Louis XII. lost himself in petty intrigues, +by which he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of the Borgias +and Austria. Francis I. foamed his force away like a spent wave at +Marignano and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in +the sixteenth century was destined to receive the impress of the Spanish +spirit, and to bear the yoke of Austrian dukes. Hand in hand with +political despotism marched religious tyranny. The Counter-Reformation +over which the Inquisition presided, was part and parcel of the Spanish +policy for the enslavement of the nation no less than for the +restoration of the Church. Meanwhile the weakness, discord, egotism, and +corruption which prevented the Italians from resisting the French +invasion in 1494, continued to increase. Instead of being lessoned by +experience, Popes, Princes, and Republics vied with each other in +calling in the strangers, pitting Spaniard against Frenchman, and paying +the Germans to expel the Swiss, oblivious that each new army of +foreigners they summoned was in reality a new swarm of devouring +locusts. In the midst of this anarchy it is laughable to hear the shrill +voice of priests, like Julius and Leo, proclaiming before God their vows +to rid Italy of the barbarians. The confusion was tenfold confounded +when the old factions of Guelf and Ghibelline put on a new garb of +French and Spanish partisanship. Town fought with town and family with +family, in the cause of strangers whom they ought to have resisted with +one will and steady hatred. The fascination of fear and the love of +novelty alike swayed the fickle population of Italian cities. The +foreign soldiers who inflicted on the nation such cruel injuries made a +grand show in their streets, and there will always be a mob so childish +as to covet pageants at the expense of freedom and even of safety. + + [1] Guicciardini's _Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze_ (_Op. + Ined._ vol. ii. p. 94) sets forth the state of internal anarchy + and external violence which followed the departure of Charles + VIII., with wonderful acuteness. 'Se per sorte l' uno + Oltramontano caccerà l' altro, Italia resterà in estrema + servitù,' is an exact prophecy of what happened before the end + of the sixteenth century, when Spain had beaten France in the + duel for Italy. + + [2] Matarazzo, in his _Cronaca della Città di Perugia_ (_Arch. + St._, vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the + eagerness with which the French were greeted in 1495, and of + the wanton brutality by which they soon alienated the people. + In this he agrees almost textually with De Comines, who writes: + 'Le peuple nous advouoit comme Saincts, estimans en nous toute + foy et bonté; mais ce propos ne leur dura gueres, tant pour + nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi les ennemis + oppreschoient le peuple en tous quartiers,' etc., lib. vii. + cap. 6. In the first paragraph of the _Chronicon Venetum_ + (_Muratori_, vol. xxlv. p. 5), we read concerning the advent of + Charles: 'I popoli tutti dicevano _Benedictus qui venit in + nomine Domini_. Nè v'era alcuno che li potesse contrastare, nè + resistere, tanto era da tutti i popoli Italiani chiamato.' The + Florentines, as burghers of a Guelf city, were always loyal to + the French. Besides, their commerce with France (_e.g._ the + wealth of Filippo Strozzi) made it to their interest to favor + the cause of the French. See Guicc. i. 2, p. 62. This loyalty + rose to enthusiasm under the influence of Savonarola, survived + the stupidities of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and committed + the Florentines in 1328 to the perilous policy of expecting aid + from Francis I. + +In spite of its transitory character the invasion of Charles VIII., +therefore, was a great fact in the history of the Renaissance. It was, +to use the pregnant phrase of Michelet, no less than the revelation of +Italy to the nations of the North. Like a gale sweeping across a forest +of trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilizing pollen, after it has +broken and deflowered their branches, to far-distant trees that hitherto +have bloomed in barrenness, the storm of Charles's army carried far and +wide through Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich +the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How +terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of +Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But +France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable +and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the +Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe what we call the +movement of the Renaissance. There is some truth in this panegyric of +Michelet's. The passage of the army of Charles VIII. marks a +turning-point in modern history, and from this epoch dates the diffusion +of a spirit of culture over Europe. But Michelet forgets to notice that +the French never rightly understood their vocation with regard to Italy. +They had it in their power to foster that free spirit which might have +made her a nation capable, in concert with France, of resisting Charles +V. Instead of doing so, they pursued the pettiest policy of avarice and +egotism. Nor did they prevent that Spanish conquest the horrors of which +their historian has so eloquently described. Again, we must remember +that it was the Spaniards and not the French who saved Italy from being +barbarized by the Turk. + +For the historian of Italy it is sad and humiliating to have to +acknowledge that her fate depended wholly on the action of more powerful +nations, that she lay inert and helpless at the discretion of the +conqueror in the duels between Spain and France and Spain and Islam. Yet +this is the truth. It would seem that those peoples to whom we chiefly +owe advance in art and knowledge, are often thus the captives of their +intellectual inferiors. Their spiritual ascendency is purchased at the +expense of political solidity and national prosperity. This was the case +with Greece, with Judah, and with Italy. The civilization of the +Italians, far in advance of that of other European nations, unnerved +them in the conflict with robust barbarian races. Letters and the arts +and the civilities of life were their glory. 'Indolent princes and most +despicable arms' were their ruin. Whether the Renaissance of the modern +world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy had remained free, +who shall say? The very conditions which produced her culture seem to +have rendered that impossible. + + + + +APPENDICES + + + + +APPENDIX I. + +_Blood-madness_. See Chapter iii, p. 109. + + +One of the most striking instances afforded by history of Hæmatomania in +a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, prince of Africa and Sicily (A.D. 875). +This man, besides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of +enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execution of horrible +butcheries within the walls of his own palace. His astrologers having +once predicted that he should die by the hands of a 'small assassin,' he +killed off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their places +with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to treat after the same +fashion. On another occasion, when one of his three hundred eunuchs had +by chance been witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered +the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end to sixty youths, +originally selected for his pleasures, burning them by gangs of five or +six in the furnace, or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his +baths. Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; and when +one, who was so diseased that he could scarcely stir, implored to be +allowed to end his days in peace, Ibrahim answered: 'I make no +exceptions.' His own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders before +his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secretaries, ministers, and +courtiers was of common occurrence. But his fiercest fury was directed +against women. He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetuation +of the human race. Wives and concubines were strangled, sawn asunder, +and buried alive, if they showed signs of pregnancy. His female children +were murdered as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom his +mother managed to conceal and rear at her own peril, were massacred upon +the spot when Ibrahim discovered whom they claimed as father. +Contemporary Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy +passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he was the subject +of a strange disease, a portentous secretion of black bile producing the +melancholy which impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the +principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear +unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm +and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for +blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the +time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and +donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, preached a crusade, and led an +army into Italy, where he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. +The only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter is to +suppose that it was a dark monomania, a form of psychopathy analogous to +that which we find in the Maréchal de Retz and the Marquise de +Brinvilliers. One of the most marked symptoms of this disease was the +curiosity which led him to explore the entrails of his victims, and to +feast his eyes upon their quivering hearts. After causing his first +minister Ibn-Semsâma to be beaten to death, he cut his body open, and +with his own knife sliced the brave man's heart. On another occasion he +had 500 prisoners brought before him. Seizing a sharp lance he first +explored the region of the ribs, and then plunged the spear-point into +the heart of each victim in succession. A garland of these hearts was +made and hung up on the gate of Tunis. The Arabs regarded the heart as +the seat of thought in man, the throne of the will, the center of +intellectual existence. In this preoccupation with the hearts of his +victims we may therefore trace the jealousy of human life which Ibrahim +displayed in his murder of pregnant women, as well as a tyrant's fury +against the organ which had sustained his foes in their resistance. We +can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary lust with Ibrahim's +vigorous conduct of civil and military affairs, on the hypothesis that +this man-tiger, as Amari, to whom I owe these details, calls him, was +possessed with a specific madness. + + + + +APPENDIX II. + +_Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, lib. i. cap. 4._ See Chap. iv. p. 195. + + +After the freedom regained by the expulsion of the Duke of Athens and +the humbling of the nobles, regularity for the future in the government +might have been expected, since a very great equality among the burghers +had been established in consequence of those troubles. The city too had +been divided into quarters, and the supreme magistracy of the republic +assigned to the eight priors, called _Signori Priori di libertá_, +together with the Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, +two for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in no +respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dignity; and as the +fourth part of the honors pertained to the members of the lesser arts, +their turn kept coming round to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier +belonged. This magistracy remained for two whole months, always living +and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according to the notion of +our ancestors, they might be able to attend with greater diligence to +the affairs of the commonwealth, in concert with their colleagues, who +were the sixteen gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, and the +twelve _buoni uomini_, or special advisers of the Signory. These +magistrates collectively in one body were called the College, or else +the Signory and the Colleagues. After this magistracy came the Senate; +the number of which varied, and the name of which was altered several +times up to the year 1494, according to circumstances. The larger +councils, whose business it was to discuss and make the laws and all +provisions both general and particular, were until that date two; the +one called the Council of the people, formed only by the _cittadini +popolani_, and the other the Council of the Commune, because it embraced +both nobles and plebeians from the-date of the formation of these +councils.[1] The appointment of the magistrates, which of old times and +under the best and most equitable governments was made on the occasion +of each election, in this more modern period was consigned to a special +council called _Squittino_.[2] The mode and act of the election was +termed _Squittinare_, which is equivalent to Scrutinium in the Latin +tongue, because minute investigation was made into the qualities of the +eligible burghers. This method, however, tended greatly to corrupt the +good manners of the city, inasmuch as, the said scrutiny being made +every three or five years, and not on each occasion, as would have been +right, considering the present quality of the burghers and the badness +of the times, those who had once obtained their nomination and been put +into the purses thereto appointed, being certain to arrive some time at +the honors and offices for which they were designed, became careless and +negligent of good customs in their lives. The proper function of the +Gonfaloniers was, in concert with their Gonfalons and companies, to +defend with arms the city from perils foreign and civil, when occasion +rose, and to control the fire-guards specially deputed by that +magistracy in four convenient stations. All the laws and provisions, as +well private as public, proposed by the Signory, had to be approved and +carried by that College, then by the Senate, and lastly by the Councils +named above. Notwithstanding this rule, everything of high importance +pertaining to the state was discussed and carried into execution during +the whole time that the Medici administered the city by the Council +vulgarly called _Balia_, composed of men devoted to that government. +While the Medici held sway, the magistracy of the _Dieci della Guerra_ +or of Liberty and Peace were superseded by the _Otto della Pratica_ in +the conduct of all that concerned wars, truces, and treaties of peace, +in obedience to the will of the chief agents of that government. The +_Otto di guardia e balia_ were then as now delegated to criminal +business, but they were appointed by the fore-named Council of Balia, +or rather such authority and commission was assigned them by the +Signory, and this usage was afterwards continued on their entry into +office. Let this suffice upon these matters. Now the burghers who have +the right of discussing and determining the affairs of the republic were +and still are called privileged, _beneficiati_ or _statuali_, of that +quality and condition to which, according to the laws of our city, the +government belongs; in other words they are eligible for office, as +distinguished from those who have not this privilege. Consequently the +_benefiziati_ and _statuali_ of Florence correspond to the +_gentiluomini_ of Venice. Of these burghers there were about 400 +families or houses, but at different times the number was larger, and +before the plague of 1527 they made up a total of about 4,000 citizens +eligible for the Consiglio Grande. During the period of freedom between +1494 and 1512 the other or nonprivileged citizens could be elevated to +this rank of enfranchisement according as they were judged worthy by the +Council: at the present time they gain the same distinction by such +merits as may be pleasing to the ruler of the city for the time being: +our commonwealth from the year 1433 having been governed according to +the will of its own citizens, though one faction has from time to time +prevailed over another, and though before that date the republic was +distressed and shaken by the divisions which affected the whole of +Italy, and by many others which are rather to be reckoned as sedition +peculiar and natural to free cities. Seeing that men by good and evil +arts in combination are always striving to attain the summit of human +affairs, together also with the favor of fortune, who ever insists on +having her part in our actions. + + [1] Lorenzo de' Medici superseded these two councils by the + Council of the Seventy, without, however, suppressing them. + + [2] A corruption of Scrutinio. + + + + +_Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. iii. caps. 20, 21, 22._ + +The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, the first of +which takes in the whole of that part which is now called Beyond the +Arno, and the chief church of the district gives it the name of Santo +Spirito. The other three, which embrace all that is called This side the +Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, and are the +Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, and San Giovanni. Each of +these four quarters is divided into four gonfalons, named after the +different animals or other things they carry painted on their ensigns. +The quarter of Santo Spirito includes the gonfalons of the Ladder, the +Shell, the Whip, and the Dragon; that of Santa Croce, the Car, the Ox, +the Golden Lion, and the Wheels; that of Santa Maria Novella, the Viper, +the Unicorn, the Red Lion, and the White Lion; that of San Giovanni, the +Black Lion, the Dragon, the Keys, and the Vair. Now all the households +and families of Florence are included and classified under these four +quarters and sixteen gonfalons, so that there is no burgher of Florence +who does not rank in one of the four quarters and one of the sixteen +gonfalons. Each gonfalon had its standard-bearer, who carried the +standard like captains of bands; and their chief office was to run with +arms whenever they were called by the Gonfalonier of Justice, and to +defend, each under his own ensign, the palace of the Signory, and to +fight for the people's liberty; wherefore they were called Gonfaloniers +of the companies of the people, or, more briefly, from their number, the +Sixteen. Now since they never assembled by themselves alone, seeing that +they could not propose or carry any measure without the Signory, they +were also called the Colleagues, that is, the companions of the Signory, +and their title was venerable. This, after the Signory, was the first +and most honorable magistracy of Florence; and after them came the +Twelve Buonuomini, also called, for the like reason, Colleagues. So the +Signory with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the Sixteen, and the Twelve +were called the Three Greater. No man was said to have the franchise +(_aver lo stato_), and in consequence to frequent the council, or to +exercise any office, whose grandfather or father had not occupied or +been passed for (_seduto o veduto_) one of these three magistracies. To +be passed (_veduto_) Gonfalonier or Colleague meant this: when a man's +name was drawn from the purse of the Gonfaloniers or of the College to +exercise the office of Gonfalonier or Colleague, but by reason of being +below the legal age, or for some other cause, he never sat himself upon +the Board or was in fact Gonfalonier or Colleague, he was then said to +have been passed; and this held good of all the other magistracies of +the city. + +It should also be known that all the Florentine burghers were obliged to +rank in one of the twenty-one arts: that is, no one could be a burgher +of Florence unless he or his ancestors had been approved and +matriculated in one of these arts, whether they practiced it or no. +Without the proof of such matriculation he could not be drawn for any +office, or exercise any magistracy, or even have his name put into the +bags. The arts were these: i. Judges and Notaries (for the doctors of +the law were styled of old in Florence Judges); Merchants, or the Arts +of; ii. Calimala,[1] iii. Exchange, iv. Wool; Porta Santa Maria, or the +Arts of; v. Silk; vi. Physicians and Apothecaries; vii. Furriers. The +others were viii. Butchers, ix. Shoemakers, x. Blacksmiths, xi. +Linen-drapers and Clothesmen, xii. Masters, or Masons, and +Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. Oilsellers, +Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Hosiers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. +Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. The last +fourteen were called Lesser Arts; whoever was enrolled or matriculated +into one of these was said to rank with the lesser (_andare per la +minore_); and though there were in Florence many other trades than +these, yet having no guild of their own they were associated to one or +other of those that I have named. Each art had, as may still be seen, a +house or mansion, large and noble, where they assembled, appointed +officers, and gave account of debit and credit to all the members of the +guild.[2] In processions and other public assemblies the heads (for so +the chiefs of the several arts were called) had their place and +precedence in order. Moreover, these arts at first had each an ensign +for the defense, on occasion, of liberty with arms. Their origin was +when the people in 1282 overcame the nobles (_Grandi_), and passed the +Ordinances of Justice against them, whereby no nobleman could exercise +any magistracy; so that such of the patricians as desired to be able to +hold office had to enter the ranks of the people, as did many great +houses of quality, and matriculate into one of the arts. Which thing, +while it partly allayed the civil strife of Florence, almost wholly +extinguished all noble feeling in the souls of the Florentines; and the +power and haughtiness of the city were no less abated than the insolence +and pride of the nobles, who since then have never lifted up their heads +again. These arts, the greater as well as the lesser, have varied in +numbers at different times; and often have not only been rivals, but +even foes, among themselves; so much so that the lesser arts once got it +passed that the Gonfalonier should be appointed only from their body. +Yet after long dispute it was finally settled that the Gonfalonier could +not be chosen from the lesser, but that he should always rank with the +greater, and that in all other offices and magistracies, the lesser +should always have a fourth and no more. Consequently, of the eight +Priors, two were always of the lesser; of the Twelve, three; of the +Sixteen, four; and so on through all the magistracies. + + [1] The name Calimala was given to a trade in cloth carried on + at Florence by merchants who bought rough goods in France, + Flanders, and England, and manufactured them into more delicate + materials. + + [2] Marco Foscari, quoted lower down, estimates the property + the Arts at 200,000 ducats. + +As a consequence from what has been said, it is easy to perceive that +all the inhabitants of Florence (by inhabitants I mean those only who +are really settled there, for of strangers, who are passing or +sojourning a while, we need not here take any account) are of two sorts. +The one class are liable to taxation in Florence, that is, they pay +tithes of their goods and are inscribed upon the books of the Commune, +and these are called contributors. The others are not taxed nor +inscribed upon the registers of the Commune, inasmuch as they do not pay +the tithes or other ordinary imposts; and these are called +non-contributors: who, seeing that they live by their hands, and carry +on mechanical arts and the vilest trades, should be called plebeians; +and though they have ruled Florence more than once, ought not even to +entertain a thought about public affairs in a well-governed state. The +contributors are of two sorts: for some, while they pay the taxes, do +not enjoy the citizenship (_i.e._ cannot attend the council or take any +office); either because none of their ancestors, and in particular their +father or their grandfather, has sat or been passed for any of the three +greater magistracies; or else because they have not had themselves +submitted to the scrutiny,[1] or, if they have advanced so far, have not +been approved and nominated for office. These are indeed entitled +citizens: but he who knows what a citizen is really, knows also that, +being unable to share either the honors or the advantages of the city, +they are not truly citizens; therefore let us call them burghers, +without franchise. Those again who pay taxes and enjoy the citizenship +(whom we will therefore call enfranchised burghers) are in like manner +of two kinds. The one class, inscribed and matriculated into one of the +seven first arts, are said to rank with the greater; whence we may call +them Burghers of the Greater: the others, inscribed and matriculated +into the fourteen lesser arts, are said to rank with the lesser; whence +we may call them Burghers of the Lesser. This distinction had the +Romans, but not for the same reason. + + + + +_Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. ix. chs. 48, 49, 46._ + +As for natural abilities, I for my part cannot believe that any one +either could or ought to doubt that the Florentines, even if they do +not excel all other nations, are at least inferior to none in those +things to which they give their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth +their city is founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, +they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty and true than +great and prudent: but besides trade, it is clear that the three most +noble arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture have reached that +degree of supreme excellence in which we find them now, chiefly by the +toil and by the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified and +adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great +glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, +seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me +from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame +and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole +world, owes it solely to the judgment and the generosity of the Medici +that Greek letters were not extinguished to the great injury of the +human race, and that Latin literature was restored to the incalculable +profit of all men. + + [1] For an explanation of _Squittino_ and _Squittinare_, see + Nardi, p. 593 above. + +I am wholly of opinion opposed to that of some, who, because the +Florentines are merchants, hold them for neither noble nor +high-spirited, but for tame and low.[1] On the contrary, I have often +wondered with myself how it could be that men who have been used from +their childhood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool and +baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves all day and great +part of the night at the loom, could summon, when and where was need, +such greatness of soul, such high and haughty thoughts, that they have +wit and heart to say and do those many noble things we know of them. +Pondering on the causes of which, I find none truer than this, that the +Florentine climate, between the fine air of Arezzo and the thick air of +Pisa, infuses into their breasts the temperament of which I spoke. And +whoso shall well consider the nature and the ways of the Florentines, +will find them born more apt to rule than to obey. Nor would it be +easily believed how much was gained for the youth of Florence by the +institution of the militia; for whereas many of the young men, heedless +of the commonwealth and careless of themselves, used to spend all the +day in idleness, hanging about places of public resort, girding at one +another, or talking scandal of the passers by, they immediately, like +beasts by some benevolent Circe transformed again to men, gave all their +heart and soul, regardless of peril or loss, to gaining fame and honor +for themselves, and liberty and safety for their country. I do not by +what I have been saying mean to deny that among the Florentines may be +found men proud, ambitious, and greedy of gain; for vices will exist as +long as human nature lasts: nay, rather, the ungrateful, the envious, +the malicious, and the evil-minded among them are so in the highest +degree, just as the virtuous are supremely virtuous. It is indeed a +common proverb that Florentine brains have no mean either way; the fools +are exceeding simple, and the wise exceeding prudent. + + [1] Compare, however, Varchi, quoted above, p. 243. The Report + of Marco Foscari, _Relazioni Venete_, series ii, vol. i. p. 9 + et seq., contains a remarkable estimate of the Florentine + character. He attributes the timidity and weakness which he + observes in the Florentines to their mercantile habits, and + notices, precisely what Varchi here observes with admiration: + 'li primi che governano lo stato vanno alle loro botteghe di + seta, e gittati li lembi del mantello sopra le spalle, pongonsi + alia caviglia e lavorano pubblicamente che ognuno li vede; ed i + figliuoli loro stanno in bottega con li grembiuli dinanzi, e + portano il sacco e le sporte alle maestre con la seta e fanno + gli altri esercizi di bottega.' A strong aristocratic prejudice + transpires in every line. This report was written early in + 1527. The events of the Siege must have surprised Marco + Foscari. He notices among other things, as a source of + weakness, the country villas which were all within a few months + destroyed by their armies for the public good. + +Their mode of life is simple and frugal, but wonderfully and incredibly +clean and neat; and it may be said with truth that the artisans and +handicraftsmen live at Florence even better than the citizens +themselves: for whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, +according as they find good wine, and only think of joyous living; the +latter in their homes, with the frugality of merchants, who for the most +part make but do not spend money, or with the moderation of orderly +burghers, never exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wanting +families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, such as the +Antinori, the Bartolini, the Tornabuoni, the Pazzi, the Borgherini, the +Gaddi, the Rucellai, and among the Salviati, Piero d'Alamanno and +Alamanno d'Jacopo, and some others. At Florence every one is called by +his proper name or his surname; and the common usage, unless there be +some marked distinction of rank or age, is to say _thou_ and not _you_; +only to knights, doctors, and prebendaries is the title of _messere_ +allowed; to doctors that of _maestro_, to monks _don_, and to friars +_padre_. True, however, is it that since there was a Court at Florence, +first that of Giulio, the Cardinal de' Medici, then that of the Cardinal +of Cortona, which enjoyed more license than the former, the manners of +the city have become more refined--or shall I say more corrupt? + + + + +APPENDIX III. + +_The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's Story, +Fiorentina, cap. 27._ See Chap. vii. p. 412 above. + + +So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity; about +whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and of great +judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his +first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had +bought with gold so high a station, in like manner his government +disagreed not with this base foundation. There were in him, and in full +measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there be imagined +in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into +working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women +and boys, but more especially toward women; and so far did he exceed all +measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own +daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was +exceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in +getting new wealth: and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had +no respect whatever; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, +dispensations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court +dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to +his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. +He caused the death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even be +rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of +seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his +direction many were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less +with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose +favor he acquired the Papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping +of his troth: he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but +what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in his days Rome +was like a den of thieves and murderers: his ambition was boundless, and +such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased: +nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he +was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still +almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made Cardinal and +then Vice-Chancellor: in which high place he continued till his papacy, +with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become Pope, he made +Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the +ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a +bastard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought +proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made +him a layman and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and turned +his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared far better than he +purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, +Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former +Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope +before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, +and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the +Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the +King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he +showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant +general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that +point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In +one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages +peradventure had been any pope before. + + + + +APPENDIX IV. + +_Religious Revivals in Mediæval Italy._ See Chap. viii. p. 491 above. + + +It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance +as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the +phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise +and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were +due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the +Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were +shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of +movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical +revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of +the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their +militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is +necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was +common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its +wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its +pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of mediæval Europe, haunted +with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by +imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon +the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning +and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of +semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. +The celebrated shrines of Europe--Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, +Canterbury--acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion +of the mediæval races, like setons to their over-charged imagination. In +all these universal movements the Italians had their share: being more +advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the +crusades to commercial count, and maintained some moderation in the +_fakir_ fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general +history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, +but rather with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which +were peculiar to the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the +political influence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the +preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics or superstitious +terror which seized upon wide districts, and the personal ascendency of +hermits unaccredited by the Church, but believed by the people to be +divinely inspired. + +One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth +century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had +recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. +France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes +were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble +task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that +period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private feuds +crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny +of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It +seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to +agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice +of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in +Bologna during the year 1233. The citizens and the country folk of the +surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial +wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his +eloquence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation +and forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had +prosecuted hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and +swore to live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him +to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations +by which the peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his +best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his +sanctity had been already spread abroad. The _carroccio_ of the city, on +which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to +many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he +entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace +produced the same results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were +clasped which had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. +Treviso, Feltre, Beliuno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the +grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas +were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves +at the disposition of the monk, and prayed him to reform their +constitution. But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate +community, to reconcile household with household, and to efface the +miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza aimed at consolidating the +Lombard cities in one common bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers +of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of +Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of August was the day fixed +for this great national assembly. More than four hundred thousand +persons, according to the computation of Parisio di Cereta, appeared +upon the scene. This multitude included the populations of Verona, +Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several +standards, together with contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, +Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly confined to the common +folk. The bishops of these flourishing cities, the haughty Marquis of +Este, the fierce lord of Romano, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, obeyed +the invitation of the friar. There, on the banks of the Adige, and +within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended a pulpit that had +been prepared for him, and preached a sermon on the text, _Pacem meam do +vobis, pacem relinquo vobis_. The horrors of war, and the Christian duty +of reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the end of which +he constrained the Lombards to ratify a solemn league of amity, vowing +to eternal perdition all who should venture to break the same, and +imprecating curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and +everything they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of Este to take +in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Romano. Up to this moment John of +Vicenza had made a noble use of the strange power which he possessed. +But his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of confining +himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now demanded to be +made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive +the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a +saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first things he +did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty +citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The +Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms, +he was beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at the +intercession of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige +annihilated.[1] + + [1] The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza + are to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of + Rolandini and Gerardus Maurisius. + +The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of +Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political +authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, +he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for +sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the +year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to +preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote +Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons +so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the +devotion they inspired increased marvelously. And he, seeing the +concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce +vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and +thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the +tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and +the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia +who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time +ruled Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed +against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay +him. But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so +powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria +and established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were +laying siege to Pavia: the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied +by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade. +Fra Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his +eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. They broke +through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the +freedom of Pavia. What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed +over to the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into +the scale of the Visconti: so that at the end of a three years' manful +conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359. Fra Jacopo +made the best terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to +secure his own safety. He was consigned by the conquerors to the +superiors of his order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at +Vercelli. In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the +eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had been strictly +subordinated to political aims in the interests of republican liberty. +Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with Savonarola: like Savonarola, he fell a +victim to the selfish and immoral oppressors of his country. As in the +case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which subsisted in Italy +between a high standard of morality and patriotic heroism.[1] + + [1] The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo + are Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his + Chronicle (Groevius, vol. ix.). + +San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preachers, who, without +taking a prominent part in contemporary politics, devoted all their +energies to the moral regeneration of the people. His life, written by +Vespasiano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents which we +possess for the religious history of Italy in the first half of the +fifteenth century. His parents, who were people of good condition, sent +him at an early age to study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him +for a lucrative and important office in the Church. But, while yet a +youth, he was seized with a profound conviction of the degradation of +his countrymen. The sense of sin so weighed upon him that he sold all +his substance, entered the order of S. Francis, and began to preach +against the vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. After +traveling through the length and breadth of the peninsula, and winning +all men by the magic of his eloquence, he came to Florence. 'There,' +says Vespasiano, 'the Florentines being by nature very well disposed +indeed to truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole State and gave +it, one may say, a second birth. And in order to abolish the false hair +which the women wore, and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused +a sort of large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and +bade every one who possessed any of these vanities to place them there; +and so they did; and he set fire thereto and burned the whole.' S. +Bernardino preached unremittingly for forty-two years in every quarter +of Italy, and died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness. 'Of many +enmities and deaths of men he wrought peace and removed deadly hatreds; +and numberless princes, who harbored feuds to the death, he reconciled, +and restored tranquillity to many cities and peoples.' A vivid picture +of the method adopted by S. Bernardino in his dealings with these cities +is presented to us by Graziani, the chronicler of Perugia: 'On September +23, 1425, a Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards of +3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from the Sacred +Scripture, reproving men of every vice and sin, and teaching Christian +living. Then he began to rebuke the women for their paints and +cosmetics, and false hair, and such like wanton customs; and in like +manner the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and amulets +and charms: insomuch that within a fortnight the women sent all their +false hair and gewgaws to the Convent of S. Francis, and the men their +dice, cards, and such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on October +29 Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things on the piazza, +where he erected a kind of wooden castle between the fountain and the +Bishop's palace; and in this he put all the said articles, and set fire +to them; and the fire was so great that none durst go near; and in the +fire were burned things of the greatest value, and so great was the +haste of men and women to escape that fire that many would have perished +but for the quick aid of the burghers.' Together with this onslaught +upon vanities, Fra Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and +amity. It is noticeable that while his sermon lasted and the great bell +of S. Lorenzo went on tolling, no man could be taken or imprisoned in +the city of Perugia.[1] + + [1] See Vespasiano, _Vite di Uomini Illustri,_ pp. 185-92. + Graziani, _Archivio Storico,_ vol. xvi. part i. pp. 313, 314. + +The same city was the scene of many similar displays. During the +fifteenth century it remained in a state of the most miserable internal +discord, owing to the feuds of its noble families. Graziani gives an +account of the preaching there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445: on +this occasion a temporary truce was patched up between old enemies, a +witch was burned for the edification of the burghers, the people were +reproved for their extravagance in dress, and two peacemakers +(_pacieri_) were appointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing +this discipline, the whole of Perugia seemed to have repented of its +sins; but the first entry for April 15 is the murder of one of the +Ranieri family by another of the same house. So transitory were the +effects of such revivals.[1] Another entry in Graziani's _Chronicle_ +deserves to be noticed. He describes how, in 1448, Fra Roberto da Lecce +(like S. Bernardino and Fra Jacopo della Marca, a Franciscan of the +Order of Observance) came to preach in January. He was only twenty-two +years of age; but his fame was so great that he drew about 15,000 +persons into the piazza to listen to him. The stone pulpit, we may say +in passing, is still shown, from which these sermons were delivered. It +is built into the wall of the Cathedral, and commands the whole square. +Roberto da Lecce began by exhibiting a crucifix, which moved the +audience to tears; 'and the weeping and crying, _Jesu misericordia!_ +lasted about half an hour. Then he made four citizens be chosen for each +gate as peacemakers.' What follows in Graziani is an account of a +theatrical show, exhibited upon the steps of the Cathedral. On Good +Friday the friar assembled all the citizens, and preached; and when the +moment came for the elevation of the crucifix, 'there issued forth from +San Lorenzo Eliseo di Christoforo, a barber of the quarter of Sant +Angelo, like a naked Christ with the cross on his shoulder, and the +crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh seemed to be bruised as +when Christ was scourged.' The people were immensely moved by this +sight. They groaned and cried out, _'Misericordia!'_ and many monks were +made upon the spot. At last, on April 7, Fra Roberto took his leave of +the Perugians, crying as he went, _'La pace sia con voi!'_[2] We have a +glimpse of the same Fra Roberto da Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The +feuds of the noble families della Croce and della Valle were then raging +in the streets of Rome. On the night of April 3 they fought a pitched +battle in the neighborhood of the Pantheon, the factions of Orsini and +Colonna joining in the fray. Many of the combatants were left dead +before the palaces of the Vallensi; the numbers of the wounded were +variously estimated; and all Rome seemed to be upon the verge of civil +war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing large congregations, not only of +the common folk, but also of the Roman prelates, to his sermons at Santa +Maria sopra Minerva, interrupted his discourse upon the following +Friday, and held before the people the image of their crucified Saviour, +entreating them to make peace. As he pleaded with them, he wept; and +they too fell to weeping--fierce satellites of the rival factions and +worldly prelates lifting up their voice in concert with the friar who +had touched their hearts.[3] Another member of the Franciscan Order of +Observance should be mentioned after Fra Roberto. This was Fra Giovanni +da Capistrano, of whose preaching at Brescia in 1451 we have received a +minute account. He brought with him a great reputation for sanctity and +eloquence, and for the miraculous cures which he had wrought. The +Rectors of the city, together with 300 of the most distinguished +burghers upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on foot, went +out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements were made for the +entertainment of himself and 100 followers, at public cost. Next +morning, three hours before dawn, there were already assembled upwards +of 10,000 people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. 'Think, +therefore,' says the _Chronicle,_ 'how many there must have been in the +daytime! and mark this, that they came less to hear his sermon than to +see him.' As he made his way through the throng, his frock was almost +torn to pieces on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.[4] + + [1] See Graziani, pp. 565-68. + + [2] Graziani, pp, 597-601. + + [3] See Jacobus Volaterranus. Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, 156, + 167. + + [4] See _Istoria Bresciana._ Muratori, xxi. 865. + +It did not always need the interposition of a friar to arouse a strong +religious panic in Italian cities. After an unusually fierce bout of +discord the burghers themselves would often attempt to give the sanction +of solemn rites and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. +Siena, which was always more disturbed by civil strife than any of her +neighbors, offered a notable example of this custom in the year 1494. +The factions of the Monti de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging; the +city was full of feud and suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by the +French invasion. It seemed good, therefore, to the heads of the chief +parties that an oath of peace should be taken by the whole body of the +burghers. Allegretti's account of the ceremony, which took place at dead +of night in the beautiful Cathedral of Siena, is worthy to be +translated. 'The conditions of the peace were then read, which took up +eight pages, together with an oath of the most horrible sort, full of +maledictions, imprecations, excommunications, invocations of evil, +renunciation of benefits temporal and spiritual, confiscation of goods, +vows, and so many other woes that to hear it was a terror; _et etiam_ +that _in articulo mortis_ no sacrament should accrue to the salvation, +but rather to the damnation of those who might break the said +conditions; insomuch that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, being +present, believe that never was made or heard a more awful and horrible +oath. Then the notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side of +the altar, wrote down the names of all the citizens, who swore upon the +crucifix, for on each side there was one, and every couple of the one +and the other faction kissed; and the bells clashed, and _Te Deum +laudamus_ was sung with the organs and the choir while the oath was +being taken. All this happened between one and two hours of the night, +with many torches lighted. Now may God will that this be peace indeed, +and tranquillity for all citizens, whereof I doubt.'[1] The doubt of +Allegretti was but too reasonable. Siena profited little by these +dreadful oaths and terrifying functions. Two years later on, the same +chronicler tells how it was believed that blood had rained outside the +Porta a Laterino, and that various visions of saints and specters had +appeared to holy persons, proclaiming changes in the state, and +commanding a public demonstration of repentance. Each parish organized a +procession, and all in turn marched, some by day and some by night, +singing Litanies, and beating and scourging themselves, to the +Cathedral, where they dedicated candles; and 'one ransomed prisoners, +for an offering, and another dowered a girl in marriage.' + +In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the occasion of an +outbreak of the plague. 'Flagellants went round the city, and when they +came to a cross, they all cried with a loud voice: _Misericordia! +misericordia!_ For eight days there was a strict fast; the butchers shut +their shops.' What follows in the Chronicle is comic: 'Meretrices ad +concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quâdam quæ cupiditate lucri +adolescentem admiserat, deprehensâ, aliæ meretrices ita illius nates +nudas corrigiis percusserunt, ut sanguinem emitteret.'[2] Ferrara +exhibited a like devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About this +time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the passage of +Charles VIII., and by the changes in states and kingdoms which +Savonarola had predicted. The Ferrarese, to quote the language of their +chronicler, expected that 'in this year, throughout Italy, would be the +greatest famine, war, and want that had ever been since the world +began.' Therefore they fasted, and 'the Duke of Ferrara fasted together +with the whole of his court. At the same time a proclamation was made +against swearing, games of hazard, and unlawful trades: and it was +enacted that the Jews should resume their obnoxious yellow gaberdine +with the O upon their breasts. In 1500 these edicts were repeated. The +condition of Italy had grown worse and worse: it was necessary to +besiege the saints with still more energetic demonstrations. Therefore +'the Duke Ercole d' Este, for good reasons to him known, _and because it +is always well to be on good terms with God,_ ordained that processions +should be made every third day in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and +about 4,000 children or more from twelve years of age upwards, dressed +in white, and each holding a banner with a painted Jesus. His lordship, +and his sons and brothers, followed this procession, namely the Duke on +horseback, because he could not then walk, and all the rest on foot, +behind the Bishop.'[3] A certain amount of irony transpires in this +quotation, which would make one fancy that the chronicler suspected the +Duke of ulterior, and perhaps political, motives. + + [1] See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839. + + [2] _Annales Bononienses._ Mur. xxiii. 890. + + [3] _Diario Ferrarese._ Mur. xxiv. pp. 17-386. + +It sometimes happened that the contagion of such devotion spread from +city to city; on one occasion, in 1399, it traveled from Piedmont +through the whole of Italy. The epidemic of flagellants, of which +Giovanni Villani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also in +Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The Florentine +authorities refused entrance to these fanatics into their territory. In +1334, Villani mentions another outburst of the same devotion (lib xi. +cap. 23), which was excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da +Bergamo. The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with the +olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves +before the altars of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred +at a time, in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the _Storia di +Milano_ (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 'white +penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 'Multitudes of men, +women, girls, boys, small and great, townspeople and countryfolk, nobles +and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white +sheets from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every +district in succession. 'On their journey, when they came to a +cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying +_Misericordia_ three times; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the +Ave Maria. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing _Stabat +Mater dolorosa_ and other litanies and prayers. The population of the +places to which they came were divided: for some went forth and told +those who staid that they should assume the same habit, so that at one +time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000 of +them.' After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many cases +penitence, amity, and alms-giving, Corio goes on to observe: 'However, +men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It is +noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague; and +it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents +together on the highways and in the cities led to this result. + +During the anarchy of Italy between 1494--the date of the invasion of +Charles VIII.--and 1527--the date of the sack of Rome--the voice of +preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always +to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the +center of the military operations of the French, the Swiss, the +Spaniards, and the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none +were fanatical prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516 +there appeared in Milan 'a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond +measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly +hair and beard, and so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit.' +He lived on water and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms +of all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the +opposition of the Archbishop and the Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his +theater; and there he denounced the vices of the priests and monks to +vast congregations of eager listeners. In a word, he engaged in open +warfare with the clergy on their own ground. But they of course proved +too strong for him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a native +of Siena, aged 30.[1] We may compare with this picturesque apparition of +Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome +like birds of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of Clement +VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went +about preaching and predicting the ruin of Italy and the end of the +world with wild cries and threats.'[2] In 1523 Milan beheld the +spectacle of a parody of the old preachers. There appeared a certain +Frate di S. Marco, whom the people held for a saint, and who 'encouraged +the Milanese against the French, saying it was a merit with Jesus Christ +to slay those Frenchmen, and that they were pigs.' He seems to have +been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head had been turned by the +examples of Bussolaro and Savonarola.[3] Again, in 1529, we find a +certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great +commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very +lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, +this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended +deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, +and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed +in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They +promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting _Misericordia!_ +and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, the Bishop and the +Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the devotion.[4] These +gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national importance. +Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought them +worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus we find Pitti, +in the _Storia Fiorentina (Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. 112), describing what +happened at Florence in 1514: 'There appeared in Santa Croce a Frate +Francesco da Montepulciano, very young, who rebuked vice with severity, +and affirmed that God had willed to scourge Italy, especially Florence +and Rome, in sermons so terrible that the audience kept crying with +floods of tears, _Misericordia!_ The whole people were struck dumb with +horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd, +listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached +a sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost +their senses; for he promised to reveal upon the third day how and from +what source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the +pulpit, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the +lungs, which soon put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the +frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused +all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for +the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici +endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and public +shows. + + [1] See Prato and Burigozzo, _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. pp. 357, + 431. It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil + discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. + Caterina, S. Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the + mind. + + [2] _Storia Fiorintina,_ vol. i. p. 87. + + [3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 443. + + [4] Burigozzo, pp. 485-89. + +Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate +the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the +Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been +said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto +da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was +by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining +the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the +sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a rôle, which had been often +played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar +genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander +VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet +which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions +which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects +of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while +they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic +scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of +these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. +The momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, +Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out of proportion to the +slight intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has +nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the +duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral +abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his +audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, +when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the +nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he +obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is +as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which +removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther. + + + + +APPENDIX V. + +_The 'Sommario della Storia d'Italia dal_ 1511 _al_ 1527,'_ by Francesco +Vettori._[1] + + +I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history +written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not +because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous +chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate +in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it +supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family +which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to +the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, +remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous +times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in +1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in +1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican policy, he continued in +secret stanch to the family by whom he hoped to obtain honors and +privileges in the state. Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by +Pitti, Francesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his +expectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their native city, +and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they were condemned to exile, +death, imprisonment, or frosty toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two +years after Cosimo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards of +sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the princes to whose +service he had consecrated his life and for whose sake he had helped to +enslave Florence. To respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any +pity for the men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish +expectations, is impossible. + + [1] Printed in _Arch. Stor. It._ Appendice No. 22, vol. vl. + +Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the +Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; +and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were +spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, +resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together +with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on +the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and +Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of +the men whose characters he weighed in his _Sommario_, and of obtaining +a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place +upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter +V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, +had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than +theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini +and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter +are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco +Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain +the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical +philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear +comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found +in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he +writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian +philosophy was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many +inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth +century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who +only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or +skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics. + +In the dedication of the _Sommario della Storia d' Italia_ to Francesco +Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he +retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical +narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to +transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but +rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of +Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the views of men and morals +adopted in my previous chapters. + +After touching on the sack of Prato and the consternation which ensued +in Florence, Vettori describes the return of the Medici in 1512. +Giuliano, the son of Lorenzo, was the first to appear: after him came +the Cardinal Giovanni, and Giuliano's son Giulio.[1] The elder among +their partisans persuaded them to call a Parlamento and assume the +government in earnest. On September 16, accordingly, the Cardinal took +possession of the palace, _fece pigliare il Palazzo_; the Signory +summoned the people into the piazza--a mere matter of form; a Balia of +forty men was appointed; the Gonfalonier Ridolfi resigned; and the city +was reduced to the will and pleasure of the Cardinal de' Medici. Then +reasons sons Vettori:[2] 'This was what is called an absolute tyranny; +yet, speaking of the things of this world without prejudice and +according to the truth, I say that if it were possible to institute +republics like that imagined by Plato, or feigned to exist in Utopia by +Thomas More, we might affirm they were not tyrannical governments: but +all the commonwealths or kingdoms I have seen or read of, have, it seems +to me, a savor of tyranny. Nor is it a matter for astonishment that +parties and factions have often prevailed in Florence, and that one man +has arisen to make himself the chief, when we reflect that the city is +very populous, that many of the burghers desire to share in its +advantages, and that there are few prizes to distribute: wherefore one +party always must have the upper hand and enjoy the honors and benefits +of the state, while the other stands by to watch the game.' He then +proceeds to criticise France, where the nobles alone bear arms and pay +no taxes, and where the administration of justice is slow and expensive; +and Venice, where three thousand gentlemen keep more than 100,000 of the +inhabitants below their feet, unhonored, powerless, unprivileged, +oppressed. Having demonstrated the elements of tyranny and injustice +both in a kingdom and a commonwealth reputed prosperous and free, he +shows that, according to his own philosophy, no blame attaches to a +burgher who succeeds in usurping the sole mastery of a free state, +provided he rule wisely; for all kingdoms were originally founded either +by force or by craft. 'We ought not therefore to call that private +citizen a tyrant who has usurped the government of his state, if he be a +good man; nor again to call a man the real lord of a city who, though he +has the investiture of the Emperor, is bad and malevolent.' This +critique of constitutions from the pen of a doctrinaire, who was also a +man of experience, is interesting, partly for its positive frankness, +and partly as showing what elementary notions still prevailed about the +purposes of government. Vettori's ultimate criterion is the personal +quality of the ambitious ruler. + + [1] Giovanni and Giulio were afterwards Leo X. and Clement VII. + + [2] P. 293. + +Passing to what he says about Leo X.,[1] it is worth while to note that +he attributes his election chiefly to the impression produced upon the +Cardinals by Alexander and Julius. 'During the reign of two fierce and +powerful Pontiffs, Cardinals had been put to death, imprisoned, deprived +of their property, exiled, and kept in continual alarm; and so great was +the dread among them now of electing another such Pope, that they +unanimously chose Giovanni de' Medici. Up to that time he had always +shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in squandering the +little that he owned; he had moreover managed so to dissemble as to +acquire a reputation for most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds +that his power in Florence helped him, and that he owed much to the +ability displayed by Bernardo da Bibbiena in winning votes. The joy of +the Florentines at his election is attributed to mean motives: 'being +all of them given over to commerce and gain, they thought they ought to +get some profit from this Papacy.'[2] + +The government which Lorenzo, afterwards Duke of Urbino, now established +in Florence is very favorably described by Vettori.[3] 'Lorenzo, though +still a young man, applied himself with great attention to the business +of the city, providing that equal justice should be administered to all, +that the public moneys should be levied and spent with frugality, and +that disputes should be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. His +rule was tolerated, because, while the revenues were large and the +expenses small, the citizens were not troubled with taxes; and this is +the chief way to please a people, seeing their affection for a prince is +measured by the good they get from him. Taking this opinion of Lorenzo, +it is possible for Vettori in another place to say of him that 'he +governed Florence like a citizen;'[4] and on the occasion of his death +in 1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his character. 'His +death was a misfortune for Florence, which it would be difficult to +describe. Though young, he had the qualities of virtuous maturity. He +bore a real affection toward the citizens, was parsimonious of the +moneys of the Commune, prodigal of his own; while a foe to vice, he was +not too severe on those who erred. Though he began his military life at +twenty-three, he always bore the cuirass of a man at arms upon his +shoulders day and night on active service. He slept very little, was +sober in his diet, temperate in love. The Florentines did not love him, +because it is not possible for men used to freedom to love a ruler; but +he, for his part, had not sought the office which was thrust upon him by +the will of others. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopularity +upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Florentines, who noticed every +detail, thought her grasping: and though he wanted to restrain her, he +found himself unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held +her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth +to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable +portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his _Principe_. The +somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, +his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, +combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, +are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare +Borgia was almost the exact opposite. The impression produced by +Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by what he says about +Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake the Duchy of Urbino.[5] + + [1] P. 297. + + [2] P. 300. + + [3] Ibid. + + [4] P. 306. + + [5] P. 321. See too p. 307. + +But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. Vettori marks his +interference in the affairs of Lucca as the first great mistake he +made.[1] His advisers in Florence had not reflected 'what infamy it +would bring upon the Pope in the opinion of all men, or what suspicion +it would rouse among the princes, if in the first months of his power he +were led to sanction an attack by the Florentines upon the Lucchese, +their neighbors and allies. How too could the burghers of Florence, who +had urged him to this step, remind the pontiff that he ought to moderate +his desire of gaining dominion for the Church and for his kin, by the +example of former Popes, all of whom, in the interest of their +dependents, had acquired to their own dishonor with peril and expense +what in a few days upon their death returned to the old and rightful +owners?' The conduct of Leo with regard to Lucca, his policy in +Florence, and the splendor maintained by his brother at Rome, did in +fact rouse the jealousy of the Italian powers both great and small.[2] +'King Ferdinand remarked: If Giuliano has left Florence, he must be +aiming at something better, which can be nothing but the realm of +Naples. The Dukes of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino said the same. The +Sienese thought: If the pope allows the Florentines to attack Lucca, +which is so strong, well furnished, and harmonious, far more will he +consent to their encroaching upon us, who are weak, ill-provided, and at +odds among ourselves. The Duke of Ferrara had further reasons for +discontent in respect to Modena and Reggio.' Altogether, Leo began to +lose credit. Secret alliances were formed against him by the della +Rovere, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci; and though he took care to +attend public services and to fast more than etiquette required, nobody +believed in him. Vettori's comment reads like an echo of Machiavelli and +Guicciardini.[3] 'Assuredly it is most difficult to combine temporal +lordship with a reputation for religion: for they are two things which +will not harmonize. He who well considers the law of the Gospel will +observe that the pontiffs, though called Christ's Vicars, have +originated a new religion unlike that of Christ except in name. His +enjoins poverty; they desire riches. He preached humility; they follow +after pride. He commanded obedience; they aim at universal sovereignty. +I could enlarge upon their other vices; but it is enough to allude to +these, without entering into inconvenient discourses.' While treating of +the affairs of Urbino,[4] however, Vettori remarks that Leo could not +have done otherwise than punish Francesco Maria della Rovere, if he +wished to maintain the Papacy at the height of reputation to which it +had been raised by his predecessors. + + [1] P. 301. + + [2] P. 303. + + [3] P. 304. + + [4] P. 319. + +In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all that we know about +this Pope from other sources. He insists more perhaps than other +historians upon the able diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of +Tricarico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,[1] and traces Leo's +fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the influence of Jeronimo +Adorno.[2] The secret springs of Leo's conduct, when he was vainly +endeavoring to steer to his own profit between the great rivals for +power in Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of these +points. Of the prodigality which helped to ruin this Pope, and which +made his two successors impotent, he speaks with sneering sarcasm. 'It +was as easy for him to keep 1,000 ducats together as for a stone to fly +into the air by its own weight.'[3] When the news of the capture of +Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo was at the Villa Magliana in +the neighborhood of Rome.[4] Whether he took cold at a window, or +whether his anxiety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori +remains uncertain. At any rate, he was attacked with fever, returned to +Rome, and died. 'It was said that his death was caused by poison; but +these stories are always circulated about men of high estate, especially +when they succumb to acute disease. Those, however, who knew the +constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and his habits of life, +will rather wonder that he lived so long.' After summing up the +vicissitudes of his career and passing a critique upon his vacillating +policy, Vettori resumes:[5] 'while on the one hand he would fain have +never had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desirous of fame +and sought to aggrandize his kindred. Fortune, to rid him of this +ambition, removed his brother and his nephew in his lifetime. Lastly, +when he had engaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if he +won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, fortune removed him +from the world so that he might not see his own mischance. In his +pontificate at Rome there was no plague, no poverty, no war. Letters and +the arts flourished, and the vices were also at their height. Alexander +and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance not only of the +prelates but of every little priest or clerk who died in Rome. Leo +abstained entirely from such practices. Therefore people came in crowds; +and it may be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, +the population of Rome increased by one third.' Vettori prudently +refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo's character in one decisive +sentence. He notes, however, that he was blamed for not keeping to his +word: 'it was a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give +such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; accordingly he +made so many promises; and fed people with such great expectations, that +it became impossible to please them.' + + [1] P. 313. + + [2] P. 334. + + [3] P. 322. + + [4] P. 338. + + [5] P. 339. + +The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to the mutual hatred and +jealousy of the Cardinals.[1] He ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the +Pope's want of interest in great affairs, adds his testimony to his +private excellence and public incapacity, and dismisses him without +further notice.[2] + + [1] P. 341. + + [2] Pp. 343, 347. + +What he tells us about Clement is more interesting. In the dedication to +the _Sommario_ he apologized in express terms for the high opinion +recorded of this Pope. Yet the impression which he leaves upon our mind +by what he writes is so unfavorable as to make it clear what Clement's +foes habitually said against him. He remarks, as one excuse for his +ill-success in office, that he succeeded to a Papacy ruined by the +prodigality in war and peace of Leo.[1] As knight of Rhodes, as governor +of Florence, and as Cardinal, Clement had shown himself an able man. +Fortune heaped her favors on him then. As soon as he was made Pope, she +veered round. 'From a puissant and respected Cardinal, he became a +feeble and discredited Pope.' His first care was to provide for the +government of Florence. In order to arrive at a decision, he asked +council of the Florentine orators and four other noble burghers then in +Rome, as to whether he could advantageously intrust the city to the +Cardinal of Cortona in guardianship over Ippolito and Alessandro, the +young bastards of the Medici.[2] 'All men nearly,' says Vettori, 'are +flatterers, and say what they believe will please great folk, although +they think the contrary. Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten +advised him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship of the +Cardinal of Cortona.' The remaining three, who were Ruberto Acciajuoli, +Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of +administering a free city through a priest who held his title from a +subject town. They recommended the appointment of a Gonfalonier for one +year, and so on, till a member of the Medicean family could take the +lead. Clement, however, decided on the other course; and to this cause +may be traced half the troubles of his reign. + + [1] P. 348. + + [2] P. 349. They were 14 and 13 years of age respectively. + +The greater part of what remains of the _Sommario_ is occupied with the +wars and intrigues of Francis, Charles, and Clement. Vettori, it may be +said in passing, records a very unfavorable opinion of the Marquis of +Pescara, who was, he hints, guilty of first turning a favorable ear to +Moroni's plot and then of discovering the whole to his master.[1] A few +days after his breach of faith with the Milanese, he fell ill and died. +'He was a man whose military excellence cannot be denied; but proud +beyond all measure, envious, ungrateful, avaricious, venomous, cruel, +without religion or humanity, he was born to be the ruin of Italy; and +it may be truly said that of the evil she has suffered and still +suffers, a large part was caused by him.' + + [1] Pp. 358, 359. + +Of the breach of faith of Francis, after he had left his Spanish prison, +Vettori speaks in terms of the very highest commendation.[1] His refusal +to cede Burgundy to Charles was just and patriotic. That he broke his +faith was no crime; for, though a man ought rather to die than forswear +himself, yet his first duty is to God, his second to his country, +Francis was clearly acting for the benefit of his kingdom; and had he +not left his two sons as hostages in Spain? The whole defense is a good +piece of specious pleading, and might be used to illustrate the chapter +on the Faith of Princes in the _Principe_. + + [1] P. 362. + +By far the most striking passage in Vettori's _Sommario_ is the +description of the march of Frundsberg's and De Bourbon's army upon +Rome.[1] He makes it clear to what extent the calamity of the sack was +due to the selfishness and cowardice of the Italian princes. First of +all the Venetians refused to offer any obstacles before the passage of +the Po, feeling that by doing so they might draw trouble on their own +provinces. Then the Duke of Ferrara supplied the Lutherans with +artillery, of which they hitherto had stood in need. The first use they +made of their fire-arms was to shoot the best captain in Italy, Giovanni +de' Medici of the Black Bands. The Duke of Urbino, the Marquis of +Saluzzo, and Guido Rangoni watched them cross the river and proceed by +easy stages through the district of Piacenza, 'following them like +lacqueys waiting on their lords.' The same thing happened at Parma and +Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying the foreigners with +food and money. Clement meanwhile was penniless in Rome. Rich as the +city was, he had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, +and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, moreover, who +had recently plundered the Vatican, kept him in a state of terror. As +the invaders, now commanded by the Constable de Bourbon, approached +Tuscany, the youth of Florence demanded to be armed in defense of their +hearths and homes. The Cardinal of Cortona, fearing a popular rising, +refused to grant their request. A riot broke out, and the Medici were +threatened with expulsion: but by the aid of influential citizens a +revolution was averted. The Constable, avoiding Florence and Siena, +marched straight on Rome, still watched but unmolested by the armies of +the League. He left his artillery on the road, and, as is well known, +carried the walls of Rome by assault on the morning of May 3, dying +himself at the moment of victory. From what has just been rapidly +narrated, it will be seen how utterly abject was the whole of Italy at +this moment, when a band of ruffians, headed by a rebel from his +sovereign, in disobedience to the viceroy of the king he pretended to +serve, was not only allowed but actually helped to traverse rivers, +plains, and mountains, on their way to Rome. What happened after the +capture of the Transteverine part of the city moves even deeper scorn. +'It still remained for the Imperial troops to enter the populous and +wealthy quarters; and these they had to reach by one of three bridges. +They numbered hardly more than 25,000 men, all told. In Rome were at +least 30,000 men fit to bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, +and among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds of Romans, +swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, with beards upon their +breasts. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get 500 together in +one band for the defense of one of the three bridges.' What immediately +follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a translation of +it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 'The soldiers slew at +pleasure; pillaged the houses of the middle classes and small folk, the +palaces of the nobles, the convents of both sexes, and the churches. +They made prisoners of men, women, and even of little children, without +regard to age, or vows, or any other claim on pity. The slaughter was +not great, for men rarely kill those who offer no resistance: but the +booty was incalculable, in coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, +clothes, tapestries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this +should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum that, if set down, +would win no credence. Let any one consider through how many years the +money of all Christendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there +in a great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bishops, Prelates, +and public officers, the wealthy merchants, both Roman and foreign, +selling at high prices, letting their houses at dear rents, and paying +nothing in the way of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the +poorer folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a city +sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater store of treasure +could be drawn. Though Rome has at other times been taken and pillaged, +yet never before was it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted +so long that what might not perhaps have been discovered on the first +day sooner or later came to light. This disaster was an example to the +world that men proud, avaricious, envious, murderous, lustful, +hypocritical, cannot long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied +that the inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained with +all these vices, and with many greater.' + +[1] Pp. 372-82. + + + + +INDEX + + +A + +Abelard, 9. +Adrian VI., 441. +Agrippa quoted, 459. +Ahmed, 589. +Albigenses, 9. +Aldi, the, 23. +Aleander, 27. +Alexander VI., 406, 407 _seq._., 603; + death, 430 (see Papacy). +Alfonso I. of Naples, 568. +Alfonso II., 119, 572. +Allegre, 418, +Allegretti, works, 292; + cited, 165; + quoted, 616 +America, effects of its discovery, 540. +Ammanati, works, 489. +Anjou, house of, transfers its claims to Sicily, 539. +Appiani, 148. +Ariosto, works, 119; + cited, 413; + quoted, 130 +Aristotle, influence of his writings, 197; + quoted, 234, 235. +Art in Middle Age, 17; + effect of religious conventionalism, 18; + revolution made by Renaissance, 18, 19. + Italian, inimical to ugliness, 490; + flourishes under despots, 79. +Ascham, R., quoted, 472. + + +B + +Bacon, Francis, 26; + Roger, 9, 10. +Baglioni, 122, 148. +Barbiano, 159. +Bartoli, A., cited, 252. +Beccadelli, 174. +Bellini, works, 488. +Bentivogli, 102, 115, 123. +Bergamo, V. da, 618. +Bernard, St., 13. +Berni cited, 443. +Bibbiena, 184; + quoted, 190. +Bible, discovery of the original, 20. +Blood-madness, 109, 589 _seq._ +Boccaccio, 11, 20. +Boiado, 171. +Bologna, 123, 617. +Boniface VIII., 76. +Borgia, Cesare, 117, 324, 345 _seq._, 426, 577; + murders, 352. +Borgia, Lucrezia, 419; + character cleared of calumny, 420. +Borgia, Roderigo (see Alexander VI). +Boscoli, P. P., 466. +Bracciolini, P., 274. +Brantôme quoted, 117. +Brescia, 615; + Arnold of, 64. +Browning, R., quoted, 13. +Bruni, L., 274. +Buonarottí, 491; + works, 19. +Burchard cited, 430, 431. +Burckhardt cited, 428; + quoted, 434. +Burton, Robert, cited, 475. +Bussolaro, J. del, 610. +Byzantine empire, effect of its fall, 14 + + +C + +Capistrano, G. da, 615. +Capponi, P., 284, 563. +Carducci, 284, 289; + works, 293. +Carmagnuola, F., 161. +"Carmina Burana," 9. +Carrara, 149. +Carroccio, 58. +Castiglione, works, 183, 457. +Catholic Church (see Papacy). + Support of Church required by good society, 455; + philosophy and theology fused, 456; + religion divorced from morality, 462, 493; + influence of ancient literature, 464; + æstheticism, 465; + humanism antagonistic to Christianity, 493; + its corruption, 448 _seq._; + not universal, 470; + immorality of priests, 458, 459; + superstition, 466; + relics, 461; + sanctity of pope, 462; + power of forms, 471; + counter-reformation, 25; + power of ecclesiastical eloquence, 491; + revivals, 490, 606 _seq_.; + indestructable vigor of religious faith, 469. +Cellini, B., 104, 462, 492; memoirs, 325. +Charles VIII. (see Italy, history), 540 _seq_.; + escape, 580. +Charles of Anjou, 75. +Charles the Great, 50. +Chivalry, 483. +Christianity (see Catholic Church, Morals), + influence in forming modern society, 7; + how affected by Renaissance, 25. +Clement VII., 443, 633. +Colonnesi, 375. +Columbus, 15. +Comines cited, 416; + quoted, 214, 475, 541, 553, 572, 578. +Condottieri, 86, 113, 131, 156 _seq_.; 245, 361; + character of warfare, 102, 363. +Compagni, Dino, chronicle of, 262; + its authenticity, 266 _seq_. +Copernicus, 15. +Corio, works, 292; + quoted, 135, 143, 145, 152. 160, 385, 391, 392, 619. +Coryat, T., quoted, 475. +Croce, della, 614. +Cromwell, 454. +Cruelty (see Blood-madness), + instances of, 151, 478, 571; + of French, 557, 583; + its use, 354. +Crusades, 7. + + +D + +Dante, political views, 261; + works, 10, 11, 73, 260; + quoted, 73, 76, 77, 133. +Democratic idea, its gradual growth, 8. +Dennistoun cited, 160. +Descartes, 26. +Djem, 415, 566, 576. +Dürer, works, 490; + cited, 475. + + +E + +Erasmus, 24, 27. +Este, house of, 395, 420; + Nicolo, 168. + + +F + +Fanfoni, P., cited, 263, 268. +Feltre, V. da, 171, 176. +Ferdinand of Arragon, 296, 358; of + Naples, 570. +Ferrara, 499, 617; + court, 423. +Ficino, 175, 456. +Fiesole, G. da, Works, 488. +Filelfo, 171; + quoted, 381. +Flora, Joachim of, 9. +Florence, its constitution, 195, 201, 592, 596, 598; + number of citizens, 598; + parties, 211; + perpetual flux, 221; + government by merchants, 225; + the "parlamento," 230; + cause of failure of popular government, 231; + population, 256; + the "arti," 597; + militia, its value, 601; + Machiavelli's reforms, 312; + revenues, 255; + topography, 595; + history (see Italy), rule of the Medici, 277, 305, 629, + years 1527-31, 282; + recovers liberty through the French, 560; + occupation, 562; + commonwealth, 282; + divisions of popular party, 283; + siege, 285; + effect of Savonarola's prophecies, 290; + Pazzi conspiracy, 398; + final subjugation, 446; + character of its historians, 248 _seq_., 274. + + Society, character of people, 600; + their enlightenment and immorality, 504; + absence of religious faith, 295; + excess of intellectual mobility, 237; + commercial character, 238; + social life, 242. + A city of intelligence, 232, 246. +Fondulo, G., 463. +Ford, J., cited, 477. +Foscari, F., 215; quoted, 600. +Francia, works, 489. +Frattcelli, 9. +Frederick I., 63. +Frederick II., 10, 68, 105. +Froben, J., 23. + + +G + +Gambacorta, 147. +Gemistos Plethon, 173. +Genezzano, 506, 522. +Genoa, 79; history, 201. +Giacomini, 313. +Giannotti cited, 217; + quoted, 169, 196, 216, 238, 278, 280. +Giotto, works, 488. +Giovio, quoted, 249. +God, medieval idea of, 16. +Gonzaghi, 146. +Government, Guicciardini's theories, 305. [See Machiavelli.] +Graziani quoted, 614. +Greek, knowledge of, in Renaissance, 182. +Greene, R., quoted, 473. +Gregorovius cited, 421, 430, 479,. +Guarino, 171. +Guarnieri, 158. +Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 206. +Guicciardini, 278, 280, 285, 295, 482; + works, 291, 294, 301 _seq_.; + political theories analyzed, 304 _seq_.; + quoted, 44, 91, 92, 119, 169, 223, + 284, 404, 409, 412, 417, 431, 434, + 451, 536. 541. 547, 549, 582, 583, + 603. + + +H + +Hawkwood, J., 113. +Hegel quoted, 367. +Hegel, C, cited, 252. +Heribert, 58. +Hildebrand, 59. +Hirsch cited, 567. +Hogarth, works, 490. +Howell cited, 473. +Hussites, 9. +Hutten, 27. + + +I + +Infessura, works, 292; cited, 405; + quoted, 395, 404, 474, +Innocent VIII., 403. +Inquisition in Spain, 399. +Inventions of Renaissance, 29. +Italy, history (see Condottieri, Papacy), its character, 32; + papacy and empire, 33, 41, 43, 94, 97, 99; + variety of governments, 35, 43; + their influence on national development, 44; + politics, 36; + invasions, 39; + want of historical continuity, 41; + the despotisms, 42; + origin of modern history, 46; + the Lombards, 48; + Charles the Great, 51; + Berengar, 52; + Otho I., 52; + growth of power of Church, 53; + Frederick I., 63; + Charles of Anjou, 75; + convulsions of 14th century, 81; + states of 15th century, 88; + obstacles to unity, 89; + to monarchy, 92; + to federalism, 95; + in time of Machiavelli, 365; + policy of Lorenzo, 543; + equilibrium destroyed, 545; + French invasion, 549; + character of their army, 565; + league against them, 576; + cause of their failure, 340; + effect of their example, 583; + on other nations, 585; + Charles V., 98. + + Italians incapable of helping themselves, 586; + responsible for their despots, 115; + development precocious and unsound, 495; + fatal effects of want of union, 538, 552. + + _The Republics_, character of their history, 33, 193; + beginning of the power of the cities, 53; + their origin, 54; + count and bishop, 55; + "people," 55; + commune, 56; + consuls, 56; + effect of struggle of papacy and empire, 61; + influence of latter, 198; + Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 80, 206; + wars of cities, 62; + Frederic I., 64; + struggle with nobles, 66; + the podesta, 67; + "captain of the people," 71; + the "arti," 72; + distinction between parties, 74; + not representative governments, 196; + not democratic, 195; + factions, 195, 210; + small number of active citizens, 209; + temporal character of alliances, 212. + + _The Despotisms_, 42, 76; + their justification, 83; + idea of liberty, 78; + republican freedom unknown, 91; + policy commercial, 85; + taxation, 86; + diplomacy substituted for warfare, 87; + illegitimacy, 102; + good government, 103; + bad effect of their example, 104; + courts, 106, 186; + varieties of despotisms, 109; + claims of despots due to force, not rank, 116; + their democratic character, 117; + uncertainty of tenure of power, 117, 129; + domestic crime, 119; + murders, 120; + tastes and pursuits, 126; + degeneracy of their houses, 126, 151; + bad effects of rule, 130; + centralizing tendencies, 131; + cruelty, 151; + absence of all morality, 168. + + _Society_. Why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance, 5; + Italians gentle and humane, 478; + not gluttons, 479; + personal originality not discouraged, 488; + Italy originates type of gentleman, 192; + courtiers, idea of nobility, 186; + community of interest with that of Roman Church, 470; + immorality not great relatively, 487; + superiority to their contemporaries, 489; + purity of their art shows that heart of the people was not + vitiated, 488; + commercial integrity, 474; + demoralization of society, 472; + immorality came from above, 489; + commonness of crime, 170, 480; + exceptions to rule, 183; + murders, 480; + deficiency in sense of honor, 481; + chastity in women, 486; + unnatural passions, 477; + charms of illicit love, 476; + immoral literature, 475. + Literature, early, 53. + + +J + +Jews, expulsion from Spain, 400. +Julia, daughter of Claudius, 22, 23. +Julius II., 389, 406, 432 seq. + + +L + +Lecce, Roberto da, 614. +Leo X., 435, 630. +Libraries of Renaissance, 21. +Locke, J., 26. +Lombards, 48 seq. +London, mediæval, 137. +Louis XII., 339. +Luini, works, 489. +Lungo, del, cited, 273. +Luther, 26, 442, 454, 530. + + +M + +Macaulay on the despots, 127, 320. +Machiavelli, 232, 278, 308 seq.; + property, 309; + education, 310; + political career, 311; + cringing character, 317; + intercourse with Cesare Borgia, 347; + compared with Savonarola, 368; + last years, 328; + death, 333. + Works, 76, 169, 203, 249, 332, 369, 457, 494; + military system, 312; + Art of War, 328; + History, 331; + The Prince, 319; + object in writing it, 321; + appeal to the Medici, 366; + apology for the author, 367; + morality of the work, 324-6; + author's sincerity, 333; + not the inventor of Machiavellianism, 335; + it assumes Reparation of statecraft and morality, 335; + an abstract of political expediency, 336; + how permanently to assimilate provinces, 338; + colonies, 338; + founders of monarchies, 343; + distinction between monarch and despot, 341; + use of cruelty, 354; + value of distrust, 358; + military precautions, 360; + the work condemned + by the Inquisition, 336; + opinion of it in France, 326; + quoted, 45, 82, 84, 96, 98, 115, 116, 146, 152, 187, 202, 214, + 215, 245, 325, 447, 450, 453, 460. +Madonna, conventional idea of, 18. +Malatesta, 172. +Malespini, chronicle, 251. +Mantegna, works, 489. +Mantuanus, B., quoted, 394. +Marlowe quoted, 336. +Marston, cited, 473, 475. +Massa, B. da, 611. +Masuccio quoted, 458, 486. +Matarazzo, works, 292; quoted, 583. +Medici, their policy, 87, 90, 128, 155, 228, 230; + expulsion, 222; + connection with papacy, 404; + services to literature, 600. + Alessandro, 298; + Cosimo, 300, 492; + Lorenzo, 504, 628; + death, 523; + Piero, 558. +Michelet quoted, 15, 585. +Middle Age: mental condition, 6, 13; + inaccessibility to mental ideas, 7; + political character, 8; + art, 17; + scholarship, 20. +Milan, 58; Visconti and Sforza, 154. +Milman quoted, 530. +Milton, 454. +Mirandola, 171, 456, 520; + quoted, 401, 511. +Monaldeschi, L. B., 252. +Montferrat, 146. +Montone, B. da, 123, 159. +Morals (see Italy, society; Papacy, court; Virtu;) in Cellini's memoirs, + 325; + sexual immorality,474; + tyrannicide defended, 468. +Müntz, E., cited, 384. +Muzio quoted, 174. + + +N + +Naples (see Italy), attraction for foreigners, 566; + claims of house + of Anjou, 539; + flight of king, 574. +Nardi, 278, 280, 290; + works, 291; + quoted, 292, 511, 534, 592. +Nerli, 278, 290; works, 293 seq.; + quoted, 328. +Nicholas V., 378. +Normans In Italy, 58. + + +O + +Olgiati, 166. +Orsini, 375. +Otho 1., 52. + + +P + +Pamponazzo, 456. +Pandolfini, 239; + works, 241. +Papacy (see Catholic Church), "the ghost of the Roman empire," 6; + church and state, 8; + Charles the Great, 51; + imperial nominees, 59; + change in mode of election, 60; + effect of crushing the Hohenstauffen, 101; + nepotism, 114; + authority in 14th century, 371, 375; + secularization, 371, 375; + temporal power, 376; its consolidation, 378; + its extent, 434; + persecution, 402; + of Platonists, 417; + its effect, 418; + plan to transform Papacy to kingdom, 392; + sale of pardons, 404, 439; + no horror felt at election of Alexander VI., 410; + Turks invited to Italy, 415, 551; + censure of press, 416: + alliance with France, 427, 566; + political crimes of Alexander VI., 428; + tide turns with Julius II., 433; + reforms of Adrian VI., 441; + moral advantage of sack of Rome, 445. + Court, 372; + its scandalous history, 390, 403, 411, 414, 420, 424, 439, 457; + extravagance, 390, 436, 437; + extortion, 437; + monopolies, 394; + nepotism, 419, 438; + simony, 394, 405, 414; + art patronage, 384, 401, 433, 436. +Paterini, 9. +Paul II., 383. +Pazzi conspiracy, 396. +Perrotti quoted, 179. +Perugia, 612. +Pescara, marquis of, 634. +Petrarch, 11, 20; quoted, 250. +Piccolomini (see Pius II.). +Pisa, 342, 560. +Pitti, 275, 280; works, 291, +Pius II., 380. +Poggio quoted, 187. +Poliziano, 171, +Poontano cited, 481. +Printers of Renaissance, 23, +Provence, civilization of, 9. +Puritanism, 25, 37. + + +R + +Raffaella quoted, 483. +Raphael, works, 488. +Reformation, 433; + how affected by Renaissance, 27. +Rembrandt, works, 490. +Renaissance (see Middle Age), not synonymous with "revival of + learning," 1; + not completed, 2; + extent of signification, 2-3; + origin, 4; + idea not separable from "Reformation," "Revolution," 5; + effect on old beliefs, 14, 16; + all its tendencies worldly, 455; + restores double past, Christian and pagan, 506; + obstacles in the way, 5; + preparation, 9; + opposition of the Church, 10; + character of the men, 12; + discoveries, 15; + scholarship, 20; + assimilation of paganism, 25; + reaction against enlightenment, 25; + inventions, 29. +Reuchlin, 27. +Reumont, A. von, cited, 212, 524. +Ripamonti quoted, 163, 167. +Robbia, works, 489. +Romagna, 349. +Romano, Ezzelino da, 69, 75, 106, 119; + Giulio, works, 490. +Rome (see Italy, Papacy), effect of its ruins, 253; + appearance at time of French occupation, 564; + early mediæval history, 47; + opposition to Lombards, 49; + government semi-independent of pope, 376; + advantages derived from presence of papal court, 377; + improvements under Nicholas V., 378; + impunity of criminals, 405; + factions destroyed, 413; + rising of Colonnas, 443; + sack, 444, 636; + prostitutes, 474. +Romeo and Juliet, 74, +Rosellini, works, 489, +Rosenbaum cited, 567. +Royere, F. della (see Sixtus IV.); + Francesco Maria, 393; + Giuliano (see Julius II,); + Pietro, 390. +Rubens, works, 490. + + +S + +Sadoleto, quoted, 446. +Savelli, 375. +Savonarola, 202, 221, 230, 277, 283, 290, 345, 368, 453, 454, 456, 491, + 498 seq., 561, 622; + poems, 502; + settles in Florence, 504; + portraits, 508; + eloquence, 510; + creed, 513; + prophecies, 514; + political career, 526; + hatred of secular culture, 527; + dares not break with Rome, 531; + martyrdom, 533; + works, 536; + quoted, 128. +Savoy, 146. +Scala, della, family, 145, 258. +Scheffer-Bolchorst cited, 252, 269. +Segal, 278, 280, 289; + works 292, seq. +Sforza family, 131 seq.; + their magnificience, 164; + to be made kings of Lombardy, 392; + Francesco, 153, 159 seq., 345; + Galeazzo, 165; + Ludovico, 543 seq. +Shelley cited, 477. +Siena, 207, 616. +Sismondi quoted, 138, 144, 159, 226, 533. +Sixtus IV., 388 seq., 502. +Soderini, P., 289, 324. +Spaniards, cruelty of, 478. +Spinoza, 26. +Stendhal cited, 482. +Stephani, the, 23. +Strozzi, Ercole, 423; F., 285. +Swiss, 450. +Syphilis, history of, 567. + + +T + +Tasso, 486. +Temporal Power (see Papacy). +Tenda, Beatrice di, 152. +Theodoric, 47. +Theology, effect of Renaissance upon, 16. +Tiraboschi, quoted, 173. +Titian, works, 19 +Torre, della, 132. +Trinci, 122. + + +U + +Urbino, dukes of, 174 seq., 393, 438. + + +V + +Valois, Charles of, 76. +Varani, 121. +Varchi, 278, 290; + works, 279, 303 seq.; + quoted, 204, 244, 505. +Venice, 79, 88, 91; + an exception + among the republics, 195, 214; + constitution, 215; + the Ten, 218; + fascination exercised by government, 220; + military system, 220; + no initiative mining citizens, 233; + compared with Sparta, 234; + indifference to prosperity of Italy, 550. +Vespusiano quoted, 174, 477, 612. +Vettori, F., 624; works, 626. +Vicenza, John of, 607. +Villani, M., works, 251 seq., quoted, 128, 139. +Villari, quoted, 195, 500. +Vinci, da, 326, 548; + works, 489. +Virgil, 20. +Virtu, 171, 337, 345, 484, 493. +Visconti, family, 131 seq.; + their realm falls to pieces, 150; + Filippo, 152; + Gisa, 141; + Violante, 137. + + +W + +Webster, J., quoted, 119, 557. +Witchcraft persecutions, 402. + + +Y + +Yriarte, quoted, 210, 217. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF +7)*** + + +******* This file should be named 15400-8.txt or 15400-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/4/0/15400 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7)</p> +<p>Author: John Addington Symonds</p> +<p>Release Date: March 18, 2005 [eBook #15400]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF 7)***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Turgut Dincer, Leonard Johnson,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (https://www.pgdp.net)</h4> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p><br /></p> + +<h1>RENAISSANCE IN ITALY</h1> + + +<h3><i>THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS</i></h3> + + + +<h3>BY</h3> + + +<h2>JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS</h2> + +<div style="text-align: center;">AUTHOR OF</div> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS</i>, <i>SKETCHES +IN ITALY AND GREECE</i>, ETC.</div> +<p><br /></p> + +<div style="text-align: center;">____________________</div> + +<div style="text-align: center;"> <br />'Di questi adunque +oziosi principi, e di queste vilissime armi, sarà piena la +mia Istoria'</div> +<div style="text-align: left; margin-left: 250px;">MACH. +1<i>st Fior.</i> lib. i.</div> + +<div style="text-align: center;">____________________</div> + +<p><br /></p> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><img + src="images/001owl.jpg" + title="" alt="owl picture" style="width: 129px; height: 149px;" /></div> + +<p><br /></p> + +<div style="text-align: center;">NEW YORK</div> +<div style="text-align: center;">HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</div> +<div style="text-align: center;">1888</div> + +<div style="text-align: center;">RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.</div> + + +<h4>TO</h4> + +<h4>MY FRIEND</h4> + +<h3>JOHN BEDDOE, M.D., F.R.S.,</h3> + + +<h4>I DEDICATE MY WORK</h4> + +<h4>ON</h4> + +<h4>THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE.</h4> +<p><br /></p> + +<h3>AUTHOR'S EDITION</h3> +<p><br /></p> + + + + +<h3>AUTHORS NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p>Though these books taken together and in the order planned by the author +form one connected study of Italian culture at a certain period of +history, still each aims at a completeness of its own, and each can be +read independently of its companions. That the author does not regard +acquaintance with any one of them as essential to a profitable reading +of any other has been shown by the publication of each with a separate +title-page and without numeration of the volumes, while all three bear +the same general heading of "Renaissance in Italy." +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + + +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p> +This volume is the First Part of a work upon the 'Renaissance in Italy.' +The Second Part treats of the Revival of Learning. The Third, of the +Fine Arts. The Fourth Part, in two volumes, is devoted to Italian +Literature. +</p> + +<p> +Owing to the extent of the ground I have attempted to traverse, I feel +conscious that the students of special departments will find much to be +desired in my handling of each part. In some respects I hope that the +several portions of the work may complete and illustrate each other. +Many topics, for example, have been omitted from Chapter VIII. in this +volume because they seemed better adapted to treatment in the future. +</p> +<p> +One of the chief difficulties which the critic has to meet in dealing +with the Italian Renaissance is the determination of the limits of the +epoch. Two dates, 1453 and 1527, marking respectively the fall of +Constantinople and the sack of Rome, are convenient for fixing in the +mind that narrow space of time during which the Renaissance culminated. +But in order to trace its progress up to this point, it is necessary to +go back to a far more remote period; nor, again, is it possible to +maintain strict chronological consistency in treating of the several +branches of the whole theme. +</p> + +<p> +The books of which the most frequent use has been made in this first +portion of the work are Sismondi's 'Républiques Italiennes'; Muratori's +'Rerum Italicarum Scriptores'; the 'Archivio Storico Italiano'; the +seventh volume of Michelet's 'Histoire de France'; the seventh and +eighth volumes of Gregorovius' 'Geschichte der Stadt Rom'; Ferrari's +'Rivoluzioni d' Italia'; Alberi's series of Despatches; Gino Capponi's +'Storia della Repubblica di Firenze'; and Burckhardt's 'Cultur der +Renaissance in Italien.' To the last-named essay I must acknowledge +especial obligations. It fell under my notice when I had planned, and in +a great measure finished, my own work. But it would be difficult for me +to exaggerate the profit I have derived from the comparison of my +opinions with those of a writer so thorough in his learning and so +delicate in his perceptions as Jacob Burckhardt, or the amount I owe to +his acute and philosophical handling of the whole subject. I must also +express a special debt to Ferrari, many of whose views I have adopted in +the Chapter on 'Italian History.' With regard to the alterations +introduced into the substance of the book in this edition, it will be +enough to say that I have endeavored to bring each chapter up to the +level of present knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +In conclusion, I once more ask indulgence for a volume which, though it +aims at a completeness of its own, is professedly but one part of a long +inquiry. +<br /><br /><br /></p> + + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h4>THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> + +<li>Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation +of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediæval +Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provencals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of +Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of +the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg001">1</a></span> +</li></ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3> + +<h4>ITALIAN HISTORY.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of +leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The +People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the +Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The +Consuls--The Podestas--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The +Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The +Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been +achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part +played by the Papacy <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg032">32</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3> + +<h4>THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS.</h4> +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of +Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino da +Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the +Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of +Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-government in +Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The +Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian +Tyrant--Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Descriptions of a Tyrant--The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza +Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino and +the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of the +Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg099">99</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3> + +<h4>THE REPUBLICS.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's +Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests +and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of +Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and +Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece +and Italy-- Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg193">193</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3> + +<h4>THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>Florence, the City of Intelligence--Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty--Florentine Historical Literature--Philosophical Study of +History--Ricordano Malespini--Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns--The Villani--The Date +1300--Statistics--Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets--Dino +Compagni--Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century--Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini--The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century--Men of Action and Men of Letters; the +Doctrinaires--Florence between 1494 and 1537--Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini--The Political Importance of these +Writers--The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529--State of Parties--Filippo Strozzi--Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians--Their Literary Qualities--Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli--Scientific Statists--Discord +between Life and Literature--The Biography of Guicciardini--His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'--Biography of Machiavelli--His Scheme of a National +Militia--Dedication of 'The Prince'--Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance--The 'Discorsi'--The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence. <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg246">246</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3> + +<h4>'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay--Machiavellism--His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory--Analysis of 'The +Prince'--Nine Conditions of Principalities--The Interest of the +Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy--Critique of +Louis XII.--Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism--Three Ways of +subduing a free City--Example of Pisa--Principalities founded by +Adventurers--Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus--Savonarola--Francesco +Sforza--Cesare Borgia--Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him--Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius--A Sketch of Cesare's +Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d' +Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of +Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a +powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of +National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg334">334</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3> + +<h4>THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas +V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The +Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the +Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in +Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander +VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the +Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of +Gandia--Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius +II.--His violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo +X.--His Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian +VI.--His Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg371">371</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3> + +<h4>THE CHURCH AND MORALITY.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between +Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad +Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic +Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General +Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg447">447</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3> + +<h4>SAVONAROLA.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the +Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San +Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His +Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 +and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabhiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to +call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial +and Execution of Savonarola <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg497">497</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3> + +<h4>CHARLES VIII.</h4> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe--Policy of +Louis XI. of France--Character of Charles VIII.--Preparations for the +Invasion of Italy--Position of Lodovico Sforza--Diplomatic +Difficulties in Italy after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici--Weakness +of the Republics--Il Moro--The year 1494---Alfonso of +Naples--Inefficiency of the Allies to cope with France--Charles at +Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of Italy by Giuliano della +Rovere--Charles at Asti and Pavia--Murder of Gian Galeazzo +Sforza--Mistrust in the French Army--Rapallo and Fivizzano--The +Entrance into Tuscany--Part played by Piero de' Medici--Charles at +Pisa--His Entrance into Florence--Piero Capponi--The March on +Rome--Entry into Rome--Panic of Alexander VI.--The March on +Naples--The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand--Alfonso II. +escapes to Sicily--Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia--Charles at +Naples--The League against the French--De Comines at Venice--Charles +makes his Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli--The Battle of +Fornovo--Charles reaches Asti and returns to France--Italy becomes +the Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance +of the Expedition of Charles VIII. <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg537">537</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<h3>APPENDICES.</h3> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +No. I.—The Blood-madness of Tyrants <span class="tocright"><a href="#pg589">589</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +No. II.—Translations of Nardi, 'Istorie di Firenze,' lib. l. cap. 4; +and of Varchi, 'Storia Fiorentina,' lib. iii. caps. 20,21, 22; lib. ix. caps. 48, 49, 46<span class="tocright"><a href="#pg592">592</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +No. III.—The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's +'Storia Fiorentina,' cap. 27<span class="tocright"><a href="#pg603">603</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +No. IV.—Religious Revivals in Mediæval Italy<span class="tocright"><a href="#pg606">606</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +No. V.—The 'Sommario della Storia d' Italia dal 1511 al 1527, +by Francesco Vettori<span class="tocright"><a href="#pg624">624</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> +INDEX<span class="tocright"><a href="#pg639">639</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h2>RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.</h2> +<hr style='width: 20%;' /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg001" id="pg001">1</a></span></p> +<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3> + + +<h4>THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE.</h4> + +<p>Difficulty of fixing Date—Meaning of Word Renaissance—The Emancipation +of the Reason—Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance—Mediæval +Warnings of the Renaissance—Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provençals, the Heretics, Frederick II.—Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio—Physical Energy of the Italians—The Revival of Learning—The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man—Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe—Science—The Fine Arts and Scholarship—Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church—Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship—The Age of Desire—The Age of Acquisition—The Legend of +Julia's Corpse—The Age of the Printers and Critics—The Emancipation of +the Conscience—The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit—Mechanical Inventions—The Place of Italy in the Renaissance.</p> + + +<p>The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended +significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent—the +Revival of Learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the +Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to assign +certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we +cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say—between this year and +that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to +name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended +Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg002" id="pg002">002</a></span> + +The truth is, that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The +evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is +progressive. As in the transformation scene of some great Masque, so +here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at +first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now +the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether +the new scene be finally set up?</p> + +<p>In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to +any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one +department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they +mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution +effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of +antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see +in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for +antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a +correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new +systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the +Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science +will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and +Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation +of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point + +which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg003" id="pg003">003</a></span> interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, +again, has his own answer to the question. The extinction of feudalism, +the development of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of +monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority and the +erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place +the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in +the Revolution; these are the aspects of the movement which engross his +attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal fictions based +upon the false decretals, the acquisition of a true text of the Roman +Code, and the attempt to introduce a rational method into the theory of +modern jurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of international +law. Men whose attention has been turned to the history of discoveries +and inventions will relate the exploration of America and the East, or +will point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of +printing and engraving, by the compass and the telescope, by paper and +by gunpowder; and will insist that at the moment of the Renaissance all +these instruments of mechanical utility started into existence, to aid +the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and +perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither any one of +these answers taken separately, nor indeed all of them together, will +offer a solution of the problem. By the term Renaissance, or new birth, +is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that +characteristic, but to be accepted as an + +effort<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg004" id="pg004">004</a></span> of humanity for which +at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we +still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of +arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or even of nations. It is the +history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit +manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no +new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The +arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly +became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on +the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not +their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the +intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which +enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then +generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the +modern world.</p> + +<p>How was it, then, that at a certain period, about fourteen centuries +after Christ, to speak roughly, the intellect of the Western races awoke +as it were from slumber and began once more to be active? That is a +question which we can but imperfectly answer. The mystery of organic +life defeats analysis; whether the subject of our inquiry be a +germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the commencement of a new +religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a new phase in +civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to state the +conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point out what +are its manifestations. In +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg005" id="pg005">005</a></span> doing so, moreover, we must be careful not +to be carried away by words of our own making. Renaissance, Reformation, +and Revolution are not separate things, capable of being isolated; they +are moments in the history of the human race which we find it convenient +to name; while history itself is one and continuous, so that our utmost +endeavors to regard some portion of it independently of the rest will be +defeated.</p> + +<p>A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the +dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no immediate +possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had +deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism: the fragments of Roman +civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated: the Germanic +nations had to receive culture and religion from the people they had +superseded; the Church had to be created, and a new form given to the +old idea of the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern +nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be +formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth +accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of +the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which +fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The +reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy +possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and +commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg006" id="pg006">006</a></span> still +semi-barbarous. Where the human spirit had been buried in the decay of +the Roman Empire, there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the +Papacy, called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, seated, +throned and crowned, upon the ashes thereof, to some extent bridged over +the gulf between the two periods.</p> + +<p>Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the +Renaissance was intellectual, that it was the emancipation of the reason +for the modern world, we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. +The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration +before the idols of the Church—dogma and authority and scholasticism. +Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by +the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the +outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, +without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, without the +traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state of utter +rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a difficult +hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved during the Middle +Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was done +unconsciously—that it was a gradual and instinctive process of +becoming. The reason, in one word, was not awake; the mind of man was +ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to +think of the mediæval students poring over a single ill-translated + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg007" id="pg007">007</a></span> +sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole +systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles +hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the +time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and +Aristotle were alive but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the +Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern +mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of +humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but +unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life +down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping the +sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and +with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time within their +breasts and brains the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but +unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which erelong was destined to +restore its birthright to the world.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own work. Slowly and +obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations +and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took +shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters, +and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed. +The qualities which render modern society different from that of the +ancient world, were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, +by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg008" id="pg008">008</a></span> the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came a further +phase. After the nations had been molded, their monarchies and dynasties +were established. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into various forms of +more or less defined autocracy. In Italy and Germany numerous +principalities sprang into pre-eminence; and though the nation was not +united under one head, the monarchical principle was acknowledged. +France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of which the king +could say, 'L'Etat c'est moi.' England developed her complicated +constitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At the same time +the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation. The +Papacy became more autocratic. Like the king, the Pope began to say, +'L'Eglise c'est moi.' This merging of the mediæval State and mediæval +Church in the personal supremacy of King and Pope may be termed the +special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the +Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary conditions and external +circumstances were prepared. The organization of the five great nations, +and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political +and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of +which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the +Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still +evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, it must not be imagined that the Renaissance + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg009" id="pg009">009</a></span> burst suddenly +upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms. +Far from that: within the middle age itself, over and over again, the +reason strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in the twelfth +century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and +words was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the beginning of +the thirteenth century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed that +man, by use of nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora, intermediate +between the two, drank one drop of the cup of prophecy offered to his +lips, and cried that 'the Gospel of the Father was past, the Gospel of +the Son was passing, the Gospel of the Spirit was to be.' These three +men, each in his own way, the Frenchman as a logician, the Englishman as +an analyst, the Italian as a mystic, divined the future but inevitable +emancipation of the reason of mankind. Nor were there wanting signs, +especially in Provence, that Aphrodite and Phoebus and the Graces were +ready to resume their sway. The premature civilization of that favored +region, so cruelly extinguished by the Church, was itself a reaction of +nature against the restrictions imposed by ecclesiastical discipline; +while the songs of the wandering students, known under the title of +<i>Carmina Burana</i>, indicate a revival of Pagan or pre-Christian feeling +in the very stronghold of mediæval learning. We have, moreover, to +remember the Cathari, the Paterini, the Fraticelli, the Albigenses, the +Hussites—heretics in whom the new light dimly shone, but + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg010" id="pg010">010</a></span> who were +instantly exterminated by the Church. We have to commemorate the vast +conception of the Emperor Frederick II., who strove to found a new +society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the +advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were +exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that +the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal +Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus +early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those +headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, in +the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The +nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for +venturing to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Dominicans +preaching crusades against the cultivated nobles of Toulouse; Popes +stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the +masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies +and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity +devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy +sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled +the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations +of the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile.</p> + +<p>Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a work of conscious art, +conceived in a modern spirit and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg011" id="pg011">011</a></span> written in a modern tongue, was the +first true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had +shaken off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal, of antique culture +as the everlasting solace and the universal education of the human race, +his lifelong effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and +speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of the +Renaissance—its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After +Petrarch, Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of +freedom. His conception of human existence as joy to be accepted with +thanksgiving, not as a gloomy error to be rectified by suffering, +familiarized the fourteenth century with that form of semi-pagan +gladness which marked the real Renaissance.</p> + +<p>In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recovered the consciousness of +intellectual liberty. What we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived; +but their achievement rendered its appearance in due season certain. +With Dante the genius of the modern world dared to stand alone and to +create confidently after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same genius +reached forth across the gulf of darkness, resuming the tradition of a +splendid past. With Boccaccio the same genius proclaimed the beauty of +the world, the goodliness of youth and strength and love and life, +unterrified by hell, unappalled by the shadow of impending death.</p> + +<p>It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy had +lost indeed the heroic spirit which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg012" id="pg012">012</a></span> we admire in her Communes of the +thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that +repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last +began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried +the civilization of the old world. Behind stretched the centuries of +mediævalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were +as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who +were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted; +their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of +enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life artificially +preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had sapped the fiber of the men who +were about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to +delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their +capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No +generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them +down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair of +thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses +rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They +yearned for magnificence, and instinctively comprehended splendor. At +the same time the period of satiety was still far off. Everything seemed +possible to their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon +their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and +faculties are evenly balanced, when + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg013" id="pg013">013</a></span> the perceptions are not blunted nor +the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of +wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first +transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable +than the fullness of the life that throbbed in them. Natures rich in all +capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor +was there any limit to the play of personality in action. We may apply +to them what Mr. Browning has written of Sordello's temperament:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">A footfall there</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suffices to upturn to the warm air</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Half germinating spices, mere decay</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Produces richer life, and day by day</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">New pollen on the lily-petal grows,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not +seen the beauty of the world or had seen it only to cross himself, and +turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like S. Bernard traveling along +the shores of the Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the +waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the +mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a +thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his mule; even like this +monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of +sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had +scarcely known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. +Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg014" id="pg014">014</a></span> world a fleeting show, man +fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell +everlasting, heaven hard to win; ignorance is acceptable to God as a +proof of faith and submission; abstinence and mortification are the only +safe rules of life: these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediæval +Church. The Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick +veil which they had drawn between the mind of man and the outer world, +and flashing the light of reality upon the darkened places of his own +nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted culture in +the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man +strove to make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his +privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation +of the reason from a dungeon, the double discovery of the outer and the +inner world.</p> + +<p>An external event determined the direction which this outburst of the +spirit of freedom should take. This was the contact of the modern with +the ancient mind which followed upon what is called the Revival of +Learning. The fall of the Greek Empire in 1453, while it signalized the +extinction of the old order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated +forces of the new. A belief in the identity of the human spirit under +all previous manifestations and in its uninterrupted continuity was +generated. Men found that in classical as well as Biblical antiquity +existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual, by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg015" id="pg015">015</a></span> + which +they might profit in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in +its own energies when it learned what the ancients had achieved. The +guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of the moderns. The +whole world's history seemed once more to be one.</p> + +<p>The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the +world and the discovery of man.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1" /><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Under these two formulæ may be +classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The +discovery of the world divides itself into two branches—the exploration +of the globe, and that systematic exploration of the universe which is +in fact what we call Science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the +Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar +system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain +statement; for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid +what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is +only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with +the four centuries which have ensued, that we can estimate the magnitude +of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been +added to civilization. In like manner, it is worth while to pause a +moment and consider what is implied in the substitution of the +Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, regarded<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg016" id="pg016">016</a></span> + in old times +as the center of all things, the apple of God's eye, for the sake of +which were created sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to be one +of the many balls that roll round a giant sphere of light and heat, +which is itself but one among innumerable suns attended each by a +<i>cortège</i> of planets, and scattered, how we know not, through infinity. +What has become of that brazen seat of the old gods, that Paradise to +which an ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds, and hidden +for a moment from the eyes of his disciples. The demonstration of the +simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were +most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their +symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the +world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one +proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most +cherished conceptions, to the very core of her mythology. Science was +born, and the warfare between scientific positivism and religious +metaphysic was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshiped under the +forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had been given to +the words: 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him +in spirit and in truth.' The reason of man was at last able to study the +scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to ascertain the +actual laws by which it is governed. Three centuries and a half have +elapsed since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg017" id="pg017">017</a></span> + by +reflecting on the mass of knowledge we have since acquired, knowledge +not only infinitely curious but also incalculably useful in its +application to the arts of life, and then considering how much ground of +this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the +Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force +which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hand of astrology, +geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, +as far as to the present moment she has never ceased to grow. +Progressive and durable, Science may be called the first-born of the +spirit of the modern world.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is to Michelet that we owe these formulæ, which have +passed into the language of history.</p></div> + +<p>Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the one hand the +appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners of the habitable +globe, and on the other the conquest by Science of all that we now know +about the nature of the universe. In the discovery of man, again, it is +possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations, +illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, +illustrated by Biblical antiquity; these are the two regions, at first +apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpenetrative, which the +critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for +investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at +work, art and scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, like +philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless scholasticism—a +frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without +inspiration from<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg018" id="pg018">018</a></span> + debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected +with the religious feelings of the people, formulæ from which to deviate +would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshiper. +Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and +stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even +had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms +he saw around him. But with the dawning of the Renaissance, a new spirit +in the arts arose. Men began to conceive that the human body is noble in +itself and worthy of patient study. The object of the artist then became +to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the +utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of delineation. He studied from +the nude; he drew the body in every posture; he composed drapery, +invented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures and the +expression of his faces to the subject he had chosen. In a word, he +humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister-frescoes upon which he +worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols, and +brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living +human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently +substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the +principles of the Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for the +display of physical perfection, and to introduce 'un bel corpo ignudo' +into the composition was of more moment to them than to represent the +macerations of the Magdalen. Men thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg019" id="pg019">019</a></span> + learned to look beyond the +relique and the host, and to forget the dogma in the lovely forms which +gave it expression. Finally, when the classics came to aid this work of +progress, a new world of thought and fancy, divinely charming, wholly +human, was revealed to their astonished eyes. Thus art, which had begun +by humanizing the legends of the Church, diverted the attention of its +students from the legend to the work of beauty, and lastly, severing +itself from the religious tradition, became the exponent of the majesty +and splendor of the human body. This final emancipation of art from +ecclesiastical trammels culminated in the great age of Italian painting. +Gazing at Michael Angelo's prophets in the Sistine Chapel, we are indeed +in contact with ideas originally religious. But the treatment of these +ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of +Pheidias. Titian's Virgin received into Heaven, soaring midway between +the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to +follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of +humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is +nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of +the Renaissance stop here. It went further, and plunged into Paganism. +Sculptors and painters combined with architects to cut the arts loose +from their connection with the Church by introducing a spirit and a +sentiment alien to Christianity.</p> + +<p>Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the ideas<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg020" id="pg020">020</a></span> which art +introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought for the modern world +a real resurrection of the body, which, since the destruction of antique +civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts and cerements within +the tomb of the mediæval cloister. It was scholarship which +revealed to men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human +thought, the value of human speculation, the importance of human life +regarded as a thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. During the +Middle Ages a few students had possessed the poems of Virgil and the +prose of Boethius—and Virgil at Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had +actually been honored as saints—together with fragments of Lucan, +Ovid, Statius, Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. The Renaissance opened to +the whole reading public the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin +literature. At the same time the Bible in its original tongues was +rediscovered. Mines of Oriental learning were laid bare for the students +of the Jewish and Arabic traditions. The Aryan and Semitic revelations +were for the first time subjected to something like a critical +comparison. With unerring instinct the men of the Renaissance named the +voluminous subject-matter of scholarship 'Litteræ +Humaniores,'—the more human literature, or the literature that +humanizes.</p> + +<p>There are three stages in the history of scholarship during the +Renaissance. The first is the age of passionate desire; Petrarch poring +over a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity +learning<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg021" id="pg021">021</a></span> Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head of +poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the +Italians with a thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of +acquisition and of libraries. Nicholas V., who founded the Vatican +Library in 1453, Cosimo de Medici, who began the Medicean Collection a +little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and +convents of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers of Greek, +who in the first half of the fifteenth century escaped from +Constantinople with precious freights of classic literature, are the +heroes of this second period. It was an age of accumulation, of +uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshiped by +these men, just as the reliques of Holy Land had been adored by their +great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the Crusades was revived in this +quest of the Holy Grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of Pagan +authors were valued like precious gems, reveled in like odoriferous and +gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes +of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received +an almost equal homage. Criticism had not yet begun. The world was bent +on gathering up its treasures, frantically bewailing the lost books of +Livy, the lost songs of Sappho—absorbing to intoxication the strong +wine of multitudinous thoughts and passions that kept pouring from those +long-buried amphora of inspiration. What is most remarkable about this +age of scholarship is the enthusiasm which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg022" id="pg022">022</a></span> +pervaded all classes Italy for antique culture. Popes and princes, captains of adventure and +peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike became +scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the +temper of the times with singular felicity. On the 18th of April 1485 a +report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a +Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, +engraved with the inscription, 'Julia, Daughter of Claudius,' and inside +the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, +preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. +The bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and +mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. She was +instantly removed, so goes the legend, to the Capitol; and then began a +procession of pilgrims from all the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this +saint of the old Pagan world. In the eyes of those enthusiastic +worshipers, her beauty was beyond imagination or description: she was +far fairer than any woman of the modern age could hope to be. At last +Innocent VIII. feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new +cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his +direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble +coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in +Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was +yellow, another that it<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg023" id="pg023">023</a></span> +was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us +rather use the mythus as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which +prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty +in the tomb of the classic world.<a name="FNanchor_1_2" id="FNanchor_1_2" /><a href="#Footnote_1_2" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_2" id="Footnote_1_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_2"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The most remarkable document regarding the body of Julia +which has yet been published is a Latin letter, written by Bartholomæus +Fontius to his friend Franciscus Saxethus, minutely describing her, with +details which appear to prove that he had not only seen but handled the +corpse. It is printed in Janitschek, <i>Die Gesellschaft der R. in It.</i>: +Stuttgart, 1879, p. 120.</p></div> + +<p>Then came the third age of scholarship—the age of the critics, +philologers, and printers. What had been collected by Poggio and Aurispa +had now to be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. They began +their task by digesting and arranging the contents of the libraries. +There were then no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no +dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology +and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of +classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, +and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. +Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. +The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing +scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose +work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, +to punctuate, to commit to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg024" id="pg024">024</a></span> +press, and to place beyond the reach of monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace of humanity +which exists in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field +of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men, +who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the +accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer +in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1513. They then became the +inalienable heritage of mankind. But what vigils, what anxious +expenditure of thought, what agonies of doubt and expectation, were +endured by those heroes of humanizing scholarship, whom we are apt to +think of merely as pedants! Which of us now warms and thrills with +emotion at hearing the name of Aldus Manutius, or of Henricus Stephanus, +or of Johannes Froben? Yet this we surely ought to do; for to them we +owe in a great measure the freedom of our spirit, our stores of +intellectual enjoyment, our command of the past, our certainty of the +future of human culture.</p> + +<p>This third age in the history of the Renaissance Scholarship may be said +to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed +on the torch of learning to the northern nations. The publication of his +"Adagia" in 1500, marks the advent of a more critical and selective +spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining strength +in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and +sifting, is one of the points<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg025" id="pg025">025</a></span> +which distinguish the moderns from the ancients; and criticism was developed by the process of assimilation, +comparison, and appropriation, which was necessary in the growth of +scholarship. The ultimate effect of this recovery of classic literature +was, once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The modern world was +brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, +and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to +judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in +the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely +from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The +minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediæval +ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew +to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This +extravagance led of necessity to a reaction—in the north to Puritanism, +in the south to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected +under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that +most precious possession of the modern world, was never seriously +imperiled by the classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance; nor, on the +other hand, was the progressive emancipation of the reason materially +retarded by the reaction it produced.</p> + +<p>The transition at this point to the third branch in the discovery of +man, the revelation to the consciousness of its own spiritual freedom, +is natural. Not only did scholarship restore the classics and encourage +literary criticism;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg026" id="pg026">026</a></span> +it also restored the text of the Bible, and encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of theological freedom +followed a free philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the +Church. To purge the Christian faith from false conceptions, to liberate +the conscience from the tyranny of priests, and to interpret religion to +the reason has been the work of the last centuries; nor is this work as +yet by any means accomplished. On the one side Descartes and Bacon, +Spinoza and Locke, are sons of the Renaissance, champions of new-found +philosophical freedom; on the other side, Luther is a son of the +Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom. The whole +movement of the Reformation is a phase in that accelerated action of the +modern mind which at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a +mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated phenomenon or as a mere +effort to restore the Church to purity. The Reformation exhibits in the +region of religious thought and national politics what the Renaissance +displays in the sphere of culture, art, and science—the recovered +energy and freedom of the reason. We are too apt to treat of history in +parcels, and to attempt to draw lessons from detached chapters in the +biography of the human race. To observe the connection between the +several stages of a progressive movement of the human spirit, and to +recognize that the forces at work are still active, is the true +philosophy of history.</p> + +<p>The Reformation, like the revival of science and of<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg027" id="pg027">027</a></span>culture, had its +mediæval anticipations and foreshadowings. The heretics whom the Church +successfully combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia were the +precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way in the fifteenth +century. Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type—Reuchlin in +Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as +a humanist—contribute each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, +incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the +necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity, as +distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the +individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for +himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between the human soul +and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. +Thus the principles involved in what we call the Reformation were +momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of +texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on +the other side with the intolerance of mere authority it led to what has +since been named rationalism—the attempt to reconcile the religious +tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie +the conceptions of the popular religious consciousness. Again, by +promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, and by connecting itself +with national politics, the reformation was linked historically to the +revolution. It was the Puritan Church in England stimulated<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg028" id="pg028">028</a></span> +by the patriotism of the Dutch Protestants, which established our +constitutional liberty, and introduced in America the general principle +of the equality of men. This high political abstraction, latent in +Christianity, evolved by criticism, and promulgated as a gospel in the +second half of the last century, was externalized in the French +Revolution. The work that yet remains to be accomplished for the modern +world is the organization of society in harmony with democratic +principles.</p> + +<p>Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth to liberty—the +spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of +self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world, and of +the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the +conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and +establishing the principle of political freedom. The Church was the +schoolmaster of the Middle Ages. Culture was the humanizing and refining +influence of the Renaissance. The problem for the present and the future +is how through education to render knowledge accessible to all—to break +down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set between clerk and +layman, and which in the intermediate period has arisen between the +intelligent and ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern world, +in which all men shall enjoy the same social, political, and +intellectual advantages, be realized or not, we cannot doubt that the +whole movement of humanity from the Renaissance onward has tended in +this<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg029" id="pg029">029</a></span> direction. To destroy the distinctions, mental and physical, which +nature raises between individuals, and which constitute an actual +hierarchy, will always be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the +future no civilized man will lack the opportunity of being physically +and mentally the best that God has made him.</p> + +<p>It remains to speak of the instruments and mechanical inventions which +aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern age. Discovered over +and over again, and offered at intervals to the human race at various +times and on divers soils, no effective use was made of these material +resources until the fifteenth century. The compass, discovered according +to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for +the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in +the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus +to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to +substantiate his theory of the planetary system. Printing, after +numerous useless revelations to the world of its resources, became an +art in 1438; and paper, which had long been known to the Chinese, was +first made of cotton in Europe about 1000, and of rags in 1319. +Gunpowder entered into use about 1320. As employed by the Genius of the +Renaissance, each one of these inventions became a lever by means of +which to move the world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war. The +feudal castle, the armor of the Knight and his battle-horse,<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg030" id="pg030">030</a></span> the prowess +of one man against a hundred, and the pride of aristocratic cavalry +trampling upon ill-armed militia, were annihilated by the flashes of the +canon. Courage became more a moral than a physical quality. The victory +was delivered to the brain of the general. Printing has established, as +indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property +of every one, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing +cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite, and must occur to +every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the +inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious +calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when +we direct it to the phenomena of the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared. +But it must never be forgotten that as a matter of history the true +Renaissance began in Italy. It was there that the essential qualities +which distinguish the modern from the ancient and the mediæval world +were developed. Italy created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture +and of intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath of the +European races. As the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people of +divine revelation, so may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar +vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in +science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern +intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and France and +England the restored<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg031" id="pg031">031</a></span> humanities complete. Spain and England have since +done more for the exploration and colonization of the world. Germany +achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has +collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible +energy. But if we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we +find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had +already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and +to set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and +live.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg032" id="pg032">032</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<h3>ITALIAN HISTORY</h3> + +<p>The special Difficulties of this Subject—Apparent Confusion—Want of +leading Motive—The Papacy—The Empire—The Republics—The Despots—The +People—The Dismemberment of Italy—Two main Topics—The Rise of the +Communes—Gothic Kingdom—Lombards—Franks—Germans—The Bishops—The +Consuls—The Podestàs—Civil Wars—Despots—The Balance of Power—The +Five Italian States—The Italians fail to achieve National Unity—The +Causes of this Failure—Conditions under which it might have been +achieved—A Republic—A Kingdom—A Confederation—A Tyranny—The Part +played by the Papacy.</p> + + +<p>After a first glance into Italian history the student recoils +as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To fix the moment of +transition from ancient to modern civilization seems impossible. There +is no formation of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France or +England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the Italian races do in +their original type; Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins, +Iapygians, Greeks have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman +rule into a nation that survives political mutations and the disasters +of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lombards, and Franks blend successively +with the masses of this complex population, and lose the outlines of +their several personalities. The western Empire melts imperceptibly +away. The Roman Church grows no less imperceptibly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg033" id="pg033">033</a></span> +and forms the Holy Roman Empire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness in the +sphere of secular authority. These two institutions, the crowning +monuments of Italian creative genius, dominate the Middle Ages, powerful +as facts, but still more powerful as ideas. Yet neither of them controls +the evolution of Italy in the same sense as France was controlled by the +monarchical, and Germany by the federative, principle. The forces of the +nation, divided and swayed from side to side by this commanding dualism, +escaped both influences in so far as either Pope or Emperor strove to +mold them into unity. Meanwhile the domination of Byzantine Greeks in +the southern provinces, the kingdom of the Goths at Ravenna, the kingdom +of the Lombards and Franks at Pavia, the incursions of Huns and +Saracens, the kingdom of the Normans at Palermo, formed but accidents +and moments in a national development which owed important modifications +to each successive episode, but was not finally determined by any of +them. When the Communes emerge into prominence, shaking off the +supremacy of the Greeks in the South, vindicating their liberties +against the Empire in the North, jealously guarding their independence +from Papal encroachment in the center, they have already assumed shapes +of marked distinctness and bewildering diversity. Venice, Milan, Genoa, +Florence, Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Amalfi, Lucca, Pisa, to mention only +a few of the more notable, are indiscriminately called Republics. Yet +they differ<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg034" id="pg034">034</a></span> in their internal type no less than in external conditions. +Each wears from the first and preserves a physiognomy that justifies our +thinking and speaking of the town as an incarnate entity. The cities of +Italy, down to the very smallest, bear the attributes of individuals. +The mutual attractions and repulsions that presided over their growth +have given them specific qualities which they will never lose, which +will be reflected in their architecture, in their customs, in their +language, in their policy, as well as in the institutions of their +government. We think of them involuntarily as persons, and reserve for +them epithets that mark the permanence of their distinctive characters. +To treat of them collectively is almost impossible. Each has its own +biography, and plays a part of consequence in the great drama of the +nation. Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian literature, +Italian art, is really not the study of one national genius, but of a +whole family of cognate geniuses, grouped together, conscious of +affinity, obeying the same general conditions, but issuing in markedly +divergent characteristics. Democracies, oligarchies, aristocracies +spring into being by laws of natural selection within the limits of a +single province. Every municipality has a separate nomenclature for its +magistracies, a somewhat different method of distributing administrative +functions. In one place there is a Doge appointed for life; in another +the government is put into commission among officers elected for a +period of months. Here we find a Patrician,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg035" id="pg035">035</a></span> a Senator, a Tribune; there +Consuls, Rectors, Priors, Ancients, Buonuomini, Conservatori. At one +period and in one city the Podestà seems paramount; across the border a +Captain of the People or a Gonfaloniere di Giustizia is supreme. Vicars +of the Empire, Exarchs, Catapans, Rectors for the Church, Legates, +Commissaries, succeed each other with dazzling rapidity. Councils are +multiplied and called by names that have their origin and meaning buried +in the dust of archæology. Consigli del Popolo, Credenza, Consiglio del +Comune, Senato, Gran Consiglio, Pratiche, Parlamenti, Monti, Consiglio +de' Savi, Arti, Parte Guelfa, Consigli di Dieci, di Tre, I Nove, Gli +Otto, I Cento—such are a few of the titles chosen at random from the +constitutional records of different localities.</p> + +<p>Not one is insignificant. Not one but indicates some moment of +importance in the social evolution of the state. Not one but speaks of +civil strife, whereby the burgh in question struggled into individuality +and defined itself against its neighbor. Like fossils, in geological +strata, these names survive long after their old uses have been +forgotten, to guide the explorer in his reconstruction of a buried past. +While one town appears to respect the feudal lordship of great families, +another pronounces nobility to be a crime, and forces on its citizens +the reality or the pretense of labor. Some recognize the supremacy of +ecclesiastics. Others, like Venice, resist the least encroachment of the +Church, and stand aloof<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg036" id="pg036">036</a></span> from Roman Christianity in jealous isolation. +The interests of one class are maritime, of another military, of a third +industrial, of a fourth financial, of a fifth educational. Amalfi, Pisa, +Genoa, and Venice depend for power upon their fleets and colonies; the +little cities of Romagna and the March supply the Captains of adventure +with recruits; Florence and Lucca live by manufacture; Milan by banking; +Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, owe their wealth to students attracted by their +universities. Foreign alliances or geographical affinities connect one +center with the Empire of the East, a second with France, a third with +Spain. The North is overshadowed by Germany; the South is disquieted by +Islam. The types thus formed and thus discriminated are vital, and +persist for centuries with the tenacity of physical growths. Each +differentiation owes its origin to causes deeply rooted in the locality. +The freedom and apparent waywardness of nature, when she sets about to +form crystals of varying shapes and colors, that shall last and bear her +stamp for ever, have governed their uprising and their progress to +maturity. At the same time they exhibit the keen jealousies and mutual +hatreds of rival families in the animal kingdom. Pisa destroys Amalfi; +Genoa, Pisa; Venice, Genoa; with ruthless and remorseless egotism in the +conflict of commercial interests. Florence enslaves Pisa because she +needs a way to the sea. Siena and Perugia, upon their inland altitudes, +consume themselves in brilliant but unavailing efforts to expand. Milan +engulfs the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg037" id="pg037">037</a></span> lesser towns of Lombardy. Verona absorbs Padua and Treviso. +Venice extends dominion over the Friuli and the Veronese conquests. +Strife and covetousness reign from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. But it is +a strife of living energies, the covetousness of impassioned and +puissant units. Italy as a whole is almost invisible to the student by +reason of the many-sided, combative, self-centered crowd of numberless +Italian communities. Proximity foments hatred and stimulates hostility. +Fiesole looks down and threatens Florence. Florence returns frown for +frown, and does not rest till she has made her neighbor of the hills a +slave. Perugia and Assissi turn the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of +wolves by their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another across the +Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her +Becca Questa in responsive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno +receives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife and fierce +town-rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing satire and insulting epithet, +for no apparent reason but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same +water and to breathe the same air as Florence. It would seem as though +the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended +for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the +indigenous populations of Italy, tamed by antique culture, were +reverting to their primal instincts, with all the discords and divisions +introduced by the military system of the Lombards, the feudalism of the +Franks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg038" id="pg038">038</a></span> the alien institutions of the Germans, superadded to +exasperate the passions of a nation blindly struggling against obstacles +that block the channel of continuous progress. Nor is this the end of +the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with one another, but +they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their +ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the +plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men +of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in +persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half. The exiles +roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their conquerors. +Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow. Again alliances are made +and revolutions accomplished, till the ancient feuds of the towns are +crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness that defies +analysis. Through the medley of quarreling, divided, subdivided, and +intertwisted factions, ride Emperors followed by their bands of knights, +appearing for a season on vain quests, and withdrawing after they have +tenfold confounded the confusion. Papal Legates drown the cities of the +Church in blood, preach crusades, fulminate interdictions, rouse +insurrections in the States that own allegiance to the Empire. Monks +stir republican revivals in old cities that have lost their liberties, +or assemble the populations of crime-maddened districts in aimless +comedies of piety and false pacification, or lead them barefooted and +intoxicated with shrill cries of 'Mercy' over plain<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg039" id="pg039">039</a></span> and mountain. +Princes of France, Kings of Bohemia and Hungary, march and countermarch +from north to south and back again, form leagues, establish realms, head +confederations, which melt like shapes we form from clouds to nothing. +At one time the Pope and Emperor use Italy as the arena of a deadly +duel, drawing the congregated forces of the nation into their dispute. +At another they join hands to divide the spoil of ruined provinces. +Great generals with armies at their backs start into being from apparent +nothingness, dispute the sovereignty of Italy in bloodless battles, +found ephemeral dynasties, and pass away like mists upon a mountain-side +beneath a puff of wind. Conflict, ruin, desolation, anarchy are ever +yielding place to concord, restoration, peace, prosperity, and then +recurring with a mighty flood of violence. Construction, destruction, +and reconstruction play their part in crises that have to be counted by +the thousands.</p> + +<p>In the mean time, from this hurricane of disorder rises the clear ideal +of the national genius. Italy becomes self-conscious and attains the +spiritual primacy of modern Europe. Art, Learning, Literature, +State-craft, Philosophy, Science build a sacred and inviolable city of +the soul amid the tumult of seven thousand revolutions, the dust and +crash of falling cities, the tramplings of recurrent invasions, the +infamies and outrages of tyrants and marauders who oppress the land. +Unshaken by the storms that rage around it, this refuge of the spirit, +raised by Italian poets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg040" id="pg040">040</a></span> thinkers, artists, scholars, and discoverers, +grows unceasingly in bulk and strength, until the younger nations take +their place beneath its ample dome. Then, while yet the thing of wonder +and of beauty stands in fresh perfection, at that supreme moment when +Italy is tranquil and sufficient to fulfill the noblest mission for the +world, we find her crushed and trampled under foot. Her tempestuous but +splendid story closes in the calm of tyranny imposed by Spain.</p> + +<p>Over this vertiginous abyss of history, where the memories of antique +civilization blend with the growing impulses of modern life in an +uninterrupted sequence of national consciousness; through this +many-chambered laboratory of conflicting principles, where the ideals of +the Middle Age are shaped, and laws are framed for Europe; across this +wonder-land of waning and of waxing culture, where Goths, Greeks, +Lombards, Franks, and Normans come to form themselves by contact with +the ever-living soul of Rome; where Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swiss, and +Germans at a later period battle for the richest prize in Europe, and +learn by conquest from the conquered to be men; how shall we guide our +course? If we follow the fortunes of the Church, and make the Papacy the +thread on which the history of Italy shall hang, we gain the advantage +of basing our narrative upon the most vital and continuous member of the +body politic. But we are soon forced to lose sight of the Italians in +the crowd of other Christian races. The history<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg041" id="pg041">041</a></span> of the Church is +cosmopolitan. The Sphere of the Papacy extends in all directions around +Italy taken as a local center. Its influence, moreover, was invariably +one of discord rather than of harmony within the boundaries of the +peninsula. If we take the Empire as our standing-ground, we have to +write the annals of a sustained struggle, in the course of which the +Italian cities were successful, when they reduced the Emperor to the +condition of an absentee with merely nominal privileges. After Frederick +II. the Empire played no important part in Italy until its rights were +reasserted by Charles V. upon the platform of modern politics. A power +so external to the true life of the nation, so successfully resisted, +so impotent to control the development of the Italians, cannot be chosen +as the central point of their history. If we elect the Republics, we are +met with another class of difficulties. The historian who makes the +Commune his unit, who confines attention to the gradual development, +reciprocal animosities, and final decadence of the republics, can hardly +do justice to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papacy, which +occupy no less than half the country. Again, the great age of the +Renaissance, when all the free burghs accepted the rule of despots, and +when the genius of the Italians culminated, is for him a period of +downfall and degradation. Besides, he leaves the history of the Italian +people before the starting-point of the Republics unexplained. He has, +at the close of their career, to account for the reason<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg042" id="pg042">042</a></span> why these +Communes, so powerful in self-development, so intelligent, so wealthy, +and so capable of playing off the Pope against the Empire, failed to +maintain their independence. In other words he selects one phase of +Italian evolution, and writes a narrative that cannot but be partial. If +we make the Despots our main point, we repeat the same error in a worse +form. The Despotisms imply the Communes as their predecessors. Each and +all of them grew up and flourished on the soil of decadent or tired +Republics. Though they are all-important at one period of Italian +history—the period of the present work—they do but form an episode in +the great epic of the nation. He who attempts a general history of Italy +from the point of view of the despotisms, is taking a single scene for +the whole drama. Finally we might prefer the people—that people, +instinctively and persistently faithful to Roman traditions, which +absorbed into itself the successive hordes of barbarian invaders, +civilized them, and adopted them as men of Italy; that people which +destroyed the kingdoms of the Goths and Lombards humbled the Empire at +Legnano, and evolved the Communes; that people which resisted alien +feudalism, and spent its prime upon eradicating every trace of the +repugnant system from its midst; that people which finally attained to +the consciousness of national unity by the recovery of scholarship and +culture under the dominion of despotic princes. This people is Italy. +But the documents that should throw light upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg043" id="pg043">043</a></span> the early annals of the +people are deficient. It does not appear upon the scene before the reign +of Otho I. Nor does it become supreme till after the Peace of Constance. +Its biography is bound up with that of the republics and the despots. +Before the date of their ascendency we have to deal with Bishops of +Rome, Emperors of the East and West, Exarchs and Kings of Italy, the +feudal Lords of the Marches, the Dukes and Counts of Lombard and +Frankish rulers. Through that long period of incubation, when Italy +freed herself from dependence upon Byzantium, created the Papacy and +formed the second Roman Empire, the people exists only as a spirit +resident in Roman towns and fostered by the Church, which effectually +repelled all attempts at monarchical unity, playing the Lombards off +against the Goths, the Franks against the Lombards, the Normans against +the Greeks, merging the Italian Kingdom in the Empire when it became +German, and resisting the Empire of its own creation when the towns at +last were strong enough to stand alone. To speak about the people in +this early period is, therefore, to invoke a myth; to write its history +is the same as writing an ideal history of mediæval Europe.</p> + +<p>The truth is that none of these standpoints in isolation suffices for +the student of Italy. Her inner history is the history of social and +intellectual progress evolving itself under the conditions of attraction +and repulsion generated by the double ideas of Papacy and Empire.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg044" id="pg044">044</a></span> +Political unity is everywhere and at all times imperiously rejected. The +most varied constitutional forms are needed for the self-effectuation of +a race that has no analogue in Europe. The theocracy of Rome, the +monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, the democracy of +Florence, the tyranny of Milan are equally instrumental in elaborating +the national genius that gave art, literature, and mental liberty to +modern society. The struggles of city with city for supremacy or bare +existence, the internecine wars of party against party, the never-ending +clash of principles within the States, educated the people to +multifarious and vivid energy. In the course of those long complicated +contests, the chief centers acquired separate personalities, assumed the +physiognomy of conscious freedom, and stamped the mark of their own +spirit on their citizens. At the end of all discords, at the close of +all catastrophes, we find in each of the great towns a population +released from mental bondage and fitted to perform the work of +intellectual emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the essential +characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled and harmonized by an +ideal rhythm of progressive movement.<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3" /><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> We who are mainly occupied in +this book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in society, +scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most brilliant<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg045" id="pg045">045</a></span> period of +renascence, may accept this fact of political dismemberment with +acquiescence. It was to the variety of conditions offered by the Italian +communities that we owe the unexampled richness of the mental life of +Italy. Yet it is impossible to overlook the weakness inflicted on the +people by those same conditions when the time came for Italy to try her +strength against the nations of Europe.<a name="FNanchor_2_4" id="FNanchor_2_4" /><a href="#Footnote_2_4" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It was then shown that the +diversities which stimulated spiritual energy were a fatal source of +national instability. The pride of the Italians in their local +independence, their intolerance of unification under a single head, the +jealousies that prevented them from forming a permanent confederation, +rendered them incapable of coping with races which had yielded to the +centripetal force of monarchy. If it is true that the unity of the +nation under a kingdom founded at Pavia would have deprived the world of +much that Italy has yielded in the sphere of thought and art, it is +certainly not less true that such centralization alone could have +averted the ruin of the sixteenth century which gives the aspect of a +tragedy to each volume of my work on the Renaissance.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Guicciardini (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 28) for an +eloquent demonstration of the happiness, prosperity, and splendor +conferred on the Italians by the independence of their several centers. +He is arguing against Machiavelli's lamentation over their failure to +achieve national unity.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_4" id="Footnote_2_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_4"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This was the point urged by Machiavelli, in the <i>Principe</i>, +the <i>Discorsi</i>, and the <i>Art of War</i>. With keener political insight than +Guicciardini, he perceived that the old felicity of Italy was about to +fail her through the very independence of her local centers, which +Guicciardini rightly recognized as the source of her unparalleled +civilization and wealth. The one thing needful in the shock with France +and Spain was unity.</p></div> + +<p>Without seeking to attack the whole problem of Italian history, two main +topics must be briefly discussed in the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg046" id="pg046">046</a></span> chapter before entering +on the proper matter of this work. The first relates to the growth of +the Communes, which preceded, necessitated, and determined the +despotisms of the fifteenth century. The second raises the question why +Italian differs from any other national history, why the people failed +to achieve unity either under a sovereign or in a powerful +confederation. These two subjects of inquiry are closely connected and +interdependent. They bring into play the several points that have been +indicated as partially and imperfectly explanatory of the problem of +Italy. But, since I have undertaken to write neither a constitutional +nor a political history, but a history of culture at a certain epoch, it +will be enough to treat of these two questions briefly, with the special +view of showing under what conditions the civilization of the +Renaissance came to maturity in numerous independent Communes, reduced +at last by necessary laws of circumstance to tyranny; and how it was +checked at the point of transition to its second phase of modern +existence, by political weakness inseparable from the want of national +coherence in the shock with mightier military races.</p> + +<p>Modern Italian history may be said to begin with the retirement of +Honorius to Ravenna and the subsequent foundation of Odoacer's Kingdom +in 476. The Western Empire ended, and Rome was recognized as a Republic. +When Zeno sent the Goths into Italy, Theodoric established himself at +Ravenna, continued<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg047" id="pg047">047</a></span> the institutions and usages of the ancient Empire, +and sought by blending with the people to naturalize his alien +authority. Rome was respected as the sacred city of ancient culture and +civility. Her Consuls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed in due +course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric made himself the vicegerent +of the Cæsars rather than an independent sovereign. When we criticise +the Ostro-Gothic occupation by the light of subsequent history, it is +clear that this exclusion of the capital from Theodoric's conquest and +his veneration for the Eternal City were fatal to the unity of the +Italian realm. From the moment that Rome was separated from the +authority of the Italian Kings, there existed two powers in the +Peninsula—the one secular, monarchical, with the military strength of +the barbarians imposed upon its ancient municipal organization; the +other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the undefined ambitions of +S. Peter's See and the unconquered instincts of the Roman people +scattered through the still surviving cities.<a name="FNanchor_1_5" id="FNanchor_1_5" /><a href="#Footnote_1_5" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Justinian, bent upon +asserting his rights as the successor of the Cæsars, wrested Italy from +the hands of the Goths; but scarcely was this revolution effected when +Narses, the successor of Belisarius, called a new nation of barbarians +to support his policy<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg048" id="pg048">048</a></span> in Italy. Narses died before the advent of the +Lombards; but they descended, in forces far more formidable than the +Goths, and established a second kingdom at Pavia. Under the Lombard +domination Rome was left untouched. Venice, with her population gathered +from the ruins of the neighboring Roman cities, remained in +quasi-subjection to the Empire of the East. Ravenna became a Greek +garrison, ruling the Exarchate and Pentapolis under the name of the +Byzantine Emperors. The western coast escaped the Lombard domination; +for Genoa grew slowly into power upon her narrow cornice between hills +and sea, while Pisa defied the barbarians intrenched in military +stations at Fiesole and Lucca. In like manner the islands, Sicily, +Sardinia, and Corsica, were detached from the Lombard Kingdom; and the +maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta +asserted independence under the shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the +Lombards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed to accomplish, +decided the future of Italy. They broke the country up into unequal +blocks; for while the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while +the great duchies of Spoleto in the center and of Benevento in the south +owned the nominal sway of Alboin's successors,<a name="FNanchor_2_6" id="FNanchor_2_6" /><a href="#Footnote_2_6" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Venice and the +Riviera, Pisa and the maritime republics of Apulia and Calabria, +Ravenna<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg049" id="pg049">049</a></span> and the islands, repelled their sovereignty. Rome remained +inviolable beneath the ægis of her ancient prestige, and the decadent +Empire of the East was too inert to check the freedom of the towns which +recognized its titular supremacy.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_5" id="Footnote_1_5" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_5"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> When I apply the term Roman here and elsewhere to the +inhabitants of the Italian towns, I wish to indicate the indigenous +Italic populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity. The resurgence +of this population and its reattainment of intellectual consciousness by +the recovery of past traditions and the rejection of foreign influence +constitutes the history of Italy upon the close of the Dark Ages.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_6" id="Footnote_2_6" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_6"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It will be remembered by students of early Italian history +that Benevento and Spoleto joined the Church in her war upon the Lombard +kingdom. Spoleto was broken up. Benevento survived as a Lombard duchy +till the Norman Conquest.</p></div> + +<p>The kingdom of the Lombards endured two centuries, and left ineffaceable +marks upon Italy. A cordon of military cities was drawn round the old +Roman centers in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Duchy of Spoleto. Pavia rose +against Milan, which had been a second Rome, Cividale against Aquileia, +Fiesole against Florence, Lucca against Pisa. The country was divided +into Duchies and Marches; military service was exacted from the +population, and the laws of the Lombards, <i>asininum jus, quoddam jus +quod faciebant reges per se</i>, as the jurists afterwards defined them, +were imposed upon the descendants of Roman civilization. Yet the +outlying cities of the sea-coast, as we have already seen, were +independent; and Rome remained to be the center of revolutionary ideas, +the rallying-point of a policy inimical to Lombard unity. Not long after +their settlement, the princes of the Lombard race took the fatal step of +joining the Catholic communion, whereby they strengthened the hands of +Rome and excluded themselves from tyrannizing in the last resort over +the growing independence of the Papal See. The causes of their +conversion from Arianism to orthodox Latin Christianity are buried in +obscurity. But it is probable that they were driven to this measure by +the rebelliousness<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg050" id="pg050">050</a></span> of their great vassals and the necessity of resting +for support upon the indigenous populations they had subjugated. Rome, +profiting by the errors and the weakness of her antagonists, extended +her spiritual dominion by enforcing sacraments, ordeals, and appeals to +ecclesiastical tribunals, organized her hierarchy under Gregory the +Great, and lost no opportunity of enriching and aggrandizing her +bishoprics. In 718 she shook off the yoke of Byzantium by repelling the +heresies of Leo the Isaurian; and when this insurrection menaced her +with the domestic tyranny of the Lombard Kings, who possessed themselves +of Ravenna in 728, she called the Franks to her aid against the now +powerful realm. Stephen II. journeyed in 753 to Gaul, named Pippin +Patrician of Rome, and invited him to the conquest of Italy. In the war +that followed, the Franks subdued the Lombards, and Charles the Great +was invested with their kingdom and crowned Emperor in 800 by Leo III. +at Rome.</p> + +<p>The famous compact between Charles the Great and the Pope was in effect +a ratification of the existing state of things. The new Emperor took for +himself and converted into a Frankish Kingdom all the provinces that had +been wrested from the Lombards. He relinquished to the Papacy Rome with +its patrimony, the portions of Spoleto and Benevento that had already +yielded to the See of S. Peter, the southern provinces that owned the +nominal ascendency of Byzantium, the islands and the cities of the +Exarchate<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg051" id="pg051">051</a></span> and Pentapolis which formed no part of the Lombard conquest. +By this stipulation no real temporal power was accorded to the Papacy, +nor did the new Empire surrender its paramount rights over the peninsula +at large. The Italian kingdom, transferred to the Franks in 800, was the +kingdom founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered +districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which had +guided their emancipation. Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by +Theodoric's veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the +Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement whereby the Pope gave a +new Empire to Western Christendom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime +Republics of the south, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue +their own course of independence; and this is the chief among many +reasons why they rose so early into prominence. Rome consolidated her +ancient patrimonies and extended her rectorship in the center, while the +Frankish kings, who succeeded each other through eight reigns, developed +the Regno upon feudal principles by parceling the land among their +Counts. New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric +and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom. Thus the great +vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against +Pavia. The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious +nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the +last independent<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg052" id="pg052">052</a></span> sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of +Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation.</p> + +<p>The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the +Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles +summoned into Italy in 951. When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned +Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy. Thus the +Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital. +Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed +Pontiff and an absent Emperor. The subsequent history of the Italians +shows how they succeeded in reducing both these powers to the condition +of principles, maintaining the pontifical and imperial ideas, but +repelling the practical authority of either potentate. Otho created new +marches and gave them to men of German origin. The houses of Savoy and +Montferrat rose into importance in his reign. To Verona were intrusted +the passes between Germany and Italy. The Princes of Este at Ferrara +held the keys of the Po, while the family of Canossa accumulated fiefs +that stretched from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over the +Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto. Thus the ancient Italy of +Lombards and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, +owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in the +provinces beyond the Alps. At the same time the organization of the +Church was fortified.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg053" id="pg053">053</a></span> The Bishops were placed on an equality with the +Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts were created to represent +their civil jurisdiction. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance +of Otho's concessions to the Bishops. During the preceding period of +Frankish rule about one third of the soil of Italy had been yielded to +the Church, which had the right of freeing its vassals from military +service; and since the ecclesiastical sees were founded upon ancient +sites of Roman civilization, without regard to the military centers of +the barbarian kingdoms, the new privileges of the Bishops accrued to the +benefit of the indigenous population. Milan, for example, down-trodden +by Pavia, still remained the major See of Lombardy. Aquileia, though a +desert, had her patriarch, while Cividale, established as a fortress to +coerce the neighboring Roman towns, was ecclesiastically but a village. +At this epoch a third power emerged in Italy. Berengar had given the +cities permission to inclose themselves with walls in order to repel the +invasions of the Huns.<a name="FNanchor_1_7" id="FNanchor_1_7" /><a href="#Footnote_1_7" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Otho respected their right of self-defense, +and from the date of his coronation the history of the free burghs +begins in Italy. It is at first closely connected with the changes +wrought by the extinction of the kingdom of Pavia, by the exaltation of +the clergy, and by the dislocation of the previous system of +feud-holding, which followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg054" id="pg054">054</a></span> upon Otho's determination to remodel the +country in the interest of the German Empire. The Regno was abolished. +The ancient landmarks of nobility were altered and confused. The cities +under their Bishops assumed a novel character of independence. Those of +Roman origin, being ecclesiastical centers, had a distant advantage over +the more recent foundations of the Lombard and the Frankish monarchs. +The Italic population everywhere emerged and displayed a vitality that +had been crushed and overlaid by centuries of invasion and military +oppression.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_7" id="Footnote_1_7" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_7"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is worthy of notice that to this date belongs the +war-chant of the Modenese sentinels, with its allusions to Troy and +Hector, which is recognized as the earliest specimen of the Italian +hendecasyllabic meter.</p></div> + +<p>The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as luminous points in the dense +darkness of feudal aristocracy.<a name="FNanchor_1_8" id="FNanchor_1_8" /><a href="#Footnote_1_8" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Gathering round their Cathedral as a +center, the towns inclose their dwellings with bastions, from which they +gaze upon a country bristling with castles, occupied by serfs, and +lorded over by the hierarchical nobility.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg055" id="pg055">055</a></span> Within the city the Bishop +and the Count hold equal sway; but the Bishop has upon his side the +sympathies and passions of the burghers. The first effort of the towns +is to expel the Count from their midst. Some accident of misrule +infuriates the citizens. They fly to arms and are supported by the +Bishop. The Count has to retire to the open country, where he +strengthens himself in his castle.<a name="FNanchor_2_9" id="FNanchor_2_9" /><a href="#Footnote_2_9" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Then the Bishop remains victor in +the town, and forms a government of rich and noble burghers, who control +with him the fortunes of the new-born state. At this crisis we begin to +hear for the first time a word that has been much misunderstood. The +<i>Popolo</i> appears upon the scene. Interpreting the past by the present, +and importing the connotation gained by the word <i>people</i> in the +revolutions of the last two centuries, students are apt to assume that +the Popolo of the Italian burghs included the whole population. In +reality it was at first a close aristocracy of influential families, to +whom the authority of the superseded Counts was transferred in +commission, and who held it by hereditary right.<a name="FNanchor_3_10" id="FNanchor_3_10" /><a href="#Footnote_3_10" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Unless we firmly +grasp this fact, the subsequent<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg056" id="pg056">056</a></span> vicissitudes of the Italian +commonwealths are unintelligible, and the elaborate definitions of the +Florentine doctrinaires lose half their meaning. The internal +revolutions of the free cities were almost invariably caused by the +necessity of enlarging the Popolo, and extending its franchise to the +non-privileged inhabitants. Each effort after expansion provoked an +obstinate resistance from those families who held the rights of +burghership; and thus the technical terms <i>primo popolo</i>, <i>secondo +popolo</i>/i>, <i>popolo grasso</i>, <i>popolo minuto</i>, frequently occurring in the +records of the Republics, indicate several stages in the progress from +oligarchy to democracy. The constitution of the city at this early +period was simple. At the head of its administration stood the Bishop, +with the Popolo of enfranchised burghers. The <i>Commune</i> included the +Popolo, together with the non-qualified inhabitants, and was represented +by Consuls, varying in number according to the division of the town into +quarters.<a name="FNanchor_4_11" id="FNanchor_4_11" /><a href="#Footnote_4_11" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Thus the Commune and the Popolo were originally separate +bodies; and this distinction has been perpetuated in the architecture of +those towns which still can show a Palazzo del Popolo apart from the +Palazzo del Commune. Since the affairs of the city had to be conducted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg057" id="pg057">057</a></span>by discussion, we find Councils corresponding to the constituent +elements of the burgh. There is the <i>Parlamento</i>, in which the +inhabitants meet together to hear the decisions of the Bishop and the +Popolo, or to take measures in extreme cases that affect the city as a +whole; the <i>Gran Consiglio</i>, which is only open to duly qualified +members of the Popolo; and the <i>Credenza</i>, or privy council of specially +delegated burghers, who debate on matters demanding secrecy and +diplomacy. Such, generally speaking, and without regard to local +differences, was the internal constitution of an Italian city during the +supremacy of the Bishops.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_8" id="Footnote_1_8" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_8"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is not +necessary to raise antiquarian questions here +relating to the origin of the Italian Commune. Whether regarded as a +survival of the ancient Roman <i>municipium</i> or as an offshoot from the +Lombard <i>guild</i>, it was a new birth of modern times, a new organism +evolved to express the functions of Italian as different from ancient +Roman or mediæval Lombard life. The affection of the people for their +past induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility for the +officers and councils of the Commune. Thus a specious air of classical +antiquity, rather literary and sentimental than real, was given to the +Commune at the outset. Moreover, it must be remembered that Rome herself +had suffered no substantial interruption of republican existence during +the Dark Ages. Therefore the free burghs, though their vitality was the +outcome of wholly new conditions, though they were built up of guilds +and associations representing interests of modern origin, flattered +themselves with an uninterrupted municipal succession from the Roman +era, and pointed for proof to the Eternal City. +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_9" id="Footnote_2_9" /><a +href="#FNanchor_2_9"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The Italian word +<i>contado</i> is a survival from this state of things. It represents a +moment in the national development when the sphere of the Count outside +the city was defined against the sphere of the municipality. The +<i>Contadini</i> are the people of the Contado, the Count's men.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_10" id="Footnote_3_10" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_10"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Even Petrarch, in his letter to four Cardinals (Lett. Fam. xi. 16, +ed. Fracassetti) on the reformation of the Roman Commonwealth, +recommends the exclusion of the neighboring burghs and all strangers, +inclusive of the Colonna and Orsini families, from the franchise. None +but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the <i>colluviet omnium +gentium</i> deposited upon the Seven Hills by centuries of immigration he +does not clearly say, should be chosen to revive the fallen majesty of +the Republic. See in particular the peroration of his argument (op. cit. +vol. iii. p. 95). In other words, he aims at a narrow Popolo, a <i>pura +cittadinanza</i>, in the sense of Cacciaguida Par. xvi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_11" id="Footnote_4_11" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_11"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In some places we find as many as twelve Consuls. It appears that +both the constituent families of the Popolo and the numbers of the +Consuls were determined by the Sections of the city, so many being told +off for each quarter.</p></div> + +<p>In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals, among whom may +be mentioned the houses of Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, +creations of the Salic Emperors, looked with favor upon the development +of the towns, while some nobles went so far as to constitute themselves +feudatories of Bishops.<a name="FNanchor_1_12" id="FNanchor_1_12" /><a href="#Footnote_1_12" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The angry warfare carried on against Canossa +by the Lombard barons has probably to be interpreted by the jealousy +this popular policy excited. At the same time, while Lombardy and +Tuscany were establishing their municipal liberties, a sympathetic +movement began in Southern Italy, which resulted in the conquest of +Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily by the Normans. Omitting all the details of +this episode, than which nothing more dramatic is presented by the +history of modern nations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg058" id="pg058">058</a></span> it must be enough to point out here that the +Normans finally severed Italy from the Greek Empire, gave a monarchical +stamp to the south of the peninsula, and brought the Regno they +consolidated into the sphere of national politics under the protection +of the Pope. Up to the date of their conquest Southern Italy had a +separate and confused history. It now entered the Italian community, and +by the peculiar circumstances of its cession to the Holy See was +destined in the future to become the chief instrument whereby the Popes +disturbed the equilibrium of the peninsula in furtherance of their +ambitious schemes.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_12" id="Footnote_1_12" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_12"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Pelavicini of S. Donnino, for example, gave themselves +to Parma.</p></div> + +<p>The greatness of the Roman cities under the popular rule of their +Bishops is illustrated by Milan, second only to Rome in the last days of +the Empire. Milan had been reduced to the condition of abject misery by +the Kings, who spared no pains to exalt Pavia at the expense of her +elder sister. After the dissolution of the kingdom, she started into a +new life, and in 1037 her archbishop, Heribert, was singled out by +Conrad II. as the protagonist of the episcopal revolution against +feudalism.<a name="FNanchor_1_13" id="FNanchor_1_13" /><a href="#Footnote_1_13" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Heribert was in truth the hero of the burghs in their +first strife for independence. It was he who devised the <i>Carroccio</i>, an +immense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner of the Commune, with an +altar and priests ministrant, around which the pikemen of the city +mustered when they<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg059" id="pg059">059</a></span> went to war. This invention of Heribert's was soon +adopted by the cities throughout Italy. It gave cohesion and confidence +to the citizens, reminded them that the Church was on their side in the +struggle for freedom, and served as symbol of their military strength in +union. The first authentic records of a Parliament, embracing the nobles +of the Popolo, the clergy, and the multitude, are transmitted to us by +the Milanese Chronicles, in which Heribert figures as the president of a +republic. From this date Milan takes the lead in the contests for +municipal independence. Her institutions like that of the Carroccio, +together with her tameless spirit, are communicated to the neighboring +cities of Lombardy, cross the Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs +of Tuscany.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_13" id="Footnote_1_13" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_13"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> He was summoned before the Diet of Pavia for having +dispossessed a noble of his feud.</p></div> + +<p>Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal presidency, the cities +now proceeded to claim the right of choosing their own Bishops. They +refused the prelates sent them by the Emperor, and demanded an election +by the Chapters of each town. This privilege was virtually won when the +war of Investitures broke out in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. in +1046, the Emperors resolved to enforce their right of nominating the +Popes. The two first prelates imposed on Rome, Clement II. and Damatus +II., died under suspicion of poison. Thus the Roman people refused a +foreign Pope, as the Lombards had rejected the bishops sent to rule +them. The next Popes, Leo IX. and Victor II., were persuaded by +Hildebrand, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg060" id="pg060">060</a></span> now appears upon the stage, to undergo a second +election at Rome by the clergy and the people. They escaped +assassination. But the fifth German, Stephen X., again died suddenly; +and now the formidable monk of Soana felt himself powerful enough to +cause the election of his own candidate, Nicholas II. A Lateran council, +inspired by Hildebrand, transferred the election of Popes to the +Cardinals, approved by the clergy and people of Rome, and confirmed the +privilege of the cities to choose their bishops, subject to Papal +ratification. In 1073 Hildebrand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and +declared a war that lasted more than forty years against the Empire. At +its close in 1122 the Church and the Empire were counterposed as +mutually exclusive autocracies, the one claiming illimitable spiritual +sway, the other recognized as no less illimitably paramount in civil +society. From the principles raised by Hildebrand and contested in the +struggles of this duel, we may date those new conceptions of the two +chief powers of Christendom which found final expression in the +theocratic philosophy of the <i>Summa</i> and the imperial absolutism of the +<i>De Monarchiâ</i>. Meanwhile the Empire and the Papacy, while trying their +force against each other, had proved to Italy their essential weakness. +What they gained as ideas, controlling the speculations of the next two +centuries, they lost as potentates in the peninsula. It was impossible +for either Pope or Emperor to carry on the war without bidding for the +support of the cities; and therefore, at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg061" id="pg061">061</a></span> end of the struggle, the +free burghs found themselves strengthened at the expense of both powers. +Still it must not be forgotten that the wars of Investitures, while they +developed the independent spirit and the military energies of the +Republics, penetrated Italy with the vice of party conflict. The +ineradicable divisions of Guelf and Ghibelline were a heavy price to pay +for a step forward on the path of emancipation; nor was the +ecclesiastical revolution, which tended to Italianize the Papacy, while +it magnified its cosmopolitan ascendency, other than a source of evil to +the nation.</p> + +<p>The forces liberated in the cities by these wars brought the Consuls to +the front. The Bishops had undermined the feudal fabric of the kingdom, +depressed the Counts, and restored the Roman towns to prosperity. During +the war both Popolo and Commune grew in vigor, and their Consuls began +to use the authority that had been conquered by the prelates. At first +the Consuls occupied a subordinate position as men of affairs and +notaries, needed to transact the business of the mercantile inhabitants. +They now took the lead as political agents of the first magnitude, +representing the city in its public acts, and superseding the +ecclesiastics. The Popolo was enlarged by the admission of new burgher +families, and the ruling caste, though still oligarchical, became more +fairly representative of the inhabitants. This progress was inevitable, +when we remember that the cities had been organized for warfare, and +that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg062" id="pg062">062</a></span> except their Consuls, they had no officials who combined civil +and military functions. Under the jurisdiction of the Consuls Roman law +was everywhere substituted for Lombard statutes, and another strong blow +was thus dealt against decaying feudalism. The school of Bologna +eclipsed the university of Pavia. Justinian's Code was studied with +passionate energy, and the Italic people enthusiastically reverted to +the institutions of their past. In the fable of the Codex of the +<i>Pandects</i> brought by Pisa from Amalfi we can trace the fervor of this +movement, whereby the Romans of the cities struggled after resurrection.</p> + +<p>One of the earliest manifestations of municipal vitality was the war of +city against city, which began to blaze with fury in the first half of +the twelfth century, and endured so long as free towns lasted to +perpetuate the conflict. No sooner had the burghs established themselves +beneath the presidency of their Consuls than they turned the arms they +had acquired in the war of independence, against their neighbors. The +phenomenon was not confined to any single district. It revealed a new +necessity in the very constitution of the commonwealths. Penned up +within the narrow limits of their petty dependencies, throbbing with +fresh life, overflowing with a populace inured to warfare, demanding +channels for their energies in commerce, competing with each other on +the paths of industry, they clashed in deadliest duels for breathing +space and means of wealth. The occasions that provoked<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg063" id="pg063">063</a></span> one Commune to +declare war upon its rival were trivial. The animosity was internecine +and persistent. Life or death hung in the balance. It was a conflict for +ascendency that brought the sternest passions into play, and decided the +survival of the fittest among hundreds of competing cities. The deeply +rooted jealousies of Roman and feudal centers, the recent partisanship +of Papal and Imperial principles, imbittered this strife. But what lay +beneath all superficial causes of dissension was the economic struggle +of communities, for whom the soil of Italy already had begun to seem too +narrow. So superabundant were the forces of her population, so vast were +the energies emancipated by her attainment of municipal freedom, that +this mighty mother of peoples could not afford equal sustenance to all +her children. New-born, they had to strangle one another as they hung +upon the breast that gave them nourishment. It was impossible for the +Emperor to overlook the apparent anarchy of his fairest province. +Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his first +thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after his +election he descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues among the +cities of the North, the one headed by Pavia, the center of the +abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome +and contained within her loins the future of Italian freedom. It is not +necessary to follow in detail the conflict of the Lombard burghs with +Frederick, so enthusiastically described<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg064" id="pg064">064</a></span> by their historian, Sismondi, +It is enough for our present purpose to remember that in the course of +that contention both leagues made common cause against the Emperor, drew +the Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 1183, after +the victory of Legnano had convinced Frederick of his weakness, extorted +by the Peace of Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was amply +guaranteed and recognized. The advantages won by Milan who sustained the +brunt of the imperial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyrdom +surmounted the petty jealousies of her municipal rivals, were extended +to the cities of Tuscany. After the date of that compact signed by the +Emperor and his insurgent subjects, the burghs obtained an assured +position as a third power between the Empire and the Church. The most +remarkable point in the history of this contention is the unanimous +submission of the Communes to what they regarded as the just suzerainty +of Cæsar's representative. Though they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they +took no measures for closing the gates of the Alps against the Germans. +The Emperor was free to come and go as he listed; and when peace was +signed, he reckoned the burghers who had beaten him by arms and policy, +among his loyal vassals. Still the spirit of independence in Italy had +been amply asserted. This is notably displayed in the address presented +to Frederick, before his coronation, by the senate of Rome. Regenerated +by Arnold of Brescia's revolutionary<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg065" id="pg065">065</a></span> mission, the Roman people assumed +its antique majesty in these remarkable words: 'Thou wast a stranger; I +have made thee citizen; thou camest from regions from beyond the Alps; I +have conferred on thee the principality.'<a name="FNanchor_1_14" id="FNanchor_1_14" /><a href="#Footnote_1_14" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Presumptuous boast as this +sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved that the Italic nation had +now sharply defined itself against the Church and the barbarians. It +still accepted the Empire because the Empire was the glory of Italy, the +crown that gave to her people the presidency of civilization. It still +recognized the authority of the Church because the Church was the eldest +daughter of Italy emergent from the wrecks of Roman society. But the +nation had become conscious of its right to stand apart from either.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_14" id="Footnote_1_14" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_14"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex transalpinis +partibus, principem constitui. Quod meum jure fuit, tibi dedi.' See +<i>Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronicon</i>, De Rebus Gestis Frid. i. Imp. +Lib. ii. cap. 21. Basileæ, 1569. The Legates appointed by the Senate met +the Emperor at Sutri, and delivered the oration of which the sentence +just quoted was part. It began: 'Urbis legati nos, rex optime, ad tuam a +Senatu, populoque Romano destinati sumus excellentiam,' and contained +this remarkable passage: 'Orbis imperium affectas, coronam præbitura +gratanter assurgo, jocanter occurro ... indebitum clericorum excussurus +jugum.' If the words are faithfully reported, the Republic separates +itself abruptly from the Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in +honor before the Empire. Frederick is said to have interrupted the +Legates in a rage before they could finish their address, and to have +replied with angry contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a +rhetorical composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. 'Multa +de Romanorum sapientia seu fortitudine hactenus audivimus, magis tamen +de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba vestra plus +arrogantiæ tumore insipida quam sale sapientiæ condita sentimus.... +Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quondam dico, atque o utinam +tam veracitur quam libenter nunc dicere possemus,' etc.</p></div> + +<p>Strengthened<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg066" id="pg066">066</a></span> by their contest with Frederick Barbarossa, recognized in +their rights as belligerent powers, and left to their own guidance by +the Empire, the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon the +remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learned to know it, was +surrounded by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held still +undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cordon of +fortresses every city with singular unanimity directed the forces it had +formed in the preceding conflicts. At the same time the municipal +struggles of Commune against Commune lost none of their virulence. The +Counts, pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up around them, +adopted the policy of pitting one burgh against another. When a noble +was attacked by the township near his castle, he espoused the +animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by +accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his +natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In +his desperation he emancipated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado +profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This +new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined +period, assuming different characters in different centers; but the end +of it was that the nobles were forced to submit to the cities. They were +admitted to the burghership, and agreed to spend a certain portion of +every year in the palaces they raised within the circuit of the walls. +Thus the Counts<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg067" id="pg067">067</a></span> placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the +Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself the relics of +Lombard, Frank, and German aristocracy. Still the gain upon the side of +the republics was not clear. Though the feudal lordship of the nobles +had been destroyed, their wealth, their lands, and their prestige +remained untouched. In the city they felt themselves but aliens. Their +real home was still the castle on the neighboring mountain. Nor, when +they stooped to become burghers, had they relinquished the use of arms. +Instead of building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they filled +its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence they carried on feuds +among themselves and imperiled the safety of the streets. It was +speedily discovered that the war against the Castles had become a war +against the Palaces, and that the arena had been transferred from the +open Contado to the Piazza and the barricade. The authority of the +consuls proved insufficient to maintain an equilibrium between the +people and the nobles. Accordingly a new magistrate started into being, +combining the offices of supreme justiciary and military dictator. When +Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard cities +in the common interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a +foreign judge, called Podestà <i>quasi habens potestatem Imperatoris in +hâc parte</i>. This institution only served at the moment to inflame and +imbitter the resistance of the Communes: but the title of Podestà was +subsequently conferred<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg068" id="pg068">068</a></span> upon the official summoned to maintain an equal +balance between the burghers and the nobles. He was invariably a +foreigner, elected for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in +all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life and death, and +disposing of the municipal militia. The old constitution of the Commune +remained to control this dictator and to guard the independence of the +city. All the Councils continued to act, and the Consuls were fortified +by the formation of a College of Ancients or Priors. The Podestà was +created with the express purpose of effecting a synthesis between two +rival sections of the burgh. He was never regarded as other than an +alien to the city, adopted as a temporary mediator and controller of +incompatible elements. The lordship of the burgh still resided with the +Consuls, who from this time forward began to lose their individuality in +the College of the <i>Signoria</i>—called <i>Priori</i>, <i>Anziani</i>, or <i>Rettori</i>, +as the case might be in various districts.</p> + +<p>The Italian republics had reached this stage when Frederick II. united +the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the +utmost moment for Italian independence. Master of the South, Frederick +sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and +Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting +Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The +warfare of extermination carried<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg069" id="pg069">069</a></span> on by the Popes against the house of +Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom. +They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy +and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the +cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was +devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da +Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the +parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable +force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed +by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, +the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the +friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the +naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of +feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with +disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while +the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a +matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war +lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to +possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted +principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the +precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety +of the whole people. A city does not pronounce itself either Guelf or +Ghibelline till half<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg070" id="pg070">070</a></span> the burghers have been exiled. The victorious +party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself +in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at +home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and +confiscations.<a name="FNanchor_1_15" id="FNanchor_1_15" /><a href="#Footnote_1_15" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The exiles make common cause with members of their own +faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and +Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a +common dualism. In this way we are justified in saying that Italy +achieved her national consciousness through strife and conflict; for the +Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues, or +engaged in merely local conflicts. They were brought together and +connected by the sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which +embraced and dominated the municipalities, set Republics and Regno on +equal footing, and merged the titular leaders of the struggle, Pope and +Emperor, in the uncontrollable tumult. The issue was no vulgar one; no +merely egotistic interests were at stake. Guelfs and Ghibellines alike +interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for +the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse +senses. The Ghibelline heard Italy calling upon him to build a citadel +that should be guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where the +hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg071" id="pg071">071</a></span> the Empire, might +dispense culture and civil order in due measure to the people. The Guelf +believed that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds within the +burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, who stood for Christ, the +preacher of equality and peace for all mankind, in order that the +beehive of industry should in course of time evolve a civil order and a +culture representative of its own freely acting forces.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_15" id="Footnote_1_15" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_15"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is enough to refer to the importance of the <i>Parte +Guelfa</i> in the history of Florence.</p></div> + +<p>During the stress and storm of the fierce warfare carried on by Guelfs +and Ghibellines, the Podestà fell into the second rank. He had been +created to meet an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement for +arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the title of <i>Captain of +the People</i>. Chosen when one or other of the factions gains supreme +power in the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes the lead +in proscribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the +changes introduced into the constitution. The old magistracies and +councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with +the Capitano at its head, takes the lead; and a new member, called the +Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain the +policy of the victorious faction. But the Consiglio del Comune, with the +Podestà, who has not ceased to exercise judicial functions, still +subsists. The Priors form the signory as of old. The Credenza goes on +working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body of privileged +burghers. The party does<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg072" id="pg072">072</a></span> but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, +and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this +clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower classes +of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular +revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now assert +their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the <i>Arti</i> is the chief +social phenomenon of the crisis.<a name="FNanchor_1_16" id="FNanchor_1_16" /><a href="#Footnote_1_16" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Thus the final issue of the conflict +was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood, +because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse +currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in +antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial +and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the +old nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of +earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the +port asserted themselves against the mountain fastness and the +barrackburgh. The several classes of society, triturated, shaken +together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but +few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however +humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism +disappeared; but the constitution of the city itself was confused, and +the Popolo, whether 'primo' or 'secondo or<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg073" id="pg073">073</a></span> even 'terzo,' was diluted +with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'<a name="FNanchor_2_17" id="FNanchor_2_17" /><a href="#Footnote_2_17" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and +Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante +finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood +aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in +Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never +felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the +skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even +so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other +hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating +from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased +to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed +themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic +colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the +feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines +cut<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg074" id="pg074">074</a></span> fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some +Calabrians were murdered by their host, who discovered from their way of +slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. Ghibellines drank +out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore +white, and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing +dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for +distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the +middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ +from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he +turned his face to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city has a tale of +love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into +the region of romance and legend. Florence dated her calamities from the +insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a +broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi +stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. The story +of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into +play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the +ineffectual efforts of the Podestà to curb the violence of party +warfare.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_16" id="Footnote_1_16" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_16"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that +of any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in +politics at this epoch of the civil wars.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_17" id="Footnote_2_17" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_17"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This is the sting of Cacciaguida's scornful lamentation over +Florence Par. xvi. +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ma la cittadinanza, ch' è or mista</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tal fatto è fiorentino, e cambia e merca,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Là dove andava l' avolo alia cerca.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sempre la confusione delle persone</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Principio fu del mal della cittade,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Come del corpo il cibo che s' appone.</span><br /> + +</p></div> + +<p>So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter the exhaustion, that the +distracted Communes were fain at last to find some peace in tyranny. At +the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the +Popes<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg075" id="pg075">075</a></span> called Charles of Anjou into Italy. The final issue of that policy +for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this +work. It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da Romano +introduced despotism in its worst form as a party leader of the +Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf +interest. He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the +Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him +as the price of his dictatorship. The republics almost simultaneously +entered upon a new phase. Democratized by the extension of the +franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli's phrase, in their old +organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of +tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of +the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle class for +the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.<a name="FNanchor_1_18" id="FNanchor_1_18" /><a href="#Footnote_1_18" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Placing himself above +the law, manipulating the machinery of the State for his own ends, +substituting the will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile +passions in the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquillity +upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg076" id="pg076">076</a></span> the people was conferred +upon him.<a name="FNanchor_2_19" id="FNanchor_2_19" /><a href="#Footnote_2_19" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The Councils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The +aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. Under his rule +commerce flourished; the towns were adorned with splendid edifices; +foreign wars were carried on for the aggrandizement of the State without +regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked the first emergence +of personality supreme within the State, resuming its old forces in an +autocratic will, superseding and at the same time consciously +controlling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses of previous +revolutions. His advent was welcomed as a blessing by the recently +developed people of the cities he reduced to peace. But the great +families and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, as a +reptile spawned by the corruption and disease of the decaying body +politic. In their fury they addressed themselves to the two chiefs of +Christendom. Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a +second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the titles of Marquis of +Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce +Italy to order on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes +invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless march of Henry VII. +Neither Pope nor Emperor was strong enough to control the currents of +the factions which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg077" id="pg077">077</a></span> were surely whirling Italy into the abyss of +despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sciarra Colonna, the terrible +Ghibelline's outrage at Anagni, and the Papal Court was transferred to +Avignon in 1316. Henry VII. expired, of poison probably, at +Buonconvento, in 1313. The parties tore each other to fragments. Tyrants +were murdered. Whole families were extirpated. Yet these convulsions +bore no fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was in +despotism—the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as at Florence, or the +despotism of new tyrants in Lombardy and the Romagna.<a name="FNanchor_3_20" id="FNanchor_3_20" /><a href="#Footnote_3_20" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_18" id="Footnote_1_18" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_18"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which +took the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth +century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da Faggiuola, +Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke of Athens. The +revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from Uguccione; the premature +death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the Tuscan duchy he was building +up upon the basement of Ghibellinism; while the rebellion of 1343 +averted tyranny from Florence for another century.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_19" id="Footnote_2_19" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_19"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Machiavelli's <i>Vita di Castruccio Castracane</i>, though it is rather a +historical romance than a trustworthy biography, illustrates the gradual +advances made by a bold and ambitious leader from the Captaincy of the +people, conferred upon him for one year, to the tyranny of his city.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_20" id="Footnote_3_20" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_20"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of Italian +tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history of the +civil wars: +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chè le terre d' Italia tutte piene</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ogni villan che parteggiando viene.</span><br /> +</p><p> +Those lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy (<i>Purg.</i> vi.) where Dante +refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme authority in +Europe.</p></div> + +<p>Meanwhile the perils to which the tyrants were exposed taught them to +employ cruelty and craft in combination. From the confused and spasmodic +efforts of the thirteenth century, when Captains of the people and +leaders of the party seized a momentary gust of power, there arose a +second sort of despotism, more cautious in its policy, more methodic in +its use of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing the Italian +cities and preparing the great age of the Renaissance. It would be +sentimental to utter lamentations over this change, and unphilosophical +to deplore the diminution<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg078" id="pg078">078</a></span> of republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The +divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no +other solution of the political problem. All branches of the municipal +administration, strained to the cracking-point by the tension of party +conflict, were now isolated from the organism, abnormally developed, +requiring the combining effort of a single thinker to reunite their +scattered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. The indirect +restraints which a calmer period of municipal vitality had placed upon +tyrannic ambition, were removed by the leveling of classes and the +presentation of an equal surface to the builder of the palace-dome of +monarchy. Moreover, it must be remembered that what the Italians then +understood by freedom was municipal autonomy controlled by ruling houses +in the interest of the few. These considerations need not check our +sympathy with Florence in the warfare she carried on against the +Milanese tyrants. But they should lead us to be cautious in adopting the +conclusions of Sismondi, who saw Italian greatness only in her free +cities. The obliteration of the parties beneath despotism was needed, +under actual conditions, for that development of arts and industry which +raised Italy to a first place among civilized nations. Of the manners of +the Despots, and of the demoralization they encouraged in the cities of +their rule, enough will be said in the succeeding chapters, which set +forth the social conditions of the Renaissance in Italy. But attention +should here<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg079" id="pg079">079</a></span> be called to the general character of despotic authority, +and to the influence the Despots exercised for the pacification of the +country. We are not justified by facts in assuming that had the free +burghs continued independent, arts and literature would have risen to a +greater height. Venice, in spite of an uninterrupted republican career, +produced no commanding men of letters, and owed much of her splendor in +the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castelfranco, and Verona. +Genoa remained silent and irresponsive to the artistic movement of Italy +until the last days of the republic, when her independence was but a +shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, +while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune. +Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of +Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature. The +art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families. +The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin to Lodovico Sforza, +and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more +than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Next to +Florence, the most brilliant centers of literary activity during the +bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples. +Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its +first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome +remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary +evolution. Thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg080" id="pg080">080</a></span> the facts of the case seem to show that culture and +republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some +historians would seek to make us believe. On the other hand it is +impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were +necessary to the perfecting of art and literature. All that can be +safely advanced upon this subject, is that the pacification of Italy was +demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to +pass through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the +oligarchies of Venice and Florence. It might further be urged that the +Despots were in close sympathy with the masses of the people, shared +their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry. When the classical +revival took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined +this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all +encouragement. To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, +the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an +impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the +development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting +is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes +her magnificence to the despotic Popes. Even the pottery of Gubbio was a +creation of the ducal house of Urbino.</p> + +<p>After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning of the Papal exile at +Avignon, the Guelf party became the rallying-point of municipal +independence, with its headquarters<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg081" id="pg081">081</a></span> in Florence. Ghibellinism united +the princes in an opposite camp. 'The Guelf party,' writes Giovanni +Villani, 'forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and +is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he +must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline.' Milan, first to +assert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of +despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the +long struggle between Florence and the Visconti. The chronicle of the +Villani and the Florentine history of Poggio contain the record of this +strife, which seemed to them the all-important crisis of Italian +affairs. In the Milanese annals of Galvano Fiamma and Mussi, on the +other hand, the advantages of a despotic sovereignty in giving national +coherence, the crimes of the Papacy, which promoted anarchy in its +ill-governed States, and the prospect of a comprehensive Italian tyranny +under the great house of the Visconti, are eloquently pleaded. The terms +of the main issue being thus clearly defined, we may regard the warfare +carried on by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the interests of +Church and Empire, the splendid campaigns of Egidio d'Albornoz, and the +delirious cruelty of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory +excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main profits of those +convulsions, which drowned Italy in blood during nearly all the +fourteenth century, accrued to the Despots, who held their ground in +spite of all attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses, notably<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg082" id="pg082">082</a></span> +the Visconti, acquired strength by revolutions in which the Church and +Empire neutralized each other's action. The lesser families struck firm +roots into cities, infuriated rather than intimidated by such acts of +violence as the massacres of Faenza and Cesena in 1377. The relations of +the imperial and pontifical parties were confused; while even in the +center of republican independence, at Florence, social changes, +determined in great measure by the exhaustion of the city in its +conflict, prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny. Neither the Church +nor the Empire gained steady footing in Italy, while the prestige of +both was ruined.<a name="FNanchor_1_21" id="FNanchor_1_21" /><a href="#Footnote_1_21" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Municipal freedom, instead of being enlarged, was +extinguished by the ambition of the Florentine oligarchs, who, while +they spent the last florin of the Commune in opposing the Visconti, +never missed an opportunity of enslaving the sister burghs of Tuscany. +In a word, the destiny of the nation was irresistibly impelling it +toward despotism.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_21" id="Footnote_1_21" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_21"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Machiavelli, in his <i>Istorie Fiorentine</i> (Firenze, 1818, +vol. i. pp. 47, 48), points out how the competition of the Church and +Empire, during the Papacies of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. and the +reign of Louis strengthened the tyrants of Lombardy, Romagna, and the +March. Each of the two contending powers gave away what did not belong +to them, bidding against each other for any support they might obtain +from the masters of the towns.</p></div> + +<p>In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the +clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must +remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted +burghs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg083" id="pg083">083</a></span> the heroes of the middle classes and the multitude, the quellers +of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers +of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the +praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo +in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:<a name="FNanchor_1_22" id="FNanchor_1_22" /><a href="#Footnote_1_22" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +'He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and +daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue, +was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and +justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which +removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew +in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through +love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his +mantle.' These verses set forth the qualities which united the mass of +the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial +classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of +personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon +the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud +than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers, +brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered +local vanity by continuing the municipal machinery in its functions of +parade,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg084" id="pg084">084</a></span> and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their +pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the +burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from +attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the +gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy +height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where +a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the +man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on +his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it +by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political +necessities, an equilibrium of forces, substituted without legal title +for the Church and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic +individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of +consuls, Podestàs, and Captains of the people. The chief danger he had +to fear was conspiracy; and in providing himself against this peril he +expended all the resources suggested by refined ingenuity and heightened +terror. Yet, when the Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of +necessity that the successful conspirator became in turn a tyrant. +'Cities,' wrote Machiavelli,<a name="FNanchor_2_23" id="FNanchor_2_23" /><a href="#Footnote_2_23" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 'that are once corrupt and accustomed to +the rule of princes, can never acquire freedom, even though the prince +with all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish +another; and the city has no rest except by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg085" id="pg085">085</a></span> the creation of a new lord, +unless it chance that one burgher by his goodness and great qualities +may during his lifetime preserve its temporary independence.' Palace +intrigues, therefore, took the place of Piazza revolutions, and +dynasties were swept away to make room for new tyrants without material +change in the condition of the populace.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_22" id="Footnote_1_22" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_22"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Mur. Scr. R. It.</i> xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote +about Azzo Visconti: 'He conciliated the people to him by equal justice +without distinction of Guelf or Ghibelline.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_23" id="Footnote_2_23" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_23"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Discorsi</i>. i. 17.</p></div> + +<p>It was the universal policy of the Despots to disarm their subjects. +Prompted by considerations of personal safety, and demanded by the +necessity of extirpating the factions, this measure was highly popular. +It relieved the burghers of that most burdensome of all public duties, +military service. A tax on silver and salt was substituted in the +Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs, +actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country. The +effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions +all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of +Italian powers. The principalities were transformed into great banks, +where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and +calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire +by bargain. At first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, buying +up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when +it had been accomplished. But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to +the sense of their own power, and placed themselves beneath captains who +secured them a certainty<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg086" id="pg086">086</a></span> of pay with continuity of profitable service. +Thus the Condottieri came into existence, and Italy beheld the spectacle +of moving despotisms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect establishment +upon the weakest, worst-defended points of the peninsula. They proved a +grave cause of disquietude alike to the tyrants and the republics; and +until the settlement of Francesco Sforza in the Duchy of Milan, when the +employers of auxiliaries had come to understand the arts of dealing with +them by perfidy, secret assassination, and a system of elaborate +counter-checks, the equilibrium of power in Italy was seriously +threatened. The country suffered at first from marauding excursions +conducted by piratical leaders of adventurous troops, by Werner of +Urslingen, the Conte Lando, and Fra Moriale; afterwards from the +discords of Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo, incessantly +plotting to carve duchies for themselves from provinces they had been +summoned by a master to subdue. At this period gold ruled the destinies +of Italy. The Despots, relying solely on their exchequer for their +power, were driven to extortion. Cities became bankrupt, pledged their +revenues, or sold themselves to the highest bidder.<a name="FNanchor_1_24" id="FNanchor_1_24" /><a href="#Footnote_1_24" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Indescribable +misery oppressed the poorer classes and the peasants. A series of +obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a +vehement<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg087" id="pg087">087</a></span> plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become +unbearable. The lower classes of the burghers rose against the 'popolani +grassi,' and a new class of princes emerged at the close of the crisis. +Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on +Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia and the Petrucci on Siena.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_24" id="Footnote_1_24" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_24"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country +population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, upon +her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for 1,500. +Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388.</p></div> + +<p>The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth +century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and +the financial distress which ensued upon the substitution of mercenary +for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, +and marked a new period in the history of despotism. From the date of +Francesco Sforza's entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes +became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious. Having +begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms +themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person +and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and +substituting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare. Gold +still ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery. To the ambitious +military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti succeeded the commercial +cynicism of Cosimo de' Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute +demoralization.<a name="FNanchor_1_25" id="FNanchor_1_25" /><a href="#Footnote_1_25" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The spirit of the age was materialistic and positive. +The Despots held their state by treachery, craft,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg088" id="pg088">088</a></span> and corruption. The +element of force being virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained +undivided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli was realized +with more or less completeness in all parts of the peninsula. At this +moment and by these means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of +peace beneath the confederation of her great powers. Nicholas V. had +restored the Papal court to Rome in 1447; where he assumed the manners +of despotism and counted as one among the Italian Signori. Lombardy +remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco Sforza, and Tuscany under +that of the Casa Medici. The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of +Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of enlightened +despotism, while Venice, who had so long formed a state apart, by her +recent acquisition of a domain on terra firma, entered the community of +Italian politics. Thus the country had finally resolved itself into five +grand constituent elements—the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, +Florence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples—all of them, though widely +differing in previous history and constitutional peculiarities, now +animated by a common spirit.<a name="FNanchor_2_26" id="FNanchor_2_26" /><a href="#Footnote_2_26" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Politically they tended to despotism; +for though Venice continued to be a republic, the government of the +Venetian oligarchy was but despotism put<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg089" id="pg089">089</a></span> into commission. +Intellectually, the same enthusiasm for classical studies, the same +artistic energy, and the same impulse to revive Italian literature +brought the several centers of the nation into keener sympathy than they +had felt before. A network of diplomacy embraced the cities; and round +the leaders of the confederation were grouped inferior burghs, +republican or tyrannical as the case might be, like satellites around +the luminaries of a solar system. When Constantinople was taken by the +Turks in 1453, Italy felt the need of suppressing her old jealousies, +and Nicholas V. induced the four great powers to sign with him a treaty +of peace and amity. The political tact and sagacity of Lorenzo de' +Medici enabled him to develop and substantiate the principle of balance +then introduced into Italian politics; nor was there any apparent reason +why the equilibrium so hardly won, so skillfully maintained, should not +have subsisted but for Lodovico Sforza's invitation to the French in +1494. Up to that date the more recent wars of Italy had been principally +caused by the encroachments of Venice and the nepotism of successive +Popes. They raised no new enthusiasm hostile to the interests of peace. +The Empire was eliminated and forgotten as an obsolete antiquity. Italy +seemed at last determined to manage her own affairs by mutual agreement +between the five great powers.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_25" id="Footnote_1_25" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_25"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I have attempted to analyze Cosimo's method in the article +on 'Florence and the Medici,' <i>Studies and Sketches in Italy</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_26" id="Footnote_2_26" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_26"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This centralization of Italy in five great powers was not obtained +without the depression or total extinction of smaller cities. Ferrari +counts seventeen towns, who died, to use his forcible expression, at the +close of the civil wars. <i>Storia delle Rivoluzioni d' Italia</i>, iii. 239.</p></div> + +<p>Still the ground beneath this specious fabric of diplomacy rung hollow. +The tyrannies represented a transient political necessity. They were not +the product<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg090" id="pg090">090</a></span> of progressive social growth, satisfying and regulating +organic functions of the nation. Far from being the final outcome of a +slow, deliberate accretion in the states they had absorbed, we see in +them the climax of conflicting humors, the splendid cancers and +imposthumes of a desperate disease. That solid basis of national +morality which grounds the monarch firm upon the sympathies and +interests of the people whom he seems to lead, but whom he in reality +expresses, failed them. Therefore each individual despot trembled for +his throne, while Italy, as in the ominous picture drawn by her +historian, felt that all the elements were combining to devour her with +a coming storm. The land of earthquakes divined a cataclysm, to cope +with which she was unable. An apparently insignificant event determined +the catastrophe. The Sforza appealed to France, and after the disastrous +descent of Charles VIII. the whole tide of events turned. Instead of +internal self-government by any system of balance, Italy submitted to a +succession of invasions terminating in foreign tyranny.</p> + +<p>The problem why the Italians failed to achieve the unity of a coherent +nation has been implicitly discussed in the foregoing pages upon the +history of the Communes and the development of despotism. We have +already seen that their conception of municipal independence made a +narrow oligarchy of enfranchised burghers lords of the city, which in +its turn oppressed the country and the subject burghs of its domain. +Every conquest by a republic reduced some village or center<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg091" id="pg091">091</a></span> of civil +life to the condition of serfdom. The voices of the inhabitants were no +longer heard debating questions that affected their interests. They +submitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised few in the +ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guicciardini pointed out in his +'Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli,' the subjection of +Italy by a dominant republic would have meant the extinction of +numberless political communities and the sway of a close oligarchy from +the Alps to the Ionian Sea.<a name="FNanchor_1_27" id="FNanchor_1_27" /><a href="#Footnote_1_27" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The 3,200 burghers who constituted +Florence in 1494, or the nobles of the Golden Book at Venice, would by +such unification of the country under a victorious republic have become +sovereigns, administering the resources of the nation for their profit. +The dread of this catastrophe rendered Venice odious to her sister +commonwealths at the close of the fifteenth century, and justified, +according to Guicciardini's views of history, the action taken by Cosimo +de' Medici in 1450, when he rendered Milan strong by supporting her +despot, Francesco Sforza.<a name="FNanchor_2_28" id="FNanchor_2_28" /><a href="#Footnote_2_28" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In a word republican freedom, as the term +is now understood, was unknown in Italy. Municipal autonomy, implying +the right of the municipality to rule its conquests for its own +particular profit, was the dominant idea. To have advanced from this +stage of thought to the highly developed conception of a national +republic, centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time giving +free play to its local energies, would have been impossible.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg092" id="pg092">092</a></span> This kind +of republican unity implies a previous unification of the people in some +other form of government. It furthermore demands a system of +representation extended to all sections of the nation. Their very +nature, therefore, prevented the republican institutions won by the +Italians in the early Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence +in a national republic.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_27" id="Footnote_1_27" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_27"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 28.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_28" id="Footnote_2_28" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_28"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> vol. iii. p. 8.</p></div> + +<p>It may with more reason be asked in the next place why Italy did not +become a monarchy, and again why she never produced a confederation, +uniting the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were combined for mutual +support and self-defense. When we attack the first of these two +questions, our immediate answer must be that the Italians had a rooted +disinclination for monarchical union.<a name="FNanchor_1_29" id="FNanchor_1_29" /><a href="#Footnote_1_29" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Their most strenuous efforts +were directed against it when it seemed to threaten them. It may be +remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to +secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome +they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy +of municipalities governed and directed by the mistress of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg093" id="pg093">093</a></span> the globe. +When Rome passed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy, +though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that +joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that +the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in +their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no +fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name +of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them. +Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for +their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was +there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local +independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It +was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that +unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized +armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard +was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection +to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman +culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much +to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem +of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that +of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct +of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a +monarchical state<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg094" id="pg094">094</a></span> were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of +the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastical Rome. We +have seen how the Goths erred by submitting-to the Empire and merging +their authority in a declining organization. We have seen again how the +Lombards erred by adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling +themselves in the policy of Papal Rome. Both Goths and Lombards +committed the mistake of sparing the Eternal City; or it may be more +accurate to say that neither of them were strong enough to lay hands of +violence upon the sacred and mysterious metropolis and hold it as their +seat of monarchy against the world. So long as Rome remained +independent, neither Ravenna nor Pavia could head a kingdom in the +peninsula. Meanwhile Rome lent her prestige to the advancement of a +spiritual power which, subject to no dynastic weakness, with the +persistent force of an idea that cannot die, was bent on subjugating +Europe. The Papacy needed Italy as the basis of its operations, and +could not brook a rival that might reduce the See of S. Peter to the +level of an ordinary bishopric. Rome therefore, generation after +generation, upheld the so-called liberties of Italy against all comers; +and when she summoned the Franks, it was to break the growing power of +the Lombard monarchs. The pact between the Popes and Charles the Great, +however we may interpret its meaning, still further removed the +possibility of a kingdom by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg095" id="pg095">095</a></span> dividing Italy into two sections with +separate allegiances; and since the sway of neither Pope nor Emperor, +the one unarmed, the other absent, was stringent enough to check the +growth of independent cities, a third and all-important factor was added +to the previous checks upon national unity.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_29" id="Footnote_1_29" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_29"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Guicciardini (<i>Op. Ined.</i> i. 29) remarks: 'O sia per +qualche fato d' Italia, o per la complessione degli uomini temperata in +modo che hanno ingegno e forze, non è mai questa provincia stata facile +a ridursi sotto uno imperio.' He speaks again of her disunion as 'quello +modo di vivere che è più secondo la antiquissima consuetudine e +inclinazione sua.' But Guicciardini, with that defect of vision which +rendered him incapable of appreciating the whole situation while he +analyzed its details so profoundly, was reckoning without the great +nations of Europe. See above, pp. 40, 41.</p></div> + +<p>After 1200 the problem changes its aspect. We have now to ask ourselves +why, when the struggle with the Empire was over, when Frederick +Barbarossa had been defeated at Legnano, when the Lombard and the Tuscan +Leagues were in full vigor before the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had +confused the mainsprings of political activity, and while the national +militia was still energetic, the Communes did not advance from the +conception of local and municipal independence to that of national +freedom in a confederacy similar to the Swiss Bund. The Italians, it may +be suggested, saw no immediate necessity for a confederation that would +have limited the absolute autonomy of their several parcels. Only the +light cast by subsequent events upon their early history makes us +perceive that they missed an unique opportunity at this moment. What +they then desired was freedom for expansion each after his own political +type, freedom for the development of industry and commerce, freedom for +the social organization of the city beloved by its burghers above the +nation as a whole. Special difficulties, moreover, lay in the way of +confederation. The Communes were not districts, like the Swiss Cantons, +but towns at war with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg096" id="pg096">096</a></span> the Contado round them and at war among +themselves. Mutually jealous and mistrustful, with a country population +that but partially obeyed their rule, these centers of Italian freedom +were in a very different position from the peasant communities of +Schwytz, Uri, Untenvalden. Italy, moreover, could not have been +federally united without the consent of Naples and the Church. The +kingdom of the Two Sicilies, rendered definitely monarchical by the +Norman Conquest, offered a serious obstacle; and though the Regno might +have been defied and absorbed by a vigorous concerted movement from the +North and center, there still remained the opposition of the Papacy. It +had been the recent policy of the Popes to support the free burghs in +their war with Frederick. But they did this only because they could not +tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power; and the very +reasons which had made them side with the cities in the wars of +liberation would have roused their hostility against a federative union. +To have encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which they would +have found the Church unarmed and on a level with the puissant towns of +Lombardy and Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. Such a +coalition, if attempted, could not but have been opposed with all their +might; for the whole history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right +when he asserted that the Church had persistently maintained the nation +in disunion for the furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have +furthermore to add<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg097" id="pg097">097</a></span> the prestige which the Empire preserved for the +Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof +the representative of Cæsar should not be the God-appointed head. Though +the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as +a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than +the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they +regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they +laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial +shadow. To raise up a political association as a bulwark against the +Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an +independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of +scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of +sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been, +theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a +sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the +Wars of Investiture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that +quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to +remove the hope of national unity into the region of things +unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave +external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far +distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every +city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory +principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle +that set neighbor against neighbor on the field<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg098" id="pg098">098</a></span> of war and in the +market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered +by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 +Italy could only have been united under a tyrant's iron rule. At such an +universal despotism Gian Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague +cut short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest stakes for it. +Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. Machiavelli, at the end of the +<i>Principe</i>, when the tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked +it. But even for this last chance of unification it was now too late. +The great nations of Europe were in movement, and the destinies of Italy +depended upon France and Spain. When Charles V. remained victor in the +struggle of the sixteenth century, he stereotyped and petrified the +divisions of Italy in the interest of his own dynastic policy. The only +Italian power that remained unchangeable throughout all changes was the +Papacy—the first to emerge into prominence after the decay of the old +Western Empire, the last to suffer diminution in spite of vicissitudes, +humiliations, schisms, and internal transformation. As the Papacy had +created and maintained a divided Italy, as it had opposed itself to +every successive prospect of unification, so it survived the extinction +of Italian independence, and lent its aid to that imperial tyranny +whereby the disunion of the nation was confirmed and prolongated till +the present century.</p> + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg099" id="pg099">099</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" />CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<h3>THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS.</h3> + + +<p>Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy—Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church—The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates—The Free Emergence of +Personality—Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example—Ezzelino +da Romano—Six Sorts of Italian Despots—Feudal Seigneurs—Vicars of the +Empire—Captains of the People—Condottieri—Nephews and Sons of +Popes—Eminent Burghers—Italian Incapacity for Self-Government in +Commonwealths—Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability—The +Condition of the Despot's Life—Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses—Macaulay's Description of the Italian Tyrant +—Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Description of a Tyrant—The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century—History of the Visconti—Francesco Sforza—The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders—Mercenary Warfare—Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo—History of the Sforza +Dynasty—The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza—The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy—Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters—Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta—Duke Federigo of Urbino—The School of Vittorino +and the Court of Urbino—The Cortegiano of Castiglione—The Ideals of +the Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman—General Retrospect.</p> + +<p>The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be called the Age of the +Despots in Italian history, as the twelfth and thirteenth are the Age of +the Free Burghs, and as the sixteenth and seventeenth are the Age of +Foreign Enslavement. It was during the age of the Despots that the +conditions of the Renaissance were evolved, and that the Renaissance +itself assumed a definite<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg100" id="pg100">100</a></span> character in Italy. Under tyrannies, in the +midst of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar individuality of +the Italians obtained its ultimate development. This individuality, as +remarkable for salient genius and diffused talent as for self-conscious +and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the Renaissance and +affected by example the whole of Europe. Italy led the way in the +education of the Western races, and was the first to realize the type of +modern as distinguished from classical and mediæval life.</p> + +<p>During this age of the despots, Italy presents the spectacle of a nation +devoid of central government and comparatively uninfluenced by +feudalism. The right of the Emperor had become nominal, and served as a +pretext for usurpers rather than as a source of order. The visits, for +instance, of Charles IV. and Frederick III. were either begging +expeditions or holiday excursions, in the course of which ambitious +adventurers bought titles to the government of towns, and meaningless +honors were showered upon vain courtiers. It was not till the reign of +Maximilian that Germany adopted a more serious policy with regard to +Italy, which by that time had become the central point of European +intrigue. Charles V. afterwards used force to reassert imperial rights +over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the +Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same +time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of +the Empire, exercised<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg101" id="pg101">101</a></span> a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized +except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the +House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant the investiture +of the kingdom of Naples to foreigners, the Popes not only struck a +death-blow at imperial influence, but also prepared the way for their +own exile to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second great +authority to which Italy had been accustomed to look for the maintenance +of some sort of national coherence. Moreover, the Church, though +impotent to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power enough to +prevent the formation either by Milan or Venice or Naples of a +substantial kingdom. The result was a perpetually recurring process of +composition, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, of +the scattered elements of Italian life. The Guelf and Ghibelline +parties, inherited from the wars of the thirteenth century, survived the +political interests which had given them birth, and proved an +insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real +significance, to the pacification of the country.<a name="FNanchor_1_30" id="FNanchor_1_30" /><a href="#Footnote_1_30" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The only important +state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however +disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. +The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg102" id="pg102">102</a></span> Of these, +Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was +overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was +destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of +despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the +Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was +illegitimate—based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in +no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or +extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_30" id="Footnote_1_30" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_30"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo +exclaiming (<i>Orlandino</i>, ii. 59)— +</p> +<p> </p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chè se non fusser le gran parti in quella,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.</span><br /> + +</div> + +<p>If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we find abundant +proofs of their despotic nature. The succession from father to son was +always uncertain. Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last La +Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in Naples descended from a +bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half-brothers the heritage +of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of +more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of +Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the +same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli +at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to +an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the +wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons +of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was +less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg103" id="pg103">103</a></span> +once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling +families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed +were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully +established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a +quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or +wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile +the people at large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and +intelligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life peculiar to +political and social centers in a condition of continued rivalry and +change.</p> + +<p>Under the Italian despotisms we observe nearly the opposite of all the +influences brought to bear in the same period upon the nations of the +North. There is no gradual absorption of the great vassals in +monarchies, no fixed allegiance to a reigning dynasty, no feudal aid or +military service attached to the tenure of the land, no tendency to +centralize the whole intellectual activity of the race in any capital, +no suppression of individual character by strongly biased public +feeling, by immutable law, or by the superincumbent weight of a social +hierarchy. Everything, on the contrary, tends to the free emergence of +personal passions and personal aims. Though the vassals of the despot +are neither his soldiers nor his loyal lieges, but his courtiers and +taxpayers, the continual object of his cruelty and fear, yet each +subject has the chance of becoming a prince like Sforza or<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg104" id="pg104">104</a></span> a companion +of princes like Petrarch. Equality of servitude goes far to democratize +a nation, and common hatred of the tyrant leads to the combination of +all classes against him. Thence follows the fermentation of arrogant and +self-reliant passions in the breasts of the lowest as well as the +highest.<a name="FNanchor_1_31" id="FNanchor_1_31" /><a href="#Footnote_1_31" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The rapid mutations of government teach men to care for +themselves and to depend upon themselves alone in the battle of the +world; while the necessity of craft and policy in the conduct of +complicated affairs sharpens intelligence. The sanction of all means +that may secure an end under conditions of social violence encourages +versatility unprejudiced by moral considerations. At the same time the +freely indulged vices of the sovereign are an example of self-indulgence +to the subject, and his need of lawless instruments is a practical +sanction of force in all its forms. Thus to the play of personality, +whether in combat with society and rivals, or in the gratification of +individual caprice, every liberty is allowed. Might is substituted for +right, and the sense of law is supplanted by a mere dread of coercion. +What is the wonder if a Benvenuto Cellini should be the outcome of the +same society as that which formed a Cesare Borgia? What is the miracle +if Italy under these circumstances produced original characters and +many-sided intellects in greater profusion than any other nation at any<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg105" id="pg105">105</a></span> +other period, with the single exception of Greece on her emergence from +the age of her despots? It was the misfortune of Italy that the age of +the despots was succeeded not by an age of free political existence, but +by one of foreign servitude.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_31" id="Footnote_1_31" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_31"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Guicciardini, 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' <i>Op. +Ined.</i> vol. ii. p. 53, for a critique of the motives of tyrannicide in +Italy.</p></div> + +<p>Frederick II. was at the same time the last emperor who maintained +imperial sway in Italy in person, and also the beginner of a new system +of government which the despots afterwards pursued. His establishment of +the Saracen colony at Nocera, as the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill +his orders with scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and customs, +taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects to a state of unarmed +passivity, and to carry on their wars by the aid of German, English, +Swiss, Gascon, Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might be. +Frederick, again, derived from his Mussulman predecessors in Sicily the +arts of taxation to the utmost limits of the national capacity, and +founded a precedent for the levying of tolls by a Catasto or schedule of +the properties attributed to each individual in the state. He also +destroyed the self-government of burghs and districts, by retaining for +himself the right to nominate officers, and by establishing a system of +judicial jurisdiction which derived authority from the throne. Again, he +introduced the example of a prince making profit out of the industries +of his subjects by monopolies and protective duties. In this path he was +followed by illustrious successors—especially by Sixtus IV. and Alfonso +II. of Aragon, who enriched<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg106" id="pg106">106</a></span> themselves by trafficking in the corn and +olive-oil of their famished provinces. Lastly, Frederick established the +precedent of a court formed upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans, +in which chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of hereditary +nobles, and functions of state were confided to the body-servants of the +monarch. This court gave currency to those habits of polite culture, +magnificent living, and personal luxury which played so prominent a part +in all subsequent Italian despotism. It is tempting to overstrain a +point in estimating the direct influence of Frederick's example. In many +respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in advance of his age; and +what we may be inclined to ascribe to him personally, would have +followed in the natural evolution of events. Yet it remains a fact that +he first realized the type of cultivated despotism which prevailed +throughout Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Italian +literature began in his court, and many Saracenic customs of statecraft +were transmitted through him from Palermo to Lombardy.</p> + +<p>While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively modern tyrants of the +coming age, his Vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, +represented the atrocities towards which they always tended to +degenerate. Regarding himself with a sort of awful veneration as the +divinely appointed scourge of humanity, this monster in his lifetime was +execrated as an aberration from 'the kindly race of men,' and after his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg107" id="pg107">107</a></span>death he became the hero of a fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding +centuries of Italian history his kind was only too common; the +immorality with which he worked out his selfish aims was systematically +adopted by princes like the Visconti, and reduced to rule by theorists +like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his +face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold +to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one +passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood. +Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, he founded his illegal +authority upon the captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by +Frederick. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno made him their +captain in the Ghibelline interest, conferring on him judicial as well +as military supremacy. How he fearfully abused his power, how a crusade +was preached against him,<a name="FNanchor_1_32" id="FNanchor_1_32" /><a href="#Footnote_1_32" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and how he died in silence, like a boar at +bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes had placed to +keep him alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua alone he +erected eight prisons, two of which contained as many as three hundred +captives each; and though the executioner never ceased to ply his trade +there, they were always full. These dungeons were designed to torture by +their noisomeness, their want of air and light and space. Ezzelino<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg108" id="pg108">108</a></span> made +himself terrible not merely by executions and imprisonments but also by +mutilations and torments. When he captured Friola he caused the +population, of all ages, sexes, occupations, to be deprived of their +eyes, noses, and legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the +elements. On another occasion he walled up a family of princes in a +castle and left them to die of famine. Wealth, eminence, and beauty +attracted his displeasure no less than insubordination or disobedience. +Nor was he less crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends +their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his promises. A +gigantic instance of his scheming was the coup-de-main by which he +succeeded in entrapping 11,000 Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped +the miseries of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of law, his +inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, and his infliction of +plagues upon whole peoples, Ezzelino established the ideal in Italy of a +tyrant marching to his end by any means whatever. In vain was the +humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. Vainly did the +monks assemble pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara to +atone with tears and penitence for the insults offered to the saints in +heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian +imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to +fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves +whether such men are mad—whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg109" id="pg109">109</a></span> in the case of a Nero or a Maréchal +de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not +a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal +are morbid.<a name="FNanchor_2_33" id="FNanchor_2_33" /><a href="#Footnote_2_33" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Is there in fact such a thing as Hæmatomania, +Bloodmadness? But if we answer this question in the affirmative, we +shall have to place how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias, +Farnesi, and princes of the houses of Anjou and Aragon in the list of +these maniacs? Ezzelino was indeed only the first of a long and horrible +procession, the most terror-striking because the earliest, prefiguring all the rest.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_32" id="Footnote_1_32" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_32"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Alexander IV. issued letters for this crusade in 1255. It +was preached next year by the Archbishop of Ravenna.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_33" id="Footnote_2_33" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_33"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Appendix, No. I.</p></div> + +<p>Ezzelino's cruelty was no mere Berserkir fury or Lycanthropia coming +over him in gusts and leaving him exhausted. It was steady and +continuous. In his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, there +was method; he used it to the end of the consolidation of his tyranny. +Yet, inasmuch as it passed all limits and prepared his downfall, it may +be said to have obtained over his nature the mastery of an insane +appetite. While applying the nomenclature of disease to these +exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at +first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing +more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion—lust, violence, +cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less +influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a +greed<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg110" id="pg110">110</a></span> for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions +in his nature. He then is not unjustly termed a monomaniac. Within the +circle of his vitiated appetite he proves himself irrational. He becomes +the puppet of passions which the sane man cannot so much as picture to +his fancy, the victim of desire, ever recurring and ever destined to +remain unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lunacy than +the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul thirstier than it was before, +the paroxysm of unnatural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave +for it.</p> + +<p>In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant, +we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy. +Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the +people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a +consciousness of tyranny in the minds of irresponsible rulers.</p> + +<p>During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find, roughly speaking, +six sorts of despots in Italian cities.<a name="FNanchor_1_34" id="FNanchor_1_34" /><a href="#Footnote_1_34" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Of these the <i>first</i> class, +which is a very small one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing +from long seignioral possession of their several districts. The most +eminent are the houses of Montferrat and Savoy, the Marquises of +Ferrara, the Princes of Urbino. At the same time it is difficult to know +where to draw<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg111" id="pg111">111</a></span> the line between such hereditary lordship as that of the +Este family, and tyranny based on popular favor. The Malatesti of +Rimini, Polentani of Ravenna, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli, +Chiavelli of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might claim to +rank among the former, since their cities submitted to them without a +long period of republican independence like that which preceded +despotism in the cases to be next mentioned. Yet these families styled +themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled; and in many instances they +obtained the additional title of Vicars of the Church.<a name="FNanchor_2_35" id="FNanchor_2_35" /><a href="#Footnote_2_35" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Even the +Estensi were made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the +thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the supremacy of the +Papacy. There was in fact no right outside the Empire in Italy; and +despots of whatever origin or complexion gladly accepted the support +which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or the People might +give. Brought to the front amid the tumults of the civil wars, and +accepted as pacificators of the factions by the multitude, they gained +the confirmation of their anomalous authority by representing themselves +to be lieutenants or vicegerents of the three great powers. The <i>second</i> +class comprise those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the +Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in +Lombardy. Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are +illustrious instances. Finding in their official capacity a ready-made +foundation, they extended<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg112" id="pg112">112</a></span> it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of +the Empire constituted dynasties. The <i>third</i> class is important. Nobles +charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestàs, by the +free burghs, used their authority to enslave the cities they were chosen +to administer. It was thus that almost all the numerous tyrants of +Lombardy, Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth, +first erected their despotic dynasties. This fact in the history of +Italian tyranny is noticeable. The font of honor, so to speak, was in +the citizens of these great burghs. Therefore, when the limits of +authority delegated to their captains by the people were overstepped, +the sway of the princes became confessedly illegal. Illegality carried +with it all the consequences of an evil conscience, all the insecurities +of usurped dominion all the danger from without and from within to which +an arbitrary governor is exposed. In the <i>fourth</i>/i> class we find the +principle of force still more openly at work. To it may be assigned +those Condottieri<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg113" id="pg113">113</a></span> who made a prey of cities at their pleasure. The +illustrious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to follow up his +victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, in order that he might cement +his power in Lucca and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of +tyrant. His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of Machiavelli's +romance, is another. But it was not until the first half of the +fifteenth century that professional Condottieri became powerful enough +to found such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco Sforza at +Milan.<a name="FNanchor_3_36" id="FNanchor_3_36" /><a href="#Footnote_3_36" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The <i>fifth</i> class includes the nephews or sons of Popes. The +Riario principality of Forli, the Della Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of +Romagna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species of despotisms; +but all these are of a comparatively late origin. Until the Papacies of +Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of +providing in this way for their relatives. Also, it may be remarked, +there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies. Since they had to be +carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his +son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a +province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to +bestow it on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could not long +have<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg114" id="pg114">114</a></span> stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the +dynastic possession of Church property. Luckily for the continuance of +the Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in after the sack +of Rome and the great Northern Schism, put a stop to nepotism in its +most barefaced form.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_34" id="Footnote_1_34" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_34"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since +many of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I +have mentioned.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_35" id="Footnote_2_35" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_35"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Guicc. <i>Ist.</i> end of Book 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_36" id="Footnote_3_36" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_36"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held Cotignola +and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI. In the second half of the fifteenth +century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect tyrannies were most +frequent. Braccio da Montone established himself in Perugia in 1416, and +aspired, not without good grounds for hope, to acquiring the kingdom of +Italy. Francesco Sforza, before gaining Milan, had begun to form a +despotism at Ancona. Sforza's rival, Giacomo Piccinino, would probably +have succeeded in his own attempt, had not Ferdinand of Aragon +treacherously murdered him at Naples in 1465. In the disorganization +caused by Charles VIII., Vidovero of Brescia in 1495 established himself +at Cesena and Castelnuovo, and had to be assassinated by Pandolfo +Malatesta at the instigation of Venice. After the death of Gian Galeazzo +Visconti, in 1402, the generals whom he had employed in the +consolidation of his vast dominions attempted to divide the spoil among +themselves. Naples, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence were in course of +time made keenly alive to the risk of suffering a captain of adventure +to run his course unchecked.</p></div> + +<p>There remains the <i>sixth</i> and last class of despots to be mentioned. +This again is large and of the first importance. Citizens of eminence, +like the Medici at Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglioni of +Perugia, the Vitelli of Città di Castello, the Gambacorti of Pisa, like +Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (1502), Roméo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna +(1323), the plebeian, Alticlinio, and Agolanti of Padua (1313), Giovanni +Vignate, the millionaire of Lodi (1402), acquired more than their due +weight in the conduct of affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In +most of these cases great wealth was the original source of despotic +ascendency. It was not uncommon to buy cities together with their +Signory. Thus the Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins in 1333; the +Appiani sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza and Imola in 1377. In +1444 Galeazzo Malatesta sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and +Fossombrone to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by the same +family. Franceschetto Cibo purchased the County of Anguillara. Towns at +last came to have their market value. It was known that Bologna was +worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 Lucca 30,000,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg115" id="pg115">115</a></span> and so +forth. But personal qualities and nobility of blood might also produce +despots of the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent from a +bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., who was for a long time an +honorable prisoner in Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle +with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy to ability and vigor +in the last years of the fifteenth century. But the neighborhood of the +Papal power, and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold of +this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the case of the Medici and +the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher +families assumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were always +advancing.</p> + +<p>The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth +century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward +tyranny. Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not +answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.' +But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead +of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of +social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for +municipalities at the end of those fierce internal conflicts and +exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli, +with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the +most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom. 'No +accident, however weighty<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg116" id="pg116">116</a></span> and violent, could ever restore Milan or +Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. This is clear from +the fact that after the death of Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to +regain freedom, she was unable to preserve it.'<a name="FNanchor_1_37" id="FNanchor_1_37" /><a href="#Footnote_1_37" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Whether Machiavelli +is right in referring this incapacity for self-government to the +corruption of morals and religion may be questioned. But it is certain +that throughout the states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice, +causes were at work inimical to republics and favorable to despotisms.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_37" id="Footnote_1_37" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_37"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Discorsi</i>, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in +the same passage, 'Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of a +prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince with all +his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish +another; and the city has no rest except by the creation of a new lord, +unless one burgher by his goodness and his great qualities may chance to +preserve its independence during his lifetime.'</p></div> + +<p>It will be observed in this classification of Italian tyrants that the +tenure of their power was almost uniformly forcible. They generally +acquired it through the people in the first instance, and maintained it +by the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do with their claims. +The bastards of Popes, who like Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants +like the Medici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a rich +usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with nobles of the ancient +houses of Este, Visconti, or Malatesta. The chief point in favor of the +latter was the familiarity which through long years of authority had +accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, they had a better +chance of return to power than parvenus, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg117" id="pg117">117</a></span> party-cry and ensigns +were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty—if indeed +the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established +and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of +doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta. +Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece was democratic. It recruited its +ranks from all classes and erected its thrones upon the sovereignty of +the peoples it oppressed. The impulse to the free play of ambitious +individuality which this state of things communicated was enormous. +Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the chair of S. Peter's, the +meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity, vigor, unscrupulous +crime were the chief requisites for success. It was not till Cesare +Borgia displayed his magnificence at the French Court, till the Italian +adventurer matched himself with royalty in its legitimate splendor, that +the lowness of his origin and the frivolity of his pretensions appeared +in any glaring light.<a name="FNanchor_1_38" id="FNanchor_1_38" /><a href="#Footnote_1_38" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In Italy itself, where there existed no +time-honored hierarchy of classes and no fountain of nobility in the +person of a sovereign, one man was a match for another, provided he knew +how to assert himself. To the conditions of a society based on these +principles we may ascribe the unrivaled emergence of great<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg118" id="pg118">118</a></span> +personalities among the tyrants, as well as the extraordinary tenacity +and vigor of such races as the Visconti. In the contest for power, and +in the maintenance of an illegal authority, the picked athletes came to +the front. The struggle by which they established their tyranny, the +efforts by which they defended it against foreign foes and domestic +adversaries, trained them to endurance and to daring. They lived +habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies. +Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their +vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or +mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his +brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only +gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and +moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, +scientific in the use of cruelty and terror, employing first-rate +faculties of brain and will and bodily powers in the service of +transcendent egotism, only the <i>virtuosi</i> of political craft as +theorized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their own upon this +perilous arena.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_38" id="Footnote_1_38" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_38"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Brantôme <i>Capitaines Etrangers</i>, Discours 48, gives an +account of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds: +'The king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doubt +how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the +petty Duke of Valentinois.'</p></div> + +<p>The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. Immured +in strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like +the Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops, +protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and +drink lest they should be poisoned. His chief associates were +artists,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg119" id="pg119">119</a></span> +men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and exiles. He had no real +friends or equals, and against his own family he adopted an attitude of +fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he was +exposed.<a name="FNanchor_1_39" id="FNanchor_1_39" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_39" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His timidity verged on +monomania. Like Alfonso II. of Naples, he was tortured with the ghosts +of starved or strangled victims; like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious +fascination of astrology; like Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at +the sound of thunder, and set one band of body-guards to watch another +next his person. He dared not hope for a quiet end. No one believed in +the natural death of a prince: princes must be poisoned or poignarded.<a +name="FNanchor_2_40" id="FNanchor_2_40" /><a href="#Footnote_2_40" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Out<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg120" +id="pg120">120</a></span> of thirteen of the Carrara family, in little +more than a century (1318-1435), three were deposed or murdered by near +relatives, one was expelled by a rival from his state, four were +executed by the Venetians. Out of five of the La Scala family, three +were killed by their brothers, and a fourth was poisoned in exile.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_39" id="Footnote_1_39" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_39"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See what +Guicciardini in his <i>History of Florence</i> says about the suspicious +temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and philosophical Lorenzo +de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent and penetrating allegory +of <i>Sospetto</i>, and its application to the tyrants of Italy in Ariosto's +<i>Cinque Canti</i> (C. 2. St. 1-9).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_40" id="Footnote_2_40" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_40"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fascinated by the +crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim on his +death-bed:— +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">'O thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whilst horror waits on princes.'</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred. Besides +those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to notice the +murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at Mirandola (1533); +the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo; the assassination of +Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerino (1434); Ostasio da Polenta's +fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's fratricide in the next +generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga by his brothers; Gian +Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the poisoning of Francesco +Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of Montalto, with her little +girl, by her aunt; and the murder of Galeotto Manfredi, by his wife, at +Faenza (1488).</p></div> + +<p>To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning families, occurring in the +fifteenth century alone, would be quite impossible within the limits of +this chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more important that any +adequate notion of the perils of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus +Girolamo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli (1488), and +Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo<a name="FNanchor_1_41" id="FNanchor_1_41" /><a href="#Footnote_1_41" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +(1387). At Lodi in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief members of the +ruling house of Vistarini on the public square, and died himself of +poison after a few months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni +Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Visconti in a wooden cage at +Pavia, and beat his brains out in despair against its bars. At the same +epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy of the Cavalcabò family +together in his castle of Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring +their tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards beheaded as a traitor at +Milan (1425). Ottobon Terzi<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg121" id="pg121">121</a></span> was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola +Borghese at Siena (1499). Altobello Dattiri at Todi (about 1500), +Raimondo and Pandolfo Malatesta at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di +Montefeltro at Urbino (1444).<a name="FNanchor_2_42" id="FNanchor_2_42" /><a href="#Footnote_2_42" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The Varani were massacred to a man in +the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino (1434), the Trinci at Foligno +(1434), and the Chiavelli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day +(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reigning families introduces +one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Italian despotism. +From the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio Cesare, a boy of +two years old, was saved by his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss +of hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. Hardly had she gained +this refuge, when the Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with her +burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There the same scenes of bloodshed +awaited her. A third time she took to flight, and now concealed her +precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was afterwards stolen from the +town on horseback by a soldier of adventure. After surviving three +massacres of kith and kin, he returned as despot at the age of twelve to +Camerino, and became a general of distinction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg122" id="pg122">122</a></span> But he was not destined +to end his life in peace. Cesare Borgia finally murdered him, together +with three of his sons, when he had reached the age of sixty. Less +romantic but not less significant in the annals of tyranny is the story +of the Trinci. A rival noble of Foligno, Pietro Rasiglia, had been +injured in his honor by the chief of the ruling house. He contrived to +assassinate two brothers, Nicolà and Bartolommeo, in his castle of +Nocera; but the third, Corrado Trinci, escaped, and took a fearful +vengeance on his enemy. By the help of Braccio da Montone he possessed +himself of Nocera and all its inhabitants, with the exception of Pietro +Rasiglia's wife, whom her husband flung from the battlements. Corrado +then butchered the men, women, and children of the Rasiglia clan, to the +number of three hundred persons, accomplishing his vengeance with +details of atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. It is +recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their mangled limbs paraded +the streets of Foligno as a terror-striking spectacle for the +inhabitants. He then ruled the city by violence, until the warlike +Cardinal dei Vitelleschi avenged society of so much mischief by +destroying the tyrant and five of his sons, in the same year. Equally +fantastic are the annals of the great house of the Baglioni at Perugia. +Raised in 1389 upon the ruins of the bourgeois faction called Raspanti, +they founded their tyranny in the person of Pandolfo Baglioni, who was +murdered together<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg123" id="pg123">123</a></span> with sixty of his clan and followers by the party +they had dispossessed. The new despot, Biordo Michelotti, was stabbed in +the shoulders with a poisoned dagger by his relative, the abbot of S. +Pietro. Then the city, in 1416, submitted to Braccio da Montone, who +raised it to unprecedented power and glory. On his death it fell back +into new discords, from which it was rescued again by the Baglioni in +1466, now finally successful in their prolonged warfare with the rival +family of Oddi. But they did not hold their despotism in tranquillity. +In 1500 one of the members of the house, Grifonetto degli Baglioni, +conspired against his kinsmen and slew them in their palaces at night. +As told by Matarazzo, this tragedy offers an epitome of all that is +most, brilliant and terrible in the domestic feuds of the Italian +tyrants.<a name="FNanchor_3_43" id="FNanchor_3_43" /><a href="#Footnote_3_43" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present +another series of catastrophes, due less to their personal crimes than +to the fury of the civil strife that raged around them. Giovanni +Bentivoglio began the dynasty in 1400. The next year he was stabbed to +death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated populace, who thought +he had betrayed their interests in battle. His son, Antonio, was +beheaded by a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the family on their +return from exile suffered the same fate. In course of time the +Bentivogli made themselves adored by the people; and when Piccinino +imprisoned the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg124" id="pg124">124</a></span> heir of their house, Annibale, in the castle of Varano, +four youths of the Marescotti family undertook his rescue at the peril +of their lives, and raised him to the Signory of Bologna. In 1445 the +Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popular dynasty, invited +Annibale and all his clan to a christening feast, where they +exterminated every member of the reigning house. Not one Bentivoglio was +left alive. In revenge for this massacre, the Marescotti, aided by the +populace, hunted down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, and +nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the Bentivoglio palace. They +then drew from his obscurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio, +who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool-factory to a throne. +Whether he was a genuine Bentivoglio or not, mattered little. The house +had become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity had been baptized in +the bloodshed of four massacres. What remains of its story can be +briefly told. When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Marescotti +intrigued with him, and eight of their number were sacrificed by the +Bentivogli in spite of their old services to the dynasty. The survivors, +by the help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to witness the +final banishment of the Bentivogli and to take part in the destruction +of the palace, where their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the +Canetoli upon the walls.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_41" id="Footnote_1_41" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_41"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their +castle and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_42" id="Footnote_2_42" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_42"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back. +Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law. Raimondo +Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as hermits. Dattiri +was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by the people, who bit +his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate it—distributing his living +body as a sort of infernal sacrament among themselves.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_43" id="Footnote_3_43" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_43"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See the article 'Perugia' in my <i>Sketches in Italy and +Greece</i>.</p></div> + +<p>To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg125" id="pg125">125</a></span> of force repelled +by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, +would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing +nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic +and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable +by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting +through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the +spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough +however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the +tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever +capable of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well based in its +dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi +offers a long list of terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for +adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the +throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned +by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal +against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life +(1506). Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force +repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by +Tasso lived.</p> + +<p>Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and +timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his +amusement, and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to +extravagance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg126" id="pg126">126</a></span> Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable +and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs +with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures. +From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for +states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the +utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance. It would +be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this +sort. The saner, better, and nobler among them—men of the stamp of Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico +Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation of their +empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men, +the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the +building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of +conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively +innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo +Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a +scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino, +exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of +culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic +houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and +the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in +the shape of men. The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last +Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg127" id="pg127">127</a></span> the last Medici are +among the worst specimens of human nature.</p> + +<p>Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian tyrant in his essay on +Machiavelli deserves careful study. It may, however, be remarked that +the picture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker crimes of the +despots, and draws his portrait almost exclusively from such men as Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino, +and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to establish—that +political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern +brutality—leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined +passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the +excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes. +When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary, +where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and +humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci, +Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. When he writes, 'His +passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their +most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been +accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria +Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. If all +the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and +conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have +taken place. It is,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg128" id="pg128">128</a></span> however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth +century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects assumed an +external form of mildness. As Italy mixed with the European nations, and +as tyranny came to be legalized in the Italian states, the despots +developed a policy not of terrorism but of enervation (Lorenzo de' +Medici is the great example), and aspired to be paternal governors.</p> + +<p>What I have said about Italian despotism is no mere fancy picture. The +actual details of Milanese history, the innumerable tragedies of +Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the ascendency of +despotic families, are far more terrible than any fiction; nor would it +be easy for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage +barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's denunciations<a +name="FNanchor_1_44" id="FNanchor_1_44" /><a href="#Footnote_1_44" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and Villani's descriptions of a despot read +like passages from Plato's +Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny. +The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be +cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian +thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): 'The crimes of +despots always hinder and often neutralize the virtues of good men. +Their pleasures are at variance with morality. By them the riches of +their subjects are<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg129" +id="pg129">129</a></span> swallowed up. They are foes to men who grow in +wisdom and in greatness of soul in their dominions. They diminish by +their imposts the wealth of the peoples ruled by them. Their unbridled +lust is never satiated, but their subjects have to suffer such outrages +and insults as their fancy may from time to time suggest. But inasmuch +as the violence of tyranny is manifested to all eyes by these and many +other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh. It is enough to +select one feature, strange in appearance but familiar in fact; for what +can be more extraordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustrious +lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of high descent and +time-honored nobility frequenting their tables and accepting their +bounties? Yet if we consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants +often turns to misery and ruin. Who can exaggerate their wretchedness? +They know not where to place their confidence; and their courtiers are +always on the lookout for the despot's fall, gladly lending their +influence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of previous servility. +This does not happen to hereditary kings, because their conduct toward +their subjects, as well as their good qualities and all their +circumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants. Therefore +the very causes which produce and fortify and augment tyrannies, conceal +and nourish in themselves the sources of their overthrow and ruin. This +indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_44" id="Footnote_1_44" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_44"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the passage +condensed from his Sermons in Villari's Life of Savonarola (Eng. Tr. +vol. ii. p. 62). The most thorough-going analysis of despotic +criminality is contained in Savonarola's <i>Tractato circa el Reggimento e +Governo della Città di Firenze</i>, Trattato ii. cap. 2. <i>Della +Malitia e pessime Conditioni del Tyranno</i>.</p></div> + +<p>It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, from<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg130" id="pg130">130</a></span> the pen of a +Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an +invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of +burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the +censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the +house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction they +conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly concerning the +pernicious effects of their misgovernment.<a name="FNanchor_1_45" id="FNanchor_1_45" /><a href="#Footnote_1_45" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is to be noticed that +Villani and Matarazzo agree about the special evils brought upon the +populations by their tyrants. Lust and violence take the first place. +Next comes extortion; then the protection of the lawless and the +criminal against the better sort of citizens. But the Florentine, with +intellectual acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of their +rule. They retard the development of mental greatness in their states, +and check the growth of men of genius. Ariosto, in the comparative calm +of the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to the protectorate +of Spain, sums up the records of the past in the following memorable +passage:<a name="FNanchor_2_46" id="FNanchor_2_46" /><a href="#Footnote_2_46" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 'Happy the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless man +gives law! Wretched indeed and pitiable are those where injustice and +cruelty hold sway, where burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid +upon the people by tyrants like those who now abound in Italy, whose +infamy will be recorded through<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg131" id="pg131">131</a></span> years to come as no less black than +Caligula's or Nero's.' Guicciardini, with pregnant brevity, observes:<a name="FNanchor_3_47" id="FNanchor_3_47" /><a href="#Footnote_3_47" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +'The mortar with which the states of the tyrants are cemented is the +blood of the citizens.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_45" id="Footnote_1_45" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_45"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Arch. Stor. +xvi. 102. See my <i>Sketches in Italy and Greece</i>, p. 84.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_46" id="Footnote_2_46" /><a +href="#FNanchor_2_46"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Cinque Canti, +ii. 5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_47" id="Footnote_3_47" /><a +href="#FNanchor_3_47"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Ricordi +Politici, ccxlii.</p></div> + +<p>In the history of Italian despotism two points of first-rate importance +will demand attention. The first is the process by which the greater +tyrannies absorbed the smaller during the fourteenth century. The second +is the relation of the chief Condottieri to the tyrants of the fifteenth +century. The evolution of these two phenomena cannot be traced more +clearly than by a study of the history of Milan, which at the same time +presents a detailed picture of the policy and character of the Italian +despot during this period. The dynasties of Visconti and Sforza from +1300 to 1500 bridged over the years that intervened between the Middle +Age and the Renaissance, between the period of the free burghs and the +period during which Italy was destined to become the theater of the +action of more powerful nations. Their alliances and diplomatic +relations prepared the way for the interference of foreigners in Italian +affairs. Their pedigree illustrates the power acquired by military +adventurers in the peninsula. The magnitude of their political schemes +displays the most soaring ambition which it was ever granted to Italian +princes to indulge. The splendor of their court and the intelligence of +their culture bear witness to the high state of civilization which the +Italians had reached.</p> + +<p>The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg132" id="pg132">132</a></span> +power of the Visconti in Milan was founded upon that of the Della Torre +family, who preceded them as Captains General of the people at the end +of the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, first laid a +substantial basis for the dominion of his house by imprisoning Napoleone +Della Torre and five of his relatives in three iron cages in 1277, and +by causing his nephew Matteo Visconti to be nominated both by the +Emperor and by the people of Milan as imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed +the Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of a prudent Italian +despot. From the date 1311, when he finally succeeded in his attempts +upon the sovereignty of Milan, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor of +his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of character, craft, and +insight, more than by violence or cruelty. Excellent as a general, he +was still better as a diplomatist, winning more cities by money than by +the sword. All through his life, as became a Ghibelline chief at that +time, he persisted in fierce enmity against the Church. But just before +his death a change came over him. He showed signs of superstitious +terror, and began to fear the ban of excommunication which lay upon him. +This weakness alarmed the suspicions of his sons, terrible and wolf-like +men, whom Matteo had hitherto controlled with bit and bridle. They +therefore induced him to abdicate in 1322, and when in the same year he +died, they buried his body in a secret place, lest it should be exhumed, +and scattered to the winds in accordance with<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg133" id="pg133">133</a></span> the Papal edict against him.<a +name="FNanchor_1_48" id="FNanchor_1_48" /><a href="#Footnote_1_48" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Galeazzo, his son, was less fortunate than +Matteo, surnamed Il Grande by the Lombards. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria +threw him into prison on the occasion of his visit to Milan in 1327, and +only released him at the intercession of his friend Castruccio +Castracane. To such an extent was the growing tyranny of the Visconti +still dependent upon their office delegated from the Empire. This +Galeazzo married Beatrice d' Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, of whom +Dante speaks in the eighth canto of the Purgatory, and had by her a son +named Azzo. Azzo bought the city, together with the title of Imperial +Vicar, from the same Louis who had imprisoned his father.<a +name="FNanchor_2_49" id="FNanchor_2_49" /><a href="#Footnote_2_49" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> When he was thus seated in the tyranny of his +grandfather, he proceeded to fortify it further by the addition of ten +Lombard towns, which he reduced beneath the supremacy of Milan. At the +same time he consolidated his own power by <span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg134" id="pg134">134</a></span>the murder of his uncle Marco in +1329, who had grown too mighty as a general. Giovio describes him as +fair of complexion, blue-eyed, curly-haired, and subject to the +hereditary disease of gout.<a name="FNanchor_3_50" id="FNanchor_3_50" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_50" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Azzo died in 1339, +and was succeeded by his uncle Lucchino. In Lucchino the darker side of +the Visconti character appears for the first time. Cruel, moody, and +jealous, he passed his life in perpetual terror. His nephews, Galeazzo +and Barnabas, conspired against him, and were exiled to Flanders. His +wife, Isabella Fieschi, intrigued with Galeazzo and disgraced him by her +amours with Ugolino Gonzaga and Dandolo the Doge of Venice. Finally +suspicion rose to such a pitch between this ill-assorted couple, that, +while Lucchino was plotting how to murder Isabella, she succeeded in +poisoning him in 1349. In spite of these domestic calamities, Lucchino +was potent as a general and governor. He bought Parma from Obizzo d' +Este, and made the town of Pisa dependent upon Milan. Already in his +policy we can trace the encroachment which characterized the schemes of +the Milanese despots, who were always plotting to advance their foot +beyond the Apennines as a prelude to the complete subjugation of Italy. +Lucchino left sons, but none of proved legitimacy.<a +name="FNanchor_4_51" id="FNanchor_4_51" /><a href="#Footnote_4_51" +class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Consequently<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg135" id="pg135">135</a></span> he was succeeded by his brother +Giovanni, son of old Matteo il Grande, and Archbishop of Milan. This +man, the friend of Petrarch, was one of the most notable characters of +the fourteenth century. Finding himself at the head of sixteen cities, +he added Bologna to the tyranny of the Visconti in 1350, and made +himself strong enough to defy the Pope. Clement VI., resenting his +encroachments on Papal territory, summoned him to Avignon. Giovanni +Visconti replied that he would march thither at the head of 12,000 +cavalry and 6,000 infantry. In the Duomo of Milan he ascended his throne +with the crosier in his left hand and a drawn sword in his right; and +thus he is always represented in pictures. The story of Giovanni's +answer to the Papal Legate is well told by Corio:<a name="FNanchor_5_52" +id="FNanchor_5_52" /><a href="#Footnote_5_52" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> +'After Mass in the Cathedral the great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a +flashing sword, which he had girded on his thigh, and with his left hand +seized the cross, saying, "This is my spiritual scepter, and I will +wield the sword as my temporal, in defense of all my empire."' +Afterwards he sent couriers to engage lodgings for his soldiers and his +train for six months. Visitors to Avignon found no room in the city, and +the Pope was fain to decline so terrible a guest. In 1353 Giovanni +annexed Genoa to the Milanese principality, and died in 1354, having +established the rule of the Visconti over the whole of the North of +Italy, with the exception of Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and +Venice.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_48" id="Footnote_1_48" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_48"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We may compare +what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the 'Purgatory' (canto +iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests +against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense of +justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the sentence +of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of partisans; yet the +examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo Visconti prove how +terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences continued to be. Few +had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di Mirandola, who expired in 1499 +under the ban of the Church, which he had borne for sixteen years.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_49" id="Footnote_2_49" /><a +href="#FNanchor_2_49"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This was in +1328. Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins. The vast wealth of the Visconti +amassed during their years of peaceful occupation always stood them in +good stead when bad times came, and when the Emperor was short of cash. +Azzo deserves special commendation from the student of art for the +exquisite octagonal tower of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta +with marble pilasters, in Milan. It is quite one of the loveliest +monuments of mediæval Italian architecture.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_50" id="Footnote_3_50" /><a +href="#FNanchor_3_50"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Lucchino and +Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout, the latter to such an +extent as to be almost crippled.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_51" id="Footnote_4_51" /><a +href="#FNanchor_4_51"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> This would not +have been by itself a bar to succession in an Italian tyranny. But +Lucchino's bastards were not of the proper stuff to continue their +father's government, while their fiery uncle was precisely the man to +sustain the honor and extend the power of the Visconti.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_52" id="Footnote_5_52" /><a +href="#FNanchor_5_52"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Storia di +Milano, 1554, p. 223.</p></div> + +<p>The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg136" id="pg136">136</a></span> +reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a new epoch in the despotism +of the Visconti. They are now no longer the successful rivals of the +Della Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but self-made +sovereigns, with a well-established power in Milan and a wide extent of +subject territory. Their dynasty, though based on force and maintained +by violence, has come to be acknowledged; and we shall soon see them +allying themselves with the royal houses of Europe. After the death of +Giovanni, Matteo's sons were extinct. But Stefano, the last of his +family, had left three children, who now succeeded to the lands and +cities of the house. They were named Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. +Between these three princes a partition of the heritage of Giovanni +Visconti was effected. Matteo took Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, +Bobbio, and some other towns of less importance. Bernabo received +Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo. Galeazzo held Como, Novara, +Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and Alessandria. Milan and Genoa were to be +ruled by the three in common. It may here be noticed that the +dismemberment of Italian despotisms among joint-heirs was a not +unfrequent source of disturbance and a cause of weakness to their +dynasties. At the same time the practice followed naturally upon the +illegal nature of the tyrant's title. He dealt with his cities as so +many pieces of personal property, which he could distribute as he chose, +not as a coherent whole to be bequeathed to one ruler for the common +benefit<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg137" id="pg137">137</a></span> +of all his subjects. In consequence of such partition, it became +the interest of brother to murder brother, so as to effect a +reconsolidation of the family estates. Something of the sort happened on +this occasion. Matteo abandoned himself to bestial sensuality; and his +two brothers, finding him both feeble and likely to bring discredit on +their rule, caused him to be assassinated in 1355.<a +name="FNanchor_1_53" id="FNanchor_1_53" /><a href="#Footnote_1_53" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> They then jointly swayed the Milanese, with +unanimity remarkable in despots. Galeazzo was +distinguished as the handsomest man of his age. He was tall and +graceful, with golden hair, which he wore in long plaits, or tied up in +a net, or else loose and crowned with flowers. Fond of display and +magnificence, he spent much of his vast wealth in shows and festivals, +and in the building of palaces and churches. The same taste for splendor +led him to seek royal marriages for his children. His daughter Violante +was wedded to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England, who +received with her for dowry the sum of 200,000 golden florins, as well +as five cities bordering on Piedmont.<a name="FNanchor_2_54" +id="FNanchor_2_54" /><a href="#Footnote_2_54" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +It must have been a strange experience for this brother of the Black +Prince, leaving London, where +the streets were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds laid on +straw, and where wine was sold as medicine, to pass into the luxurious +palaces of Lombardy, walled<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg138" id="pg138">138</a></span> with marble, and raised high above smooth +streets of stone. Of his marriage with Violante Giovio gives some +curious details. He says that Galeazzo on this occasion made splendid +presents to more than 200 Englishmen, so that he was reckoned to have +outdone the greatest kings in generosity. At the banquet Gian Galeazzo, +the bride's brother, leading a choice company of well-born youths, +brought to the table with each course fresh gifts.<a name="FNanchor_3_55" id="FNanchor_3_55" /><a href="#Footnote_3_55" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'At one time it +was a matter of sixty most beautiful horses with trappings of silk and +silver; at another, plate, hawks, hounds, horse-gear, fine cuirasses, +suits of armor fashioned of wrought steel, helmets adorned with crests, +surcoats embroidered with pearls, belts, precious jewels set in gold, +and great quantities of cloth of gold and crimson stuff for making +raiment. Such was the profusion of this banquet that the remnants taken +from the table were enough and to spare for 10,000 men.' Petrarch, we +may remember, assisted at this festival and sat among the princes. It +was thus that Galeazzo displayed his wealth before the feudal nobles of +the North, and at the same time stretched the hand of friendly patronage +to the greatest literary man of Europe. Meanwhile he also married his +son Gian Galeazzo to Isabella, daughter of King John of France, spending +on this occasion, it is said, a similar sum of money for the honor of a +royal alliance.<a name="FNanchor_4_56" id="FNanchor_4_56" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_56" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_53" id="Footnote_1_53" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_53"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> M. Villani, v. 81. Compare Corio, p. 230. Corio gives the +date 1356.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_54" id="Footnote_2_54" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_54"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Namely, Alba, Cuneo, Carastro, Mondovico, Braida. See Corio, p. 238, +who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu l' ultima roina del suo stato.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_55" id="Footnote_3_55" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_55"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Corio (pp. 239, 240) gives the bill of fare of the banquet.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_56" id="Footnote_4_56" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_56"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Sismondi says he gave 600,000 florins to Charles, the brother of +Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount.</p></div> + +<p>Galeazzo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg139" +id="pg139">139</a></span> held his court at Pavia. His brother reigned +at Milan. Bernabo displayed all the worst vices of the Visconti. His +system of taxation was most oppressive, and at the same time so +lucrative that he was able, according to Giovio's estimate, to settle +nine of his daughters at an expense of something like two millions of +gold pieces. A curious instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting +establishment. Having saddled his subjects with the keep of 5,000 +boar-hounds, he appointed officers to go round and see whether these +brutes were either too lean or too well-fed to be in good condition for +the chase. If anything appeared defective in their management, the +peasants on whom they were quartered had to suffer in their persons and +their property.<a name="FNanchor_1_56" id="FNanchor_1_56" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_56" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This Bernabo was also +remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. Together with his brother, he +devised and caused to be publicly announced by edict that State +criminals would be subjected to a series of tortures extending over the +space<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg140" id="pg140">140</a></span> of +forty days. In this infernal programme every variety of torment found a +place, and days of respite were so calculated as to prolong the lives of +the victims for further suffering, till at last there was little left of +them that had not been hacked and hewed and flayed away.<a +name="FNanchor_2_57" id="FNanchor_2_57" /><a href="#Footnote_2_57" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> To such extremities of terrorism were the +despots driven in the maintenance of their illegal power.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_56" id="Footnote_1_56" /><a +href="#FNanchor_1_56"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Per cagione di +questa caccia continoamente teneva cinque mila cani; e la maggior parte +di quelle distribuiva alla custodia de i cittadini, e anche a i +contadini, i quali niun altro cane che quelli potevano tenere. Questi +due volte il mese erano tenuti a far la mostra. Onde trovandoli macri in +gran somma di danari erano condannati, e se grossi erano, incolpandoli +del troppo, erano multati; se morivano, li pigliava il +tutto.—Corio, p. 247.</p> + +<p>Read M. Villani, vii. 48, for the story of a peasant who was given to +Bernabo's dogs to be devoured for having killed a hare. Corio (p. 247) +describes the punishments which he inflicted on his subjects who were +convicted of poaching—eyes put out, houses burned, etc. A young +man who dreamed of killing a boar had an eye put out and a hand cut off +because he imprudently recounted his vision of sport in sleep. On one +occasion he burned two friars who ventured to remonstrate. We may +compare Pontanus, 'De Immanitate,' vol. i. pp. 318, 320, for similar +cruelty in Ferdinand, King of Naples. </p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_57" id="Footnote_2_57" /><a +href="#FNanchor_2_57"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This programme +may be read in Sismondi, iv. 282.</p></div> + +<p>Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own portion of the +Visconti domain by his son Gian Galleazzo. Now began one of those long, +slow, internecine struggles which were so common between the members of +the ruling families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to get +possession of the young prince's estate. He, on the other hand, +determined to supplant his uncle, and to reunite the whole Visconti +principality beneath his own sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose +in this encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made no disguise of +his physical cowardice, which was real, while he simulated a timidity of +spirit wholly alien to his temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in +religious observances, and gradually induced his uncle and<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg141" id="pg141">141</a></span> cousins to +despise him as a poor creature whom they could make short work of when +occasion served. In 1385, having thus prepared the way for treason, he +avowed his intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of +Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body guard of Germans, he passed near +Milan, where his uncle and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian +Galeazzo feigned a courteous greeting; but when he saw his relatives +within his grasp, he gave a watchword in German to his troops, who +surrounded Bernabo and took him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo +marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle in a dungeon, and +proclaimed himself sole lord of the Visconti heirship.<a name="FNanchor_1_58" id="FNanchor_1_58" /><a href="#Footnote_1_58" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_58" id="Footnote_1_58" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_58"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The narrative of this coup-de-main may be read with +advantage in Corio, p. 258.</p></div> + +<p>The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this coup-de-main +(1385-1402), forms a very important chapter in Italian history. We may +first see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to trace his aims +and achievements. Giovio describes him as having been a remarkably +sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends +feared he would not grow to man's estate. No pleasures in after-life +drew him away from business. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no +charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the preservation of his +health, read and meditated much, and relaxed himself in conversation +with men of letters. Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect +independence in this prince, who was far above the boisterous pleasures +and violent activities of the age in which he lived. In the erection of +public buildings he was magnificent. The Certosa of Pavia and the Duomo +of Milan owed their foundation to his sense of splendor. At the same +time<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg142" +id="pg142">142</a></span> he completed the palace of Pavia, which his father had begun, and +which he made the noblest dwelling-house in Europe. The University of +Pavia was raised by him from a state of decadence to one of great +prosperity, partly by munificent endowments and partly by a wise choice +of professors. In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred taste +for vast engineering projects. He contemplated and partly carried out a +scheme for turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels, and +for drying up the lagoons of Venice. In this way he purposed to attack +his last great enemy, the Republic of S. Mark, upon her strongest point. +Yet in the midst of these huge designs he was able to attend to the most +trifling details of economy. His love of order was so precise that he +may be said to have applied the method of a banker's office to the +conduct of a state. It was he who invented Bureaucracy by creating a +special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments. Their duty +consisted in committing to books and ledgers the minutest items of his +private expenditure and the outgoings of his public purse; in noting the +details of the several taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of +the whole state revenue; and in recording the names and qualities and +claims of his generals, captains, and officials. A separate office was +devoted to his correspondence, of all of which he kept accurate +copies.<a name="FNanchor_1_59" id="FNanchor_1_59" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_59" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> By applying this +mercantile machinery to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg143" +id="pg143">143</a></span> the management of +his vast dominions, at a time when public economy was but little +understood in Europe, Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth enormously above +that of his neighbors. His income in a single year is said to have +amounted to 1,200,000 golden florins, with the addition of 800,000 +golden florins levied by extraordinary calls.<a name="FNanchor_2_60" id="FNanchor_2_60" /><a href="#Footnote_2_60" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The personal timidity +of this formidable prince prevented him from leading his armies in the +field. He therefore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and took +into his service all the chief Condottieri of the day, thus giving an +impulse to the custom which was destined to corrupt the whole military +system of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how to choose, he was +himself the brain and moving principle. He might have boasted that he +never took a step without calculating the cost, carefully considering +the object, and proportioning the means to his end. How mad to such a +man must have seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the +chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their +force upon such unprofitable and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg144" +id="pg144">144</a></span> impossible undertakings as the +subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his +character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said +to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. +Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the +following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity: +'False and pitiless, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius for +enterprise, and to immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did +not endeavor to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him +into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers +to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He +seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the +vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense +wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his +cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the +captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from +him, and were ready to return to his service whenever called upon. He +encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; he knew well how to +distinguish, reward, and win their attachment.'<a name="FNanchor_3_61" +id="FNanchor_3_61" /><a href="#Footnote_3_61" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +Such was the tyrant who aimed at nothing less than the reduction of the +whole of Italy beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who might have +achieved his purpose had not his career of<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg145" id="pg145">145</a></span> conquest been checked by the +Republic of Florence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_59" id="Footnote_1_59" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_59"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne +gli armari de' suoi Archivi maravigliosi libri in carta pecora, i quali +contenevano d' anno in anno i nomi de' capitani, condottieri, e soldati +vecchi, e le paghe di ogn' uno, e 'l rotulo delle cavallerie, et delle +fanterie: v' erano anco registrate le copie delle lettere le quali negli +importantissimi maneggi di far guerra o pace, o egli haveva scritto ai +principi o haveva ricevuto da loro.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_60" id="Footnote_2_60" /><a +href="#FNanchor_2_60"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The description +given by Corio (pp. 260, 266-68) of the dower in money, plate, and +jewels brought by Valentina Visconti to Louis d'Orleans is a good proof +of Gian Galeazzo's wealth. Besides the town of Asti, she took with her +in money 400,000 golden florins. Her gems were estimated at 68,858 +florins, and her plate at 1,667 marks of Paris. The inventory is +curious.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_61" id="Footnote_3_61" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_61"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> 'History of the Italian Republics' (1 vol. Longmans), p. 190.</p></div> + +<p>At the time of his accession the Visconti had already rooted out the +Correggi and Rossi of Parma, the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of +San Donnino, the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabò of +Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the +Brusati of Brescia. Their viper had swallowed all these lesser +snakes.<a name="FNanchor_1_62" id="FNanchor_1_62" /><a href="#Footnote_1_62" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga at +Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house of Scala was in +possession of Verona. Gian Galeazzo's schemes were first directed +against the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of the Visconti, upon the +imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height under the Ghibelline +general Can Grande and his nephew Mastino, in the first half of the +fourteenth century (1312-51). Mastino had himself cherished the project +of an Italian Kingdom; but he died before approaching its +accomplishment. The degeneracy of his house began with his three sons. +The two younger killed the eldest; of the survivors the stronger slew +the weaker and then died in 1374, leaving his domains to two of his +bastards. One of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,<a name="FNanchor_2_63" id="FNanchor_2_63" /><a href="#Footnote_2_63" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and +afterwards<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg146" +id="pg146">146</a></span> fell a prey to the Visconti in 1387. In his subjugation of +Verona Gian Galeazzo contrived to make use of the Carrara family, +although these princes were allied by marriage to the Scaligers, and had +everything to lose by their downfall. He next proceeded to attack Padua, +and gained the co-operation of Venice. In 1388 Francesco da Carrara had +to cede his territory to Visconti's generals, who in the same year +possessed themselves for him of the Trevisan Marches. It was then that +the Venetians saw too late the error they had committed in suffering +Verona and Padua to be annexed by the Visconti, when they ought to have +been fortified as defenses interposed between his growing power and +themselves. Having now made himself master of the North of Italy,<a name="FNanchor_3_64" id="FNanchor_3_64" /><a href="#Footnote_3_64" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +with the exception of Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna, Gian Galeazzo turned +his attention to these cities. Alberto d' Este was ruling in Ferrara; +Francesco da Gonzaga in Mantua. It was the Visconti's policy to enfeeble +these two princes by causing them to appear odious in the eyes of their +subjects.<a name="FNanchor_4_65" id="FNanchor_4_65" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_65" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Accordingly he roused the +jealousy of the Marquis of Ferrara against his nephew Obizzo to such a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg147" +id="pg147">147</a></span>pitch that Alberto beheaded +him together with his mother, burned his wife, and hung a third member +of his family, besides torturing to death all the supposed accomplices +of the unfortunate young man. Against the Marquis of Mantua Gian +Galeazzo devised a still more diabolical plot. By forged letters and +subtly contrived incidents he caused Francesco da Gonzaga to suspect his +wife of infidelity with his secretary.<a name="FNanchor_5_66" +id="FNanchor_5_66" /><a href="#Footnote_5_66" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> +In a fit of jealous fury Francesco ordered the execution of his wife, the mother of several of +his children, together with the secretary. Then he discovered the +Visconti's treason. But it was too late for anything but impotent +hatred. The infernal device had been successful; the Marquis of Mantua +was no less discredited than the Marquis of Ferrara by his crime. It +would seem that these men were not of the stamp and caliber to be +successful villans, and that Gian Galeazzo had reckoned upon this defect +in their character. Their violence caused them to be rather loathed than +feared. The whole of Lombardy was now prostrate before the Milanese +tyrant. His next move was to set foot in Tuscany. For this purpose Pisa +had to be acquired; and here again he resorted to his devilish policy of +inciting other men to crimes by which he alone would profit in the +long-run. Pisa was ruled at that time by the Gambacorta family, with an +old merchant named Pietro at their head. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg148" +id="pg148">148</a></span> man had a friend and +secretary called Jacopo Appiano, whom the Visconti persuaded to turn +Judas, and to entrap and murder his benefactor and his children. The +assassination took place in 1392. In 1399 Gherardo, son of Jacopo +Appiano, who held Pisa at the disposal of Gian Galeazzo, sold him this +city for 200,000 florins.<a name="FNanchor_6_67" id="FNanchor_6_67" /><a href="#Footnote_6_67" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Perugia was next attacked. Here Pandolfo, +chief of the Baglioni family, held a semi-constitutional authority, +which the Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, and +then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his own.<a name="FNanchor_7_68" id="FNanchor_7_68" /><a href="#Footnote_7_68" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> All Italy and +even Germany had now begun to regard the usurpations of the Milanese +despot with alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus refused to take +action against him; nay, in 1395 he granted to the Visconti the +investiture of the Duchy of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only +Pavia for himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and in the next +two years the plague came to his assistance by enfeebling the ruling +families of Lucca and Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that +he was now able to take possession of those cities.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_62" id="Footnote_1_62" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_62"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Il Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly +given to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in +allusion to their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_63" id="Footnote_2_63" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_63"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio tried +to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his death in the +prosecution of infamous amours.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_64" id="Footnote_3_64" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_64"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the Marquisate of +Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir in a +kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in formidable +neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_65" id="Footnote_4_65" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_65"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The policy adopted by the Visconti against the Estensi and the +Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc. iii. 32): 'quando +alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto l' animo ad uno +accordo, non ci è altro modo più vero, nè più stabile, che fargli usare +qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il qual tu non vuoi che +l' accordo si faccia.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_66" id="Footnote_5_66" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_66"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina, daughter +of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy the more +disgraceful.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_67" id="Footnote_6_67" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_67"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty +despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, is +similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the Vistarini +of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the Ducal house of +Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino Buonacolsi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_68" id="Footnote_7_68" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_68"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed himself of +Perugia in 1400, having paved his way for the usurpation by causing +Biordo Michelotti, the successor of the Baglioni to be assassinated by +his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed that he proceeded +slowly and surely in the case of each annexation, licking over his prey +after he had throttled it and before he swallowed it, like a +boa-constrictor.</p></div> + +<p>There<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg149" +id="pg149">149</a></span> remained no power in Italy, except the Republic of Florence and +the exiled but invincible Francesco da Carrara, to withstand his further +progress. Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Francesco managed +to return to Padua. Still the peril which threatened the whole of Italy +was imminent. The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood—rich, +prosperous, and full of mental force. His acquisitions were well +cemented; his armies in good condition; his treasury brim full; his +generals highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp respected +the iron will and the deep policy of the despot who swayed their action +from his arm-chair in Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains and +hands that did him service, to keep them mutually in check, and by their +regulated action to make himself not one but a score of men. At last, +when all other hope of independence for Italy had failed, the plague +broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo retired to his isolated +fortress of Marignano in order to escape infection. Yet there in 1402 he +sickened. A comet appeared in the sky, to which he pointed as a sign of +his approaching death—'God could not but signalize the end of so +supreme a ruler,' he told his attendants. He died aged 55. Italy drew a +deep breath. The danger was passed.</p> + +<p>The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo for the enslavement of +Italy, the ability and force of intellect which sustained him in its +execution, and the power with which he bent men to his will, are +scarcely more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg150" +id="pg150">150</a></span> extraordinary than the sudden dissolution of his dukedom +at his death. Too timid to take the field himself, he had trained in his +service a band of great commanders, among whom Alberico da Barbino, +Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, and +Ottobon Terzo were the most distinguished. As long as he lived and held +them in leading strings, all went well. But at his death his two sons +were still mere boys. He had to intrust their persons, together with the +conduct of his hardly won dominions, to these captains in conjunction +with the Duchess Catherine and a certain Francesco Barbavara. This man +had been the Duke's body-servant, and was now the paramour of the +Duchess. The generals refused to act with them; and each seized upon +such portions of the Visconti inheritance as he could most easily +acquire. The vast tyranny of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a +day. The whole being based on no legal right, but held together +artificially by force and skill, its constituent parts either reasserted +their independence or became the prey of adventurers.<a name="FNanchor_1_69" id="FNanchor_1_69" /><a href="#Footnote_1_69" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Many scions of +the old ejected families recovered their authority in the subject towns. +We hear again of the Scotti at Piacenza, the Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, the Benzoni at Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and +Colleoni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcabò at +Cremona.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg151" id="pg151">151</a></span> +Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia; +Ottonbon Terzo established himself in Parma. Meanwhile Giovanni Maria +Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria +occupied Pavia. Gabriello, a bastard son of the first duke, fortified +himself in Crema.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_69" id="Footnote_1_69" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_69"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian +Galeazzo's death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of +these usurpations. Corio, pp. 292 et seq., contain the details.</p></div> + +<p>In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, there was a +progressive tendency to degeneration. The strain of tyranny sustained by +force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the +isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a +kind of hereditary madness.<a name="FNanchor_1_70" id="FNanchor_1_70" +/><a href="#Footnote_1_70" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In the case of +Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria Visconti these predisposing causes of +insanity were probably intensified by the fact that their father and mother were first cousins, +the grandchildren of Stefano, son of Matteo il Grande. Be this as it +may, the constitutional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in +Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something akin to madness +in his brother. Gian Maria, Duke of Milan in nothing but in name, +distinguished himself by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his +ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men. All the +criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get denounced as criminals, +even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his +infernal sport.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg152" +id="pg152">152</a></span> His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the +dogs to their duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched +them tear his victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.<a +name="FNanchor_2_71" id="FNanchor_2_71" /><a href="#Footnote_2_71" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In 1412 some Milanese nobles succeeded in +murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse into the street. A +prostitute is said to have covered it with roses. Filippo Maria +meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,<a name="FNanchor_3_72" +id="FNanchor_3_72" /><a href="#Footnote_3_72" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +who brought him nearly half a million of florins for dowry, together +with her husband's soldiers and the cities he had seized after Gian +Galeazzo's death. By the help of this alliance Filippo was now gradually +recovering the Lombard portion of his father's dukedom. The minor +cities, purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the +grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and political +tragedies that drenched their streets with blood. Piacenza was utterly +depopulated. It is recorded that for the space of a year only three of +its inhabitants remained within the walls.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_70" id="Footnote_1_70" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_70"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a +scientific statement of the theory of madness developed by accumulated +and hereditary vices.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_71" id="Footnote_2_71" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_71"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Corio, p. <a href="#pg301">301</a> mentions by name Giovanni da Pusterla and Bertolino +del Maino as 'lacerati da i cani del Duca.' Members of the families of +these men afterwards helped to kill him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_72" id="Footnote_3_72" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_72"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Beatrice di Tenda, the wife of Facino Cane, was twenty years older +than the Duke of Milan. As soon as the Visconti felt himself assured in +his duchy, he caused a false accusation to be brought against her of +adultery with the youthful Michele Oranbelli, and, in spite of her +innocence, beheaded her in 1418. Machiavelli relates this act of perfidy +with Tacitean conciseness (1st. Fior. lib. i. vol. i. p. 55): 'Dipoi per +esser grato de' benefici grandi, come sono quasi sempre tutti i +Principi, accusè Beatrice sua moglie di stupro e la fece morire.'</p></div> + +<p>Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was extremely ugly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg153" +id="pg153">153</a></span> and so +sensitive about his ill-formed person that he scarcely dared to show +himself abroad. He habitually lived in secret chambers, changed +frequently from room to room, and when he issued from his palace refused +salutations in the streets. As an instance of his nervousness, the +chroniclers report that he could not endure to hear the noise of +thunder.<a name="FNanchor_1_73" id="FNanchor_1_73" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_73" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> At the same time he +inherited much of his father's insight +into character, and his power of controlling men more bold and active +than himself. But he lacked the keen decision and broad views of Gian +Galeazzo. He vacillated in policy and kept planning plots which seemed +to have no object but his own disadvantage. Excess of caution made him +surround the captains of his troops with spies, and check them at the +moment when he feared they might become too powerful. This want of +confidence neutralized the advantage which he might have gained by his +choice of fitting instruments. Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza +for his general against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But he +could not attach the great soldier of fortune to himself. Sforza took +the pay of Florence against his old patron, and in 1441 forced him to a +ruinous peace; one of the conditions of which was the marriage of the +Duke of Milan's only daughter, Bianca,<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg154" id="pg154">154</a></span> to the son of the peasant of +Cotignola. Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no male heir. +The great family of the Visconti had dwindled away. Consequently, after +the duke's death in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of +Milan, which he first secured by force and then claimed in right of his +wife. An adverse claim was set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of +Orleans having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of Gian +Galeazzo.<a name="FNanchor_2_74" id="FNanchor_2_74" /><a href="#Footnote_2_74" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But both of these claims were invalid, since the +investiture granted by Wenceslaus to the first duke excluded females. So +Milan was once again thrown open to the competition of usurpers.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_73" id="Footnote_1_73" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_73"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The most complete account of Filippo Maria Visconti written +by a contemporary is that of Piero Candido Decembrio (Muratori, vol. +xx.). The student must, however, read between the lines of this +biography, for Decembrio, at the request of Leonello d' Este, suppressed +the darker colors of the portrait of his master. See the correspondence +in Rosmini's Life of Guarino da Verona.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_74" id="Footnote_2_74" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_74"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This claim of the House of Orleans to Milan was one source +of French interference in Italian affairs. Judged by Italian custom, +Sforza's claim through Bianca was as good as that of the Orleans princes +through Valentina, since bastardy was no real bar in the peninsula. It +is said that Filippo Maria bequeathed his duchy to the Crown of Naples, +by a will destroyed after his death. Could this bequest have taken +effect, it might have united Italy beneath one sovereign. But the +probabilities are that the jealousies of Florence, Venice, and Rome +against Naples would have been so intensified as to lead to a bloody war +of succession, and to hasten the French invasion.</p></div> + +<p>The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan blazed forth upon the +death of the last duke. In spite of so many generations of despots, the +people still regarded themselves as sovereign, and established a +republic. But a state which had served the Visconti for nearly two +centuries, could not in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon +itself alone. The republic, feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, was +short-sighted enough to engage Francesco Sforza as commander-in-chief +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg155" id="pg155">155</a></span>against +the Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy in Lombardy to +push their power west of the Adda.</p> + +<p>Sforza, though the ablest general of the day, was precisely the man whom +common prudence should have prompted the burghers to mistrust. In one +brilliant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond the Adda, burned +their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the Po, and utterly defeated their army +at Caravaggio. Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the +surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their capital, and forced +them to receive him as their Duke in 1450. Italy had lost a noble +opportunity. If Florence and Venice had but taken part with Milan, and +had stimulated the flagging energies of Genoa, four powerful republics +in federation might have maintained the freedom of the whole peninsula +and have resisted foreign interference. But Cosimo de' Medici, who was +silently founding the despotism of his own family in Florence, preferred +to see a duke in Milan; and Venice, guided by the Doge Francesco +Foscari, thought only of territorial aggrandizement. The chance was +lost. The liberties of Milan were extinguished. A new dynasty was +established in the duchy, grounded on a false hereditary claim, which, +as long as it continued, gave a sort of color to the superior but still +illegal pretensions of the house of Orleans. It is impossible at this +point in the history of Italy to refrain from judging that the Italians +had become incapable of local self-government, and that the prevailing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg156" id="pg156">156</a></span>tendency +to despotism was not the results of accidents in any combination, but of +internal and inevitable laws of evolution.</p> + +<p>It was at this period that the old despotisms founded by Imperial Vicars +and Captains of the People came to be supplanted or crossed by those of +military adventurers, just as at a somewhat later time the Condottiere +and the Pope's nominee were blent in Cesare Borgia. This is therefore +the proper moment for glancing at the rise and influence of mercenary +generals in Italy, before proceeding to sketch the history of the Sforza +family.</p> + +<p>After the wars in Sicily, carried on by the Angevine princes, had ceased +(1302), a body of disbanded soldiers, chiefly foreigners, was formed +under Fra Ruggieri, a Templar, and swept the South of Italy. Giovanni +Villani marks this as the first sign of the scourge which was destined +to prove so fatal to the peace of Italy.<a name="FNanchor_1_75" id="FNanchor_1_75" /><a href="#Footnote_1_75" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But it was not any merely +accidental outbreak of Banditti, such as this, which established the +Condottiere system. The causes were far more deeply seated, in the +nature of Italian despotism and in the peculiar requirements of the +republics. We have already seen how Frederick II. found it convenient to +employ Saracens in his warfare with the Holy See. The same desire to +procure troops incapable of sympathizing with the native population +induced the Scala and Visconti tyrants to hire German, Breton, Swiss, +English, and even Hungarian guards. These foreign<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg157" id="pg157">157</a></span> troops +remained at +the disposal of the tyrants and superseded the national militia. The +people of Italy were reserved for taxation; the foreigners carried on +the wars of the princes. Nor was this policy otherwise than popular. It +relieved all classes from the conscription, leaving the burgher free to +ply his trade, the peasant to till his fields, and disarming the nobles +who were still rebellious and turbulent within the city walls. The same +custom gained ground among the Republics. Rich Florentine citizens +preferred to stay at home at ease, or to travel abroad for commerce, +while they intrusted their military operations to paid generals.<a name="FNanchor_2_76" id="FNanchor_2_76" /><a href="#Footnote_2_76" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +Venice, jealous of her own citizens, raised no levies in her immediate +territory, and made a rule of never confiding her armies to Venetians. +Her admirals, indeed, were selected from the great families of the +Lagoons. But her troops were placed beneath the discipline of +foreigners. The warfare of the Church, again, had of necessity to be +conducted on the same principles; for it did not often happen that a +Pope arose like Julius II., rejoicing in the sound of cannon and the +life of camps. In this way principalities and republics gradually +denationalized their armies, and came to carrying on campaigns by the +aid of foreign mercenaries under paid commanders. The generals, wishing +as far as possible to render their troops movable and compact, +suppressed the infantry, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg158" +id="pg158">158</a></span> confined their attention to perfecting the +cavalry. Heavy-armed cavaliers, officered by professional captains, +fought the battles of Italy; while despots and republics schemed in +their castles, or debated in their council-chambers, concerning objects +of warfare about which the soldiers of fortune were indifferent. The pay +received by men-at-arms was more considerable than that of the most +skilled laborers in any peaceful trade. The perils of military service +in Italy, conducted on the most artificial principles, were but slight; +while the opportunities of self-indulgence—of pillage during war and of +pleasure in the brief intervals of peace—attracted all the hot blood of +the country to this service.<a name="FNanchor_3_77" id="FNanchor_3_77" /><a href="#Footnote_3_77" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Therefore, in course of time, the +profession of Condottiere fascinated the needier nobility of Italy, and +the ranks of their men-at-arms were recruited by townsfolk and peasants, +who deliberately chose a life of adventure.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_75" id="Footnote_1_75" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_75"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> VIII. 51.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_76" id="Footnote_2_76" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_76"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> We may remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325, +misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members of +the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money from them +as the price of freedom from perilous or irksome service.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_77" id="Footnote_3_77" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_77"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Matarazzo, in his Chronicle of Perugia, gives a lively +picture of an Italian city, in which the nobles for generations followed +the trade of Condottieri, while the people enlisted in their bands—to +the utter ruin of the morals and the peace of the community.</p></div> + +<p>At first the foreign troops of the despots were engaged as body-guards, +and were controlled by the authority of their employers. But the +captains soon rendered themselves independent, and entered into military +contracts on their own account. The first notable example of a roving +troop existing for the sake of pillage, and selling its services to any +bidder, was the so-called Great Company (1343), commanded by the German +Guarnieri, or Duke Werner who wrote upon his corselet: 'Enemy of God, of +Pity and of Mercy.'<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg159" +id="pg159">159</a></span> This band was employed in 1348 by the league of the +Montferrat, La Scala, Carrara, Este, and Gonzaga houses, formed to check +the Visconti.</p> + +<p>'In the middle of the fourteenth century,' writes Sismondi,<a name="FNanchor_1_78" id="FNanchor_1_78" /><a href="#Footnote_1_78" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'all the +soldiers who served in Italy were foreigners: at the end of the same +century they were all, or nearly all, Italian.' This sentence indicates +a most important change in the Condottiere system, which took place +during the lifetime of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Alberico da Barbiano, a +noble of Romagna, and the ancestor of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso, +adopted the career of Condottiere, and formed a Company, called the +Company of S. George, into which he admitted none but Italians. The +consequence of this rule was that he Italianized the profession of +mercenary arms for the future. All the great captains of the period were +formed in his ranks, during the course of those wars which he conducted +for the Duke of Milan. Two rose to paramount importance—Braccio da +Montone, who varied his master's system by substituting the tactics of +detached bodies of cavalry for the solid phalanx in which Barbiano had +moved his troops; and Sforza Attendolo, who adhered to the old method. +Sforza got his name from his great physical strength. He was a peasant +of the village of Cotignola, who, being invited to quit the mattock for +a sword, threw his pickax into an oak, and cried, 'If it stays there, it +is a sign that I shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg160" +id="pg160">160</a></span> make my fortune.' The ax stuck in the tree, and +Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.<a name="FNanchor_2_79" id="FNanchor_2_79" /><a href="#Footnote_2_79" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> After the death of +Barbiano in 1409, Sforza and Braccio separated and formed two distinct +companies, known as the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi, who carried on +between them, sometimes in combination, but usually in opposition, all +the wars of Italy for the next twenty years. These old comrades, who had +parted in pursuit of their several advantage, found that they had more +to lose than to gain by defeating each other in any bloody or +inconveniently decisive engagement. Therefore they adopted systems of +campaigning which should cost them as little as possible, but which +enabled them to exhibit a chess-player's capacity for designing clever +checkmates.<a name="FNanchor_3_80" id="FNanchor_3_80" /><a +href="#Footnote_3_80" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Both Braccio and Sforza +died in 1424, and were succeeded respectively by Nicolo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg161" +id="pg161">161</a></span> Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. These two men +became in their turn the chief champions of Italy. At the same time +other Condottieri rose into notice. The Malatesta family at Rimini, the +ducal house of Urbino, the Orsini and the Vitelli of the Roman States, +the Varani of Camerino, the Baglioni of Perugia, and the younger +Gonzaghi furnished republics and princes with professional leaders of +tried skill and independent resources. The vassals of these noble houses +were turned into men-at-arms, and the chiefs acquired more importance in +their roving military life than they could have gained within the narrow +circuit of their little states.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_78" id="Footnote_1_78" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_78"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Vol. v. p. 207.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_79" id="Footnote_2_79" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_79"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This is the commonly received legend. Corio, p. 255, does +not draw attention to the lowness of Sforza's origin, but says that he +was only twelve years of age when he enlisted in the corps of Boldrino +da Panigale, condottiere of the Church. His robust physical qualities +were hereditary for many generations in his family. His son Francesco +was tall and well made, the best runner, jumper, and wrestler of his +day. He marched, summer and winter, bareheaded; needed but little sleep; +was spare in diet, and self-indulgent only in the matter of women. +Galeazzo Maria, though stained by despicable vices was a powerful +prince, who ruled his duchy with a strong arm. Of his illegitimate +daughter, Caterina, the wife of Girolamo Riario, a story is told, which +illustrates the strong coarse vein that still distinguished this brood +of princes. [See Dennistoun, 'Dukes of Urbino,' vol. i. p. 292, for +Boccalini's account of the Siege of Forli, sustained by Caterina in +1488. Compare Sismondi, vol. vii. p. 251.] Caterina Riario Sforza, as a +woman, was no unworthy inheritor of her grandfather's personal heroism +and genius for government.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_80" id="Footnote_3_80" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_80"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I shall have to notice the evils of this system in another place, +while reviewing the <i>Principe</i> of Machiavelli. In that treatise the +Florentine historian traces the whole ruin of Italy during the sixteenth +century to the employment of mercenaries.</p></div> + +<p>The biography of one of these Condottieri deserves special notice, since +it illustrates the vicissitudes of fortune to which such men were +exposed, as well as their relations to their patrons. Francesco +Carmagnuola was a Piedmontese. He first rose into notice at the battle +of Monza in 1412, when Filippo Maria Visconti observed his capacity and +bravery, and afterwards advanced him to the captaincy of a troop. Having +helped to reduce the Visconti duchy to order, Carmagnuola found himself +disgraced and suspected without good reason by the Duke of Milan; and in +1426 he took the pay of the Venetians against his old master. During the +next year he showed the eminence of his abilities as a general; for he +defeated the combined forces of Piccinino, Sforza, and other captains of +the Visconti, and took them prisoners at Macalo. Carmagnuola neither +imprisoned nor murdered his foes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg162" +id="pg162">162</a></span><a name="FNanchor_1_81" +id="FNanchor_1_81" /><a href="#Footnote_1_81" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +He gave them their liberty, and four years later had to sustain a defeat +from Sforza at Soncino. Other +reverses of fortune followed, which brought upon him the suspicion of +bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received +their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his +admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet +clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a +secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with +his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned for +this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been convicted of treason? Was he +being punished for his ill success in the campaign of the preceding +years? The Republic of Venice, by the secrecy in which she enveloped +this dark act of vengeance, sought to inspire the whole body of her +officials with vague alarm.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_81" id="Footnote_1_81" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_81"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Such an act of violence, however consistent with the +morality of a Cesare Borgia, a Venetian Republic, or a Duke of Milan, +would have been directly opposed to the code of honor in use among +Condottieri. Nothing, indeed, is more singular among the contradictions +of this period than the humanity in the field displayed by hired +captains. War was made less on adverse armies than on the population of +provinces. The adventurers respected each other's lives, and treated +each other with courtesy. They were a brotherhood who played at +campaigning, rather than the representatives of forces seriously bent on +crushing each other to extermination. Machiavelli says (Princ. cap. +xii.) 'Aveano usato ogni industria per levar via a se e a' soldati la +fatica e la paura, non s'ammazzando nelle zuffe, ma pigliandosi prigioni +e senza taglia.' At the same time the license they allowed themselves +against the cities and the districts they invaded is well illustrated by +the pillage of Piacenza in 1447 by Francesco Sforza's troops. The +anarchy of a sack lasted forty days, during which the inhabitants were +indiscriminately sold as slaves, or tortured for their hidden treasure. +Sism. vi. 170.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg163" +id="pg163">163</a></span>But to return to the Duchy of Milan. Francesco Sforza entered the +capital as conqueror in 1450, and was proclaimed Duke. He never obtained +the sanction of the Empire to his title, though Frederick III. was +proverbially lavish of such honors. But the great Condottiere, +possessing the substance, did not care for the external show of +monarchy. He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times well, attending +to the prosperity of his states, maintaining good discipline in his +cities, and losing no ground by foolish or ambitious schemes. Louis XI. +of France is said to have professed himself Sforza's pupil in +statecraft, than which no greater tribute could be paid to his political +sagacity. In 1466 he died, leaving three sons, Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, +the Cardinal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro.</p> + +<p>'Francesco's crown,' says Ripamonti, 'was destined to pass to more than +six inheritors, and these five successions were accomplished by a series +of tragic events in his family. Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because +of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his people, before the +altar, in the middle of the sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who +followed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico was +imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.<a name="FNanchor_1_82" id="FNanchor_1_82" /><a href="#Footnote_1_82" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> One of his +sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and +exile, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg164" +id="pg164">164</a></span> restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been +undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the +recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan. It was +for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and +danger.' In these rapid successions we trace, besides the demoralization +of the Sforza family, the action of new forces from without. France, +Germany, and Spain appeared upon the stage; and against these great +powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_82" id="Footnote_1_82" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_82"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly +painted wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room +known as his prison, with this legend, <i>Voilà un qui n'est pas content</i>. +Tradition gives it to Il Moro.</p></div> + +<p>We have now reached the threshold of the true Renaissance, and a new +period is being opened for Italian politics. The despots are about to +measure their strength with the nations of the North. It was Lodovico +Sforza who, by his invitation of Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated +the age of Foreign Enslavement. His biography belongs, therefore, to +another chapter. But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of +Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an +integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have +hitherto been tracing. In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were +repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice in +particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted +the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded +citizens of a still free city. Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, fifty +chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; a<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg165" id="pg165">165</a></span> hundred +men-at-arms and five hundred foot soldiers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of +hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him. His suite of courtiers +numbered two thousand on horseback: 200,000 golden florins were expended +on this pomp. Machiavelli (1st. Fior. lib. 7) marks this visit of the +Duke of Milan as a turning-point from austere simplicity to luxury and +license in the manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de' Medici was +already bending to his yoke. The most extravagant lust, the meanest and +the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.<a name="FNanchor_1_83" id="FNanchor_1_83" /><a href="#Footnote_1_83" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He +it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them +alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom he +had made his confidants and friends. The details of his assassination, +in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for +pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral +characteristic of this period which is intimately connected with the +despotism. Three young nobles of Milan, educated in the classic +literature by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had imbibed +from their studies of Greek and Latin history an ardent thirst for +liberty and a deadly hatred of tyrants.<a name="FNanchor_2_84" +id="FNanchor_2_84" /><a href="#Footnote_2_84" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +Their names were Carlo Visconti, Girolamo Olgiati,<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg166" id="pg166">166</a></span> and Giannandrea Lampugnani. Galeazzo Sforza +had wounded the two latter in the points which men hold dearest—their +honor and their property<a name="FNanchor_3_85" id="FNanchor_3_85" /><a href="#Footnote_3_85" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>—by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by +depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Abbey of Miramondo. The +spirit of Harmodius and Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they +determined to rid Milan of her despot. After some meetings in the garden +of S. Ambrogio, where they matured their plans, they laid their project +of tyrannicide as a holy offering before the patron saint of Milan.<a name="FNanchor_4_86" id="FNanchor_4_86" /><a href="#Footnote_4_86" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +Then having spent a few days in poignard exercise for the sake of +training,<a name="FNanchor_5_87" id="FNanchor_5_87" /><a href="#Footnote_5_87" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> they took their place within the precincts of S. Stephen's +Church. There they received the sacrament and addressed themselves in +prayer to the Protomartyr, whose fane was about to be hallowed by the +murder of a monster odious to God and man. It was on the morning of +December 26, 1476, that the duke entered San Stefano. At one and the +same moment the daggers of the three conspirators struck him—Olgiati's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg167" +id="pg167">167</a></span>in the breast, Visconti's in the back, Lampugnani's in the belly. He +cried 'Ah, Dio!' and fell dead upon the pavement. The friends were +unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lampugnani were killed on the +spot; Olgiati was seized, tortured, and torn to death.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_83" id="Footnote_1_83" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_83"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. +777, and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures. +See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. +316. Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with the +vice of unbridled sensuality.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_84" id="Footnote_2_84" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_84"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this +time, as also during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of +patriots. Lorenzino de' Medici appealed to the example of Timoleon in +1537, and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that of Brutus in 1513.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_85" id="Footnote_3_85" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_85"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> 'Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o nell' +onore.... La roba e l'onore sono quelle due cose che offendono più gli +uomini che alcun' altra offesa, e dalle quali il principe si debbe +guardare: perchè e' non può mai spogliare uno tanto che non gli resti un +coltello da vendicarsi; non può tanto disonorare uno che non gli resti +un animo ostinato alla vendetta.' Mach. Disc. iii. 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_86" id="Footnote_4_86" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_86"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Olgiati's prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87, and in +Mach. Ist. Fior. lib. 7.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_87" id="Footnote_5_87" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_87"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Giovanni Sanzi's chronicle, quoted by Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 223, +describes the conspirators rehearsing on a wooden puppet.</p></div> + +<p>In the interval which elapsed between the rack and the pincers, Olgiati +had time to address this memorable speech to the priest who urged him to +repent: 'As for the noble action for which I am about to die, it is this +which gives my conscience peace; to this I trust for pardon from the +Judge of all. Far from repenting, if I had to come ten times to life in +order ten times to die by these same torments, I should not hesitate to +dedicate my blood and all my powers to an object so sublime.' When the +hangman stood above him, ready to begin the work of mutilation, he is +said to have exclaimed: Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memora +facti—my death is untimely, my fame eternal, the memory of the deed +will last for aye.' He was only twenty-two years of age.<a name="FNanchor_1_88" id="FNanchor_1_88" /><a href="#Footnote_1_88" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> There is an +antique grandeur about the outlines of this story, strangely mingled +with mediæval Catholicism in the details, which makes it typical of the +Renaissance. Conspiracies against rulers were common at the time in +Italy;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg168" +id="pg168">168</a></span> but none were so pure and honorable as this. Of the Pazzi +Conjuration (1478) which Sixtus IV. directed to his everlasting infamy +against the Medici, I shall have to speak in another place. It is enough +to mention here in passing the patriotic attempt of Girolamo Gentile +against Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa in 1476, and the more selfish plot of +Nicolo d' Este, in the same year, against his uncle Ercole, who held the +Marquisate of Ferrara to the prejudice of his own claim. The latter +tragedy was rendered memorable by the vengeance taken by Ercole. He +beheaded Nicolo and his cousin Azzo together with twenty-five of his +comrades, effectually preventing by this bloodshed any future attempt to +set aside his title. Falling as these four conspiracies do within the +space of two years, and displaying varied features of antique heroism, +simple patriotism, dynastic dissension, and ecclesiastical perfidy, they +present examples of the different forms and causes of political +tragedies with a noteworthy and significant conciseness.<a name="FNanchor_2_89" id="FNanchor_2_89" /><a href="#Footnote_2_89" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_88" id="Footnote_1_88" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_88"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The whole story may be read in Ripamonti, under the head of +'Confessio Olgiati;' in Corio, who was a page of the Duke's and an +eye-witness of the murder; and in the seventh book of Machiavelli's +'History.' Sismondi's summary and references, vol. vii. pp. 86-90, are +very full.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_89" id="Footnote_2_89" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_89"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It is worthy of notice that very many tyrannicides took +place in Church—for example, the murders of Francesco Vico dei +Prefetti, of the Varani, the Chiavelli, Giuliano de' Medici, and +Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The choice of public service, as the best +occasion for the commission of these crimes, points to the guarded +watchfulness maintained by tyrants in their palaces and on the streets. +Banquets and festivities offered another kind of opportunity; and it was +on such occasions that domestic tragedies, like Oliverotto's murder of +his uncle and Grifonetto Baglioni's treason, were accomplished.</p></div> + +<p>Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth +century. Neither public nor private morality in our sense of the word +existed. The crimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg169" +id="pg169">169</a></span> of the tyrants against their subjects and the +members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime +in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. +Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, 'He who gives his own +life can take a tyrant's,' had worked itself into popular language. At +this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public +murder which prevailed in Italy. Machiavelli, in the <i>Discorsi</i> iii. 6, +discusses the whole subject with his usual frigid and exhaustive +analysis. It is no part of his critical method to consider the morality +of the matter. He deals with the facts of history scientifically. The +esteem in which tyrannicide was held at Florence is proved by the +erection of Donatello's Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo +Pubblico, with this inscription, <i>exemplum salutis publicæ cives +posuere</i>. All the political theorists agree that to rid a state of its +despot is a virtuous act. They only differ about its motives and its +utility. In Guicciardini's Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. pp. +53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide are discussed, and it is +concluded that <i>pochissimi sono stati quelli che si siano mossi +meramente per amore della libertà della sua patria, a' quali si +conviene suprema laude</i>.<a name="FNanchor_1_90" id="FNanchor_1_90" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_90" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Donato Giannotti (Opere, +vol. i. p. 341) bids the conspirator consider whether the mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg170" +id="pg170">170</a></span> destruction of the despot will +suffice to restore his city to true liberty and good government—a +caution by which Lorenzino de' Medici in his assassination of Duke +Alessandro might have profited; for he killed one tyrant in order only +to make room for another. Lorenzino's own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. pp. +283-295) is an important document, as showing that the murderer of a +despot counted on the sympathy of honorable men. So, too, is the verdict +of Boscolo's confessor (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who pronounced that +conspiracy against a tyrant was no crime. Nor did the demoralization of +the age stop here. Force, which had been substituted for Law in +government, became, as it were, the mainspring of society. Murders, +poisoning, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as of +public life.<a name="FNanchor_2_91" id="FNanchor_2_91" /><a href="#Footnote_2_91" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an +inconceivably low rate. A man's life was worth scarcely more than that +of a horse. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional +cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the +right of sanctuary. Popes sold absolution for the most<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg171" +id="pg171">171</a></span> horrible +excesses, and granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of +crimes of lust and violence. Success was the standard by which acts were +judged; and the man who could help his friends intimidate his enemies, +and carve a way to fortune for himself by any means he chose, was +regarded as a hero. Machiavelli's use of the word <i>virtù</i> is in this +relation most instructive. It has altogether lost the Christian sense of +<i>virtue</i>, and retains only so much of the Roman <i>virtus</i> as is +applicable to the courage, intellectual ability, and personal prowess of +one who has achieved his purpose, be that what it may. The upshot of +this state of things was that individuality of character and genius +obtained a freer scope at this time in Italy than during any other +period of modern history.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_90" id="Footnote_1_90" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_90"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Very few indeed have those been, whose motive for +tyrannicide was a pure love of their country's liberty; and these +deserve the highest praise.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_91" id="Footnote_2_91" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_91"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It is quite impossible to furnish a complete view of +Italian society under this aspect. Students must be referred to the +stories of the novelists, who collected the more dramatic incidents and +presented them in the form of entertaining legends. It may suffice here +to mention Bartolommeo Colleoni, Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, all of +whom owed their start in life to the murder of their respective fathers +by assassins; to Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were attempted by +cut-throats; to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in each of whose +biographies poison and the knife play their parts. If men of letters and +artists were exposed to these perils, the dangers of the great and noble +may be readily imagined.</p></div> + +<p>At the same time it must not be forgotten that during this period the +art and culture of the Renaissance were culminating. Filelfo was +receiving the gold of Filippo Maria Visconti. Guarino of Verona was +instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre was educating +the children of the Marquis of Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan +with his music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was pouring +forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino was expounding Plato. +Boiardo was singing the prelude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara. Pico +della Mirandola was dreaming of a reconciliation of the Hebrew, Pagan, +and Christian traditions. It is necessary to note these facts in +passing; just as when we are surveying the history<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg172" +id="pg172">172</a></span> of letters and the +arts, it becomes us to remember the crimes and the madness of the +despots who patronized them. This was an age in which even the wildest +and most perfidious of tyrants felt the ennobling influences and the +sacred thirst of knowledge. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of +Rimini, might be selected as a true type of the princes who united a +romantic zeal for culture with the vices of barbarians.<a name="FNanchor_1_92" id="FNanchor_1_92" /><a href="#Footnote_1_92" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The coins +which bear the portraits of this man, together with the medallions +carved in red Verona marble on his church at Rimini, show a narrow +forehead, protuberant above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow +cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips. The whole face seems +ready to flash with sudden violence, to merge its self-control in a +spasm of fury. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta killed three wives in +succession, violated his daughter, and attempted the chastity of his own +son. So much of him belongs to the mere savage. He caused the +magnificent church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo Alberti +in a manner more worthy of a Pagan Pantheon than of a Christian temple. +He incrusted it with exquisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of +the earliest Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns upon +every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in the building, and +dedicated a shrine there to his concubine—<i>Divæ Isottæ Sacrum</i>. So much +of him belongs to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg173" +id="pg173">173</a></span> the Neo-Pagan of the fifteenth century. He brought +back from Greece the mortal remains of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon, +buried them in a sarcophagus outside his church, and wrote upon the tomb +this epigraph: 'These remains of Gemistus of Byzantium, chief of the +sages of his day, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, +commander in the war against the king of the Turks in the Morea, induced +by the mighty love with which he burns for men of learning, brought +hither and placed within this chest. 1466.' He, the most fretful and +turbulent of men, read books with patient care, and bore the +contradictions of pedants in the course of long discussions on +philosophy and arts and letters. So much of him belonged to the new +spirit of the coming age, in which the zeal for erudition was a passion, +and the spell of science was stronger than the charms of love. At the +same time, as Condottiere, he displayed all the treasons, duplicities, +cruelties, sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which the most +accomplished villain of the age could have aspired.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_92" id="Footnote_1_92" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_92"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For a fuller account of him, see my 'Sketches in Italy and +Greece,' article <i>Rimini</i>.</p></div> + +<p>It would be easy, following in the steps of Tiraboschi, to describe the +patronage awarded in the fifteenth century to men of letters by +princes—the protection extended by Nicholas III. of Ferrara to Guarino +and Aurispa—the brilliant promise of his son Leonello, who corresponded +with Poggio, Filelfo, Guarino, Francesco Barbaro, and other +scholars—the liberality of Duke Borso, whose purse was open to poor +students. Or we might review the splendid culture<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg174" +id="pg174">174</a></span> of the court of +Naples, where Alfonso committed the education of his terrible son +Ferdinand to the care of Lorenzo Valla and Antonio Beccadelli.<a name="FNanchor_1_93" id="FNanchor_1_93" /><a href="#Footnote_1_93" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> More +insight, however, into the nature of Italian despotism in all its phases +may be gained by turning from Milan to Urbino, and by sketching a +portrait of the good Duke Frederick.<a name="FNanchor_2_94" id="FNanchor_2_94" /><a href="#Footnote_2_94" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The life of Frederick, Count of +Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 1474 by Pope Sixtus IV., covers +the better part of the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little +corner of old Umbria lying between the Apennines and the Adriatic, +Rimini and Ancona, formed his patrimony. Speaking roughly, the whole +duchy was but forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of +bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor territory became the +center of a splendid court. 'Federigo,' says his biographer, Muzio, +'maintained a suite so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal +household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino in order to learn +manners and the art of war from the most noble general of his day. 'His +household,' we hear from Vespasiano, 'which consisted of 500 mouths +entertained at his own cost, was governed less like a company<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg175" +id="pg175">175</a></span> of +soldiers than a strict religious community. There was no gaming nor +swearing, but the men conversed with the utmost sobriety.' In a list of +the court officers we find forty-five counts of the duchy and of other +states, seventeen gentlemen, five secretaries, four teachers of grammar, +logic, and philosophy, fourteen clerks in public offices, five +architects and engineers, five readers during meals, four transcribers +of MSS. The library, collected by Vespasiano during fourteen years of +assiduous labor, contained copies of all the Greek and Latin authors +then discovered, the principal treatises on theology and church history, +a complete series of Italian poets, historiographers, and commentators, +various medical, mathematical, and legal works, essays on music, +military tactics and the arts, together with such Hebrew books as were +accessible to copyists. Every volume was bound in crimson and silver, +and the whole collection cost upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses +of so large a household, and the maintenance of this fine library, not +to mention a palace that was being built and churches that required +adornment, the mere revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed. +Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a general. Military +service formed his trade. 'In 1453,' says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from +Alfonso of Naples exceeded 8,000 ducats a month, and for many years he +had from him and his son an annual peace-pension of 6,000 in name of +past services. At the close of his life, when captain-general of the +Italian league, he drew in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg176" +id="pg176">176</a></span> war 165,000 ducats of annual stipend, 45,000 +being his own share; in peace, 65,000 in all.' As a Condottiere, +Federigo was famous in this age of broken faith for his plain dealing +and sincerity. Only one piece of questionable practice—the capture of +Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo +Malatesta—stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the +field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and +merciful.<a name="FNanchor_3_95" id="FNanchor_3_95" /><a href="#Footnote_3_95" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'In military science,' says Vespasiano, 'he was excelled by +no commander of his time; uniting energy with judgment, he conquered by +prudence as much as by force. The like wariness was observed in all his +affairs; and in none of his many battles was he worsted. Nor may I omit +the strict observance of good faith, wherein he never failed. All to +whom he once gave his word, might testify to his inviolate performance +of it.' The same biographer adds that 'he was singularly religious, and +most observant of the Divine commands. No morning passed without his +hearing mass upon his knees.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_93" id="Footnote_1_93" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_93"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Panormita; author, by the way, of the shameless +'Hermaphroditus.' This fact is significant. The moral sense was extinct +when such a pupil was intrusted to such a tutor.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_94" id="Footnote_2_94" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_94"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> For the following details I am principally indebted to 'The +Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,' by James Dennistoun; 3 vols., Longmans, +1851. Vespasiano's Life of Duke Frederick (Vite di uomini illustri, pp. +72-112) is one of the most charming literary portraits extant. It has, +moreover, all the value of a personal memoir, for Vespasiano had lived +in close relation with the Duke as his librarian.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_95" id="Footnote_3_95" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_95"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See the testimony of Francesco di Giorgio; Dennistoun, vol. i. p. +259. The sack of Volterra was, however, a blot upon his humanity.</p></div> + +<p>While a boy, Federigo had been educated in the school of Vittorino da +Feltre at Mantua. Gian Francesco Gonzaga invited that eminent scholar to +his court in 1425 for the education of his sons and daughter, assembling +round him subordinate teachers in grammar, mathematics, music, painting, +dancing, riding, and all noble exercises. The system supervised by +Vittorino<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg177" +id="pg177">177</a></span> included not only the acquisition of scholarship, but also +training in manly sports and the cultivation of the moral character. +Many of the noblest Italians were his pupils. Ghiberto da Correggio, +Battista Pallavicíni, Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, Gabbriello da Cremona, +Francesco da Castiglione, Niccolo Perrotti, together with the Count of +Montefeltro, lived in Vittorino's house, associating with the poorer +students whom the benevolent philosopher instructed for the love of +learning. Ambrogio Camaldolese in a letter to Niccolo Niccoli gives this +animated picture of the Mantuan school: 'I went again to visit Vittorino +and to see his Greek books. He came to meet me with the children of the +prince, two sons and a daughter of seven years. The eldest boy is +eleven, the younger five. There are also other children of about ten, +sons of nobles, as well as other pupils. He teaches them Greek, and they +can write that language well. I saw a translation from Saint Chrysostom +made by one of them which pleased me much.' And again a few years later: +'He brought me Giovanni Lucido, son of the Marquis, a boy of about +fourteen, whom he has educated, and who then recited two hundred lines +composed by him upon the shows with which the Emperor was received in +Mantua. The verses were most beautiful, but the sweetness and elegance +of his recitation made them still more graceful. He also showed me two +propositions added by him to Euclid, which prove how eminent he promises +to be in mathematical studies.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg178" +id="pg178">178</a></span> There was also a little daughter of the +Marquis, of about ten, who writes Greek beautifully; and many other +pupils, some of noble birth, attended them.' The medal struck by +Pisanello in honor of Vittorino da Feltre bears the ensign of a pelican +feeding her young from a wound in her own breast—a symbol of the +master's self-sacrifice.<a name="FNanchor_1_96" id="FNanchor_1_96" /><a href="#Footnote_1_96" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> I hope to return in the second volume of +this work to Vittorino. It is enough here to remark that in this good +school the Duke of Urbino acquired that solid culture which +distinguished him through life. In after years, when the cares of his +numerous engagements fell thick upon him, we hear from Vespasiano that +he still prosecuted his studies, reading Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, +and Physics, listening to the works of S. Thomas Aquinas and Scotus read +aloud, perusing at one time the Greek fathers and at another the Latin +historians.<a name="FNanchor_2_97" id="FNanchor_2_97" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_97" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> How profitably he spent +his day at Urbino may be gathered from this account of his biographer: +'He was on horseback at daybreak +with four or six mounted attendants and not more, and with one or two +foot servants unarmed. He would ride out three or four miles, and be +back again when the rest of his court rose from bed. After dismounting, +he heard mass. Then he went into a garden open at all sides, and gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg179" +id="pg179">179</a></span> +audience to those who listed until dinner-time. At table, all the doors +were open; any man could enter where his lordship was; for he never ate +except with a full hall. According to the season he had books read out +as follows—in Lent, spiritual works; at other times, the history of +Livy; all in Latin. His food was plain; he took no comfits, and drank no +wine, except drinks of pomegranate, cherry, or apples.' After dinner he +heard causes, and gave sentence in the Latin tongue. Then he would visit +the nuns of Santa Chiara or watch the young men of Urbino at their +games, using the courtesy of perfect freedom with his subjects. His +reputation as a patron of the arts and of learning was widely spread. +'To hear him converse with a sculptor,' says Vespasiano, 'you would have +thought he was a master of the craft. In painting, too, he displayed the +most acute judgment; and as he could not find among the Italians worthy +masters of oil colors, he sent to Flanders for one, who painted for him +the philosophers and poets and doctors of the Church. He also brought +from Flanders masters in the art of tapestry.' Pontano, Ficino, and +Poggio dedicated works of importance to his name; and Pirro Perrotti, in +the preface to his uncle's 'Cornucopia,' draws a quaint picture of the +reception which so learned a book was sure to meet with at Urbino.<a name="FNanchor_3_98" id="FNanchor_3_98" /><a href="#Footnote_3_98" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +But Frederick was<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg180" +id="pg180">180</a></span> not merely an accomplished prince. Concurrent +testimony proves that he remained a good husband and a constant friend +throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quickness of temper, +and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age of lax morality he +might have indulged without reproach. In his relations to his subjects +he showed what a paternal monarch should be, conversing familiarly with +the citizens of Urbino, accosting them with head uncovered, inquiring +into the necessities of the poorer artisans, relieving the destitute, +dowering orphan girls, and helping distressed shopkeepers with loans. +Numerous anecdotes are told which illustrate his consideration for his +old servants, and his anxiety for the welfare and good order of his +state. At a time when the Pope and the King of Naples were making money +by monopolies of corn, the Duke of Urbino filled his granaries from +Apulia, and sold bread during a year of scarcity at a cheap rate to his +poor subjects. Nor would he allow his officers to prosecute the indigent +for debts incurred by such purchases. He used to say: 'I am not a +merchant; it is enough to have saved my people from hunger.' We must +remember that this excellent prince had a direct interest in +maintaining the prosperity<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg181" +id="pg181">181</a></span> and good-will of his duchy. His profession +was warfare, and the district of Urbino supplied him with his best +troops. Yet this should not diminish the respect due to the foresight +and benevolence of a Condottiere who knew how to carry on his calling +with humanity and generosity. Federigo wore the Order of the Garter, +which Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan Order of the Ermine, +and the Papal decorations of the Rose, the Hat, the Sword. He served +three pontiffs, two kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The +Republic of Florence and more than one Italian League appointed him +their general in the field. If his military career was less brilliant +than that of the two Sforzas, Piccinino, or Carmagnuola, he avoided the +crimes to which ambition led some of these men and the rocks on which +they struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing duchy, a +cultivated court, a renowned name, and the leadership of the Italian +League to his son Guidobaldo.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_96" id="Footnote_1_96" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_96"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Prendilacqua, the biographer of Vittorino, says that he +died so poor that his funeral expenses had to be defrayed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_97" id="Footnote_2_97" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_97"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Pius II. in his Commentaries gives an interesting account +of the conversations concerning the tactics of the ancients which he +held with Frederick, in 1461, in the neighborhood of Tivoli.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_98" id="Footnote_3_98" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_98"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The preface to the original edition of the 'Cornucopia' is worth +reading for the lively impression which it conveys of Federigo's +personality: 'Admirabitur in te divinam illam corporis proceritatem, +membrorum robur eximium, venerandam oris dignitatem, ætatis maturam +gravitatem, divinam quandam majestatem cum humanitate conjunctam, totum +præterea talem qualem esse oportebat eum principem quem nuper pontifex +maximus et universus senatus omnium rerum suarum et totius ecclesiastici +imperii ducem moderatoremque constituit.'</p></div> + +<p>The young Duke, whose court, described by Castiglione, may be said to +have set the model of good breeding to all Europe, began life under the +happiest auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear that even in +boyhood he cared only for study and for manly sports. His memory was so +retentive that he could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse +of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what he had resolved to +retain. In the Latin and Greek languages<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg182" +id="pg182">182</a></span> he became an accomplished +scholar,<a name="FNanchor_1_99" id="FNanchor_1_99" /><a href="#Footnote_1_99" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and while he appreciated the poets, he showed peculiar +aptitude for philosophy and history. But his development was precocious. +His zeal for learning and the excessive ardor with which he devoted +himself to physical exercises undermined his constitution. He became an +invalid and died childless, after exhibiting to his court for many years +an example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness under +the restraints of enforced inaction. His wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, one +of the most famous women of her age, was no less a pattern of noble +conduct and serene contentment.</p> + +<p>Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro dynasty.<a name="FNanchor_2_100" id="FNanchor_2_100" /><a href="#Footnote_2_100" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It is +necessary to bear their virtues in mind while dwelling on the +characteristics of Italian despotism in the fifteenth century. The Duchy +of Urbino, both as an established dynasty not founded upon violence, and +also as a center of really humane culture, formed, it is true, an +exception to the rule of Italian tyrannies: yet, if we omitted this +state from our calculation, confining our attention to the extravagant +iniquities<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg183" +id="pg183">183</a></span> of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities +of the Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court of Naples, we should +gain a false notion of the many-sided character of Italy, in which at +that time vices and virtues were so strangely blended. We must never +forget that the same society which produced a Filippo Maria Visconti, a +Galeazzo Maria Sforza, a Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, +gave birth also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da Montefeltro. +It is only by studying the lives of all these men in combination that we +can obtain a correct conception of the manifold personality, the mingled +polish and barbarism, of the Italian Renaissance.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_99" id="Footnote_1_99" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_99"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period +intended by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' +in a Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by +these phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, +but rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin +books to understand allusions and quotations. Poliziano, it may be +remarked, thought it worth while to flatter Guidobaldo in a Greek +epigram.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_100" id="Footnote_2_100" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_100"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> After Guidobaldo's death the duchy was continued by the +Della Rovere family, one of whom, Giovanni, Prefect of Rome and nephew +of Sixtus IV., married the Duke's sister Giovanna in 1474.</p></div> + +<p>Some more detailed account of Baldassare Castiglione's treatise <i>Il +Cortegiano</i> will form a fitting conclusion to this Chapter on the +Despots. It is true that his book was written later than the period we +have been considering,<a name="FNanchor_1_101" id="FNanchor_1_101" /><a href="#Footnote_1_101" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and he describes court life in its most +graceful aspect. Yet all the antecedent history of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg184" +id="pg184">184</a></span> the past two +centuries had been gradually producing the conditions under which his +courtier flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he appeared +to the rest of Europe, was such a gentleman as he depicts. For the +historian his book is of equal value in its own department with the +Principe of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and the +Diary of Burchard.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_101" id="Footnote_1_101" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_101"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the +Aldi of Venice in 1528. We find an English translation so early as 1561 +by Thomas Hoby. At this time it was in the hands of all the gentlefolk +of Europe. It is interesting to compare the 'Cortegiano' with Della +Casa's 'Galateo,' published in 1558. The 'Galateo' professes to be a +guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the minute rules laid +down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the present century. In +manners and their ethical analysis we have certainly gained nothing +during the last three centuries. The principle upon which these precepts +of conduct are founded is not etiquette or fashion, but respect for the +sensibilities of others. It would be difficult to compose a more +philosophical treatise on the lesser duties imposed upon us by the +conditions of society—such minute matters as the proper way to blow the +nose or use the napkin, being referred to the one rule of acting so as +to cause no inconvenience to our neighbors.</p></div> + +<p>In the opening of his 'Cortegiano' Castiglione introduces us to the +court of Urbino—refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated, +gentle—confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy. He +brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of +Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of +Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters +in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author +of 'Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to +estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, +of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San +Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to +fame—two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of +Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l' Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the +humorist. These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the +custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four +consecutive evenings. The theme of their conversation is the Perfect +Courtier. What must that man be who deserves<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg185" +id="pg185">185</a></span> the name of Cortegiano, +and how must he conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries us at +once into a bygone age. No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier; +but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to +despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing +pages, the question was one of the most serious importance. Culture and +good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the +intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect +of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite +knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than +in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation +whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to +court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or +even in humbler offices of state. To be able, therefore, to conduct +himself with dignity, to know how to win the favor of his master and to +secure the good-will of his peers, to retain his personal honor and to +make himself respected without being hated, to inspire admiration and to +avoid envy, to outshine all honorable rivals in physical exercises and +the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and retinue, to be +instructed in the arts of polite intercourse, to converse with ease and +wit, to be at home alike in the tilting-yard, the banquet-hall, the +boudoir, and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to live +before the world and yet to keep a fitting privacy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg186" +id="pg186">186</a></span> distance,—these and a hundred other matters were the climax and +perfection of the culture of a gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in which it +was possible for a man of birth and talents to shine, it followed that +the perfect courtier and the perfect gentleman were synonymous terms. +Castiglione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on the character +of the true gentleman as he appeared in Italy. Eliminating all qualities +that are special to any art or calling, he defines those essential +characteristics which were requisite for social excellence in the +sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how unchangeable are the +laws of real politeness and refinement. Castiglione's courtier is, with +one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as +all men of education at the present day would wish to be.</p> + +<p>The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he must be noble. +The Count of Canossa, who proposed the subject of debate, lays down this +as an axiom. Gaspar Pallavicino denies the necessity.<a +name="FNanchor_1_102" id="FNanchor_1_102" /><a href="#Footnote_1_102" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg187" +id="pg187">187</a></span> after a lively discussion, his opinion is +overruled, on the ground that, although the gentle virtues may be found +among people of obscure origin, yet a man who intends to be a courtier +must start with the prestige of noble birth. Next he must be skillful in +the use of weapons and courageous in the battle-field. He is not, +however, bound to have the special science of a general, nor must he in +times of peace profess unique devotion to the art of war: that would +argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory. Again, he must excel in all +manly sports and exercises, so as, if possible, to beat the actual +professors of each game, or feat of skill on their own ground. Yet here +also he should avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg188" +id="pg188">188</a></span> a man +who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete. Another indispensable +quality is gracefulness in all he does and says. In order to secure this +elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation: 'Let him shun +affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in +everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show that what +he says or does comes from him without effort or deliberation.' This +vice of affectation in all its kinds, and the ways of avoiding it, are +discussed with a delicacy of insight which would do credit to a +Chesterfield of the present century, sending forth his son into society +for the first time. Castiglione goes so far as to condemn the pedantry +of far-fetched words and the coxcombry of elaborate costumes, as +dangerous forms of affectation. His courtier must speak and write with +force and freedom. He need not be a purist in his use of language, but +may use such foreign phrases and modern idioms as are current in good +society, aiming only at simplicity and clearness. He must add to +excellence in arms polite culture in letters and sound scholarship, +avoiding that barbarism of the French, who think it impossible to be a +good soldier and an accomplished student at the same time. Yet his +learning should be always held in reserve, to give brilliancy and flavor +to his wit, and not brought forth for merely erudite parade. He must +have a practical acquaintance with music and dancing; it would be well +for him to sing and touch various stringed and keyed instruments, so as +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg189" +id="pg189">189</a></span> relax his own spirits and to make himself agreeable to ladies. If he +can compose verses and sing them to his own accompaniment, so much the +better. Finally, he ought to understand the arts of painting and +sculpture; for criticism, even though a man be neither poet nor artist, +is an elegant accomplishment. Such are the principal qualities of the +Cortegiano.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_102" id="Footnote_1_102" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_102"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Italy, earlier than any other European nation, developed +theoretical democracy. Dante had defined true nobility to consist of +personal excellence in a man or in his ancestors; he also called +'nobiltà' sister of 'filosofia.' Poggio in his 'Dialogue De Nobilitate,' +into which he introduces Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo de' Medici +(Cosimo's brother), decides that only merit constitutes true nobility. +Hawking and hunting are far less noble occupations than agriculture; +descent from a long line of historic criminals is no honor. French and +English castle-life, and the robber-knighthood of Germany, he argues, +are barbarous. Lorenzo pleads the authority of Aristotle in favor of +noble blood; Poggio contests the passage quoted, and shows the +superiority of the Latin word 'nobilitas' (distinction) over the Greek +term [Greek: <i>eugeneia</i>] (good birth). The several kinds of aristocracy +in Italy are then discussed. In Naples the nobles despise business and +idle their time away. In Rome they manage their estates. In Venice and +Genoa they engage in commerce. In Florence they either take to +mercantile pursuits or live upon the produce of their land in idleness. +The whole way of looking at the subject betrays a liberal and scientific +spirit, wholly free from prejudice. Machiavelli ('Discorsi,' i. 55) is +very severe on the aristocracy, whom he defines as 'those who live in +idleness on the produce of their estates, without applying themselves to +agriculture or to any other useful occupation.' He points out that the +Venetian nobles are not properly so called, since they are merchants. +The different districts of Italy had widely different conceptions of +nobility. Naples was always aristocratic, owing to its connection with +France and Spain. Ferrara maintained the chivalry of courts. Those +states, on the other hand, which had been democratized, like Florence, +by republican customs, or like Milan, by despotism, set less value on +birth than on talent and wealth. It was not until the age of the Spanish +ascendency (latter half of sixteenth century) that Cosimo I. withdrew +the young Florentines from their mercantile pursuits and enrolled them +in his order of S. Stephen, and that the patricians of Genoa carried +daggers inscribed 'for the chastisement of villeins.'</p></div> + +<p>The precepts which are laid down for the use of his acquirements and +his general conduct, resolve themselves into a strong recommendation of +tact and caution. The courtier must study the nature of his prince, and +show the greatest delicacy in approaching him, so as to secure his +favor, and to avoid wearying him with importunities. In tendering his +advice he must be modest; but he should make a point of never +sacrificing his own liberty of judgment. To obey his master in +dishonorable things would be a derogation from his dignity; and if he +discovers any meanness in the character of the prince, it is better to +quit his service.<a name="FNanchor_1_103" id="FNanchor_1_103" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_103" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A courtier must be +careful to create beforehand a favorable opinion of himself in places he +intends to visit. Much stress is laid upon his choice of clothes and the +equipment of his servants. In these respects he should aim at combining +individuality with simplicity, so as to produce an impression of novelty +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg190" +id="pg190">190</a></span>without extravagance or eccentricity. He must be very cautious in his +friendships, selecting his associates with care, and admitting only one +or two to intimacy.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_103" id="Footnote_1_103" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_103"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From many passages in the 'Cortegiano' it is clear that +Castiglione is painting the character of an independent gentleman, to +whom self-culture in all humane excellence is of far more importance +than the acquisition of the art of pleasing. Circumstances made the life +of courts the best obtainable; but there is no trace of French +'oeil-de-boeuf' servility.</p></div> + +<p>In connection with the general subject of tact and taste, the Cardinal +Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of +jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of +wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad +taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere +obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many +jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the +essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth +by cleverness, and not by mere tricks and clumsy inventions.</p> + +<p>In bringing this chapter on Italian Despotism in the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries to a conclusion, it will be well to cast a backward +glance over the ground which has been traversed. A great internal change +took place and was accomplished during this period. The free burghs +which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to +tyrannies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and maintained by +force. In the absence of dynastic right, violence and craft were +instruments by means of which the despots founded and preserved their +power. Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large were not unfavorable +to the growth of principalities. On the contrary, the forces which move +society, the inner<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg191" +id="pg191">191</a></span> instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress and +development, tended year by year more surely to the consolidation of +despotisms. City after city lost its faculty for self-government, until +at last Florence, so long the center of political freedom, fell beneath +the yoke of her merchant princes. It is difficult for the historian not +to feel either a monarchical or a republican bias. Yet this internal and +gradual revolution in the states of Italy may be regarded neither as a +matter for exultation in the cause of sovereignty, nor for lamentation +over the decay of liberty. It was but part of an inevitable process +which the Italians shared, according to the peculiarities of their +condition, in common with the rest of Europe.</p> + +<p>In tracing the history of the Visconti and the Sforzas our attention has +been naturally directed to the private and political vices of the +despot. As a contrast to so much violence and treachery, we have studied +the character of one of the best princes produced in this period. Yet it +must be borne in mind that the Duke of Urbino was far less +representative of his class than Francesco Sforza, and that the aims and +notions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti formed the ideal to which an Italian +prince of spirit, if he had the opportunity, aspired. The history of art +and literature in this period belongs to another branch of the inquiry; +and a separate chapter must be devoted to the consideration of political +morality as theorized by the Italians at the end of these two centuries +of intrigue.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg192" +id="pg192">192</a></span> But having insisted on the violence and vices of the +tyrants, it seemed necessary to close the review of their age by +describing the Italian nobleman as court-life made him. Castiglione +shows him at the very best: the darker shadows of the picture are +omitted; the requirements of the most finished culture and the tone of +the purest society in Italy are depicted with the elegance of a scholar +and the taste of a true gentleman. The fact remains that the various +influences at work in Italy during the age of the despots had rendered +the conception of this ideal possible. Nowhere else in Europe could a +portrait of so much dignity and sweetness, combining the courage of a +soldier with the learning of a student and the accomplishments of an +artist, the liberality of freedom with the courtesies of service, have +been painted from the life and been recognized as the model which all +members of polite society should imitate. Nobler characters and more +heroic virtues might have been produced by the Italian commonwealths if +they had continued to enjoy their ancient freedom of self-government. +Meanwhile we must render this justice to Italian despotism, that beneath +its shadow was developed the type of the modern gentleman.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg193" +id="pg193">193</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" />CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<h3>THE REPUBLICS.</h3> + +<p>The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics—The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities—The Rights of Citizenship—Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths—Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions—Example of Genoa—Savonarola's +Constitution—Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.—Complexity of Interests +and Factions—Example of Siena—Small Size of Italian Cities—Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths—The notable Exception of +Venice—Constitution of Venice—Her wise System of Government—Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes—The Magistracies of Florence—Balia and +Parlamento—The Arts of the Medici—Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility—Parallels between Greece +and Italy—Essential Differences—The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs—The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'—The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher—Mercenary Arms.</p> + + +<p>The despotisms of Italy present the spectacle of states founded upon +force, controlled and molded by the will of princes, whose object in +each case has been to maintain usurped power by means of mercenary arms +and to deprive the people of political activity. Thus the Italian +principalities, however they may differ in their origin, the character +of their administration, or their relation to Church and Empire, all +tend to one type. The egotism of the despot, conscious of his selfish +aims and deliberate in their execution, formed the motive principle in +all alike.</p> + +<p>The republics on the contrary are distinguished by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg194" +id="pg194">194</a></span> strongly marked +characteristics. The history of each is the history of the development +of certain specific qualities, which modified the type of municipal +organization common to them all. Their differences consist chiefly in +the varying forms which institutions of a radically similar design +assumed, and also in those peculiar local conditions which made the +Venetians Levant merchants, the Perugians captains of adventure, the +Genoese admirals and pirates, the Florentines bankers, and so forth. +Each commonwealth contracted a certain physiognomy through the prolonged +action of external circumstances and by the maintenance of some +political predilection. Thus Siena, excluded from maritime commerce by +its situation, remained, broadly speaking, faithful to the Ghibelline +party; while Perugia at the distance of a few miles, equally debarred +from mercantile expansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity. +The annals of the one city record a long succession of complicated party +quarrels, throughout the course of which the State continued free; the +Guelf leanings of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment of +the Popes, while its civic independence was imperiled and enfeebled by +the contests of a few noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner +are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a state of feud and +faction which delivered it bound hand and foot to Florence, the former +after many vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the dominion of a +narrow oligarchy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg195" +id="pg195">195</a></span>But while recognizing these differences, which manifest themselves +partly in what may be described as national characteristics, and partly +in constitutional varieties, we may trace one course of historical +progression in all except Venice. This is what natural philosophers +might call the morphology of Italian commonwealths. To begin with, the +Italian republics were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek +states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the +privileges of government, together with a larger population, who, though +they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages of the +city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was hereditary in +those families by whom it had been once acquired, each republic having +its own criterion of the right, and guarding it jealously against the +encroachments of non-qualified persons. In Florence, for example, the +burgher must belong to one of the Arts.<a name="FNanchor_1_104" id="FNanchor_1_104" /><a href="#Footnote_1_104" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In Venice his name must be +inscribed upon the Golden Book. The rivalries to which this system of +municipal government gave rise were a chief source of internal weakness +to the commonwealths. Nor did the burghers see far enough or +philosophically enough to recruit their numbers by a continuous +admission of new members from the wealthy but unfranchised citizens.<a name="FNanchor_2_105" id="FNanchor_2_105" /><a href="#Footnote_2_105" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +This alone could have saved them from<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg196" +id="pg196">196</a></span> the death by dwindling and decay +to which they were exposed. The Italian conception of citizenship may be +set forth in the words of one of their acutest critics, Donato +Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors in a state:<a name="FNanchor_3_106" id="FNanchor_3_106" /><a href="#Footnote_3_106" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'Non dico +tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti quelli che hanno grado; cioè +che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli antichi loro, facultà d'ottenere i +magistrate; e in somma che sono <i>participes imperandi et parendi</i>.' No +Italian had any notion of representative government in our sense of the +term. The problem was always how to put the administration of the state +most conveniently into the hands of the fittest among those who were +qualified as burghers, and how to give each burgher his due share in the +government; not how to select men delegated from the whole population. +The wisest among their philosophical politicians sought to establish a +mixed constitution, which should combine the advantages of principality, +aristocracy, and democracy. Starting with the fact that the eligible +burghers numbered some 5,000, and with the assumption that among these +the larger portion would be content with freedom and a voice in the +administration, while a certain body were ambitious of honorable +distinctions, and a few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they +thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg197" +id="pg197">197</a></span> that these several desires might be satisfied and reconciled in +a republic composed of a general assembly of the citizens, a select +Senate, and a Doge. In these theories the influence of Aristotelian +studies<a name="FNanchor_4_107" id="FNanchor_4_107" /><a href="#Footnote_4_107" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it +is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 +who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the +city.<a name="FNanchor_5_108" id="FNanchor_5_108" /><a href="#Footnote_5_108" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like +that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's +speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, +with which we Englishmen<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg198" +id="pg198">198</a></span> were made familiar in the seventeenth century, or that again +of the rights of men, on which the democracies of France and America +were founded. The right contemplated by the Italian politicians is that +of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for their advantage. As a +matter of fact, Venice was the only Italian republic which maintained +this kind of oligarchy with success through centuries of internal +tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a series of revolutions which +ended at last in their enslavement.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_104" id="Footnote_1_104" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_104"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Villari, <i>Life of Savonarola</i>, vol. i. p. 259, may be +consulted concerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, +Aggravezzati, at Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. Consult +Appendix ii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_105" id="Footnote_2_105" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_105"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting +deserving individuals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine +Constitution of 1495. The principle was not, however, recognized at +large by the republics.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_106" id="Footnote_3_106" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_106"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> On the Government of Siena (vol. i. p. 351 of his collected works): +'I say not all the inhabitants of the state, but all those who have +rank; that is, who have acquired, either in their own persons or through +their ancestors, the right of taking magistracy, in short those who are +participes imperandi et parendi.' What has already been said in Chapter +II. about the origin of the Italian Republics will explain this +definition of burghership.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_107" id="Footnote_4_107" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_107"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It would be very interesting to trace in detail the influence of +Aristotle's Politics upon the practical and theoretical statists of the +Renaissance. The whole of Giannotti's works; the discourses of de' +Pazzi, Vettori, Acciaiuoli, and the two Guicciardini on the State of +Florence (<i>Arch. St. It.</i> vol. i.); and Machiavelli's <i>Discorso sul +Reggimento di Firenze</i>, addressed to Leo X., illustrate in general the +working of Aristotelian ideas. At Florence, in 1495, Savonarola urged +his Constitution on the burghers by appeals to Aristotle's doctrine and +to the example of Venice [see Segni, p. 15, and compare the speeches of +Pagolo Antonio Soderini and Guido Antonio Vespucci, in Guicciardini's +<i>Istoria d' Italia</i>, vol. ii. p. 155 of Rosini's edition, on the same +occasion]. Segni, p. 86, mentions a speech of Pier Filippo Pandolfini, +the arguments of which, he says, were drawn from Aristotle and +illustrated by Florentine history. The Italian doctrinaires seem to have +imagined that, by clever manipulation of existing institutions, they +could construct a state similar to that called [Greek: <i>politeia</i>] by +Aristotle, in which all sections of the community should be fairly +represented. Venice, meanwhile, was a practical instance of the possible +prosperity of such a constitution with a strong oligarchical complexion.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_108" id="Footnote_5_108" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_108"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> These numbers, 100,000 for the population, and 5,000 for the +burghers, are stated roundly. In Florence, when the Consiglio Maggiore +was opened in 1495, it was found that the Florentines altogether +numbered about 90,000, while the qualified burghers were not more than +3,200. In 1581 the population of Venice numbered 134,890, whereof 1,843 +were adult patricians [see below, p. 209].</p></div> + +<p>Intolerant of foreign rule, and blinded by the theoretical supremacy of +the Empire to the need of looking beyond its own municipal institutions, +each city in the twelfth century sought to introduce such a system into +the already existing machinery of the burgh as should secure its +independence and place the government in the hands of its citizens. But +the passing of bad laws, or the non-observance of wise regulations, or, +again, the passions of individuals and parties, soon disturbed the +equilibrium established in these little communities. Desire for more +power than their due prompted one section of the burghers to violence. +The love of independence, or simple insubordination, drove another +portion to resistance. Matters were further complicated by resident or +neighboring nobles. Then followed the wars of factions, proscriptions, +and exiles. Having banished their rivals, the party in power for the +time being remodeled the institutions of the republic to suit their own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg199" +id="pg199">199</a></span>particular interest. Meanwhile the opposition in exile fomented every +element of discontent within the city, which this short-sighted policy +was sure to foster. Sudden revolutions were the result, attended in most +cases by massacres consequent upon the victorious return of the outlaws. +To the action of these peccant humors—<i>umori</i> is the word applied by +the elder Florentine historians to the troubles attendant upon +factions—must be added the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity +of intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, +the treason and the egotism of mercenary generals, and the false foreign +policy which led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany or +Spain. Little by little, under the prolonged action of these disturbing +forces, each republic in turn became weaker, more confused in policy, +more mistrustful of itself and its own citizens, more subdivided into +petty but ineradicable factions, until at last it fell a prey either to +some foreign potentate, or to the Church, or else to an ambitious family +among its members. The small scale of the Italian commonwealths, taken +singly, favored rapid change, and gave an undue value to distinguished +wealth or unscrupulous ability among the burghers. The oscillation +between democracy and aristocracy and back again, the repetition of +exhausting discords, and the demoralizing influences of occasional +despotism, so broke the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the +citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were glad to accept +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg200" +id="pg200">200</a></span>tyranny for the sake of the protection it professed to extend to life +and property.</p> + +<p>To these vicissitudes all the republics of Italy, with the exception of +Venice, were subject. In like manner, they shared in common the belief +that constitutions could be made at will, that the commonwealth was +something plastic, capable of taking the complexion and the form +impressed upon it by speculative politicians. So firmly rooted was this +conviction, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen of Italy +become, partly by the experience of their shifting history, and partly +by their study of antiquity, that the idea of the State as something +possessed of organic vitality can scarcely be said to have existed among +them. The principle of gradual growth, which gives its value, for +example, to the English Constitution, was not recognized by the +Italians. Nor again had their past history taught them the necessity, so +well defined and recognized by the Greek statesmen, of maintaining a +fixed character at any cost in republics, which, in spite of their small +scale, aspired to permanence.<a name="FNanchor_1_109" +id="FNanchor_1_109" /><a href="#Footnote_1_109" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The most violent and arbitrary changes which the speculative faculty of +a theorist could contrive, or which the prejudices of a party could +impose, seemed to them not only possible but natural.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_109" id="Footnote_1_109" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_109"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The value of the [Greek: <i>êthos</i>] was not wholly +unrecognized by political theorists. Giannotti (vol. i. p. 160, and vol. +ii. p. 13), for example translates it by the word 'temperamento.'</p></div> + +<p>A very notable instance of this tendency to treat the State as a plastic +product of political ingenuity, is afforded<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg201" +id="pg201">201</a></span> by the annals of Genoa. +After suffering for centuries from the vicissitudes common to all +Italian free cities—discords between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, +between the nobles and the people, between the enfranchised citizens and +the proletariat—after submitting to the rule of foreign masters, +especially of France and Milan, and after being torn in pieces by the +rival houses of Adorni and Fregosi, the Genoese at last received liberty +from the hands of Andrea Doria in 1528. They then proceeded to form a +new Constitution for the protection of their freedom; and in order to +destroy the memory of the old parties which had caused their ruin, they +obliterated all their family names with the exception of twenty, under +one or other of which the whole body of citizens were bound to enroll +themselves.<a name="FNanchor_1_110" id="FNanchor_1_110" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_110" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This was nothing less +than an attempt to create new <i>gentes</i> by effacing the distinctions +established by nature and tradition. To parallel a scheme so artificial +in its method, we must go back to the history of Sicyon and the changes +wrought in the Dorian tribes by Cleisthenes.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_110" id="Footnote_1_110" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_110"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Varchi, <i>St. F.</i> lib. vii. cap. 3.</p></div> + +<p>Short of such violent expedients as these, the whole history of towns +like Florence reveals a succession of similar attempts. When, for +example, the Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines found +themselves without a working constitution, and proceeded to frame one. +The matter was at first referred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio +Vespucci and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg202" +id="pg202">202</a></span> Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and +against the establishment of a Grand Council on the Venetian model, +before the Signory in the Palazzo. At this juncture Savonarola in his +sermon for the third Sunday in Advent<a name="FNanchor_1_111" +id="FNanchor_1_111" /><a href="#Footnote_1_111" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +suggested that each of the sixteen Companies should form a plan, that +these should be submitted to the Gonfaloniers, who should choose the +four best, and that from these four the Signory should select the most +perfect. At the same time he pronounced himself in favor of an imitation +of the Venetian Consiglio Grande. His scheme, as is well known, was +adopted.<a name="FNanchor_2_112" id="FNanchor_2_112" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_112" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Running through the +whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and historians, +we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary alterations of the +state. Machiavelli pronounces his opinion that, in spite of the +corruption of Florence, a wise legislator might effect her salvation.<a +name="FNanchor_3_113" id="FNanchor_3_113" /><a href="#Footnote_3_113" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Skill alone was needed. There lay the wax; the +scientific artist had only to set to his hand and model it.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_111" id="Footnote_1_111" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_111"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> December +12, 1494.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_112" id="Footnote_2_112" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_112"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Segni (pp. 15, 16) says that Savonarola deserved to be +honored for this Constitution by the Florentines no less than Numa by +the Romans. Varchi (vol. i. p. 169) judges the Consiglio Grande to have +been the only good institution ever adopted by the Florentines. We may +compare Giannotti (<i>Sopra la Repubblica di Siena</i> p. 346) for a similar +opinion. Guicciardini, both in the <i>Storia d' Italia</i> and the <i>Storia di +Firenze</i>, gives to Savonarola the whole credit of having passed this +Constitution. Nardi and Pitti might be cited to the same effect. None of +these critics doubt for a moment that what was theoretically best ought +to have been found practically feasible.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_113" id="Footnote_3_113" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_113"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>St. Fior.</i> lib. iii. 1. 'Firenze a quel grado è pervenuta che +facilmente da uno savio dator di leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque +forma di governo riordinata.'</p></div> + +<p>This is the dominant thought which pervades his treatise on<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg203" +id="pg203">203</a></span> the right +ordering of the State of Florence addressed to Leo X.<a name="FNanchor_1_114" id="FNanchor_1_114" /><a href="#Footnote_1_114" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A more +consummate piece of political mechanism than that devised by Machiavelli +in this essay can hardly be imagined. It is like a clock with separate +actions for hours, minutes, seconds, and the revolutions of the moon and +planets. All the complicated interest of parties and classes in the +state, the traditional pre-eminence of the Medicean family, the rights +of the Church, and the relation of Florence to foreign powers, have been +carefully considered and provided for. The defect of this consummate +work of art is that it remained a mere machine, devised to meet the +exigencies of the moment, and powerless against such perturbations as +the characters and passions of living men must introduce into the +working of a Commonwealth. Had Florence been a colony established in a +new country with no neighbors but savages, or had it been an institution +protected from without against the cupidity of selfish rivals, then<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg204" +id="pg204">204</a></span> +such a constitution might have been imposed on it with profit. But to +expect that a city dominated by ancient prejudices, connected by a +thousand subtle ties not only with the rest of Italy but also with the +states of Europe, and rotten to the core in many of its most important +members, could be restored to pristine vigor by a doctrinaire however +able, was chimerical. The course of events contradicted this vain +expectation. Meanwhile a few clear-headed and positive observers were +dimly conscious of the instability of merely speculative +constitution-making. Varchi, in a weighty passage on the defects of the +Florentine republic, points out that its weakness arose partly from the +violence of factions, but also in a great measure from the implicit +faith reposed in doctors of the law.<a name="FNanchor_2_115" +id="FNanchor_2_115" /><a href="#Footnote_2_115" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +The history of the Florentine Constitution, he says, is the history of +changes effected by successions of mutually hostile parties, each in its +own interest subverting the work of its predecessor, and each in turn +relying on the theories of jurists, who without practical genius for +politics make arbitrary rules for the control of state-affairs. Yet even +Varchi shares the prevailing conviction that the proper method is first +to excogitate a perfect political system, and then to impress that like +a stamp upon the material of the commonwealth. His criticism is directed +against lawyers, not against philosophers and practical +diplomatists.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_114" id="Footnote_1_114" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_114"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The language of this treatise is noteworthy. After +discoursing on the differences between republics and principalities, and +showing that Florence is more suited to the former, and Milan to the +latter, form of government, he says: 'Ma perchè <i>fare</i> principato dove +starebbe bene repubblica,' etc. ... 'si perche Firenze <i>è subietto +attissimo di pigliare questa forma</i>,' etc. The phrases in italics show +how thoroughly Machiavelli regarded the commonwealth as plastic. We may +compare the whole of Guicciardini's elaborate essay 'Del Reggimento di +Firenze' (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. ii.), as well as the 'Discourses' addressed +by Alessandro de' Pazzi, Francesco Vettori, Ruberto Acciaiuoli, +Francesco Guicciardini, and Luigi Guicciardini, to the Cardinal Giulio +de' Medici, on the settlement of the Florentine Constitution in 1522 +(<i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. i.). Not one of these men doubted that his nostrum +would effect the cure of the republic undermined by slow consumption.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_115" id="Footnote_2_115" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_115"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>St. Fior.</i> lib. vi. cap. 4; vol. i. p. 294.</p></div> + +<p>In this sense and to this extent were the republics of Italy<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg205" +id="pg205">205</a></span> the +products of constructive skill; and great was the political sagacity +educed among the Italians by this state of things. The citizens +reflected on the past, compared their institutions with those of +neighboring states, studied antiquity, and applied the whole of their +intelligence to the one aim of giving a certain defined form to the +commonwealth. Prejudice and passion distorted their schemes, and each +successive modification of the government was apt to have a merely +temporary object. Thus the republics, as I have already hinted, lacked +that safeguard which the Greek states gained by clinging each to its own +character. The Greeks were no less self-conscious in their political +practice and philosophy; but after the age of the Nomothetæ, when they +had experienced nearly every phase through which a commonwealth can +pass, they recognized the importance of maintaining the traditional +character of their constitutions inviolate. Sparta adhered with singular +tenacity to the code of Lycurgus; and the Athenians, while they advanced +from step to step in the development of a democracy, were bent on +realizing the ideal they had set before them.</p> + +<p>Religion, which in Greece, owing to its local and genealogical +character, was favorable to this stability, proved in Italy one of the +most potent causes of disorder. The Greek city grew up under the +protection of a local deity, whose blood had been transmitted in many +instances to the chief families of the burgh. This ancestral god gave +independence and autonomy to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg206" +id="pg206">206</a></span> the State; and when the Nomothetes +appeared, he was understood to have interpreted and formulated the +inherent law that animated the body politic. Thus the commonwealth was a +divinely founded and divinely directed organism, self-sufficing, with no +dependence upon foreign sanction, with no question of its right. The +Italian cities, on the contrary, derived their law from the common <i>jus</i> +of the Imperial system, their religion from the common font of +Christianity. They could not forget their origin, wrung with difficulty +from existing institutions which preceded them and which still remained +ascendant in the world of civilized humanity. The self-reliant autonomy +of a Greek state, owing allegiance only to its protective deity and its +inherent Nomos, had no parallel in Italy outside Venice. All the other +republics were conscious of dependence on external power, and regarded +themselves as <i>ab initio</i> artificial rather than natural creations.</p> + +<p>Long before a true constitutional complexion had been given to any +Italian State but Venice, parties had sprung up, and taken such firm +root that the subsequent history of the republics was the record of +their factions. To this point I have already alluded; but it is too +important to be passed by without further illustration. The great +division of Guelf and Ghibelline introduced a vital discord into each +section of the people, by establishing two antagonistic theories +respecting the right of supreme government. Then followed subordinate +quarrels of the nobles<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg207" +id="pg207">207</a></span> with the townsfolk, schisms between the +wealthier and poorer burghers, jealousies of the artisans and merchants, +and factions for one or other eminent family. These different elements +of discord succeed each other with astonishing rapidity; and as each +gives place to another, it leaves a portion of its mischief rankling in +the body politic, until last there remains no possibility of +self-government.<a name="FNanchor_1_116" id="FNanchor_1_116" /><a href="#Footnote_1_116" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The history of Florence, or Genoa, or Pistoja would +supply us with ample illustrations of each of these obstacles to the +formation of a solid political temperament. But Siena furnishes perhaps +the best example of the extent to which such feuds could disturb a +state. The way in which this city conducted its government for a long +course of years, justified Varchi in calling it 'a jumble, so to speak, +and chaos of republics, rather than a well-ordered and disciplined +commonwealth.'<a name="FNanchor_2_117" id="FNanchor_2_117" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_117" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The discords of Siena +were wholly internal. They proceeded from the wrangling of five +successive factions, or Monti, as the people of Siena called them. The +first of these was termed the <i>Monte de' Nobili</i>; for Siena, like all +Italian free burghs, had originally been controlled by certain noble +families, who formed the people and excluded the other citizens from +offices of state. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg208" +id="pg208">208</a></span> course of time the plebeians acquired wealth, and +the nobles split into parties among themselves. To such a pitch were the +quarrels of these nobles carried, that at last they found it impossible +to conduct the government, and agreed to relinquish it for a season to +nine plebeian families chosen from among the richest and most +influential. This gave rise to the <i>Monte de' Nove</i>, who were supposed +to hold the city in commission for the nobles, while the latter devoted +themselves to the prosecution of their private animosities. Weakened by +feuds, the patricians fell a prey to their own creatures, the <i>Monte de' +Nove</i>, who in their turn ruled Siena like oligarchs, refusing to give up +the power which had been intrusted to them. In time, however, their +insolence became insufferable. The populace rebelled, deposed the +<i>Nove</i>, and invested with supreme authority twelve other families of +mixed origin. The <i>Monte de' Dodici</i>, created after this fashion, ran +nearly the same course as their predecessors, except that they appear to +have administered the city equitably. Getting tired of this form of +government, the people next superseded them by sixteen men, chosen from +the dregs of the plebeians, who assumed the title of <i>Riformatori</i>. This +new <i>Monte de' Sedici</i> or <i>de' Riformatori</i> showed much integrity in +their management of affairs, but, as is the wont of red republicans, +they were not averse to bloodshed. Their cruelty caused the people, with +the help of the surviving patrician houses, together with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg209" +id="pg209">209</a></span> the <i>Nove</i> and +the <i>Dodici</i>, to rise and shake them off. The last governing body formed +in this diabolical five-part fugue of crazy statecraft received the name +of <i>Monte del Popolo</i>, because it included all who were then eligible to +the Great Council of the State. Yet the factions of the elder <i>Monti</i> +still survived; and to what extent they had absorbed the population may +be gathered from the fact that, on the defeat of the <i>Riformatori</i>, +4,500 of the Sienese were exiled. It must be borne in mind that with the +creation of each new <i>Monte</i> a new party formed itself in the city, and +the traditions of these parties were handed down from generation to +generation. At last, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pandolfo +Petrucci, who belonged to the <i>Monte de' Nove</i>, made himself in reality, +if not in name, the master of Siena, and the Duke of Florence, later on +in the same century extended his dominion over the republic.<a +name="FNanchor_3_118" id="FNanchor_3_118" /><a href="#Footnote_3_118" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> There is something almost grotesque in the bare +recital of these successive factions; yet we must remember that beneath +their dry names they conceal all elements of class and party +discord.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_116" id="Footnote_1_116" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_116"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Machiavelli, in spite of his love of freedom, says (<i>St. +Fior.</i> lib. vii. 1): 'Coloro che sperano che una repubblica possa essere +unita assai di questa speranza s'ingannano.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_117" id="Footnote_2_117" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_117"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Vol. i. pp. 324-30. See, too, Segni, p. 213, and Giannotti, +vol. i. p. 341. De Comines describes Siena thus: 'La ville est de tout +temps en partialité, et se gouverne plus follement que ville d'Italie.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_118" id="Footnote_3_118" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_118"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Siena capitulated, in 1555, to the Spanish troops, who resigned it +to Duke Cosmo I. in 1557.</p></div> + +<p>What rendered the growth of parties still more pernicious, as already +mentioned, was the smallness of Italian republics. Varchi reckoned +10,000 <i>fuochi</i> in Florence, 50,000 <i>bocche</i> of seculars, and 20,000 +<i>bocche</i> of religious. According to Zuccagni Orlandini there were 90,000 +Florentines<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg210" +id="pg210">210</a></span> in 1495, of whom only 3,200 were burghers. +Venice, according to Giannotti, counted at about the same period 20,000 +<i>fuochi</i>, each of which supplied the state with two men fit to bear +arms. These calculations, though obviously rough and based upon no +accurate returns, show that a republic of 100,000 souls, of whom 5,000 +should be citizens, would have taken distinguished rank among Italian +cities.<a name="FNanchor_1_119" id="FNanchor_1_119" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_119" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In a state of this size, +divided by feuds of every kind, from the highest political antagonism +down to the meanest personal antipathy, changes were very easily +effected. The slightest disturbance of the equilibrium in any quarter +made itself felt throughout the city.<a name="FNanchor_2_120" +id="FNanchor_2_120" /><a href="#Footnote_2_120" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +The opinions of each burgher were known and calculated. Individuals, by +their wealth, their power of aiding or of suppressing poorer citizens, +and the force of their personal ability, acquired a perilous importance. +At Florence the political balance was so nicely adjusted that the +ringing of the great bell in the Palazzo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg211" +id="pg211">211</a></span> meant a revolution, and to +raise the cry of <i>Palle</i> in the streets was tantamount to an outbreak in +the Medicean interest. To call aloud <i>Popolo e libertà</i> was +nothing less than riot punishable by law. Segni tells how Jacopino +Alamanni, having used these words near the statue of David on the Piazza +in a personal quarrel, was beheaded for it the same day.<a +name="FNanchor_3_121" id="FNanchor_3_121" /><a href="#Footnote_3_121" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The secession of three or four families from +one faction to another altered the political situation of a whole +republic, and led perhaps to the exile of a sixth part of the +enfranchised population.<a name="FNanchor_4_122" id="FNanchor_4_122" +/><a href="#Footnote_4_122" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> After this would +follow the intrigues of the outlaws eager to return, including +negotiations with lukewarm party-leaders in the city, alliances with +hostile states, and contracts which compromised the future conduct of +the commonwealth in the interest of a few revengeful citizens. The +biographies of such men as Cosimo de' Medici the elder and Filippo +Strozzi throw the strongest light upon these delicacies and complexities +of party politics in Florence.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_119" id="Footnote_1_119" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_119"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It may be worth while to compare the accurate return of the +Venetian population in 1581 furnished by Yriarte (Vie d'un Patricien de +Venise, p. 96). The whole number of the inhabitants was 134,600. Of +these 1,843 were adult patricians; 4,309 women and children of the +patrician class; Cittadini of all ages and both sexes, 3,553; monks, +nuns, and priests, 3,969; Jews, 1,043; beggars, 187.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_120" id="Footnote_2_120" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_120"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> We might mention, as famous instances, the Neri and Bianchi +factions introduced into Pistoja in 1296 by a quarrel of the Cancellieri +family, the dismemberment of Florence in 1215 by a feud between the +Buondelmonti and Amidei, the tragedy of Imelda Lambertazzi, which upset +Bologna in 1273, the student riot which nearly delivered Bologna into +the hands of Roméo de' Pepoli in 1321, the whole action of the Strozzi +family at the period of the extinction of Florentine liberty, the petty +jealousies of the Cerchi and Donati detailed by Dino Compagni, in 1294.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_121" id="Footnote_3_121" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_121"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Segni, <i>St. Fior</i>. p. 53.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_122" id="Footnote_4_122" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_122"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> As an instance, take what Marco Foscari reported in 1527 to the +Venetian Senate respecting the parties in Florence (<i>Rel. Ven.</i> serie +ii. vol. i. p. 70). The <i>Compagnacci</i>, one of the three great parties, +only numbered 800 persons.</p></div> + +<p>In addition to the evils of internal factions we must reckon all the +sources of mutual mistrust to which the republics were exposed. As the +Italians had no notion of representative government, so they never +conceived a confederation. The thirst for autonomy in each state was as +great as of old among the cities of Greece. To be independent of a +sister republic, though such freedom were<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg212" id="pg212">212</a></span> bought at the price of the +tyranny of a native family was the first object of every commonwealth. +At the same time this passion for independence was only equaled by the +greed of foreign usurpation. The second object of each republic was to +extend its power at the expense of its neighbors. As Pisa swallowed +Amalfi, so Genoa destroyed Pisa, and Venice did her best to cripple +Genoa. Florence obliterated the rival burgh of Semifonte, and Milan +twice reduced Piacenza to a wilderness. The notion that the great +maritime powers of Italy or the leading cities of Lombardy should +permanently co-operate for a common purpose was never for a moment +entertained. Such leagues as were formed were understood to be +temporary. When their immediate object had been gained, the members +returned to their initial rivalries. Milan, when, on the occasion of Filippo Maria Visconti's death, she +had a chance of freedom, refused to recognize the liberties of the +Lombard cities, and fell a prey to Francesco Sforza. Florence, under the +pernicious policy of Cosimo de' Medici, helped to enslave Milan and +Bologna instead of entering into a republican league against their +common foes, the tyrants. Pisa, Arezzo, and the other subject cities of +Tuscany were treated by her with such selfish harshness that they proved +her chiefest peril in the hour of need.<a name="FNanchor_1_123" +id="FNanchor_1_123" /><a href="#Footnote_1_123" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Competition in commerce increased the mutual hatred of the free burghs. +States like Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, depending<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg213" +id="pg213">213</a></span> for their existence +upon mercantile wealth, and governed by men of business, took every +opportunity they could of ruining a rival in the market. So mean and +narrow was the spirit of Italian policy that no one accounted it +unpatriotic or dishonorable for Florence to suck the very life out of +Pisa, or for Venice to strangle a competitor so dangerous as Genoa.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_123" id="Footnote_1_123" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_123"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the instructions furnished to Averardo dei Medici, +quoted by Von Reumont in his <i>Life of Lorenzo</i>, vol. ii. p. 122, German +edition.</p></div> + +<p>Thus the jealousy of state against state, of party against party, and of +family against family, held Italy in perpetual disunion; while +diplomatic habits were contracted which rendered the adoption of any +simple policy impossible. When the time came for the Italians to cope +with the great nations of Europe, the republics of Venice, Genoa, Milan, +Florence ought to have been leagued together and supported by the weight +of the Papal authority. They might then have stood against the world. +Instead of that, these cities presented nothing but mutual rancors, +hostilities, and jealousies to the common enemy. Moreover, the Italians +were so used to petty intrigues and to a system of balance of power +within the peninsula, that they could not comprehend the magnitude of +the impending danger. It was difficult for a politician of the +Renaissance, accustomed to the small theater of Italian diplomacy, +schooled in the traditions of Lorenzo de' Medici, swayed in his +calculations by the old pretensions of Pope and Emperor, dominated by +the dread of Venice, Milan, and Naples, and as yet but dimly conscious +of the true force of France or Spain, to conceive that absolutely the +only chance of Italy<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg214" +id="pg214">214</a></span> lay in union at any cost and under any form. +Machiavelli indeed seems too late to have discerned this truth. But he +had been lessoned by events, which rendered the realization of his +cherished schemes impossible; nor, could he find a Prince powerful +enough to attempt his Utopia. Of the Republics he had abandoned all +hope.</p> + +<p>To the laws which governed the other republics of Italy, Venice offered +in many respects a notable exception. Divided from the rest of Italy by +the lagoons, and directed by her commerce to the Eastern shores of the +Mediterranean, Venice took no part in the factions which rent the rest +of the peninsula, and had comparatively little to fear from foreign +invasion. Her attitude was one of proud and almost scornful isolation. +In the Lombard Wars of Independence she remained neutral, and her name +does not appear among the Signataries to the Peace of Constance. Both +the Papacy and the Empire recognized her independence. Her true policy +consisted in consolidating her maritime empire and holding aloof from +the affairs of Italy. As long as she adhered to this course, she +remained the envy and the admiration of the rest of Europe.<a name="FNanchor_1_124" id="FNanchor_1_124" /><a href="#Footnote_1_124" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It was +only when she sought to extend her hold upon the mainland that she +aroused the animosity of the Italian powers, and had to bear the brunt +of the League of Cambray alone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg215" +id="pg215">215</a></span><a name="FNanchor_2_125" id="FNanchor_2_125" /><a href="#Footnote_2_125" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Her selfish prudence had been a +source of dread long before this epoch: when she became aggressive, she +was recognized as a common and intolerable enemy.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_124" id="Footnote_1_124" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_124"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> De Comines, in his <i>Memoirs of the Reign of Charles VIII.</i> +(tom. ii. p, 69), draws a striking picture of the impression made upon +his mind by the good government of the state of Venice. This may be +compared with what he says of the folly of Siena.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_125" id="Footnote_2_125" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_125"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Mach. <i>1st. Fior.</i> lib. i. 'Avendo loro con il tempo +occupata Padova, Vicenza, Trevigi, e dipoi Verona, Bergamo e Brescia, e +nel Reame e in Romagna molte città, cacciati dalla cupidità del dominare +vennero in tanta opinione di potenza, che non solamente ai principi +Italiani ma ai Rè oltramontani erano in terrore. Onde congiurati quelli +contra di loro, in un giorno fu tolto loro quello stato che si avevano +in molti anni con infiniti spendii guadagnato. E benchè ne abbino in +questi ultimi tempi racquistato parte, non avendo racquistata nè la +riputazione, nè le forze, a discrezione d'altri, come tutti gli altri +principi Italiani vivono.' It was Francesco Foscari who first to any +important extent led the republic astray from its old policy. He meddled +in Italian affairs, and sought to encroach upon the mainland. For this, +and for the undue popularity he acquired thereby, the Council of Ten +subjected him and his son Jacopo to the most frightfully protracted +martyrdom that a relentless oligarchy has ever inflicted [1445-57].</p></div> + +<p>The external security of Venice was equaled by her internal repose. +Owing to continued freedom from party quarrels, the Venetians were able +to pursue a consistent course of constitutional development. They in +fact alone of the Italian cities established and preserved the character +of their state. Having originally founded a republic under the +presidency of a Doge, who combined the offices of general and judge, and +ruled in concert with a representative council of the chief citizens +(697-1172), the Venetians by degrees caused this form of government to +assume a strictly oligarchical character. They began by limiting the +authority of the Doge, who, though elected for life, was in 1032 +forbidden to associate his<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg216" +id="pg216">216</a></span> son in the supreme office of the state. In +1172 the election of the Doge was transferred from the people to the +Grand Council, who, as a co-opting body, tended to become a close +aristocracy. In 1179 the Ducal power was still further restricted by the +creation of a senate called the Quarantia for the administration of +justice; while in 1229 the Senate of the Pregadi, interposed between the +Doge and the Grand Council, became an integral part of the constitution. +To this latter Senate were assigned all deliberations upon peace and +war, the voting of supplies, the confirmation of laws. Both the +Quarantia and the Pregadi were elected by the Consiglio Grande, which by +this time had become the virtual sovereign of the State of Venice. It is +not necessary here to mention the further checks imposed upon the power +of the Doges by the institution of officials named Correttori and +Inquisitori, whose special business it was to see that the coronation +oaths were duly observed, or by the regulations which prevented the +supreme magistrate from taking any important action except in concert +with carefully selected colleagues. Enough has been said to show that +the constitution of Venice was a pyramid resting upon the basis of the +Grand Council and rising to an ornamented apex, through the Senate, and +the College, in the Doge. But in adopting this old simile—originally +the happy thought of Donato Giannotti, it is said<a name="FNanchor_1_126" id="FNanchor_1_126" /><a href="#Footnote_1_126" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—we must not +forget<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg217" +id="pg217">217</a></span> that the vital force of the Grand Council was felt throughout +the whole of this elaborate system, and that the same individuals were +constantly appearing in different capacities. It is this which makes the +great event of the years 1297-1319 so all-important for the future +destinies of Venice. At this period the Grand Council was restricted to +a certain number of noble families who had henceforth the hereditary +right to belong to it. Every descendant of a member of the Grand Council +could take his seat there at the age of twenty-five; and no new +families, except upon the most extraordinary occasions, were admitted to +this privilege.<a name="FNanchor_2_127" id="FNanchor_2_127" /><a href="#Footnote_2_127" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> By the Closing of the Grand Council, as the +ordinances of this crisis were termed, the administration of Venice was +vested for perpetuity in the hands of a few great houses. The final +completion was given to the oligarchy in 1311 by the establishment of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg218" id="pg218">218</a></span>the +celebrated Council of Ten,<a name="FNanchor_3_128" id="FNanchor_3_128" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_128" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> who exercised a +supervision over all the magistracies, constituted the Supreme Court of +judicature, and ended by controlling the whole foreign and internal +policy of Venice. The changes which I have thus briefly indicated are +not to be regarded as violent alterations in the constitution, but +rather as successive steps in its development. Even the Council of Ten, +which seems at first sight the most tyrannous state-engine ever devised +for the enslavement of a nation, was in reality a natural climax to the +evolution which had been consistently advancing since the year 1172. +Created originally during the troublous times which succeeded the +closing of the Grand Council, for the express purpose of curbing unruly +nobles and preventing the emergence of conspirators like Tiepolo, the +Council of Ten were specially designed to act as a check upon the +several orders in the state and to preserve its oligarchical character +inviolate. They were elected by the Consiglio Grande, and at the +expiration of their office were liable to render strict account of all +that they had done. Nor was this magistracy coveted by the Venetian +nobles. On the contrary, so burdensome were its duties, and so great was +the odium which from time to time the Ten incurred in the discharge of +their functions, that it was not always found easy to fill up their +vacancies. A law had even to be passed that the Ten had<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg219" +id="pg219">219</a></span> not completed +their magistracy before their successors were appointed.<a +name="FNanchor_4_129" id="FNanchor_4_129" /><a href="#Footnote_4_129" +class="fnanchor">[4]</a> They may therefore be regarded as a select +committee of the citizens, who voluntarily delegated dictatorial powers +to this small body in order to maintain their own ascendency, to +centralize the conduct of important affairs, to preserve secrecy in the +administration of the republic, and to avoid the criticism to which the +more public government of states like Florence was exposed.<a +name="FNanchor_5_130" id="FNanchor_5_130" /><a href="#Footnote_5_130" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The weakness of this portion of the state +machinery was this: created with ill-defined and almost unlimited +authority,<a name="FNanchor_6_131" id="FNanchor_6_131" /><a +href="#Footnote_6_131" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> designed to supersede +the other public functionaries on occasions of great moment, and +composed of men whose ability placed them in the very first rank of +citizens, the Ten could scarcely fail, as time advanced, to become a +permanently oppressive power—a despotism within the bosom of an +oligarchy. Thus in the whole mechanism of the state of Venice we trace +the action of a permanent aristocracy tolerating, with a view to its own +supremacy, an amount of magisterial control which in certain cases, like +that of the two Foscari, amounted to the sternest tyranny. By submitting +to the Council of Ten the nobility of Venice secured its hold upon the +people and preserved unity in its policy.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_126" id="Footnote_1_126" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_126"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Vol. ii. of his works, p. 37. On p. 29 he describes the +population of Venice as divided into 'Popolari,' or plebeians, +exercising small industries, and so forth: 'Cittadini,' or the middle +class, born in the state, and of more importance than the plebeians; +'Gentiluomini,' or masters of Venice by sea and land, about 3,000 in +number, corresponding to the burghers of Florence. What he says about +the Constitution refers solely to this upper class. The elaborate work +of M. Yriarte, <i>La Vie d'un Patricien de Venise an Seizième Siècle</i>, +Paris, 1874, contains a complete analysis of the Venetian state-machine. +See in particular what he says about the helplessness of the Doges, ch. +xiii. 'Rex in foro, senator in curiâ, captivus in aulâ,' was a current +phrase which expressed the contrast between their dignity of parade and +real servitude. They had no personal freedom, and were always ruined by +office. It was necessary to pass a law compelling the Doge elect to +accept the onerous distinction thrust upon him. The Venetian oligarchs +argued that it was good that one man should die for the people.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_127" id="Footnote_2_127" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_127"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 55, for the mention of fifteen, admitted +on the occasion of Baiamonte Tiepolo's conspiracy, and of thirty +ennobled during the Genoese war.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_128" id="Footnote_3_128" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_128"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The actual number of this Council was seventeen, for the Ten +associated with the Signoria, which consisted of the Doge and six +Counselors.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_129" id="Footnote_4_129" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_129"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 123.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_130" id="Footnote_5_130" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_130"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The diplomatic difficulties of a popular government, a 'governo +largo,' as opposed to a 'governo stretto,' are set forth with great +acumen by Guicciardini, <i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. ii. p. 84. Cf. vol. iii. p. +272.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_131" id="Footnote_6_131" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_131"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> 'è la sua autorità pari a quella del Consiglio de' Pregati +e di utta la città,' says Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 120.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg220" +id="pg220">220</a></span>No state has ever exercised a greater spell of fascination over its +citizens than Venice. Of treason against the Republic there was little. +Against the decrees of the Council, arbitrary though they might be, no +one sought to rebel. The Venetian bowed in silence and obeyed, knowing +that all his actions were watched, that his government had long arms in +foreign lands, and that to arouse revolt in a body of burghers so +thoroughly controlled by common interests, would be impossible. Further +security the Venetians gained by their mild and beneficent +administration of subject cities, and by the prosperity in which their +population flourished. When, during the war of the League of Cambray, +Venice gave liberty to her towns upon the mainland, they voluntarily +returned to her allegiance. At home, the inhabitants of the lagoons, who +had never seen a hostile army at their gates, and whose taxes were light +in comparison with those of the rest of Italy, regarded the nobles as +the authors of their unexampled happiness. Meanwhile, these nobles were +merchants. Idleness was unknown in Venice. Instead of excogitating new +constitutions or planning vengeance against hereditary foes the Venetian +attended to his commerce on the sea, swayed distant provinces, watched +the interests of the state in foreign cities, and fought the naval +battles of the republic. It was the custom of Venice to employ her +patricians only on the sea as admirals, and never to intrust her armies +to the generalship of burghers. This policy had undoubtedly its wisdom; +for by these means the nobles<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg221" +id="pg221">221</a></span> had no opportunity of intriguing on a +large scale in Italian affairs, and never found the chance of growing +dangerously powerful abroad. But it pledged the State to that system of +paid condottieri and mercenary troops, jealously watched and scarcely +ever trustworthy, which proved nearly as ruinous to Venice as it did to +Florence.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which is +presented by Florence to Venice. While Venice pursued one consistent +course of gradual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained in +perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions or of +party-leaders varied.<a name="FNanchor_1_132" id="FNanchor_1_132" /><a href="#Footnote_1_132" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> When the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, +Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted her in the fourteenth century, she +submitted for a while to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, +who were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party. Thence she passed for +a few months into the hands of a despot in the person of the Duke of +Athens (1342-43). After the confirmation of her republican liberty, +followed a contest between the proletariat and the middle classes +(Ciompi 1378). During the fifteenth century she was kept continually +disturbed by the rivalry of her great merchant families. The rule of the +Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the Florentine territory +by numerous conquests, was virtually the despotism of a close oligarchy. +This phase of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg222" +id="pg222">222</a></span> her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, who +guided her affairs with a show of constitutional equity for four +generations. In 1494, this state of things was violently shaken. The +Florentines expelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their mask +and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they reconstituted their +Commonwealth as nearly as they could upon the model of Venice, and to +this new form of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic +complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.<a name="FNanchor_2_133" id="FNanchor_2_133" /><a href="#Footnote_2_133" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But the internal +elements of the discord were too potent for the maintenance of this +régime. The Medici were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the +shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. and Clement VII., +through the hands of prelates whom they made the guardians and advisers +of their nephews. In 1527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster +on the noblest of Italian cities. The sack of Rome had paralyzed the +Pope. His family were compelled to quit the Medicean palace. The Grand +Council was restored: a Gonfalonier was elected; Florence suffered the +hardships of her memorable siege. At the end of her trials, menaced +alike by Pope and Emperor, who shook<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg223" +id="pg223">223</a></span> hands over her prostrate corpse, +betrayed by her general, the infamous Malatesta Baglioni, and sold by +her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the hereditary +sovereignty of the Medici. It was in vain that Lorenzino of that house +pretended to play Brutus and murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in +1536. Cosimo succeeded in the same year, and won the title of Grand +Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi-Austrian princes.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_132" id="Footnote_1_132" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_132"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,' says Marco Foscari +(as quoted above, p. 42 of his report). The flux of Florence struck a +Venetian profoundly.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_133" id="Footnote_2_133" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_133"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public +Palace, in 1528, to this effect: 'Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi +S.F. decreto electus.' This inscription is differently given. See +Varchi, vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46. Nothing is more significant of the +difference between Venice and Florence than the political idealism +implied in this religious consecration of the republic by statute. In my +essay on 'Florence and the Medici' (<i>Sketches and Studies in Italy</i>) I +have attempted to condense the internal history of the Republic and to +analyze the state-craft of the Medici.</p></div> + +<p>Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and phase of republican +government was advocated, discussed, and put in practice by the +Florentines. All the arts of factions, all the machinations of exiles, +all the skill of demagogues, all the selfishness of party-leaders, all +the learning of scholars, all the cupidity of subordinate officials, all +the daring of conspirators, all the ingenuity of theorists, and all the +malice of traitors, were brought successively or simultaneously into +play by the burghers, who looked upon their State as something they +might mold at will. One thing at least is clear amid so much apparent +confusion, that Florence was living a vehemently active and +self-conscious life, acknowledging no principle of stability in her +constitution, but always stretching forward after that ideal +<i>Reggimento</i> which was never realized.<a name="FNanchor_1_134" +id="FNanchor_1_134" /><a href="#Footnote_1_134" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_134" id="Footnote_1_134" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_134"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In his 'Proemio' to the 'Trattato del Reggimento di +Firenze, Guicciardini thus describes the desideratum: 'introdurre in +Firenze un governo onesto, bene ordinato, e che veramente si potesse +chiamare libero, il che dalla sua prima origine insino a oggi non è mai +stato cittadino alcuno che abbia saputo o potuto fare.'</p></div> + +<p>It is worth while to consider more in detail the different<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg224" id="pg224">224</a></span> magistracies +by which the government of Florence was conducted between the years of +1250 and 1531, and the gradual changes in the constitution which +prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny.<a name="FNanchor_1_135" +id="FNanchor_1_135" /><a href="#Footnote_1_135" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +It is only thus an accurate conception of the difference between the +republican systems of Venice and of Florence can be gained. Before the +date 1282, which may be fixed as the turning-point in Florentine history +we hear of twelve Anziani, two chosen for each Sestiere of the city, +acting in concert with a foreign Podestà, and a Captain of the +People charged with military authority. At this time no distinction was +made between nobles and plebeians; and the town, though Guelf, had not +enacted rigorous laws against the Ghibelline families. Towards the end +of the thirteenth century, however, important, changes were effected in +the very elements of the commonwealth. The Anziani were superseded by +the Priors of the Arts. Eight Priors, together with a new officer called +the Gonfalonier of Justice, formed the Signoria, dwelling at public +charge in the Palazzo and holding office only for two months.<a +name="FNanchor_2_136" id="FNanchor_2_136" /><a href="#Footnote_2_136" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> No one who had not been matriculated into one +of the Arti or commercial guilds could henceforth bear office in the +state. At the same time severe measures, called Ordinanze della +Giustizia, were passed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg225" +id="pg225">225</a></span> by which the nobles were for ever excluded from +the government, and the Gonfalonier of Justice was appointed to maintain +civil order by checking their pride and turbulence.<a +name="FNanchor_3_137" id="FNanchor_3_137" /><a href="#Footnote_3_137" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> These modifications of the constitution, +effected between 1282 and 1292, gave its peculiar character to the +Florentine republic. Henceforward Florence was governed solely by +merchants. Both Varchi and Machiavelli have recorded unfavorable +opinions of the statute which reduced the republic of Florence to a +commonwealth of shop-keepers.<a name="FNanchor_4_138" +id="FNanchor_4_138" /><a href="#Footnote_4_138" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +But when we read these criticisms, we must bear in mind the internecine +ferocity of party-strife at this period, and the discords to which a +city divided between a territorial aristocracy and a commercial +bourgeoisie was perpetually exposed. If anything could make the +Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would be a cool perusal of +the <i>Chronicle</i> of Matarazzo, which sets forth the wretched state of +Perugia owing to the feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the +Baglioni.<a name="FNanchor_5_139" id="FNanchor_5_139" /><a +href="#Footnote_5_139" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Peace for the republic +was not, however, secured by these strong measures. The factions of the +Neri and Bianchi opened the fourteenth century with battles and +proscriptions; and in 1323 the constitution had again to be modified. At +this date the Signoria of eight Priors with the Gonfalonier of Justice, +the College<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg226" +id="pg226">226</a></span> of the twelve Buonuomini, and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of +the companies—called collectively <i>i tre maggiori</i>, or the three +superior magistracies—were rendered eligible only to Guelf +citizens of the age of thirty, who had qualified in one of the seven +Arti Maggiori, and whose names were drawn by lot. This mode of election, +the most democratic which it is possible to adopt, held good through all +subsequent changes in the state. Its immediate object was to quiet +discontent and to remove intrigue by opening the magistracies to all +citizens alike. But, as Nardi has pointed out, it weakened the sense of +responsibility in the burghers, who, when their names were once included +in the bags kept for the purpose, felt sure of their election, and had +no inducement to maintain a high standard of integrity. Sismondi also +dates from this epoch the withdrawal of the Florentines from military +service.<a name="FNanchor_6_140" id="FNanchor_6_140" /><a +href="#Footnote_6_140" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Nor, as the sequel +shows, was the measure efficient as a check upon the personal ambition +of encroaching party leaders. The <i>Squittino</i> and the <i>Borse</i> became +instruments in the hands of the Medici for the consolidation of their +tyranny.<a name="FNanchor_7_141" id="FNanchor_7_141" /><a +href="#Footnote_7_141" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> By the end of the +fourteenth century (about 1378)the Florentines had to meet a new +difficulty. The Guelf citizens began to abuse the so-called Law of +Admonition, by means of which the Ghibellines were excluded from the +government. This law had formed an essential part of the measures of +1323. In the intervening<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg227" +id="pg227">227</a></span> half-century a new aristocracy, distinguished +by the name of <i>nobili popolani</i>, had grown up and were now threatening +the republic with a close oligarchy.<a name="FNanchor_8_142" +id="FNanchor_8_142" /><a href="#Footnote_8_142" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> +The discords which had previously raged between the people and the +patricians were now transferred to this new aristocracy and the +plebeians. It was found necessary to abolish the Admonition, which had +been made a pretext of excluding all <i>novi homines</i> from the government, +and to place the members of the inferior Arti on the same footing as +those of the superior.<a name="FNanchor_9_143" id="FNanchor_9_143" /><a +href="#Footnote_9_143" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> At this epoch the +Medici, who neither belonged to the ancient aristocracy nor y the more +distinguished houses of the <i>nobili popolani</i>, but rather to the +so-called <i>gente grassa</i> or substantial tradesmen, first acquired +importance. It was by a law of Salvestro de' Medici's in 1378 that the +constitution received its final development in the direction of +equality. Yet after all this leveling, and in the vehement efforts made +by the proletariat on the occasion of the Ciompi outbreak, the exclusive +nature of the Florentine republic was maintained. The franchise was +never extended to more than the burghers, and the matter in debate was +always virtually, who shall be allowed to rank as citizen upon the +register? In fact, by using the pregnant words of Machiavelli, we may +sum up the history of Florence to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg228" +id="pg228">228</a></span> this point in one sentence: 'Di +Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, dipoi i nobili e il +popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e molte volte occorse che una +di queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise in due.'<a +name="FNanchor_10_144" id="FNanchor_10_144" /><a href="#Footnote_10_144" +class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_135" id="Footnote_1_135" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_135"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I will place in an appendix (No. ii.) translations of +Varchi, book iii. sections 20-22, and Nardi, book i. cap. 4, which give +complete and clear accounts of the Florentine constitution after 1292.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_136" id="Footnote_2_136" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_136"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Machiavelli, <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. ii. sect. II. The number +of the Priors was first three, then six, and finally eight. Up to 1282 +the city had been divided into Sestieri. It was then found convenient to +divide it into quarters, and the numbers followed this alteration.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_137" id="Footnote_3_137" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_137"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Machiavelli, <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. ii. sect. 13, may be consulted for +the history of Giano della Bella and his memorable ordinance. Dino +Compagni's <i>Chronicle</i> contains the account of a contemporary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_138" id="Footnote_4_138" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_138"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169; Mach. <i>Ist. Fior.</i> end of book ii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_139" id="Footnote_5_139" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_139"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Archivio Storico</i>, vol. xvi. See also the article 'Perugia,' in my +<i>Sketches in Italy and Greece</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_140" id="Footnote_6_140" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_140"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Vol. iii. p. 347.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_141" id="Footnote_7_141" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_141"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See App. ii. for the phrases 'Squittino' and 'Borse.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_142" id="Footnote_8_142" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_142"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Of these new nobles the Albizzi and Ricci, deadly foes, were the +most eminent. The former strove to exclude the Medici from the +government.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_143" id="Footnote_9_143" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_143"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The number of the Arti varied at different times. Varchi treats of +them as finally consisting of seven maggiori and fourteen minori.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_144" id="Footnote_10_144" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_144"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Proemio to <i>Storia Fiorentina</i>. 'In Florence the nobles first split +up, then the nobles and the people, lastly the people and the multitude; +and it often happened that when one of these parties got the upper hand, +it divided into two camps.' For the meaning of <i>Popolo</i> see above, p. +55.</p></div> + +<p>In the next generation the constitutional history of Florence +exhibits a new phase. The equality which had been introduced into all +classes of the commonwealth, combined with an absence of any state +machinery like that of Venice, exposed Florence at this period to the +encroachments of astute and selfish parvenus. The Medici, who had +hitherto been nobodies, begin now to aspire to despotism. Partly by his +remarkable talent for intrigue, partly by the clever use which he made +of his vast wealth, and partly by espousing the plebeian cause, Cosimo +de' Medici succeeded in monopolizing the government. It was the policy +of the Medici to create a party dependent for pecuniary aid upon their +riches, and attached to their interests by the closest ties of personal +necessity. At the same time they showed consummate caution in the +conduct of the state, and expended large sums on works of public +utility. There was nothing mean in their ambition; and though posterity +must condemn the arts by which they sought to sap the foundations of +freedom in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg229" +id="pg229">229</a></span> native city, we are forced to acknowledge that +they shared the noblest enthusiasms of their brilliant era. Little by +little they advanced so far in the enslavement of Florence that the +elections of all the magistrates, though still conducted by lot, were +determined at their choice: the names of none but men devoted to their +interests were admitted to the bags from which the candidates for office +were selected, while proscriptive measures of various degrees of rigor +excluded their enemies from participation in the government.<a +name="FNanchor_1_145" id="FNanchor_1_145" /><a href="#Footnote_1_145" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> At length in 1480 the whole machinery of the +republic was suspended by Lorenzo de' Medici in favor of the Board of +Seventy, whom he nominated, and with whom, acting like a Privy Council, +he administered the state.<a name="FNanchor_2_146" id="FNanchor_2_146" +/><a href="#Footnote_2_146" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It is clear that +this revolution could never have been effected without a succession of +coups d'état. The instrument for their accomplishment lay ready +to the hands of the Medicean party in the pernicious system of the +Parlamento and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg230" +id="pg230">230</a></span> Balia, by means of which the people, assembled from time +to time in the public square, and intimidated by the reigning faction, +intrusted full powers to a select committee nominated in private by the +chiefs of the great house.<a name="FNanchor_3_147" id="FNanchor_3_147" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_147" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> It is also clear +that so much political roguery could not have been successful without an +extensive demoralization of the upper rank of citizens. The Medici in +effect bought and sold the honor of the public officials, lent money, +jobbed posts of profit, and winked at peculation, until they had created +a sufficient body of <i>âmes damnées</i>, men who had everything +to gain by a continuance of their corrupt authority. The party so +formed, including even such distinguished citizens as the Guicciardini, +Baccio Valori, and Francesco Vettori, proved the chief obstacle to the +restoration of Florentine liberty in the sixteenth century.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_145" id="Footnote_1_145" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_145"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> What Machiavelli says (<i>Ist. Fior.</i> vii. 1) about the arts +of Cosimo contains the essence of the policy by which the Medici rose. +Compare v. 4 and vii. 4-6 for his character of Cosimo. Guicciardini +(<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. ii. p. 68) describes the use made of extraordinary +taxation as a weapon of offense against his enemies, by Cosimo: 'usò le +gravezze in luogo de' pugnali che communemente suole usare chi ha simili +reggimenti nelle mani.' The Marchese Gino Capponi (<i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. i. +pp. 315-20) analyzes the whole Medicean policy in a critique of great +ability.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_146" id="Footnote_2_146" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_146"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Guicciardini (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. ii. pp. 35-49) exposes the +principle and the <i>modus operandi</i> of this Council of Seventy, by means +of which Lorenzo controlled the election of the magistracies, diverted +the public moneys to his own use, and made his will law in Florence. The +councils which he superseded at this date were the Consiglio del Popolo +and the Consiglio del Comune, about which see Nardi, lib i. cap. 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_147" id="Footnote_3_147" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_147"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> For the operation of the Parlamento and Balia, see Varchi, vol. ii. +p. 372; Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4. Segni says: 'The +Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the Piazza of the +Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to address the meeting, +the piazza is guarded by armed men, and then the people are asked +whether they wish to give absolute power (Balia) and authority to the +citizens named, for their good. When the answer, yes, prompted partly by +inclination and partly by compulsion, is returned, the Signory +immediately retires into the palace. This is all that is meant by this +parlamento, which thus gives away the full power of effecting a change +in the state.' The description given by Marco Foscari, p. 44 (loc. cit. +supr.) is to the same effect, but the Venetian exposes more clearly the +despotic nature of the institution in the hands of the Medici. It is +well known how hostile Savonarola was to an institution which had lent +itself so easily to despotism. This couplet he inscribed on the walls of +the Council Chamber, in 1495:— +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">'E sappi che chi vuol parlamento</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.'</span><br /> + +</p><p> +Compare the proverb, 'Chi disse parlamento disse guastamento.'</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg231" +id="pg231">231</a></span>This tyranny of a commercial family, swaying the republic without the +title and with but little of the pomp of princes, subsisted until the +hereditary presidency of the state was conferred upon Alessandro de' +Medici, Duke of Cività di Penna, in 1531. Cosimo his successor, obtained +the rank of Grand Duke from Pius V. in 1569, and his son received the +imperial sanction to the title in 1575. The re-establishment at two +different periods of a free commonwealth upon the sounder basis of the +Consiglio Grande (1494-1512 and 1527-30) formed but two episodes in the +history of this masked but tenacious despotism. Had Savonarola's +constitution been adopted in the thirteenth instead of at the end of the +fifteenth century, the stability of Florence might have been secured. +But at the latter date the roots of the Medicean influence were too +widely intertwined with private interests, the jealousies of classes and +of factions were too inveterate, for any large and wholesome form of +popular government to be universally acceptable. Besides, the burghers +had been reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which ambition +and avarice took the place of patriotism; while the corruption of +morals, fostered by the Medici for the confirmation of their own +authority, was so widely spread as to justify Segni, Varchi, Giannotti, +Guicciardini, and Machiavelli in representing the Florentines as equally +unable to maintain their liberty and to submit to control.</p> + +<p>The historical vicissitudes of Florence were no less<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg232" id="pg232">232</a></span> remarkable +than the unity of Venice. If in Venice we can trace the permanent and +corporate existence of a state superior to the individuals who composed +it, Florence exhibits the personal activity and conscious effort of her +citizens. Nowhere can the intricate relations of classes to the +commonwealth be studied more minutely than in the annals of Florence. In +no other city have opinions had greater value in determining historical +events; and nowhere was the influence of character in men of mark more +notable. In this agitated political atmosphere the wonderful Florentine +intelligence, which Varchi celebrated as the special glory of the Tuscan +soil, and which Vasari referred to something felicitous in Tuscan air, +was sharpened to the finest edge.<a name="FNanchor_1_148" +id="FNanchor_1_148" /><a href="#Footnote_1_148" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Successive generations of practical and theoretical statesmen trained +the race to reason upon government, and to regard politics as a science. +Men of letters were at the same time also prominent in public affairs. +When, for instance, the exiles of 1529 sued Duke Alessandro before +Charles V. at Naples, Jacopo Nardi drew up their pleas, and Francesco +Guicciardini rebutted them in the interest of his master. Machiavelli +learned his philosophy at the Courts of France and Germany and in the +camp of Cesare Borgia. Segni shared the anxieties of Nicolo Capponi, +when the Gonfalonier was impeached for high treason to the state of +Florence. This list might be extended almost indefinitely, with the +object of proving the intimate connection<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg233" +id="pg233">233</a></span> which subsisted at Florence +between the thinkers and the actors. No other European community of +modern times has ever acquired so subtle a sense of its own political +existence, has ever reasoned upon its past history so acutely, or has +ever displayed so much ingenuity in attempting to control the future. +Venice on the contrary owed but little to the creative genius of her +citizens. In Venice the state was everything: the individual was almost +nothing. We find but little reflection upon politics, and no speculative +philosophy of history among the Venetians until the date of Trifone +Gabrielli and Paruta. Their records are all positive and detailed. The +generalizations and comparisons of the Florentines are absent; nor was +it till a late date of the Renaissance that the Venetian history came to +be written as a whole. It would seem as though the constitutional +stability which formed the secret of the strength of Venice was also the +source of comparative intellectual inertness. This contrast between the +two republics displayed itself even in their art. Statues of Judith, the +tyrannicide, and of David, the liberator of his country, adorned the +squares and loggie of Florence. The painters of Venice represented their +commonwealth as a beautiful queen receiving the homage of her subjects +and the world. Florence had no mythus similar to that which made Venice +the Bride of the Sea, and which justified the Doge in hailing Caterina +Cornaro as daughter of S. Mark's (1471). It was in the personal courage +and intelligence<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg234" +id="pg234">234</a></span> of individual heroes that the Florentines discovered +the counterpart of their own spirit; whereas the Venetians personified +their city as a whole, and paid their homage to the Genius of the +State.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_148" id="Footnote_1_148" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_148"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Varchi, ix. 49; Vasari, xii. p. 158; Burckhardt, p. 270.</p></div> + +<p>It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the city of +self-conscious political activity, variable, cultivated, and ill-adapted +by its very freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, +firmly based upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and +solid at the cost of some rigidity, with Venice. As in Greece the +philosophers of Athens, especially Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the +immobility of Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the +theorists of Florence, Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, look with +envy at the state machinery which secured repose and liberty for Venice. +The parallel between Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable +when we inquire into the causes of their decay. Just as the Ephors, +introduced at first as a safeguard to the constitution, by degrees +extinguished the influence of the royal families, superseded the senate, +and exercised a tyrannous control over every department of the state; so +the Council of Ten, dangerous because of its vaguely defined dictatorial +functions, reduced Venice to a despotism.<a name="FNanchor_1_149" +id="FNanchor_1_149" /><a href="#Footnote_1_149" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The gradual dwindling of the Venetian aristocracy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg235" +id="pg235">235</a></span> and the +impoverishment of many noble families, which rendered votes in the Grand +Council venal, and threw the power into the hands of a very limited +oligarchy, complete the parallel.<a name="FNanchor_2_150" +id="FNanchor_2_150" /><a href="#Footnote_2_150" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +One of the chief sources of decay both to Venice and to Sparta was that +shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their +ranks by the admission of new families. The system again of secret +justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which +both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will +upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.<a +name="FNanchor_3_151" id="FNanchor_3_151" /><a href="#Footnote_3_151" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Venice in the end became demoralized in +politics and profligate in private life. Her narrowing oligarchy watched +the national degeneration with approval, knowing that it is easier to +control a vitiated populace than to curb a nation habituated to the +manly virtues.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_149" id="Footnote_1_149" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_149"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty [Greek: +<i>isotyrannos</i>]. Giannotti (vol-ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators. +We might bring the struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty +into comparison with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to +make themselves the chiefs of the republic in more than name. Müller, in +his <i>Dorians</i>, observes that 'the Ephoralty was the moving element, the +principle of change, in the Spartan constitution, and, in the end, the +cause of its dissolution.' Sismondi remarks that the precautions which +led to the creation of the Council of Ten 'dénaturaient entièrement la +constitution de l'état.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_150" id="Footnote_2_150" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_150"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See what Aristotle in the <i>Politics</i> says about [Greek: +<i>oliganthrôpia</i>], and the unequal distribution of property. As to the +property of the Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, <i>Vite dei Duchi</i>, Murat. +xxii. p. 1194, who mentions the benevolences of the richer families to +the poor. They built houses for aristocratic paupers to live in free of +rent.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_151" id="Footnote_3_151" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_151"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> A curious passage in Plutarch's <i>Life of Cleomenes</i> (Clough's +Translation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian +statecraft:—'They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do +supernatural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but thinking +their polity is chiefly kept up by fear ... and therefore the +Lacedæmonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the Ephors, +having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.'</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg236" +id="pg236">236</a></span>Between Athens and Florence the parallel is not so close. These two +republics, however, resemble one another in the freedom and variety of +their institutions. In Athens, as in Florence, there was constant change +and a highly developed political consciousness. Eminent men played the +same important part in both. In both the genius of individuals was even +stronger than the character of the state. Again, as Athens displayed +more of a Panhellenic feeling than any other Greek city, so Florence was +invariably more alive to the interests of Italy at large than any other +state of the peninsula. Florence, like Athens, was the center of culture +for the nation. Like Athens, she give laws to her sister towns in +language, in literature, in fine arts, poetry, philosophy, and history. +Without Florence it is not probable that Italy would have taken the +place of proud pre-eminence she held so long in Europe. Florence never +attained to the material greatness of Athens, because her power, +relatively to the rest of Italy, was slight, her factions were +incessant, and her connection with the Papacy was a perpetual source of +weakness. But many of the causes which ruined Athens were in full +operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable +temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed +by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, +fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source +of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of +wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg237" +id="pg237">237</a></span> exiles under the +guidance of Filippo Strozzi (1533-37) became the laughing-stock of Italy +through their irresolution. The Venetian ambassadors agree in +representing the burghers of Florence as timid from excess of +intellectual mobility. And Dante, whose insight into national +characteristics was of the keenest, has described in ever-memorable +lines the temperament of his fickle city (<i>Purg.</i> vi. 135-51).</p> + +<p>Much of this instability was due to the fact that Florentine, like +Athenian, intelligence was overdeveloped. It passed into mere +cleverness, and overreached itself. Next we may note the tyranny which +both republics exercised over cities that had once been free. Athens +created a despotic empire instead of forming an Ionian Confederation. +Florence reduced Pisa to the most miserable servitude, rendered herself +odious to Arezzo and Volterra, and never rested from attempts upon the +liberties of Lucca and Siena. All these states, which as a Tuscan +federation should have been her strength in the hour of need, took the +first opportunity of throwing off her yoke and helping her enemies. What +Florence spent in recapturing Pisa, after the passage of Charles VIII. +in 1494, is incalculable. And no sooner was she in difficulties during +the siege of 1329, than both Arezzo and Pisa declared for her foes.</p> + +<p>It will not do to push historical parallels too far, interesting as it +may be to note a repetition of the same phenomena at distant periods and +under varying conditions<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg238" +id="pg238">238</a></span> of society. At the same time, to observe +fundamental points of divergence is no less profitable. Many of the +peculiarities of Greek history are attributable to the fact that a Greek +commonwealth consisted of citizens living in idleness, supported by +their slaves, and bound to the state by military service and by the +performance of civic duties. The distinctive mark of both Venice and +Florence, on the other hand, was that their citizens were traders. The +Venetians carried on the commerce of the Levant; the Florentines were +manufacturers and bankers: the one town sent her sons forth on the seas +to barter and exchange; the other was full of speculators, calculating +rates of interest and discount, and contracting with princes for the +conduct of expensive wars. The mercantile character of these Italian +republics is so essential to their history that it will not be out of +place to enlarge a little on the topic. We have seen that the +Florentines rendered commerce a condition of burghership. Giannotti, +writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the republic,<a name="FNanchor_1_152" id="FNanchor_1_152" /><a href="#Footnote_1_152" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> says: +'Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la maggior parte de' nostri, cosi +nobili come ignobili.' To quote instances in a matter so clear and +obvious would be superfluous: else I might show how Bardi and Peruzzi, +Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while they<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg239" +id="pg239">239</a></span> ranked with princes at +the Courts of France, or Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees +and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe. The Palle of the +Medici, which emboss the gorgeous ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, +still swing above the pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great +families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully +asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a +surprising fact that the daughter of the mediæval bankers should have +given a monarch to the French in the sixteenth century.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_152" id="Footnote_1_152" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_152"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Sulle azioni del Ferruccio</i>, vol. i. p. 44. The report of +Marco Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, +contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of +illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' Medici +refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a tradesman.</p></div> + +<p>A very lively picture of the modes of life and the habits of mind +peculiar to the Italian burgher may be gained by the perusal of Agnolo +Pandolfini's treatise, <i>Del Governo della Famiglia</i>. This essay should +be read side by side with Castiglione's <i>Cortegiano</i>, by all who wish to +understand the private life of the Italians in the age of the +Renaissance.<a name="FNanchor_1_153" id="FNanchor_1_153" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_153" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Pandolfini lived at the +time of the war of Florence with Filippo Visconti the exile, and the +return of Cosimo de' Medici. He was employed by the republic on +important<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg240" +id="pg240">240</a></span> missions, and his substance was so great that, on occasion of +extraordinary aids, his contributions stood third or fourth upon the +list. In the Councils of the Republic he always advocated peace, and in +particular he spoke against Impresa di Lucca. As age advanced, he +retired from public affairs, and devoted himself to study, religious +exercises, and country excursions. He possessed a beautiful villa at +Signa, notable for the splendor of its maintenance in all points which +befit a gentleman. There he had the honor on various occasions of +entertaining Pope Eugenius, King Réné, Francesco Sforza, +and the Marchese Piccinino. His sons lived with him, and spent much of +their spare time in hawking and the chase. They were three, Carlo, who +rose to great dignity in the republic, Giannozzo, still more eminent as +a public man, and Pandolfo, who died young. His wife, one of the +Strozzi, died while Agnolo was between thirty and forty; but he never +married again. He was a great friend of Lionardo Aretino, who published +nothing without his approval. He lived to be upwards of eighty-five, and +died in 1446. These facts sufficiently indicate what sort of man was the +supposed author of the "Essay on the Family," proving, as they +do, that he passed his leisure among princes and scholars, and that he +played some part in the public affairs of the State of Florence. Yet his +view of human life is wholly <i>bourgeois</i>, though by no means ignoble. In +his conception, the first of all virtues is thrift, which should +regulate the use not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg241" +id="pg241">241</a></span> of money, but of all the gifts of nature and +of fortune. The proper economy of the mind involves liberal studies, +courteous manners, honest conduct, and religion.<a name="FNanchor_2_154" +id="FNanchor_2_154" /><a href="#Footnote_2_154" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +The right use of the body implies keeping it in good health by +continence, exercise and diet.<a name="FNanchor_3_155" +id="FNanchor_3_155" /><a href="#Footnote_3_155" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +The thrift of time consists in being never idle. Agnolo's sons, who are +represented as talking with their father in this dialogue, ask him, in +relation to the gifts of fortune, whether he thinks the honors of the +State desirable. This question introduces a long and vehement invective +against the life of a professional statesman, as of necessity +fraudulent, mendacious, egotistic, cruel.<a name="FNanchor_4_156" +id="FNanchor_4_156" /><a href="#Footnote_4_156" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +The private man of middle station is really happiest; and only a sense +of patriotism should induce him, not seeking but when sought, to serve +the State in public office. The really dear possessions of a man are his +family, his wealth, his good repute, and his friendships. In order to be +successful in the conduct of the family, a man must choose a large and +healthy house, where the whole of his offspring—children and +grandchildren, may live together. He must own an estate which will +supply him with corn, wine, oil, wood, fowls, in fact with all the +necessaries of life, so that he may not need to buy much. The main food +of the family will be bread and wine. The discussion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg242" +id="pg242">242</a></span> the utility of +the farm leads Agnolo to praise the pleasure and profit to be derived +from life in the Villa. But at the same time a town-house has to be +maintained; and it is here that the sons of the family should be +educated, so that they may learn caution, and avoid vice by knowing its +ugliness. In order to meet expenses, some trade must be followed, silk +or wool manufacture being preferred; and in this the whole family should +join, the head distributing work of various kinds to his children, as he +deems most fitting, and always employing them rather than strangers. +Thus we get the three great elements of the Florentine citizen's life: +the <i>casa</i>, or town-house, the <i>villa</i>, or country-farm, and the +<i>bottega</i>, or place of business. What follows is principally concerned +with the details of economy. Expenses are of two sorts: necessary, for +the repair of the house, the maintenance of the farm, the stocking of +the shop; and unnecessary, for plate, house decoration, horses, grand +clothes, entertainments. On this topic Agnolo inveighs with severity +against household parasites, bravi, and dissolute dependents.<a +name="FNanchor_5_157" id="FNanchor_5_157" /><a href="#Footnote_5_157" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a> A little further on he indulges in another +diatribe against great nobles, <i>i signori</i>, from whom he would have his +sons keep clear at any cost.<a name="FNanchor_6_158" id="FNanchor_6_158" +/><a href="#Footnote_6_158" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> It is the animosity +of the industrious burgher for the haughty, pleasure-loving, idle, +careless man of blood and high estate. In the bourgeois household +described by Pandolfini no one can be indolent. The men have to work +outside<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg243" +id="pg243">243</a></span> and collect wealth, the women to stay at home and preserve it. +The character of a good housewife is sketched very minutely. Pandolfini +describes how, when he was first married, he took his wife over the +house, and gave up to her care all its contents. Then he went into their +bedroom, and made her kneel with him before Madonna, and prayed God to +give them wealth, friends, and male children. After that he told her +that honesty would be her great charm in his eyes, as well as her chief +virtue, and advised her to forego the use of paints and cosmetics. Much +sound advice follows as to the respective positions of the master and +the mistress in the household, the superintendence of domestics, and the +right ordering of the most insignificant matters. The quality of the +dress which will beseem the children of an honored citizen on various +occasions, the pocket money of the boys, the food of the common table, +are all discussed with some minuteness: and the wife is made to feel +that she must learn to be neither jealous nor curious about concerns +which her husband finds it expedient to keep private.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_153" id="Footnote_1_153" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_153"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I ought to state that Pandolfini is at least a century +earlier in date than Casliglione, and that he represents a more +primitive condition of society. The facts I have mentioned about his +life are given on the authority of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The +references are made to the Milanese edition of 1802. It must also be +added that there are strong reasons for assigning the treatise in +question to Leo Battista Alberti. As it professes, however, to give a +picture of Pandolfini's family, I have adhered to the old title. But the +whole question of the authorship of the Famiglia will be fully discussed +in the last section of my book, which deals with Italian literature. +Personally. I accept the theory of Alberti's authorship.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_154" id="Footnote_2_154" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_154"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A beautiful description of the religious temper, p. 74.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_155" id="Footnote_3_155" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_155"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> What Pandolfini says about the beauty of the body is worthy of a +Greek: what he says about exercise might have been written by an +Englishman, p. 77.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_156" id="Footnote_4_156" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_156"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Pp. 82-89 are very important as showing how low the art of politics +had sunk in Italy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_157" id="Footnote_5_157" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_157"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> P. 125.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_158" id="Footnote_6_158" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_158"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> P. 175.</p></div> + +<p>The charm of a treatise like that of Pandolfini on the family +evaporates as soon as we try to make a summary of its contents. Enough, +however, has been quoted to show the thoroughly <i>bourgeois</i> tone which +prevailed among the citizens of Florence in the fifteenth century.<a +name="FNanchor_1_159" id="FNanchor_1_159" /><a href="#Footnote_1_159" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Very important results were the natural<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg244" +id="pg244">244</a></span> issue +of this commercial spirit in the State. Talking of the Ordinanze di +Giustizia, Varchi observes: 'While they removed in part the civil +discords of Florence, they almost entirely extinguished all nobility of +feeling in the Florentines, and tended as much to diminish the power and +haughtiness of the city as to abate the insolence of the patriciate.'<a +name="FNanchor_2_160" id="FNanchor_2_160" /><a href="#Footnote_2_160" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> A little further on he says: 'Hence may all +prudent men see how ill-ordered in all things, save only in the Grand +Council, has been the commonwealth of Florence; seeing that, to speak of +nought else, that kind of men who in a wisely constituted republic ought +not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the merchants and artisans of +all sorts, are in Florence alone capable of taking office, to the +exclusion of all others.' Machiavelli, less wordy but far more emphatic +than Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This caused the abandonment +by Florence not only of arms, but of all nobility of soul.'<a +name="FNanchor_3_161" id="FNanchor_3_161" /><a href="#Footnote_3_161" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The most notable consequence of the mercantile +temper of the republics was the ruinous system of mercenary warfare, +with all its attendant evils of ambitious captains of adventure, +irresponsible soldiery, and mock campaigns, adopted by the free Italian +States. It is true that even if the Italians had maintained their +national militias in full force, they might not have been able to resist +the shock of France and Spain any better than the armies of Thebes, +Sparta, and Athens averted the Macedonian<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg245" +id="pg245">245</a></span> hegemony. But they would at +least have run a better chance, and not perhaps have perished so ignobly +through the treason of an Alfonso d'Este (1527), of a Marquis of Pescara +(1525), of a Duke of Urbino (1527), and of a Malatesta Baglioni +(1530).<a name="FNanchor_4_162" id="FNanchor_4_162" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_162" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Machiavelli, in a +weighty passage at the end of the first book of his Florentine History, +sums up the various causes which contributed to the disuse of national +arms among the Italians of the Renaissance. The fear of the despot for +his subjects, the priest-rule of the Church, the jealousy of Venice for +her own nobles, and the commercial sluggishness of the Florentine +burghers, caused each and all of these powers, otherwise so different, +to intrust their armies to paid captains. 'Di questi adunque oziosi +principi e di queste vilissime armi sarà piena la mia istoria,' +is the contemptuous phrase with which he winds up his analysis.<a +name="FNanchor_5_163" id="FNanchor_5_163" /><a href="#Footnote_5_163" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_159" id="Footnote_1_159" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_159"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Varchi (book x. cap. 69) quotes a Florentine proverb: +'Chiunque non sta a bottega è ladro.' See above, p. 239.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_160" id="Footnote_2_160" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_160"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Varchi, vol. i. p. 168; compare vol. ii. p. 87, however.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_161" id="Footnote_3_161" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_161"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. ii. end. Aristotle's contempt for the [Greek: +<i>technitai</i>] emerges in these comments of the doctrinaires.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_162" id="Footnote_4_162" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_162"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> To multiply the instances of fraud and treason on the part of +Italian condottieri would be easy. I have only mentioned the notable +examples which fall within a critical period of five years. The Marquis +of Pescara betrayed to Charles V. the league for the liberation of +Italy, which he had joined at Milan. The Duke of Ferrara received and +victualed Bourbon's (then Frundsberg's) army on its way to sack Rome, +because he spited the Pope, and wanted to seize Modena for himself. The +Duke of Urbino, wishing to punish Clement VII. for personal injuries, +omitted to relieve Rome when it was being plundered by the Lutherans, +though he held the commission of the Italian League. Malatesta Baglioni +sold Florence, which he had undertaken to defend, to the Imperial army +under the Prince of Orange.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_163" id="Footnote_5_163" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_163"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> 'With the records of these indolent princes and most abject +armaments, my history will, therefore, be filled.' Compare the following +passage in a letter from Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini (<i>Op.</i> +vol. x. p. 255): 'Comincio ora a scrivere di nuovo, e mi sfogo accusando +i principi, che hanno fatto ogni cosa per condurci qui.'</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg246" +id="pg246">246</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" />CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<h3>THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS.</h3> + + +<p>Florence, the City of Intelligence—Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty—Florentine Historical Literature—Philosophical Study of +History—Ricordano Malespini—Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns—The Villani—The Date +1300—Statistics—Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets—Dino +Compagni—Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century—Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini—The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century—Men of Action and Men of Letters: the +Doctrinaires—Florence between 1494 and 1537—Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini—The Political Importance of these +Writers—The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529—State of Parties—Filippo Strozzi—Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians—Their Literary Qualities—Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli—Scientific Statists—Discord +between Life and Literature—The Biography of Guicciardini—His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'—Biography of Machiavelli—His Scheme of a National +Militia—Dedication of 'The Prince'—Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance—The Discorsi—The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence.'</p> + +<p>Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times. Other +nations have surpassed the Italians in their genius—the quality which +gave a superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare and an universal +sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole +population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly +intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg247" +id="pg247">247</a></span>as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in +quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only +they but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples, were +conscious. Boniface VIII., when he received the ambassadors of the +Christian powers in Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1300, +observed that all of them were citizens of Florence. The witticism which +he is said to have uttered, <i>i Fiorentini essere il quinto elemento</i>, +'that the men of Florence form a fifth element,' passed into a proverb. +The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, +scholarship, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy.</p> + +<p>When the struggle for existence has been successfully terminated, and +the mere instinct of self-preservation no longer absorbs the activities +of a people, then the three chief motive forces of civilization begin to +operate. These are cupidity, or the desire of wealth and all that it +procures; curiosity, or the desire to discover new facts about the world +and man; and the love of beauty, which is the parent of all art. +Commerce, philosophy, science, scholarship, sculpture, architecture, +painting, music, poetry, are the products of these ruling +impulses—everything in fact which gives a higher value to the life +of man. Different nations have been swayed by these passions in +different degrees. The artistic faculty, which owes its energy to the +love of beauty, has been denied to some; the philosophic faculty, which +starts with curiosity, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg248" +id="pg248">248</a></span> others; and some again have shown but little +capacity for amassing wealth by industry or calculation. It is rare to +find a whole nation possessed of all in an equal measure of perfection. +Such, however, were the Florentines.<a name="FNanchor_1_164" +id="FNanchor_1_164" /><a href="#Footnote_1_164" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The mere sight of the city and her monuments would suffice to prove +this. But we are not reduced to the necessity of divining what Florence +was by the inspection of her churches, palaces, and pictures. That +marvelous intelligence which was her pride, burned brightly in a long +series of historians and annalists, who have handed down to us the +biography of the city in volumes as remarkable for penetrative acumen as +for definite delineation and dramatic interest. We possess +picture-galleries of pages in which the great men of Florence live again +and seem to breathe and move, epics of the commonwealth's vicissitudes +from her earliest commencement, detailed tragedies and highly finished +episodes, studies of separate characters, and idylls detached from the +main current of her story. The whole mass of this historical literature +is instinct with the spirit of criticism and vital with experience. The +writers have been either actors or spectators of the drama. Trained in +the study of antiquity, as well as in the council-chambers of the +republic and in the courts of foreign princes, they survey the matter of +their histories from a lofty vantage ground, fortifying their<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg249" id="pg249">249</a></span> speculative +conclusions by practical knowledge and purifying their judgment of +contemporary events with the philosophy of the past. Owing to this rare +mixture of qualities, the Florentines deserve to be styled the +discoverers of the historic method for the modern world. They first +perceived that it is unprofitable to study the history of a state in +isolation, that not wars and treaties only, but the internal +vicissitudes of the commonwealth, form the real subject matter of +inquiry,<a name="FNanchor_2_165" id="FNanchor_2_165" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_165" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and that the smallest +details, biographical, economical, or topographical, may have the +greatest value. While the rest of Europe was ignorant of statistics, and +little apt to pierce below the surface of events to the secret springs +of conduct, in Florence a body of scientific historians had gradually +been formed, who recognized the necessity of basing their investigations +upon a diligent study of public records, state-papers, and notes of +contemporary observers.<a name="FNanchor_3_166" id="FNanchor_3_166" /><a +href="#Footnote_3_166" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The same men prepared +themselves for the task<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg250" +id="pg250">250</a></span> of criticism by a profound study of ethical and +political philosophy in the works of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and +Tacitus.<a name="FNanchor_4_167" id="FNanchor_4_167" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_167" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> They examined the +methods of classical historians, and compared the annals of Greece, +Rome, and Palestine with the chronicles of their own country. They +attempted to divine the genius and to characterize the special qualities +of the nations, cities, and individuals of whom they had to treat.<a +name="FNanchor_5_168" id="FNanchor_5_168" /><a href="#Footnote_5_168" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a> At the same time they spared no pains in +seeking out persons possessed of accurate knowledge in every branch of +inquiry that came beneath their notice, so that their treatises have the +freshness of original documents and the charm of personal memoirs. Much, +as I have elsewhere noted, was due to the peculiarly restless temper of +the Florentines, speculative, variable, unquiet in their politics. The +very qualities which exposed the commonwealth to revolutions, developed +the intelligence of her historians; her want of stability was the price +she paid for intellectual versatility and acuteness unrivaled in modern +times. '"<i>O ingenia magis acria quam matura</i>," said Petrarch, +and with truth, about the wits of the Florentines; for it is their +property by nature to have more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg251" +id="pg251">251</a></span> of liveliness and acumen than of +maturity or gravity.'<a name="FNanchor_6_169" id="FNanchor_6_169" /><a +href="#Footnote_6_169" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_164" id="Footnote_1_164" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_164"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Since the Greeks, no people have combined curiosity and the +love of beauty, the scientific and the artistic sense, in the same +proportions as the Florentines.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_165" id="Footnote_2_165" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_165"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer +Poggio, in the Proemio to his <i>Florentine History</i>. His own conception +of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit of a nation, is +highly philosophical.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_166" id="Footnote_3_166" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_166"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The high sense of the requirements of scientific history attained by +the Italians is shown by what Giovio relates of Gian Galeazzo's archives +(<i>Vita di Gio. Galeazzo</i>, p. 107). After describing these, he adds: +'talche, chi volesse scrivere un' historia giusta non potrebbe +desiderare altronde nè più abbondante nè più certa materia; perciocchè +da questi libri facilissimamente si traggono le cagioni delle guerre, i +consigli, e i successi dell' imprese.' The Proemio to Varchi's <i>Storie +Fiorentine</i> (vol. i. pp. 42-44), which gives an account of his +preparatory labors, is an unconscious treatise on the model historian. +Accuracy, patience, love of truth, sincerity in criticism, and laborious +research, have all their proper place assigned to them. Compare +Guicciardini, <i>Ricordi</i>, No. cxliii., for sound remarks upon the +historian's duty of collecting the statistics of his own age and +country.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_167" id="Footnote_4_167" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_167"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The prefaces to Giannotti's critiques of Florence and of Venice show +how thoroughly his mind had been imbued with the <i>Politics</i> of +Aristotle. Varchi acknowledges the direct influence of Polybius and +Tacitus. Livy is Machiavelli's favorite.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_168" id="Footnote_5_168" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_168"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> On this point the Relazioni of Italian ambassadors are invaluable. +What dryly philosophical compendia are the notes of Machiavelli upon the +French Court and Cesare Borgia! How astute are the Venetian letters on +the opinions and qualities of the Roman Prelates!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_169" id="Footnote_6_169" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_169"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Guicc. <i>Ricordi</i>, cciii. <i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 229.</p></div> + + +<p>The year 1300 marks the first development of historical research in +Florence. Two great writers, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at +this epoch pursued different lines of study, which determined the future +of this branch of literature for the Italians. It is not +uncharacteristic of Florentine genius that while the chief city of +Tuscany was deficient in historians of her achievements before the date +which I have mentioned, her first essays in historiography should have +been monumental and standard-making for the rest of Italy. Just as the +great burghs of Lombardy attained municipal independence somewhat +earlier than those of Tuscany, so the historic sense developed itself in +the valley of the Po at a period when the valley of the Arno had no +chronicler. Sire Raul and Ottone Morena, the annalists of Milan, Fra +Salimbene, the sagacious and comprehensive historian of Parma, +Rolandino, to whom we owe the chronicle of Ezzelino and the tragedy of +the Trevisan Marches, have no rivals south of the Apennines in the +thirteenth century. Even the Chronicle of the Malespini family, written +in the vulgar tongue from the beginning of the world to the year 1281, +which occupies 146 volumes of Muratori's Collection, and which used to +be the pride of Tuscan antiquarians, has recently been shown to be in +all probability a compilation based upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg252" +id="pg252">252</a></span> the Annals of Villani.<a +name="FNanchor_1_170" id="FNanchor_1_170" /><a href="#Footnote_1_170" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This makes the clear emergence of a scientific +sense for history in the year +1300 at Florence all the more remarkable. In order to estimate the high +quality of the work achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn +the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities which still breathe +the spirit of unintelligent mediæval industry, before the method of +history had been critically apprehended. The naïveté of these records +may be appreciated by the following extracts. A Roman writes<a name="FNanchor_2_171" id="FNanchor_2_171" /><a href="#Footnote_2_171" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>: 'I +Lodovico Bonconte Monaldeschi was born in Orvieto, and was brought up in +the city of Rome, where I have resided. I was born in the year 1327, in +the month of June, at the time when the Emperor Lodovico came. Now I +wish to relate the whole history of my age, seeing that I lived one +hundred and fifteen years without illness, except that when I was born I +fainted, and I died of old age, and remained in bed twelve months on +end.' Burigozzo's<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg253" +id="pg253">253</a></span> Chronicle of Milan, again, concludes with these +words:<a name="FNanchor_3_172" id="FNanchor_3_172" /><a href="#Footnote_3_172" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'As you will see in the Annals of my son, inasmuch as the +death which has overtaken me prevents my writing more.' Chronicles +conceived and written in this spirit are diaries of events, repertories +of strange stories, and old wives' tales, without a deep sense of +personal responsibility, devoid alike of criticism and artistic unity. +Very different is the character of the historical literature which +starts into being in Florence at the opening of the fourteenth century.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_170" id="Footnote_1_170" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_170"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, <i>Florentiner Studien</i>, +Leipzig, 1874, Carl Hegel, in his defense of Compagni, <i>Die Chronik des +Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung</i>, Leipzig, 1875, admits the proof +of spuriousness. See the preface, p. v. The point, however, is still +disputed by Florentine scholars of high authority. Gino Capponi, in his +<i>Storia della Repubblica di Firenze</i> (vol. i. Appendix, final note), +observes that while the Villani are popular in tone the Malespini +Chronicle is feudal. Adolfo Bartoli (<i>Storia della Lett. It.</i> vol. iii. +p. 155) treats the question as still open. The custom of preserving +brief <i>fasti</i> in the archives of great houses rendered such compilations +as the Malespini Chronicle is now supposed to have been both easy and +attractive. The Christian name <i>Ricordano</i> given to the first Malespini +annalist does not exist. It has been suggested that it is due to a +misreading of an initial sentence, <i>Ricordano i Malespini</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_171" id="Footnote_2_171" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_171"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Muratori, vol. xii. p. 529.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_172" id="Footnote_3_172" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_172"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iii. p. 552. Both Monaldeschi and Burigozzo +appear to mention their own death. The probability is that their annals, +as we have them, have been freely dealt with by transcribers or +continuators adopting the historic 'I' after the decease of the titular +authors.</p></div> + +<p>Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occasion of the +Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the streets of the Eternal City, +he was moved in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of +the discrowned mistress of the world.<a name="FNanchor_1_173" id="FNanchor_1_173" /><a href="#Footnote_1_173" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'When I saw the great and +ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories and the great deeds of +the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and by +Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other masters of history, who +related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the +Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was +not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the +steps of Ara Celi, within sight<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg254" +id="pg254">254</a></span> of the Capitol, and within hearing of +the monks at prayer, he felt the <i>genius loci</i> stir him with a mixture +of astonishment and pathos. Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence, +the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great +achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I thought it seemly to relate +in this new Chronicle all the doings and the origins of the town of +Florence, as far as I could collect and discover them, and to continue +the acts of the Florentines and the other notable things of the world in +brief onwards so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in whom by +His grace I have done the work rather than by my poor knowledge; and +therefore in the year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to +compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint John and the praise +of this our city Florence.' The key-note is struck in these passages. +Admiration for the past mingles with prescience of the future. The +artist and the patriot awake together in Villani at the sight of Rome +and the thought of Florence.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_173" id="Footnote_1_173" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_173"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Lib. viii. cap. 36.</p></div> + +<p>The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the Chronicle which +Giovanni Villani carried in twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348 +he died of the plague, and his work was continued on the same plan by +his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left +the Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 1365. +Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, both as a master of +style and as an historical<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg255" +id="pg255">255</a></span> artist. Matteo is valuable for the general +reflections which form exordia to the eleven books that bear his name. +Filippo was more of a rhetorician. He is known as the public lecturer +upon the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some interesting but meager +lives of eminent Florentines, his predecessors or contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The Chronicle of the Villani is a treasure-house of clear and accurate +delineations rather than of profound analysis. Not only does it embrace +the whole affairs of Europe in annals which leave little to be desired +in precision of detail and brevity of statement; but, what is more to +our present purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal +condition of the Florentines and the statistics of the city in the +fourteenth century. We learn, for example, that the ordinary revenues of +Florence amounted to about 300,000 golden florins,<a name="FNanchor_1_174" id="FNanchor_1_174" /><a href="#Footnote_1_174" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> levied chiefly by +way of taxes—90,200 proceeding from the octroi, 58,300 from the retail +wine trade, 14,450 from the salt duties, and so on through the various +imposts, each of which is carefully calculated. Then we are informed +concerning the ordinary expenditure of the Commune—15,240 lire for the +podestà and his establishment, 5,880 lire for the Captain of the people +and his train, 3,600 for the maintenance of the Signory in the Palazzo, +and so on down to a sum of 2,400 for the food of the lions, for candles, +torches, and bonfires. The amount spent publicly in almsgiving; the +salaries of ambassadors and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg256" +id="pg256">256</a></span> governors; the cost of maintaining the +state armory; the pay of the night-watch; the money spent upon the +yearly games when the palio was run; the wages of the city trumpeters; +and so forth, are all accurately reckoned. In fact the ordinary Budget +of the Commune is set forth. The rate of extraordinary expenses during +war-time is estimated on the scale of sums voted by the Florentines to +carry on the war with Martino della Scala in 1338. At that time they +contributed 25,000 florins monthly to Venice, maintained full garrisons +in the fortresses of the republic, and paid as well for upwards of 1,000 +men at arms. In order that a correct notion of these balance-sheets may +be obtained, Villani is careful to give particulars about the value of +the florin and the lira, and the number of florins coined yearly. In +describing the condition of Florence at this period, he computes the +number of citizens capable of bearing arms, between the ages fifteen and +seventy, at 25,000; the population of the city at 90,000, not counting +the monastic communities, nor including the strangers, who are estimated +at about 15,000. The country districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 +to this calculation. It is further noticed that the excess of male +births over female was between 300 and 500 yearly in Florence, that from +8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls learned to read; that there were six +schools, in which from 10,000 to 12,000 children learned arithmetic; and +four high schools, in which from 550 to 600 learned grammar and logic. +Then follows a list<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg257" +id="pg257">257</a></span> of the religious houses and churches: among the +charitable institutions are reckoned 30 hospitals capable of receiving +more than 1,000 sick people. Here too it may be mentioned that Villani +reckons the beggars of Florence at 17,000, with the addition of 4,000 +paupers and sick persons and religious mendicants.<a name="FNanchor_2_175" id="FNanchor_2_175" /><a href="#Footnote_2_175" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> These mendicants +were not all Florentines, but received relief from the city charities. +The big wool factories are numbered at upwards of two hundred; and it is +calculated that from sixty to eighty thousand pieces of cloth were +turned out yearly, to the value in all of about 1,200,000 florins. More +than 30,000 persons lived by this industry. The <i>calimala</i> factories, +where foreign cloths were manufactured into fine materials, numbered +about twenty. These imported some 10,000 pieces of cloth yearly, to the +value of 300,000 florins. The exchange offices are estimated at about +eighty in number. The fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking +were colossal for those days. Villani tells us that the great houses of +the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our King Edward III. more than 1,365,000 +golden florins.<a name="FNanchor_3_176" id="FNanchor_3_176" /><a href="#Footnote_3_176" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'And mark this,' he continues, 'that these moneys +were chiefly the property of persons who had given it to them on +deposit.' This debt was to have been recovered out of the wool revenues +and other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi had +negotiated a national loan, by which they hoped to gain a superb +percentage on their capital. The speculation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg258" +id="pg258">258</a></span> however, proved +unfortunate; and the two houses would have failed, but for their +enormous possessions in Tuscany. We hear, for example, of the Bardi +buying the villages of Vernia and Mangona in 1337.<a name="FNanchor_4_177" id="FNanchor_4_177" /><a href="#Footnote_4_177" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> As it was, their +credit received a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered; and a +little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars with the La Scala +family and Pisa, and after the loss of Lucca, they finally stopped +payment and declared themselves bankrupt.<a name="FNanchor_5_178" id="FNanchor_5_178" /><a href="#Footnote_5_178" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The shock communicated by +this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is well described by +Villani.<a name="FNanchor_6_179" id="FNanchor_6_179" /><a href="#Footnote_6_179" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> The enormous wealth amassed by Florentine citizens in +commerce may be still better imagined when we remember that the Medici, +between the years 1434 and 1471, spent some 663,755 golden florins upon +alms and public works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo alone. +But to return to Villani; not content with the statistics which I have +already extracted, he proceeds to calculate how many bushels of wheat, +hogsheads of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Florence by the +year and the week.<a name="FNanchor_7_180" id="FNanchor_7_180" /><a href="#Footnote_7_180" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> We are even told that in the month of July 1280, +40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in +the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines +neglected: the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old +times (about 1260) is<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg259" +id="pg259">259</a></span> contrasted with the new-fangled fashions +introduced by the French in 1342.<a name="FNanchor_8_181" id="FNanchor_8_181" /><a href="#Footnote_8_181" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> In addition to all this +miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo +Villani concerning the foundation of the Monte or Public Funds of +Florence in the year 1345,<a name="FNanchor_9_182" id="FNanchor_9_182" /><a href="#Footnote_9_182" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> as well as the remarkable essay upon the +economical and other consequences of the plague of 1348, which forms the +prelude to his continuation of his brother's Chronicle.<a name="FNanchor_10_183" id="FNanchor_10_183" /><a href="#Footnote_10_183" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_174" id="Footnote_1_174" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_174"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> xi. 62.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_175" id="Footnote_2_175" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_175"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> x. 162.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_176" id="Footnote_3_176" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_176"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> xi. 88.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_177" id="Footnote_4_177" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_177"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> xi. 74. On this occasion a law was passed forbidding citizens to +become lords of districts within the territory of Florence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_178" id="Footnote_5_178" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_178"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> xi. 38.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_179" id="Footnote_6_179" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_179"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> xi. 88.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_180" id="Footnote_7_180" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_180"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> xi, 94.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_181" id="Footnote_8_181" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_181"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> vi. 69; xii. 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_182" id="Footnote_9_182" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_182"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> iii. 106.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_183" id="Footnote_10_183" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_183"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> i. 1-8.</p></div> + +<p>In his survey of the results of the Black Death, Matteo notices not only +the diminution of the population, but the alteration in public morality, +the displacement of property, the increase in prices, the diminution of +labor, and the multiplication of lawsuits, which were the consequences +direct or indirect of the frightful mortality. Among the details which +he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the +enormous bequests to public charities in Florence—350,000 florins to +the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, +and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The poorer population +had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds +were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by +mal-administrators.<a name="FNanchor_1_184" id="FNanchor_1_184" /><a href="#Footnote_1_184" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The foundation of the University of Florence is +also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this +calamity.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_184" id="Footnote_1_184" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_184"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria +Nuova, which seems to have been well managed.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg260" +id="pg260">260</a></span>The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediæval +literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how +far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this +period.<a name="FNanchor_1_185" id="FNanchor_1_185" /><a href="#Footnote_1_185" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Dante's aim is wholly different. Of statistics and of +historical detail we gain but little from his prose works. His mind was +that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient +characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity +in his account of facts. I need not do more than mention here the +concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, +of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise 'De Monarchiâ' we +possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in +constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave +birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the +cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner +the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized +and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations. In the 'De +Monarchiâ' Dante bases a theory of universal government upon a definite +conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity. Amid the anarchy +and discord of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and +where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were but cloaks for party +strife, Dante endeavors to bring his countrymen<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg261" +id="pg261">261</a></span> back to a sublime ideal +of a single monarchy, a true <i>imperium</i>, distinct from the priestly +authority of the Church, but not hostile to it,—nay, rather seeking +sanction from Christ's Vicar upon earth and affording protection to the +Holy See, as deriving its own right from the same Divine source. +Political science in this essay takes rank as an independent branch of +philosophy, and the points which Dante seeks to establish are supported +by arguments implying much historical knowledge, though quaintly +scholastic in their application. The Epistles contain the same thoughts: +peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common head, the duty of the +chief to his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, are urged +with no less force, but in a more familiar style and with direct +allusion to the events which called each letter forth. They are in fact +political brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude to the +chief actors in the drama of history around him. Nor would it here be +right to omit some notice of the essay 'De Vulgari Eloquio,' which, +considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and +indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise 'De +Monarchiâ.' It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member +of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several +dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation of a +common literary tongue for Italy. Though Dante was of course devoid of +what we now call comparative philology, and had but<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg262" +id="pg262">262</a></span> little knowledge of +the first beginnings of the languages which he discusses, yet it is not +more than the truth to say that this essay applies the true method of +critical analysis for the first time to the subject, and is the first +attempt to reason scientifically upon the origin and nature of a modern +language.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_185" id="Footnote_1_185" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_185"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and +Stow, were later by two centuries than the Villani.</p></div> + +<p>While discussing the historical work of Dante and the Villani, it is +impossible that another famous Florentine should not occur to our +recollection, whose name has long been connected with the civic contests +that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his native +city. Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to deal with the question +of Dino Compagni's Chronicle—a question which for years has divided +Italian students into two camps, which has produced a voluminous +literature of its own, and which still remains undecided. The point at +issue is by no means insignificant. While one party contends that we +have in this Chronicle the veracious record of an eye-witness, the other +asserts that it is the impudent fabrication of a later century, composed +on hints furnished by Dante, and obscure documents of the Compagni +family, and expressed in language that has little of the fourteenth +century. The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient only in +minor details of accuracy. The other stigmatizes it as a wholly +untrustworthy forgery, and calls attention to numberless mistakes, +confusions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which +place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility. After<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg263" +id="pg263">263</a></span> a careful +consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro del +Lungo's arguments, it seems to me clearly established that the Chronicle +of Dino Compagni can no longer be regarded as a perfectly genuine +document of fourteenth-century literature. In the form in which we now +possess it, we are rather obliged to regard it as a <i>rifacimento</i> of +some authentic history, compiled during the course of the fifteenth +century in a prose which bears traces of the post-Boccaccian style of +composition.<a name="FNanchor_1_186" id="FNanchor_1_186" /><a href="#Footnote_1_186" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Yet the authority of Dino Compagni has long been such, +and such is still the literary value of the monograph which bears his +name, that it would be impertinent to dismiss the 'Chronicle' +unceremoniously as a mere fiction. I propose, therefore, first to give +an account of the book on its professed merits, and then to discuss, as +briefly as I can, the question of its authenticity.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_186" id="Footnote_1_186" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_186"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in +question was Pietro Fanfani, in an article of <i>Il Pievano Arlotto</i>, +1858. The cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler +German authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied +on this subject are, 1. <i>Florentiner Studien</i>, von P. +Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2. <i>Dino Compagni vendicato +dalla Calunnia di Scrittore della Cronica</i>, di Pietro Fanfani, Milano, +Carrara, 1875. 3. <i>Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer +Rettung</i>, von Dr. Carl Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 4. <i>Die Chronik des +Dino Compagni, Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift</i>, von P. +Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 5. The note appended to Gino +Capponi's <i>Storia della Repubblica di Firenze</i>. 6. <i>Dino Compagni e la +sua Chronica</i>, per Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, Le Mornier. Unluckily, +the last-named work, though it consists already of two bulky volumes in +large 8vo, is not yet complete; and the part which will treat of the +question of authorship and MS. authority has not appeared.</p></div> + +<p>The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg264" +id="pg264">264</a></span> his descent with Virgil +to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani's +'Chronicle,' is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of +the preface to his work. 'The recollections of ancient histories,' he +says, 'have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and +ill-fated events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered +many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.' +Dino Compagni, whose 'Chronicle' embraces the period between 1280 and +1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in +1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was +therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times. He +died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante's death, +and was buried in the church of Santa Trinità. He was a man of the same +stamp as Dante;<a name="FNanchor_1_187" id="FNanchor_1_187" /><a href="#Footnote_1_187" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> burning with love for his country, but still more a +lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere +partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, +profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and +justice. As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one +small but highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate the civic +quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was +brought to ruin by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg265" +id="pg265">265</a></span> selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his +'Chronicle,' although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical +accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its +delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of +its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays bare the +political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable +period which embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the +struggles of the Neri and Bianchi. The comparison of Dino Compagni with +any contemporary annalist in Italy shows that here again, in these +pages, a new spirit has arisen. Muratori, proud to print them for the +first time in 1726, put them on a level with the 'Commentaries of +Cæsar'; Giordani welcomed their author as a second Sallust. The +political sagacity and scientific penetration, possessed in so high a +degree by the Florentines, appear in full maturity. Compagni's +'Chronicle' heads a long list of similar monographs, unique in the +literature of a single city.<a name="FNanchor_2_188" id="FNanchor_2_188" /><a href="#Footnote_2_188" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_187" id="Footnote_1_187" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_187"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The apostrophes to the citizens of Florence at large, and +the imprecations on some of the worst offenders among the party-leaders +(especially in book ii. on the occasion of the calamities of 1301) are +conceived and uttered in the style of Dante.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_188" id="Footnote_2_188" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_188"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of +the Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period +between 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's +attempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's 'Biographies,' and +Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy.' Gino Capponi, born about +1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 and 1418; he +died in 1421. Giovanni Cavalcanti was a zealous admirer of Cosimo de' +Medici; he composed his 'Chronicle' in the prison of the Stinche, where +he was unjustly incarcerated for a debt to the Commune of Florence. +Vespasiano da Bisticci contributed a series of most valuable portraits +to the literature of Italy: all the great men of his time are there +delineated with a simplicity that is the sign of absolute sincerity, +Poliziano was present at the murder of Giuliano de' Medici in the +Florentine Duomo. The historians of the sixteenth century will be +noticed together further on.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg266" +id="pg266">266</a></span>The arguments against the authenticity of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle' +may be arranged in three groups. The <i>first</i> concerns the man himself. +It is urged that, with the exception of his offices as Prior and +Gonfalonier, we have no evidence of his political activity, beyond what +is furnished by the disputed 'Chronicle.' According to his own account, +Dino played a part of the first importance in the complicated events of +1280-1312. Yet he is not mentioned by Giovanni Villani, by Filippo +Vallani, or by Dante. There is no record of his death, except a MS. note +in the Magliabecchian Codex of his 'Chronicle' of the date 1514.<a name="FNanchor_1_189" id="FNanchor_1_189" /><a href="#Footnote_1_189" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He +is known in literature as the author of a few lyrics and an oration to +Pope John XXII., the style of which is so rough and mediæval as to make +it incredible that the same writer should have composed the masterly +paragraphs of the 'Chronicle.'<a name="FNanchor_2_190" id="FNanchor_2_190" /><a href="#Footnote_2_190" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The <i>second</i> group of arguments +affects the substance of the 'Chronicle' itself. Though Dino was Prior +when Charles of Valois entered Florence, he records that event under the +date of Sunday the fourth of November, whereas Charles arrived on the +first<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg267" +id="pg267">267</a></span> of November, and the first Sunday of the month was the fifth. He +differs from the concurrent testimony of other historians in making the +affianced bride of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti a Giantruffetti instead +of an Amidei, and the Bishop of Arezzo a Pazzi instead of an Ubertini. +He reckons the Arti at twenty-four, whereas they numbered twenty-one. He +places the Coronation of Henry VII. in August, instead of in June, 1312. +He seems to refer to the Palace of the Signory, which could not have +been built at the date in question. He asserts that a member of the +Benivieni family was killed by one of the Galligai, whereas the murderer +was of the blood of the Galli. He represents himself as having been the +first Gonfalonier of Justice who destroyed the houses of rebellious +nobles, while Baldo de' Ruffoli, who held the office before him, had +previously carried out the Ordinances. Speaking of Guido Cavalcanti +about the year 1300, he calls him 'uno giovane gentile'; and yet Guido +had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti in 1266, and certainly +did not survive 1300 more than a few months. The peace with Pisa, which +was concluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalonierate, is not +mentioned, though this must have been one of the most important public +events with which he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and +inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and difficulties of the kind +described abound on every page of the 'Chronicle,' rendering the labor +of its last commentator<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg268" +id="pg268">268</a></span> and defender one of no small difficulty. The +<i>third</i> group of arguments assails the language of the 'Chronicle' and +its MS. authority. Fanfani, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his +destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's style in general +is not distinguished for the 'purity, simplicity, and propriety' of the +trecento<a name="FNanchor_3_191" id="FNanchor_3_191" /><a href="#Footnote_3_191" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>; that it abounds in expressions of a later period, such as +<i>armata</i> for <i>oste</i>, <i>marciare</i> for <i>andare</i>, <i>acciò</i> for <i>acciocchè</i>, +<i>onde</i> for <i>affinchè</i>; that numerous imitations of Dante can be traced +in it; and that to an acute student of early Italian prose its palpable +<i>quattrocentismo</i> is only slightly veiled by a persistent affectation of +fourteenth-century archaism. This argument from style seems the +strongest that can be brought against the genuineness of the +'Chronicle'; for while it is possible that Dino may have made +innumerable blunders about the events in which he took a part, it is +incredible that he should have anticipated the growth of Italian by at +least a century. Yet judges no less competent than Fanfani in this +matter of style, and far more trustworthy as witnesses, Vincenzo +Nannucci, Gino Capponi, Isidoro del Lungo, are of opinion that Dino's +'Chronicle' is a masterpiece<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg269" +id="pg269">269</a></span> of Italian fourteenth-century prose; and +till Italian experts are agreed, foreign critics must suspend their +judgment. The analysis of style receives a different development from +Scheffer-Boichorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that many +passages of the 'Chronicle,' especially the important one which refers +to the <i>Ordinamenti della Giustizia</i>, have been borrowed from +Villani.<a name="FNanchor_4_192" id="FNanchor_4_192" /><a href="#Footnote_4_192" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost +always cuts both ways. Yet the German historian has made out an +undoubtedly good case by proving Villani's language closer to the +original <i>Ordinamenti</i> than Compagni's. With regard to MS. authority, +the codices of Dino's 'Chronicle' extant in Italy are all of them +derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to +Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the +Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears +the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the +questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable +suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that the 'Chronicle' must have been +fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly +appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not +uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed +himself to the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nicknamed +<i>Cronaca Scorretta</i> by his Florentine cronies, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg270" +id="pg270">270</a></span> one of his +contemporaries, was the forger.<a name="FNanchor_5_193" id="FNanchor_5_193" /><a href="#Footnote_5_193" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> An Italian impugner of the +'Chronicle,' Giusto Grion of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as +the fabricator.<a name="FNanchor_6_194" id="FNanchor_6_194" /><a href="#Footnote_6_194" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> These hypotheses, however, are, to say the least, +unlucky for their suggestors, and really serve to weaken rather than to +strengthen the destructive line of argument. There exists an elder codex +of which Fanfani and his followers were ignorant. It is a MS. of perhaps +the middle of the fifteenth century, which was purchased for the +Ashburnham Library in 1846. This MS. has been minutely described by +Professor Paul Meyer; and Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile +specimen of one of its pages.<a name="FNanchor_7_195" id="FNanchor_7_195" /><a href="#Footnote_7_195" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> By some unaccountable negligence this +latest and most determined defender of Compagni has failed to examine +the MS. with his own eyes.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_189" id="Footnote_1_189" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_189"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This is Isidoro del Lungo's Codex A. The note occurs also +in the Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_190" id="Footnote_2_190" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_190"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics +refer the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in 1251. +See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship of the +<i>Intelligenza</i>, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer of the +'Chronicle,' in Borgognini's Essays (<i>Scritti Vari</i>, Bologna, Romagnoli, +1877, vol. i.). With regard to the oration to Pope John XXII. date 1326, +it must be noted that this performance was first printed by Anton +Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness may be disputed. See +Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. 18-22.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_191" id="Footnote_3_191" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_191"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The most important of Fanfani's numerous essays on the Compagni +controversy, together with minor notes by his supporters, are collected +in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds all bounds of +decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant claims to be +considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style. These claims he +bases in some measure upon the fact that he deceived the Della Crusca by +a forgery of his own making, which was actually accepted for the +<i>Archivio Storico</i>. See op. cit. p. 181.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_192" id="Footnote_4_192" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_192"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Die Chronik</i>, etc., pp. 53-57.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_193" id="Footnote_5_193" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_193"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Die Chronik</i>, etc., p. 39.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_194" id="Footnote_6_194" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_194"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_195" id="Footnote_7_195" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_195"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to face +p. 1. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in 1840, and +sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a MS. which +Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth century spoke of as 'la copia più +antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfini.'</p></div> + +<p>Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle.' The defenders +of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, +fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author, +from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with +the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's +errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg271" +id="pg271">271</a></span> a later +date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from +general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism. +One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that +the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated. +Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication. +Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' +could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth +century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded +in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery. There is the +further question of <i>cui bono?</i> which in all problems of literary +forgery must first receive some probable solution. What proof is there +that the vanity or the cupidity of any parties was satisfied by its +production? A book exists in a MS. of about 1450, acquires some notice +in a MS. of 1514, but is not published to the world until 1726. +Supposing it to have been a forgery, the labor of concocting it must +have been enormous. With all its defects, the 'Chronicle' would still +remain a masterpiece of historical research, imagination, sympathy with +bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigor, and antiquarian command of +language. But who profited by that labor? Not the author of the forgery, +since he was dead or buried more than two centuries before his +fabrication became famous. Not the Compagni family; for there is no +evidence to show that they had piqued themselves upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg272" +id="pg272">272</a></span> being the +depositaries of their ancestors masterpiece, nor did they make any +effort, at a period when the printing-press was very active, to give +this jewel of their archives to the public. If it be objected that, on +the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS. of the 'Chronicle' must have been +divulged before the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce +two plausible answers. In the first place, Dino was the partisan of a +conquered cause; and his family had nothing to gain by publishing an +acrimonious political pamphlet during the triumph of his antagonists. In +the second place, MSS. of even greater literary importance disappeared +in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their +subjects again excited interest in the literary world. The history of +Dante's treatise <i>De Vulgari Eloquio</i> is a case in point. With regard to +style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge. Reading the +celebrated description of Florence at the opening of Dino's 'Chronicle,' +I seem indeed, for my own part, to discern a post-Boccaccian +artificiality of phrase. Still there is nothing to render it impossible +that the 'Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of 1450(?) and +1514, may be a <i>rifacimento</i> of an elder and simpler work. In that +section of my history which deals with Italian literature of the +fifteenth century, I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling of +ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was by no means +unfrequent. The curious discrepancies between the <i>Trattato della +Famiglia</i> as written by Alberti<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg273" +id="pg273">273</a></span> and as ascribed to <i>Pandolfini</i> can only +be explained upon the hypothesis of such <i>rifacimento</i>. If the +historical inaccuracies in which the 'Chronicle' abounds are adduced as +convincing proof of its fabrication, it may be replied that the author +of so masterly a romance would naturally have been anxious to preserve a +strict accordance with documents of acknowledged validity. Consequently, +these very blunders might not unreasonably be used to combat the +hypothesis of deliberate forgery. It is remarkable, in this connection, +that only one meager reference is made to Dante by the Chronicler, who, +had he been a literary forger, would scarcely have omitted to enlarge +upon this theme. Without, therefore, venturing to express a decided +opinion on a question which still divides the most competent Italian +judges, I see no reason to despair of the problem being ultimately +solved in a way less unfavorable to Dino Compagni than +Scheffer-Boichorst and Fanfani would approve of. Considered as the +fifteenth century <i>rifacimento</i> of an elder document, the 'Chronicle' +would lose its historical authority, but would still remain an +interesting monument of Florentine literature, and would certainly not +deserve the unqualified names of 'forgery' and 'fabrication' that have +been unhesitatingly showered upon it.<a name="FNanchor_1_196" id="FNanchor_1_196" /><a href="#Footnote_1_196" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_196" id="Footnote_1_196" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_196"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is to be hoped that the completion of Del Lungo's work +may put an end to the Compagni controversy, either by a solid +vindication of the 'Chronicle,' or by so weak a defense as to render +further partisanship impossible. So far as his book has hitherto +appeared, it contains no signs of an ultimate triumph. The weightiest +point contained in it is the discovery of the Ashburnham MS. If Del +Lungo fails to prove his position, we shall be left to choose between +Scheffer-Boichorst's absolute skepticism or the modified view adopted by +me in the text.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg274" +id="pg274">274</a></span>The two chief Florentine historians of the fifteenth century are +Lionardo Bruni of Arezzo, and Poggio Bracciolini, each of whom, in his +capacity of Chancellor to the Republic, undertook to write the annals of +the people of Florence from the earliest date to his own time. Lionardo +Aretino wrote down to the year 1404, and Poggio Bracciolini to the year +1455. Their histories are composed in Latin, and savor much of the +pedantic spirit of the age in which they were projected.<a name="FNanchor_1_197" id="FNanchor_1_197" /><a href="#Footnote_1_197" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Both of them +deserve the criticism of Machiavelli, that they filled their pages too +exclusively with the wars and foreign affairs in which Florence was +engaged, failing to perceive that the true object of the historian is to +set forth the life of a commonwealth as a continuous whole, to draw the +portrait of a state with due regard to its especial physiognomy.<a name="FNanchor_2_198" id="FNanchor_2_198" /><a href="#Footnote_2_198" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> To +this critique we may add that both Lionardo and Poggio were led astray +by the false taste of the earlier Renaissance. Their admiration for Livy +and the pedantic proprieties of a labored Latinism made them pay more +attention to rhetoric than to the substance of their work.<a name="FNanchor_3_199" id="FNanchor_3_199" /><a href="#Footnote_3_199" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> We meet +with frigid imitations and bombastic<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg275" +id="pg275">275</a></span> generalities, where concise +details and graphic touches would have been acceptable. In short, these +works are rather studies of style in an age when the greatest stylists +were but bunglers and beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians +of the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and Livy, succeeded +only in becoming lifeless shadows of the past. History dictated under +the inspiration of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of +reproducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had played no +prominent part in the Commonwealth,<a name="FNanchor_4_200" id="FNanchor_4_200" /><a href="#Footnote_4_200" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> cannot pretend to the vigor and +the freshness that we admire so much in the writings of men like the +Villani, Gino Capponi, Giovanni Cavalcanti, and many others. Yet even +after making these deductions, it may be asserted with truth that no +city of Italy at this period of the Renaissance, except Florence, could +boast historiographers so competent. Vespasiano at the close of his +biography of Poggio estimates their labor in sentences which deserve to +be remembered: 'Among the other singular obligations which the city of +Florence owes to Messer Lionardo and to Messer Poggio, is this, that +except the Roman Commonwealth no republic or free state in Italy has +been so distinguished as the town of Florence, in having had two such +notable writers to record its doings as Messer Lionardo and Messer +Poggio; for up to the time of their histories everything was in the +greatest obscurity. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg276" +id="pg276">276</a></span> the republic of Venice, which can show so many +wise citizens, had the deeds which they have done by sea and land +committed to writing, it would be far more illustrious even than it is +now. And Galeazzo Maria, and Filippo Maria, and all the Visconti—their +actions would also be more famous than they are. Nay, there is not any +republic that ought not to give every reward to writers who should +commemorate its doings. We see at Florence that from the foundation of +the city to the days of Messer Lionardo and Messer Poggio there was no +record of anything that the Florentines had done, in Latin, or history +devoted to themselves. Messer Poggio follows after Messer Lionardo, and +writes like him in Latin. Giovanni Villani, too, wrote an universal +history in the vulgar tongue of whatsoever happened in every place, and +introduces the affairs of Florence as they happened. The same did Messer +Filippo Villani, following after Giovanni Villani. These are they alone +who have distinguished Florence by the histories that they have +written.'<a name="FNanchor_5_201" id="FNanchor_5_201" /><a href="#Footnote_5_201" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The pride of the citizen and a just sense of the value of +history, together with sound remarks upon Venice and Milan, mingle +curiously in this passage with the pedantry of a fifteenth-century +scholar.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_197" id="Footnote_1_197" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_197"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Poggio's <i>Historia Populi Florentini</i> is given in the XXth +volume of Muratori's collection. Lionardo's <i>Istoria Fiorentina</i>, +translated into Italian by Donato Acciajuoli, has been published by Le +Monnier (Firenze, 1861). The high praise which Ugo Foscolo bestowed upon +the latter seems due to a want of familiarity.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_198" id="Footnote_2_198" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_198"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See the preface to the <i>History of Florence</i>, by +Machiavelli.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_199" id="Footnote_3_199" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_199"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Lionardo Bruni, for example, complains in the preface to his history +that it is impossible to accommodate the rude names of his personages to +a polished style.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_200" id="Footnote_4_200" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_200"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Both Poggio and Lionardo began life as Papal secretaries; the latter +was not made a citizen of Florence till late in his career.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_201" id="Footnote_5_201" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_201"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Vite di Uomini Illustri</i>. Barbera, 1859; p. 425.</p></div> + +<p>The historians of the first half of the sixteenth century are a race +apart. Three generations of pedantic erudition and of courtly or +scholastic trifling had separated the men of letters from the men of +action, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg277" +id="pg277">277</a></span> had made literature a thing of curiosity. Three generations +of the masked Medicean despotism had destroyed the reality of freedom in +Florence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. Yet, strange to +say, it was at the end of the fifteenth century that the genius of the +thirteenth revived. Italian literature was cultivated for its own sake +under the auspices of Lorenzo de' Medici. The year 1494 marks the +resurrection of the spirit of old liberty beneath the trumpet-blast of +Savonarola's oratory. Amid the universal corruption of public morals, +from the depth of sloth and servitude, when the reality of liberty was +lost, when fate and fortune had combined to render constitutional +reconstruction impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the +intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more than its old +vigor in a series of the most brilliant political writers who have ever +illustrated one short but eventful period in the life of a single +nation. That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. It embraces +the two final efforts of the Florentines to shake off the Medicean yoke, +the disastrous siege at the end of which they fell a prey to the +selfishness of their own party-leaders, the persecution of Savonarola by +Pope Alexander, the Church-rule of Popes Leo and Clement, the extinction +of the elder branch of the Medici in its two bastards (Ippolito, +poisoned by his brother Alessandro, and Alessandro poignarded by his +cousin Lorenzino), and the final eclipse of liberty beneath the +Spain-appointed dynasty of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg278" +id="pg278">278</a></span> the younger Medicean line in Duke Cosimo. The +names of the historians of this period are Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo +Nardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Giannotti, +Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pitti.<a name="FNanchor_1_202" id="FNanchor_1_202" /><a href="#Footnote_1_202" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In these men the +mental qualities which we admire in the Villani, Dante, and Compagni +reappear, combined, indeed, in different proportions, tempered with the +new philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, and permeated with +quite another morality. In the interval of two centuries freedom has +been lost. It is only the desire for freedom that survives. But that, +after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still a passion. The +rectitude of instinct and the intense convictions of the earlier age +have been exchanged for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean +acceptance' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which in men like +Guicciardini and Machiavelli is absolutely appalling. Nearly all the +authors of this period bear a double face. They write one set of memoirs +for the public, and another set for their own delectation. In their +inmost souls they burn with the zeal for liberty: yet they sell their +abilities to the highest bidder—to Popes<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg279" +id="pg279">279</a></span> whom they despise, and to +Dukes whom they revile in private. What makes the literary labors of +these historians doubly interesting is that they were carried on for the +most part independently; for though they lived at the same time, and in +some cases held familiar conversation with each other, they gave +expression to different shades of political opinion, and their histories +remained in manuscript till some time after their death.<a name="FNanchor_2_203" id="FNanchor_2_203" /><a href="#Footnote_2_203" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The student +of the Renaissance has, therefore the advantage of comparing and +confronting a whole band of independent witnesses to the same events. +Beside their own deliberate criticism of the drama in which all played +some part as actors or spectators, we can use the not less important +testimony they afford unconsciously, according to the bias of private or +political interest by which they are severally swayed.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_202" id="Footnote_1_202" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_202"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The dates of these historians are as follows:— +</p></div> + +<table summary="lists the name, year of birth, year of death" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" + style="text-align: left; width: 50%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"> + <tbody> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"></td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">BORN.</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">DIED.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Machiavelli</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1469</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1527</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Nardi</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1485</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;"> 1556</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Guicciardini</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1492</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1540</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Nerli</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1485</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1536</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Giannotti</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1492</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1572</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Varchi</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1502</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1565</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Segni</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1504</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1558</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">Pitti</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1519</td> + <td style="vertical-align: top;">1589</td> + </tr> + </tbody> +</table> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_203" id="Footnote_2_203" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_203"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Varchi, it is true, had Nardi's <i>History of Florence</i> and +Guicciardini's <i>History of Italy</i> before him while he was compiling his +<i>History of Florence</i>. But Segni and Nerli were given for the first time +to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and Guicciardini's +<i>History of Florence</i> in 1859.</p></div> + +<p>The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year +1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; +that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that +of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509. The prefatory chapters, which in most +cases introduce the special subject of each history, contain a series of +retrospective surveys over the whole history of Florence extremely +valuable for the detailed information they contain, as well as for the +critical judgments of men<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg280" +id="pg280">280</a></span> whose acumen had been sharpened to the utmost +by their practical participation in politics. It will not, perhaps, be +superfluous to indicate the different parts played by these historians +in the events of their own time. Guicciardini, it is well known, had +governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean Popes. He too was +instrumental in placing Duke Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536. +At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the +exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and +advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was +composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni was nephew of the +Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals +during the siege of Florence. Pitti was a member of the great house who +contested the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the +fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the +Palleschi may still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity. +Giannotti, in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace a +spirit no less democratic than Pitti's, was also an actor in the events +of the siege, and afterwards appeared among the exiles. In the attempt +made by the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosimo and the +adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti was chosen as the spokesman for +the latter. He wrote and died in exile at Venice. Nerli again took part +in the events of those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing +himself up with the exiles and acting<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg281" +id="pg281">281</a></span> as a spy upon their projects. All +the authors I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some of +them were members of her most illustrious families. Varchi, in whom the +flame of Florentine patriotism burns brightest, and who is by far the +most copious annalist of the period, was a native of Montevarchi. Yet, +as often happens, he was more Florentine than the Florentines; and of +the events which he describes, he had for the most part been witness. +Duke Cosimo employed him to write the history; it is a credit both to +the prince and to the author that its chapters should be full of +criticisms so outspoken, and of aspirations after liberty so vehement. +On the very first page of his preface Varchi dares to write these words +respecting Florence—'divenne, dico, di stato piuttosto corrotto e +licenzioso, tirannide, che di sana e moderata repubblica, +principato';<a name="FNanchor_1_204" id="FNanchor_1_204" /><a href="#Footnote_1_204" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in which he deals blame with impartial justice all +round. It must, however, be remembered that at the time when Varchi +wrote, the younger branch of the Medici were firmly established on the +throne of Florence. Between this branch and the elder line there had +always been a coldness. Moreover, all parties had agreed to accept the +duchy as a divinely appointed instrument for rescuing the city from her +factions and reducing her to tranquillity.<a name="FNanchor_2_205" id="FNanchor_2_205" /><a href="#Footnote_2_205" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_204" id="Footnote_1_204" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_204"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'It passed, I say, from the condition of a corrupt and +ill-conducted commonwealth to tyranny, rather than from a healthy and +well-tempered republic to principality.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_205" id="Footnote_2_205" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_205"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. i. p. xxxv.</p></div> + +<p>It would be beyond the purpose of this chapter to enter<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg282" +id="pg282">282</a></span> into the +details of the history of Florence between 1527 and 1531—those years of +her last struggle for freedom, which have been so admirably depicted by +her great political annalists. It is rather my object to illustrate the +intellectual qualities of philosophical analysis and acute observation +for which her citizens were eminent. Yet a sketch of the situation is +necessary in order to bring into relief the different points of view +maintained by Segni, Nardi, Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively.</p> + +<p>At the period in question Florence was, according to the universal +testimony of these authors, too corrupt for real liberty and too +turbulent for the tranquil acceptance of a despotism. The yoke of the +Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the pride of the old noble +families; while the policy pursued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created +a class of greedy professional politicians. The city was not content +with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for wealth or ability, were +egotistical, vain, and mutually jealous. Each man sought advantage for +himself. Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean party, or +Palleschi, were either extreme in their devotion to the ruling house, +and desirous of establishing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and +anxious to retain the Medici as the chiefs of a dominant oligarchy. The +point of union between these two divisions of the party was a prejudice +in favor of class rule, a hope to get power and wealth for themselves +through the elevation of the princely family The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg283" +id="pg283">283</a></span> popular faction on the +other hand agreed in wishing to place the government of the city upon a +broad republican basis. But the leaders of this section of the citizens +favored the plebeian cause from different motives. Some sought only a +way to riches and authority, which they could never have opened for them +under the oligarchy contemplated by the Palleschi. Others, styled +Frateschi or Piagnoni, clung to the ideas of liberty which were +associated with the high morality and impassioned creed of Savonarola. +These were really the backbone of the nation, the class which might have +saved the state if salvation had been possible. Another section, steeped +in the study of ancient authors and imbued with memories of Roman +patriotism, thought it still possible to secure the freedom of the state +by liberal institutions. These men we may call the Doctrinaires. Their +panacea was the establishment of a mixed form of government, such as +that which Giannotti so learnedly illustrated. To these parties must be +added the red republicans, or Arrabbiati—a name originally reserved for +the worst adherents of the Medici, but now applied to fanatics of +Jacobin complexion—and the Libertines, who only cared for such a form +of government as should permit them to indulge their passions.</p> + +<p>Amid this medley of interests there resulted, as a matter of fact, two +policies at the moment when the affairs of Florence, threatened by Pope +and Emperor in combination, and deserted by France and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg284" +id="pg284">284</a></span> the rest of +Italy, grew desperate. One was that of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who +advocated moderate counsels and an accommodation with Clement VII. The +other was that of the Gonfalonier Carducci, who pushed things to +extremities and used the enthusiasm of the Frateschi for sustaining the +spirit of the people in the siege.<a name="FNanchor_1_206" id="FNanchor_1_206" /><a href="#Footnote_1_206" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The latter policy triumphed over +the former. Its principles were an obstinate belief in Francis, though +he had clearly turned a deaf ear to Florence; confidence in the +generals, Baglioni and Colonna, who were privately traitors to the cause +they professed to defend; and reliance on the prophecies of Savonarola, +supported by the preaching of the Friars Foiano, Bartolommeo, and +Zaccaria. Ill-founded as it was in fact, the policy of Carducci had on +its side all that was left of nobility, patriotism, and the fire of +liberty among the Florentines. In spite of the hopelessness of the +attempt, we cannot now read without emotion how bravely and desperately +those last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the independence<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg285" +id="pg285">285</a></span> of +their city at any cost, and in the teeth of overwhelming opposition. The +memory of Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Ferrucci was +its hero. It failed. It was in vain that the Florentines had laid waste +Valdarno, destroyed their beautiful suburbs, and leveled their crown of +towers. It was in vain that they had poured forth their treasures to the +uttermost farthing, had borne plague and famine without a murmur, and +had turned themselves at the call of their country into a nation of +soldiers, Charles, Clement, the Palleschi, and Malatesta +Baglioni—enemies without the city walls and traitors within its +gates—were too powerful for the resistance of burghers who had learned +but yesterday to handle arms and to conduct a war on their own +account.<a name="FNanchor_2_207" id="FNanchor_2_207" /><a href="#Footnote_2_207" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Florence had to capitulate. The venomous Palleschi, +Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio Valori, by proscription, exile, and +taxation, drained the strength and broke the spirit of the state. Cæsar +and Christ's Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, embraced and made +friends over the prostrate corpse of sold and slaughtered liberty. +Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff +in the sack of Rome.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_206" id="Footnote_1_206" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_206"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Guicciardini, writing his <i>Ricordi</i> during the first months +of the siege, remarks upon the power of faith (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. +83. Compare p. 134): 'Esemplo a' dì nostri ne è grandissimo questa +ostinazione de' Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del +mondo messi a aspettare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza speranza +di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille difficultà, hanno +sostenuto in quelle mura già sette mesi gli e serciti, e quali non sì +sarebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette dì; e condotto le cose in +luogo che se vincessino, nessuno più se ne maraviglierebbe, dove prima +da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e questa ostinazione ha causata in +gran parte la fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra +Jeronimo da Ferrara.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_207" id="Footnote_2_207" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_207"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic +Ferrucci.</p></div> + +<p>The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties +of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time +historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of +the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the +Ottimati,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg286" +id="pg286">286</a></span> bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished +narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this +most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. +Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of +handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's +princely relatives by his wealth. Yet though he made a profession of +patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great influence consistently as a +counterpoise to the Medicean authority. It was he, for instance, who +advised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke of Florence. +Distinguished, as he was, above all men of his time for wit, urbanity, +accomplishments, and splendid living, his want of character neutralized +these radiant gifts of nature. His private morals were infamous. He +encouraged by precept and example the worst vices of his age and nation, +consorting with young men whom he instructed in the arts of dissolute +living, and to whom he communicated his own selfish Epicureanism. To him +in a great measure may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine +aristocracy in the sixteenth century. In his public action he was no +less vacillating than unprincipled in private life. After prevailing +upon Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici to leave Florence in 1527, he +failed to execute his trust of getting Pisa from their grasp (moved, it +is said, by a guilty fondness for the young and handsome Ippolito), nor +did he afterwards share any of the hardships and responsibilities of +the siege. Indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg287" +id="pg287">287</a></span> he then found it necessary to retire into exile in +France, on the excuse of superintending his vast commercial affairs at +Lyons. After the restoration of the Medici he returned to Florence as +the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and abetted in his +juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with Alessandro on the occasion of an +insult offered to his daughter Luisa, and the accusation of murder +brought against his son Piero, he went into opposition and exile, less +for political than for private reasons. After the murder of Alessandro, +he received Lorenzo de' Medici, the fratricide, with the title of +'Second Brutus' at Venice. Meanwhile it was he who paid the dowry of +Catherine de' Medici to the Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen +the house of princes against whom he was plotting, by that splendid +foreign alliance which placed a descendant of the Florentine +bill-brokers on the throne of France. After all these vicissitudes +Filippo Strozzi headed an armed attack upon the dominions of Duke +Cosimo, was taken in the battle of Montemurlo, and finally was murdered +in that very fortress, outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had +counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the +Florentines.<a name="FNanchor_1_208" id="FNanchor_1_208" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_208" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The historians with the +exception of Nerli agree in describing him as a pleasure-loving and +self-seeking man, whose many changes of policy were due, not to +conviction,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg288" +id="pg288">288</a></span> but to the desire of gaining the utmost license of +disorderly living. At the same time we cannot deny him the fame of +brilliant mental qualities, a princely bearing, and great courage.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_208" id="Footnote_1_208" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_208"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See +Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this castle. It +should be said that accounts disagree about Filippo's death. Nerli very +distinctly asserts that he committed suicide. Segni inclines to the +belief that he was murdered by the creatures of Duke Cosimo.</p></div> + +<p>The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the +ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of +the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the +keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the +failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular +party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and +egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored +now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati—as he calls +them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology—whether they +professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on +self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.<a name="FNanchor_1_209" id="FNanchor_1_209" /><a href="#Footnote_1_209" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy +during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the +same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these +men, called from<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg289" +id="pg289">289</a></span> a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the +administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero +Soderini—that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls +him—was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the +other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares +his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more +moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that +section of the Medicean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He had +strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a government of nobles to +the popular democracy which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While +he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that the republic could +not hold its own against both Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the +King of France, who ought to have rendered assistance in the hour of +need, was bound by the treaty of Cambray, and by the pledges he had +given to Charles in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which +Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his +fall—a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the +Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been +restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns. +Varchi, while no less alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was +animated with a more democratic spirit. He had none of Segni's Whig +leanings, but shared the patriotic enthusiasm<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg290" +id="pg290">290</a></span> which at that supreme +moment made the whole state splendidly audacious in the face of +insurmountable difficulties. Both Segni and Varchi discerned the +exaggerated and therefore baneful influence of Savonarola's prophecies +over the populace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the people +kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, after her chastisement, +Florence would bloom forth with double luster, and that angels in the +last resort would man her walls and repel the invaders. There is +something pathetic in this delusion of a great city, trusting with +infantine pertinacity to the promises of the man whom they had seen +burned as an impostor, when all the while their statesmen and their +generals were striking bargains with the foe. Nardi is more sincerely +Piagnone than either Segni or Varchi. Yet, writing after the events of +the siege, his faith is shaken; and while he records his conviction that +Savonarola was an excellent Nomothetes, he questions his prophetic +mission, and deplores the effect produced by his vain promises. Nerli, +as might have been expected from a noble married to Caterina Salviati, +the niece of Leo and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been courtier +to Clement and privy councilor to Alessandro, sustains the Medicean note +throughout his commentaries.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_209" id="Footnote_1_209" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_209"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> He goes +so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished to give a +liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans were frustrated +by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be oligarchs. See <i>Arch. Stor</i>. +vol. i. pp. 121,131. The passages quoted from his 'Apologia de' +Cappucci,' relative to Machiavelli, Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco +Guicciardini (<i>Arch. Stor</i>. vol. i. pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very +instructive; with such greedy self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible +for the Medicean Popes to establish any government but a tyranny in +Florence.</p></div> + +<p>Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we +gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a +period when her<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg291" +id="pg291">291</a></span> vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all +faculty for centralized or concerted action. In sagacity, in the power +of analysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to +causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper +subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common. He +who has seen Rembrandt's painting of the dissecting-room might construct +for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these +patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of +their native city. Life is extinct. Nothing is left for science but, +scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution. Each +anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady. +Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own +impressions.</p> + +<p>The literary qualities of these historians are very different, and +seem to be derived from essential differences in their characters. Pitti +is by far the most brilliant in style, concentrated in expression to the +point of epigram, and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though deficient in +some of the most attractive characteristics of the historian, is +invaluable for sincerity of intention and painstaking accuracy. The +philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add so much +splendor to the works of Guicciardini are absent from the pages of +Nardi. He is anxious to present a clear picture of what happened; but he +cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at length<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg292" +id="pg292">292</a></span> upon the matter +of his history. At the same time he lacks the <i>naïiveté</i> +which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He +gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for +the want of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the +part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent +and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with +Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his +inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.<a +name="FNanchor_1_210" id="FNanchor_1_210" /><a href="#Footnote_1_210" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably +cautious, preferring always to give an external relation of events, +instead of analyzing motives or criticising character.<a +name="FNanchor_2_211" id="FNanchor_2_211" /><a href="#Footnote_2_211" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> He is in especial silent about bad men and +criminal actions. Therefore, when he passes an adverse judgment (as, for +instance, upon Cesare Borgia), or notes a dark act (as the <i>stuprum</i> +committed upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of historians more +addicted to scandal is important. Segni is far more lively than Nardi, +while he is not less painstaking to be accurate. He shows a partisan +feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo Capponi<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg293" +id="pg293">293</a></span> and his +prejudice against Francesco Carducci, which gives the relish of +personality that Nardi's cautiously dry chronicle lacks. Rarely have the +entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set forth more +lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style. Segni is +deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, +minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal +for truth which makes Varchi incomparable. His sketches of men, +critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious +than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. +Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language +is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, +and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable +repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the +republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style. +Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those that have been +mentioned; yet some of the particulars which he relates, about +Savonarola's reform of manners, for example, and the literary gatherings +in the Rucellai gardens, are such as we find nowhere else.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_210" id="Footnote_1_210" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_210"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Book ii. +cap. 16.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_211" id="Footnote_2_211" +/><a href="#FNanchor_2_211"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See lib. +ii. cap. 34: 'Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo far giudizio delle cose +incerte, e massimamente della intenzione e animo segreto degli uomini, +che non apparisce chiara se non per congettura e riscontro delle cose +esteriori. E però stando termo il primo proposito, vogliamo +raccontare quanto più possibile ci sia, la verità delle +cose fatte, più tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.' This is +dignified and noble language in an age which admired the brilliant +falsehoods of Giovio.</p></div> + +<p>Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too much time has been spent +in the discussion of these annalists of the siege of Florence. Yet for +the student of history they have a value almost unique. They suggest the +possibilities of a true science of comparative<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg294" +id="pg294">294</a></span> history, and reveal a +vivacity of the historic consciousness which can be paralleled by no +other nation. How different might be our conception of the vicissitudes +of Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a similar Pleiad of +contemporary Greek authors!</p> + +<p>Having traced the development of historical research and political +philosophy in Florence from the year 1300 to the fall of the Republic, +it remains to speak of the two greatest masters of practical and +theoretical statecraft—Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli. +These two writers combine all the distinctive qualities of the +Florentine historiographers in the most eminent perfection. At the same +time they are, not merely as authors but also as men, mirrors of the +times in which they both played prominent parts. In their biographies +and in their works we trace the spirit of an age devoid of moral +sensibility, penetrative in analysis, but deficient in faith, hope, +enthusiasm, and stability of character. The dry light of the intellect +determined their judgment of men, as well as their theories of +government. On the other hand, the sordid conditions of existence to +which they were subjected as the servants of corrupt states, or the +instruments of wily princes—as diplomatists intent upon the plans of +kings like Ferdinand or adventurers like Cesare Borgia, privy councilors +of such Popes as Clement VII. and such tyrants as Duke Alessandro de' +Medici—distorted their philosophy and blunted their instincts. For the +student of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg295" +id="pg295">295</a></span> the sixteenth century they remain riddles, the solution of +which is difficult, because by no strain of the imagination is it easy +to place ourselves in their position. One half of their written +utterances seem to be at variance with the other half. Their actions +often contradict their most brilliant and emphatic precepts; while +contemporaries disagree about their private character and public +conduct. All this confusion, through which it is now perhaps impossible +to discern what either Guicciardini or Machiavelli really was, and what +they really felt and thought, is due to the anomaly of consummate +ability and unrivaled knowledge of the world existing without religious +or political faith, in an age of the utmost depravity of public and +private morals. No criticism could be more stringent upon the +contemporary disorganization of society in Italy than is the silent +witness of these men, sublimely great in all mental qualities, but +helplessly adrift upon a sea of contradictions and of doubts, ignorant +of the real nature of mankind in spite of all their science, because +they leave both goodness and beauty out of their calculations.</p> + +<p>Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1482. In 1505, at the age of +twenty-three, he had already so distinguished himself as a student of +law that he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the +Institutes in public. However, as he preferred active to professorial +work, he began at this time to practice at the bar, where he soon ranked +as an able advocate and eloquent speaker. This reputation, together<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg296" +id="pg296">296</a></span> +with his character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria to +send him on an embassy to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512. Thus +Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and +statesman. We may also conclude with safety that it was at the court of +that crowned hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he +learned his first lessons in political cynicism. The court of Spain +under Ferdinand the Catholic was a perfect school of perfidy, where even +an Italian might discern deeper reaches of human depravity and formulate +for his own guidance a philosophy of despair. It was whispered by his +enemies that here, upon the threshold of his public life, Guicciardini +sold his honor by accepting a bribe from Ferdinand.<a name="FNanchor_1_212" id="FNanchor_1_212" /><a href="#Footnote_1_212" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Certain it is +that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time +forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy +of supporting force by clever dissimulation.<a name="FNanchor_2_213" id="FNanchor_2_213" /><a href="#Footnote_2_213" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Returning to Florence, +Guicciardini was, in 1515, deputed to meet Leo X. on the part of the +Republic at Cortona. Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able men and +making use of them, took him into favor, and three years later appointed +him Governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule. +Clement VII. made him Viceroy of Romagna in 1523,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg297" +id="pg297">297</a></span> and in 1526 elevated +him to the rank of Lieutenant-General of the Papal army. In consequence +of this high commission, Guicciardini shared in the humiliation +attaching to all the officers of the League who, with the Duke of Urbino +at their head suffered Rome to be sacked and the Pope to be imprisoned +in 1527. The blame of this contemptible display of cowardice or private +spite cannot, however, be ascribed to him: for he attended the armies of +the League not as general, but as counselor and chief reporter. It was +his business not to control the movements of the army so much as to act +as referee in the Pope's interest, and to keep the Vatican informed of +what was stirring in the camp. In 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the +governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the Papal +lord-lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of +Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes at +Florence. In this sketch of his career I must not omit to mention that +Guicciardini was declared a rebel in 1527 by the popular government on +account of his well-known Medicean prejudices, and that in 1530 he had +been appointed by Clement VII. to punish the rebellious citizens. On the +latter occasion he revenged himself for the insults offered him in 1527 +by the cruelty with which he pushed proscription to the utmost limits, +relegating his enemies to unhealthy places of exile, burdening them with +intolerable fines, and using all the indirect means which his ingenuity +could<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg298" id="pg298">298</a></span> devise for forcing them +into outlawry and contumacy.<a name="FNanchor_3_214" id="FNanchor_3_214" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_214" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Therefore when he +returned to inhabit Florence, he did so as the creature of the Medici, +sworn to maintain the bastard Alessandro in his power. He was elected a +member of the Senate of eighty; and so thoroughly did he espouse the +cause of his new master, that he had the face to undertake the Duke's +defense before Charles V. at Naples in 1535. On this occasion +Alessandro, who had rendered himself unbearable by his despotic habits, +and in particular by the insults which he offered to women of all ranks +and conditions in Florence, was arraigned by the exiles before the bar +of Cæsar. Guicciardini won the cause of his client, and restored +Alessandro with an Imperial confirmation of his despotism to Florence. +This period of his political career deserves particular attention, since +it displays a glaring contradiction between some of his unpublished +compositions and his actions, and confirms the accusations of his +enemies.<a name="FNanchor_4_215" id="FNanchor_4_215" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_215" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> That he should have +preferred a government of Ottimati, or wealthy nobles, to a more popular +constitution, and that he should have adhered with fidelity to the +Medicean faction in Florence,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg299" id="pg299">299</a></span> +is no ground for censure.<a name="FNanchor_5_216" id="FNanchor_5_216" +/><a href="#Footnote_5_216" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> But when we find +him in private unmasking the artifices of the despots by the most +relentless use of frigid criticism, and advocating a mixed government +upon the type of the Venetian Constitution, we are constrained to admit +with Varchi and Pitti that his support of Alessandro was prompted less +by loyalty than by a desire to gratify his own ambition and avarice +under the protective shadow of the Medicean tyranny.<a +name="FNanchor_6_217" id="FNanchor_6_217" /><a href="#Footnote_6_217" +class="fnanchor">[6]</a> He belonged in fact to those selfish citizens +whom Pitti denounces, diplomatists and men of the world, whose thirst +for power induced them to play into the hands of the Medici, wishing to +suck the state<a name="FNanchor_7_218" id="FNanchor_7_218" /><a +href="#Footnote_7_218" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> themselves, and to hold +the prince in the leading-strings of vice and pleasure for their own +advantage.<a name="FNanchor_8_219" id="FNanchor_8_219" /><a +href="#Footnote_8_219" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> After<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg300" +id="pg300">300</a></span> the murder of +Alessandro, it was principally through Guicciardini's influence that +Cosimo was placed at the head of the Florentine Republic with the title +of Duke. Cosimo was but a boy, and much addicted to field sports. +Guicciardini therefore reckoned that, with an assured income of 12,000 +ducats, the youth would be contented to amuse himself, while he left the +government of Florence in the hands of his Vizier.<a +name="FNanchor_9_220" id="FNanchor_9_220" /><a href="#Footnote_9_220" +class="fnanchor">[9]</a> But here the wily politician overreached +himself. Cosimo wore an old head on his young shoulders. With decent +modesty and a becoming show of deference, he used Guicciardini as his +ladder to mount the throne by, and then kicked the ladder away. The +first days of his administration showed that he intended to be sole +master in Florence. Guicciardini, perceiving that his game was spoiled, +retired to his villa in 1537 and spent the last years of his life in +composing his histories. The famous Istoria d' Italia was the work of +one year of this enforced retirement. The question irresistibly rises to +our mind, whether some of the severe criticisms passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg301" +id="pg301">301</a></span> upon the Medici +in his unpublished compositions were the fruit of these same bitter +leisure hours.<a name="FNanchor_10_221" id="FNanchor_10_221" /><a +href="#Footnote_10_221" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> Guicciardini died in +1540 at the age of fifty-eight, without male heirs.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_212" id="Footnote_1_212" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_212"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iv. +part 2, p. 318.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_213" id="Footnote_2_213" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_213"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> For the avarice of Guicciardini, see Varchi, vol. i. p. 318. His +<i>Ricordi Politici</i> amply justify the second, though not the first, +clause of this sentence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_214" id="Footnote_3_214" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_214"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Varchi, book xii. (and especially cap. xxv.), for these arts; he +says, 'Nel che messer Francesco Guicciardini si scoperse più crudele e +più appassionato degli altri.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_215" id="Footnote_4_215" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_215"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Knowing what sort of tyrant Alessandro was, and remembering 'hat +Guicciardini had written (<i>Ricordi</i>, No. ccxlii.): 'La calcina con che +si murano gli stati de' tiranni è il sangue de' cittadini: però +doverebbe sforzarsi ognuno che nella città sua non s'avessino a murare +tali palazzi,' it is very difficult to approve of his advocacy of the +Duke.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_216" id="Footnote_5_216" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_216"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Though even here the selfish ambition of the man was apparent to +contemporaries: 'egli arebbe voluto uno stato col nome d' Ottimati, ma +in fatti de' Pochi, nel quale larghissima parte, per le sue molte e +rarissime qualità, meritissimamente gli si venia.'—Varchi, vol. i. p. +318.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_217" id="Footnote_6_217" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_217"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Guicciardini's <i>Storia Fiorentina</i> and <i>Reggimento di Firenze</i> (<i>Op. +Ined.</i> vols. i, and iii.) may be consulted for his private critique of +the Medici. What was the judgment passed upon him by contemporaries may +be gathered from Varchi, vols. i. pp. 238, 318; ii. 410; iii. 204. +Segni, pp. 219, 332. Nardi, vol. ii. p. 287. Pitti, quoted in <i>Arch. +Stor.</i> vol. i. p. xxxviii., and the 'Apologia de' Cappucci' (<i>Arch. +Stor.</i> vol. iv. pt. 2). It is, however, only fair to Guicciardini to +record here his opinion, expressed in <i>Ricordi</i>, Nos. ccxx. and cccxxx., +that it was the duty of good citizens to seek to guide the tyrant: +'Credo sia uficio di buoni cittadini, quando la patria viene in mano di +tiranni, cercare d'avere luogo con loro per potere persuadere il bene, e +detestare il male; e certo è interesse della città che in qualunque +tempo gli uomini da bene abbino autorità; e ancora che gli ignoranti e +passionati di Firenze l' abbino sempre intesa altrimenti, si +accorgerebbono quanta pestifero sarebbe il governo de' Medici, se non +avessi intorno altri che pazzi e cattivi.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_218" id="Footnote_7_218" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_218"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 204. 'Che Cosimo ... <i>succiarsi lo stato</i>.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_219" id="Footnote_8_219" /><a href="#FNanchor_8_219"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Pitti dips his pen in gall when he describes these citizens: +'Cotesti vogliosi Ottimati; i quali non hanno saputo mai ritrovare luogo +che piaccia loro, sottomendosi ora al Medici per l'ingorda avarizia; ora +gittandosi al popolo, per non potere a modo loro tiraneggiare; ora +rivendendolo a' Medici, vedutisi scoperti e raffrenati da lui; e sempre +mai con danno della Repubblica, e di ciascuna parte, inquieti, +insaziabili e fraudolenti.—'Apologia de' Cappucci,' <i>Arch. Stor.</i> xv. +pt. ii. p. 215.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_220" id="Footnote_9_220" /><a href="#FNanchor_9_220"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Here is a graphic touch in Varchi's <i>History</i>, vol. iii. p. 202. +Guicciardini is discussing the appointment of Cosimo de' Medici: 'Gli +dovessero esser pagati per suo piatto ogn' anno 12,000 fiorini d' oro, e +non più, avendo il Guicciardino, <i>abbassando il viso e alzando gli +occhi</i>, detto: "Un 12,000 fiorini d' oro è—un bello spendere."'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_221" id="Footnote_10_221" /><a href="#FNanchor_10_221"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Pitti seems to have taken this view: see 'Apologia de' Cappucci' +(<i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iv. part ii. p. 329): 'Tosto che 'l duca Cosimo lo +pose a sedere insieme con certi altri suoi colleghi, si adirò malamente; +e se la disputa della provvisione non l' avesse ritenuto, sarebbe ito a +servire papa Pagolo terzo. Onde, restato confuso e disperato, si +tratteneva alla sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove +transportato dalla stizza ritoccò in molte parti la sua Istoria, per +mostrare di non essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, +accattó l' occasione di parere istrumento della Repubblica.' +Guicciardini's own apology for his treatment of the Medici, in the +proemio to the treatise <i>Del Reggimento di Firenze</i>, deserves also to be +read.</p></div> + +<p>Turning now from the statesman to the man of letters, we find in +Guicciardini one of the most consummate historians of any nation or of +any age. The work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is +one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very +intricate period, for subordination of the parts to the whole, for +calmness of judgment and for philosophic depth of thought. Considering +that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the annals of his own +times, and that he had to disentangle the raveled skein of Italian +politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarkable. +The whole movement of the history recalls the pomp and dignity of Livy, +while a series of portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand of +an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid force of Tacitus. Yet +Guicciardini in this work deserves less commendation as a writer than as +a thinker. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg302" +id="pg302">302</a></span> is a manifest straining to secure style, by +manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the +unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. +His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and +monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity +without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes +with nature.</p> + +<p>The transcendent merit of the history is this—that it presents us with +a scientific picture of politics and of society during the first half of +the sixteenth century. The picture is set forth with a clairvoyance and +a candor that are almost terrible. The author never feels enthusiasm for +a moment: no character, however great for good or evil, rouses him from +the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criticism. He utters but few +exclamations of horror or of applause. Faith, religion, conscience, +self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of +human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces +which, according to his experience, move the world. That the +strong should trample on the weak, that the wily should circumvent the +innocent, that hypocrisy and fraud and dissimulation should triumph, +seems to him but natural. His whole theory of humanity is tinged with +the sad gray colors of a stolid, cold-eyed, ill-contented, egotistical +indifference. He is not angry, desperate, indignant, but phlegmatically +prudent, face to face with the ruin of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg303" +id="pg303">303</a></span> his country. For him the world +was a game of intrigue, in which his friends, his enemies, and himself +played parts, equally sordid, with grave faces and hearts bent only on +the gratification of mean desires. Accordingly, though his mastery of +detail, his comprehension of personal motives, and his analysis of craft +are alike incomparable, we find him incapable of forming general views +with the breadth of philosophic insight or the sagacity of a frank and +independent nature. The movements of the eagle and the lion must be +unintelligible to the spider or the fox. It was impossible for +Guicciardini to feel the real greatness of the century, or to foresee +the new forces to which it was giving birth. He could not divine the +momentous issues of the Lutheran schism; and though he perceived the +immediate effect upon Italian politics of the invasion of the French, he +failed to comprehend the revolution marked out for the future in the +shock of the modern nations. While criticising the papacy, he discerned +the pernicious results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he had no +instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and religious regeneration. +His judgment of the political situation led him to believe that the +several units of the Italian system might be turned to profit and +account by the application of superficial remedies,—by the development +of despotism, for example, or of oligarchy, when in reality the decay of +the nation was already past all cure.</p> + +<p>Two other masterpieces from Guicciardini's pen, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg304" +id="pg304">304</a></span> <i>Dialogo del +Reggimento di Firenze</i> and the <i>Storia Fiorentina</i>, have been given to +the world during the last twenty years. To have published them +immediately after their author's death would have been inexpedient, +since they are far too candid and outspoken to have been acceptable to +the Medicean dynasty. Yet in these writings we find Guicciardini at his +best. Here he has not yet assumed the mantle of the rhetorician, which +in the <i>Istoria d' Italia</i> sits upon him somewhat cumbrously. His style +is more spontaneous; his utterances are less guarded. Writing for +himself alone, he dares to say more plainly what he thinks and feels. At +the same time the political sagacity of the statesman is revealed in all +its vigor. I have so frequently used both of these treatises that I need +not enter into a minute analysis of their contents. It will be enough to +indicate some of the passages which display the literary style and the +scientific acumen of Guicciardini at their best. The <i>Reggimento di +Firenze</i> is an essay upon the form of government for which Florence was +best suited. Starting with a discussion of Savonarola's constitution, in +which ample justice is done to the sagacity and promptitude by means of +which he saved the commonwealth at a critical juncture (pp. 27-30), the +interlocutors pass to an examination of the Medicean tyranny (pp. +34-49). This is one of the masterpieces of Guicciardini's analysis. He +shows how the administration of justice, the distribution of public +honors, and the foreign policy of the republic were perverted by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg305" +id="pg305">305</a></span> this +family. He condemns Cosimo's tyrannical application of fines and imposts +(p. 68), Piero the younger's insolence (p. 46), and Lorenzo's +appropriation of the public moneys to his private use (p. 43). Yet while +setting forth the vices of this tyranny in language which even Sismondi +would have been contented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no +passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted princes eager for +power, although they crushed the spirit of the people, discouraged +political ardor, extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them +lay to enervate the nation they governed. The scientific statist +acknowledges no reciprocal rights and duties between the governor and +the governed. It is a trial of strength. If the tyrant gets the upper +hand, the people must expect to be oppressed. If, on the other side, the +people triumph, they must take good care to exterminate the despotic +brood: 'The one true remedy would be to destroy and extinguish them so +utterly that not a vestige should remain, and to employ for this purpose +the poignard or poison, as may be most convenient; otherwise the least +surviving spark is certain to cause trouble and annoyance for the +future'(p. 215). The same precise criticism lays bare the weakness of +democracy. Men, says Guicciardini, always really desire their own power +more than the freedom of the state (p. 50), and the motives even of +tyrannicides are very rarely pure (pp. 53-54). The governments +established by the liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande, +for<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg306" +id="pg306">306</a></span> example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its choice of +magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of taxes, scarcely less +prejudiced against individuals than a tyrant would be, and incapable of +diplomatic foreign policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the +relative merits of the three chief forms of government—the Governo +dell' Uno, the Governo degli Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p. +129). Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the third.<a name="FNanchor_1_222" id="FNanchor_1_222" /><a href="#Footnote_1_222" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He +now expresses a strong opinion that the second is the worst which could +be applied to the actual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130). +His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139-41) illustrates his +plan for combining the advantages of the three species and obviating +their respective evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the +sixteenth century—the Governo Misto—a political invention which +fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as +the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last +century.<a name="FNanchor_2_223" id="FNanchor_2_223" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_223" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> What follows is an +elaborate scheme for applying<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg307" +id="pg307">307</a></span> the principles of the Governo Misto to the +existing state of things in Florence. This lucid and learned +disquisition is wound up (p. 188) with a mournful expression of the +doubt which hung like a thick cloud over all the political speculations +of both Guicciardini and Machiavelli: 'I hold it very doubtful, and I +think it much depends on chance whether +this disorganized constitution will ever take new shape or not ... and +as I said yesterday, I should have more hope if the city were but young; +seeing that not only does a state at the commencement take form with +greater facility than one that has grown old under evil governments, but +things always turn out more prosperously and more easily while fortune +is yet fresh and has not run its course,' etc.<a name="FNanchor_3_224" id="FNanchor_3_224" /><a href="#Footnote_3_224" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> In reading the +Dialogue on the Constitution of Florence it must finally be remembered +that Guicciardini has thrown it back into the year 1494, and that he +speaks through the mouths of four interlocutors. Therefore we may +presume that he intended<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg308" +id="pg308">308</a></span> his readers to regard it as a work of +speculative science rather than of practical political philosophy. Yet +it is not difficult to gather the drift of his own meaning.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_222" id="Footnote_1_222" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_222"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Cf. <i>Ricordi</i>, cxl.: 'Chi disse uno popolo, disse veramente +uno animale pazzo, pieno ni mille errori, di mille confusioni, sanza +gusto, sanza diletto, sanza stabilità.' It should be noted that +Guicciardini here and elsewhere uses the term Popolo in its fuller +democratic sense. The successive enlargements of the burgher class in +Florence, together with the study of Greek and Latin political +philosophy, had introduced the modern connotation of the term.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_223" id="Footnote_2_223" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_223"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A lucid criticism of the three forms of government is +contained in Guicciardini's Comment on the second chapter of the first +book of Machiavelli's <i>Discorsi</i> (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 6): 'E non è +dubio che il governo misto delle tre spezie, principi, ottimati e +popolo, è migliore e più stabile che uno governo semplice di qualunque +delle tre spezie, e massime quando è misto in modo che di qualunque +spezie è tolto il buono e lasciato indietro il cattivo.' Machiavelli had +himself, in the passage criticised, examined the three simple +governments and declared in favor of the mixed as that which gave +stability to Sparta, Rome, and Venice. The same line of thought may be +traced in the political speculations of both Plato and Aristotle. The +Athenians and Florentines felt the superior stability of the Spartan and +Venetian forms of government, just as a French theorist might idealize +the English constitution. The essential element of the Governo Misto, +which Florence had lost beyond the possibility of regaining it, was a +body of hereditary and patriotic patricians. This gave its strength to +Venice; and this is that which hitherto has distinguished the English +nation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_224" id="Footnote_3_224" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_224"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Compare <i>Ricordi Politici e Civili</i>, No. clxxxix., for a lament of +this kind over the decrepitude of kingdoms, almost sublime in its +stoicism.</p></div> + +<p>The <i>Istoria Fiorentina</i> is a succinct narrative of the events of +Italian History, especially as they concerned Florence, between the +years 1378 and 1509. In other words it relates the vicissitudes of the +Republic under the Medici, and the administration of the Gonfalonier +Soderini. This masterpiece of historical narration sets forth with +brevity and frankness the whole series of events which are rhetorically +and cautiously unfolded in the Istoria d' Italia. Most noticeable are +the characters of Lorenzo de' Medici (cap. ix.), of Savonarola (cap. +xvii.), and of Alexander VI. (cap. xxvii.). The immediate consequences +of the French invasion have never been more ably treated than in Chapter +xi., while the whole progress of Cesare Borgia in his career of villany +is analyzed with exquisite distinctness in Chapter xxvi. The wisdom of +Guicciardini nowhere appears more ripe, or his intellect more elastic, +than in the <i>Istoria Fiorentina</i>. Students who desire to gain a still +closer insight into the working of Guicciardini's mind should consult +the 403 <i>Ricordi Politici e Civili</i> collected in the first volume of his +<i>Opere Inedite</i>. These have all the charm which belongs to occasional +utterances, and are fit, like proverbs, to be worn for jewels on the +finger of time.</p> + +<p>The biography of Niccolo Machiavelli consists for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg309" +id="pg309">309</a></span> most part of a +record of his public services to the State of Florence. He was born on +May 3, 1469, of parents who belonged to the prosperous middle class of +Florentine citizens. His ancestry was noble; for the old tradition which +connected his descent with the feudal house of Montespertoli has been +confirmed by documentary evidence.<a name="FNanchor_1_225" id="FNanchor_1_225" /><a href="#Footnote_1_225" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His forefathers held offices of +high distinction in the Commonwealth; and though their wealth and +station had decreased, Machiavelli inherited a small landed estate. His +family, who were originally settled in the Val di Pesa, owned farms at +San Casciano and in other villages of the Florentine dominion, a list of +which may be seen in the return presented by his father Bernardo to the +revenue office in 1498.<a name="FNanchor_2_226" id="FNanchor_2_226" /><a href="#Footnote_2_226" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Their wealth was no doubt trivial in +comparison with that which citizens amassed by trade in Florence; for it +was not the usage of those times to draw more than the necessaries of +life from the Villa: all superfluities were provided by the Bottega in +the town.<a name="FNanchor_3_227" id="FNanchor_3_227" /><a href="#Footnote_3_227" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Yet there can be no question, after a comparison of +Bernardo Machiavelli's return of his landed property with Niccolo +Machiavelli's will,<a name="FNanchor_4_228" id="FNanchor_4_228" /><a href="#Footnote_4_228" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> that the illustrious war secretary at all periods +of his life owned just sufficient property to maintain his family in a +decent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg310" +id="pg310">310</a></span> if not a dignified, style. About his education we know next to +nothing. Giovio<a name="FNanchor_5_229" id="FNanchor_5_229" /><a href="#Footnote_5_229" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> asserts that he possessed but little Latin, and that +he owed the show of learning in his works to quotations furnished by +Marcellus Virgilius. This accusation, which, whether it be true or not, +was intended to be injurious, has lost its force in an age that, like +ours, values erudition less than native genius. It is certain that +Machiavelli knew quite enough of Latin and Greek literature to serve his +turn; and his familiarity with some of the classical historians and +philosophers is intimate. There is even too much parade in his works of +illustrations borrowed from Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch: the only +question is whether Machiavelli relied upon translations rather than +originals. On this point, it is also worthy of remark that his culture +was rather Roman than Hellenic. Had he at any period of his life made as +profound a study of Plato's political dialogues as he made of Livy's +histories, we cannot but feel that his theories both of government and +statecraft might have been more concordant with a sane and normal +humanity.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_225" id="Footnote_1_225" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_225"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Villani's <i>Machiavelli</i>, vol. i. p. 303. Ed. Le +Monnier.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_226" id="Footnote_2_226" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_226"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See vol. i. of the edition of Machiavelli, by Mess. Fanfani +and Passerini, Florence, 1873; p. lv. Villani's Machiavelli, ib. p. 306. +The income is estimated at about 180<i>l.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_227" id="Footnote_3_227" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_227"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Pandolfini, <i>Trattato del Governo della Famiglia</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_228" id="Footnote_4_228" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_228"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Fanfani and Passerini's edition, vol. i. p. xcii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_229" id="Footnote_5_229" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_229"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Elogia, cap. 87.</p></div> + +<p>In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici, Machiavelli was +admitted to the Chancery of the Commune as a clerk; and in 1498 he was +appointed to the post of chancellor and secretary to the <i>Dieci di +libertà e pace</i>. This place he held for the better half of +fifteen years, that is to say, during the whole period of<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg311" id="pg311">311</a></span> Florentine +freedom. His diplomatic missions undertaken at the instance of the +Republic were very numerous. Omitting those of less importance, we find +him at the camp of Cesare Borgia in 1502, in France in 1504, with Julius +II. in 1506, with the Emperor Maximilian in 1507, and again at the +French Court in 1510.<a name="FNanchor_1_230" id="FNanchor_1_230" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_230" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> To this department of +his public life belong the dispatches and Relazioni which he sent home +to the Signory of Florence, his Monograph upon the Massacre of +Sinigaglia, his treatises upon the method of dealing with Pisa, Pistoja, +and Valdichiana, and those two remarkable studies of foreign nations +which are entitled <i>Ritratti delle Cose dell' Alemagna</i> and <i>Ritratti +delle Cose di Francia</i>. It was also in the year 1500 that he laid the +first foundations of his improved military system. The political +sagacity and the patriotism for which Machiavelli has been admired are +nowhere more conspicuous than in the discernment which suggested this +measure, and in the indefatigable zeal with which he strove to carry it +into effect. Pondering upon the causes of Italian weakness when +confronted with nations like the French, and comparing contemporary with +ancient history, Machiavelli came to the conclusion that the universal +employment of mercenary troops was the chief secret of the insecurity of +Italy. He therefore conceived<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg312" +id="pg312">312</a></span> a plan for establishing a national +militia, and for placing the whole male population at the service of the +state in times of war. He had to begin cautiously in bringing this +scheme before the public; for the stronghold of the mercenary system was +the sloth and luxury of the burghers. At first he induced the <i>Dieci di +libertà e pace</i>, or war office, to require the service of one man +per house throughout the Florentine dominion; but at the same time he +caused a census to be taken of all men capable of bearing arms. His next +step was to carry a law by which the permanent militia of the state was +fixed at 10,000. Then in 1503, having prepared the way by these +preliminary measures, he addressed the Council of the Burghers in a set +oration, unfolding the principles of his proposed reform, and appealing +not only to their patriotism but also to their sense of +self-preservation. It was his aim to prove that mercenary arms must be +exchanged for a national militia, if freedom and independence were to be +maintained. The Florentines allowed themselves to be convinced, and, on +the recommendation of Machiavelli, they voted in 1506 a new magistracy, +called the <i>Nove dell' Ordinanza e Milizia</i>, for the formation of +companies, the discipline of soldiers, and the maintenance of the +militia in a state of readiness for active service.<a +name="FNanchor_2_231" id="FNanchor_2_231" /><a href="#Footnote_2_231" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Machiavelli became<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg313" +id="pg313">313</a></span> the secretary of this board; +and much of his time was spent thenceforth in the levying of troops and +the practical development of his system. It requires an intimate +familiarity with the Italian military system of the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries to understand the importance of this reform. We are +so accustomed to the systems of Militia, Conscription, and Landwehr, by +means of which military service has been nationalized among the modern +races, that we need to tax our imagination before we can place ourselves +at the point of view of men to whom Machiavelli's measure was a novelty +of genius.<a name="FNanchor_3_232" id="FNanchor_3_232" /><a +href="#Footnote_3_232" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_230" id="Footnote_1_230" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_230"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +Machiavelli never bore the title of Ambassador on these missions. He +went as Secretary. His pay was miserable. We find him receiving one +ducat a day for maintenance.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_231" id="Footnote_2_231" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_231"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Documents relating to the institution of the <i>Nove dell' +Ordinanza e Milizia</i>, and to its operations between December 6, 1506, +and August 6, 1512, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be found printed +by Signor Canestrini in <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. xv. pp. 377 to 453. +Machiavelli's treatise <i>De re militari</i>, or <i>I libri sull' arte della +guerra</i>, was the work of his later life; it was published in 1521 at +Florence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_232" id="Footnote_3_232" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_232"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military system, the +part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into effect must not be +forgotten. Pitti, in his 'Life of Giacomini' (<i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iv. pt. +ii. p. 241), says: 'Avendo per dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle +fazioni e nelle battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva +troppo bene conosciuto con quanta più sicurezza si potesse la repubblica +servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.' Machiavelli had gone as +Commissary to the camp of Giacomini before Pisa in August 1505; there +the man of action and the man of theory came to an agreement: both found +in the Gonfalonier Soderini a chief of the republic capable of entering +into their views.</p></div> + +<p>It must be admitted that the new militia proved ineffectual in the hour +of need. To revive the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny +and given over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond the +force of even Machiavelli. When Prato had been sacked in 1512, the +Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed +by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg314" +id="pg314">314</a></span> excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open +to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his +nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's +marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at +their pleasure. Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean +government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. In +1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo +Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and +tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that he was +innocent. Leo X. released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the +event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to +his farm near San Casciano.</p> + +<p>Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of +Machiavelli's biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters +a picture of the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was +condemned in the solitude of the country.<a name="FNanchor_1_233" +id="FNanchor_1_233" /><a href="#Footnote_1_233" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Writing on December<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg315" +id="pg315">315</a></span> 10 to his friend Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am +at my farm; and, since my last misfortunes, have not been in Florence +twenty days. I rise with the sun, and go into a wood of mine that is +being cut, where I remain two hours inspecting the work of the previous +day and conversing with the woodcutters, who have always some trouble on +hand among themselves or with their neighbors. When I leave the wood, I +proceed to a well, and thence to the place which I use for snaring +birds, with a book under my arm—Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the +minor poets, like Tibullus or Ovid. I read the story of their passions, +and let their loves remind me of my own, which is a pleasant pastime for +a while. Next I take the road, enter the inn door, talk with the +passers-by, inquire the news of the neighborhood, listen to a variety of +matters, and make note of the different tastes and humors of men. This +brings me to dinner-time, when I join my family and eat the poor produce +of my farm. After dinner I go back to the inn, where I generally find +the host and a butcher, a miller, and a pair of bakers. With these +companions I play the fool all day at cards or backgammon: a thousand +squabbles, a thousand insults and abusive dialogues take place, while we +haggle over a farthing, and shout loud enough to be heard from San +Casciano. But when evening falls I go home and enter my writing-room. On +the threshold I put off my country habit, filthy with mud and mire, and +array myself in royal courtly garments; thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg316" +id="pg316">316</a></span> worthily attired, I make my +entrance into the ancient courts of the men of old, where they receive +me with love, and where I feed upon that food which only is my own and +for which I was born. I feel no shame in conversing with them and asking +them the reason of their actions. They, moved by their humanity, make +answer; for four hours' space I feel no annoyance, forget all care; +poverty cannot frighten, nor death appall me. I am carried away to their +society. And since Dante says "that there is no science unless we +retain what we have learned," I have set down what I have gained +from their discourse, and composed a treatise, <i>De Principatibus</i>, in +which I enter as deeply as I can into the science of the subject, with +reasonings on the nature of principality, its several species, and how +they are acquired, how maintained, how lost. If you ever liked any of my +scribblings, this ought to suit your taste. To a prince, and especially +to a new prince, it ought to prove acceptable. Therefore I am dedicating +it to the Magnificence of Giuliano.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_233" id="Footnote_1_233" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_233"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This letter may be compared with others of about the same +date. In one (Aug. 3, 1514) he says: 'Ho lasciato dunque i pensieri +delle cose grandi e gravi, non mi diletta più leggere le cose antiche, +nè ragionare delle moderne; tutte si son converse in ragionamenti +dolci,' etc. Again he writes (Dec. 4, 1514): 'Quod autem ad me pertinet, +si quid agam scire cupis, omnem meae vitae rationem ab eodem Tafano +intelliges, quam sordidam ingloriamque, non sine indignatione, si me ut +soles amas, cognosces.' Later on, we may notice the same language. Thus +(Feb. 5, 1515), 'Sono diventato inutile a me, a' parenti ed agli amici,' +and (June 8, 1517) 'Essendomi io ridotto a stare in villa per le +avversità che io ho avuto ed ho, sto qualche volta un mese che non mi +ricordo di me.'</p></div> + +<p>Further on in the same letter he writes: 'I have talked with Filippo +Casavecchia about this little work of mine, whether I ought to present +it or not; and if so, whether I ought to send or take it myself to him. +I was induced to doubt about presenting it at all by the fear lest +Giuliano should not even read it, and that this Ardinghelli should +profit by my latest labors. On the other hand, I am prompted to present +it by the necessity which pursues me, seeing that I am consuming myself<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg317" +id="pg317">317</a></span> +in idleness, and I cannot continue long in this way without becoming +contemptible through poverty. I wish these Signori Medici would begin to +make some use of me, if it were only to set me to the work of rolling a +stone.<a name="FNanchor_1_234" id="FNanchor_1_234" /><a href="#Footnote_1_234" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> If I did not win them over to me afterwards, I should only +complain of myself. As for my book, if they read it, they would perceive +that the fifteen years I have spent in studying statecraft have not been +wasted in sleep or play; and everybody ought to be glad to make use of a +man who has so filled himself with experience at the expense of others. +About my fidelity they ought not to doubt. Having always kept faith, I +am not going to learn to break it now. A man who has been loyal and good +for forty-three years, like me, is not likely to change his nature; and +of my loyalty and goodness my poverty is sufficient witness to them.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_234" id="Footnote_1_234" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_234"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Compare the letter, dated June 10, 1514, to Fr. Vettori: +'Starommi dunque così tra i miei cenci, senza trovare uomo che della mia +servitù si ricordi, o che creda che io possa esser buono a nulla. Ma +egli è impossibile che io possa star molto così, perchè io mi logoro,' +etc. Again, Dec. 20, 1514: 'E se la fortuna avesse voluto che i Medici, +o in cosa di Firenze o di fuora, o in cose loro particolari o in +pubbliche, mi avessino una volta comandato, io sarei contento.'</p></div> + +<p>This letter, invaluable to the student of Machiavelli's works, is +prejudicial to his reputation. It was written only ten months after he +had been imprisoned and tortured by the Medici, just thirteen months +after the republic he had served so long had been enslaved by the +princes before whom he was now cringing. It is true that Machiavelli was +not wealthy; his habits of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for +his needs.<a name="FNanchor_1_235" id="FNanchor_1_235" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_235" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg318" id="pg318">318</a></span> is true that +he could ill bear the enforced idleness of country life, after being +engaged for fifteen years in the most +important concerns of the Florentine Republic. But neither his poverty, +which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he +found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this +letter. When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of +another exile, who while he tells us— +another exile, who while he tells us—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Come sa di sale</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—can yet refuse the advances of his factious city thus: 'If Florence +cannot be entered honorably, I will never set foot within her walls. And +what? Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the earth to gaze +upon the sun and stars? shall I not beneath whatever region of the +heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself +ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people? +Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very +letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought +to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the +debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his +shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_235" id="Footnote_1_235" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_235"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See familiar letter, June 10, 1514.</p></div> + +<p>In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg319" +id="pg319">319</a></span> Buonarroti may +be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence. +Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her +citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs +for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of +Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put <i>to roll a stone by +these Signori Medici</i>, if only he may so escape from poverty and +dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as +an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo. +Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night +justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him +for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had +disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public +action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came +before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A +treatise <i>De Principatibus</i>; in other words, the celebrated <i>Principe</i>; +which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or +explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom +in its pages. Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed, +we are in a condition to estimate the proud humility and prostrate pride +of the dedication. 'Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son +of Piero de' Medici:' so runs the title. 'Desiring to present myself to +your Magnificence with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg320" +id="pg320">320</a></span> some proof of my devotion, I have not found +among my various furniture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of +the actions of great men acquired by me through a long experience of +modern affairs and a continual study of ancient. These I have long and +diligently revolved and examined in my mind, and have now compressed +into a little book which I send to your Magnificence. And though I judge +this work unworthy of your presence, yet I am confident that your +humanity will cause you to value it when you consider that I could not +make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a few hours to +understand what I have learned through perils and discomforts in a +lengthy course of years.' 'If your Magnificence will deign, from the +summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low place, you +will know how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and continued +malice of fortune.' The work so dedicated was sent in MS. for the +Magnificent's private perusal. It was not published until 1532, by order +of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli.</p> + +<p>I intend to reserve the <i>Principe</i>, considered as the supreme +expression of Italian political science, for a separate study; and after +the introduction to Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter +in detail into a discussion of the various theories respecting the +intention of this treatise.<a name="FNanchor_1_236" id="FNanchor_1_236" +/><a href="#Footnote_1_236" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Yet this is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg321" +id="pg321">321</a></span> +proper place for explaining my view about Machiavelli's writings in +relation to his biography, and for attempting to connect them into such +unity as a mind so strictly logical as his may have designed.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_236" id="Footnote_1_236" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_236"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +Macaulay's essay is, of course, brilliant and comprehensive. I do not +agree with his theory of the Italian despot, as I have explained on p. +127 of this volume. Sometimes, too, he indulges in rhetoric that is +merely sentimental, as when he says about the dedication of the +Florentine History to Clement: 'The miseries and humiliations of +dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, the +stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, had not broken +the spirit of Machiavelli. <i>The most corrupting post in a corrupting +profession had not depraved the generous heart of Clement.</i>' The +sentence I have printed in italics may perhaps tell the truth about the +Church and Popes in general; but the panegyric of Clement is +preposterous. Macaulay must have been laughing in his sleeve.</p></div> + +<p>With regard to the circumstances under which the Prince was composed, +enough has been already said. Machiavelli's selfish purpose in putting +it forth seems to my mind apparent. He wanted employment: he despaired +of the republic: he strove to furnish the princes in power with a +convincing proof of his capacity for great affairs. Yet it must not on +this account be concluded that the <i>Principe</i> was merely a cheap bid for +office. On the contrary, it contained the most mature and the most +splendid of Machiavelli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years +of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it embodied the dream of +a philosophical patriot for the restitution of liberty to Italy. +Florence, indeed, was lost. 'These Signori Medici' were in power. But +could not even they be employed to purge the sacred soil of Italy from +the Barbarians?</p> + +<p>If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machiavelli's mind at this +distance of time, we may conjecture that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg322" +id="pg322">322</a></span> he had come to believe the free +cities too corrupt for independence. The only chance Italy had of +holding her own against the great powers of Europe was by union under a +prince. At the same time the Utopia of this union, with which he closes +the <i>Principe</i>, could only be realized by such a combination as would +either neutralize the power of the Church, or else gain the Pope for an +ally by motives of interest. Now at the period of the dedication of the +<i>Principe</i> to Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo X. was striving to found a +principality in the states of the Church.<a name="FNanchor_1_237" +id="FNanchor_1_237" /><a href="#Footnote_1_237" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +In 1516 he created his nephew Duke of Urbino, and it was thought that +this was but a prelude to still further greatness. Florence in +combination with Rome might do much for Italy. Leo meanwhile was still +young, and his participation in the most ambitious schemes was to be +expected. Thus the moment was propitious for suggesting to Lorenzo that +he should put himself at the head of an Italian kingdom, which, by its +union beneath the strong will of a single prince, might suffice to cope +with nations more potent in numbers and in arms.<a name="FNanchor_2_238" +id="FNanchor_2_238" /><a href="#Footnote_2_238" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +The <i>Principe</i> was therefore dedicated in good faith to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg323" +id="pg323">323</a></span> the Medici, and +the note on which it closes was not false. Machiavelli hoped that what +Cesare Borgia had but just failed in accomplishing, Lorenzo de' Medici, +with the assistance of a younger Pope than Alexander, a firmer basis to +his princedom in Florence, and a grasp upon the states of the Church +made sure by the policy of Julius II., might effect. Whether so good a +judge of character as Machiavelli expected really much from Lorenzo may +be doubted.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_237" id="Footnote_1_237" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_237"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We are, however, bound to remember that Leo was only made +Pope in March 1513, and that the <i>Principe</i> was nearly finished in the +following December. Machiavelli cannot therefore be credited with +knowing as well as we do now to what length the ambition of the Medici +was about to run when he composed his work. He wrote in the hope that it +might induce them to employ him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_238" id="Footnote_2_238" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_238"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to +Piero Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with the +<i>Principe</i> for the light they throw on Machiavelli's opinions there +expressed.</p></div> + +<p>These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable. +To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a +worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and +to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled +to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two +realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he +ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the +logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his +adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that +the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy +was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a +political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low +level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of +statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the +clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of +intrigue in which he<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg324" +id="pg324">324</a></span> had been working all his life. Even his keen +insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare +Borgia.</p> + +<p>To have formulated the ethics of the <i>Principe</i> is not diabolical. There +is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply +a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, +where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms +of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought +of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not +regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say, +to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as +horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that +they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate +end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre +at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in +condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni +because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to +crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue +had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one +quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be +combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was +simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram—<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg325" +id="pg325">325</a></span> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">La notte che morì Pier Soderini</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">L' alma n' andò dell' inferno alla bocca;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E Pluto le gridò: Anima sciocca,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The night that Peter Soderini died,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'What? Hell for you? You silly spirit!' cried</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>As of old in Corcyra, so now in Italy, 'guilelessness, which is the +principal ingredient of genuine nobleness, was laughed down, and +disappeared.'<a name="FNanchor_1_239" id="FNanchor_1_239" /><a href="#Footnote_1_239" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> What men feared was not the moral verdict of society, +pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent acts, but the +intellectual estimate of incapacity and the stigma of dullness. They +were afraid of being reckoned among feebler personalities; and to escape +from this contempt, by the commission even of atrocities, had come to be +accounted manly. The truth, missed almost universally, was that the +supreme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abiding honesty, the +doing of right because right is right, in scorn of consequence. Nothing +appears more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this point, while +the Italian novels are full of matter bearing on the same topic. It is +therefore ridiculous to assume that an Italian judged of men or conduct +in any sense according to our standards. Pinturicchio and Perugino +thought it no shame to work<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg326" +id="pg326">326</a></span> for princes like the Baglioni and for Popes +like Alexander VI. Lionardo da Vinci placed his talents as an engineer +at the service of Cesare Borgia, and employed his genius as a musician +and a painter for the amusement of the Milanese Court, which must have +been, according to Corio's account, flagrantly and shamelessly corrupt. +Leo Battista Alberti, one of the most charming and the gentlest spirits +of the earlier Renaissance, in like manner lent his architectural +ability to the vanity of the iniquitous Sigismondo Malatesta. No: the +<i>Principe</i> was not inconsistent with the general tone of Italian +morality; and Machiavelli cannot be fairly taxed with the discovery of a +new infernal method. The conception of politics as a bare art of means +to ends had grown up in his mind by the study of Italian history and +social customs. His idealization of Cesare Borgia and his romance of +Castruccio were the first products of the theory he had formed by +observation of the world he lived in. The <i>Principe</i> revealed it fully +organized. But to have presented such an essay in good faith to the +despots of his native city, at that particular moment in his own career, +and under the pressure of trivial distress, is a real blot upon his +memory.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_239" id="Footnote_1_239" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_239"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Thuc. iii. 83. The whole of the passage about Corcyra in +the third book of Thucydides (chs. 82 and 83) applies literally to the +moral condition of Italy at this period.</p></div> + +<p>We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for +his <i>Principe</i>, the poor thinking it would teach the Medici to take away +their honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, and +both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom.<a name="FNanchor_1_240" +id="FNanchor_1_240" /><a href="#Footnote_1_240" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Machiavelli<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg327" +id="pg327">327</a></span> can scarcely have calculated upon this evil +opinion, which followed him to the grave: for though he showed some +hesitation in his letter to Vettori about the propriety of presenting +the essay to the Medici, this was only grounded on the fear lest a rival +should get the credit of his labors. Again, he uttered no syllable about +its being intended for a trap to catch the Medici, and commit them to +unpardonable crimes. We may therefore conclude that this explanation of +the purpose of the <i>Principe</i> (which, strange to say, has approved +itself to even recent critics) was promulgated either by himself or by +his friends, as an after-thought, when he saw that the work had missed +its mark, and at the time when he was trying to suppress the MS.<a +name="FNanchor_2_241" id="FNanchor_2_241" /><a href="#Footnote_2_241" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Bernardo Giunti in the dedication of the +edition of 1532, and Reginald Pole in 1535, were, I believe, the first +to put forth this fanciful theory in print. Machiavelli could not before +1520 have boasted of the patriotic treachery with which he was +afterwards accredited, so far, at any rate, as to lose the confidence of +the Medicean family; for in that year the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici +commissioned him to write the history of Florence.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_240" id="Footnote_1_240" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_240"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Storia Fior.</i> lib. iv. cap. 15.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_241" id="Footnote_2_241" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_241"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Varchi, loc. cit. The letter written by Machiavelli to +Fr. Guicciardini from Carpi, May 17, 1521, should be studied in this +connection. It is unfortunately too mutilated to be wholly intelligible. +After explaining his desire to be of use to Florence, but not after the +manner most approved of by the Florentines themselves, he says: 'io +credo che questo sarebbe il vero modo di andare in Paradiso, imparare la +via dell' Inferno per fuggirla.'</p></div> + +<p>The <i>Principe</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg328" +id="pg328">328</a></span> after its dedication to Lorenzo, remained in MS., and +Machiavelli was not employed in spite of the continual solicitations of +his friend Vettori.<a name="FNanchor_1_242" id="FNanchor_1_242" /><a href="#Footnote_1_242" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Nothing remained for him but to seek other +patrons, and to employ his leisure in new literary work. Between 1516 +and 1519, therefore, we find him taking part in the literary and +philosophical discussions of the Florentine Academy, which assembled at +that period in the Rucellai Gardens.<a name="FNanchor_2_243" id="FNanchor_2_243" /><a href="#Footnote_2_243" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It was here that he read his +Discourses on the First Decade of Livy—a series of profound essays upon +the administration of the state, to which the sentences of the Roman +historian serve as texts. Having set forth in the <i>Principe</i> the method +of gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in the <i>Discorsi</i> +what institutions are necessary to preserve the body politic in a +condition of vigorous activity. We may therefore regard the <i>Discorsi</i> +as in some sense a continuation of the <i>Principe</i>. But the wisdom of the +scientific politician is no longer placed at the disposal of a +sovereign. He addresses himself to all the members of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg329" +id="pg329">329</a></span> a state who are +concerned in its prosperity. Machiavelli's enemies have therefore been +able to insinuate that, after teaching tyranny in one pamphlet, he +expounded the principles of opposition to a tyrant in the other, +shifting his sails as the wind veered.<a name="FNanchor_3_244" id="FNanchor_3_244" /><a href="#Footnote_3_244" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The truth here also lies in +the critical and scientific quality of Machiavelli's method. He was +content to lecture either to princes or to burghers upon politics, as an +art which he had taken great pains to study, while his interest in the +demonstration of principles rendered him in a measure indifferent to +their application.<a name="FNanchor_4_245" id="FNanchor_4_245" /><a href="#Footnote_4_245" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> In fact, to use the pithy words of Macaulay, 'the +Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the +progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the +former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in +the latter to the longer duration and more complex interest of a +society.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_242" id="Footnote_1_242" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_242"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The political letters addressed to Francesco Vettori, at +Rome, and intended probably for the eye of Leo X., were written in 1514. +The discourse addressed to Leo, <i>sulla riforma dello stato di Firenze</i>, +may be referred perhaps to 1519.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_243" id="Footnote_2_243" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_243"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Of these meetings Filippo de' Nerli writes in the Seventh +Book of his Commentaries, p. 138: 'Avendo convenuto assai tempo nell' +orto de' Rucellai una certa scuola di giovani letterati e d' elevato +ingegno, infra quali praticava continuamente Niccolò Machiavelli (ed io +ero di Niccolò e di tutti loro amicissimo, e molto spesso con loro +convirsavo), s' esercitavano costoro assai, mediante le lettere, nelle +lezioni dell' istorie, e sopra di esse, ed a loro istanza compose il +Machiavello quel suo libro de' discorsi sopra Tito Livio, e anco il +libro di que' trattati e ragionamenti sopra la milizia.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_244" id="Footnote_3_244" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_244"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Pitti, 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iv. pt. ii. +p. 294.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_245" id="Footnote_4_245" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_245"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The dedication of the <i>Discorsi</i> contains a phrase which recalls +Machiavelli's words about the <i>Principe</i>: 'Perche in quello io ho +espresso quanto io so, e quanto io ho imparato per una lunga pratica e +continua lezione delle cose del mondo.'</p></div> + +<p>The Seven Books on the Art of War may be referred with certainty to the +same period of Machiavelli's life. They were probably composed in 1520. +If we may venture to connect the works of the historian's leisure, +according to the plan above suggested, this treatise forms a supplement +to the <i>Principe</i> and the <i>Discorsi</i>. Both in his analysis of the +successful<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg330" +id="pg330">330</a></span> tyrant and in his description of the powerful commonwealth he +had insisted on the prime necessity of warfare, conducted by the people +and their rulers in person. The military organization of a great kingdom +is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme +for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. +Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice +maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit of his +theory.</p> + +<p>By this time the Medici had determined to take Machiavelli into favor; +and since he had expressed a wish to be set at least to rolling stones, +they found for him a trivial piece of work. The Franciscans at Carpi had +to be requested to organize a separate Province of their Order in the +Florentine dominion; and the conduct of this weighty matter was +intrusted to the former secretary at the Courts of Maximilian and Louis. +Several other missions during the last years of his life devolved upon +Machiavelli; but none of them were of much importance: nor, when the +popular government was instituted in 1527, had he so far regained the +confidence of the Florentines as to resume his old office of war +secretary. This post, considering his recent alliance with the Medicean +party, he could hardly have expected to receive; and therefore it is +improbable that the news of Gianotti's election at all contributed to +cause his death.<a name="FNanchor_1_246" id="FNanchor_1_246" /><a href="#Footnote_1_246" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Disappointment he may indeed have felt: for his +moral force<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg331" +id="pg331">331</a></span> had been squandered during fifteen years in the attempt to +gain the favor of princes who were now once more regarded as the enemies +of their country. When the republic was at last restored, he found +himself in neither camp. The overtures which he had made to the Medici +had been but coldly received; yet they were sufficiently notorious to +bring upon him the suspicion of the patriots. He had not sincerely acted +up to the precept of Polonius: 'This above all,—to thine own self be +true.' His intellectual ability, untempered by sufficient political +consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:— +consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">che non furon ribelli,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sè foro.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The great achievement of these years was the composition of the <i>Istorie +Fiorentine</i>. The commission for this work he received from Giulio de' +Medici through the Officiali dello Studio in 1520, with an annual +allowance of 100 florins. In 1527, the year of his death, he dedicated +the finished History to Pope Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary +art, though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy and +superficiality,<a name="FNanchor_2_247" id="FNanchor_2_247" /><a href="#Footnote_2_247" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> marks an epoch in the development of modern +historiography. It must be remembered that it preceded the great work of +Guicciardini by some years, and that before the date of its appearance +the annalists<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg332" +id="pg332">332</a></span> of Italy had been content with records of events, personal +impressions, and critiques of particular periods. Machiavelli was the +first to contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace +the operation of political forces through successive generations, to +contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over +which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of +the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively +unimportant details. By thus applying the philosophical method to +history, Machiavelli enriched the science of humanity with a new +department. There is something in his view of national existence beyond +the reach of even the profoundest of the classical historians. His style +is adequate to the matter of his work. Never were clear and definite +thoughts expressed with greater precision in language of more masculine +vigor. We are irresistibly compelled, while characterizing this style, +to think of the spare sinews of a trained gladiator. Though Machiavelli +was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments of rhetoric.<a name="FNanchor_3_248" id="FNanchor_3_248" /><a href="#Footnote_3_248" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> His images, rare +and carefully chosen, seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate. +Though a philosopher, he never wanders into speculation. Facts and +experience are so thoroughly compacted with reflection in his mind, that +his widest generalizations have the substance of realities. The element +of unreality, if such there be, is due to a misconception of human<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg333" +id="pg333">333</a></span> +nature. Machiavelli seems to have only studied men in masses, or as +political instruments, never as feeling and thinking personalities.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_246" id="Footnote_1_246" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_246"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Varchi, loc. cit.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_247" id="Footnote_2_247" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_247"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See the criticisms of Ammirato and Romagnosi, quoted by Cantù, +<i>Letteratura Italiana</i>, p. 187.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_248" id="Footnote_3_248" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_248"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I shall have to speak elsewhere of Machiavelli's comedies, +occasional poems, novel of 'Belphegor,' etc.</p></div> + +<p>Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his son Pietro to +Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of medicine taken at the wrong time. He +was attended on his deathbed by a friar, who received his confession. +His private morality was but indifferent. His contempt for weakness and +simplicity was undisguised. His knowledge of the world and men had +turned to cynicism. The frigid philosophy expressed in his political +Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured +humors, made him unpopular. It was supposed that he had died with +blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human +nature into ridicule. Through these myths, as through a mist, we may +discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. +The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too +arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar +conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation +Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of +virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature +either less genius or a better mind.'</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg334" +id="pg334">334</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" />CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<h3>'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI.</h3> + + +<p>The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay—Machiavellism—His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory—Analysis of the +Prince—Nine Conditions of Principalities—The Interest of the Conqueror +acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy—Critique of Louis +XII.—Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism—Three Ways of subduing a +free City—Example of Pisa—Principalities founded by +Adventurers—Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus—Savonarola—Francesco +Sforza—Cesare Borgia—Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him—Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius—A Sketch of Cesare's +Career—Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes—Oliverotto da Fermo—The Uses of Cruelty—Messer Ramiro d' +Orco—The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli—On the Faith of +Princes—Alexander VI.—The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest—Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy—The Military System of a +powerful Prince—Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries—Necessity of +National Militia—The Art of War—Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise—Machiavelli and Savonarola.</p> + + +<p>After what has been already said about the circumstances under which +Machiavelli composed the <i>Principe</i>, we are justified in regarding it as +a sincere expression of his political philosophy. The intellect of its +author was eminently analytical and positive; he knew well how to +confine himself within the strictest limits of the subject he had +chosen. In the <i>Principe</i> it was not his purpose to write a treatise of +morality, but to set forth with scientific accuracy the arts which he +considered necessary to the success of an absolute<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg335" +id="pg335">335</a></span> ruler. We may +therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of +the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth +century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a +truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the +Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically +pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the <i>Prince</i>. But it is +no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate +a theory of government in which the interests of the ruler are alone +regarded, which assumes a separation between statecraft and morality, +which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining +high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct, and +which presupposes the corruption, venality, and baseness of mankind at +large. It was this which aroused the animosity of Europe against +Machiavelli, as soon as the Prince attained wide circulation. Nations +accustomed to the Monarchical rather than the Despotic form of +government resented the systematic exposition of an art of tyranny which +had long been practiced among the Italians. The people of the North, +whose moral fiber was still vigorous, and who retained their respect for +established religion, could not tolerate the cynicism with which +Machiavelli analyzed his subject from the merely intellectual point of +view. His name became a byword. 'Am I Machiavel?' says the host in the +<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>. Marlowe<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg336" +id="pg336">336</a></span> makes the ghost of the great +Florentine speak prologue to the <i>Jew of Malta</i> thus—<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I count religion but a childish toy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And hold there is no sin but ignorance.</span><br /> +</p> +<p>When the Counter-reformation had begun in Italy, and desperate efforts +were being made to check the speculative freedom of the Renaissance, the +<i>Principe</i> was condemned by the Inquisition. Meanwhile it was whispered +that the Spanish princes, and the sons of Catherine de' Medici upon the +throne of France, conned its pages just as a manual of toxicology might +be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers. Machiavelli became the +scapegoat of great political crimes; and during the religious wars of +the sixteenth century there were not wanting fanatics who ascribed such +acts of atrocity as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew to his venomous +influence. Yet this book was really nothing more or less than a critical +compendium of facts respecting Italy, a highly condensed abstract of +political experience. In it as in a mirror we may study the lineaments +of the Italian despot who by adventure or by heritage succeeded to the +conduct of a kingdom. At the same time the political principles here +established are those which guided the deliberations of the Venetian +Council and the Papal Court, no less than the actions of a Sforza or a +Borgia upon the path to power. It is therefore a document of the very +highest value for the illustration of the Italian conscience in relation +to political morality.</p> + +<p>The <i>Principe</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg337" +id="pg337">337</a></span> opens with the statement that all forms of government may +be classified as republics or as principalities. Of the latter some are +hereditary, others acquired. Of the principalities acquired in the +lifetime of the ruler some are wholly new, like Milan under Francesco +Sforza; others are added of hereditary kingdoms, like Naples to Spain. +Again, such acquired states have been previously accustomed either to +the rule of a single man or to self-government. Finally they are won +either with the conqueror's own or with borrowed armies, either by +fortune or by ability.<a name="FNanchor_1_249" id="FNanchor_1_249" /><a href="#Footnote_1_249" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Thus nine conditions under which +principalities may be considered are established at the outset.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_249" id="Footnote_1_249" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_249"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The word Virtù, which I have translated ability, is almost +equivalent to the Greek [Greek: <i>aretê</i>], before it had received a moral +definition, or to the Roman Virtus. It is very far, as will be gathered +from the sequel of the <i>Principe</i>, from denoting what we mean by +Virtue.</p></div> + +<p>The short chapter devoted by Machiavelli to hereditary principalities +may be passed over as comparatively unimportant. It is characteristic of +Italian politics that the only instance he adduces of this form of +government in Italy is the Duchy of Ferrara. States and cities were so +frequently shifting owners in the sixteenth century that the scientific +politician was justified in confining his attention to the method of +establishing and preserving principalities acquired by force. When he +passes to the consideration of this class, Machiavelli enters upon the +real subject of his essay. The first instance he discusses is that of a +prince who has<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg338" +id="pg338">338</a></span> conquered a dominion which he wishes to unite as firmly +as possible to his hereditary states. The new territory may either +belong to the same nationality and language as the old possession, or +may not. In the former case it will be enough to extinguish the whole +line of the ancient rulers, and to take care that neither the laws nor +the imposts of the province be materially altered. It will then in +course of time become by natural coalition part of the old kingdom. But +if the acquired dominion be separate in language, customs, and +traditions from the old, then arises a real difficulty for the +conqueror. In order to consolidate his empire and to accustom his new +subjects to his rule, Machiavelli recommends that he should either take +up his residence in the subjugated province, or else plant colonies +throughout it, but that he should by no means trust merely to garrisons. +'Colonies,' he remarks, 'are not costly to the prince, are more +faithful, and cause less offense to the subject states; those whom they +may injure, being poor and scattered, are prevented from doing mischief. +For it should be observed that men ought either to be caressed or +trampled out, seeing that small injuries may be avenged, whereas great +ones destroy the possibility of retaliation; and so the damage that has +to be inflicted ought to be such that it need involve no fear of +vengeance.' I quote this passage as a specimen of Machiavelli's direct +and scientific handling of the most inhuman necessities of statecraft, +as conceived<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg339" +id="pg339">339</a></span> by him.<a name="FNanchor_1_250" id="FNanchor_1_250" /><a href="#Footnote_1_250" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He uses no hypocritical palliation to disguise +the egotism of the conqueror. He does not even pretend to take into +consideration any interests but those of the ambitious prince. He treats +humanity as though it were the marble out of which the political artist +should hew the form that pleased his fancy best. He calculates the exact +amount of oppression which will render a nation incapable of resistance, +and relieve the conqueror of trouble in his work of building up a +puissant kingdom for his own aggrandizement.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_250" id="Footnote_1_250" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_250"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is fair to call attention to the strong expressions used +by Machiavelli in the <i>Discorsi</i>, lib. i. cap. 18 and cap. 26, on the +infamies and inhumanities to which the aspirant after tyranny is +condemned.</p></div> + +<p>What Machiavelli says about mixed principalities is pointed by a +searching critique of the Italian policy of Louis XII. The French king +had well-known claims upon the Duchy of Milan, which the Venetians urged +him to make good. They proposed to unite forces and to divide the +conquered province of Lombardy. Machiavelli does not blame Louis for +accepting this offer and acting in concert with the Republic. His +mistakes began the moment after he had gained possession of Milan, +Genoa, and the majority of the North Italian cities. It was then his +true policy to balance Venice against Rome, to assume the protectorate +of the minor states, and to keep all dangerous rivals out of Italy. +Instead of acting thus, he put Romagna into the hands of the Pope and +divided Naples with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg340" +id="pg340">340</a></span> the King of Spain. 'Louis indeed,' concludes +Machiavelli, 'was guilty of five capital errors: he destroyed the hopes +of his numerous and weak allies; he increased the power, already too +great, of the Papacy; he introduced a foreign potentate; he neglected to +reside in Italy; he founded no colonies for the maintenance of his +authority. If I am told that Louis acted thus imprudently toward +Alexander and Ferdinand in order to avoid a war, I answer that in each +case the mistake was as bad as any war could be in its results. If I am +reminded of his promise to the Pope, I reply that princes ought to know +how and when to break their faith, as I intend to prove. When I was at +Nantes, the Cardinal of Rouen told me that the Italians did not know how +to conduct a war: I retorted that the French did not understand +statecraft, or they would not have allowed the Church to gain so much +power in Italy. Experience showed that I was right; for the French +wrought their own ruin by aggrandizing the Papacy and introducing Spain +into the realm of Naples.'</p> + +<p>This criticism contains the very essence of political sagacity. It lays +bare the secret of the failure of the French under Charles, under Louis, +and under Francis, to establish themselves in Italy. Expeditions of +parade, however brilliant, temporary conquests, cross alliances, and +bloody victories do not consolidate a kingdom. They upset states and +cause misery to nations: but their effects pass and leave the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg341" +id="pg341">341</a></span> so-called +conquerors worse off than they were before. It was the doom of Italy to +be ravaged by these inconsequent marauders, who never attempted by +internal organization to found a substantial empire, until the mortmain +of the Spanish rule was laid upon the peninsula, and Austria gained by +marriages what France had failed to win by force of arms.</p> + +<p>The fourth chapter of the <i>Principe</i> is devoted to a parallel between +Monarchies and Despotisms which is chiefly interesting as showing that +Machiavelli appreciated the stability of kingdoms based upon feudal +foundations. France is chosen as the best example of the one and Turkey +of the other. 'The whole empire of the Turk is governed by one Lord; the +others are his servants; he divides his kingdom into satrapies, to which +he appoints different administrators, whom he changes about at pleasure. +But the King of France is placed in the center of a time-honored company +of lords, acknowledged as such by their subjects and loved by them; they +have their own prerogatives, nor can the king deprive them of these +without peril.' Hence it follows that the prince who has once +dispossessed a despot finds ready to his hand a machinery of government +and a band of subservient ministers; while he who may dethrone a monarch +has immediately to cope with a multitude of independent rulers, too +numerous to extinguish and too proud to conciliate.</p> + +<p>Machiavelli now proceeds to discuss the best method<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg342" +id="pg342">342</a></span> of subjugating free +cities which have been acquired by a prince. There are three ways of +doing it, he says. 'The first is to destroy them utterly; the second, to +rule them in your own person; the third, to leave them their +constitution under the conduct of an oligarchy chosen by yourself, and +to be content with tribute. But, to speak the truth, the only safe way +is to ruin them.' This sounds very much like the advice which an old +spider might give to a young one: When you have caught a big fly, suck +him at once; suck out at any rate so much of his blood as may make him +powerless to break your web, and feed on him afterwards at leisure. Then +he goes on to give his reasons. 'He who becomes the master of a city +used to liberty, and does not destroy it, should be prepared to be +undone by it himself, because that name of Liberty, those ancient usages +of Freedom, which no length of years and no benefits can extinguish in +the nation's mind, which cannot be uprooted by any forethought or by any +pains, unless the citizens themselves be broken or dispersed, will +always be a rallying-point for revolution when an opportunity occurs.' +This terrific moral—through which, let it be said in justice to +Machiavelli, the enthusiasm of a patriot transpires—is pointed by the +example of Pisa. Pisa, held for a century beneath the heel of +Florence—her ports shut up, her fields abandoned to marsh fever, her +civic life extinguished, her arts and sciences crushed out—had yet not +been utterly ruined in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg343" +id="pg343">343</a></span> the true sense of depopulation or dismemberment. +Therefore when Charles VIII. in 1494 entered Pisa, and Orlandi, the +orator, caught him by the royal mantle, and besought him to restore her +liberty, that word, the only word the crowd could catch in his petition, +inflamed a nation: the lions and lilies of Florence were erased from the +public buildings; the Marzocco was dashed from its column on the quay +into the Arno; and in a moment the dead republic awoke to life. +Therefore, argues Machiavelli, so tenacious is the vitality of a free +state that a prudent conqueror will extinguish it entirely or will rule +it in person with a rod of iron. This, be it remembered, is the advice +of Machiavelli, the the Florentine patriot, to Lorenzo de' Medici, the +Florentine tyrant, who has recently resumed his seat upon the neck of +that irrepressible republic.</p> + +<p>Hitherto we have been considering how the state acquired by a conqueror +should be incorporated with his previous dominions. The next section of +Machiavelli's discourse is by far the most interesting. It treats of +principalities created by the arms, personal qualities, and good fortune +of adventurers. Italy alone in the sixteenth century furnished examples +of these tyrannies: consequently that portion of the <i>Principe</i> which is +concerned with them has a special interest for students of the +Renaissance. Machiavelli begins with the founders of kingdoms who have +owed but little to fortune and have depended on their own forces. The +list he furnishes, when tested by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg344" +id="pg344">344</a></span> modern notions of history, is to say +the least a curious one. It contains Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. +Having mentioned Moses first, Machiavelli proceeds to explain that, +though we have to regard him as the mere instrument of God's purpose, +yet the principles on which the other founders acted were 'not different +from those which Moses derived from so supreme a teacher.' What these +men severally owed to fortune was but the occasion for the display of +the greatness that was in them. Moses found the people of Israel +enslaved in Egypt. Romulus was an exile from Alba. Cyrus had to deal +with the Persian people tired of the empire of effeminate Medes. Theseus +undertook to unite the scattered elements of the Athenian nation. Thus +each of these founders had an opening provided for him, by making use of +which he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into play. The +achievement in each case was afterwards due solely to his own ability, +and the conquest which he made with difficulty was preserved with ease. +This exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when +we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at +the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator +has to overcome, meanwhile, are enormous. 'He has for passionate foes +all such as flourish under the old order, for friends those who might +flourish under the new; but these are lukewarm, partly from fear of +their opponents,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg345" +id="pg345">345</a></span> on whose side are established law and right, partly +from the incredulity which prevents men from putting faith in what is +novel and untried.' It therefore becomes a matter of necessity that the +innovator should be backed up with force, that he should be in a +position to command and not obliged to sue for aid. This is the reason +why all the prophets who have used arms to enforce their revelations +have succeeded, and why those who have only trusted to their personal +ascendency have failed. Moses, of course, is an illustrious example of +the successful prophet. Savonarola is adduced as a notable instance of a +reformer 'who was ruined in his work of innovation as soon as the +multitude lost their faith in him, since he had no means of keeping +those who had believed firm, or of compelling faith from disbelievers.' +In this critique Machiavelli remains true to his positive and scientific +philosophy of human nature. He will not allow that there are other +permanent agencies in the world than the calculating ability of resolute +men and the might derived from physical forces.</p> + +<p>Among the eminent examples of Italian founders who rose to princely +power by their own ability or by availing themselves of the advantages +which fortune put within their reach, Machiavelli selects Francesco +Sforza and Cesare Borgia. The former is a notable instance of success +achieved by pure <i>virtù</i>: 'Francesco, by using the right means, and by +his own singular ability, raised himself from the rank of a private man +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg346" +id="pg346">346</a></span> the Duchy of Milan, and maintained with ease the mastery he had +acquired with infinite pains.' Cesare, on the other hand, illustrates +both the strength and the weakness of <i>fortuna</i>: 'he acquired his +dominion by the aid derived from his father's position, and when he lost +that he also lost his power, notwithstanding that he used every endeavor +and did all that a prudent and able man ought to do in order to plant +himself firmly in those states which the arms and fortune of others had +placed at his disposal.' It is not necessary to dwell upon the career of +Francesco Sforza. Not he but Cesare Borgia is Machiavelli's hero in this +treatise, the example from which he deduces lessons both of imitation +and avoidance for the benefit of Lorenzo de' Medici. Lorenzo, it must be +remembered, like Cesare, would have the fortunes of the Church to start +with in that career of ambition to which Machiavelli incites him. Unlike +Francesco Sforza, he was no mere soldier of adventure, but a prince, +born in the purple, and bound to make use of those undefined advantages +which he derived from his position in Florence and from the countenance +of his uncle, the Pope. The Duke Valentino, therefore, who is at one and +the same time Machiavelli's ideal of prudence and courage in the conduct +of affairs, and also his chief instance of the instability of fortune, +supplies the philosopher with all he needed for the guidance of his +princely pupil. With the Duke Valentino Machiavelli had conversed on +terms of private intimacy, and there is<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg347" +id="pg347">347</a></span> no doubt that his imagination +had been dazzled by the brilliant intellectual abilities of this +consummate rogue. Dispatched in 1502 by the Florentine Republic to watch +the operations of Cesare at Imola, with secret instructions to offer the +Duke false promises in the hope of eliciting information that could be +relied upon, Machiavelli had enjoyed the rare pleasure of a game at +political écarté with the subtlest and most unscrupulous diplomatist of +his age. He had witnessed his terrible yet beneficial administration of +Romagna. He had been present at his murder of the chiefs of the Orsini +faction at Sinigaglia. Cesare had confided to him, or had pretended to +confide, his schemes of personal ambition, as well as the motives and +the measures of his secret policy. On the day of the election of Pope +Julius II. he had laid bare the whole of his past history before the +Florentine secretary, and had pointed out the single weakness of which +he felt himself to have been guilty. In these trials of skill and this +exchange of confidence it is impossible to say which of the two +gamesters may have been the more deceived. But Machiavelli felt that the +Borgia supplied him with a perfect specimen for the study of the arts of +statecraft; and so deep was the impression produced upon his mind, that +even after the utter failure of Cesare's designs he made him the hero of +the political romance before us. His artistic perception of the perfect +and the beautiful, both in unscrupulous conduct and in frigid +calculation of conflicting interests, was satisfied by the steady<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg348" +id="pg348">348</a></span> selfishness, the persistent perfidy, the +profound mistrust of men, the self-command in the execution of perilous +designs, the moderate and deliberate employment of cruelty for definite +ends, which he observed in the young Duke, and which he has idealized in +his own <i>Principe</i>. That nature, as of a salamander adapted to its +element of fire, as of 'a resolute angel that delights in flame,' to +which nothing was sacred, which nothing could daunt, which never for a +moment sacrificed reason to passion, which was incapable of weakness or +fatigue, had fascinated Machiavelli's fancy. The moral qualities of the +man, the base foundations upon which he raised his power, the +unutterable scandals of his private life, and the hatred of all +Christendom were as nothing in the balance. Such considerations had, +according to the conditions of his subject, to be eliminated before he +weighed the intellectual qualities of the adventurer. 'If all the +achievements of the Duke are considered'—it is Machiavelli +speaking—'it will be found that he built up a great substructure +for his future power; nor do I know what precepts I could furnish to a +prince in his commencement better than such as are to be derived from +his example.' It is thus that Machiavelli, the citizen, addresses +Lorenzo, the tyrant of Florence. He says to him: Go thou and do +likewise. And what, then, is this likewise?</p> + +<p>Cesare, being a Pope's son, had nothing to look to but the influence of +his father. At first he designed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg349" +id="pg349">349</a></span> use this influence in the Church; +but after murdering his elder brother, he threw aside the Cardinal's +scarlet and proclaimed himself a political aspirant. His father could +not make him lord of any state, unless it were a portion of the +territory of the Church: and though, by creating, as he did, twelve +Cardinals in one day, he got the Sacred College to sanction his +investiture of the Duchy of Romagna, yet both Venice and Milan were +opposed to this scheme. Again there was a difficulty to be encountered +in the great baronial houses of Orsini and Colonna, who at that time +headed all the mercenary troops of Italy, and who, as Roman nobles, had +a natural hatred for the Pope. It was necessary to use their aid in the +acquisition of Cesare's principality. It was no less needful to humor +their animosity. Under these circumstances Alexander thought it best to +invite the French king into Italy, bargaining with Louis that he would +dissolve his marriage in return for protection awarded to Cesare. The +Colonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the Orsini to be +flattered. Cesare, by the help of his French allies and the Orsini +captains, took possession of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to +overrun Romagna. In this enterprise he succeeded to the full. Romagna +had been, from the earliest period of Italian history, a nest of petty +tyrants who governed badly and who kept no peace in their dominions. +Therefore the towns were but languid in their opposition to Cesare, and +were soon more than<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg350" +id="pg350">350</a></span> contented with a conqueror who introduced a good +system for the administration of justice. But now two difficulties +arose. The subjugation of Romagna had been effected by the help of the +French and the Orsini. Cesare as yet had formed no militia of his own, +and his allies were becoming suspicious. The Orsini had shown some +slackness at Faenza; and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master of +Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the capture of Piombino—which +conquests he completed during 1500 and 1501—Louis began to be jealous +of him. The problem for the Duke was how to disembarrass himself of the +two forces by which he had acquired a solid basis for his future +principality. His first move was to buy over the Cardinal d'Amboise, +whose influence in the French Court was supreme and thus to keep his +credit for awhile afloat with Louis. His second was to neutralize the +power of the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colonnesi, and +partly by superseding them in their command as captains. For the latter +purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the +lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he +collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of +mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him +established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their +own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the +career of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The conspiracy known<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg351" +id="pg351">351</a></span> +as the 'Diet of La Magione' was the consequence. In this conjuration the +Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, +together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Città di Castello, the +Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from +Siena, and Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part. The result of their +machinations against the common foe was that Cesare for a moment lost +Urbino, and was nearly unseated in Romagna. But the French helped him, +and he stood firm. Still it was impossible to believe that Louis XII. +would suffer him to advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as +long as he continued between the French and the Orsini his position was +of necessity insecure. The former had to be cast off; the latter to be +extirpated; and yet he had not force enough to play an open game. 'He +therefore,' says Machiavelli, 'turned to craft, and displayed such skill +in dissimulation that the Orsini through the mediation of Paolo became +his friends again.' The cruelty of Cesare Borgia was only equalled by +his craft; and it was by a supreme exercise of his power of +fascination that he lured the foes who had plotted against him at La +Magione into his snare at Sinigaglia. Paolo Orsini, Francesco Orsini, +duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo were all +men of arms, accustomed to intrigue and to bloodshed, and more than one +of them were stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery. Yet +such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in 1502 he<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg352" +id="pg352">352</a></span> managed to assemble +them, apart from their troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had +them strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the opposition and +enlisted their forces in his own service, Cesare, to use the phrase of +Machiavelli, 'had laid good foundations for his future power.' He +commanded a sufficient territory; he wielded the temporal and spiritual +power of his father; he was feared by the princes and respected by the +people throughout Italy; his cruelty and perfidy and subtlety and +boldness caused him to be universally admired. But as yet he had only +laid foundations. The empire of Italy was still to win; for he aspired +to nothing else, and it is even probable that he entertained a notion of +secularizing the Papacy. France was the chief obstacle to his ambition. +The alarm of Louis had at last been roused. But Louis' own mistake in +bringing the Spaniards into Naples afforded Cesare the means of shaking +off the French control. He espoused the cause of Spain, and by +intriguing now with the one power and now with the other made himself +both formidable and desirable to each. His geographical position between +Milan and Naples enforced this policy. Another difficulty against which +he had to provide was in the future rather than the present. Should his +father die, and a new Pope adverse to his interests be elected, he might +lose not only the support of the Holy See, but also his fiefs of Romagna +and Urbino. To meet this contingency he took four precautions, mentioned +with great admiration by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg353" +id="pg353">353</a></span> Machiavelli. In the first place he +systematically murdered the heirs of the ruling families of all the +cities he acquired—as for example three Varani at Camerino, two +Manfredi at Faenza, the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigaglia, and others +whom it would be tedious to mention. By this process he left no scion of +the ancient houses for a future Pope to restore. In the second place he +attached to his person by pensions, offices, and emoluments, all the +Roman gentry, so that he might be able to keep the new Pope a prisoner +and unarmed in Rome. Thirdly, he reduced the College of Cardinals, by +bribery, terrorism, poisoning, and packed elections, to such a state +that he could count on the creation of a Pope, if not his nominee, at +least not hostile to his interests. Fourthly, he lost no time, but +pushed his plans of conquest on with utmost speed, so as, if possible, +to command a large territory at the time of Alexander's death. +Machiavelli, who records these four points with approbation, adds: 'He +therefore, who finds it needful in his new authority to secure himself +against foes, to acquire allies, to gain a point by force or fraud, +etc., etc., could not discover an ensample more vigorous and blooming +than that of Cesare.' Such is the panegyric which Machiavelli, writing, +as it seems to me, in all good faith and innocence, records of a man +who, taken altogether, is perhaps the most selfish, perfidious, and +murderous of adventurers on record. The only fault for which he blames +him is that he did not prevent the election of Pope Julius II,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg354" +id="pg354">354</a></span> by +concentrating his influence on either the Cardinal d'Amboise or a +Spaniard.</p> + +<p>It is curious to read the title of the chapter following that which +criticises the action of Cesare Borgia: it runs thus, 'Concerning those +who have attained to sovereignty by crimes.' Cesare was clearly not one +of these men in the eyes of Machiavelli, who confines his attention to +Agathocles of Syracuse, and to Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand who +acquired the lordship of Fermo by murdering his uncle and benefactor, +Giovanni Fogliani, and all the chief men of the city at a banquet to +which he had invited them. This atrocity, according to Machiavelli's +creed, would have been justified, if Oliverotto had combined cruelty and +subtlety in proper proportions. But his savagery was not sufficiently +veiled; a prince should never incur odium by crimes of violence, but +only use them as the means of inspiring terror. Besides, Oliverotto was +so simple as to fall at last into the snare of Cesare Borgia at +Sinigaglia. Cesare himself supplies Machiavelli with a notable example +of the way in which cruelty can be well used. Having found the cities of +Romagna in great disorder, Cesare determined to quell them by the +ferocity of a terrible governor. For this purpose he chose Messer Ramiro +d' Orco, 'a man cruel and quick of action, to whom he gave the fullest +power.' A story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his temper in +a very bizarre fashion: he one day kicked a clumsy<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg355" +id="pg355">355</a></span> page on to the fire, +and held him there with a poker till he was burned up. Acting after this +fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole +province into comparative tranquillity. But it did not suit Cesare to +incur the odium which the man's cruelty brought on his administration. +Accordingly he had him decapitated one night and exposed to public view, +together with the block and bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena. Of +the art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to order by the cruelty +of his agent, and then avoided the odium of this cruelty by using the +wretched creature as an appalling example of his justice and his power, +Machiavelli wholly approves. His theory is that cruelty should be +employed for certain definite purposes, but that the Prince should +endeavor to shun as far as possible the hatred it inspires. In justice +both to Machiavelli and to Cesare, it should be said that the +administration of Romagna was far better under the Borgia rule than it +had ever been before. The exhibition of savage violence of which +Machiavelli approves was perhaps needed to cow so brutalized a +population.</p> + +<p>In those chapters which Machiavelli has devoted to the exposition of +the qualities that befit a Prince, it is clear that Cesare Borgia was +not unfrequentlv before his eyes.<a name="FNanchor_1_251" +id="FNanchor_1_251" /><a href="#Footnote_1_251" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The worst thing that can be said about Italy<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg356" id="pg356">356</a></span> of the sixteenth century is that +such an analyst as Machiavelli should have been able to idealize an +adventurer whose egotistic immorality was so undisguised. The ethics of +this profound anatomist of human motives were based upon a conviction +that men are altogether bad. When discussing the question whether it be +better to be loved or feared, Machiavelli decides that 'it is far safer +to be feared than loved, if you must choose; seeing that you may say of +men generally that they are ungrateful and changeable, dissemblers, apt +to shun danger, eager for gain; as long as you serve them, they offer +you everything, down to their very children, if you have no need; but +when you want help, they fail you. Therefore it is best to put no faith +in their pretended love.' This is language which could only be used in a +country where loyalty was unknown and where all political and social +combinations were founded upon force or convenience. Princes must, +however, be cautious not to injure their subjects in their honor or +their property—especially the latter, since men 'forget the murder +of their fathers quicker than the loss of their money.' Under another +heading Machiavelli returns to the same topic, and lays it down as an +axiom that, since the large majority of men are bad, a prince must learn +in self-defense how to be bad, and must use this science when and where +he deems appropriate, endeavoring, however, under all circumstances to +pass for good.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_251" id="Footnote_1_251" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_251"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In a letter to Fr. Vettori (Jan. 31, 1514) he says: 'Il +duca Valentino, l' opere del quale io imiterei sempre quando fossi +principe nuove.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg357" +id="pg357">357</a></span>He brings the same desperate philosophy of life, the same bitter +experience of mankind, to bear upon his discussion of the faith of +princes. The chapter which is entitled 'How princes ought to keep their +word' is one of the most brilliantly composed and thoroughly +Machiavellian of the whole treatise. He starts with the assertion that +to fight the battles of life in accordance with law is human, to depend +on force is brutal; yet when the former method is insufficient, the +latter must be adopted. A prince should know how to combine the natures +of the man and of the beast; and this is the meaning of the mythus of +Cheiron, who was made the tutor of Achilles. He should strive to acquire +the qualities of the fox and of the lion, in order that he may both +avoid snares and guard himself from wolves. A prudent prince cannot and +must not keep faith, when it is harmful to do so, or when the occasion +under which he promised has passed by. He will always find colorable +pretexts for breaking his word; and if he learns well how to feign, he +will have but little difficulty in deceiving people. Among the +innumerable instances of successful hypocrites Machiavelli can think of +none more excellent than Alexander VI. 'He never did anything else but +deceive men, nor ever thought of anything but this, and always found apt +matter for his practice. Never was there a man who had greater force in +swearing and tying himself down to his engagements, or who observed them +less. Nevertheless his wiles were always successful in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg358" +id="pg358">358</a></span> the way he +wished, because he well knew that side of the world.' It is curious that +Machiavelli should have forgotten that the whole elaborate life's policy +of Alexander and his son was ruined precisely by their falling into one +of their own traps, and that the mistake or treason of a servant upset +the calculations of the two most masterly deceivers of their age.<a name="FNanchor_1_252" id="FNanchor_1_252" /><a href="#Footnote_1_252" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Following out the same line of thought, which implies that in a bad +world a prince cannot afford to be good, Machiavelli asserts: 'It is not +necessary that a prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, +just: nay, I will venture to say, that if he had all these qualities and +always used them, they would harm him. But he must <i>seem</i> to have them, +especially if he be new in his principality, where he will find it quite +impossible to exercise these virtues, since in order to maintain his +power he will be often obliged to act contrary to humanity, charity, +religion.' Machiavelli does not advise him to become bad for the sake of +badness, but to know when to quit the path of virtue for the +preservation of his kingdom. 'He must take care to say nothing that is +not full of these five qualities, and must always appear all mercy, all +loyalty, all humanity, all justice, all religion, especially the last.' +On the advantage of a reputation for piety Machiavelli insists most +strongly. He points out how Ferdinand the Catholic used the pretext of +religious zeal in order to achieve the conquest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg359" +id="pg359">359</a></span> Granada, to invade +Africa, to expel the Moors, and how his perfidies in Italy, his +perjuries to France, were colored with a sanctimonious decency.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_252" id="Footnote_1_252" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_252"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Perhaps this is an indirect argument against the legend of +their death.</p></div> + +<p>After reading these passages we feel that though it may be true that +Machiavelli only spoke with scientific candor of the vices which were +common to all statesmen in his age—though the Italians were so corrupt +that it seemed hopeless to deal fairly with them—yet there was a +radical taint in the soul of the man who could have the heart to cull +these poisonous herbs of policy and distill their juices to a +quintessence for the use of the prince to whom he was confiding the +destinies of Italy.<a name="FNanchor_1_253" id="FNanchor_1_253" /><a href="#Footnote_1_253" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Almost involuntarily we remember the oath which +Arthur administered to his knights, when he bade them 'never to do +outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no means to be +cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of +forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore.' +In a land where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either as an +ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Machiavelli could scarcely +have been published. The Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It +was possible among them for the philosophers to teach the princes that +success purchased at the expense of honor, loyalty, humanity, and truth +might be illustrious.</p> + +<p>It is refreshing to turn from those chapters in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg360" +id="pg360">360</a></span> Machiavelli +teaches the Prince how to cope with the world by using the vices of the +wicked, to his exposition of the military organization suited to the +maintenance of a great kingdom. Machiavelli has no mean or humble +ambition for his Prince: 'double will his glory be, who has founded a +new realm, and fortified and adorned it with good laws, good arms, good +friends, and good ensamples.' What the enterprise to which he fain would +rouse Lorenzo really is, will appear in the conclusion. Meanwhile he +encourages him by the example of Ferdinand the Catholic to gird his +loins up for great enterprises. He bids him be circumspect in his choice +of secretaries, seeing that 'the first opinion formed of a prince and of +his capacity is derived from the men whom he has gathered round him.' He +points out how he should shun flattery and seek respectful but sincere +advice. Finally he reminds him that a prince is impotent unless he can +command obedience by his arms. Fortresses are a doubtful source of +strength; against foreign foes they are worse than useless; against +subjects they are worthless in comparison with the goodwill of the +people: 'the best fortress possible is to escape the hatred of your +subjects.' Everything therefore depends upon the well-ordering of a +national militia. The neglect of that ruined the princes of Italy and +enabled Charles VIII. to conquer the fairest of European kingdoms with +wooden spurs and a piece of chalk.<a name="FNanchor_2_254" id="FNanchor_2_254" /><a href="#Footnote_2_254" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_253" id="Footnote_1_253" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_253"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the <i>Discorsi</i>, lib. i. cap. 55, he calls Italy 'la +coruttela del mondo,' and judges that her case is desperate; 'non si può +sperare nelle provincie che in questi tempi si veggono corrotte, come è +l' Italia sopra tutte le altre.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_254" id="Footnote_2_254" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_254"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The references in this paragraph are made to chapters xx.-xxiv. and +chapter xii. of the <i>Principe</i>.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg361" +id="pg361">361</a></span>In his discourse on armies Machiavelli lays it down that the troops with +which a prince defends his state are either his own, or mercenaries, or +auxiliaries, or mixed. 'Mercenary and auxiliary forces are both useless +and perilous, and he who founds the security of his dominion on the +former will never be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, +ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, truculent to their +friends, cowardly among foes; they have no fear of God, no faith with +men; you are only safe with them before they are attacked; in peace they +plunder you; in war you are the prey of your enemies. The cause of this +is that they have no other love nor other reason to keep the field, +beyond a little pay, which is far from sufficient to make them wish to +die for you. They are willing enough to be your soldiers so long as you +are at peace, but when war comes their impulse is to fly or sneak away. +It ought to be easy to establish the truth of this assertion, since the +ruin of Italy is due to nothing else except this, that we have now for +many years depended upon mercenary arms.'<a name="FNanchor_1_255" +id="FNanchor_1_255" /><a href="#Footnote_1_255" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Here he touches the real weakness of the Italian states. Then he +proceeds to explain further the rottenness of the Condottiere system. +Captains of adventure are either men of ability or not. If they are, you +have to fear lest their ambition prompt them to turn their arms against +yourself or your allies. This happened to Queen Joan of Naples, who was +deserted by Sforza Attendolo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg362" +id="pg362">362</a></span> in her sorest need; to the Milanese, when +Francesco Sforza made himself their despot; to the Venetians, who were +driven to decapitate Carmagnuola because they feared him. The only +reason why the Florentines were not enslaved by Sir John Hawkwood was +that, though an able general, he achieved no great successes in the +field. In the same way they escaped by luck from Sforza, who turned his +attention to Milan, and from Braccio, who formed designs against the +Church and Naples. If Paolo Vitelli had been victorious against Pisa +(1498), he would have held them at discretion. In each of these cases it +was only the good fortune of the republic which saved it from a military +despotism. If, on the other hand, the mercenary captains are men of no +capacity, you are defeated in the field.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_255" id="Footnote_1_255" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_255"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See chapter xii. of the <i>Principe.</i></p></div> + +<p>Proceeding to the historical development of this bad system, Machiavelli +points out how after the decline of the Imperial authority in Italy, the +Papacy and the republics got the upper hand. Priests and merchants were +alike unwilling to engage in war. Therefore they took mercenary troops +into their pay. The companies of the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi were +formed; and 'after these came all those others who have ruled this sort +of warfare down to our own days. The consequence of their valor is that +Italy has been harried by Charles, plundered by Louis, forced by +Ferdinand, insulted by the Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the +reputation of their cavalry by depressing the infantry. Being<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg363" +id="pg363">363</a></span> without +dominion of their own, and making war their commerce, a few foot +soldiers brought them no repute, while they were unable to support many. +Therefore they confined themselves to cavalry, until in a force of +20,000 men you could not number 2,000 infantry. Besides this they +employed all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their soldiers of +fatigue and peril, by refraining from slaughter and from taking +prisoners without ransom. Night attacks and sorties were abandoned; +stockades and trenches in the camp were given up; no one thought of a +winter campaign. All these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in +order to avoid, as I have said, fatigue and peril. Whereby they have +reduced Italy to slavery and insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French +troops borrowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged by Julius +II., are even worse. 'He who wants to be unable to win the game should +make use of these forces; for they are far more dangerous than +mercenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is ready made—they +are united together, and inclined to obey their own masters. Machiavelli +enforces this moral by one of those rare but energetic figures which add +virile dignity to his discourse. He compares auxiliary troops to the +armor of Saul, which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his +stone and sling. 'In one word, arms borrowed from another either fall +from your back, or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It +remains<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg364" id="pg364">364</a></span> +for a prince to form his own troops and to take the field in person, +like Cesare Borgia, when he discarded his French allies and the +mercenary aid of the Orsini captains. Republics should follow the same +course, dispatching, as the Romans did, their own citizens to the war, +and controlling by law the personal ambition of victorious generals. It +was thus that the Venetians prospered in their conquests, before they +acquired their provinces in Italy and adopted the Condottiere system +from their neighbors. 'A prince, therefore, should have but one object, +one thought, one art—the art of war.' Those who have followed this +rule have attained to sovereignty, like Francesco Sforza, who became +Duke of Milan; those who have neglected it have lost even hereditary +kingdoms, like the last Sforzas, who sank from dukedom into private +life. Even amid the pleasures of the chase a prince should always be +studying the geographical conformation of his country with a view to its +defense, and should acquire a minute knowledge of such strategical laws +as are everywhere applicable. He should read history with the same +object, and should keep before his eyes the example of those great men +of the past from whom he can learn lessons for his guidance in the +present.</p> + +<p>This brings us to the peroration of the <i>Principe</i>, which contains the +practical issue toward which the whole treatise has been tending, the +patriotic thought that reflects a kind of luster even on the darkest +pages<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg365" +id="pg365">365</a></span> that have gone before. Like Thetis, Machiavelli has dipped his +Achilles in the Styx of infernal counsels; like Cheiron, he has shown +him how the human and the bestial natures should be combined in one who +has to break the teeth of wolves and keep his feet from snares; like +Hephaistos, he has forged for him invulnerable armor. The object toward +which this preparation has been leading is the liberation of Italy from +the barbarians. The slavery of Israel in Egypt, the oppression of the +Persians by the Medes, the dispersion of the Athenians into villages, +were the occasions which enabled Moses and Cyrus and Theseus to display +their greatness. The new Prince, who would fain win honor in Italy and +confer upon his country untold benefits, finds her at the present moment +'more enslaved than the Hebrews, more downtrodden than the Persians, +more disunited than the Athenians, without a chief, without order, +beaten, despoiled, mangled, overrun, subject to every sort of +desolation.' Fortune could not have offered him a nobler opportunity. +'See how she prays God to send her some one who should save her from +these barbarous cruelties ind insults! See her all ready and alert to +follow any standard, if only there be a man to raise it!' Then +Machiavelli addresses himself to the chief of the Medici in person. 'Nor +is there at the present moment any place more full of hope for her than +your illustrious House, which by its valor and its fortune, favored by +God and by the Church,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg366" +id="pg366">366</a></span> whereof it is now the head, might take the lead +in this delivery.' This is followed by one of the rare passages of +courtly rhetoric which, when Machiavelli condescends to indulge in them, +add peculiar splendor to his style. Then he turns again to speak of the +means which should immediately be used. He urges Lorenzo above all +things to put no faith in mercenaries or auxiliaries, but to raise his +own forces, and to rely on the Italian infantry. If Italian armies have +always been defeated in the field during the past twenty years, it is +not due so much to their defective courage as to the weakness of their +commanders. Lorenzo will have to raise a force capable of coping with +the Swiss, the Spanish, and the French. The respect with which +Machiavelli speaks at this supreme moment of these foreign troops, +proves how great was their prestige in Italy; yet he ventures to point +out that there are faults peculiar to each of them: the Spanish infantry +cannot stand a cavalry charge, and the Switzers are liable to be +disconcerted by the rapid attack of the wiry infantry of Spain. It is +therefore necessary to train troops capable of resisting cavalry, and +not afraid of facing any foot soldiers in the world. 'This opportunity, +therefore, must not be suffered to slip by; in order that Italy may +after so long a time at last behold her saviour. Nor can I find words to +describe the love with which he would be hailed in all the provinces +that have suffered through these foreign deluges, the thirst for +vengeance, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg367" +id="pg367">367</a></span> stubborn fidelity, the piety, the tears, that he would +meet What gates would be closed against him? What people would refuse +him allegiance? What jealousy would thwart him? What Italian would be +found to refuse him homage? This rule of the barbarians stinks in the +nostrils of us all. Then let your illustrious House assume this +enterprise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just enterprises +are begun, that so, under your flag, this land of ours may be ennobled, +and under your auspices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Lo, valor against rage</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For that old heritage</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong.</span><br /> +</p> +<p>With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the +<i>Principe</i> closes.</p> + +<p>Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has recorded a judgment of +Machiavelli's treatise in relation to the political conditions of Italy +at the end of the mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most +complete apology for the author it is possible to make. 'This book,' he +says, 'has often been cast aside with horror as containing maxims of the +most revolting tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the +necessity of constituting a state which caused him to lay down the +principles on which alone states could be formed under the +circumstances. The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely +suppressed; and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg368" +id="pg368">368</a></span> +means which he proposes both as the only available and also as wholly +justifiable—including, as these do, the most reckless violence, all +kinds of deception, murder, and the like—yet we must confess that the +despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch +as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly +engrained in them.'</p> + +<p>Yet after the book has been shut and the apology has been weighed, we +cannot but pause and ask ourselves this question, Which was the truer +patriot—Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and corruptions +of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom +it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and +enforcing repentance—Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom +those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of +Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without +a moral reformation no liberty was possible? We shall have to consider +the action of Savonarola in another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much +to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes +like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free. Hypocrisy, +treachery, dissimulation, cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the +enslaved. Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and by his +experience of the present to defend these vices, as the necessary +qualities of the prince whom he would fain have chosen for the saviour +of his country. It is legitimate to excuse him on the ground that the +Italians<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg369" +id="pg369">369</a></span> of his age had not conceived a philosophy of right which should +include duties as well as privileges, and which should guard the +interests of the governed no less than those of the governor. It is true +that the feudal conception of Monarchy, so well apprehended by him in +the fourth chapter of the <i>Principe,</i> had nowhere been realized in +Italy, and that therefore the right solution of the political problem +seemed to lie in setting force against force, and fraud against fraud, +for a sublime purpose. It may also be urged with justice that the +historians and speculators of antiquity, esteemed beyond their value by +the students of the sixteenth century, confirmed him in his application +of a positive philosophy to statecraft. The success which attended the +violence and dissimulation of the Romans, as described by Livy, induced +him to inculcate the principles on which they acted. The scientific +method followed by Aristotle in the Politics encouraged him in the +adoption of a similar analysis; while the close parallel between ancient +Greece and mediaeval Italy was sufficient to create a conviction that +the wisdom of the old world would be precisely applicable to the +conditions of the new. These, however, are exculpations of the man +rather than justifications of his theory. The theory was false and +vicious. And the fact remains that the man, impregnated by the bad +morality of the period in which he lived, was incapable of ascending +above it to the truth, was impotent with all his acumen to read the +deepest lessons of past and present<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg370" +id="pg370">370</a></span> history, and in spite of his +acknowledged patriotism succeeded only in adding his conscious and +unconscious testimony to the corruption of the country that he loved. +The broad common-sense, the mental soundness, the humane instinct and +the sympathy with nature, which give fertility and wholeness to the +political philosophy of men like Burke, are absent in Machiavelli. In +spite of its vigor, his system implies an inversion of the ruling laws +of health in the body politic. In spite of its logical cogency, it is +inconclusive by reason of defective premises. Incomparable as an essay +in pathological anatomy, it throws no light upon the working of a normal +social organism, and has at no time been used with profit even by the +ambitious and unscrupulous.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg371" +id="pg371">371</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" />CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE</h3> + + +<p>>The Papacy between 1447 and 1527—The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes—Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon—Nicholas +V.—His Conception of a Papal Monarchy—Pius II.—The +Crusade—Renaissance Pontiffs—Paul II.—Persecution of the +Platonists—Sixtus IV.—Nepotism—The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere—Avarice—Love of Warfare—Pazzi Conspiracy—Inquisition in +Spain—Innocent VIII.—Franceschetto Cibo—The Election of Alexander +VI.—His Consolidation of the Temporal Power—Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families—Venality of everything in Rome—Policy toward the +Sultan—The Index—The Borgia Family—Lucrezia—Murder of Duke of Gandia +—Cesare and his Advancement—The Death of Alexander—Julius II.—His +violent Temper—Great Projects and commanding Character—Leo X.—His +Inferiority to Julius—S. Peter's and the Reformation—Adrian VI.—His +Hatred of Pagan Culture—Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election—Clement VII.—Sack of Rome—Enslavement of Florence.</p> + +<p>In the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries the +authority of the Popes, both as Heads of the Church and as temporal +rulers, had been impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A +new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 1447, and ended during +the pontificate of Clement VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through +the whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs than as +pontiffs, and the secularization of the See of Rome was earned to its +utmost limits. The contrast<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg372" +id="pg372">372</a></span> between the sacerdotal pretensions and the +personal immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor had the chiefs of the +Church yet learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with +suspicion. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal States +had become a recognized kingdom; while the Popes of this later epoch +were endeavoring by means of the inquisition and the educational orders +to check the free spirit of Italy.</p> + +<p>The history of Italy has at all times been closely bound up with that of +the Papacy; but at no period has this been more the case than during +these eighty years of Papal worldliness, ambition, depotism, and +profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption of the European +nations into Italy and by the secession of the Teutonic races from the +Latin Church. In this short space of time a succession of Popes filled +the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety—displaying a pride so +regal, a cynicism so unblushing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so +suicidal as to favor the belief that they had been placed there in the +providence of God to warn the world against Babylon. At the same time +the history of the Papal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the +contradictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We find in the Popes +of this period what has been already noticed in the despots—learning, +the patronage of of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the +refinements of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently combined +with barbarous ferocity of temper and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg373" +id="pg373">373</a></span> with savage and coarse tastes. On +the one side we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have +scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the other, a seeming +zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time +worshiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins or liberation +from burdensome engagements; at another he is trampled under foot, in +his capacity of sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised +sensuality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy marching to its end by +murders, treasons, interdicts, and imprisonments; the open sale of +spiritual privileges; commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments; +hypocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and perjury reduced to +system—these are the ordinary scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the +Pope is still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. His curse +and blessing carry death and life. He rises from the bed of harlots to +unlock or bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of crime +he believes himself to be the representative of Christ on earth. These +anomalies, glaring as they seem to us, and obvious as they might be to +deeper thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock the mass +of men who witnessed them. The Renaissance was so dazzling by its +brilliancy, so confusing by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions +were obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of new life, a +carnival of liberated energies. The corruption of Italy was only equaled +by its culture. Its immorality<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg374" +id="pg374">374</a></span> was matched by its enthusiasm. It was +not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the fermentation of a new +age coming into life, that bred the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth +and the sixteenth centuries. The contrast between mediæval Christianity +and renascent Paganism—the sharp conflict of two adverse principles, +destined to fuse their forces and to recompose the modern world—made +the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is the first effervescence +of these elements so well displayed as in the history of those Pontiffs +who, after striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity beneath a +cowl, are now the chief actors in the comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus +raising their foreheads once more to the light of day.</p> + +<p>The struggle carried on between the Popes of the thirteenth century and +the House of Hohenstauffen ended in the elevation of the Princes of +Anjou to the throne of Naples—the most pernicious of all the evils +inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed the French tyranny, +under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni. Benedict XI. was poisoned +at the instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was transferred +to Avignon. The Popes lost their hold upon the city of Rome and upon +those territories of Romagna, the March, and S. Peter's Patrimony which +had been confirmed to them by the grant of Rodolph of Hapsburg (1273). +They had to govern their Italian dependencies by means of Legates, +while, one by one, the cities which had recognized their sway passed +beneath<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg375" +id="pg375">375</a></span> the yoke of independent princes. The Malatesti established +themselves in Rimini, Pesaro, and Fano; the house of Montefeltro +confirmed its occupation of Urbino; Camerino, Faenza, Ravenna, Forli, +and Imola became the appanages of the Varani, the Manfredi, the +Polentani, the Ordelaffi, and the Alidosi.<a name="FNanchor_1_256" id="FNanchor_1_256" /><a href="#Footnote_1_256" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The traditional supremacy +of the Popes was acknowledged in these tyrannies; but the nobles I have +named acquired a real authority, against which Egidio Albornoz and +Robert of Geneva struggled to a great extent in vain, and to break which +at a future period taxed the whole energies of Sixtus and of Alexander.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_256" id="Footnote_1_256" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_256"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Mach. <i>Ist. Fior</i>. lib. i.</p></div> + +<p>While the influence of the Popes was thus weakened in their states +beyond the Apennines, three great families, the Orsini, the Savelli, and +the Colonnesi, grew to princely eminence in Rome and its immediate +neighborhood. They had been severally raised to power during the second +half of the thirteenth century by the nepotism of Nicholas III., +Honorius IV., and Nicholas IV. This nepotism bore baneful fruits in the +future; for during the exile at Avignon the houses of Colonna and Orsini +became so overbearing as to threaten the freedom and safety of the +Popes. It was again reserved for Sixtus and Alexander to undo the work +of their predecessors and to secure the independence of the Holy See by +the coercion of these towering nobles.</p> + +<p>In the States of the Church the temporal power of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg376" +id="pg376">376</a></span> the Popes, founded +upon false donations, confirmed by tradition, and contested by rival +despots, was an anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though +different, was no less peculiar. While the factions of Orsini and +Colonna divided the Campagna and wrangled in the streets of the city, +Rome continued to preserve, in form at least, the old constitution of +Caporioni and Senator. The Senator, elected by the people, swore, not to +obey the Pope, but to defend his person. The government was ostensibly +republican. The Pope had no sovereign rights, but only the ascendency +inseparable from his wealth and from his position as Primate of +Christendom. At the same time the spirit of Arnold of Brescia, of +Brancaleone, and of Rienzi revived from time to time in patriots like +Porcari and Baroncelli, who resented the encroachments of the Church +upon the privileges of the city. Rome afforded no real security to the +members of the Holy College. They commanded no fortress like the +Castello of Milan, and had no army at their disposition. When the people +or the nobles rose against them, the best they could do was to retire to +Orvieto or Viterbo, and to wait the passing of the storm.</p> + +<p>Such was the position of the Pope, considered as one of the ruling +princes of Italy, before the election of Nicholas V. His authority was +wide but undefined, confirmed by prescription, but based on neither +force nor legal right. Italy, however, regarded the Papacy as +indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome was<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg377" id="pg377">377</a></span> proud to be called the metropolis +of Christendom, and ready to sacrifice the shadow of republican liberty +for the material advantages which might accrue from the sovereignty of +her bishop. How the Roman burghers may have felt upon this point we +gather from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the administration +of Nicholas: 'The city had become a city of gold through the jubilee; +the dignity of the citizens was respected; all reasonable petitions were +granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, no new taxes. Justice +was fairly administered. It was the whole care of the Pontiff to adorn +the city.'<a name="FNanchor_1_257" id="FNanchor_1_257" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_257" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The prosperity which the +Papal court brought to Rome was the main support of the Popes as +princes, at a time when many thinkers looked with Dante's jealousy upon +the union of temporal and spiritual functions in the Papacy.<a +name="FNanchor_2_258" id="FNanchor_2_258" /><a href="#Footnote_2_258" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Moreover, the whole of Italy, as we have seen +in the previous chapters, was undergoing a gradual and instinctive +change in politics; commonwealths were being superseded by tyrannies, +and the sentiments of the race at large were by no means unfavorable to +this revolution. Now was the proper moment, therefore, for the Popes to +convert their ill-defined authority into a settled despotism, to secure +themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg378" id="pg378">378</a></span> subdue the States of the Church +to their temporal jurisdiction.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_257" id="Footnote_1_257" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_257"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_258" id="Footnote_2_258" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_258"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation of +Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas, +contained these reminiscences of the 'De Monarchiá': 'Ut Papa tantum +vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Cæsaris ... tune Papa et erit et dicetur +pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesæ.'</p></div> + +<p>The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who ascended the Chair of S. +Peter, as Nicholas V., in 1447. One part of his biography belongs to the +history of scholarship, and need not here be touched upon. Educated at +Florence, under the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed those +principles of deference to princely authority which were supplanting the +old republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the +Catholic Church were healed; and finding no opposition to his spiritual +power, he determined to consolidate the temporalities of his See. In +this purpose he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a +Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republican enthusiasm in the +city at the moment of the Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted +against his liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates were +put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope proclaimed himself a +monarch. The vast wealth which the jubilee of 1450 had poured into the +Papal coffers<a name="FNanchor_1_259" id="FNanchor_1_259" /><a href="#Footnote_1_259" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> he employed in beautifying the city of Rome and in +creating a stronghold for the Sovereign Pontiff. The mausoleum of +Hadrian, used long before as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now +strengthened, while the bridge of S. Angelo and the Leonine city were so +connected and defended by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg379" +id="pg379">379</a></span> a system of walls and outworks as to give the +key of Rome into the hands of the Pope. A new Vatican began to rise, and +the foundations of a nobler S. Peter's Church were laid within the +circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, conceived the great +idea of restoring the supremacy of Rome, not after the fashion of a +Hildebrand, by enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but by +establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the architectural +magnificence of the Eternal City, and by rendering his court the center +of European culture. In the will which he recited on his death-bed to +the princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done for the +secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome, explaining his deep +sense of the necessity of securing the Popes from internal revolution +and external force, together with his desire to exalt the Church by +rendering her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. This +testament of Nicholas remains a memorable document. Nothing illustrates +more forcibly the transition from the Middle Ages to the worldliness of +the Renaissance than the conviction of the Pontiff that the destinies of +Christianity depended on the state and glory of the town of Rome. What +he began was carried on amid crime, anarchy, and bloodshed by successive +Popes of the Renaissance, until at last the troops of Frundsberg paved +the way, in 1527, for the Jesuits of Loyola, and Rome, still the Eternal +City, cloaked her splendor and her scandals beneath the black pall of +Spanish inquisitors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg380" +id="pg380">380</a></span> The political changes in the Papacy initiated by +Nicholas had been, however, by that date fully accomplished, and for +more than three centuries the Popes have since held rank among the kings +of the earth.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_259" id="Footnote_1_259" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_259"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The bank of the Medici alone held 100,000 florins for the +Pope. Vespasiano, <i>Vit, Nic. V.</i></p></div> + +<p>Of Alfonso Borgia, who reigned for three years as Calixtus III., little +need be said, except that his pontificate prepared for the greatness of +his nephew, Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment to his +uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been imbittered by the fall of +Constantinople and the imminent peril which threatened Europe from the +Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were directed towards the one end +of uniting the European nations against the infidel. Æneas Sylvius +Piccolomini, as an author, an orator, a diplomatist, a traveller, and a +courtier, bears a name illustrious in the annals of the Renaissance. As +a Pope, he claims attention for the single-hearted zeal which he +displayed in the vain attempt to rouse the piety of Christendom against +the foes of civilization and the faith. Rarely has a greater contrast +been displayed between the man and the pontiff than in the case of Pius. +The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking man of letters and the world +has become a Holy Father, jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on +stirring Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their force three +centuries before. Frederick II. and S. Louis closed the age of the +Crusades, the one by striking a bargain with the infidel, the other by +snatching at a martyr's<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg381" +id="pg381">381</a></span> crown. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was the mirror +of his times—a humanist and stylist, imbued with the rhetorical and +pseudo-classic taste of the earlier Renaissance. Pius II. is almost an +anachronism. The disappointment which the learned world experienced when +they discovered that the new Pope, from whom so much had been expected, +declined to play the part of their Mæcenas, may be gathered from the +epigrams of Filelfo upon his death<a name="FNanchor_1_260" id="FNanchor_1_260" /><a href="#Footnote_1_260" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>:— +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gaudeat orator, Musæ gaudete Latinæ;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sustulit e medio quod Deus ipse Pium.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ut bene consuluit doctis Deus omnibus æque,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Quos Pius in cunctos se tulit usque gravem.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nunc sperare licet. Nobis Deus optime Quintum</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Reddito Nicoleon Eugeniumve patrem.</span><br /> +</p> +<p>and again:—</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hac sibi quam vivus construxit clauditur arca</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Corpore; nam Stygios mens habet atra lacus.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Pius himself was not unconscious of the discrepancy between his old and +his new self. <i>Æneam rejicite, Pium recipite</i>, he exclaims in a +celebrated passage of his Retractation, where he declares his heartfelt +sorrow for the irrevocable words of light and vain romance that he had +scattered in his careless youth. Yet though Pius II. proved a virtual +failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either backwards to the +ideal of earlier Christianity or forwards on the path of modern culture, +he is the last Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard with +real respect. Those<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg382" +id="pg382">382</a></span> who follow, and with whose personal characters, +rather than their action as Pontiffs, we shall now be principally +occupied, sacrificed the interests of Christendom to family ambition, +secured their sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted +with the infidel, and played the part of Antichrist upon the theater of +Europe.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_260" id="Footnote_1_260" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_260"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Rosmini, <i>Vita di Filelfo</i>, vol. ii. p. 321.</p></div> + +<p>It would be possible to write the history of these priest-kings without +dwelling more than lightly on scandalous circumstances, to merge the +court-chronicle of the Vatican in a recital of European politics, or to +hide the true features of high Papal dignitaries beneath the masks +constructed for them by ecclesiastical apologists. That cannot, however, +be the line adopted by a writer treating of civilization in Italy during +the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He must paint the Popes of the +Renaissance as they appeared in the midst of society, when Lorenzo de' +Medici called Rome 'a sink of all the vices,' and observers so competent +as Machiavelli and Guicciardini ascribed the moral depravity and +political decay of Italy to their influence. It might be objected that +there is now no need to portray the profligacy of that court, which, by +arousing the conscience of Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable +shame, proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. But without +reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding of Italian morality, +and a true insight into Italian social feeling as expressed in +literature, are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this +epoch<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg383" id="pg383">383</a></span> +shrink from his task, even though the transactions he has to record seem +to savor of legend rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains +matter more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted to express a +truth in figures of the fancy, than the authentic well-attested annals +of this period of seventy years, from 1464 to 1534.</p> + +<p>Paul the Second was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who began life as a +merchant. He had already shipped his worldly goods on board a trading +vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that his uncle had been +made Pope under the name of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry +consisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune in the +Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high seas by his wits. +So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the +age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain +to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals +dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as +Paul in 1464. A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic. He +spent enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his tiara alone was +valued at 200,000 golden florins. In all public ceremonies, whether +ecclesiastical or secular, he was splendid, delighting equally to sun +himself before the eyes of the Romans as the chief actor in an Easter +benediction or a Carnival procession. The poorer Cardinals received +subsidies from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg384" +id="pg384">384</a></span> purse in order that they might add luster to his +pageants by their retinues. The arts found in him munificent patron. For +the building of the palace of S. Marco, which marks an abrupt departure +from the previous Gothic style in vogue, he brought architects of +eminence to Rome, and gave employment to Mino da Fiesole, the sculptor, +and to Giuliano da San Gallo, the wood-carver. The arches of Titus and +Septimius Severus were restored at his expense, together with the statue +of Marcus Aurelius and the horses of Monte Cavallo. But Paul showed his +connoisseurship more especially in the collection of gems, medals, +precious stones, and cameos, accumulating rare treasures of antiquity +and costly masterpieces of Italian and Flemish gold-work in his +cabinets. This patronage of contemporary art, no less than the +appreciation of classical monuments, marked him as a Mæcenas of the true +Renaissance type.<a name="FNanchor_1_261" id="FNanchor_1_261" /><a href="#Footnote_1_261" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg385" +id="pg385">385</a></span> qualities of a dilettante were not +calculated to shed luster on a Pontiff who spent the substance of the +Church in heaping up immensely valuable curiosities. His thirst for gold +and his love of hoarding were so extreme that, when bishoprics fell +vacant, he often refused to fill them up, drawing their revenues for his +own use. His court was luxurious, and in private he was addicted to +sensual lust.<a name="FNanchor_2_261" id="FNanchor_2_261" /><a href="#Footnote_2_261" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> This would not, however, have brought his name into bad +odor in Rome, where the Holy Father was already regarded as an Italian +despot with certain sacerdotal additions. It was his prosecution of the +Platonists which made him unpopular in an age when men had the right to +expect that, whatever happened, learning at least would be respected. +The example of the Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged +the Romans to found a society for the discussion of philosophical +questions. The Pope conceived that a political intrigue was the<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg386" id="pg386">386</a></span> real +object of this club. Nor was the suspicion wholly destitute of color. +The conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas, and the Catilinarian riots +of Tiburzio which had troubled the pontificate of Pius, were still fresh +in people's memories; nor was the position of the Pope in Rome as yet by +any means secure. What increased Paul's anxiety was the fact that some +scholars, appointed secretaries of the briefs (Abbreviatori) by Pius and +deprived of office by himself, were members of the Platonic Society. +Their animosity against him was both natural and ill-concealed. At the +same time the bitter hatred avowed by Laurentius Valla against the +temporal power might in an age of conjurations have meant active malice. +Leo Alberti hints that Porcari had been supported by strong backers +outside Rome; and one of the accusations against the Platonists was that +Pomponius Lætus had addressed Platina as Holy Father. Now both Pomponius +Lætus and Valla had influence in Naples, while Paul was on the verge of +open rupture with King Ferdinand. He therefore had sufficient grounds +for suspecting a Neapolitan intrigue, in which the humanists were +playing the parts of Brutus and Cassius. Yet though we take this trouble +to construct some show of reason for the panic of the Pope, the fact +remains that he was really mistaken at the outset; and of the stupidity, +cruelty, and injustice of his subsequent conduct there can be no doubt. +He seized the chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned them, put +them to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg387" +id="pg387">387</a></span> torture, and killed some of them upon the rack. 'You would +have taken Castle S. Angelo for Phalaris' bull,' writes Platina; 'the +hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent young men.' No +evidence of a conspiracy could be extorted. Then Paul tried the +survivors for unorthodoxy. They proved the soundness of their faith to +the satisfaction of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing remained but to +release them, or to shut them up in dungeons, in order that the people +might not say the Holy Father had arrested them without due cause. The +latter course was chosen. Platina, the historian of the Popes, was one +of the <i>abbreviatori</i> whom Paul had cashiered, and one of the Platonists +whom he had tortured. The tale of Papal persecution loses, therefore, +nothing in the telling; for if the humanists of the fifteenth century +were powerful in anything it was in writing innuendoes and invectives. +Among other anecdotes, he relates how, while he was being dislocated on +the rack, the inquisitors Vianesi and Sanga held a sprightly colloquy +about a ring which the one said jestingly the other had received as a +love-token from a girl. The whole situation is characteristic of Papal +Rome in the Renaissance.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_261" id="Footnote_1_261" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_261"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +See <i>Les Arts à la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le XVI. +Siècles</i>, E. Müntz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie. M. Müntz has done good +service to æsthetic archæology by vindicating the fame of Paul II. as an +employer of artists from the wholesale abuse heaped on him by Platina. +It may here be conveniently noticed that even the fierce Sixtus IV. +showed intelligence as a patron of arts and letters. He built the +Sistine Chapel, and brought the greatest painters of the day to +Rome—Signorelli, Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and +Ghirlandajo. Melozzo da Forlì worked for him. One of that painter's few +remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican, which +represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries—a magnificent +piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw the Vatican library open +to the public, and In his days the Confraternity of S. Luke was founded +for the encouragement of design. Rome owes to him the hospital of S. +Spirito, a severe building, by Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. +Maria del Popolo and S. Maria della Pace. Innocent VIII. added the +Belvedere to the Vatican after Antonio del Pollajuolo's plan, and +commenced the Villa Magliana. Alexander VI. enriched the Vatican with +the famous Borgia apartments, decorated by Pinturhicchio. He also began +the Palace of the University, and converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian +into the Castle of S. Angelo. These brief allusions must suffice. It is +not the object of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons; +but it should not be forgotten that, having accepted a place among the +despots of Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to art and learning +in the spirit of contemporary potentates.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_261" id="Footnote_2_261" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_261"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Corio sums up his character thus: 'Fu costui uomo alla +libidine molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie appresso +di lui. Del giorno faceva notte, e la notte ispediva quanto gli +occorreva.' Marcus Attilius Alexius says: 'Paulus II. ex concubiná domum +replevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta est sedes Barionis.' See +Gregorovius, <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. vii. p. 215, for the latter quotation.</p></div> + +<p>Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth led people to +anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after +supping on two huge watermelons, <i>duos prægrandes pepones</i>. His +successor was a man of base extraction, named Francesco della<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg388" id="pg388">388</a></span> Rovere, born +near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to be +thought noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house of Rovere +of Turin by giving them two cardinals' hats, and proclaimed himself +their kinsman. Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an azure ground which +Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in compliment +to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Having bribed the most venal members of +the Sacred College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, and assumed +the name of Sixtus IV. He began his career with a lie; for though he +succeeded to the avaricious Paul who had spent his time in amassing +money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found 5,000 +florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by the +prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews. +It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which were cast +upon the birth of two of the Pope's nephews and upon the nature of his +weakness for them. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most +monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of these men +recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus.<a +name="FNanchor_1_262" id="FNanchor_1_262" /><a href="#Footnote_1_262" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> We may, however, dwell upon<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg389" id="pg389">389</a></span> the principal +features of his nepotism; for Sixtus was the first Pontiff who +deliberately organized a system for pillaging the Church in order to +exalt his family to principalities. The weakness of this policy has +already been exposed<a name="FNanchor_2_263" id="FNanchor_2_263" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_263" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>: its justification, if +there is any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no +legitimate or hereditary succession. The names of the Pope's nephews +were Lionardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of +his brother Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his +sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister married to +Giovanni Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere,<a +name="FNanchor_3_264" id="FNanchor_3_264" /><a href="#Footnote_3_264" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> these young men had no claim to distinction +beyond good looks and a certain martial spirit which ill suited with the +ecclesiastical dignities thrust upon some of them. Lionardo was made +prefect of Rome and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of +Naples. Giuliano received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous +warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius +II. Girolamo Basso was created Cardinal<span class="pagenum"><a +name="pg390" id="pg390">390</a></span> of San Crisogono in 1477, and +died in 1507. Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of +Galeazzo Sforza. For him the Pope in 1473 bought the town of Imola with +money of the Church, and, after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a +Duke. He was murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 1488, not, +however, before he had founded a line of princes. Pietro, another nephew +of the Riario blood, or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since +believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at the age of +twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, Patriarch of Constantinople, +and Archbishop of Florence. He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but +his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant +profligacy of his own life to recommend him to the notice of posterity. +All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. His +official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden florins; but in his +short career of profligate magnificence he managed to squander a sum +reckoned at not less than 200,000. When Leonora of Aragon passed through +Rome on her way to wed the Marquis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch +erected a pavilion in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli for her +entertainment.<a name="FNanchor_4_265" id="FNanchor_4_265" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_265" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> The square was +partitioned into chambers communicating with the palace of the Cardinal. +The ordinary hangings were of velvet and of white and crimson silk, +while one of the apartments was draped with the famous tapestries of +Nicholas V., which represented the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg391" +id="pg391">391</a></span> Creation of the World. All the utensils in +this magic dwelling were of silver—even to the very vilest. The +air of the banquet-hall was cooled with punkahs; <i>ire mantici coperti, +che facevano continoamemte vento</i>, are the words of Corio; and on a +column in the center stood a living naked gilded boy, who poured forth +water from an urn. The description of the feast takes up three pages of +the history of Corio, where we find a minute list of the +dishes—wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted whole; peeled +oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for washing; and the +tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought in +pastry—<i>tutte in vivande</i>. We are also told how masques of +Hercules, Jason, and Phædra alternated with the story of Susannah +and the Elders, played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of +<i>San Giovan Battista decapitato</i> and <i>quel Giudeo che rosfi il corpo di +Cristo</i>. The servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed +his dress of richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the +banquet. Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wine +from golden goblets. The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, +meanwhile, moved among his guests 'like some great Cæsar's son.' +The whole entertainment lasted from Saturday till Thursday, during which +time Ercole of Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in S. +Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the intervals of games, +dances, and banquets of the kind described. We need scarcely add that, +in spite of his enormous<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg392" +id="pg392">392</a></span> wealth, the young Cardinal died 60,000 florins +in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in +January 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and +Venice as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never well +authenticated, that the Venetians helped his death by poison.<a +name="FNanchor_5_266" id="FNanchor_5_266" /><a href="#Footnote_5_266" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The sensual indulgences of every sort in which +this child of the proletariat, suddenly raised to princely splendor, +wallowed for twenty-five continuous months, are enough to account for +his immature death without the hypothesis of poisoning. With him expired +a plan which might have ended in making the Papacy a secular, hereditary +kingdom. During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with the +Duke, by the terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza was to be crowned king +of Lombardy, while the Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the +Papal throne.<a name="FNanchor_6_267" id="FNanchor_6_267" /><a +href="#Footnote_6_267" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Sixtus, it is said, was +willing to abdicate in his nephew's favor, with a view to the firmer +establishment of his family in the tyranny of Rome. The scheme was a +wild one, yet, considering the power and wealth of the Sforza family, +not so wholly impracticable as might appear. The same dream floated, a +few years later, before the imagination of the two Borgias; and +Machiavelli wrote in his calm style that to make the Papal power +hereditary was all that remained for nepotism in his days to do.<a +name="FNanchor_7_268" id="FNanchor_7_268" /><a href="#Footnote_7_268" +class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg393" +id="pg393">393</a></span> opinion which had been conceived of the +Cardinal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence may be gathered +from the following couplets of an epigram placed, as Corio informs us, +on his tomb:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynædus,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italiâ:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Namque illa Ausonii pestis scelerata senatûs,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Petrus, ad infernas est modo raptus aquas.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last nephew, Giovanni della +Rovere, into like favor. He was married to Giovanna, daughter of +Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of Sinigaglia. +Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, upon the death of his brother +Lionardo. This man founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Urbino. +The plebeian violence of the della Rovere temper reached a climax in +Giovanni's son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's +lover with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed the Papal +Legate to death in the streets of Bologna at the age of twenty, and +knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during +a council of war in 1526.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_262" id="Footnote_1_262" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_262"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part +be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to epigrams by +scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura, Burchard, and the +Venetian ambassadors relate of these two Popes such traits of character +and such abominable actions as render the worst calumnies probable. +Infessura, though he expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet +a dry chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his own +eyes, Burchurd was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies, who reported +the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander with phlegmatic +gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of whom indulges in satire +strictly so called, is more valuable than that of Tacitus or Suetonius +to the vices of the Roman emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian +ambassadors, again, are trustworthy, seeing they were always written +with political intention and not for the sake of gossip.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_263" id="Footnote_2_263" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_263"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See ch. iii. p. 113.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_264" id="Footnote_3_264" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_264"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet even +Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power. Jacobus +Volaterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: 'Vir est naturæ +duriusculæ, ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturæ.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_265" id="Footnote_4_265" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_265"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> For what follows read Corio, <i>Storia di Milano</i>, pp. 417-20.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_266" id="Footnote_5_266" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_266"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Mach. <i>1st. Fior</i>. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_267" id="Footnote_6_267" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_267"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned the +Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_268" id="Footnote_7_268" /><a href="#FNanchor_7_268"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>1st. Fior</i>, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38.</p></div> + +<p>Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy +life without some youthful protégé about his person. Accordingly in 1463 +he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and +Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a +young Olympian. With<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg394" +id="pg394">394</a></span> this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless +though stupid character.</p> + +<p>With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally +short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his +coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each +of which had its well-known price.<a name="FNanchor_1_269" id="FNanchor_1_269" /><a href="#Footnote_1_269" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Benefices were disposed of with +rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be +considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege +within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise +money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our +heaven, our very God, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time; +while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen +and ink to get what sum he wants.'<a name="FNanchor_2_270" id="FNanchor_2_270" /><a href="#Footnote_2_270" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The second great financial +expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. +Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine +prices; good grain was sold<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg395" +id="pg395">395</a></span> out of the kingdom, and bad imported in +exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores, +and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces. +Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south. +It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men +condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have +spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume +it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the +State.'<a name="FNanchor_3_271" id="FNanchor_3_271" /><a href="#Footnote_3_271" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_269" id="Footnote_1_269" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_269"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this +market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia Romana officia +adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_270" id="Footnote_2_270" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_270"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Baptista Mantuanus, <i>de Calamitatibus Temporum</i>, lib. iii. +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">Venalia nobis</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronæ,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque.</span><br /> + +</p><p> +Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, writes: +'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., che al papa +bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro, per avere quella somma +che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. <i>Ep</i>. i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque +argento Romana Curia dedat; nam et ipsæ manus impositiones et Spiritus +Sancti dona venduntur, nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_271" id="Footnote_3_271" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_271"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Infessura, <i>Eccardus</i>, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex +dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e ex +necessitate comedebatur, ex quo sæpenumero in civitate morbus viguit.'</p></div> + +<p>But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who +trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of God, to +squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy +was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same +worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of +Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly +planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all +the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils +was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,<a name="FNanchor_1_272" id="FNanchor_1_272" /><a href="#Footnote_1_272" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> rushed with wild +delight into a project which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg396" +id="pg396">396</a></span> involved the discord of the whole +Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all +the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called +the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting +for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he +died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury +because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the +sake of a favorite nephew.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_272" id="Footnote_1_272" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_272"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) +relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat 'a +steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be fought by +two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose the Piazza of S. +Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared at a window, blessed the +combatants, and crossed himself as a signal for the battle to begin. We +who think the ring, the cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should +study Pollajuolo's engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel +'a steccato chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, +Infessura writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, +puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii and a +barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, quæ circa hoc +possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It was not, perhaps, a +wholly Protestant calumny which accused Sixtus of granting private +indulgences for the commission of abominable crimes in certain seasons +of the year.</p></div> + +<p>The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the +Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the +Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year +1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi +family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had +driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his +banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with +Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political +reasons at this moment made the Pope<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg397" +id="pg397">397</a></span> and his nephew anxious to destroy +the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in +Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their +views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a +plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private +foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well +affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was +to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the +young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then +proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed +in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of +blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate +Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.<a name="FNanchor_1_273" id="FNanchor_1_273" /><a href="#Footnote_1_273" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place +selected was the Duomo.<a name="FNanchor_2_274" id="FNanchor_2_274" /><a href="#Footnote_2_274" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg398" +id="pg398">398</a></span> be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced +Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat +of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen, +arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before +the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the <i>religio loci</i> +dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such +silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was +found, who, <i>being a priest</i>, was more accustomed to the place and +therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.' This, however, spoiled +all. The priests, though more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less +used to the trade of assassination. They failed to strike home. +Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo Bandini and +Francesco de' Pazzi at the very moment of the elevation of Christ's +body. But Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole +conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people of +Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with +Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others among the principal +conspirators, were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For +this act of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest, +Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg399" +id="pg399">399</a></span> mingled treason, +sacrilege, and murder, ex-communicated Florence, and carried on for +years a savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when the +descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him tremble for his own safety, +that he chose to make peace with these enemies whom he had himself +provoked and plotted against.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_273" id="Footnote_1_273" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_273"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> His 'Confession,' printed by Fabroni, <i>Lorenzi Medicis +Vita</i>, vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the hatching of +the plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that Montesecco exculpates him of +the design to murder the Medici. He only wanted to ruin them.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_274" id="Footnote_2_274" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_274"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian tyrannicides +took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano were murdered during a +solemn service in 1435; the sentence of the creed 'Et incarnatus est' +was chosen for the signal. Gian Maria Visconti was killed in San +Gottardo (1412), Galeazzo Maria Sforza in San Stefano (1484). Lodovico +Moro only just escaped assassination in Sant' Ambrogio (1484). +Machiavelli says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was attempted by Batista +Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see <i>1st. Fior.</i> book viii. near the end). +The Bagliani of Perugia were to have been massacred during the marriage +festival of Astorre with Lavinia Colonna(1500). Stefano Porcari intended +to capture Nicholas V. at the great gate of S. Peter's (1453). The only +chance of catching cautious princes off their guard was when they were +engaged in high solemnities. See above, p. 168.</p></div> + +<p>Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus deserves special +mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition +was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and +Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000 +victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of +ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning—a new Aceldama—was +set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were +committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual +imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In +Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their +inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the +Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were +bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold +or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables +was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was +given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the +persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg400" +id="pg400">400</a></span> the sentence by the +payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand +and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ +for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for +the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left +Spain<a name="FNanchor_1_275" id="FNanchor_1_275" /><a href="#Footnote_1_275" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>—some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their +bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and +deflowered their women—some for Portugal, where they bought the right +to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and +daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as +slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the +bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and +sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with +famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the +Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died +by hundreds in the harbor.<a name="FNanchor_2_276" id="FNanchor_2_276" /><a href="#Footnote_2_276" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence +along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000 +persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn specters, the +victims of bigotry and avarice,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg401" +id="pg401">401</a></span> everywhere pillaged and everywhere +rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox +rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato +with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of +the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so +extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words +we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first +sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; +yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as +beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God.' A critic of this century can +only exclaim with stupefaction: <i>Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!</i> +Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell +upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The +very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free +thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily +throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was +destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her +manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color +of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_275" id="Footnote_1_275" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_275"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his +<i>History of the Inquisition</i> (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and 400,000; he +also speaks of 170,000 <i>families</i> as one calculation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_276" id="Footnote_2_276" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_276"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is truly +awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The passage may be read +in Prescott's <i>Ferdinand and Isabella</i>, chapter 17.</p></div> + +<p>Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus—indulging his lust +and pride in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with +masterpieces,<a name="FNanchor_1_277" id="FNanchor_1_277" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_277" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> rending Italy<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg402" id="pg402">402</a></span> with broils +for the aggrandizement of favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid +for bishoprics, extorting money from starved provinces, plotting murder +against his enemies, hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences, +refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Christendom against the +Turk—yet meanwhile thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by +myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious +Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the +blood of others, to burn his own vices in the <i>autos da fé</i> of Seville, +and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to +secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.<a name="FNanchor_2_278" id="FNanchor_2_278" /><a href="#Footnote_2_278" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> This is not the +language of a Protestant denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the +Roman Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, that august and +venerable monument of immemorial antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to +the contradictions between<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg403" +id="pg403">403</a></span> practice and pretension upon which the +History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so lurid.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_277" id="Footnote_1_277" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_277"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of +Michael Angelo, it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the +arraignment of the Popes who built and beautified that chapel, when the +Christ, whose blood they sold, should appear with His menacing right arm +uplifted, and the prophets should thunder their denunciations: 'Howl, ye +shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of +the flock, for the days of your slaughter and your dispersions are +accomplished.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_278" id="Footnote_2_278" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_278"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose +bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution directed +against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in the <i>Malleus +Maleficarum</i>, mentions that in the first year after its publication +forty-one witches were burned in the district of Como, while crowds of +suspected women took refuge in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. +Cantù's <i>Storia della Diocesi di Como</i> (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be +consulted for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica. +Cp. Folengo's <i>Maccaronea</i> for the prevalence of witchcraft in those +districts.</p></div> + +<p>After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular name was Giambattista +Cibo. The sacred College, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into +thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his creation of scandalous +Cardinals, might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn obligations on +the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, to every +member of the conclave, that he would maintain a certain order of +appointment and a purity of election in the Church. No Cardinal under +the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's own blood, none +without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, and +so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them +all as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair. +Engagements made by the man might always be broken by the Pope. Of +Innocent's Pontificate little need be said. He was the first Pope +publicly to acknowledge his seven children, and to call them sons and +daughters.<a name="FNanchor_1_279" id="FNanchor_1_279" /><a href="#Footnote_1_279" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base +favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the +scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg404" +id="pg404">404</a></span> a step +even beyond Sixtus, by establishing a Bank at Rome for the sale of +pardons.<a name="FNanchor_2_280" id="FNanchor_2_280" /><a href="#Footnote_2_280" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the +convenience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were poured into the +Papal coffers; the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This +insignificant princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was +purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and +spending money. He was small of stature and tame-spirited: yet the +destinies of an important house of Europe depended on him; for his +father married him to Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in +1487. This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal's hat at the +age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in +the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and +by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence +fast.<a name="FNanchor_3_281" id="FNanchor_3_281" /><a href="#Footnote_3_281" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in +theft and murder filled the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg405" +id="pg405">405</a></span> Campagna with brigands and assassins.<a name="FNanchor_4_282" id="FNanchor_4_282" /><a href="#Footnote_4_282" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +Travelers and pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped and murdered on +their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people +were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the +Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and +Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy +Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to +reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid +veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were +sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He +adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judæus quidem +aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope +reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem in +Innocentiâ meâ ingressus sum.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_279" id="Footnote_1_279" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_279"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit, +primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenæos +celebravit.' Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. vii. +p. 274, note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_280" id="Footnote_2_280" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_280"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why +criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, answer: 'God +wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and +live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, forged bulls by which the +Pope granted indulgences for the commission of the worst scandals. His +father tried to buy him off for 5,000 ducats. Innocent replied that, as +his honor was concerned, he must have 6,000. The poor father could not +scrape so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and Dominico +was executed. A Roman who had killed two of his own daughters bought his +pardon for 800 ducats.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_281" id="Footnote_3_281" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_281"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the Pope for +his ally, was able to create that balance of power in Italy which it was +his chief political merit to have maintained until his death.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_282" id="Footnote_4_282" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_282"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary (Eccardus vol. +ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed debauchery and violence +of Rome at this time can be formed.</p></div> + +<p>Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The tedious leisure of +Innocent's long lethargy was employed by them in active simony. Simony, +it may be said in passing, gave the great Italian families a direct +interest in the election of the richest and most paying candidate. It +served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose +that laid such eggs, before he killed it—in other words, to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg406" +id="pg406">406</a></span> the +bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while deferring for a future time his +own election. All the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo +Borgia,<a name="FNanchor_1_283" id="FNanchor_1_283" /><a href="#Footnote_1_283" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. Having bought +their hats with gold, they were now disposed to sell their votes to the +highest bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, wisest, and most +worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what the price of each +suffrage would be, and laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio +Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of +Vice-Chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia +Palaces at Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal +Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The +Cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto with +its palace stocked with choice wines. The Cardinal of Parma would take +Nepi. The Cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in +Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave sold themselves for +gold; to meet their demands the Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules +laden with coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in proper +portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained +implacable and obdurate. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg407" +id="pg407">407</a></span> Borgia his vehement temperament +perceived a fit antagonist. The armor which he donned in their first +encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce war with the whole brood of +Borgias at Ostia, at the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and whenever +he found opportunity.<a name="FNanchor_2_284" id="FNanchor_2_284" /><a href="#Footnote_2_284" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> He and five other Cardinals—among them his +cousin Raphael Riario—refused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia, +having corrupted the rest of the college, assumed the mantle of S. Peter +in 1492, with the ever-memorable title of Alexander VI.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_283" id="Footnote_1_283" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_283"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope +Calixtus III., by her marriage with Joffré Lenzuoli. He took the name of +Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal, and to share in his +uncle's greatness.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_284" id="Footnote_2_284" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_284"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura, the +daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long after the +Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a curious and unexplained +incident.</p></div> + +<p>Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself in festival array, +exhibiting on every flag and balcony the Bull of the house of Borgia, +and crying like the Egyptians when they found Apis:—<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vive diu Bos! Vive diu Bos! Borgia vive!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vivit Alexander: Roma beata manet.</span><br /> +</p> +<p>In truth there was nothing to convince the Romans of the coming woe, or +to raise suspicion that a Pope had been elected who would deserve the +execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only +saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal +carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, +a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and ecclesiastic +parade—qualities which, though they do<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg408" +id="pg408">408</a></span> not suit our notions of a +churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in +triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits +upon a snow-white horse,' writes one of the humanists of the century,<a name="FNanchor_1_285" id="FNanchor_1_285" /><a href="#Footnote_1_285" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +'with serene forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distributes his +blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon him, and all hearts +rejoice. How admirable is the mild composure of his mien! how noble his +countenance! his glance how free! His stature and carriage, his beauty +and the full health of his body, how they enhance the reverence which he +inspires!' Another panegyrist<a name="FNanchor_2_286" id="FNanchor_2_286" /><a href="#Footnote_2_286" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> describes his 'broad forehead, kingly +brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 'the heroic beauty +of his whole body' was given him by nature in order that he might 'adorn +the seat of the Apostles with his divine form in the place of God.' How +little in the early days of his Pontificate the Borgia resembled that +Alexander with whom the legend of his subsequent life has familiarized +our fancy, may be gathered from the following account:<a name="FNanchor_3_287" id="FNanchor_3_287" /><a href="#Footnote_3_287" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'He is +handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with +honeyed and choice eloquence; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are +cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more +powerfully than the magnet influences iron.' These, we must remember, +are the testimonies<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg409" +id="pg409">409</a></span> of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan sentiments +of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in the advent of a Pope who +would, they hoped, make Rome the capital of luxury and license. +Therefore they require to be received with caution. Yet there is no +reason to suppose that the majority of the Italians regarded the +elevation of the Borgia with peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given +proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud. +Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues. If he was the +father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had +been Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little in an age when +the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular +potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was +not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the +thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church. A few men of +discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered. 'The king of +Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the +queen, his wife, with tears—tears which he was wont to check even at +the death of his own sons—that a Pope had been made who would prove +most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal +Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by +whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's +jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides, +there was in Italy a widely spread<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg410" +id="pg410">410</a></span> repugnance to the Spanish +intruders—Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called—who +crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption +like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of +all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in +1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for +during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were +created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_285" id="Footnote_1_285" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_285"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. <i>Lucrezia Borgia</i>, p. +45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_286" id="Footnote_2_286" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_286"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, <i>Stadt Rom.</i> p. 314, note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_287" id="Footnote_3_287" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_287"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. <i>Stadt Rom.</i> p. 208, note.</p></div> + +<p>It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of +Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at +the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was +afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his +Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son +Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life, +which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century. +This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date +of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern +nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the +glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his +conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like +all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.</p> + +<p>Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg411" +id="pg411">411</a></span> close an old age and +to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the +Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two +conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The +Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual +insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and +terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of +the Middle Ages—Hildebrand and Boniface—had displayed the extreme of +spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous +and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they +had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable. +To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as +unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame +and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is +justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of +which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and +imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was +rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected on it from the +unquenched furnace of a godless life. The universal conscience of +Christianity is revolted by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood +and festivals of lust, which were enjoyed in the plenitude of his green +and vigorous old age by this versatile diplomatist and subtle priest, +who controlled the councils<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg412" +id="pg412">412</a></span> of kings, and who chanted the sacramental +service for a listening world on Easter Day in Rome. Rome has never been +small or weak or mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 'that +memorable scene' presented to the nations of the modern world a pageant +of Antichrist and Antiphysis—the negation of the Gospel and of nature; +a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity as it aspires to be at +its best, and humanity as it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by +some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of servants, the +anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant upon earth of Christ, played the +chief part. It may be objected that this is the language not of history +but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions when the legend has +caught the spirit of the truth.</p> + +<p>Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate +predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular +sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and +to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond +belief.'<a name="FNanchor_1_288" id="FNanchor_1_288" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_288" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His first care was to +reduce Rome<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg413" +id="pg413">413</a></span> to order. The old factions of Colonna and Orsini, which +Sixtus had scotched, but which had raised their heads again during the +dotage of Innocent, were destroyed in his Pontificate. In this way, as +Machiavelli observed,<a name="FNanchor_2_289" id="FNanchor_2_289" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_289" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> he laid the real basis +for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a sovereign, +achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the throne of +France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of the large +European monarchies. The faithlessness and perjuries of the Pope, 'who +never did aught else but deceive, nor ever thought of anything but this, +and always found occasion for his frauds,'<a name="FNanchor_3_290" +id="FNanchor_3_290" /><a href="#Footnote_3_290" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +when combined with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, made +him a redoubtable antagonist. All considerations of religion and +morality were subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: +and his policy he restrained to two objects—the advancement of his +family, and the consolidation of the temporal power. These were narrow +aims for the ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen +pretended to confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his +whole strength, and drove him to the perpetration of enormous +crimes.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_288" id="Footnote_1_288" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_288"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in +a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; private +habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of truth, no fidelity +to his engagements, no religious sentiment; insatiable avarice, +unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the cruelty of barbarous races, +burning desire to elevate his sons by any means: of these there were +many, and among them—in order that he might not lack vicious +instruments for effecting his vicious schemes—one not less detestable +in any way than his father.' <i>St. d'It.</i> vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate +and put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander from the +<i>Storia di Firenze</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_289" id="Footnote_2_289" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_289"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the <i>Prince</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_290" id="Footnote_3_290" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_290"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Mach. <i>Prince</i>, ch. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire i. +208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken passage on the +nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results for Italy.</p></div> + +<p>Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and +indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practiced—to such an +extent, indeed, that an epigram gained<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg414" +id="pg414">414</a></span> currency: 'Alexander sells the +keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to +sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having +sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with +rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him, +laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. Paolo Capello, the +Venetian Ambassador, wrote in the year 1500: 'Every night they find in +Rome four or five murdered men, Bishops and Prelates and so forth.' +Panvinius mentions three Cardinals who were known to have been poisoned +by the Pope; and to their names may be added those of the Cardinals of +Capua and of Verona.<a name="FNanchor_1_291" id="FNanchor_1_291" /><a href="#Footnote_1_291" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> To be a prince of the Church was dangerous in +those days; and if the Borgia had not at last poisoned himself by +mistake, he must in the long-run have had to pay people to accept so +perilous a privilege. His traffic in Church dignities was carried on +upon a grand scale: twelve Cardinals' hats, for example, were put to +auction in a single day in 1500.<a name="FNanchor_2_292" id="FNanchor_2_292" /><a href="#Footnote_2_292" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> This was when he wished to pack the +Conclave with votes in favor of the cession of Romagna to Cesare Borgia, +as well as to replenish his exhausted coffers. Forty-three Cardinals +were created by him in eleven promotions: each of these was worth on an +average 10,000 florins; while the price paid by Francesco Soderini +amounted to 20,000 and that paid by Domenico Grimani reached the sum of +30,000.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_291" id="Footnote_1_291" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_291"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the authorities in Burckhardt, pp. 93, 94.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_292" id="Footnote_2_292" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_292"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Guicc. <i>St. d'It.</i> vol. iii. p. 15.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg415" +id="pg415">415</a></span>Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or +energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened. +Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of +the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favor of his children. The +fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to +some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet +and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection +to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving +40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. Innocent VIII. had +been the first to snare this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of +Longinus was sent him as a token of the Sultan's gratitude, and +Innocent, who built an altar for the relique, caused his own tomb to be +raised close by. His effigy in bronze by Pollajuolo still carries in its +hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest of Christendom.</p> + +<p>Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, and held his Moslem Court side by +side with the Pontiff in the Vatican. Dispatches are extant in which +Alexander and Bajazet exchange terms of the warmest friendship, the Turk +imploring his Greatness—so he addressed the Pope—to put an +end to the unlucky Djem, and promising as the price of this +assassination a sum of 300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ, +presumably that very seamless coat over which the soldiers of Calvary +had cast their dice.<a name="FNanchor_1_293" id="FNanchor_1_293" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_293" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg416" +id="pg416">416</a></span> money and the +relique arrived in Italy and were intercepted by the partisans of +Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before the bargain with the Sultan had +been concluded by the murder of Djem, was forced to hand him over to the +French king. But the unlucky Turk carried in his constitution the slow +poison of the Borgias, and died in Charles's camp between Rome and +Naples. Whatever crimes may be condoned in Alexander, it is difficult to +extenuate this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal from the powers of +Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the peril to the Western world was +still most serious, he stands attained for high treason against +Christendom, of which he professed to be the chief; against +civilization, which the Church pretended to protect; against Christ, +whose vicar he presumed to style himself.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_293" id="Footnote_1_293" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_293"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the letters in the 'Preuves et Observations,' printed +at the end of the <i>Mémoires de Comines</i>.</p></div> + +<p>Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the spirit and the +interests of Christianity with zeal for dogma. He never flinched in +formal orthodoxy, and the measures which he took for riveting the chains +of superstition on the people were calculated with the military firmness +of a Napoleon. It was he who established the censure of the press, by +which printers were obliged, under pain of excommunication, to submit +the books they issued to the control of the Archbishops and their +delegates. The Brief of June 1, 1501, which contains this order, may be +reasonably<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg417" +id="pg417">417</a></span> said to have retarded civilization, at least in Italy and +Spain.</p> + +<p>Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his +life.<a name="FNanchor_1_294" id="FNanchor_1_294" /><a href="#Footnote_1_294" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This, together with his almost insane weakness for his +children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all +the crimes which he committed. At the same time, though sensual, +Alexander was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, +remarks: 'The Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disagreeable +to have to dine with him.' In this respect he may be favorably +contrasted with the Roman prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to +Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce, and then +of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia Farnese,<a name="FNanchor_2_295" id="FNanchor_2_295" /><a href="#Footnote_2_295" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> surnamed La Bella, the +titular wife of Orsino<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg418" +id="pg418">418</a></span> Orsini, were open and acknowledged. These two +sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving +meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental fashion, he +maintained in the Vatican. An incident which happened during the French +invasion of 1494 brings the domestic circumstances of a Pope of the +Renaissance vividly before us. Monseigneur d'Allegre caught the ladies +Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady Adriana de Mila, who +was employed as their duenna, near Capodimonte, on November 29, and +carried them to Montefiascone. The sum fixed for their ransom was 3,000 +ducats. This the Pope paid, and on December 1 they were released. +Alexander met them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black jerkin +trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round his waist by a Spanish +girdle, from which hung his dagger. Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what +had happened, remarked that it was weak to release these ladies, who +were 'the very eyes and heart' of his Holiness, for so small a +ransom—if 50,000 ducats had been demanded, they would have been paid. +This and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope's expense, make us +understand to what extent the Italians were accustomed to regard their +high priest as a secular prince. Even the pageant of Alexander seated in +S. Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia on one side of his throne and his +daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other, moved no moral indignation; nor +were the Romans astonished when Lucrezia was appointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg419" +id="pg419">419</a></span> Governor of +Spoleto, and plenipotentiary Regent of the Vatican in her father's +absence. These scandals, however, created a very different impression in +the north, and prepared the way for the Reformation.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_294" id="Footnote_1_294" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_294"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Guicciardini (<i>St. Fior.</i> cap. 27) writes: 'Fu +lussoriosissimo nell' uno e nell' altro sesso, tenendo publicamente +femine e garzoni, ma più ancora nelle femine.' A notion of the public +disorders connected with his dissolute life may be gained from this +passage in Sanuto's Diary (Gregorovius, <i>Lucrezia Borgia</i>, p. 88): 'Da +Roma per le lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private +persone cossa assai abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra +nato un fiolo di una dona romana maritata, ch' el padre l' havea +rufianata, e di questa il marito invitò il suocero a la vigna e lo +uccise tagliandoli el capo, ponendo quello sopra uno legno con letere +che diceva questo è il capo de mio suocero che a rufianato sua fiola al +papa, et che inteso questo il papa fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma +con taglia. Questa nova venne per letere particular; etiam si godea con +la sua spagnola menatali per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li +venuto.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_295" id="Footnote_2_295" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_295"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Her brother Alexander, afterwards Paul III., owed his +promotion to the purple to this liaison, which was, therefore, the +origin of the greatness of the Farnesi. The tomb of Paul III. in the +Tribune of S. Peter's has three notable family portraits—the Pope +himself in bronze; his sister Giulia, naked in marble, as Justice; and +their old mother, Giovanna Gaetani, the bawd, as Prudence.</p></div> + +<p>The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong wine of Alexander's +paternal ambition. The passion of paternity, exaggerated beyond the +bounds of natural affection, and scandalous in a Roman Pontiff, was the +main motive of the Borgia's action. Of his children by Vannozza, he +caused the eldest son to be created Duke of Gandia; the youngest he +married to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of Aragon, by whom the +boy was honored with the Dukedom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of +this family, was appointed Bishop of Valentia, and Cardinal. The +Dukedoms of Camerino and Nepi were given to another John, whom Alexander +first declared to be his grandson through Cesare, and afterwards +acknowledged as his son. This John may possibly have been Lucrezia's +child. The Dukedom of Sermoneta, wrenched for a moment from the hands of +the Gaetani family, who still own it, was conferred upon Lucrezia's son, +Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took +three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to +two Spanish nobles, Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles, and Don Gasparo da +Procida, son of the Count of Aversa. These contracts, made before her +father became Pope, were annulled as not magnificent enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg420" +id="pg420">420</a></span> for the +Pontiff's daughter. In 1492 she was married to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of +Pesaro. But in 1497 the pretensions of the Borgias had outgrown this +alliance, and their public policy was inclining to relations with the +Southern Courts of Italy. Accordingly she was divorced and given to +Alfonso, Prince of Biseglia, a natural son of the King of Naples. When +this man's father lost his crown, the Borgias, not caring to be +connected with an ex-royal family, caused Alfonso to be stabbed on the +steps of S. Peter's in 1501; and while he lingered between life and +death, they had him strangled in his sick-bed, by Michellozzo, Cesare's +assassin in chief. Finally Lucrezia was wedded to Alfonso, crown-prince +of Ferrara, in 1502.<a name="FNanchor_1_296" id="FNanchor_1_296" /><a href="#Footnote_1_296" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The proud heir of the Este dynasty was forced by +policy, against his inclination, to take to his board and bed a Pope's +bastard, twice divorced, once severed from her husband by murder, and +soiled, whether justly or not, by atrocious rumors, to which her +father's and her brother's conduct gave but too much color. She proved a +model princess after all, and died at last in childbirth, after having +been praised by Ariosto as a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues +than the star of regal Rome.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_296" id="Footnote_1_296" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_296"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Her dowry was 300,000 ducats, besides wedding presents, and +certain important immunities and privileges granted to Ferrara by the +Pope.</p></div> + +<p>History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long +yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colorless. The +legend which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg421" +id="pg421">421</a></span> made her a poison-brewing Mænad has been proved a lie—but +only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple +northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and +Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a +woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals +perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not hers, +but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her +married life in Rome a byword. She sat and smiled through all the +tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair +port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in the corruption of Papal Rome, +which Lorenzo de' Medici described to his son Giovanni as 'a sink of all +the vices,' consorting habitually with her father's concubines, and +conscious that her own mother had been married for show to two +successive husbands, it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct +at any time with propriety. It is even probable that the darkest tales +about her are true. The Lord of Pesaro, we must remember, told his +kinsman, the Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his divorce +were false, and that the fact was what can scarcely be recorded.<a name="FNanchor_1_297" id="FNanchor_1_297" /><a href="#Footnote_1_297" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Still, there is no ground for supposing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg422" +id="pg422">422</a></span> that, in the matter of her +first husband's divorce and the second's murder, she was more than a +passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Cesare. The pleasure-loving, +careless woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of +Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern +conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of +debauchery devised for her amusement.<a name="FNanchor_2_298" id="FNanchor_2_298" /><a href="#Footnote_2_298" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Instead of viewing her with +dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with +contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the +cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the +esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached the whole +state to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the panegyrics of +the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of +note. Foreigners<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg423" +id="pg423">423</a></span> who saw her surrounded by her brilliant Court +exclaimed, like the French biographer of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que, +de son temps, ni beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouvé de plus +triomphante princesse; car elle était belle, bonne douce, et courtoise à +toutes gens.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_297" id="Footnote_1_297" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_297"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The whole question of Lucrezia's guilt has been ably +investigated by Gregorovius (<i>Lucrezia Borgia</i>, pp. 101, 159-64). +Charity suggests that the dreadful tradition of her relation to her +father and brothers is founded less upon fact than upon the scandals +current after her divorce. What Giovanni Sforza said was this: '<i>anzi +haverla conosciuta infinite volte, ma chel Papa non gelha tolta per +altro se non per usare con lei</i>.' This confession of the injured husband +went the round of all the Courts of Italy, was repeated by Malipiero and +Paolo Capello, formed the substance of the satires of Sannazaro and +Pontano, crept into the chronicle of Matarazzo, and survived in the +histories of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. There was nothing in his +words to astonish men who were cognizant of the acts of Gianpaolo +Baglioni and Sigismondo Malatesta; while the frantic passion of +Alexander for his children, closely allied as this feeling was in him to +excessive sensuality, gave them confirmation. Were they, however, true; +or were they a malevolent lie? That is the real point at issue. +Psychological speculation will help but little here. It is true that +Lucrezia in after-life showed all the signs of a clear conscience. But +so also did Alexander, whose buoyancy of spirits lasted till the very +day of his death. Yet he was stained with crimes foul enough to darken +the conscience of any man, at any period of life, and in any position.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_298" id="Footnote_2_298" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_298"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Burchard, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 77 and 78.</p></div> + +<p>Yet even at Ferrara tragedies which might remind her of the Vatican +continued to surround her path. Alfonso, rude in manners and devoted to +gun-foundry, interfered but little with the life she led among the wits +and scholars who surrounded her. One day, however, in 1508, the poet +Ercole Strozzi, who had sung her praises, was found dead, wrapped in his +mantle, and pierced with two-and-twenty wounds. No judicial inquiry into +this murder was made. Rumor credited both Alfonso and Lucrezia with the +deed—Alfonso, because he might be jealous of his wife—Lucrezia, +because her poet had recently married Barbara Torelli. Two years earlier +another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name of Borgia before the +public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both +Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of +Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to +mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the +loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the +Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and +Alfonso. His plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg424" +id="pg424">424</a></span> Este on the throne. The treason was discovered; the conspirators appeared before +Alfonso: he rushed upon Ferdinand, and with his dagger stabbed him in +the face. Both Giulio and Ferdinand were thrown into the dungeons of the +palace at Ferrara, where they languished for years, while the Duke and +Lucrezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and su ny loggie +among their courtiers. Ferdinand died in prison, aged sixty-three, in +1540. Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561. +These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia's married +life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries +of Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the +most part, in the record of the birth of children. Like her mother +Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity +and mercy. After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the +Renaissance saved their souls.</p> + +<p>But to return to the domestic history of Alexander. The murder of the +Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is +related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by +Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies. The Duke with his brother +Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their +mother Vannozza. On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a +lady of their acquaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never seen +again alive. When the news of his disappearance spread<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg425" +id="pg425">425</a></span> abroad, a +boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown +into the river on the night of the Duke's death, the 14th of June; he +had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen 'a +hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no +questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope had the Tiber dragged +for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true +successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of the +Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, one in the throat, the others +in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the +evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that +Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy +of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, +because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do +not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild +beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, +and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets +beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to +have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before +them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission +for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the +storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit from Vannozza, the +mother of his children,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg426" +id="pg426">426</a></span> wrought a sudden change from fury to +reconcilement. What passed between them is not known for certain; +Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was +indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of +the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of +Gandia. The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took +food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for +Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church.</p> + +<p>Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy to building up the +fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical +obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious +power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this +young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites. +At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own +hand, when the youth had taken refuge in Alexander's arms: the blood +spirted out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.<a name="FNanchor_1_299" id="FNanchor_1_299" /><a href="#Footnote_1_299" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +At another time he employed the same diabolical temper for the +delectation of his father. He turned out some prisoners sentenced to +death in a court-yard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic +clothes, and amused the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals. +They ran round and round the court crouching and doubling to avoid his +arrows. He showed his skill by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg427" +id="pg427">427</a></span> hitting each where he thought fit. The +Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of +bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, devised for the entertainment of +his father and his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, +can scarcely be transferred to these pages.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_299" id="Footnote_1_299" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_299"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The account is given by Capello, the Venetian envoy.</p></div> + +<p>The history of Cesare's attempt to found a principality belongs properly +to another chapter.<a name="FNanchor_1_300" id="FNanchor_1_300" /><a href="#Footnote_1_300" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But the assistance rendered by his father is +essential to the biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian +sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and Galeazzo +Maria Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the +imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a prince, +Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of France, promising to annul +his first marriage and to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if +he would undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe induced Louis +to create Cesare Duke of Valence and to confer on him the hand of +Charlotte of Navarre. He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled +Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander and his son in +their conquests was a simple one. They took the capitals and murdered +the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at Camerino in 1502, and +the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year: by his means the +Marcscotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, Rimini, and +Forli had been treated in like manner; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg428" +id="pg428">428</a></span> after the capture of Faenpza +in 1501, the two young Manfredi had been sent to Rome; where they were +exposed to the worst insults, drowned or strangled.<a name="FNanchor_2_301" id="FNanchor_2_301" /><a href="#Footnote_2_301" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> A system of equal +simplicity kept their policy alive in foreign Courts. The Bishop of +Cette in France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's (1498); +the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain the credit of the Borgias +with Louis XII.; the offer of a red hat to Briçonnet saved Alexander +from a general council in 1494. The historical interest of Alexander's +method consists of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his +power to one end—the elevation of his family. His spiritual authority, +the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an +assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and +openly to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by +foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for +his poisonous son, he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous +alliance with Ferdinand<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg429" +id="pg429">429</a></span> the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of +Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction. The two kings +quarreled over their prey: then Alexander fomented their discord in +order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his +operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his breast, whether the +patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate, +was as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by +fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal +policy.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_300" id="Footnote_1_300" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_300"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Chapter VI.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_301" id="Footnote_2_301" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_301"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 +by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death Guicciardini +writes: 'Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni e di forma eccellente +... condotto a Roma, saziata prima (secondo che si disse) la libidine di +qualcuno, fu occultamente insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato +della vita.' Nardi (<i>Storie Florentine</i>, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare +with the violation and murder of the boy. How far, we may ask, were +these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological superstition? +This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363) apropos of Sigismondo +Malatesta's assault upon his son, and Pier Luigi Farnese's violation of +the Bishop of Fano. To a temperament like Alexander's, however, mere +lust enhanced by cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an +enemy, was a sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime.</p></div> + +<p>It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings. +We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives. The two Borgias, +so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with +the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging +to their host. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they +previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the +contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent, +they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all +contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, +and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became +the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.<a +name="FNanchor_1_302" id="FNanchor_1_302" /><a href="#Footnote_1_302" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Yet Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in +his diary that both father and +son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg430" +id="pg430">430</a></span> wrote to his +masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to +apoplexy.<a name="FNanchor_2_303" id="FNanchor_2_303" /><a href="#Footnote_2_303" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever +had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written +probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly +mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, <i>ex hoc +seculo horrendâ febrium incensione absorptum</i>.<a name="FNanchor_3_304" id="FNanchor_3_304" /><a href="#Footnote_3_304" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Machiavelli, again, +who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career, +gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being +simultaneously prostrated by disease.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_302" id="Footnote_1_302" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_302"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The story is related by Cinthio in his <i>Ecatommithi</i>, +December 9, November 10.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_303" id="Footnote_2_303" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_303"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The various accounts of Alexander's death have been +epitomized by Gregorovius (<i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. vii.), and have been +discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani Dispatches, 2 +vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks the question still open. +Villari decides in favor of fever against poison.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_304" id="Footnote_3_304" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_304"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Reprinted by R. Garnett in <i>Athenæum</i>, Jan. 16, 1875.</p></div> + +<p>At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we +are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether +the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the +poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the +hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not, +however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the +Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice, +was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side, +we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and, +it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio +goes even so far as<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg431" +id="pg431">431</a></span> to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had +narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme +terror to counteract the possibility of poison.</p> + +<p>Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his sickness, Alexander +died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp +struggle with the venom he had absorbed.<a name="FNanchor_1_305" id="FNanchor_1_305" /><a href="#Footnote_1_305" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'All Rome,' says +Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men +could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent +who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every +demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of +avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had +filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick +bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he +recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in irretrievable +confusion. 'The state of the Duke of Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,<a name="FNanchor_2_306" id="FNanchor_2_306" /><a href="#Footnote_2_306" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +'vanished even as smoke in air, or foam upon the water.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_305" id="Footnote_1_305" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_305"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Morto chel fu, il corpo cominciò a bollire, e la bocca a +spumare come faria uno caldaro al focho, assì perseverò mentre che fu +sopra terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto che in lui non +apparea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza ala lunghezza del corpo +suo era differenzia alcuna' (letter of Marquis of Mantua).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_306" id="Footnote_2_306" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_306"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Commentari</i>, lib, v.</p></div> + +<p>The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself after Alexander's death +in the legend of a devil, who had carried off his soul. Burchard, +Giustiniani, Sanudo, and others mention this incident with apparent +belief.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg432" +id="pg432">432</a></span> But a letter from the Marquis of Mantua to his wife, dated +September 22, 1503, gives the fullest particulars: 'In his sickness the +Pope talked in such a way that those who did not know what was in his +mind thought him wandering, though he spoke with great feeling, and his +words were: <i>I will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while</i>. +Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained that, after the +death of Innocent, while the Conclave was sitting, he bargained with the +devil for the Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the agreements +was this, that he should hold the See twelve years, which he did, with +the addition of four days; and some attest they saw seven devils in the +room at the moment that he breathed his last.' Mere old wives' tales; +yet they mark the point to which the credit of the Borgia had fallen, +even in Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised his godlike +carriage and heroic mien upon the day of his election.</p> + +<p>Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains—the most +notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the +great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was +reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the +nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been +extirpated.<a name="FNanchor_1_307" id="FNanchor_1_307" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_307" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Alexander had proved the +old order of Catholicity<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg433" +id="pg433">433</a></span> to be untenable. The Reformation was +imperiously demanded. His very vices +spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the +new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia +to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the +souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the +spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they +illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation +between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that +Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of +the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus +and bastards.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_307" id="Footnote_1_307" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_307"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the +cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of the +Church.</p></div> + +<p>Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account +need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever +opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the +Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the +greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that +of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of +arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful +personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's +and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that +materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the +Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal +Rome, was his thought.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg434" +id="pg434">434</a></span> No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no +flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His +one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the +Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, +who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the +Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the +heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted +to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But +restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the +peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to +time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, +however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San +Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he +who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the +Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the +Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. Julius, +again, has been variously represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and +as the curse of Italy.<a name="FNanchor_1_308" id="FNanchor_1_308" /><a href="#Footnote_1_308" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He was emphatically both. In those days of +national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify the +Church except at the expense of the nation, and to achieve the purpose +of his life without<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg435" +id="pg435">435</a></span> inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his +countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline. +Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of Louis, +Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of Italy, +a Pope could only play off one against another.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_308" id="Footnote_1_308" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_308"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'Fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali +d'Italia,' says Guicciardini, <i>Storia d'Italia</i>, vol. i. p. 84. 'Der +Retter des Papstthums,' says Burckhardt, p. 95.</p></div> + +<p>Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, +wearied with the continual warfare of the old <i>Pontifice terribile</i>. In +the gorgeous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the +streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these +may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi +before his palace:<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on +her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco +answered with one pithy line:<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero:</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.'</p> + +<p>This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his +father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in +his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of +Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the +neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg436" +id="pg436">436</a></span> with the spirit of his +period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of +moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding +and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true +doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the +immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time +he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his +zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in +the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable +incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and +his easy epicurean philosophy.</p> + +<p>Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier. +His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the +corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the +praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy, +left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of +Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in +1521. During the heyday of his splendor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly on +presents to his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which was +open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, cost +half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded the knightly +Order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the conspiracy +of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg437" +id="pg437">437</a></span> such good +account—extorting from the Cardinal Riario a fine of 5,000 ducats, and +from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000—that Von +Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that dark business +as a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals +in 1517 brought him in above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these +expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined when +he died. The Bini had lent him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the +Ricasoli, 10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; the +Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 150,000.<a name="FNanchor_1_309" id="FNanchor_1_309" /><a href="#Footnote_1_309" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> These figures +are only interesting when we remember that the mountains of gold which +they denote were squandered in æsthetic sensuality.</p> + +<p>When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano (Duke of Nemours): 'Let us +enjoy the Papacy since God has given it us—<i>godiamoci il Papato, poichè +Dio ce l' ha dato.</i><a name="FNanchor_2_310" id="FNanchor_2_310" /><a href="#Footnote_2_310" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>' It was in this spirit that Leo administered the +Holy See. The keynote which he struck dominated the whole society of +Rome. At Agostine Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apostolic +secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Imperias and smooth-cheeked +singing-boys; fishes from Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were +served on golden platters, which the guests threw from the open windows +into the Tiber. Masques and balls, comedies<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg438" +id="pg438">438</a></span> and carnival processions +filled the streets and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a +mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in hand with luxury. It +seemed as though Bacchus and Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in +their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. +The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of +pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations +of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, +amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, +and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with +wide, astonished, woeful eyes—disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in +a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth +and smite.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_309" id="Footnote_1_309" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_309"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Gregorovius, <i>Stadt Rom</i>, book xiv. ch. 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_310" id="Footnote_2_310" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_310"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi, series ii. +vol. iii. p. 51.</p></div> + +<p>A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with +Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establishing +the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the +previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was +at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother +Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the +latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice +of its rightful owners.<a name="FNanchor_1_311" id="FNanchor_1_311" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_311" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> With Florence in their +hands and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg439" +id="pg439">439</a></span> the Papacy under their control, the Medici might have swayed +all Italy. Such plans, + +however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become +impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake +more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in +temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He +lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him +imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in +war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at +Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he +would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and +comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets, +artists and historians who added luster to his Court; but he brought no +new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, +both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, +bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic +temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half +burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, +dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber +of a sensualist.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_311" id="Footnote_1_311" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_311"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an +honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere family. See +the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (<i>Rel. Ven.</i> ser. ii. vol. iii. p. +51).</p></div> + +<p>It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the +sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus +aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation. +In<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg440" +id="pg440">440</a></span> that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work +of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of +the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious +of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of +the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of +reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome +and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole +attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did.</p> + +<p>The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To +choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was +impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I. +After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of +their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the +Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy, +due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the +electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen +this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the +Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake +to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and +chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed +and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg441" +id="pg441">441</a></span> +the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing +the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's +fury.'<a name="FNanchor_1_312" id="FNanchor_1_312" /><a href="#Footnote_1_312" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.<a name="FNanchor_2_313" id="FNanchor_2_313" /><a href="#Footnote_2_313" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> He knew +no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent unfamiliar to southern ears. +His studies had been confined to scholastic philosophy and theology. +With courts he had no commerce; and he was so ignorant of the state a +Pope should keep in Rome, that he wrote beforehand requesting that a +modest house and garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw the +Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of +Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for the service of +his stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish valets sufficed for +his personal attendance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for +the expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving woman cooked +his food, made his bed and washed his linen. Rome, with its splendid +immorality, its classic art and pagan culture, made the same impression +on him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers pointed to the Laocoon +as the most illustrious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away +with horror, murmuring: 'Idols of the Pagans!' The Belvedere,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg442" +id="pg442">442</a></span> which was +fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he walled up and never +entered. At the same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far as +his tied hands and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent +abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three million ducats by the +sale of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 ducats to the +purchasers, and provided places for 2,550 persons. By a stroke of his +pen Adrian canceled these contracts and threw upon the world a crowd of +angry and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to remind them +that their bargain with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts, +however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual +as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which demands blood-letting. The +real corruption of Rome, deeply seated in high places, remained +untouched. Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the North, and +accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful catastrophe for the +guilty city. 'This state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; God grant +we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the ends of the ocean. +I see the downfall of this spiritual monarchy at hand. Unless God help, +it is all over with us.'<a name="FNanchor_3_314" id="FNanchor_3_314" /><a href="#Footnote_3_314" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Adrian met the emergency, and took up arms +against the sea of troubles by expressing his horror of simony, +sensuality, thievery and so forth. The result was that he was simply +laughed at. Pasquin<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg443" +id="pg443">443</a></span> made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he +would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa +wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on +croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the +dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's +door was ornamented with this inscription: <i>Liberatori patriæ Senatus +Populusque Romanus</i>.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_312" id="Footnote_1_312" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_312"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Greg. <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details +about Adriano are chiefly taken from the <i>Relazioni</i> of the Venetian +embassadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_313" id="Footnote_2_313" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_313"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, of the Flemish family, +it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a carpet-maker. Other accounts +represent him as a ship's carpenter. The Pope's baptismal name was +Adrian.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_314" id="Footnote_3_314" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_314"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See the passage quoted from the <i>Lettere de Principi</i>, Rome, March +17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note.</p></div> + +<p>Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was made Pope in 1523. +People hoped that the merry days of Leo would return. But things had +gone too far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give +satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin had delighted: +even the scholars and the poets grumbled.<a name="FNanchor_1_315" +id="FNanchor_1_315" /><a href="#Footnote_1_315" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +His rule was weak and vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised +its head again and drove him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political +horizon of Italy grew darker and more sullen daily, as before some +dreadful storm. Over Rome itself impended ruin—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">as when God</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the sick air.<a name="FNanchor_2_316" id="FNanchor_2_316" /><a href="#Footnote_2_316" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>At last the crash came. Clement by a series of treaties, treacheries, +and tergiversations had deprived himself of every friend and exasperated +every foe. Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg444" +id="pg444">444</a></span> the +anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of +stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop, +levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with +Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her +apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg—a horde of robbers held +together by the hope of plunder—marched without difficulty to the gates +of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of +Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force +withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apennines to these +marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, +who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. Then Rome for nine +months was abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000 +brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of +insult, violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the +avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the +Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated +palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the +groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and +the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from +its windows he exclaimed with Job:<a name="FNanchor_3_317" id="FNanchor_3_317" /><a href="#Footnote_3_317" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> '<i>Quare de vulvâ eduxisti me? qui +utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret</i>.'<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg445" +id="pg445">445</a></span> What the Romans, +emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates, +lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long +agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the +barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold, +and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow. +From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never +became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the +glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on +her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded +between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name +this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together +with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy +to the respect of Europe.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_315" id="Footnote_1_315" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_315"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni +very powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of Clement's +state-policy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_316" id="Footnote_2_316" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_316"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, <i>St. Fior.</i> ii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_317" id="Footnote_3_317" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_317"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome relates.</p></div> + +<p>It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of +putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to +restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again +the seat of Empire.<a name="FNanchor_1_318" id="FNanchor_1_318" /><a href="#Footnote_1_318" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But to have done this would have been impossible +under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face +of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome +the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the +determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial +authority<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg446" +id="pg446">446</a></span> in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the +contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he +used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of +his mother-city.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_318" id="Footnote_1_318" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_318"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the authorities in Greg. <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. viii. pp. +569, 575.</p></div> + +<p>Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity +of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year +to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the +wrath of God, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of +manners and laws.<a name="FNanchor_1_319" id="FNanchor_1_319" /><a href="#Footnote_1_319" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from +returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood +was not a mere mockery and sham.<a name="FNanchor_2_320" id="FNanchor_2_320" /><a href="#Footnote_2_320" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In truth the Counter-Reformation may +be said to date historically from 1527.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_319" id="Footnote_1_319" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_319"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of +Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless city. +Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the Bishop of +Fossombrone, one of whose letters gives a really awful picture of Roman +profligacy (<i>Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni</i>, Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we +find abundant testimony to this persuasion regarding the intolerible +vice of Rome, even in men devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (<i>La +Cortegiana</i>, end of Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il +castigo, che l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta +migliore, et è più scellerata che mai.' Bandello (<i>Novelle</i>, Parte ii. +xxxvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a parenthesis, 'benche i +peccati di quella città meritassero esser castigati.' After adducing two +such witnesses, it would weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, +both of whom expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of +Papal Rome.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_320" id="Footnote_2_320" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_320"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Compare <i>Lettere de' Princ.</i> ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus, and other +testimonies quoted by Greg. <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. viii. pp. 568, 578.</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg447" +id="pg447">447</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" />CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<h3>THE CHURCH AND MORALITY.</h3> + + +<p>Corruption of the Church—Degradation and Division of Italy—Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples—Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation—The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance—Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents—Superstitious Respect for Relics—Separation between +Religion and Morality—Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes—Gianpaolo Baglioni—Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides—Pietro Paolo Boscoli—Tenacity of Religions—The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome—Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church—Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality—Bad +Faith and Sensuality—The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice—The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature—Domestic +Murders—Sense of Honor in Italy—Onore and Onesta—General +Refinement—Good Qualities of the People—Religious Revivalism.</p> + +<p>The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral +weakness throughout Italy. This makes the history of the Popes of the +Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the +subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and religion suffered an +almost complete separation in the fifteenth century. The chiefs of the +Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and +the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the +justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness +to the whole nation.</p> + +<p>The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and +their actual worldliness was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg448" +id="pg448">448</a></span> so glaring to the men of the +Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, +as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian +in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours. Æsthetic +propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even +of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity +the worst sinners believed they might make peace in time of need with +heaven. Yet there were not wanting profound thinkers who traced the +national decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church. Among +these Machiavelli stands foremost. In a celebrated passage of the +<i>Discorsi</i>,<a name="FNanchor_1_321" id="FNanchor_1_321" /><a href="#Footnote_1_321" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> after treating the whole subject of the connection +between good government and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery +criticism of the Papacy: 'Had the religion of Christianity been +preserved according to the ordinances of its founder, the states and +commonwealths of Christendom would have been far more united and far +happier than they are. Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of +its decay than by observing that, in proportion as we approach nearer to +the Roman Church, the head of this religion, we find less piety prevail +among the nations. Considering the primitive constitution of that +Church, and noting how diverse are its present customs, we are forced to +judge that without doubt either ruin or a scourge is now impending over +it. And since some men are of opinion that the welfare of Italy depends +upon the Church, I wish to put forth such arguments as<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg449" +id="pg449">449</a></span> occur to my mind +to the contrary; and of these I will adduce two, which, as I think, are +irrefutable. The first is this: that owing to the evil ensample of the +Papal Court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow +infinite troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so +its absence implies the contrary. Consequently, to the Church and +priests of Rome we Italians owe this obligation first—that we have +become void of religion and corrupt. But we also owe them another, even +greater, which is the cause of our ruin. I mean that the Church has +maintained and still maintains Italy divided. Of a truth no province +ever was united and prosperous, unless it were reduced beneath the sway +of one republic or one monarch, as is the case with France and Spain. +And the reason why Italy is not in this condition, but has neither +commonwealth nor monarch for her head, is none other than the Church: +for the Church, established in our midst and exercising a temporal +authority, has never had the force or vigor to extend its sway over the +whole country and to become the ruling power in Italy. Nor on the other +hand has it been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of losing its +temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as a counterpoise in its +defense against those powers which threatened to become supreme. Of the +truth of this, past history furnishes many instances; as when, by the +help of Charlemagne, the Popes expelled the Lombards; and when in our +own days they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and afterwards drove<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg450" +id="pg450">450</a></span> +out the French by calling in the Swiss. So then the Church, being on the +one hand too weak to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too +jealous to allow another power to do so, has prevented our union beneath +one head, and has kept us under scattered lords and princes. These have +caused so much discord and debility that Italy has become the prey not +only of powerful barbarians, but also of every assailant. And this we +owe solely and entirely to the Church. In order to learn by experience +the truth of what I say, one ought to be able to send the Roman Court, +armed with like authority to that it wields in Italy, to take up its +abode among the Swiss, who at the present moment are the only nation +living, as regards religion and military discipline, according to the +antique fashion; he would then see that the evil habits of that Court +would in no long space of time create more disorders than any other +misfortune that could arise there in any period whatever.' In this +scientific and deliberate opinion pronounced by the profoundest thinker +of the sixteenth century, the Papacy is accused of having caused both +the moral depravation and the political disunion of Italy. The second of +these points, which belongs to the general history of the Italian +nation, might be illustrated abundantly: but one other sentence from the +pen of Machiavelli exposes the ruinous and selfish policy of the Church +more forcibly than could be done by copious examples:<a name="FNanchor_2_322" id="FNanchor_2_322" /><a href="#Footnote_2_322" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 'In this way +the Pontiffs at one time by<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg451" +id="pg451">451</a></span> love of their religion, at other times for +the furtherance of their ambitious schemes, have never ceased to sow the +seeds of disturbance and to call foreigners into Italy, spreading wars, +making and unmaking princes, and preventing stronger potentates from +holding the province they were too feeble to rule.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_321" id="Footnote_1_321" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_321"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Lib. i. cap. 12.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_322" id="Footnote_2_322" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_322"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. i.</p></div> + +<p>Guicciardini, commenting upon the <i>Discorsi</i> of Machiavelli, begins his +gloss upon the passage I have just translated, with these emphatic +words:<a name="FNanchor_1_323" id="FNanchor_1_323" /><a href="#Footnote_1_323" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman Court but +that more abuse would not be merited, seeing it is an infamy, an example +of all the shames and scandals of the world.' He then proceeds to argue, +like Machiavelli, that the greatness of the Church prevented Italy from +becoming a nation under one head, showing, however, at the same time +that the Italians had derived much benefit from their division into +separate states.<a name="FNanchor_2_324" id="FNanchor_2_324" /><a href="#Footnote_2_324" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> To the concurrent testimony of these great +philosophic writers may be added the evidence of a practical statesman, +Ferdinand, king<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg452" +id="pg452">452</a></span> of Naples, who in 1493 wrote as follows:<a name="FNanchor_3_325" id="FNanchor_3_325" /><a href="#Footnote_3_325" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'From year +to year up to this time we have seen the Popes seeking to hurt and +hurting their neighbors, without having to act on the defensive or +receiving any injury. Of this we are ourselves the witness, by reason of +things they have done and attempted against us through their inborn +ambition; and of the many misfortunes which have happened of late in +Italy it is clear that the Popes are authors.' It is not so much however +with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at +present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be +confronted with his illustrious contemporary. In his aphorisms he +says:<a name="FNanchor_4_326" id="FNanchor_4_326" /><a href="#Footnote_4_326" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the +priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most +unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on +the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be +combined except in a very extraordinary subject. My position under +several Popes has compelled me to desire their aggrandizement for the +sake of my own profit.<a name="FNanchor_5_327" id="FNanchor_5_327" /><a href="#Footnote_5_327" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Otherwise, I should have loved Martin Luther +like myself—not that I might break loose from the laws which +Christianity, as it is usually interpreted and comprehended, imposes on +us, but that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg453" +id="pg453">453</a></span> I might see that horde of villains reduced within due +limits, and forced to live either without vices or without power.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_323" id="Footnote_1_323" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_323"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Guicc. <i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 27.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_324" id="Footnote_2_324" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_324"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> In another place (<i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini describes +the rule of priests as founded on violence of two sorts; 'perchè ci +sforzano con le armi temporali e con le spirituali.' It may be well to +collect the chief passages in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides +those already quoted, which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian +politics. The most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the +<i>Istoria d' Italia</i> (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be +placed the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's <i>Istorie Fiorentine</i> +(lib. i. cap. 9-25). The eleventh chapter of the <i>Principe</i> gives a +short sketch of the growth of the temporal power, so framed as to be +acceptable to the Medici, but steeped in the most acid irony. See, in +particular, the sentence 'Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, +hanno sudditi e non li governano,' etc.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_325" id="Footnote_3_325" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_325"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. vii. p. 7, +note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_326" id="Footnote_4_326" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_326"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Op. Ined. Ricordi</i> No. 28. Compare Ariosto, Satire i. 208-27.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_327" id="Footnote_5_327" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_327"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the Medicean +Popes. See back, p. 206.</p></div> + +<p>These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed +from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like +Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of +Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion. In +one passage of the <i>Discorsi</i> he even pronounces his opinion that the +Christian faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had enfeebled +national spirit.<a name="FNanchor_1_328" id="FNanchor_1_328" /><a href="#Footnote_1_328" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Privately, moreover, he was himself stained with the +moral corruption which he publicly condemned. Guicciardini, again, in +the passage before us, openly avows his egotism. Keen-sighted as they +were in theory, these politicians suffered in their own lives from that +gangrene which had penetrated the upper classes of Italy to the marrow. +Their patriotism and their desire for righteousness were not strong +enough to make them relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived +from the existing state of things. Nor had they the energy or the +opportunity to institute a thorough revolution. Italy, as Machiavelli +pointed out in another passage of the <i>Discorsi</i>, had become too +prematurely decrepit for reinvigorating changes;<a name="FNanchor_2_329" id="FNanchor_2_329" /><a href="#Footnote_2_329" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and the splendid +appeal with which the <i>Principe</i> is closed must<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg454" +id="pg454">454</a></span> even to its author have +sounded like a flourish of rhetorical trumpets.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_328" id="Footnote_1_328" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_328"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Discorsi</i>, ii. 2, iii. 1. These chapters breathe the +bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised hatred for its +historical development, the intensest rancor against Catholic +ecclesiastics.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_329" id="Footnote_2_329" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_329"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Discorsi</i>, i. 55.</p></div> + +<p>Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to rise above the +conception of a merely formal reformation, or to reach that higher +principle of life which consists in the enunciation of a new religious +truth. The whole argument in the <i>Discorsi</i> which precedes the chapter I +have quoted, treats religion not in its essence as pure Christianity, +but as a state engine for the maintenance of public order and national +well-being.<a name="FNanchor_1_330" id="FNanchor_1_330" /><a href="#Footnote_1_330" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> That Milton and Cromwell may have so regarded religion is +true: but they had, besides, a personal sense of the necessity of +righteousness, the fear of God, at the root of their political +convictions. While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished to deprive the +Popes of temporal sovereignty, in order that the worst scandals of their +Court might be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be secured, +Savonarola desired to purge the Church of sin, but to retain its +hierarchy and its dogmas inviolate. Neither the politicians nor the +prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw +clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for +the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government +presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg455" +id="pg455">455</a></span> +engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.<a name="FNanchor_2_331" id="FNanchor_2_331" /><a href="#Footnote_2_331" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_330" id="Footnote_1_330" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_330"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Mach. <i>Disc.</i> i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as +he believed, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts that, +however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness of religions, +it is their duty to maintain them: 'e debbono ... come che le +giudicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_331" id="Footnote_2_331" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_331"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Yet read the curious passage (<i>Disc</i>. iii. 1) in which Machiavelli +discusses the regeneration of religion by a return to its vital +principle, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic had done this in the +thirteenth century. It was precisely what Luther was designing while +Machiavelli was writing.</p></div> + +<p>The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect proceeded from an +intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the +stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of +secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by +the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence +of tyrannies. However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term +<i>paterino</i>, originally applied to religious innovators, had become +synonymous in common phraseology with rogue. It was a point of good +society and refined taste to support the Church. Again, the mental +faculties of Italy had for three centuries been taxed to the utmost in +studies wide apart from the field of religious faith. Art, scholarship, +philosophy, and meditation upon politics had given a definite direction +to the minds of thinking men, so that little energy was left for those +instinctive movements of the spirit which produced the German +Reformation. The great work of Italy had been the genesis of the +Renaissance, the development of modern culture. And the tendencies of +the Renaissance were worldly: its ideal of human life left no room for a +pure, and ardent intuition into spiritual<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg456" +id="pg456">456</a></span> truth. Scholars occupied with +the interpretation of classic authors, artists bent upon investing +current notions with the form of beauty, could hardly be expected to +exclaim: 'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, +that is understanding.'<a name="FNanchor_1_332" id="FNanchor_1_332" /><a href="#Footnote_1_332" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Materialism ruled the speculations no less +than the conduct of the age. Pamponazzo preached an atheistic doctrine, +with the plausible reservation of <i>Salva Fide</i>, which then covered all. +The more delicate thinkers, Pico and Ficino, sought to reconcile +irreconcilables by fusing philosophy and theology, while they +distinguished truths of science from truths of revelation. It seems +meanwhile to have occurred to no one in Italy that the liberation of the +reason necessitated an abrupt departure from Catholicism. They did not +perceive that a power antagonistic to mediaeval orthodoxy had been +generated. This was in great measure due to indifference; for the Church +herself had taught her children by example to regard her dogmas and her +discipline as a convenient convention.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg457" +id="pg457">457</a></span> It required all the scourges of +the Inquisition to flog the nation back, not to lively faith, but to +hypocrisy. Furthermore, the political conditions of Italy were highly +unfavorable to a profound religious revolution. The thirst for national +liberty which inspired England in the sixteenth century, impelling the +despotic Tudors to cast off the yoke of Rome, arming Howard the Catholic +against the holy fleet of Philip, and joining prince and people in one +aspiration after freedom, was impossible in Italy. The tone of +Machiavelli's <i>Principe</i>, the whole tenor of Castiglione's <i>Cortigiano</i>, +prove this without the need of further demonstration.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_332" id="Footnote_1_332" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_332"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical +culture was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is very +remarkable to note the feeling on this point of some of the greatest +northern scholars. Erasmus, for example, writes: 'unus adhuc scrupulus +habet animum meum, ne sub obtentu priscæ literaturæ renascentis caput +erigere conetur Paganismus, ut sunt inter Christianos qui titulo pæne +duntaxat Christum agnoscunt, ceterum intus Gentilitatem spirant'—Letter +207 (quoted by Milman in his Quarterly article on Erasmus). Ascham and +Melanchthon passed similar judgments upon the Italian scholars. The +nations of the north had the Italians at a disadvantage, for they +entered into their labors, and all the dangerous work of sympathy with +the ancient world, upon which modern scholarship was based, had been +done in Italy before Germany and England came into the field.</p></div> + +<p>Few things are more difficult than to estimate the exact condition of +a people at any given period with regard to morality and religion. And +this difficulty is increased tenfold when the age presents such rapid +transitions and such bewildering complexities as mark the Renaissance. +Yet we cannot omit to notice the attitude of the Italians at large in +relation to the Church, and to determine in some degree the character of +their national morality. Against the corruption of Rome one cry of +hatred and contempt arises from a crowd of witnesses. Dante's fiery +denunciations, Jacopone's threats, the fierce invectives of Petrarch, +and the thundering prophecies of Joachim lead the chorus. Boccaccio +follows with his scathing irony. 'Send the most obstinate Jew to Rome,' +he says, 'and the profligacy of the Papal Court will not fail to convert +him<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg458" id="pg458">458</a></span> to +the faith that can resist such obloquy.'<a name="FNanchor_1_333" +id="FNanchor_1_333" /><a href="#Footnote_1_333" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Another glaring scandal was the condition of the convents. All novelists +combine in painting the depravity of the religious houses as a patent +fact in social life. Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Bandello, and Masuccio may be +mentioned in particular for their familiar delineation of a profligacy +which was interwoven with the national existence.<a +name="FNanchor_2_334" id="FNanchor_2_334" /><a href="#Footnote_2_334" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The comic poets take the same course, and +delight in ridiculing the gross manners of the clergy. Nor do the +ecclesiasties spare<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg459" +id="pg459">459</a></span> themselves. Poggio, the author of the +<i>Facetiæ</i>, held benefices and places at the Papal Court. Bandello +was a Dominican and nephew of the General of his order. Folengo was a +Benedictine. Bibbiena became a cardinal. Berni received a Canonry in the +Cathedral of Florence. Such was the open and acknowledged immorality of +the priests in Rome that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding +them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as panders.<a +name="FNanchor_3_335" id="FNanchor_3_335" /><a href="#Footnote_3_335" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Among the aphorisms of Pius II. is recorded the +saying that if there were good reasons for enjoining celibacy on the +clergy, there were far better and stronger arguments for insisting on +their marriage.<a name="FNanchor_4_336" id="FNanchor_4_336" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_336" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_333" id="Footnote_1_333" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_333"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We may compare this Umbrian Rispetto for the opposite view. +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A Roma Santa ce so gito anch'io,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E ho visto co'miei occhi il fatto mio:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E quando a Roma ce s'e posto il piede,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Resta la rabbia e se ne va la fede.</span><br /> + +</p></div> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_334" id="Footnote_2_334" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_334"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> It may not be out of place to collect some passages from +Masuccio's Novelle on the Clergy, premising that what he writes with the +fierceness of indignation is repeated with the cynicism of indulgence by +contemporary novelists. Speaking of the Popes, he says (ed, Napoli, +Morano, 1874): 'me tacerò non solo de loro scelesti ed enormissimi vizi +e pubblici e occulti adoperati, e de li officii, de beneficil, +prelature, i vermigli cappelli, che all' incanto per loro morte vendono, +ma del camauro del principe San Pietro che ne è gia stato latto partuito +baratto non farò alcuna mentione.' Descending to prelates, he uses +similar language (p. 64): 'non possa mai pervenire ad alcun grado di +prelatura se non col favore del maestro della zecca, e quelle +conviensela comprare all' incanto come si fa dei cavalli in fiera.' A +priest is (p. 31) 'il venerabile lupo.' The members of religious orders +are (p. 534) 'ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo: (p. +25) 'piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta buoni, +che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza bruttissima +macchia.' It is perilous to hold any communication with them (p. 39): +'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala sorte +conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against nature (p. 65), the secret +marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), the 'fetide cioache oi monache,' +choked with the fruits of infanticide (p. 81), not to mention their +avarice (p. 55) and gross impiety (p. 52), are described with a naked +sincerity that bears upon its face the stamp of truth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_335" id="Footnote_3_335" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_335"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> A famous passage from Agrippa (De Vanitate Scientiarum) deserves a +place here. After alluding to Sixtus IV, he says that many state +officers 'in civitatibus suis lupanaria construunt foventque, non nihil +ex meretricio questu etiam ærario suo accumulantes emolumenti; quod +quidem in Italiâ non rarum est, ubi etiam Romana scorta in singulas +hebdomadas Julium pendent Pontifici, qui census annuus nonnunquam +viginti millia ducatos excedit, adeoque Ecclesiæ procerum id munus est, +ut una cum Ecclesiarum proventibus etiam lenociniorum numerent mercedem. +Sic enim ego illos supputantes aliquando audivi: Habet, inquientes, ille +duo beneficia, unum curaturn aureorum viginti, alterum prioratum +ducatorum quadraginta, el tres putanas in burdello, quæ reddunt singulis +hebdomadibus Julios Viginti.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_336" id="Footnote_4_336" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_336"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Very few ecclesiastics of high rank escaped the contagion of Roman +society. It was fashionable for men like Bembo and La Casa to form +connections with women of the <i>demi-monde</i> and to recognize their +children, whose legitimation they frequently procured. The Capitoli of +the burlesque poets show that this laxity of conduct was pardonable, +when compared with other laughingly avowed and all but universal +indulgences. Once more, compare Guidiccioni's letter to M. Giamb. +Bernardi Opp. vol. i. p. 102.</p></div> + +<p>Some of the contempt and hatred expressed by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg460" +id="pg460">460</a></span> Italian satirists for +the two great orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic may perhaps be due to +an ancient grudge against them as a Papal police founded in the +interests of orthodoxy. But the chief point aimed at is the mixture of +hypocrisy with immorality, which rendered them odious to all classes of +society. At the same time the Franciscans embraced among their lay +brethren nearly all the population of Italy, and to die in the habit of +the order was thought the safest way of cheating the devil of his due. +Corruption had gone so far and deep that it was universally recognized +and treated with the sarcasm of levity. It roused no sincere reaction, +and stimulated no persistent indignation. Every one acknowledged it; yet +every one continued to live indolently according to the fashion of his +forefathers, acting up to Ovid's maxim—<br /> +<br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Pro magna parte vetustas</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Creditur; acceptam parce movere fidem.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is only this incurable indifference that renders Machiavelli's comic +portraits of Fra Alberigo and Fra Timoteo at all intelligible. They are +neither satires nor caricatures, but simple pictures drawn for the +amusement of contemporaries and the stupefaction of posterity.</p> + +<p>The criticism of the Italian writers, so far as we have yet followed it, +was directed against two separate evils—the vicious worldliness of +Rome, and the demoralization of the clergy both in their dealings with +the people and in their conventual life. Contempt for false miracles and +spurious reliques, and the horror<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg461" +id="pg461">461</a></span> of the traffic in indulgences, +swelled the storm of discontent among the more enlightened. But the +people continued to make saints, to adore wonder-working shrines, and to +profit by the spiritual advantages which could be bought. Pius II., +mindful of the honor of his native city, canonized S. Bernardine and S. +Catherine of Siena. Innocent VIII consecrated a chapel for the Lance of +Longinus, which he had received from the Turk as part-payment for the +guardianship of Djem. The Venetian Senate offered 10,000 ducats for the +seamless coat of Christ (1455). The whole of Italy was agitated by the +news that S. Andrew's head had arrived from Patras (1462). The Pope and +his Cardinals went forth to meet it near the Milvian bridge. There Pius +II. pronounced a Latin speech of welcome, while Bessarion delivered an +oration when the precious member was deposited in S. Peter's. In this +passion for reliques two different sentiments seem to have been +combined—the merely superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms, +which caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark so jealously, +and the Neapolitans to watch the liqifaction of the blood of S. +Januarius with a frenzy of excitement—and that nobler respect for the +persons of the mighty dead which induced Sigismondo Malatesta to +transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to Rimini, and which rendered the +supposed coffin of Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to +Mussulman and Christian alike. The bones of Virgil, it will be +remembered, had been built into the walls of Naples,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg462" +id="pg462">462</a></span> while those of Livy +were honored with splendid sepulture at Padua.</p> + +<p>Owing to the separation between religion and morality which existed in +Italy under the influence of Papal and monastic profligacy, the Italians +saw no reason why spiritual benefits should not be purchased from a +notoriously rapacious Pontiff, or why the penalty of hell should not +depend upon the mere word of a consecrated monster. The Pope as +successor of S. Peter, and the Pope as Roman sovereign, were two +separate beings. Many curious indications of the mixed feeling of the +people upon this point, and of the advantage which the Pope derived from +his anomalous position, may be gathered from the historians of the +period. Machiavelli, in his narrative of the massacre at Sinigaglia, +relates that Vitellozzo Vitelli, while being strangled by Cesare +Borgia's assassin, begged hard that the father of his murderer, the +horrible Alexander, might be entreated to pronounce his absolution. The +same Alexander was nearly suffocated in the Vatican by the French +soldiers who crowded round to kiss his mantle, and who had made him +tremble for his life a few days previously. Cellini on his knees +implored Pope Clement to absolve him from the guilt of homicide and +theft, yet spoke of him as 'transformed to a savage beast' by a sudden +access of fury. At one time he trembled before the awful Majesty of +Christ's Vicar, revealed in Paul III.; at another he reviled him as a +man 'who neither believed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg463" +id="pg463">463</a></span> God nor in any other article of religion. +A mysterious sanctity environed the person of the Pontiff. When +Gianpaolo Baglioni held Julius II. in his power in Perugia, he respected +the Pope's freedom, though he knew that Julius would overthrow his +tyranny. Machiavelli condemns this as cowardice, but it was wholly +consistent with the sentiment of the age. 'It cannot have been goodness +or conscience which restrained him,' writes the philosopher of Florence, +'for the heart of a man who cohabited with his sister, and had massacred +his cousins and his nephews, could not have harbored any piety. We must +conclude that men know not how to be either guilty in a noble manner, or +entirely good. Although crime may have a certain grandeur of its own, or +at least a mixture of more generous motives, they do not attain to this. +Gianpaolo, careless though he was about incest and parricide, could not, +or dared not, on a just occasion, achieve an exploit for which the whole +world would have admired his spirit, and by which he would have won +immortal glory: for he would have been the first to show how little +prelates, living and ruling as they do, deserve to be esteemed, and +would have done a deed superior in its greatness to all the infamy, to +all the peril, that it might have brought with it.'<a name="FNanchor_1_337" id="FNanchor_1_337" /><a href="#Footnote_1_337" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is difficult +to know which to admire most,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg464" +id="pg464">464</a></span> the superstition of Gianpaolo, or the +cynicism of the commentary, the spurious piety which made the tyrant +miss his opportunity, or the false standard of moral sublimity by which +the half-ironical critic measures his mistake. In combination they +produce a lively impression of the truth of what I have attempted to +establish—that in Italy at this period religion survived as +superstition even among the most depraved, and that the crimes of the +Church had produced a schism between this superstition and morality.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_337" id="Footnote_1_337" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_337"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Discorsi</i>, i. 27. This episode in Gianpaolo Baglioni's +life may be illustrated by the curious story told about Gabrino Fondulo, +the tyrant of Cremona. The Emperor Sigismund and Pope John XXIII. were +his guests together in the year 1414. Part of their entertainment +consisted in visiting the sights of Cremona with their host, who took +them up the great Tower (396 feet high) without any escort. They all +three returned safely, but when Gabrino was executed at Milan in 1425, +he remarked that he only regretted one thing in the course of his +life—namely, that he had not pitched Pope and Emperor together from the +Torazzo. What a golden opportunity to have let slip! The story is told +by Antonio Campo, <i>Historia di Cremona</i> (Milan, 1645), p. 114.</p></div> + +<p>While the Church was thus gradually deviating more and more directly +from the Christian ideal, and was exhibiting to Italy an ensample of +worldliness and evil living, the Italians, earlier than any other +European nation, had become imbued with the spirit of the ancient world. +Instead of the Gospel and the Lives of the Saints, men studied Plutarch +and Livy with avidity. The tyrannicides of Greece and the suicides of +the Roman Empire, patriots like Harmodius and Brutus, philosophers like +Seneca and Pætus Thrasea, seemed to the humanists of the fifteenth +century more admirable than the martyrs and confessors of the faith. +Pagan virtues were strangely mingled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg465" +id="pg465">465</a></span> confused and ill-assimilated +precepts of the Christian Church, while pagan vices wore a halo borrowed +from the luster of the newly found and passionately welcomed poets of +antiquity. Blending the visionary intuitions of the Middle Ages with the +positive and mundane ethics of the ancients, the Italians of the +Renaissance strove to adopt the sentiments and customs of an age long +dead and not to be resuscitated. At the same time the rhetorical taste +of the nation inclined the more adventurous and passionate natures to +seek glory by dramatic exhibitions of personal heroism. The Greek ideal +of [Greek: <i>to êalon</i>], the Roman conception of <i>Virtus</i>, agitated the +imagination of a people who had been powerfully influenced by professors +of eloquence, by public orators, by men of letters, masters in the arts +of style and of parade. Painting and sculpture, and that magnificence of +public life which characterized the fifteenth century, contributed to +the substitution of æsthetic for moral or religious standards. Actions +were estimated by the effect which they produced; and to sin against the +laws of culture was of more moment than to transgress the code of +Christianity. Still, the men of the Renaissance could not forget the +creed which they had drawn in with their mothers' milk, but which the +Church had not adjusted to the new conditions of the growing age. The +result was a wild phantasmagoric chaos of confused and clashing +influences.</p> + +<p>Of this peculiar moral condition the records of the numerous<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg466" +id="pg466">466</a></span> +tyrannicides supply many interesting examples.<a name="FNanchor_1_338" id="FNanchor_1_338" /><a href="#Footnote_1_338" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Girolamo Olgiati +offered prayers to S. Ambrose for protection before he stabbed the Duke +of Milan in S. Stephen's Church.<a name="FNanchor_2_339" id="FNanchor_2_339" /><a href="#Footnote_2_339" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The Pazzi conspirators, intimidated +by the sanctity of the Florentine Duomo, had to employ a priest to wield +the sacrilegious dagger.<a name="FNanchor_3_340" id="FNanchor_3_340" /><a href="#Footnote_3_340" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Pietro Paolo Boscoli's last confession, +after the failure of his attempt to assassinate the Medici in 1513, adds +further details in illustration of the mixture of religious feeling with +patriotic paganism. Luca della Robbia, the nephew of the great sculptor +of that name, and himself no mean artist, visited his friend Boscoli on +the night of his execution, and wrote a minute account of their +interview. Both of these men were members of the Confraternità de' Neri, +who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual +counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the +choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of +soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of +Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period +which we possess.<a name="FNanchor_4_341" id="FNanchor_4_341" /><a href="#Footnote_4_341" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> What is most striking is the combination of deeply +rooted and almost infantine piety with antique heroism in the young +patriot. He is greatly concerned because, ignorant of his approaching +end, he had eaten a hearty supper: 'Son troppo carico di cibo, et ho +mangiatccose insalate;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg467" +id="pg467">467</a></span> in modo che non mi pare poter unir Io spirito a +Dio ... Iddio abbi di me misericordia, che costoro m' hanno carico di +cibo. Oh indiscrezione!'<a name="FNanchor_5_342" id="FNanchor_5_342" /><a href="#Footnote_5_342" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Then he expresses a vehement desire for the +services of a learned confessor, to resolve his intellectual doubts, +pleading with all the earnestness of desperate conviction that the +salvation of his soul must depend upon his orthodoxy at the last. He +complains that he ought to have been allowed at least a month's +seclusion with good friars before he was brought face to face with +death. At another time he is chiefly anxious to free himself from +classic memories: 'Deh! Luca, cavatemi della testa quel Bruto, acciò ch' +io faccia questo passo interamente da Cristiano'.<a name="FNanchor_6_343" id="FNanchor_6_343" /><a href="#Footnote_6_343" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Then again it +grieves him that the tears of compunction, which he has been taught to +regard as the true sign of a soul at one with God, will not flow. About +the mere fact of dying he has no anxiety. The philosophers have +strengthened him upon that point. He is only eager to die piously. When +he tries to pray, he can barely remember the Paternoster and the Ave +Maria. That reminds him how easy it would have been to have spent his +time better, and he bids Luca remember that the mind a man makes for +himself in life, will be with him in death. When they bring him a +picture of Christ, he asks<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg468" +id="pg468">468</a></span> whether he needs <i>that</i> to fix his soul upon +his Saviour. Throughout this long contention of so many varying +thoughts, he never questions the morality of the act for which he is +condemned to die. Luca, however, has his doubts, and privately asks the +confessor whether S. Thomas Aquinas had not discountenanced tyrannicide. +'Yes,' answers the monk, 'in case the people have elected their own +tyrant, but not when he has imposed himself on them by force.' This +casuistical answer satisfies Luca that his friend may reasonably be held +blameless. After confessing, Boscoli received the sacrament with great +piety, and died bravely. The confessor told Luca, weeping, that he was +sure the young man's soul had gone straight to Paradise, and that he +might be reckoned a real martyr. His head after death was like that of +an angel; and Luca was, we know, a connoisseur in angels' heads. Boscoli +was only thirty-two years of age; he had light hair, and was +short-sighted.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_338" id="Footnote_1_338" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_338"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For the Italian ethics of tyrannicide, see back, pp. 169, +170.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_339" id="Footnote_2_339" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_339"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See p. 166.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_340" id="Footnote_3_340" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_340"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See p. 398.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_341" id="Footnote_4_341" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_341"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It is printed in <i>Arch. Stor</i>, vol. i.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_342" id="Footnote_5_342" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_342"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> 'I am over-burdened with food, and I have eaten salt meats; so that +I do not seem able to join my spirit to God.... God have pity on me, for +they have burdened me with food. Oh, how thoughtless of them!' His words +cannot be translated. Naïf in the extreme, they become ludicrous in +English.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_343" id="Footnote_6_343" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_343"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> 'Ah, Luca, turn that Brutus out of my head, in order that I may take +this last step wholly as a Christian man!'</p></div> + +<p>To this narrative might be added the apology written by Lorenzino de' +Medici, after the murder of his cousin Alessandro in 1536.<a name="FNanchor_1_344" id="FNanchor_1_344" /><a href="#Footnote_1_344" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He relies +for his defense entirely upon arguments borrowed from Pagan ethics, and +by his treatment of the subject vindicates for himself that name of +Brutus with which Filippo Strozzi in person at Venice, and Varchi and +Molsa in Latin epigrams, saluted him. There is no trace of Christian<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg469" +id="pg469">469</a></span> +feeling in this strong and splendid display of rhetorical ability; nor +does any document of the age more forcibly exhibit the extent to which +classical studies had influenced the morality of the Renaissance. +Lorenzino, however, when he wrote it, was not, like Boscoli, upon the +point of dying.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_344" id="Footnote_1_344" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_344"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is printed at the end of the third volume of Varchi, pp. +283-95; compare p. 210. A medal in honor of Lorenzino's tyrannicide was +struck with a profile copied from Michael Angelo's bust of Brutus.</p></div> + +<p>The last thing to perish in a nation is its faith. The whole history of +the world proves that no anomalies are so glaring, no inconsistencies so +paradoxical, as to sap the credit of a religious system which has once +been firmly rooted in the habits, instincts, and traditions of a race: +and what remains longest is often the least rational portion. Religions +from the first are not the product of logical reflection or experiment, +but of sentiment and aspiration. They come into being as simple +intuitions, and afterwards invade the province of the reason and +assimilate the thought of centuries to their own conceptions. This is +the secret of their strength as well as the source of their weakness. It +is only a stronger enthusiasm, a new intuition, a fresh outburst of +emotional vitality, that can supplant the old:—<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Cotal rimedio ha questo aspro furore,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tale acqua suole spegner questo fuoco,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Come d'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo.'</span><br /> +</p> +<p>Criticism from without, internal corruption, patent absurdity, are +comparatively powerless to destroy those habits of belief which once +have taken hold upon the fancy and the feeling of a nation. The work of +dissolution proceeds in silence and in secret. But the established +order<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg470" +id="pg470">470</a></span> subsists until the moment comes for a new synthesis. And in the +sixteenth century the necessary impulse of regeneration was to come, not +from Italy, satisfied with the serenity of her art, preoccupied with her +culture, and hardened to the infamy of her corruption, but from the +Germany of the barbarians she despised.</p> + +<p>These considerations will help to explain how it was that the Church, in +spite of its corruption, stood its ground and retained the respect of +the people in Italy. We must moreover bear in mind that, bad as it was, +it still to some extent maintained the Christian verity. Apart from the +Roman Curia and the Convents, there existed a hierarchy of able and +God-fearing men, who by the sanctity of their lives, by the gravity of +their doctrine, by the eloquence of their preaching, by their +ministration to the sick, by the relief of the poor, by the maintenance +of hospitals, Monti di Pietà, schools and orphanages, kept alive in the +people of Italy the ideal at least of a religion pure and undefiled +before God.<a name="FNanchor_1_345" id="FNanchor_1_345" /><a href="#Footnote_1_345" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In the tottering statue of the Church some true metal +might be found between the pinchbeck at the summit and the clay of the +foundation.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_345" id="Footnote_1_345" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_345"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the life of S. Antonino, the good Archbishop of +Florence.</p></div> + +<p>It must also be remembered how far the worldly interests and domestic +sympathies of the Italians were engaged in the maintenance of their +Church system. The fibers of the Church were intertwined with the very +heartstrings of the people. Few families could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg471" +id="pg471">471</a></span> show one or more +members who had chosen the clerical career, and who looked to Rome for +patronage, employment, and perhaps advancement to the highest honors. +The whole nation felt a pride in the Eternal City: patriotic vanity and +personal interest were alike involved in the maintenance of the +metropolis of Christendom, which drew the suites of ambassadors, +multitudes of pilgrims, and the religious traffic of the whole of Europe +to the shores of Italy. It was easy for Germans and Englishmen to reason +calmly about dethroning the Papal hierarchy. Italians, however they +might loathe the temporal power, could not willingly forego the +spiritual primacy of the civilized world.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the sacraments of the Church, the absolutions, consecrations, +and benedictions which priests dispensed or withheld at pleasure, had by +no means lost their power. To what extent even the nations of the north +still clung to them is proved by our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult +of war with Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resemblance to +the old ritual consistent with the spirit of the Reformation. Far more +imposing were they in their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who +had never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the fountain of +Apostolical privileges in the person of the Pope, and whose southern +temperament inclined them to a more sensuous and less metaphysical +conception of Christianity than the Germans or the English. The dread of +the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg472" +id="pg472">472</a></span> the clergy of Florence, +roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such +words as <i>leno matris suæ, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius</i>, yet +the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the +baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last +sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed +against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean +Milman,<a name="FNanchor_1_346" id="FNanchor_1_346" /><a href="#Footnote_1_346" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly +issued and however manfully resisted.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_346" id="Footnote_1_346" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_346"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361.</p></div> + +<p>The history of the despots and the Popes, together with the analysis of +Machiavelli's political ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in +which crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and cynicism so +deliberate could be accepted as a system. Yet it remains in estimating +the general character of Italian morality to record the judgment passed +upon it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The morality of +races, as of individuals, is rarely otherwise than mixed—virtue +balancing vice and evil vitiating goodness. Still the impression +produced by Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North was almost +wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned from their Italian travels either +horrified with what they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham +writes:<a name="FNanchor_1_347" id="FNanchor_1_347" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_347" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'I was once in Italy +myself; but I thank God<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg473" +id="pg473">473</a></span> my abode there was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more +liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of London in +nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all +punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the +City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear +shoe or pantocle.' Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the +novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels +in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to +declare.'<a name="FNanchor_2_348" id="FNanchor_2_348" /><a href="#Footnote_2_348" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these +witnesses, while the proverb, <i>Inglese Italianato è un diavolo +incarnato</i>, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how +pernicious to the coarser natures of the north were the refined vices of +the south. What principally struck our ancestors in the morality of the +Italians was the license allowed in sensual indulgences, and the bad +faith which tainted all public and private dealings. In respect to the +latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is +enough.<a name="FNanchor_3_349" id="FNanchor_3_349" /><a +href="#Footnote_3_349" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Loyalty<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg474" id="pg474">474</a></span> was a virtue +but little esteemed in Italy: engagements seemed made to be broken; even +the crime of violence was aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's +stiletto or a slow poison being reckoned among the legitimate means for +ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be +forgotten that the commercial integrity of the Italians ranked high. In +all countries of Europe they carried on the banking business of +monarchs, cities, and private persons.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_347" id="Footnote_1_347" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_347"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>The Schoolmaster;</i> edn. 1863, p. 87. The whole discourse +on Italian traveling and Italian influence is very curious, when we +reflect that at this time contact with Italy was forming the chief +culture of the English in literature and social manners. The ninth +satire in Marston's <i>Scourge of Villanie</i> contains much interesting +matter on the same point. Howell's <i>Instructions for forreine Travell</i> +furnishes the following illustration: 'And being in Italy, that great +limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his +carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and deprave +the best natures, if one will abandon himself, and become a prey to +dissolute courses and wantonnesse.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_348" id="Footnote_2_348" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_348"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>The Repentance of Robert Greene</i>, quoted in the memoir to Dyce's +edition of his Dramatic Works.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_349" id="Footnote_3_349" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_349"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See chapter v.</p></div> + +<p>With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied that the corruption +of Italy was shameful. Putting aside the profligacy of the convents, the +City of Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as many as 6,800 public +prostitutes, besides those who practiced their trade under the cloak of +concubinage.<a name="FNanchor_1_350" id="FNanchor_1_350" /><a href="#Footnote_1_350" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> These women were accompanied by confederate ruffians, +ready to stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went +hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be +ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg475" id="pg475">475</a></span> under Innocent +VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De +Comines,<a name="FNanchor_2_351" id="FNanchor_2_351" /><a href="#Footnote_2_351" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could +afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the +eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and +refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston +describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine +played professor.<a name="FNanchor_3_352" id="FNanchor_3_352" /><a href="#Footnote_3_352" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola's +sermons give the best picture.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_350" id="Footnote_1_350" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_350"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Infessura, p. 1997. He adds: 'Consideratur modo qualiter +vivatur Romæ ubi caput fidei est.' From what Parent Duchatelet +<i>(Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris,</i> p. 27) has noted concerning the +tendency to exaggerate the numbers of prostitutes in any given town, we +have every reason to regard the estimate of Infessura as excessive. In +Paris, in 1854, there were only 4,206 registered 'filles publiques,' +when the population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; while those +who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously computed at +20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000. Accurate statistics relating to +the population of any Italian city in the fifteenth century do not, +unfortunately, exist.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_351" id="Footnote_2_351" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_351"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Memoirs,</i> lib. vii. 'C'est la plus triomphante cité que j'ai jamais +vue, et qui plus fait d'honneur à ambassadeurs et étrangers, et qui plus +sagement se gouverne, <i>et ou le service de Dieu est le plus +solemnellement faict.'</i> The prostitutes of Venice were computed to +number 11,654 so far back as the end of the 14th century. See Filiasi, +quoted by Mutinelli in his <i>Annali urbani di Venezia.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_352" id="Footnote_3_352" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_352"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Satires, ii.</p></div> + +<p>But the characteristic vice of the Italian was not coarse sensuality. He +required the fascination of the fancy to be added to the allurement of +the senses.<a name="FNanchor_1_353" id="FNanchor_1_353" /><a href="#Footnote_1_353" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is this which makes the Capitoli of the burlesque +poets, of men of note like Berni, La Casa, Varchi, Mauro, Molsa, Dolce, +Bembo, Firenzuola, Bronzino, Aretino, and de' Medici, so amazing. +The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg476" id="pg476">476</a></span> +crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished +treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their +cynicism. A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the <i>Canti +Carnascialeschi</i> of Florence, proving that however profligate the people +might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned +with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the +lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness +of personal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of ingenuity or +the avoidance of peril an enhancement of pleasure to the Italians. This +is perhaps one of the reasons why all the imaginative compositions of +the Renaissance, especially the <i>Novelle,</i> turn upon adultery. Judging +by the majority of these romances, by the comedies of the time, and by +the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to believe that such illicit +love was merely sensual, and owed its principal attractions to the scope +it afforded for whimsical adventures. Yet Bembo's <i>Asolani,</i> +Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, and much of the lyrical poetry +in vogue warn us to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment expressed by +the Florentines of the thirteenth century still survived to some extent, +adding a sort of dignity in form at least to these affections.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_353" id="Footnote_1_353" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_353"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Much might be written about the play of the imagination +which gave a peculiar complexion to the profligacy, the jealousy, and +the vengeance of the Italians. I shall have occasion elsewhere to +maintain that in their literature at least the Italians were not a +highly imaginative race; nor were they subject to those highly wrought +conditions of the brooding fancy, termed by the northern nations +Melancholy, which Dürer has personified in his celebrated etching, and +Burton has described in his <i>Anatomy.</i> But in their love and hatred, +their lust and their cruelty, the Italians required an intellectual +element which brought the imaginative faculty into play.</p></div> + +<p>It was due again in a great measure to their demand for imaginative +excitement in all matters of the sense, to their desire for the +extravagant and extraordinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg477" +id="pg477">477</a></span> as a seasoning of pleasure, that the +Italians came to deserve so terrible a name among the nations for +unnatural passions.<a name="FNanchor_1_354" id="FNanchor_1_354" /><a href="#Footnote_1_354" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This is a subject which can hardly be touched in +passing: yet the opinion may be recorded that it belongs rather to the +science of psychopathy than to the chronicle of vulgar lusts. English +poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament, on this as +on so many other points. Shelley in his portrait of Francesco Cenci has +drawn a man in whom cruelty and incest have become appetites of the +distempered soul; the love of Giovanni and Annabella in Ford's tragedy +is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual. It is no excuse +for the Italians to say that they had spiritualized abominable<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg478" id="pg478">478</a></span> vices. +What this really means is that their immorality was nearer that of +devils than of beasts. But in seeking to distinguish its true character, +we must take notice of the highly wrought fantasy which seasoned both +their luxury and their jealousy, their vengeance and their lust.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_354" id="Footnote_1_354" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_354"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Italian literature is loud-voiced on this topic. The +concluding stanzas of Poliziano's <i>Orfeo</i>, recited before the Cardinal +of Mantua, the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, and some of the +<i>Canti Carnasialeschi</i>, might be cited. We might add Varchi's express +testimony as to the morals of Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, +Pier Luigi Farnese, and Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells +us about the brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the +Life of San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano (<i>Vite di Illustri Uomini</i>, +p. 186) writes: 'L'Italia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e aveva +lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era più chi conoscesse +Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti e abbominevoli vizi +nefandi! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, che non temevano nè Iddio nè +l'onore del mondo. Maladetta cecità! In tanto eccesso era venuto ogni +cosa, che gli scellerati ed enormi vizi non era più chi gli stimasse, +per lo maladetto uso che n'avevano fatto ... massime il maladetto e +abominando e detestando peccato della sodomia. Erano in modo stracorsi +in questa cecità, che bisognava che l'onnipotente Iddio facesse un' +altra volta piovere dal cielo zolfo e fuoco come egli fece a Sodoma e +Gomorra.' Compare Savonarola passim, the inductions to the Sacre +Rappresentazioni, the familiar letters of Machiavelli, and the statute +of Cosimo against this vice (year 1542, Sabellii Summa. Venice, 1715; +vol. v. p. 287).</p></div> + +<p>The same is to some extent true of their cruelty. The really cruel +nation of the Renaissance was Spain, not Italy.<a name="FNanchor_1_355" +id="FNanchor_1_355" /><a href="#Footnote_1_355" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +The Italians, as a rule, were gentle and humane, especially in +warfare.<a name="FNanchor_2_356" id="FNanchor_2_356" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_356" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> No Italian army would +systematically have tortured the whole population of a captured city day +after day for months, as the Spaniards did in Rome and Milan, to satisfy +their avarice and glut their stolid appetite for blood. Their respect +for human life again was higher than that of the French or Swiss. They +gave quarter to their foes upon the battle-field, and were horrified +with the massacres in cold blood perpetrated at Fivizzano and Rapallo by +the army of Charles VIII. But when the demon of cruelty possessed the +imagination of an Italian, when, like Gian Maria Visconti, he came to +relish the sight of torment for its own sake, or when he sought to +inspire fear by the spectacle of pain, then no Spaniard surpassed him in +the ingenuity of his devices. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg479" +id="pg479">479</a></span> gratifying his thirst for vengeance he +was never contented with mere murder. To obtain a personal triumph at +the expense of his enemy by the display of superior cunning, by +rendering him ridiculous, by exposing him to mental as well as physical +anguish, by wounding him through his affections or his sense of honor, +was the end which he pursued. This is why so many acts of violence in +Italy assumed fantastic forms. Even the country folk showed an infernal +art in the execution of their <i>vendette</i>. To serve the flesh of children +up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is mentioned, for example, as +one mode of wreaking vengeance in country villages. Thus the high +culture and æsthetic temperament of the Italians gave an intellectual +quality to their vices. Crude lust and bloodshed were insipid to their +palates: they required the pungent sauce of a melodramatic +catastrophe.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_355" id="Footnote_1_355" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_355"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty +in Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma by +Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di Prato in the +<i>Archivio Storico Italiano</i>, vol. i., and Cagnola's account of the +Spanish occupation of Milan, ib. vol. iii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_356" id="Footnote_2_356" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_356"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> De Comines more than once notices the humanity shown by the Italian +peasants to the French army.</p></div> + +<p>The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations for a like reason found +no favor in Italy. It disgusted the Romans beyond measure to witness the +swinish excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality prompted them to a +refined Epicureanism in food and drink; on this point, however, it must +be admitted that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profligacy, +disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy of Vitellius.<a name="FNanchor_1_357" id="FNanchor_1_357" /><a href="#Footnote_1_357" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> We trace +the same play of the fancy, the same promptitude to quicken and +intensify the immediate sense of personality at any cost of +after-suffering, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg480" +id="pg480">480</a></span> another characteristic vice of the Italians. +Gambling among them was carried further and produced more harm than it +did in the transalpine cities. This we gather from Savonarola's +denunciations, from the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his +<i>Trattato della Famiglia</i> and <i>Cena della Famiglia</i> and also from the +inductions to many of the <i>Sacre Rappresentazioni</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_358" id="FNanchor_2_358" /><a href="#Footnote_2_358" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_357" id="Footnote_1_357" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_357"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Gregorovius, <i>Stadt Rom</i>, vol. viii. p. 225: 'E li +cardinali comenzarono a vomitar e cussi li altri,' quoted from Sanudo.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_358" id="Footnote_2_358" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_358"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> One of the excellent characteristics of Alfonso the Great +(<i>Vespasiano</i>, p. 49) was his abhorrence of gambling.</p></div> + +<p>Another point which struck a northern visitor in Italy was the frequency +of private and domestic murders.<a name="FNanchor_1_359" id="FNanchor_1_359" /><a href="#Footnote_1_359" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The Italians had and deserved a bad +reputation for poisoning and assassination. To refer to the deeds of +violence in the history of a single family, the Baglioni of Perugia, as +recorded by their chronicler Matarazzo; to cite the passages in which +Varchi relates the deaths by poison of Luisa Strozzi, Cardinal Ippolito +de' Medici, and Sanga; or to translate the pages of annalists, who +describe the palaces of nobles swarming with <i>bravi</i>, would be a very +easy task.<a name="FNanchor_2_360" id="FNanchor_2_360" /><a href="#Footnote_2_360" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But the sketch of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, which +will form part<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg481" +id="pg481">481</a></span> of my third volume, gives so lively a picture of this +aspect of Italian life, that there is no reason to enlarge upon the +topic now. It is enough to observe that, in their employment of poison +and of paid assassins, the Italians were guided by those habits of +calculation which distinguished their character.<a name="FNanchor_3_361" id="FNanchor_3_361" /><a href="#Footnote_3_361" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> They thought nothing +of removing an enemy by craft or violence: but they took no pleasure in +murder for its own sake.<a name="FNanchor_4_362" id="FNanchor_4_362" /><a href="#Footnote_4_362" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> The object which they had in view prompted +them to take a man's life; the mere delight in brawls and bloodshed of +Switzers, Germans, and Spaniards offended their taste.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_359" id="Footnote_1_359" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_359"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Guicc. <i>St. Il.</i> vol. i. p. 101, for the impression +produced upon the army of Charles by the murder by poison of Gian +Galeazzo Sforza.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_360" id="Footnote_2_360" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_360"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A vivid illustration of the method adopted by hired assassins in +tracking and hunting down their victims is presented by Francesco +Bibboni's narrative of his murder of Lorenzino de' Medici at Venice. It +casts much curious light, moreover, on the relations between paid +<i>bravi</i> and their employers, the esteem in which professional cutthroats +were held, and their connection with the police of the Italian towns. It +is published in a tract concerning Lorenzino, Milano, Daelli, 1862.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_361" id="Footnote_3_361" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_361"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See the instructions given by the Venetian government to their +agents for the purchase of poison and the hiring of secret murderers. +See also the Maxims laid down by Sarpi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_362" id="Footnote_4_362" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_362"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> This at least was accounted eccentric and barbarous in the extreme. +See Pontano, <i>de Immanitate</i>, vol. i. p. 326, concerning Niccolo +Fortibraccio, Antonio, Pontadera, and the Riccio Montechiaro, who +stabbed and strangled for the pleasure of seeing men die. I have already +discussed the blood-madness of some of the despots.</p></div> + +<p>While the imagination played so important a part in the morality of the +Italians, it must be remembered that they were deficient in that which +is the highest imaginative safeguard against vice, a scrupulous sense of +honor. It is true that the Italian authors talk much about <i>Onore</i>. +Pandolfini tells his sons that <i>Onore</i> is one of the qualities which +require the greatest thrift in keeping, and Machiavelli asserts that it +is almost as dangerous to attack men in their <i>Onore</i> as in their +property. But when we come to analyze the word, we find that it means +something different from that mixture of conscience, pride, and +self-respect which makes<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg482" +id="pg482">482</a></span> a man true to a high ideal in all the possible +circumstances of life. The Italian <i>Onore</i> consisted partly of the +credit attaching to public distinction, and partly of a reputation for +<i>Virtù</i>, understanding that word in its Machiavellian usage, as force, +courage, ability, virility. It was not incompatible with craft and +dissimulation, or with the indulgence of sensual vices. Statesmen like +Guicciardini, who, by the way, has written a fine paragraph upon the +very word in question,<a name="FNanchor_1_363" id="FNanchor_1_363" /><a href="#Footnote_1_363" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> did not think it unworthy of their honor to +traffic in affairs of state for private profit. Machiavelli not only +recommended breaches of political faith, but sacrificed his principles +to his pecuniary interests with the Medici. It would be curious to +inquire how far the obtuse sensibility of the Italians on this point was +due to their freedom from vanity.<a name="FNanchor_2_364" id="FNanchor_2_364" /><a href="#Footnote_2_364" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> No nation is perhaps less +influenced by mere opinion, less inclined to value men by their +adventitious advantages: the Italian has the courage and the +independence of his personality. It is, however, more important to take +notice that Chivalry never took a firm root in Italy; and honor, as +distinguished from vanity, <i>amour propre</i>, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg483" +id="pg483">483</a></span> credit, draws its life +from that ideal of the knightly character which Chivalry established. +The true knight was equally sensitive upon the point of honor, in all +that concerned the maintenance of an unsullied self, whether he found +himself in a king's court or a robber's den. Chivalry, as epitomized in +the celebrated oath imposed by Arthur on his peers of the Round Table, +was a northern, a Teutonic, institution. The sense of honor which formed +its very essence was further developed by the social atmosphere of a +monarch's court. It became the virtue of the nobly born and chivalrously +nurtured, as appears very remarkably in this passage from Rabelais<a name="FNanchor_3_365" id="FNanchor_3_365" /><a href="#Footnote_3_365" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>: +'En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce que vouldras. Parce +que gens liberes, bien nayz, bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies +honnesties, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui toujours les +poulse à faitctz vertueux, et retire de vice: lequel ils nommoyent +honneur.' Now in Italy not only was Chivalry as an institution weak; but +the feudal courts in which it produced its fairest flower, the knightly +sense of honor, did not exist.<a name="FNanchor_4_366" id="FNanchor_4_366" /><a href="#Footnote_4_366" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Instead of a circle of peers gathered +from all quarters of the kingdom round the font of honor in the person +of the sovereign, commercial republics, forceful tyrannies, and the +Papal Curia gave the tone to society. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg484" +id="pg484">484</a></span> every part of the peninsula +rich bankers who bought and sold cities, adventurers who grasped at +principalities by violence or intrigue, and priests who sought the +aggrandizement of a sacerdotal corporation, were brought together in the +meshes of diplomacy. The few noble families which claimed a feudal +origin carried on wars for pay by contract in the interest of burghers, +popes, or despots. Of these conditions not one was conducive to the +sense of honor as conceived in France or England. Taken altogether and +in combination, they could not fail to be eminently unfavorable to its +development. In such a society Bayard and Sir Walter Manny would have +been out of place: the motto <i>noblesse oblige</i> would have had but little +meaning.<a name="FNanchor_5_367" id="FNanchor_5_367" /><a href="#Footnote_5_367" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Instead of Honor, Virtù ruled the world in Italy. The moral +atmosphere again was critical and highly intellectualized. Mental +ability combined with personal daring gave rank. But the very subtlety +and force of mind which formed the strength of the Italians proved +hostile to any delicate sentiment of honor. Analysis enfeebles the tact +and spontaneity of feeling which constitute its strongest safeguard. All +this is obvious in the ethics of the <i>Principe</i>. What most astounds us +in that treatise is the assumption that no men will be bound by laws of +honor when utility<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg485" +id="pg485">485</a></span> or the object in view require their sacrifice. In +conclusion; although the Italians were not lacking in integrity, +honesty, probity, or pride, their positive and highly analytical genius +was but little influenced by that chivalrous honor which was an +enthusiasm and a religion to the feudal nations, surviving the decay of +chivalry as a preservative instinct more undefinable than absolute +morality. Honor with the northern gentry was subjective; with the +Italians <i>Onore</i> was objective—an addition conferred from without, in +the shape of reputation, glory, titles of distinction, or offices of +trust.<a name="FNanchor_6_368" id="FNanchor_6_368" /><a href="#Footnote_6_368" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_363" id="Footnote_1_363" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_363"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Ricordi politici e civili, No. 118, <i>Op. Ined.</i> vol. i.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_364" id="Footnote_2_364" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_364"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See De Stendhal, <i>Histoire de la peinture en Italie</i>, pp. 285-91, +for a curious catalogue of examples. The modern sense of honor is based, +no doubt, to some extent on a delicate <i>amour propre</i>, which makes a man +desirous of winning the esteem of his neighbors for its own sake. +Granting that conscience, pride, vanity, and self-respect are all +constituents of honor, we may, perhaps, find more pride in the Spanish, +more <i>amour propre</i> in the French, and more conscience in the English.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_365" id="Footnote_3_365" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_365"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Gargantua, lib. 1. ch. 57.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_366" id="Footnote_4_366" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_366"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See, however, what I have already said about Castiglione and his +ideal of the courtier in Chapter III. We must remember that he +represents a late period of the Renaissance.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_367" id="Footnote_5_367" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_367"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> It is curious to compare, for example, the part played by Italians, +especially by Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, as contractors and merchants +in the Crusades, with the enthusiasm of the northern nations.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_368" id="Footnote_6_368" /><a href="#FNanchor_6_368"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> In confirmation of this view I may call attention to Giannotti's +critique of the Florentine constitution (Florence, 1850, vol. i. pp. 15 +and 156), and to what Machiavelli says about Gianpaolo Baglioni (<i>Disc</i>. +i. 27), 'Gli uomini non sanno essere <i>onorevolmente</i> tristi'; men know +not how to be bad with credit to themselves. The context proves that +Gianpaolo failed to win the honor of a signal crime. Compare the use of +the word <i>onore</i> in Lorinzino de' Medici's 'Apologia.'</p></div> + +<p>With the Italian conception of <i>Onore</i> we may compare their view of +<i>Onestà</i> in the female sex. This is set forth plainly by Piccolomini in +<i>La Bella Creanza delle Donne</i>.<a name="FNanchor_1_369" id="FNanchor_1_369" /><a href="#Footnote_1_369" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> As in the case of <i>Onore</i>, we have +here to deal, not with an exquisite personal ideal, but with something +far more material and external. The <i>onestà</i> of a married woman is +compatible with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg486" +id="pg486">486</a></span> secret infidelity, provided she does not expose herself +to ridicule and censure by letting her amour be known. Here again, +therefore, the proper translation of the word seems to be credit. +Finally, we may allude to the invective against honor which Tasso puts +into the mouths of his shepherds in <i>Aminta</i><a name="FNanchor_2_370" id="FNanchor_2_370" /><a href="#Footnote_2_370" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Though at this period +the influence of France and Spain had communicated to aristocratic +society in Italy an exotic sense of honor, yet a court poet dared to +condemn it as unworthy of the <i>Bell' età dell' oro</i>, because it +interfered with pleasure and introduced disagreeable duties into life. +Such a tirade would not have been endured in the London of Elizabeth or +in the Paris of Louis XIV. Tasso himself, it may be said in passing, was +almost feverishly punctilious in matters that touched his reputation.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_369" id="Footnote_1_369" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_369"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>La Raffaella, ovvero Delia bella Creanza delle Donne</i> +(Milano, Daelli). Compare the statement of the author in his preface, p. +4, where he speaks in his own person, with the definition of <i>Onore</i> +given by Raffaella, pp. 50 and 51 of the Dialogue: 'l'onore non è +riposto in altro, se non nella stimazione appresso agli uomini ... +l'onor della donna non consiste, come t'ho detto, nel fare o non fare, +chè questo importa poco, ma nel credersi o non credersi.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_370" id="Footnote_2_370" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_370"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio's Novelle +(ed. Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost cynically exposes the +inconvenience of self-respect and delicacy. The situation of two +friends, who agree that honor is a nuisance and share their wives in +common, is a favorite of the Novelists.</p></div> + +<p>An important consideration, affecting the whole question of Italian +immorality, is this. Whereas the northern races had hitherto remained in +a state of comparative poverty and barbarism, distributed through +villages and country districts, the people of Italy had enjoyed +centuries of wealth and civilization in great cities. Their towns were +the centers of luxurious life. The superfluous income of the rich was +spent in pleasure, nor had modern decorum taught them<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg487" +id="pg487">487</a></span> to conceal the +vices of advanced culture beneath the cloak of propriety. They were at +the same time both indifferent to opinion and self-conscious in a high +degree. The very worst of them was seen at a glance and recorded with +minute particularity. The depravity of less cultivated races remained +unnoticed because no one took the trouble to describe mere barbarism.<a name="FNanchor_1_371" id="FNanchor_1_371" /><a href="#Footnote_1_371" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +Vices of the same sort, but less widely dispersed, perhaps, throughout +the people, were notorious in Italy, because they were combined with so +much that was beautiful and splendid. In a word, the faults of the +Italians were such as belong to a highly intellectualized society, as +yet but imperfectly penetrated with culture, raised above the +brutishness of barbarians, but not advanced to the self-control of +civilization, hampered by the corruption of a Church that trafficked in +crime, tainted by uncritical contact with pagan art and literature, and +emasculated by political despotism. Their vices, bad as they were in +reality, seemed still worse because they attacked the imagination +instead of merely exercising the senses. As a correlative to their +depravity, we find a sobriety of appetite, a courtesy of behavior, a +mildness and cheerfulness of disposition, a widely diffused refinement +of sentiment and manners, a liberal spirit of toleration, which can +nowhere else be paralleled in Europe at that period. It was no small +mark of superiority to be less ignorant and gross than England, +less<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg488" id="pg488">488</a></span> +brutal and stolid than Germany, less rapacious than Switzerland, less +cruel than Spain, less vain and inconsequent than France.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_371" id="Footnote_1_371" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_371"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Read, however, the Saxon Chronicles or the annals of +Ireland in Froude.</p></div> + +<p>Italy again was the land of emancipated individuality. What Mill in his +Essay on Liberty desired, what seems every day more unattainable in +modern life, was enjoyed by the Italians. There was no check to the +growth of personality, no grinding of men down to match the average. If +great vices emerged more openly than they did elsewhere in Europe, great +qualities also had the opportunity of free development in heroes like +Ferrucci, in saints like Savonarola, in artists like Michael Angelo. +While the social atmosphere of the Papal and despotic courts was +unfavorable to the highest type of character, we find at least no +external engine of repression, no omnipotent inquisition, no +overpowering aristocracy.<a name="FNanchor_1_372" id="FNanchor_1_372" /><a href="#Footnote_1_372" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> False political systems and a corrupt +Church created a malaria, which poisoned the noble spirits of +Machiavelli, Ariosto, Guicciardini, Giuliano della Rovere. It does not, +however, follow therefore that the humanities of the race at large, in +spite of superstition and bad government, were vitiated.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_372" id="Footnote_1_372" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_372"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I am of course speaking of the Renaissance as distinguished +from that new phase of Italian history which followed the Council of +Trent and the Spanish despotism.</p></div> + +<p>We have positive proofs to the contrary in the art of the Italians. The +April freshness of Giotto, the piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal +purity of the young Raphael, the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the +philosophic depth<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg489" +id="pg489">489</a></span> of Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of Michael Angelo, +the suavity of Fra Bartolommeo, the delicacy of the Della Robbia, the +restrained fervor of Rosellini, the rapture of the Sienese and the +reverence of the Umbrian masters, Francia's pathos, Mantegna's dignity, +and Luini's divine simplicity, were qualities which belonged not only to +these artists but also to the people of Italy from whom they sprang. If +men not few of whom were born in cottages and educated in workshops +could feel and think and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that their +mothers and their friends were pure and pious, and that the race which +gave them to the world was not depraved. Painting in Italy, it must be +remembered, was nearer to the people than literature: it was less a +matter of education than instinct, a product of temperament rather than +of culture.</p> + +<p>Italian art alone suffices to prove to my mind that the immorality of +the age descended from the upper stratum of society downwards. Selfish +despots and luxurious priests were the ruin of Italy; and the bad +qualities of the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, found expression +in the literature of poets and humanists, their parasites. But in what +other nation of the fifteenth century can we show the same of social +urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all classes from the +highest to the lowest? It is true that the sixteenth century cast a +blight upon their luster. But it was not until Italian taste had been +impaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg490" +id="pg490">490</a></span> the Spaniards +that the arts became either coarse or sensual. Giulio Romano (1492-1546) +and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-70) mark the beginning of the change. In +Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and in the whole school of Bologna, +it was accomplished. Yet never at any period did the native Italian +masters learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals innate +grossness. It remained for Dürer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth to elevate the +grotesque into the region of high art, for Rubens to achieve the +apotheosis of pure animalism, for Teniers to devote distinguished genius +to the service of the commonplace.</p> + +<p>In any review of Italian religion and morality, however fragmentary it +may be, as this indeed is, one feature which distinguishes the acute +sensibility of the race ought not to be omitted. Deficient in profound +intellectual convictions, incapable of a fixed and radical determination +towards national holiness, devoid of those passionate and imaginative +intuitions into the mysteries of the world which generate religions and +philosophies, the Italians were at the same time keenly susceptible to +the beauty of the Christian faith revealed to them by inspired orators. +What we call Revivalism was an institution in Italy, which the Church +was too wise to discountenance or to suppress, although the preachers of +repentance were often insubordinate and sometimes even hostile to the +Papal system. The names of Arnold of Brescia, San Bernardino of Siena, +John of Vicenza, Jacopo Bussolari, Alberto da Lecce, Giovanni +Capistrano, Jacopo<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg491" +id="pg491">491</a></span> della Marca, Girolamo Savonarola, bring before the +memory of those who are acquainted with Italian history innumerable +pictures of multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and +constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and +vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in +sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks +of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with +sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.<a name="FNanchor_1_373" id="FNanchor_1_373" /><a href="#Footnote_1_373" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In the +midst of these melodramatic scenes towers the single form of a Dominican +or Franciscan friar: while one voice thundering woe or pleading peace +dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these +preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in +states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than +merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not +only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of +importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the +sixteenth century in Italy—Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a real +religious vigor in the people corresponding to the preacher's zeal. But +the action of this earnest mood was intermittent and spasmodic. It +coexisted with too much superstition and with passions too vehemently +restless to form a settled tone of character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg492" +id="pg492">492</a></span> In this respect the +Italian nation stands not extravagantly pictured in the life of Cellini, +whose violence, self-indulgence, keen sense of pleasure, and pagan +delight in physical beauty were interrupted at intervals by inexplicable +interludes of repentance, Bible-reading, psalm-singing, and visions. To +delineate Cellini will be the business of a distant chapter. The form of +the greatest of Italian preachers must occupy the foreground of the +next.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_373" id="Footnote_1_373" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_373"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> I have thrown into an appendix some of the principal +passages from the chronicles about revivals in mediæval Italy.</p></div> + +<p>Before closing the imperfect and scattered notices collected in this +chapter, it will be well to attempt some recapitulation of the points +already suggested. Without committing ourselves to the dogmatism of a +theory, we are led to certain general conclusions on the subject of +Italian society in the sixteenth century. The fierce party quarrels +which closed the Middle Ages had accustomed the population to violence, +and this violence survived in the too frequent occurrence of brutal +crimes. The artificial sovereignty of the despots being grounded upon +perfidy, it followed that guile and fraud came to be recognized in +private no less than public life. With the emergence of the bourgeois +classes a self-satisfied positivism, vividly portrayed in the person of +Cosimo de' Medici, superseded the passions and enthusiasms of a previous +age. Thus force, craft, and practical materialism formed the basis of +Italian immorality. Vehement contention in the sphere of politics, +restless speculation, together with the loosening of every tie that +bound society together in the Middle<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg493" +id="pg493">493</a></span> Ages, emancipated personality and +substituted the freedom of self-centered vigor and virility (Virtù) for +the prescriptions of civil or religions order. In the nation that had +shaken off both Papal and Imperial authority no conception of law +remained to control caprice. Instead of law men obeyed the instincts of +their several characters, swayed by artistic taste or tyrannous +appetite, or by the splendid heroism of extinct antiquity. The Church +had alienated the people from true piety. Yet no new form of religious +belief arose; and partly through respect for the past, partly through +the convenience of clinging to existing institutions, Catholicism was +indulgently tolerated. At the same time the humanists introduced an +ideal antagonistic to Christianity of the monastic type. Without +abruptly severing themselves from the communion of the Church, and while +in form at least observing all its ordinances, they thought, wrote, +spoke, felt, and acted like Pagans. To the hypocrisies of obsolete +asceticism were added the affectations of anachronistic license. +Meanwhile, the national genius for art attained its fullest development, +simultaneously with the decay of faith, the extinction of political +liberty, and the anarchy of ethics. So strong was the æsthetic impulse +that it seemed for a while capable of drawing all the forces of the +nation to itself. A society that rested upon force and fraud, corroded +with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy recognizing<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg494" +id="pg494">494</a></span> no standard apart +from success in action and beauty in form, so conscious of its own +corruption that it produced no satirist among the many who laughed +lightly at its vices, wore the external aspect of exquisite refinement, +and was delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who understood the +contradictions of the age most deeply were the least capable of rising +above them Consequently we obtain in Machiavelli's works the ideal +picture of personal character, moving to calculated ends by +scientifically selected means, none of which are sanctioned by the +unwritten code of law that governs human progress. Cosimo's positivism +is reduced to theory. Fraud becomes a rule of conduct. Force is +advocated, when the dagger or the poisoned draught or the extermination +of a city may lead the individual straight forward to his object. +Religion is shown to be a political engine. Hypocrisy is a mask that +must be worn. The sanctities of ancient use and custom controlling +appetite have no place assigned them in the system. Action is analyzed +as a branch of the fine arts; and the spirit of the age, of which the +philosopher makes himself the hierophant, compels him to portray it as a +sinister and evil art.</p> + +<p>In the civilization of Italy, carried prematurely beyond the conditions +of the Middle Ages, before the institutions of mediævalism had been +destroyed or its prejudices had been overcome, we everywhere +discern<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg495" id="pg495">495</a></span> +the want of a co-ordinating principle. The old religion has died; but +there is no new faith. The Communes have been proved inadequate; but +there is no nationality. Practical positivism has obliterated the +virtues of a chivalrous and feudal past; but science has not yet been +born. Scholarship floods the world with the learning of antiquity; but +this knowledge is still undigested. Art triumphs; but the æsthetic +instinct has invaded the regions of politics and ethics, owing to +defective analysis in theory, and in practice to over-confident reliance +on personal ability. The individual has attained to freedom; but he has +not learned the necessity of submitting his volition to law. At all +points the development of the Italians strikes us as precocious, with +the weakness of precocity scarcely distinguishable from the decay of old +age. A transition from the point attained in the Renaissance to some +firmer and more solid ground was imperatively demanded. But the fatality +of events precluded the Italians from making it. Their evolution, +checked in mid career by the brilliant ambition of France and the +cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students +are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an +inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof +the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be +an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign +interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional +stage<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg496" +id="pg496">496</a></span> of the Renaissance to a sounder and more substantial phase of +national vitality; or whether, as their inner conscience seems to have +assured them, their disengagement from moral obligation and their mental +ferment foreboded an inevitable catastrophe.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg497" +id="pg497">497</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" />CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<p>SAVONAROLA.</p> + + +<p>The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance—His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara—His Poem on the Ruin of the World—Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna—Letter to his Father—Poem on the Ruin of the +Church—Begins to preach in 1482—First Visit to Florence—San +Gemignano—His Prophecy—Brescia in 1486—Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory—Effect on his audience—The three Conclusions—His +Visions—Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman—His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling—Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola—Settles in Florence, 1490—Convent of San Marco—Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici—The death of Lorenzo—Sermons of 1493 +and 1494—the Constitution of 1495—Theocracy in Florence—Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabbiati—War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.—The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498—Attempts to +call a Council—The Ordeal by Fire—San Marco stormed by the Mob—Trial +and Execution of Savonarola.</p> + + +<p>Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts of the Italian +Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also +from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope +Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been +claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired +exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither +shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to +the faiths of Christendom, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg498" +id="pg498">498</a></span> did he sympathize with that free +movement of the modern mind which found its first expression in the arts +and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy. Both toward Renaissance and +Reform he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an +austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other no desire to alter +either the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church. Yet the +history of Savonarola is not to be dissociated from that of the Italian +Renaissance. He more clearly than any other man discerned the moral and +political situation of his country. When all the states of Italy seemed +sunk in peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war, and felt the +imminence of overwhelming calamity. The purification of customs which he +preached was demanded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by the +wickedness of the tyrants. The scourge which he prophesied did in fact +descend upon Italy. In addition to this clairvoyance by right of which +we call him prophet, the hold he took on Florence at a critical moment +of Italian history is alone enough to entitle him to more than merely +passing notice.</p> + +<p>Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.<a name="FNanchor_1_374" id="FNanchor_1_374" /><a href="#Footnote_1_374" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His grandfather +Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had removed to the capital of the +Este princes at the beginning of the fifteenth century. There he held +the office of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg499" +id="pg499">499</a></span> court physician; and Girolamo was intended for the same +profession. But early in his boyhood the future prophet showed signs of +disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible dislike of the +court. Under the House of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for +its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more +frequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy maintain so much of +feudal magnificence and chivalrous enjoyment. The square castle of red +brick, which still stands in the middle of the town, was thronged with +poets, players, fools who enjoyed an almost European reputation, court +flatterers, knights, pages, scholars and fair ladies. But beneath its +cube of solid masonry, on a level with the moat, shut out from daylight +by a sevenfold series of iron bars, lay dungeons in which the objects of +the Duke's displeasure clanked chains and sighed their lives away.<a name="FNanchor_2_375" id="FNanchor_2_375" /><a href="#Footnote_2_375" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +Within the precincts of this palace the young Savonarola learned to hate +alike the worldly vices and the despotic cruelty against which in +after-life he prophesied and fought unto the death.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_374" id="Footnote_1_374" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_374"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In this chapter on Savonarola I have made use of Villari's +<i>Life</i> (translated by Leonard Horner, Longmans, 1863, 2 vols.), +Michelet's <i>Histoire de France</i>, vol. vii., Milman's article on +Savonarola (John Murray, 1870), Nardi's <i>Istoria Fiorentina</i>, book ii., +and the <i>Memoirs</i> of De Comines.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_375" id="Footnote_2_375" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_375"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See p. 424.</p></div> + +<p>Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers only tell us that he +was grave and solitary, frequenting churches, praying with passionate +persistence, obstinately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join his +father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas seem +to have been the favorite masters of his study. In fact he refused the +new lights of the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical training +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg500" +id="pg500">500</a></span> the schoolmen. Already at the age of twenty we find him composing a +poem in Italian on the Ruin of the World, in which he cries: 'The whole +world is in confusion: all virtue is extinguished, and all good manners; +I find no living light abroad, nor one who blushes for his vices.' His +point of departure had been taken, and the keynote of his life had been +struck. The sense of intolerable sin that came upon him in Ferrara +haunted him through manhood, set his hand against the Popes and despots +of Italy, and gave peculiar tone to his prophetic utterances.</p> + +<p>The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the storms of the +world, and as a rest from the torments of the sins of others, now began +to sway his mind.<a name="FNanchor_1_376" id="FNanchor_1_376" /><a href="#Footnote_1_376" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But he communicated his desire to no one. It would +have grieved his father and his mother to find that their son, who was, +they hoped, to be a shining light at the court of Ferrara, had +determined to assume the cowl. At length, however, came the time at +which he felt that leave the world he must. 'It was on the 23d of April +1475,' says Villari; 'he was sitting with his lute and playing a sad +melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of divination, turned +suddenly round to him, and exclaimed mournfully, My son, that is a sign +we are soon to part. He roused himself, and continued, but with a +trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute, without raising his +eyes from<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg501" +id="pg501">501</a></span> the ground.' This would make a picture: spring twilight in +the quaint Italian room, with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay +across the open window; the mother looking up with anxious face from her +needlework; the youth, with those terrible eyes and tense lips and +dilated nostrils of the future prophet, not yet worn by years of care, +but strongly marked and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy chords +of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in secular attire.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_376" id="Footnote_1_376" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_376"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Often in later life Savonarola cried that he had sought the +cloister to find rest, but that God had chosen, instead of bringing him +into calm waters, to cast him on a tempest-swollen sea. See the Sermon +quoted by Villari, vol. i. p. 298.</p></div> + +<p>On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in secret and journeyed to +Bologna. There he entered the order of S. Dominic, the order of the +Preachers, the order of his master S. Thomas, the order too, let us +remember, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to his father +after taking this step is memorable. In it he says: 'The motives by +which I have been led to enter into a religious life are these: the +great misery of the world; the iniquities of men, their rapes, +adulteries, robberies, their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphemies: +so that things have come to such a pass that no one can be found acting +righteously. Many times a day have I repeated with tears the verse:</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum!</span><br /> +</p> +<p>I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the blinded people of +Italy; and the more so because I saw everywhere virtue despised and vice +honored.' We see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its origin in a +deep sense of the wickedness of the world. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg502" +id="pg502">502</a></span> was the same spirit as +that which drove the early Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid. +Austere and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he had moved +long enough among the Ferrarese holiday-makers. Those elegant young men +in tight hose and particolored jackets, with oaths upon their lips and +deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, were no associates for +him. It is touching, however, to note that no text of Ezekiel or +Jeremiah, but Virgil's musical hexameter, sounded through his soul the +warning to depart.</p> + +<p>In this year Savonarola composed another poem, this time on the Ruin of +the Church. In his boyhood he had witnessed the pompous shows which +greeted Æneas Sylvius, more like a Roman general than a new-made Pope, +on his entrance into Ferrara. Since then he had seen the monster Sixtus +mount the Papal throne. No wonder if he, who had fled from the world to +the Church for purity and peace, should need to vent his passion in a +song. 'Where,' he cries, 'are the doctors of old times, the saints, the +learning, charity, chastity of the past?' The Church answers by +displaying her rent raiment and wounded body, and by pointing to the +cavern in which she has to make her home. 'Who,' exclaims the poet, 'has +wrought this wrong?' <i>Una fallace, superba meretrice</i>—Rome! Then indeed +the passion of the novice breaks in fire:—<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Deh! per Dio, donna,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Se romper si potria quelle grandi ale!</span><br /> +</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg503" +id="pg503">503</a></span> +The Church replies:—<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tu píangi e taci: e questo meglio parmi.</span><br /> +</p> +<p>No other answer could be given to Savonarola's impatient yearnings even +by his own hot heart, while he yet remained a young and unknown monk in +Bologna. Nor, strive as he might strive through all his life, was it +granted to him to break those outspread wings of arrogant Rome.</p> + +<p>The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 1482, when he was sent +first to Ferrara and then to Florence on missions by his superiors. But +at neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet has no honor in his +own country; and for pagan-hearted Florence, though destined to be the +theater of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no thundrous burden of +invective to utter. Besides, his voice was sharp and thin; his face and +person were not prepossessing. The style of his discourse was adapted to +cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic distinctions. +The great orator had not yet arisen in him. The friar, with all his +dryness and severity, was but too apparent. With what strange feelings +must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence! In after-days he +used to say that he foreknew those streets and squares were destined to +be the scene of his labors. But then, voiceless, powerless, without +control of his own genius, without the consciousness of his prophetic +mission, he brooded alone and out of harmony with the beautiful and +mundane city. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg504" id="pg504">504</a></span> charm of the hills and gardens of Valdarno, the +loveliness of Giotto's tower, the amplitude of Brunelleschi's +dome—these may have sunk deep into his soul. And the subtle temper of +the Florentine intellect must have attracted his own keen spirit by a +secret sympathy. For Florence erelong became the city of his love, the +first-born of his yearnings.</p> + +<p>In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid libraries by the +liberality of the Medicean princes, he was at peace. The walls of that +convent had recently been decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico, even +as a man might crowd the leaves of a missal with illuminations. Among +these Savonarola meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit and in +contact with the holiday folk of Florence he was ill at ease. Lorenzo +de' Medici overshadowed the whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan +spirit of the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a proper +incarnation, was the very opposite of Savonarola, who had already judged +the classical revival by its fruits, and had conceived a spiritual +resurrection for his country. At Florence a passionate love of art and +learning—the enthusiasm which prompted men to spend their fortunes +upon MSS. and statues, the sensibility to beauty which produced the +masterworks of Donatello and Ghiberti, the thirst for knowledge which +burned in Pico and Poliziano and Ficino—existed side by side with +impudent immorality, religious deadness, cold contempt for truth, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg505" +id="pg505">505</a></span> +cynical admiration of successful villainy. Both the good and the evil +which flourished on this fertile soil so luxuriantly were combined in +the versatile genius of the merchant prince, whose policy it was to +stifle freedom by caressing the follies, vices, and intellectual tastes +of his people.</p> + +<p>The young Savonarola was as yet no match for Lorenzo. And whither could +he look for help? The reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to +be expected from the Church. Florence well knew that Sixtus had plotted +to murder the Medici before the altar at the moment of the elevation of +the Host. Excommunicated for a deed of justice after the failure of this +Popish plot, the city had long been at war with the pontiff. If anywhere +it was in the cells of the philosophers, in that retreat where Ficino +burned his lamp to Plato, in that hall where the Academy crowned their +master's bust with laurels, that the more sober-minded citizens found +ghostly comfort and advice. But from this philosophy the fervent soul of +Savonarola turned with no less loathing, and with more contempt, than +from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, +which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens +during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated +theism developed by Platonic students. While the humanists were exalting +pagan license, and while the Church was teaching the worst kinds of +immorality, the philosophers kept alive in cultivated minds a sense of +God.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg506" +id="pg506">506</a></span>But the monk, nourished on the Bible and S. Thomas, valued this +confusion of spirits and creeds in a chaos of indiscriminate erudition, +at a small price. He had the courage in the fifteenth century at +Florence to proclaim that the philosophers were in hell, and that an old +woman knew more of saving faith than Plato. Savonarola and Lorenzo were +opposed as champions of two hostile principles alike emergent from the +very life of the Renaissance: paganism reborn in the one, the spirit of +the gospel in the other. Both were essentially modern; for it was the +function of the Renaissance to restore to the soul of man its double +heritage of the classic past and Christian liberty, freeing it from the +fetters which the Middle Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were Lorenzo +and Savonarola destined to clash. The obscure friar at this time was +preaching to an audience of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while +Poliziano and all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons of Fra +Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This man flattered the taste of +the moment by composing orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to +the Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon its similarity to +Platonism. Who could then have guessed that beneath the cowl of the +harsh-voiced Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years +would inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful enough to destroy +the fabric of the Medicean despotism?</p> + +<p>From Florence, where he had met with no success, Savonarola<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg507" +id="pg507">507</a></span> was sent to +San Gemignano, a little town on the top of a high hill between Florence +and Siena. We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading +frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange +feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone, crowded together within the +narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from +these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and +the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the +slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles +all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked +here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the +grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first +flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola's soul. Here for the +first time he prophesied: 'The church will be scourged, then +regenerated, and this quickly.' These are the celebrated three +conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic +utterances adhered.</p> + +<p>But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak; +his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe, still wavering between +strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward +rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him. +Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had +learned by heart each verse of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg508" +id="pg508">508</a></span> on +their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every +suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the +prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in +wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame +which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze +at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. 'Midway upon +the path of life' he opened the Book of Revelation: he figured to the +people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins +of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to +them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the +interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing +shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they +believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of +Gaston de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia, +her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk.</p> + +<p>As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the +right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of +preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were, +and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration.<a name="FNanchor_1_377" id="FNanchor_1_377" /><a href="#Footnote_1_377" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Fra +Bartolommeo, one of his followers, painted<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg509" +id="pg509">509</a></span> a profile of him in the +character of S. Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of +expression which his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of +the sweet and gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his +nation at the bar of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, +keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait +is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in +the Uffizzi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple +of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore +justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented +faithfully the outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his +peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders. +Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, +rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply +sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye +that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, +with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of +vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is +large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with +massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and +utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent: +between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation +of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the +throes<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg510" +id="pg510">510</a></span> of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; +and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine +sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit +machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, +beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in +the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary +and a monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The +wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed +over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color +of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive +yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily +overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than +by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were +succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization. +From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up +the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power, +filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his +discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips +of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments +and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of +continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings +severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience tears, at another +freezing them with terror, again quickening<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg511" +id="pg511">511</a></span> their souls with prayers +and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very +spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they +advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the +sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,<a name="FNanchor_2_378" id="FNanchor_2_378" /><a href="#Footnote_2_378" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> met +and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no +longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece +of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery +crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of +vision, he ascended the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like +Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of +the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The +walls of the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings dominated by one +ringing voice. The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons, +at times breaks off with these words: 'Here I was so overcome with +weeping that I could not go on.' Pico della Mirandola tells us that the +mere sound of Savonarola's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, +thronged through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom: a +cold shiver ran through<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg512" +id="pg512">512</a></span> the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head +stood on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: 'These sermons +caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed +through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_377" id="Footnote_1_377" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_377"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in +Harford's <i>Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti</i> (Longmans, 1857 vol. i.), +and also in Villari.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_378" id="Footnote_2_378" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_378"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Nardi, in his <i>Istorie di Firenze</i> (lib. ii. cap. 16), describes the +crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola preach: 'Per la +moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi bastante la chiesa +cattedrale di santa Maria del Fiore, ancora che molto grande e capace +sia, fu necessario edificar dentro lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto +al pergamo, certi gradi di legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a +guisa di teatro, e così dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e +dalla parte di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.'</p></div> + +<p>Such was the preacher: and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme +on which he loved to dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is at +hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her +iniquity—for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the +world—for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon +souls—for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young +men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy! Nor did Savonarola +deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid +bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his +hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly +portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity +into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the +bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the +passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on +Italy.<a name="FNanchor_1_379" id="FNanchor_1_379" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_379" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> You may read pages of +his sermons which<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg513" +id="pg513">513</a></span> seem like vivid narratives of what afterwards took +place in the sack of Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre +of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The +hell within them was revealed. The coming doom above them was made +manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a +generation of vipers, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' +was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_379" id="Footnote_1_379" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_379"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils +of Italy was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other people +what was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar believed +implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower sense, that is, in his +power to predict events, such as the deaths of Lorenzo and the King of +Naples, the punishment of Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc. +Pico says: 'Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the +whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as time +went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he possessed this +faculty. After his trial and execution a very uncomfortable sense of +doubt remained upon the minds of those who had been witnesses of his +life-drama. Upon this topic Guicciardini, <i>Stor. Fior., Op. Ined.</i> vol. +iii. p. 179; Nardi, <i>Stor. Fior.</i> lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, may be read +with advantage.</p></div> + +<p>'I began'—Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of +sermons delivered in 1491—'I began publicly to expound the Revelation +in our Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to +develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church +would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would +strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would +happen shortly.' It is by right of the foresight of a new age contained +in these three famous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves to +be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform: it +did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the +discipline, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg514" +id="pg514">514</a></span> to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no +founder of a new order: unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he +never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his +successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no +militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for +education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, +he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible +studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became +convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From +that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new +age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that +while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone +felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its +tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very +nostrils of the God of Hosts.</p> + +<p>To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his +prophecies began to fulfill themselves. Within three years after his +first sermon in S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de' +Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new +chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history. The Reform +of the Church was also destined to follow. What Savonarola had foreseen, +here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the +means<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg515" +id="pg515">515</a></span> he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense +of discerning the catastrophe to which circumstances must inevitably +lead, another thing to trace beforehand the path which will be taken by +the hurricanes that change the face of the world. Remaining in his soul +a monk, attached by education and by natural sympathy to the past rather +than the future, he felt in spite of himself the spirit of the coming +age. Had he lived but one century earlier, we should not have called him +prophet. It was the Renaissance which set the seal of truth upon his +utterances. Yet in his vision of the world to be, he was like Balaam +prophesying blindly of a star.</p> + +<p>Sixtus IV. had died and been succeeded by Innocent VIII. Innocent had +given place to Alexander. The very nadir of the abyss had been reached. +Then Savonarola saw a vision and heard a voice: <i>Ecce gladius Domini +super terram cito et velociter.</i> The sword turned earthward; the air was +darkened with fiery sleet and arrows; thunders rolled; the world was +filled with pestilences, wars, famines. At another time he dreamed and +looked toward Rome. From the Eternal City there rose a black cross, +reaching to heaven, and on it was inscribed <i>Crux iræ Dei.</i> Then too the +skies were troubled; clouds rushed through the air discharging darts and +fire and swords, and multitudes below were dying. These visions he +published in sermons and in print. Pictures were made from them. They +and the three<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg516" +id="pg516">516</a></span> conclusions went abroad through Italy. Again, Charles was +preparing for his expedition. Savonarola took the Ark of Noah for his +theme. The deluge was at hand; he bade his hearers enter the ship of +refuge before the terrible and mighty nation came: 'O Italy! O Rome! I +give you over to the hands of a people who will wipe you out from among +the nations! I see them descending like lions. Pestilence comes marching +hand in hand with war. The deaths will be so many that the buriers shall +go through the streets crying out: Who hath dead, who hath dead? and one +will bring his father, and another his son. O Rome! I cry again to you +to repent, Repent, Venice! Milan, repent!' 'The prophets a hundred years +ago proclaimed to you the flagellation of the Church. For five years I +have been announcing it: and now again I cry to you. The Lord is full of +wrath. The angels on their knees cry to Him: Strike, strike! The good +sob and groan: We can no more. The orphans, the widows say: We are +devoured, we cannot go on living. All the Church triumphant hath cried +to Christ: Thou diedst in vain. It is heaven which is in combat. The +saints of Italy, the angels, are leagued with the barbarians. Those who +called them in have put the saddles to the horses. Italy is in +confusion, saith the Lord; this time she shall be yours. And the Lord +cometh above his saints, above the blessed ones who march in +battle-array, who are drawn up in squadrons. Whither are they bound? S. +Peter<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg517" +id="pg517">517</a></span> is for Rome, crying: To Rome, to Rome! and S. Paul and S. Gregory +march, crying: To Rome! And behind them go the sword, the pestilence, +the famine. S. John cries: Up, up, to Florence! And the plague follows +him. S. Anthony cries: Ho for Lombardy! S. Mark cries: Haste we to the +city that is throned upon the waters! And all the angels of heaven, +sword in hand, and all the celestial consistory, march on unto this +war.'</p> + +<p>Then he speaks of his own fate: 'What shall be the end of our war, you +ask? If this be a general question, I shall answer Victory! If you ask +it of myself in particular, I answer, Death, or to be hewn in pieces. +This is our faith, this is our guerdon, this is our reward! We ask for +no more than this. But when you see me dead, be not then troubled. All +those who have prophesied have suffered and been slain. To make my word +prevail, there is needed the blood of many.'</p> + +<p>These are the prophecies with which Savonarola anticipated the coming of +a foreign conqueror. It is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the +double feeling of the prophet. Desire for the advent of Charles as a +Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the Church, contends with an +instinctive horror of the barbarian. Savonarola, like Dante, like all +Italian patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had been +lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could +not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from +beyond the Alps.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg518" +id="pg518">518</a></span> Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the +violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's +chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened +the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.<a name="FNanchor_1_380" id="FNanchor_1_380" /><a href="#Footnote_1_380" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Had he +taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within, +instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a +far more lasting meed of fame. As it was, together with the passion for +liberty which became a religion with his followers, he strove to revive +the obsolete tactics of an earlier age, and bequeathed to Florence the +weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy bore bitter fruits in +the next century. If it was the memory of the Friar which nerved the +citizens of Florence to sustain the siege of 1528, the same memory bound +them to seek aid from inconsequent Francis, and to hope that at the last +moment a cohort of seraphim would defend their walls.<a +name="FNanchor_2_381" id="FNanchor_2_381" /><a href="#Footnote_2_381" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_380" id="Footnote_1_380" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_380"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Segni, <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of +Savonarola's, <i>Gigli con gigli dover fiorire</i>, as one of the causes of +the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in 1529.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_381" id="Footnote_2_381" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_381"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points.</p></div> + +<p>That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt. They +were in fact, as I have already tried to show, a view of the political +and moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of profound +religious conviction and based upon a theory of the divine government of +the world. But now far he allowed himself to be guided by visions and by +words uttered to his soul in trance, is a somewhat different<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg519" +id="pg519">519</a></span> question. +It is just at this point that a man possessed of acute insight and +trusting to the truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong +devotional excitement to pass the border land which separates healthy +intuition from hallucination. If Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew +prophets inclined him to believe in dreams and revelations, yet on the +other hand the strong logic of his intellect, trained in scholastic +distinctions, taught him to mistrust the promptings of a power that +spoke to him when he was somewhat more or less than his prosaic self. +How could he be sure that the spirit came from God? We know for certain +that he struggled against the impulse of divination and refused at times +to obey it. But it overcame him. Like the Cassandra of Æschylus, he +panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he +cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I +have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into +a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I +wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished +to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be +silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the Lord is in my heart; +and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones. +Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters, +Thy will, be done.'</p> + +<p>At another time he says: 'I remember well that upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg520" +id="pg520">520</a></span> one occasion, in +the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my +sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all +allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution. God is my +witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night +I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine. At +daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake, +while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me: "Fool that thou +art, dost thou not see that it is God's will that thou shouldst keep to +the same path?" The consequence of which was that on the same day I +preached a tremendous sermon.'</p> + +<p>These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola's sincerity. +If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that +too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching +examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled +him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the +wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and +diffident, within the toils of ecstasy.</p> + +<p>Returning to the details of Savonarola's biography, we find him still in +Lombardy in 1486. After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he +made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They +continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his +nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote +the Life<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg521" +id="pg521">521</a></span> of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this +time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well +established. Now came the turning-point in his life. Fourteen hundred +and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of +power in Italy. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument +of his recall in this year to Florence. Lorenzo, who, if he could have +foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have +stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and +bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished +so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching +of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could +not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul. +Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as +incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the +monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon +on a passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this commencement he is +reported to have said: 'Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall +preach for eight years.' The Florentines were greatly moved. Savonarola +had to remove from the Church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began +the spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth without +intermission till his death.</p> + +<p>Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this uncompromising<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg522" +id="pg522">522</a></span> monk, +who, not content with moral exhortations, confidently predicted the +coming of a foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of +the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it was no longer easy +to suppress the preacher. Very early in his Florentine career Savonarola +had proved himself to be fully as great an administrator as an orator. +The Convent of San Marco dominated by his personal authority, had made +him Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thorough reform of +all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany. It was usual for the Priors +elect of S. Mark to pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their +patrons. Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom, +omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the discourtesy, is reported to +have said, with a smile: 'See now! here is a stranger who has come into +<i>my house</i>, and will not deign to visit me.' He forgot that Savonarola +looked upon his convent as a house of God. At the same time the prince +made overtures of goodwill to the Prior, frequently attended his +services, and dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savonarola +took no notice of him, and handed his florins over to the poor of the +city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola's old +rival, against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a match for +the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was forced to +leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With such unbending haughtiness +did Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg523" +id="pg523">523</a></span> had +recognized the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the +opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him as a tyrant. He +would not give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of +civility. In the same spirit he afterwards denounced Alexander, scorned +his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of Christendom for the +convening of a Council. Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme insight +into character, and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore, when +the hour for dying came, and when, true child of the Renaissance that he +was, he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent for +Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest friar he knew. The +magnanimity of the Medici was only equaled by the firmness of the monk. +Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed his sins, +Savonarola said: 'Three things are required of you: to have a full and +lively faith in God's mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained; +to give back liberty to Florence.' Lorenzo assented readily to the two +first requisitions. At the third he turned his face in silence to the +wall. He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was +easier than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without +absolution. Lorenzo died.<a name="FNanchor_1_382" id="FNanchor_1_382" /><a href="#Footnote_1_382" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_382" id="Footnote_1_382" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_382"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on +the facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Poliziano, who was +with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention them in his +letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv. Kal. Jun. 1492). But Burlmacchi, +Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the Frate's party, agree in the +story. What Poliziano wrote was that Savonarola confessed Lorenzo and +retired without volunteering the blessing. Razzi says the interview +between Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; Pico and +Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the lips of +Savonarola. We have therefore to judge between the testimony of +Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and the veracity of +several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility toward the Medici, but in +direct intercourse with the only man who could tell the exact truth of +what passed—the confessor, Savonarola, who had been alone with Lorenzo. +Villari, after sifting the evidence, arrives at the conclusion that we +may believe Burlamacchi. The Baron Reumont, in his recent <i>Life of +Lorenzo</i>, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some solid reasons for accepting this +conclusion with caution, and Gino Capponi expresses a distinct disbelief +in Burlamacchi's narration.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg524" +id="pg524">524</a></span>The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore liberty to Florence, +not only broke the peace of the dying prince, but it also afterwards for +ever ruled the conduct of Savonarola. From this time his life is that of +a statesman no less than of a preacher. What Lorenzo refused, or was +indeed upon his deathbed quite unable to perform, the monk determined to +achieve. Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the +pulpit. Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration +for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength +and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This work he sealed with +martyrdom. The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans +in Florence was political no less than pious. Whether Savonarola was +right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be +questioned. What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the +maker and destroyer of kings and constitutions? When we call him by +their title, we mean to say that he, like them, controlled by spiritual +force the fortunes of his people. Whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg525" +id="pg525">525</a></span> he sought it or not, this +rôle of politician was thrust upon him by the course of events: nor was +the history of Italian cities deficient in precedents of similar +functions assumed by preaching friars.<a name="FNanchor_1_383" id="FNanchor_1_383" /><a href="#Footnote_1_383" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_383" id="Footnote_1_383" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_383"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> It is enough to allude to Arnold of Brescia in Rome, to Fra +Bussolari in Pavia, ami to John of Vicenza. Sec Appendix iv.</p></div> + +<p>To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de' Medici, who surrendered +the fortresses of Tuscany to the French army. While Savonarola was +prophesying a sword, a scourge, a deluge, Charles VIII. rode at the head +of his knighthood into Florence. The city was leaderless, unused to +liberty. Who but the monk who had predicted the invasion should now +attempt to control it? Who but he whose voice alone had power to +assemble and to sway the Florentines should now direct them? His +administrative faculty in a narrow sphere had been proved by his reform +of the Dominican Convents. His divine mission was authenticated by the +arrival of the French. The Lord had raised him up to act as well as to +utter. He felt this: the people felt it. He was not the man to refuse +responsibility.</p> + +<p>During the years of 1493 and 1494, when Florence together with Italy +was in imminent peril, the voice of Savonarola never ceased to ring. His +sermons on the psalm 'Quam bonus' and on the Ark of Noah are among the +most stupendous triumphs of his eloquence. From his pulpit beneath the +somber dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words of power to +resuscitate the free spirit of his Florentines. In<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg526" id="pg526">526</a></span> 1495, when the +Medici had been expelled and the French army had gone upon its way to +Naples, Savonarola was called upon to reconstitute the state. He bade +the people abandon their old system of Parlamenti and Balia, and +establish a Grand Council after the Venetian type.<a +name="FNanchor_1_384" id="FNanchor_1_384" /><a href="#Footnote_1_384" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This institution, which seemed to the +Florentines the best they had ever adopted, might be regarded by the +historian as only one among their many experiments in +constitution-making, if Savonarola had not stamped it with his peculiar +genius by announcing that Christ was to be considered the Head of the +State.<a name="FNanchor_2_385" id="FNanchor_2_385" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_385" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> This step at once<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg527" +id="pg527">527</a></span> gave a +theocratic bias to the government, which determined all the acts of the +monk's administration. Not content with political organization, too +impatient to await the growth of good manners from sound institutions, +he set about a moral and religious reformation. Pomps, vanities, and +vices were to be abandoned. Immediately the women and the young men +threw aside their silks and fine attire. The Carnival songs ceased. +Hymns and processions took the place of obscene choruses and pagan +triumphs. The laws were remodeled in the same severe and abrupt spirit. +Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola ordained, Florence executed. By +the magic of his influence the city for a moment assumed a new aspect. +It seemed as though the old austerity which Dante and Villani praised +were about to return without the factious hate and pride that ruined +medæival Tuscany. In everything done by Savonarola at this epoch +there was a strange combination of political sagacity with monastic +zeal. Neither Guicciardini nor Machiavelli, writing years afterwards, +when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was again enslaved, could +propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande. Yet the fierce +revivalism advocated by the friar—the bonfire of Lorenzo di +Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and classic +poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to have +valued in one heap at 22,000 florins—the recitation of such +Bacchanalian songs as this—<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg528" +id="pg528">528</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never was there so sweet a gladness,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Joy of so pure and strong a fashion,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As with zeal and love and passion</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cry with me, cry as I now cry,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Madness, madness, holy madness!</span><br /> +</p> +<p>—the procession of boys and girls through the streets, shaming their +elders into hypocritical piety, and breeding in their own hearts the +intolerable priggishness of premature pietism—could not bring forth +excellent and solid fruits. The change was far too violent. The temper +of the race was not prepared for it. It clashed too rudely with +Renaissance culture. It outraged the sense of propriety in the more +moderate citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of +the self-indulgent and the worldly. A reaction was inevitable.<a name="FNanchor_3_386" id="FNanchor_3_386" /><a href="#Footnote_3_386" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_384" id="Footnote_1_384" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_384"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This change was certainly wrought out by the influence of +the friar and approved by him. Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks clearly on +the point, and says that the friar for this service to the city 'debbe +esser messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e debbe essere amato e onorato +da' Fiorentini non altrimenti che Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli +Ateniesi e Licurgo da' Lacedemoni.' The evil of the old system was that +the Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the Piazza, +was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper initiative, while the +Balia, or select body, to whom they then intrusted plenipotentiary +authority, was always the faction for the moment uppermost. For the mode +of working the Parlamento and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. +cap. 4; Varchi, vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola inscribed this octave stanza +on the wall of the Consiglio Grande: +</p><p> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">'Se questo popolar consiglio e certo</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Governo, popol, de la tua cittate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Conservi, che da Dio t'e stato offerto,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In pace starai sempre e libertate:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tien dunque l'occhio della mente aperto,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chè molte insidie ognor ti fien parate;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">E sappi che chi vuol far parlamento</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vuol tórti dalle mani il reggimento.'</span><br /> + +</p></div> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_385" id="Footnote_2_385" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_385"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169. Niccolo Capponi, in 1527, +returning to the policy of Savonarola, caused the Florentines to elect +Christ for their king, and inscribed upon the door of the Palazzo +Pubblico:— +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Y.H.S. CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">POPULI S.P. DECRETO ELECTUS.</span><br /> +</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_386" id="Footnote_3_386" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_386"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat similar +to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war, the majority of +the nation with them. Besides, the English temperament was more adapted +to Puritanism than the Italian, nor were the manifestations of piety +prescribed by Parliament so extravagant. And yet even in England a +reaction took place under the Restoration.</p></div> + +<p>Meanwhile the strong wine of prophecy intoxicated Savonarola. His fiery +temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine +affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision +succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were +suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining +enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the +discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg529" +id="pg529">529</a></span> of a republic, he should +make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the +city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savonarola's +position would become untenable. Parties began to form and gather to a +head. The followers of the monk, by far the largest section of the +people, received the name of Piagnoni or Frateschi. The friends of the +Medici, few at first and cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of +Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but desired to +see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as the +Arrabbiati.</p> + +<p>The discontent which germinated in Florence displayed itself in Rome. +Alexander found it intolerable to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk +who had made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At first he +used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure +Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander +suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same +time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to +reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though +still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his +preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not +intimidate. To the suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered +him, Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of martyrdom. +Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he preached the most fiery of +all his Lenten courses.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg530" +id="pg530">530</a></span> Of this series of orations Milman writes: 'His +triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 on Haggai and the Psalms. +But it is in the Carême of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher +girds himself to his full strength, when he had attained his full +authority, and could not but be conscious that there was a deep and +dangerous rebellion brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at +Florence, and when already ominous rumors began to be heard from Rome. +He that would know the power, the daring, the oratory of Savonarola, +must study this volume.'<a name="FNanchor_1_387" id="FNanchor_1_387" /><a href="#Footnote_1_387" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_387" id="Footnote_1_387" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_387"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> These sermons were printed from the notes taken by Lorenzo +Violi in one volume at Venice, 1534.</p></div> + +<p>Very terrific indeed are the denunciations contained in these +discourses—denunciations fulminated without disguise against the Pope +and priests of Rome, against the Medici, against the Florentines +themselves, in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear. +Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in Savonarola's most +impassioned style and heightened by his most impressive imagery, are +political harangues and polemical arguments against the Pope. The +position assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not a strong one, +and the reasoning by which he supported it was marked by curious +self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He +had not the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to the length +of braving Alexander by burning his bulls and by denying the authority<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg531" +id="pg531">531</a></span> +of popes in general. Not daring to break all connection with the Holy +See, he was driven to quibble about the distinction between the office +and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obedience to the Church +whose head and chief he daily outraged. At the same time he took no +pains to enlist the sympathies of the Italian princes, many of whom +might presumably have been hostile to the Pope, on his side of the +quarrel. All the tyrants came in for a share of his prophetic +indignation. Lodovico Sforza, the lord of Mirandola, and Piero de' +Medici felt themselves specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to +extinguish this source of scandal to established governments. Against so +great and powerful a host one man could not stand alone. Savonarola's +position became daily more dangerous in Florence. The merchants, +excommunicated by the Pope and thus exposed to pillage in foreign +markets, grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of +interdiction lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no longer be +administered or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians. +Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called +Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. At last in +March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, or supreme executive of +Florence, suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace +were weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See: nor could any +but his own fanatical adherents anticipate the wars which threatened the +state, with equanimity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg532" +id="pg532">532</a></span>Savonarola himself felt that the supreme hour was come. One more +resource was left; to that he would now betake himself: he could +afterwards but die. This last step was the convening of a general +council.<a name="FNanchor_1_388" id="FNanchor_1_388" /><a href="#Footnote_1_388" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Accordingly he addressed letters to all the European +potentates. One of these, inscribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched, +intercepted, and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and +warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is +noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but +must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to +confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist +me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the +work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a +just punishment on those who persecute me and would impede its progress. +As for myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May +your Holiness no longer delay but look to your salvation.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_388" id="Footnote_1_388" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_388"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia +had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a Cardinal's hat +to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less than feared through the +length and breadth of Italy. But Savonarola had allowed the favorable +moment to pass by.</p></div> + +<p>But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the +Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which +Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more +confident in his visions and more<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg533" +id="pg533">533</a></span> willing to admit his supernatural +powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed +him. Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire. +Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.<a name="FNanchor_1_389" id="FNanchor_1_389" /><a href="#Footnote_1_389" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A +Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether +he were of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took +up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. The furnace was +prepared: both monks stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assembled +in the Piazza to witness what should happen. Various obstacles, however, +arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people +had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain, +unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was +but a mere man. The Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's convent +was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day +of his execution by the rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those +last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell +the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the +latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in +1573. Of the rest we hear only<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg534" +id="pg534">534</a></span> of prolonged torture before stupid and +malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory +confessions. What he really said and chose to stand by, what he +retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what +was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.<a name="FNanchor_2_390" id="FNanchor_2_390" /><a href="#Footnote_2_390" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Though the spirit +was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be +a martyr. At ten o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth +together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and +brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage +prepared in the Piazza.<a name="FNanchor_3_391" id="FNanchor_3_391" /><a +href="#Footnote_3_391" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> These two men were +hanged first. Savonarola<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg535" +id="pg535">535</a></span> was left till the last. As the hangman tied the +rope round his neck, a voice from the crowd shouted: 'Prophet, now is the time to perform a +miracle!' The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped +his friar's frock from him, and said, 'I separate thee from the Church +militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and combative even at the +point of death, replied, 'Militant yes: triumphant, no: <i>that</i> is not +yours.' The last words he uttered were, 'The Lord has suffered as much +for me.' Then the noose was tightened round his neck. The fire beneath +was lighted. The flames did not reach his body while life was in it; but +those who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the sign +of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his heart still whole +among the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this day flowers have +been placed every morning of the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza +where his body fell.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_389" id="Footnote_1_389" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_389"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was +finally got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the Signory, who +were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of Savonarola. The +Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together with Fra Domenico was a +certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi calls him Andrea Rondinelli.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_390" id="Footnote_2_390" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_390"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of +Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He says: 'Avendo +domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava delle sue esamine fatte +infino a quel di, rispose, che ciò ch' egli aveva ne' tempi passati +detto e predetto era la pura verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e +aveva ritratto, era tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per +la paura che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e +ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato, perciò +che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel sopportare i supplicii.' +Burchard, in his Diary, reports the childish, foul, malignant gossip +current in Rome. This may be read in the 'Preuves et Observations' +appended to the <i>Memoirs</i> of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the +Marchese Gino Capponi's <i>Storia della Firenze</i> (tom. ii. pp. 248-51) for +a critical analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_391" id="Footnote_3_391" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_391"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia which +represents the burning of the three friars. The whole Piazza della +Signoria is shown, with the houses of the fifteenth century, and without +the statues which afterwards adorned it. The spectator fronts the +Palazzo, and has to his extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center +of the square is occupied by a great circular pile of billets and +fagots, to which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left +angle of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to which +the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are suspended. Sta Maria +del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the distant hills above Fiesole complete +a scene which is no doubt accurate in detail.</p></div> + +<p>Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons +and other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were +struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the +Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange +inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a +contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization +never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg536" +id="pg536">536</a></span> +his name and in his honor.<a name="FNanchor_1_392" id="FNanchor_1_392" +/><a href="#Footnote_1_392" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A legend similar to +that of S. Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory +of even the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in +the hearts of the Florentines. For many years to come his name was the +watchword of their freedom; his prophecies sustained their spirit during +the siege of 1528;<a name="FNanchor_2_393" id="FNanchor_2_393" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_393" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and it was only by +returning to his policy that Niccolo Capponi and Francesco Carducci +ruled the people through those troublous times. The political action of +Savonarola forms but a short episode in the history of Florence. His +moral revival belongs to the history of popular enthusiasm. His +philosophical and theological writings are chiefly interesting to the +student of post-medæival scholasticism. His attitude as a monastic +leader of the populace, attempting to play the old game whereby the +factious warfare of a previous age had been suspended by appeals to +piety, and politicians had looked for aid outside the nation, was +anachronistic. But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a new +era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact in the psychology of +the Renaissance.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_392" id="Footnote_1_392" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_392"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Officio del Savonarola</i>, with preface by Cesare Guasti. +Firenze, 1863.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_393" id="Footnote_2_393" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_393"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Guicciardini, in his <i>Ricordt</i>, No. i., refers the incredible +obstinacy of the Florentines at this period in hoping against all hope +and reason to Savonarola: 'questa ostinazione ha causata in gran parte a +fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronirno da +Ferrara.'</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg537" +id="pg537">537</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" />CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<h3>CHARLES VIII.</h3> + + +<p>The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe—Policy of Louis +XI. of France—Character of Charles VIII.—Preparations for the Invasion +of Italy—Position of Lodovico Sforza—Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy +after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici—Weakness of the Republics—II +Moro—The year 1494—Alfonso of Naples—Inefficiency of the Allies to +cope with France—Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of +Italy by Giuliano della Rovere—Charles at Asti and Pavia—Murder of +Gian Galeazzo Sforza—Mistrust in the French Army—Rapallo and +Fivizzano—The Entrance into Tuscany—Part played by Piero de' +Medici—Charles at Pisa—His Entrance into Florence—Piero Capponi—The +March on Rome—Entry into Rome—Panic of Alexander VI.—The March on +Naples—The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand—Alfonso II. escapes +to Sicily—Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia—Charles at Naples—The +League against the French—De Comines at Venice—Charles makes his +Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli—The Battle of +Fornovo—Charles reaches Asti and returns to France—Italy becomes the +Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany—Importance of the +Expedition of Charles VIII.</p> + +<p>One of the chief features of the Renaissance was the appearance for the +first time on the stage of history of full-formed and colossal nations. +France, Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure their strength. +Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, even Rome, are destined in the period +that is opening for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, incapable +of coping with these great powers, will become the mere arena of their +contests, the object of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg538" +id="pg538">538</a></span> their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves +were far from being conscious of this change. Accustomed through three +centuries to a system of diplomacy and intrigue among their own small +states, they still thought more of the balance of power within the +peninsula than of the means to be adopted for repelling foreign force. +Their petty jealousies kept them disunited at an epoch when the best +chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly linked together +in one league, or subject to a single prince, the Italians might not +only have met their foes on equal ground, but even have taken a foremost +place among the modern nations.<a name="FNanchor_1_394" id="FNanchor_1_394" /><a href="#Footnote_1_394" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Instead of that, their princes were +foolish enough to think that they could set France, Germany, or Spain in +motion for the attainment of selfish objects within the narrow sphere of +Italian politics, forgetting the disproportion between these huge +monarchies and a single city like Florence, a mere province like the +Milanese. It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure the +tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of Sforza and of Aragon +with the Papal See in the chains of the same interested policy with the +Commonwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodovico Sforza to fancy +that he could bring the French into the game of peninsular intrigue +without irrevocably ruining<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg539" +id="pg539">539</a></span> its artificial equilibrium. The first +sign of the alteration about to take place in European history was the +invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a +hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. +The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of +Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from +north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within +the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which +it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of the politics of +Europe.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_394" id="Footnote_1_394" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_394"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Read, however, Sismondi's able argument against the view +that Italy, united as a single nation under a sovereign, would have been +better off, vol. vii. p. 298 et seq. He is of opinion that her only +chance lay in a Confederation. See chapter ii. above, for a discussion +of this chance.</p></div> + +<p>The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the counsels of Louis +XI. After spending his lifetime in the consolidation of the French +monarchy, he constructed an inheritance of further empire for his +successors by dictating to the old King Réné of Anjou +(1474) and to the Count of Maine (1481) the two wills by which the +pretensions of the House of Anjou to the Crown of Naples were +transmitted to the royal family of France.<a name="FNanchor_1_395" +id="FNanchor_1_395" /><a href="#Footnote_1_395" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +On the death of Louis, Charles VIII. became King in 1483. He was then +aged only thirteen, and was still governed by his elder sister, Anne de +Beaujeu.<a name="FNanchor_2_396" id="FNanchor_2_396" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_396" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It was not until 1492<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg540" +id="pg540">540</a></span> +that he actually took the reins of the kingdom into his own hands. This +year, we may remark, is one of the most memorable dates in history. In +1492 Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Roderigo Borgia was made Pope: +in 1492 Spain became a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each of these +events was no less fruitful of consequences to Italy than was the +accession of Charles VIII. The discovery of America, followed in another +six years by Vasco de' Gama's exploration of the Indian seas, diverted +the commerce of the world into new channels; Alexander VI. made the +Reformation and the Northern Schism certainties; the consolidation of +Spain prepared a way for the autocracy of Charles V. Thus the +commercial, the spiritual, and the political scepter fell in this one +year from the grasp of the Italians.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_395" id="Footnote_1_395" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_395"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Sismondi, vol. vi. p. 285. The Appendix of Pièces +Justificatives to Philip de Comines' <i>Memoirs</i> contains the will of Réné +King of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated July 22, 1474, by which he +constitutes his nephew, Charles of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, Count of +Maine, his heir-in-chief; as well as the will of Charles of Anjou, King +of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated December 10, 1481, by which he makes +Louis XI. his heir, naming Charles the Dauphin next in succession.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_396" id="Footnote_2_396" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_396"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Her husband was a cadet of the House of Bourbon.</p></div> + +<p>Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have described the appearance +and the character of the prince who was destined to play a part so +prominent, so pregnant of results, and yet so trivial in the affairs of +Europe. Providence, it would seem, deigns frequently to use for the most +momentous purposes some pantaloon or puppet, environing with special +protection and with the prayers and aspirations of whole peoples a mere +manikin. Such a puppet was Charles. 'From infancy he had been weak in +constitution and subject to illness. His stature was short, and his face +very ugly, if you except the dignity and vigor of his glance. His limbs +were so disproportioned that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg541" +id="pg541">541</a></span> he had less the appearance of a man than +of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of liberal arts, but he hardly +knew his letters. Though eager to rule, he was in truth made for +anything but that; for while surrounded by dependents, he exercised no +authority over them and preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business +and fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of +prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from +impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, +promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more +often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people +called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and +feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is +more brief: 'The king was young, a fledgling from the nest; provided +neither with money nor with good sense; weak, willful, and surrounded by +foolish counselors.'</p> + +<p>These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls them, 'men of low +estate, body-servants for the most part of the king,' were headed by +Stephen de Vesc, who had been raised from the post of the king's valet +de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by William Briçonnet, +formerly a merchant, now Bishop of S. Malo. These men had everything to +gain by an undertaking which would flatter the vanity of their master, +and draw him into still closer relations with themselves. Consequently, +when the Count of Belgioioso arrived<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg542" +id="pg542">542</a></span> at the French Court from Milan, +urging the king to press his claims on Naples, and promising him a free +entrance into Italy through the province of Lombardy and the port of +Genoa, he found ready listeners. Anne de Beaujeu in vain opposed the +scheme. The splendor and novelty of the proposal to conquer such a realm +as Italy inflamed the imagination of Charles, the cupidity of his +courtiers, the ambition of de Vesc and Briçonnet. In order to assure his +situation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the neighboring great +powers. He bought peace with Henry VII. of England by the payment of +large sums of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resentment he had +aroused by sending back his daughter Margaret after breaking his promise +to marry her, and by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already +engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the cession of provinces. +Ferdinand of Spain received as the price of his neutrality the strong +places of the Pyrenees which formed the key to France upon that side. +Having thus secured tranquillity at home by ruinous concessions, Charles +was free to turn his attention to Italy. He began by concentrating +stores and ships on the southern ports of Marseilles and Genoa; then he +moved downward with his army, to Lyons, in 1494.</p> + +<p>At this point we are called to consider the affairs of Italy, which +led the Sforza to invite his dangerous ally. Lorenzo de' Medici during +his lifetime had maintained a balance of power between the several +states<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg543" id="pg543">543</a></span> by +his treaties with the Courts of Milan, Naples, and Ferrara. When he +died, Piero at once showed signs of departure from his father's policy. +The son and husband of Orsini,<a name="FNanchor_1_397" +id="FNanchor_1_397" /><a href="#Footnote_1_397" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +he embraced the feudal pride and traditional partialities of the great +Roman house who had always been devoted to the cause of Naples. The +suspicions of Lodovico Sforza were not unreasonably aroused by noticing +that the tyrant of Florence inclined to the alliance of King Ferdinand +rather than to his own friendship. At this same time Alfonso, the Duke +of Calabria, heir to the throne of Naples, was pressing the rights of +his son-in-law, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, on the attention of Italy, +complaining loudly that his uncle Lodovico ought no longer to withhold +from him the reins of government.<a name="FNanchor_2_398" +id="FNanchor_2_398" /><a href="#Footnote_2_398" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +Gian Galcazzo was in fact the legitimate successor of Galeazzo Maria +Sforza, who had been murdered in Santo Stefano in 1476. After this +assassination Madonna Bona of Savoy and Cecco Simonetta, who had +administered the Duchy as grand vizier during three reigns extending +over a period of half a century, governed Milan as regents for the young +Duke. But Lodovico, feeling himself powerful enough to assume the<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg544" id="pg544">544</a></span> tyranny, +beheaded Simonetta at Pavia in 1480, and caused Madonna Bona, the Duke's +mother, on the pretext of her immorality, to quit the regency. Thus he +took the affairs of Milan into his own hands, confined his nephew in an +honorable prison, and acted in a way to make it clear that he intended +thenceforth to be Duke in fact.<a name="FNanchor_3_399" +id="FNanchor_3_399" /><a href="#Footnote_3_399" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +It was the bad conscience inseparable from this usurpation which made +him mistrust the princes of the house of Aragon, whose rights in +Isabella, wife of the young Duke, were set at nought by him. The same +uneasy sense of wrong inclined him to look with dread upon the +friendship of the Medici for the ruling family of Naples.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_397" id="Footnote_1_397" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_397"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them +Orsini. Guicciardini, in his 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze' (<i>Op. +Ined.</i> vol. ii. p. 46), says of him: 'sendo nato di madre forestiera, +era imbastardito in lui il sangue Fiorentino, e degenerato in costumi +esterni, e troppo insolenti e altieri al nostro vivere.' Piero, +nevertheless, refused to accept estates from King Alfonso which would +have made him a Baron and feudatory of Naples. See <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. i. +p. 347.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_398" id="Footnote_2_398" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_398"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_399" id="Footnote_3_399" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_399"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation with the +show of legitimate right. He betrothed his niece Bianca Maria, in 1494, +to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower of 400,000 ducats, receiving in +return an investiture of the Duchy, which, however, he kept secret.</p></div> + +<p>While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open disturbance in +Lorenzo's balance of power had taken place, Alexander VI. was elected to +the Papacy. It was usual for the princes and cities of Italy to +compliment the Pope with embassies on his assumption of the tiara; and +Lodovico suggested that the representatives of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, +and Naples should enter Rome together in a body. The foolish vanity of +Piero, who wanted to display the splendor of his own equipage without +rivals, induced him to refuse this proposal, and led to a similar +refusal on the part of Ferdinand. This trivial circumstance confirmed +the suspicions of Lodovico, who, naturally subtle<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg545" +id="pg545">545</a></span> and intriguing, +thought that he discerned a deep political design in what was really +little more than the personal conceit of a broad-shouldered +simpleton.<a name="FNanchor_1_400" id="FNanchor_1_400" /><a href="#Footnote_1_400" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He already foresaw that the old system of alliances +established by Lorenzo must be abandoned. Another slight incident +contributed to throw the affairs of Italy into confusion by causing a +rupture between Rome and Naples. Lorenzo, by the marriage of his +daughter to Franceschetto Cibo, had contrived to engage Innocent VIII. +in the scheme of policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, and +Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, Franceschetto Cibo +determined to get rid of Anguillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he +had taken with his father's connivance from the Church. He found a +purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexander complained that the sale was an +infringement of his rights. Ferdinand supported the title of the Orsini +to his new acquisitions. This alienated the Pope from the King of +Naples, and made him willing to join with Milan and Venice in a new +league formed in 1493.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_400" id="Footnote_1_400" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_400"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Piero de' Medici was what the French call a <i>bel homme</i>, +and little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best player +at <i>pallone</i> in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and agreeable in +conversation, and excessively vain of these advantages.</p></div> + +<p>Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh combinations between +the disunited powers of Italy took place. Lodovico, however, dared not +trust his new friends. Venice had too long hankered after Milan<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg546" +id="pg546">546</a></span> to be +depended upon for real support; and Alexander was known to be in treaty +for a matrimonial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna Sancia of +Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, without a firm ally in Italy, and +with a manifestly fraudulent title to maintain. At this juncture he +turned his eyes towards France; while his father-in-law, the Duke of +Ferrara, who secretly hated him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his +own advantage in the general confusion which he anticipated, urged him +to this fatal course. Alexander at the same time, wishing to frighten +the princes of Naples into a conclusion of the projected marriage, +followed the lead of Lodovico, and showed himself at this moment not +averse to a French invasion.</p> + +<p>It was in this way that the private cupidities and spites of princes +brought woe on Italy: Lodovico's determination to secure himself in the +usurped Duchy of Milan, Ercole d' Este's concealed hatred, and +Alexander's unholy eagerness to aggrandize his bastards, were the vile +and trivial causes of an event which, however inevitable, ought to have +been as long as possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But in +Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor among princes, no +virtue in the Church. Italy, which in the thirteenth century numbered +1,800,000 citizens—that is, members of free cities, exercising the +franchise in the government of their own states—could show in the +fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:<a name="FNanchor_1_401" +id="FNanchor_1_401" /><a href="#Footnote_1_401" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg547" +id="pg547">547</a></span> these in Venice were subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, +in Florence had been enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by +party feuds and vulgar despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the +splendors of revived literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined +societies, this indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary +to publish his prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to +fulfill them. Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter +sarcasm of fate which imposed upon his country the insult of such a +conqueror as Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in +Lodovico Sforza the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. +Lodovico, called II Moro, not, as the great historian asserts, because +he was of dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree +for his device,<a name="FNanchor_2_402" id="FNanchor_2_402" /><a +href="#Footnote_2_402" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> was in himself an +epitome of all the qualities which for the last two centuries had +contributed to the degradation of Italy in the persons of the despots. +Gifted<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg548" +id="pg548">548</a></span> originally with good abilities, he had so accustomed himself to +petty intrigues that he was now incapable of taking a straightforward +step in any direction. While he boasted himself the Son of Fortune and +listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that ran: <i>God only and the +Moor foreknow the future safe and sure</i>, he never acted without +blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable tedium of +imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet +he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that they tossed +up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of him. He +disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and the arts +by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an +ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the +presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt +that, as Corio tells us,<a name="FNanchor_3_403" id="FNanchor_3_403" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_403" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> fathers sold their +daughters, brothers their sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a +word Lodovico, in spite of his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of +Italy and himself by his tortuous policy, and contributed by his private +crimes and dissolute style of living no little to the general depravity +of his country.<a name="FNanchor_4_404" id="FNanchor_4_404" /><a +href="#Footnote_4_404" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_401" id="Footnote_1_401" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_401"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must +be taken as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the facts +presented in Ferrari's <i>Rivoluzioni d' Italia</i> will not think the +estimate exaggerated. In the municipal and civil wars, free burghs were +extinguished by the score.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_402" id="Footnote_2_402" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_402"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the <i>Elogia</i> of Paulus Jovius, who +remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair. His surname, however, +provoked puns. Me had, for example, a picture painted, in which Italy, +dressed like a queen, is having her robe brushed by a Moorish page. A +motto ran beneath, <i>Per Italia nettar d' ogni bruttura</i>. He adopted the +mulberry because Pliny called it the most prudent of all trees, inasmuch +as it waits till winter is well over to put forth its leaves, and +Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in choosing the right moment for +action.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_403" id="Footnote_3_403" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_403"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>L' Historia di Milano</i>, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: 'A quella (scola di +Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi giovani. I padri vi +concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le mogliere, i fratelli le sorelle; e +per sifatto modo senz' alcun riguardo molti concorreano all' amoroso +ballo, che cosa stupendissima era riputata per qualunque l' intendeva.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_404" id="Footnote_4_404" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_404"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Guicciardini, <i>Storia d' Italia</i>, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up the +character of Lodovico with masterly completeness.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg549" +id="pg549">549</a></span>Amid this general perturbation of the old political order the year 1494, +marked in its first month by the death of King Ferdinand, began—'a +year,' to quote from Guicciardini, 'the most unfortunate for Italy, the +very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it opened the door to +numberless and horrible calamities, in which it may be said that a great +portion of the world has subsequently shared.' The expectation and +uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned to the magnitude of the +coming change. On every side the invasion of the French was regarded +with that sort of fascination which a very new and exciting event is +wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians were inclined to hail Charles +as a general pacificator and restorer of old liberties.<a name="FNanchor_1_405" id="FNanchor_1_405" /><a href="#Footnote_1_405" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Savonarola +had preached of him as the <i>flagellum Dei</i>, the minister appointed to +regenerate the Church and purify the font of spiritual life in the +peninsula. In another frame of mind they shuddered to think what the +advent of the barbarians—so the French were called—might bring upon +them. It was universally agreed that Lodovico by his invitation had done +no more than bring down, as it were, by a breath the avalanche which had +been long impending. 'Not only the preparations made by land and sea, +but also the consent of the heavens and of men, announced the woes in +store for Italy. Those<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg550" +id="pg550">550</a></span> who pretend either by art or divine inspiration +to the knowledge of the future, proclaimed unanimously that +greater and more frequent changes, occurrences more strange and awful +than had for many centuries been seen in any part of the world, were at +hand.' After enumerating divers signs and portents, such as the passing +day after day in the region round Arezzo of innumerable armed men +mounted on gigantic horses with a hideous din of drums and trumpets, the +great historian resumes: 'These things filled the people with incredible +fear; for, long before, they had been terrified by the reputation of the +power of the French and of their fierceness, seeing that histories are +full of their deeds—how they had already overrun the whole of Italy, +sacked the city of Rome with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of +Asia, and at one time or another smitten with their arms all quarters of +the world.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_405" id="Footnote_1_405" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_405"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This was the strictly popular as opposed to the +aristocratic feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and smarting +under the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese princes, expected in +Charles VIII. a Messiah, and cried 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine +Domini.' See passages quoted in a note below.</p></div> + +<p>Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of Naples had the most to +dread; for against him the invasion was specially directed. No time was +to be lost. He assembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli in July and +explained to them his theory of resistance. The allies were Florence, +Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of Romagna.<a name="FNanchor_1_406" id="FNanchor_1_406" /><a href="#Footnote_1_406" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> For once the +southern and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg551" +id="pg551">551</a></span> the middle states of Italy were united against a common +foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he +dreaded the assembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne +he had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that he had already +sent ambassadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most +Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of +undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition +to the French. But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand +was prudent. It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their +unassisted force. This might have been done if Alfonso's plan had been +adhered to. He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, +to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the passes of the Apennines to +the North, while Piero de' Medici undertook to guard the entrances to +Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to +raise Gian Galeazzo's standard in Lombardy. But that absolute agreement +which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and +comprehensive was impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention +should first be paid to the Colonnesi—Prospero and Fabrizio being +secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty. +Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman +territory on<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg552" +id="pg552">552</a></span> the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the +generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into +Lombardy. They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the +Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. The fleet +under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in +Genoa. The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of +Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral +fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the league were further enfeebled +and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the +Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly Piero de' Medici by +his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in +the sequel. This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of +forces—this total inability to strike a sudden blow—sealed beforehand +the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, +Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of +Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the +Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were +not the men to save a nation. Italy was conquered, not by the French +king, but by the vices of her own leaders. The whole history of +Charles's expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing +over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the +disorganization of peoples rendered harmless. The Atè of the gods had +descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg553" +id="pg553">553</a></span> that the +expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.<a name="FNanchor_2_407" id="FNanchor_2_407" /><a href="#Footnote_2_407" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_406" id="Footnote_1_406" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_406"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with +Charles, on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her engaged. She +declined to join the league of Alfonso by saying it was mad to save +others at the risk of drawing the war into your own territory. Nothing +is more striking than the want of patriotic sentiment or generous +concurrence to a common end in Italy at this time. Florence, by temper +and tradition favorable to France, had been drawn into the league by +Piero de' Medici, whose sympathies were firm for the Aragonese princes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_407" id="Footnote_2_407" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_407"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This, of course, was Savonarola's prophecy. But both Guicciardini +and De Comities use invariably the same language. The phrase <i>Dieu +monstroit conduire l'entreprise</i> frequently recurs in the <i>Memoirs</i> of +De Comines.</p></div> + +<p>While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for their safety in the +South, Charles remained at Lyons, still uncertain whether he should +enter Italy by sea or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all. +Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt satisfied with his +achievement and indulged himself in a long bout of tournaments and +pastimes. Besides, the want of money, which was to be his chief +embarrassment throughout the expedition, had already made itself +felt.<a name="FNanchor_1_408" id="FNanchor_1_408" /><a href="#Footnote_1_408" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It was an Italian who at length roused him to make good his +purpose against Italy—Giuliano della Rovere,<a name="FNanchor_2_409" id="FNanchor_2_409" /><a href="#Footnote_2_409" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the haughty nephew of +Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined to succeed +in course of time upon the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, +or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with +taunts and menaces until Charles felt he could delay his march no +longer. When once the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly. +Leaving<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg554" +id="pg554">554</a></span> Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the +French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon +infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, +debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on September +19.<a name="FNanchor_3_410" id="FNanchor_3_410" /><a href="#Footnote_3_410" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at +almost any point upon the route they might have been at least delayed by +hardy mountaineers until the commissariat of so large a force had proved +an insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback conqueror with +the big head and little legs, the valleys had been exalted and the rough +places had been made plain. The princes whose interest it might have +been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles were but children. The +Duke of Savoy was only twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat +fourteen; their mothers and guardians made terms with the French king, +and opened their territories to his armies.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_408" id="Footnote_1_408" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_408"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 'La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis +d'advis qu'elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit de rien, +et y alla tout l'argent contant que le Roy peut finer de ses finances: +car comme j'ay dit, il n'estoit point pourveu ne de sens, ne d'argent, +oy d'autre chose nécessaire à telle entreprise, et si en vint bien à +bout, moyennant la grâce de Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi à +cognoistre.' De Comines, lib. vii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_409" id="Footnote_2_409" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_409"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Guicciardini calls him on this occasion 'fatale instrumento e allora +e prima e poi de' mali d' Italia.' Lib. i. cap. 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_410" id="Footnote_3_410" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_410"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. 383), to +which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all attached to the +artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, carpenters, etc. See +Dennistoun, <i>Dukes of Urbino</i>, vol. i. p. 433, for a detailed list of +Charles's armaments by land and sea.</p></div> + +<p>At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole +d' Este. The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes<a name="FNanchor_1_411" id="FNanchor_1_411" /><a href="#Footnote_1_411" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +followed in their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes to +entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg555" +id="pg555">555</a></span> silken +meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, +what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The +French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by +promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the +small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded +to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement of interests arose. Charles was +bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife +Beatrice d' Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone +Alfonso and to assume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure +the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin<a name="FNanchor_2_412" id="FNanchor_2_412" /><a href="#Footnote_2_412" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the young Giovanni +Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the +beautiful Isabella of Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable +of resisting a woman's tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess +in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend +Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought +him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself? The +situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the +feeble young king. For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to +his petitioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner +had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg556" +id="pg556">556</a></span> to +remove the cause of further vacillation. Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had +his nephew poisoned.<a name="FNanchor_3_413" id="FNanchor_3_413" /><a href="#Footnote_3_413" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> When the news of Gian Galeazzo's death reached +the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was +already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible +Italians with whom they had to deal.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_411" id="Footnote_1_411" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_411"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See above, p. 548.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_412" id="Footnote_2_412" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_412"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were sisters, +princesses of Savoy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_413" id="Footnote_3_413" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_413"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he inclines to +believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet raises a doubt about +it, though the evidence is such as he would have accepted without +question in the case of a Borgia. Guicciardini, who recounts the whole +matter at length, says that all Italy believed the Duke had been +murdered, and quotes Teodoro da Pavia, one of the royal physicians, who +attested to having seen clear signs of a slow poison in the young man. +Pontano, <i>de Prudentiâ</i>, lib. 4, repeats the accusation. Guicciardini +only doubts Lodovico's motives. He inclines to think the murder had been +planned long before, and that Charles was invited into Italy in order +that Lodovico might have a good opportunity for effecting it, while at +the same time he had taken care to get the investiture of the Duchy from +the Emperor ready against the event.</p></div> + +<p>What was this beautiful land in the midst of which they found +themselves, a land whose marble palaces were thronged with cut-throats +in disguise, whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose luxuriant +meadows concealed fever, whose ladies carried disease upon their lips? +To the captains and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared a +splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with +illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to +brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered +men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and +gaze back<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg557" +id="pg557">557</a></span> with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found +themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through +the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with +drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques +with roses that they might not hear the siren's voice too clearly. It +was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance +for the people of the North. <i>The White Devil of Italy</i> is the title of +one of Webster's best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of +sin and death, holding in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good +and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is how Italy struck the +fancy of the men of the sixteenth century. She was feminine, and they +were virile; but she could teach and they must learn. She gave them +pleasure; they brought force. The fruit of her embraces with the nations +was the spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in which we +live.</p> + +<p>Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with what new enemies they +had to deal. Twice at the commencement of the invasion did the French +use the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the sorceress. These +terror-striking examples were the massacres of the inhabitants of +Rapallo on the Genoese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers +and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in the hospitals, were +butchered, first by the Swiss and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg558" +id="pg558">558</a></span> German guards, and afterwards by the +French, who would not be outdone by them in energy. It was thus that the +Italians, after a century of bloodless battles and parade campaigning, +learned a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of those +Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined to drown the peninsula with +French, Spanish, German, Swiss, and native blood.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, traversing, all through the +golden autumn weather, those plains where mulberry and elm are married +by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of maize and corn. From +Parma, placed beneath the northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, +on the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of Carrara build their +barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, there leads a winding barren mountain +pass. Charles took this route with his army, and arrived in the +beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. Meanwhile we may well +ask what Piero de' Medici had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his +engagement with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be remembered, to +hold the passes of the Apennines upon this side. To have embarrassed the +French troops among those limestone mountains, thinly forested with pine +and chestnut-trees, and guarded here and there with ancient fortresses, +would have been a matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 +Swiss troops during their wars of independence would have laughed to +scorn the whole forces of Burgundy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg559" +id="pg559">559</a></span> Austria. But Piero, a feeble and +false tyrant, preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, and +disinclined to push forward into the territory of the Sforza, had as yet +done nothing when the news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of +capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as fast as horses could +carry him to the French camp, besought an interview with Charles, and +then and there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and its citadel, +together with those of Pietra Santa, Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any +one who has followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana can +appreciate the enormous value of these concessions to the invader. They +relieved him of the difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of +land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the +highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in +the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles +would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian +knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and +dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and +Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The +Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular policy, now +rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased +from their memory the name of Medici except for execration. The +unsuccessful tyrant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his +country,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg560" +id="pg560">560</a></span> and to himself, saved his life by flying first to Bologna and +thence to Venice, where he remained in a sort of polite captivity—safe, +but a slave, until the Doge and his council saw which way affairs would +tend.</p> + +<p>On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny of fifty years, and Pisa +after the servitude of a century, recovered their liberties and were +able to reconstitute republican governments. But the situation of the +two states was very different. The Florentines had never lost the name +of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the freedom of the +inhabitants to exercise self-government than the independence of the +city in relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other hand had been +reduced to subjection by Florence: their civic life had been stifled, +their pride wounded in the tenderest point of honor, their population +decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence was the +enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment of anarchy burned to +obliterate her shame with bloodshed. The French, understanding none of +the niceties of Italian politics, and ignorant that in giving freedom to +Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked on with wonder at +the citizens who tossed the lion of the tyrant town into the Arno and +took up arms against its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm +of the long-suppressed passion for liberty in the Pisans, while we know +how soon they were reduced again to slavery by the selfish sister state, +herself too thoroughly corrupt for liberty. The part of Charles, who +espoused the cause<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg561" +id="pg561">561</a></span> of the Pisans with blundering carelessness, +pretended to protect the new republic, and then abandoned it a few +months later to its fate, provokes nothing but the languid contempt +which all his acts inspire.</p> + +<p>After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of Pisan liberty the King +of France was hailed as saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles +received a magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, +and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of +the Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar conveyed to the +French king a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to enter +their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero +de' Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the tilting yard, and +restoring the freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of +policy and indifferent to the part assigned him by the prophet as he was +before. He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 17, and +took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he informed the +elders of the city that he had come as conqueror and not as guest, and +that he intended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state.</p> + +<p>It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno flowing through her +midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even +more lovely than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls +remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make +resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi's<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg562" +id="pg562">562</a></span> dome and Giotto's +tower and Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction +to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in +their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but +a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as +castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, +refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, +intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old +factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by +flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted +Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke +in a terrestrial paradise of natural and æsthetic beauty. Which of us +who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture +to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, +incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the +Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to +pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces +the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But +in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found +loveliness of which they had not dreamed before.</p> + +<p>Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid +hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with +her—reform the republic—legislate—impose a levy on the citizens,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg563" +id="pg563">563</a></span> and +lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and +began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He +insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were +written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall +sound my trumpets.' Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.' +Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed +by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a +menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the +tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be +barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by +hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, +covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: <i>Ah, Ciappon, +Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon!</i> The secretaries beat down his terms. +All he cared for was to get money.<a name="FNanchor_1_414" id="FNanchor_1_414" /><a href="#Footnote_1_414" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He agreed to content himself with +120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted +Florence.</p> + +<p>Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obstacle. His invasion had +fallen like the rain from heaven, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg564" +id="pg564">564</a></span> like rain, as far as he was +concerned, it ran away to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first +scenes in the pageant displayed by Italy before the French army, had +been left behind. Rome now lay before them, magnificent in desolation; +not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built up +from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, but the Rome of the +Middle Ages, the city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still +pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The progress of +the French was a continued triumph. They reached Siena on the second of +December. The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid +down their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their castles: +Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese army and grand constable +of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for himself favorable terms +from the French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to their own +rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. Italy seemed bent on +proving that cowardice and selfishness and incapacity had conquered her. +Viterbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were traversed: the Campagna, +bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud +upon the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty at +the invader's feet. Not a blow had been struck, when he reached the +Porta del Popolo upon the 31st of December 1494. At three o'clock in the +afternoon began the entry of the French army. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg565" +id="pg565">565</a></span> nine at night +before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of torches and +flambeaux, defiled through the gates, and took their quarters in the +streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, +flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, +splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in +their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the +German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, +stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this +memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before +them specimens and vanguards of all those legioned races which were soon +to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling-place. Nothing was +wanting to complete the symbol of the coming doom but a representative +of the grim, black, wiry infantry of Spain.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_414" id="Footnote_1_414" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_414"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The want of money determined all Charles's operations in +this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions on Piero +and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy princesses, he +passed from place to place, bargaining and contracting debts instead of +dictating laws and founding constitutions. <i>La carestia dei danari</i> is a +phrase continually recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the jewels +lent to Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat at Turin, +de Comines exclaims: 'Et pouvez voir quel commencement de guerre +c'estoit, si Dieu n'eut guidé l'oeuvre.'</p></div> + +<p>The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Castle of S. Angelo. How would +the Conqueror, now styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of +desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom? At the side of +Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, +urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still closer to +his ear was Briçonnet, the <i>ci-devant</i> tradesman, who thought it would +become his dignity to wear a cardinal's hat. On this trifle turned the +destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate of the Church. +Charles determined to compromise matters. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg566" +id="pg566">566</a></span> demanded a few fortresses, +a red hat for Briçonnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, and +Djem, the brother of the Sultan.<a name="FNanchor_1_415" id="FNanchor_1_415" /><a href="#Footnote_1_415" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> After these agreements had been made +and ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his castle and receive the +homage of the faithful.</p> + +<p>Charles staid a month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. The fourth +and last scene in the Italian pageant was now to be displayed. After the +rich plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their rampart of +perpetual snow; after the olive gardens and fair towns of Tuscany; after +the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, +that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends +of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. +The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have +their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more +luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the +villagers are more classically graceful; the volcanic soil is more +fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in +the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist +the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg567" +id="pg567">567</a></span> lost their native +energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies +the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was +tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at +Baiæ, at Pompeii at Capreæ, until the whole region became a byword for +voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and +became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were +softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments +of the southern sorceress.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_415" id="Footnote_1_415" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_415"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate +prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive for the +Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was under engagements +with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem died of slow poison soon +after he became the guest of Charles. The Borgia preferred to keep faith +with the Turk.</p></div> + +<p>Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained +to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her +most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison—the virus of a +fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was +destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove +more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle +Ages.<a name="FNanchor_1_416" id="FNanchor_1_416" /><a href="#Footnote_1_416" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_416" id="Footnote_1_416" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_416"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of +syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von Hirsch, +<i>Historisch-geographische Pathologie</i> (Erlangen, 1860), and in Rosenbaum +<i>Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthum</i> (Halle, 1845). Some curious +contemporary observations concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease +in Italy, its symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo's +<i>Cronaca di Perugia</i> (<i>Arch. Stor. It.</i> vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36), +and in Portovenere (<i>Arch. St.</i> vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The celebrated +poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for its fine Latinity and +for its information. One of the earliest works issued from the Aldine +press in 1497 was the <i>Libellus de Epidemiâ quam vulgo morbum Gallicum +vocant</i>. It was written by Nicolas Leoniceno, and dedicated to the Count +Francesco de la Mirandola.</p></div> + +<p>The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent uncertainty<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg568" +id="pg568">568</a></span> which attended +the succession to the throne, as well as the suzerainty assumed and +misused by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing cause of discord +in Italy. The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. +After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and +Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a +bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled +Count Réné of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which +he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the +Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of +the fifteenth century. Historians are never weary of relating his +victories over Caldora and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which +he expelled his rival Réné, and the fascination which he exercised in +Milan, while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria +Visconti.<a name="FNanchor_1_417" id="FNanchor_1_417" /><a href="#Footnote_1_417" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of his +virtues, the justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture which +rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg569" +id="pg569">569</a></span> that splendid period.<a name="FNanchor_2_418" id="FNanchor_2_418" /><a href="#Footnote_2_418" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +His love of learning was a passion. Whether at home in the retirement of +his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always attended by +students, who read aloud and commented on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No +prince was more profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo +Fazio received 500 ducats a year for the composition of his histories, +and when, at their conclusion, the scholar asked for a further gift of +200 or 300 florins, the prince bestowed upon him 1,500. The year he +died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of letters alone. This +immoderate liberality is the only vice of which he is accused. It bore +its usual fruits in the disorganization of finance.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_417" id="Footnote_1_417" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_417"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Mach. <i>Ist. Fior.</i> lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may +be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at the +commencement of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near the Isle of +Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he succeeded in proving to +Filippo Visconti that it was more to his interest to have him king of +Naples than to keep the French there. Upon, this the Duke of Milan +restored him with honor to his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest +which before he had successfully opposed. It is a singular instance of +the extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and +reason.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_418" id="Footnote_2_418" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_418"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Vespasiano's <i>Life of Alfonso</i> (<i>Vite di Uomini Illustri</i>, pp. +48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid delineation. It is +written of course from the scholar's more than the politician's point of +view. Compare with it Giovio, <i>Elogia</i>, and Pontanus, <i>de Liberalitate</i>.</p></div> + +<p>The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the +Neapolitans. During the half-century in which so many Italian princes +succumbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, +according to Pontano, 'nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,' +walked up and down unarmed and unattended. 'Why should a father fear +among his children?' he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the +danger of this want of caution. The many splendid qualities by which he +was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of +his private life. Married to Margaret of Castile,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg570" +id="pg570">570</a></span> he had no legitimate +children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in +1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to +be his son by Margaret de Hijar. It was even whispered that this +Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso's brother +Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her +own. Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known +for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret +de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from +that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand's secretary, told a different tale. +He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano +of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by the brusque +contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand.</p> + +<p>It would be terrible to think that such a father could have been the +parent of such a son. In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture +degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place +to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered upon +madness. He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their +misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching +the antics of monkeys.<a name="FNanchor_1_419" id="FNanchor_1_419" /><a +href="#Footnote_1_419" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In his hunting +establishment<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg571" +id="pg571">571</a></span> were repeated the worst atrocities of Bernabo Visconti: +wretches mutilated for neglect of his hounds extended their handless +stumps for charity to the travelers through his villages.<a +name="FNanchor_2_420" id="FNanchor_2_420" /><a href="#Footnote_2_420" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Instead of the generosity for which Alfonso had +been famous, Ferdinand developed all the arts of avarice. Like Sixtus +IV. he made the sale of corn and oil a royal monopoly, trafficking in +the hunger of his subjects.<a name="FNanchor_3_421" id="FNanchor_3_421" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_421" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Like Alexander VI. +he fattened his viziers and secretaries upon the profits of extortion +which he shared with them, and when they were fully gorged he cut their +throats and proclaimed himself the heir through their attainder.<a +name="FNanchor_4_422" id="FNanchor_4_422" /><a href="#Footnote_4_422" +class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Alfonso had been famous for his candor and +sincerity. Ferdinand was a demon of dissimulation and treachery. His +murder of his guest Jacopo Piccinino at the end of a festival, which +extended over twenty-seven days of varied entertainments, won him the +applause of Machiavellian spirits throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg572" +id="pg572">572</a></span> Italy. It realized the +ideal of treason conceived as a fine art. Not less perfect as a specimen +of diabolical cunning was the vengeance which Ferdinand, counseled by +his son Alfonso, inflicted on the barons who conspired against him.<a +name="FNanchor_5_423" id="FNanchor_5_423" /><a href="#Footnote_5_423" +class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Alfonso was a son worthy of his terrible +father. The only difference between them was that Ferdinand dissembled, +while Alfonso, whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks had surrounded +him with military glory, abandoned himself with cynicism to his +passions. Sketching characters of both in the same paragraph, de Comines +writes: 'Never was man more cruel than Alfonso, nor more vicious, nor +more wicked, nor more poisonous, nor more gluttonous. His father was +more dangerous, because he could conceal his mind and even his anger +from sight; in the midst of festivity he would take and slaughter his +victims by treachery. Grace or mercy was never found in him, nor yet +compassion for his poor people. Both of them laid forcible hands on +women. In matters of the Church they observed nor reverence nor +obedience. They sold bishoprics, like that of Tarento, which Ferdinand +disposed of for 13,000 ducats to a Jew in favor of his son whom he +called a Christian.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_419" id="Footnote_1_419" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_419"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Pontanus, <i>de Immanitate,</i> Aldus, 1518, vol. 1. p. 318: +'Ferdinandus Rex Neapolitanorum præclaros etiam viros conclusos carcere +etiam bene atque abunde pascebat, eandem ex iis voluptatem capiens quam +pueri e conclusis in caveâ aviculis: quâ de re sæpenumero sibi ipsi +inter intimos suos diu multumque gratulatus subblanditusque in risum +tandem ac cachinnos profundebatur.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_420" id="Footnote_2_420" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_420"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Pontanus, <i>de Immanitate</i>, Aldus; 1518, vol. i. p. 320: 'Ferd. +R.N. qui cervum aprumve occidissent furtimve palamve, alios remo +addixit, alios manibus mutilavit, alios suspendio affecit: agros quoque +serendos inderdixit dominis, legendasque aut glandes aut poma, quæ +servari quidem volebat in escam feris ad venationis suæ usum.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_421" id="Footnote_3_421" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_421"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Caracciolo, <i>de Varietate Fortunæ</i>, Muratori, vol. xxii. p. 87, +exposes this system in a passage which should be compared with Infessura +on the practices of Sixtus. De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11, may be read +with profit on the same subject.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_422" id="Footnote_4_422" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_422"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Caracciolo, loc. cit. pp. 88, 89, concerning the judicial murder +of Francesco Coppola and Antonello Perucci, both of whom had been raised +to eminence by Ferdinand, used through their lives as the instruments of +his extortion, and murdered by him in their rich old age.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_423" id="Footnote_5_423" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_423"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11; Sismondi, vol. vii. p. 229. Read +also the short account of the massacre of the Barons given in the +<i>Chronicon Venetum</i>, Muratori, xxiv. p. 15, where the intense loathing +felt throughout Italy for Ferdinand and his son Alfonso is powerfully +expressed.</p></div> + +<p>This kind of tyranny carried in itself its own death-warrant. It needed +not the voice of Savonarola to proclaim<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg573" +id="pg573">573</a></span> that God would revenge the +crimes of Ferdinand by placing a new sovereign on his throne. It was +commonly believed that the old king died in 1494 of remorse and +apprehension, when he knew that the French expedition could no longer be +delayed. Alfonso, for his part, bold general in the field and able man +of affairs as he might be, found no courage to resist the conqueror. It +is no fiction of a poet or a moralist, but plain fact of history, that +this King of Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso and father of the +Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of accusing dead that rose +to haunt his tortured fancy in the supreme hour of peril. The chambers +of his palace in Naples were thronged with ghosts by battalions, pale +specters of the thousands he had reduced to starvation, bloody phantoms +of the barons he had murdered after nameless tortures, thin wraiths of +those who had wasted away in dungeons under his remorseless rule. The +people around his gates muttered in rebellion. He abdicated in favor of +his son, took ship for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken in a +convent ere the year was out.</p> + +<p>Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation in spite of his father's +and grandfather's tyranny, reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the +situation was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors—by his +whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at Capua, by the German guide at +Naples. Without soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but +the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg574" +id="pg574">574</a></span> execrate his +race, and with the conquerors of Italy advancing daily through his +states, retreat alone was left to him. After abandoning his castles to +pillage, burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting Don +Federigo together with the Queen dowager and the princess Joanna upon a +quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians +relate that as the shore receded from his view he kept intoning in a +loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 'Except the Lord keep the +city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and +the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there is +only the distance of some seventeen miles. It was in February, a month +of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the +whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one +tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage. +Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley's stern the +king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for +Granada, cried: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but +in vain.'</p> + +<p>There was no want of courage in the youth. By his simple presence he had +intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage +he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of +the island. There he waited till the storm was overpast. Ten times more +a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg575" +id="pg575">575</a></span> +leaving scarcely a rack behind—some troops decimated by disease and +unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor. +Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than +could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle +race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar +yoke.<a name="FNanchor_1_424" id="FNanchor_1_424" /><a href="#Footnote_1_424" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495. +He was welcomed and fêted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are +more childishly delighted with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual +sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence +and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by +dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his +retinue.<a name="FNanchor_2_425" id="FNanchor_2_425" /><a href="#Footnote_2_425" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Without receiving so much as a provisional investiture from +the Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 12 as sovereign, +with a ball in one hand and a scepter in the other, through the city. +Then he was forced to return upon his path and to seek France with the +precipitancy he had shown in gaining Naples. Alexander, who was witty, +said the French<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg576" +id="pg576">576</a></span> had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden +spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before +them to select their quarters. It remained to be seen that the +achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark +is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_424" id="Footnote_1_424" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_424"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince +inspire a deep feeling of interest. It is sad to read that after +recovering his kingdom in 1496, he died in his twenty-eighth year, worn +out with fatigue and with the pleasures of his marriage to his aunt +Joanna, whom he loved too passionately. His uncle Frederick, the brother +of Alfonso II., succeeded to the throne. Thus in three years Naples had +five Sovereigns.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_425" id="Footnote_2_425" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_425"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> 'Tous estats et offices furent donnez aux François, à deux ou +trois,' says De Comines.</p></div> + +<p>While Charles was amusing himself at Naples, a storm was gathering in +his rear. A league against him had been formed in April by the great +powers of Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence of Italy, and +urged by the Sultan, who had reason to dread Charles VIII.,<a name="FNanchor_1_426" id="FNanchor_1_426" /><a href="#Footnote_1_426" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> headed +the league. Lodovico, now that he had attained his selfish object in the +quiet position of Milan, was anxious for his safety. The Pope still +feared a general council. Maximilian, who could not forget the slight +put upon him in the matter of his daughter and his bride, was willing to +co-operate against his rival. Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured +themselves in Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re-establish +Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. Each of the contracting +parties had his rôle assigned to him. Spain undertook to aid Ferdinand +of Aragon in Calabria. Venice was to attack the seaports of the +kingdom;<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg577" +id="pg577">577</a></span> Lodovico Sforza, to occupy Asti; the King of the Romans, to +make a diversion in the North. Florence alone, though deeply injured by +Charles in the matter of Pisa, kept faith with the French.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_426" id="Footnote_1_426" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_426"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Charles, by an act dated A.D. 1494, September 6, had bought +the title of Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond from Andrew +Palæologus (see Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 183, ed. Milman). When he took +Djem from Alexander in Rome, his object was to make use of him in a war +against Bajazet; and the Pope was always impressing on the Turk the +peril of a Frankish crusade.</p></div> + +<p>The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand the Catholic had +disembarked troops on the shore of Sicily, and was ready to throw an +army into the ports of Reggio and Tropea. Alexander had refused to carry +out his treaty by the surrender of Spoleto. Cesare Borgia had escaped +from the French camp. The Lombards were menacing Asti, which the Duke of +Orleans held, and without the possession of which there was no safe +return to France. Asti indeed at this juncture would have fallen, and +Charles would have been caught in a trap, if the Venetians had only been +quick or wary enough to engage German mercenaries.<a +name="FNanchor_1_427" id="FNanchor_1_427" /><a href="#Footnote_1_427" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The danger of the situation may best be judged +by reading the Memoirs of De Comines, who was then ambassador at Venice. +'The league was concluded very late one evening. The next morning the +Signory sent for me earlier than usual. They were assembled in great +numbers, perhaps a hundred or more, and held their heads high, made a +good cheer, and had not the same countenance as on the day when they +told me of the capture of the citadel of Naples.<a name="FNanchor_2_428" +id="FNanchor_2_428" /><a href="#Footnote_2_428" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +My heart was<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg578" +id="pg578">578</a></span> heavy, and I had grave doubts about the person of the king +and about all his company; and I thought their scheme more ripe than it +really was, and feared they might have Germans ready; and if it had been +so, never could the king have got safe out of Italy.' Nevertheless De +Comines put a brave face on the matter, and told the council that he had +already received information of the league and had sent dispatches to +his master on the subject.<a name="FNanchor_3_429" id="FNanchor_3_429" +/><a href="#Footnote_3_429" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'After dinner,' +continues De Comines, 'all the ambassadors of the league met for an +excursion on the water, which is the chief recreation at Venice, where +every one goes according to the retinue he keeps, or at the expense of +the Signory. There may have been as many as forty gondolas, all bearing +displayed the arms of their masters upon banners. I saw the whole of +this company pass before my windows, and there were many minstrels on +board. Those of Milan, one at least of them who had often kept my +company, put on a brave face not to know me; and for three days I +remained without going forth into the town, nor my people, nor was there +all that time a<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg579" +id="pg579">579</a></span> single courteous word said to me or to any of my +suite.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_427" id="Footnote_1_427" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_427"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 15, pp. 78, 79.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_428" id="Footnote_2_428" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_428"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> De Comines' account of the alarm felt at Venice on that occasion is +very graphic: 'They sent for me one morning, and I found them to the +number of fifty or sixty in the Doge's bedchamber, for he was ill of +colic; and there he told me the news with a good countenance. But none +of the company knew so well how to feign as he. Some were seated on a +wooden bench, leaning their heads on their hands, and others otherwise; +and all showed great heaviness at heart. I think that when the news +reached Rome of the battle of Cannæ, the senators were not more +confounded or frightened.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_429" id="Footnote_3_429" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_429"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Bembo, in his <i>Venetian History</i> (lib. ii. p. 32), tells a different +tale. He represents De Comines quite unnerved by the news.</p></div> + +<p>Returning northward by the same route, Charles passed Rome and reached +Siena on June 13. The Pope had taken refuge, first at Orvieto, and +afterwards at Perugia, on his approach; but he made no concessions. +Charles could not obtain from him an investiture of the kingdom he +pretended to have conquered, while he had himself to surrender the +fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia alone remained in the +clutch of Alexander's implacable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In +Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. The French army desired to +see the liberties of Pisa established on a solid basis before they +quitted Italy. On their way to Naples the misfortunes of that ancient +city had touched them: now on their return they were clamorous that +Charles should guarantee its freedom. But to secure this object was an +affair of difficulty. The forces of the league had already taken the +field, and the Duke of Orleans was being besieged in Novara. The +Florentines, jealous of the favor shown, in manifest infringement of +their rights, to citizens whom they regarded as rebellious bondsmen, +assumed an attitude of menace. Charles could only reply with vague +promises to the solicitations of the Pisans, strengthen the French +garrisons in their fortresses, and march forward as quickly as possible +into the Apennines. The key of the pass by which he sought to regain +Lombardy is<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg580" +id="pg580">580</a></span> the town of Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes on June 29, +the French army, distressed for provisions and in peril among those +melancholy hills, pushed onward with all speed. They knew that the +allied forces, commanded by the Marquis of Mantua, were waiting for them +at the other side upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, if +anywhere, the French ought to have been crushed. They numbered about +9,000 men in all, while the allies were close upon 40,000. The French +were weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad lodgings. The +Italians were fresh and well cared for. Yet in spite of all this, in +spite of blind generalship and total blundering, Charles continued to +play his part of fortune's favorite to the end. A bloody battle, which +lasted for an hour, took place upon the banks of the Taro.<a name="FNanchor_1_430" id="FNanchor_1_430" /><a href="#Footnote_1_430" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The +Italians suffered so severely that, though they still far outnumbered +the French, no persuasions could make them rally and renew the fight. +Charles in his own person ran<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg581" +id="pg581">581</a></span> great peril during this battle; and when +it was over, he had still to effect his retreat upon Asti in the teeth +of a formidable army. The good luck of the French and the dilatory +cowardice of their opponents saved them now again for the last time.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_430" id="Footnote_1_430" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_430"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The action at Fornovo lasted a quarter of an hour, +according to De Comines. The pursuit of the Italians occupied about +three quarters of an hour more. Unaccustomed to the quick tactics of the +French, the Italians, when once broken, persisted in retreating upon +Reggio and Parma. The Gonzaghi alone distinguished themselves for +obstinate courage, and lost four or five members of their princely +house. The Stradiots, whose scimitars ought to have dealt rudely with +the heavy French men-at-arms, employed their time in pillaging the Royal +pavilion, very wisely abandoned to their avarice by the French captains. +To such an extent were military affairs misconstrued in Italy, that, on +the strength of this brigandage, the Venetians claimed Fornovo for a +victory. See my essay 'Fornovo,' in <i>Sketches and Studies in Italy</i>, for +a description of the ground on which the battle was fought.</p></div> + +<p>On July 15, Charles at the head of his little force marched into Asti +and was practically safe. Here the young king continued to give signal +proofs of his weakness. Though he knew that the Duke of Orleans was hard +pressed in Novara, he made no effort to relieve him; nor did he attempt +to use the 20,000 Switzers who descended from their Alps to aid him in +the struggle with the league. From Asti he removed to Turin, where he +spent his time in flirting with Anna Soléri, the daughter of his host. +This girl had been sent to harangue him with a set oration, and had +fulfilled her task, in the words of an old witness, 'without wavering, +coughing, spitting, or giving way at all.' Her charms delayed the king +in Italy until October 19, when he signed a treaty at Vercelli with the +Duke of Milan. At this moment Charles might have held Italy in his +grasp. His forces, strengthened by the unexpected arrival of so many +Switzers, and by a junction with the Duke of Orleans, would have been +sufficient to overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate the +faction of Ferdinand in Naples. Yet so light-minded was Charles, and so +impatient were his courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick return +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg582" +id="pg582">582</a></span> France. Reserving to himself the nominal right of using Genoa as a +naval station, he resigned that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed +him in the tranquil possession of his Duchy. On October 22 he left +Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps of Dauphiné. +Already his famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of +the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become the shadow of a +name. He had obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, while he +imposed on France a perilous foreign policy, and on Italy the burden of +bloody warfare in the future.</p> + +<p>A little more than a year had elapsed between the first entry of +Charles into Lombardy and his return to France. Like many other +brilliant episodes of history, this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, +was more important as a sign than as an actual event. 'His passage,' +says Guicciardini, 'was the cause not only of change in states, +downfalls of kingdoms, desolations of whole districts, destructions of +cities, barbarous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes of +conduct, new and bloody habits of war, diseases hitherto unknown. The +organization upon which the peace and harmony of Italy depended was so +upset that, since that time, other foreign nations and barbarous armies +have been able to trample her under foot and to ravage her at pleasure.' +The only error of Guicciardini is the assumption that the holiday +excursion of Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the cause of these<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg583" id="pg583">583</a></span> calamities.<a +name="FNanchor_1_431" id="FNanchor_1_431" /><a href="#Footnote_1_431" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In truth the French invasion opened a new era +for the Italians, but only in the same sense as a pageant may form the +prelude to a tragedy. Every monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid +display of Charles and forgetful of its insignificant results, began to +look with greedy eyes upon the wealth of the peninsula. The Swiss found +in those rich provinces an inexhaustible field for depredation. The +Germans, under the pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein to +their animal appetites in the metropolis of Christendom. France and +Spain engaged in a duel to the death for the possession of so fair a +prey. The French, maddened by mere cupidity, threw away those chances +which the goodwill of the race at large afforded them.<a +name="FNanchor_2_432" id="FNanchor_2_432" /><a href="#Footnote_2_432" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Louis XII.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg584" +id="pg584">584</a></span> lost himself in petty intrigues, by +which he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of the Borgias and +Austria. Francis I. foamed his force away like a spent wave at Marignano +and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in the +sixteenth century was destined to receive the impress of the Spanish +spirit, and to bear the yoke of Austrian dukes. Hand in hand with +political despotism marched religious tyranny. The Counter-Reformation +over which the Inquisition presided, was part and parcel of the Spanish +policy for the enslavement of the nation no less than for the +restoration of the Church. Meanwhile the weakness, discord, egotism, and +corruption which prevented the Italians from resisting the French +invasion in 1494, continued to increase. Instead of being lessoned by +experience, Popes, Princes, and Republics vied with each other in +calling in the strangers, pitting Spaniard against Frenchman, and paying +the Germans to expel the Swiss, oblivious that each new army of +foreigners they summoned was in reality a new swarm of devouring +locusts. In the midst of this anarchy it is laughable to hear the shrill +voice of priests, like Julius and Leo, proclaiming before God their vows +to rid Italy of the barbarians. The confusion was tenfold confounded +when the old factions of Guelf and Ghibelline<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg585" +id="pg585">585</a></span> put on a new garb of +French and Spanish partisanship. Town fought with town and family with +family, in the cause of strangers whom they ought to have resisted with +one will and steady hatred. The fascination of fear and the love of +novelty alike swayed the fickle population of Italian cities. The +foreign soldiers who inflicted on the nation such cruel injuries made a +grand show in their streets, and there will always be a mob so childish +as to covet pageants at the expense of freedom and even of safety.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_431" id="Footnote_1_431" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_431"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Guicciardini's <i>Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze</i> (<i>Op. +Ined.</i> vol. ii. p. 94) sets forth the state of internal anarchy and +external violence which followed the departure of Charles VIII., with +wonderful acuteness. 'Se per sorte l' uno Oltramontano caccerà l' altro, +Italia resterà in estrema servitù,' is an exact prophecy of what +happened before the end of the sixteenth century, when Spain had beaten +France in the duel for Italy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_432" id="Footnote_2_432" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_432"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Matarazzo, in his <i>Cronaca della Città di Perugia</i> (<i>Arch. St.</i>, +vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the eagerness with +which the French were greeted in 1495, and of the wanton brutality by +which they soon alienated the people. In this he agrees almost textually +with De Comines, who writes: 'Le peuple nous advouoit comme Saincts, +estimans en nous toute foy et bonté; mais ce propos ne leur dura gueres, +tant pour nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi les ennemis +oppreschoient le peuple en tous quartiers,' etc., lib. vii. cap. 6. In +the first paragraph of the <i>Chronicon Venetum</i> (<i>Muratori</i>, vol. xxlv. +p. 5), we read concerning the advent of Charles: 'I popoli tutti +dicevano <i>Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini</i>. Nè v'era alcuno che li +potesse contrastare, nè resistere, tanto era da tutti i popoli Italiani +chiamato.' The Florentines, as burghers of a Guelf city, were always +loyal to the French. Besides, their commerce with France (<i>e.g.</i> the +wealth of Filippo Strozzi) made it to their interest to favor the cause +of the French. See Guicc. i. 2, p. 62. This loyalty rose to enthusiasm +under the influence of Savonarola, survived the stupidities of Charles +VIII. and Louis XII., and committed the Florentines in 1328 to the +perilous policy of expecting aid from Francis I.</p></div> + +<p>In spite of its transitory character the invasion of Charles VIII., +therefore, was a great fact in the history of the Renaissance. It was, +to use the pregnant phrase of Michelet, no less than the revelation of +Italy to the nations of the North. Like a gale sweeping across a forest +of trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilizing pollen, after it has +broken and deflowered their branches, to far-distant trees that hitherto +have bloomed in barrenness, the storm of Charles's army carried far and +wide through Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich +the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How +terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of +Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But +France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable +and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the +Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg586" +id="pg586">586</a></span> what we call the +movement of the Renaissance. There is some truth in this panegyric of +Michelet's. The passage of the army of Charles VIII. marks a +turning-point in modern history, and from this epoch dates the diffusion +of a spirit of culture over Europe. But Michelet forgets to notice that +the French never rightly understood their vocation with regard to Italy. +They had it in their power to foster that free spirit which might have +made her a nation capable, in concert with France, of resisting Charles +V. Instead of doing so, they pursued the pettiest policy of avarice and +egotism. Nor did they prevent that Spanish conquest the horrors of which +their historian has so eloquently described. Again, we must remember +that it was the Spaniards and not the French who saved Italy from being +barbarized by the Turk.</p> + +<p>For the historian of Italy it is sad and humiliating to have to +acknowledge that her fate depended wholly on the action of more powerful +nations, that she lay inert and helpless at the discretion of the +conqueror in the duels between Spain and France and Spain and Islam. Yet +this is the truth. It would seem that those peoples to whom we chiefly +owe advance in art and knowledge, are often thus the captives of their +intellectual inferiors. Their spiritual ascendency is purchased at the +expense of political solidity and national prosperity. This was the case +with Greece, with Judah, and with Italy. The civilization of the +Italians, far in advance of that of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg587" +id="pg587">587</a></span> other European nations, unnerved +them in the conflict with robust barbarian races. Letters and the arts +and the civilities of life were their glory. 'Indolent princes and most +despicable arms' were their ruin. Whether the Renaissance of the modern +world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy had remained free, +who shall say? The very conditions which produced her culture seem to +have rendered that impossible.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<h2><a name="APPENDICES" id="APPENDICES" />APPENDICES</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg589" +id="pg589">589</a></span></p> +<h3>APPENDIX I.</h3> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Blood-madness</i>. See Chapter iii, p. 109.</div> + +<p>One of the most striking instances afforded by history of Hæmatomania in +a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, prince of Africa and Sicily (A.D. 875). +This man, besides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of +enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execution of horrible +butcheries within the walls of his own palace. His astrologers having +once predicted that he should die by the hands of a 'small assassin,' he +killed off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their places +with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to treat after the same +fashion. On another occasion, when one of his three hundred eunuchs had +by chance been witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered +the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end to sixty youths, +originally selected for his pleasures, burning them by gangs of five or +six in the furnace, or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his +baths. Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; and when +one, who was so diseased that he could scarcely stir, implored to be +allowed to end his days in peace, Ibrahim answered: 'I make no +exceptions.' His own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders before +his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secretaries, ministers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg590" +id="pg590">590</a></span> and +courtiers was of common occurrence. But his fiercest fury was directed +against women. He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetuation +of the human race. Wives and concubines were strangled, sawn asunder, +and buried alive, if they showed signs of pregnancy. His female children +were murdered as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom his +mother managed to conceal and rear at her own peril, were massacred upon +the spot when Ibrahim discovered whom they claimed as father. +Contemporary Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy +passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he was the subject +of a strange disease, a portentous secretion of black bile producing the +melancholy which impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the +principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear +unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm +and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for +blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the +time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and +donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, preached a crusade, and led an +army into Italy, where he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. +The only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter is to +suppose that it was a dark monomania, a form of psychopathy analogous to +that which we find in the Maréchal de Retz and the Marquise de +Brinvilliers. One of the most marked symptoms of this disease was the +curiosity which led him to explore the entrails of his victims, and to +feast his eyes upon their quivering hearts. After causing his first +minister Ibn-Semsâma to be beaten to death, he cut his body open, and +with his own knife sliced the brave man's heart. On another<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg591" +id="pg591">591</a></span> occasion he +had 500 prisoners brought before him. Seizing a sharp lance he first +explored the region of the ribs, and then plunged the spear-point into +the heart of each victim in succession. A garland of these hearts was +made and hung up on the gate of Tunis. The Arabs regarded the heart as +the seat of thought in man, the throne of the will, the center of +intellectual existence. In this preoccupation with the hearts of his +victims we may therefore trace the jealousy of human life which Ibrahim +displayed in his murder of pregnant women, as well as a tyrant's fury +against the organ which had sustained his foes in their resistance. We +can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary lust with Ibrahim's +vigorous conduct of civil and military affairs, on the hypothesis that +this man-tiger, as Amari, to whom I owe these details, calls him, was +possessed with a specific madness.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg592" +id="pg592">592</a></span></p> +<h3>APPENDIX II.</h3> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, lib. i. cap. 4.</i> See Chap. iv. p. 195.</div> + + +<p>After the freedom regained by the expulsion of the Duke of Athens and +the humbling of the nobles, regularity for the future in the government +might have been expected, since a very great equality among the burghers +had been established in consequence of those troubles. The city too had +been divided into quarters, and the supreme magistracy of the republic +assigned to the eight priors, called <i>Signori Priori di libertá</i>, +together with the Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, +two for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in no +respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dignity; and as the +fourth part of the honors pertained to the members of the lesser arts, +their turn kept coming round to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier +belonged. This magistracy remained for two whole months, always living +and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according to the notion of +our ancestors, they might be able to attend with greater diligence to +the affairs of the commonwealth, in concert with their colleagues, who +were the sixteen gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, and the +twelve <i>buoni uomini</i>, or special advisers of the Signory. These +magistrates collectively in one body were called the College, or else +the Signory and the Colleagues. After this magistracy came the Senate; +the number of which varied, and the name of which was altered several +times up to the year 1494, according to circumstances. The larger +councils, whose business it was to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg593" +id="pg593">593</a></span> discuss and make the laws and all +provisions both general and particular, were until that date two; the +one called the Council of the people, formed only by the <i>cittadini +popolani</i>, and the other the Council of the Commune, because it embraced +both nobles and plebeians from the-date of the formation of these +councils.<a name="FNanchor_1_433" id="FNanchor_1_433" /><a href="#Footnote_1_433" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The appointment of the magistrates, which of old times and +under the best and most equitable governments was made on the occasion +of each election, in this more modern period was consigned to a special +council called <i>Squittino</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_434" id="FNanchor_2_434" /><a href="#Footnote_2_434" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The mode and act of the election was +termed <i>Squittinare</i>, which is equivalent to Scrutinium in the Latin +tongue, because minute investigation was made into the qualities of the +eligible burghers. This method, however, tended greatly to corrupt the +good manners of the city, inasmuch as, the said scrutiny being made +every three or five years, and not on each occasion, as would have been +right, considering the present quality of the burghers and the badness +of the times, those who had once obtained their nomination and been put +into the purses thereto appointed, being certain to arrive some time at +the honors and offices for which they were designed, became careless and +negligent of good customs in their lives. The proper function of the +Gonfaloniers was, in concert with their Gonfalons and companies, to +defend with arms the city from perils foreign and civil, when occasion +rose, and to control the fire-guards specially deputed by that +magistracy in four convenient stations. All the laws and provisions, as +well private as public, proposed by the Signory, had to be approved and +carried by that College, then by the Senate, and lastly by the Councils +named<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg594" +id="pg594">594</a></span> above. Notwithstanding this rule, everything of high importance +pertaining to the state was discussed and carried into execution during +the whole time that the Medici administered the city by the Council +vulgarly called <i>Balia</i>, composed of men devoted to that government. +While the Medici held sway, the magistracy of the <i>Dieci della Guerra</i> +or of Liberty and Peace were superseded by the <i>Otto della Pratica</i> in +the conduct of all that concerned wars, truces, and treaties of peace, +in obedience to the will of the chief agents of that government. The +<i>Otto di guardia e balia</i> were then as now delegated to criminal +business, but they were appointed by the fore-named Council of Balia, +or rather such authority and commission was assigned them by the +Signory, and this usage was afterwards continued on their entry into +office. Let this suffice upon these matters. Now the burghers who have +the right of discussing and determining the affairs of the republic were +and still are called privileged, <i>beneficiati</i> or <i>statuali</i>, of that +quality and condition to which, according to the laws of our city, the +government belongs; in other words they are eligible for office, as +distinguished from those who have not this privilege. Consequently the +<i>benefiziati</i> and <i>statuali</i> of Florence correspond to the +<i>gentiluomini</i> of Venice. Of these burghers there were about 400 +families or houses, but at different times the number was larger, and +before the plague of 1527 they made up a total of about 4,000 citizens +eligible for the Consiglio Grande. During the period of freedom between +1494 and 1512 the other or nonprivileged citizens could be elevated to +this rank of enfranchisement according as they were judged worthy by the +Council: at the present time they gain the same distinction by such +merits as may be pleasing to the ruler of the city for the time being: +our commonwealth from the year 1433 having been<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg595" +id="pg595">595</a></span> governed according to +the will of its own citizens, though one faction has from time to time +prevailed over another, and though before that date the republic was +distressed and shaken by the divisions which affected the whole of +Italy, and by many others which are rather to be reckoned as sedition +peculiar and natural to free cities. Seeing that men by good and evil +arts in combination are always striving to attain the summit of human +affairs, together also with the favor of fortune, who ever insists on +having her part in our actions.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_433" id="Footnote_1_433" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_433"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Lorenzo de' Medici superseded these two councils by the +Council of the Seventy, without, however, suppressing them.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_434" id="Footnote_2_434" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_434"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A corruption of Scrutinio.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. iii. caps. 20, 21, 22.</i></div> + +<p>The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, the first of +which takes in the whole of that part which is now called Beyond the +Arno, and the chief church of the district gives it the name of Santo +Spirito. The other three, which embrace all that is called This side the +Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, and are the +Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, and San Giovanni. Each of +these four quarters is divided into four gonfalons, named after the +different animals or other things they carry painted on their ensigns. +The quarter of Santo Spirito includes the gonfalons of the Ladder, the +Shell, the Whip, and the Dragon; that of Santa Croce, the Car, the Ox, +the Golden Lion, and the Wheels; that of Santa Maria Novella, the Viper, +the Unicorn, the Red Lion, and the White Lion; that of San Giovanni, the +Black Lion, the Dragon, the Keys, and the Vair. Now all the households +and families of Florence are included and classified under these four +quarters and sixteen gonfalons, so that there is no burgher of Florence +who does not rank in one of the four quarters and one of the sixteen +gonfalons. Each gonfalon had its standard-bearer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg596" +id="pg596">596</a></span> who carried the +standard like captains of bands; and their chief office was to run with +arms whenever they were called by the Gonfalonier of Justice, and to +defend, each under his own ensign, the palace of the Signory, and to +fight for the people's liberty; wherefore they were called Gonfaloniers +of the companies of the people, or, more briefly, from their number, the +Sixteen. Now since they never assembled by themselves alone, seeing that +they could not propose or carry any measure without the Signory, they +were also called the Colleagues, that is, the companions of the Signory, +and their title was venerable. This, after the Signory, was the first +and most honorable magistracy of Florence; and after them came the +Twelve Buonuomini, also called, for the like reason, Colleagues. So the +Signory with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the Sixteen, and the Twelve +were called the Three Greater. No man was said to have the franchise +(<i>aver lo stato</i>), and in consequence to frequent the council, or to +exercise any office, whose grandfather or father had not occupied or +been passed for (<i>seduto o veduto</i>) one of these three magistracies. To +be passed (<i>veduto</i>) Gonfalonier or Colleague meant this: when a man's +name was drawn from the purse of the Gonfaloniers or of the College to +exercise the office of Gonfalonier or Colleague, but by reason of being +below the legal age, or for some other cause, he never sat himself upon +the Board or was in fact Gonfalonier or Colleague, he was then said to +have been passed; and this held good of all the other magistracies of +the city.</p> + +<p>It should also be known that all the Florentine burghers were obliged to +rank in one of the twenty-one arts: that is, no one could be a burgher +of Florence unless he or his ancestors had been approved and +matriculated in one of these arts, whether they practiced it or no. +Without<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg597" +id="pg597">597</a></span> the proof of such matriculation he could not be drawn for any +office, or exercise any magistracy, or even have his name put into the +bags. The arts were these: i. Judges and Notaries (for the doctors of +the law were styled of old in Florence Judges); Merchants, or the Arts +of; ii. Calimala,<a name="FNanchor_1_435" id="FNanchor_1_435" /><a href="#Footnote_1_435" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> iii. Exchange, iv. Wool; Porta Santa Maria, or the +Arts of; v. Silk; vi. Physicians and Apothecaries; vii. Furriers. The +others were viii. Butchers, ix. Shoemakers, x. Blacksmiths, xi. +Linen-drapers and Clothesmen, xii. Masters, or Masons, and +Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. Oilsellers, +Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Hosiers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. +Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. The last +fourteen were called Lesser Arts; whoever was enrolled or matriculated +into one of these was said to rank with the lesser (<i>andare per la +minore</i>); and though there were in Florence many other trades than +these, yet having no guild of their own they were associated to one or +other of those that I have named. Each art had, as may still be seen, a +house or mansion, large and noble, where they assembled, appointed +officers, and gave account of debit and credit to all the members of the +guild.<a name="FNanchor_2_436" id="FNanchor_2_436" /><a href="#Footnote_2_436" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In processions and other public assemblies the heads (for so +the chiefs of the several arts were called) had their place and +precedence in order. Moreover, these arts at first had each an ensign +for the defense, on occasion, of liberty with arms. Their origin was +when the people in 1282 overcame the nobles (<i>Grandi</i>), and passed the +Ordinances of Justice<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg598" +id="pg598">598</a></span> against them, whereby no nobleman could exercise +any magistracy; so that such of the patricians as desired to be able to +hold office had to enter the ranks of the people, as did many great +houses of quality, and matriculate into one of the arts. Which thing, +while it partly allayed the civil strife of Florence, almost wholly +extinguished all noble feeling in the souls of the Florentines; and the +power and haughtiness of the city were no less abated than the insolence +and pride of the nobles, who since then have never lifted up their heads +again. These arts, the greater as well as the lesser, have varied in +numbers at different times; and often have not only been rivals, but +even foes, among themselves; so much so that the lesser arts once got it +passed that the Gonfalonier should be appointed only from their body. +Yet after long dispute it was finally settled that the Gonfalonier could +not be chosen from the lesser, but that he should always rank with the +greater, and that in all other offices and magistracies, the lesser +should always have a fourth and no more. Consequently, of the eight +Priors, two were always of the lesser; of the Twelve, three; of the +Sixteen, four; and so on through all the magistracies.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_435" id="Footnote_1_435" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_435"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The name Calimala was given to a trade in cloth carried on +at Florence by merchants who bought rough goods in France, Flanders, and +England, and manufactured them into more delicate materials.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_436" id="Footnote_2_436" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_436"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Marco Foscari, quoted lower down, estimates the property the Arts at +200,000 ducats.</p></div> + +<p>As a consequence from what has been said, it is easy to perceive that +all the inhabitants of Florence (by inhabitants I mean those only who +are really settled there, for of strangers, who are passing or +sojourning a while, we need not here take any account) are of two sorts. +The one class are liable to taxation in Florence, that is, they pay +tithes of their goods and are inscribed upon the books of the Commune, +and these are called contributors. The others are not taxed nor +inscribed upon the registers of the Commune, inasmuch as they do not pay +the tithes or other ordinary imposts; and these are called +non-contributors:<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg599" +id="pg599">599</a></span> who, seeing that they live by their hands, and carry +on mechanical arts and the vilest trades, should be called plebeians; +and though they have ruled Florence more than once, ought not even to +entertain a thought about public affairs in a well-governed state. The +contributors are of two sorts: for some, while they pay the taxes, do +not enjoy the citizenship (<i>i.e.</i> cannot attend the council or take any +office); either because none of their ancestors, and in particular their +father or their grandfather, has sat or been passed for any of the three +greater magistracies; or else because they have not had themselves +submitted to the scrutiny,<a name="FNanchor_1_437" id="FNanchor_1_437" /><a href="#Footnote_1_437" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> or, if they have advanced so far, have not +been approved and nominated for office. These are indeed entitled +citizens: but he who knows what a citizen is really, knows also that, +being unable to share either the honors or the advantages of the city, +they are not truly citizens; therefore let us call them burghers, +without franchise. Those again who pay taxes and enjoy the citizenship +(whom we will therefore call enfranchised burghers) are in like manner +of two kinds. The one class, inscribed and matriculated into one of the +seven first arts, are said to rank with the greater; whence we may call +them Burghers of the Greater: the others, inscribed and matriculated +into the fourteen lesser arts, are said to rank with the lesser; whence +we may call them Burghers of the Lesser. This distinction had the +Romans, but not for the same reason.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. ix. chs. 48, 49, 46.</i></div> + +<p>As for natural abilities, I for my part cannot believe that any one +either could or ought to doubt that the Florentines, even<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg600" +id="pg600">600</a></span> if they do +not excel all other nations, are at least inferior to none in those +things to which they give their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth +their city is founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, +they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty and true than +great and prudent: but besides trade, it is clear that the three most +noble arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture have reached that +degree of supreme excellence in which we find them now, chiefly by the +toil and by the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified and +adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great +glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, +seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me +from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame +and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole +world, owes it solely to the judgment and the generosity of the Medici +that Greek letters were not extinguished to the great injury of the +human race, and that Latin literature was restored to the incalculable +profit of all men.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_437" id="Footnote_1_437" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_437"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For an explanation of <i>Squittino</i> and <i>Squittinare</i>, see +Nardi, p. 593 above.</p></div> + +<p>I am wholly of opinion opposed to that of some, who, because the +Florentines are merchants, hold them for neither noble nor +high-spirited, but for tame and low.<a name="FNanchor_1_438" +id="FNanchor_1_438" /><a href="#Footnote_1_438" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +On<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg601" +id="pg601">601</a></span> the contrary, I have often wondered with myself how it could be that +men who have been used from + +their childhood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool and +baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves all day and great +part of the night at the loom, could summon, when and where was need, +such greatness of soul, such high and haughty thoughts, that they have +wit and heart to say and do those many noble things we know of them. +Pondering on the causes of which, I find none truer than this, that the +Florentine climate, between the fine air of Arezzo and the thick air of +Pisa, infuses into their breasts the temperament of which I spoke. And +whoso shall well consider the nature and the ways of the Florentines, +will find them born more apt to rule than to obey. Nor would it be +easily believed how much was gained for the youth of Florence by the +institution of the militia; for whereas many of the young men, heedless +of the commonwealth and careless of themselves, used to spend all the +day in idleness, hanging about places of public resort, girding at one +another, or talking scandal of the passers by, they immediately, like +beasts by some benevolent Circe transformed again to men, gave all their +heart and soul, regardless of peril or loss, to gaining fame and honor +for themselves, and liberty and safety for their country. I do not by +what I have been saying mean to deny that among the Florentines may be +found men proud, ambitious, and greedy of gain; for vices will exist as +long as human nature lasts: nay, rather, the ungrateful, the envious, +the malicious, and the evil-minded among them are so in the highest +degree, just<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg602" +id="pg602">602</a></span> as the virtuous are supremely virtuous. It is indeed a +common proverb that Florentine brains have no mean either way; the fools +are exceeding simple, and the wise exceeding prudent.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_438" id="Footnote_1_438" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_438"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Compare, however, Varchi, quoted above, p. 243. The Report +of Marco Foscari, <i>Relazioni Venete</i>, series ii, vol. i. p. 9 et seq., +contains a remarkable estimate of the Florentine character. He +attributes the timidity and weakness which he observes in the +Florentines to their mercantile habits, and notices, precisely what +Varchi here observes with admiration: 'li primi che governano lo stato +vanno alle loro botteghe di seta, e gittati li lembi del mantello sopra +le spalle, pongonsi alia caviglia e lavorano pubblicamente che ognuno li +vede; ed i figliuoli loro stanno in bottega con li grembiuli dinanzi, e +portano il sacco e le sporte alle maestre con la seta e fanno gli altri +esercizi di bottega.' A strong aristocratic prejudice transpires in +every line. This report was written early in 1527. The events of the +Siege must have surprised Marco Foscari. He notices among other things, +as a source of weakness, the country villas which were all within a few +months destroyed by their armies for the public good.</p></div> + +<p>Their mode of life is simple and frugal, but wonderfully and incredibly +clean and neat; and it may be said with truth that the artisans and +handicraftsmen live at Florence even better than the citizens +themselves: for whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, +according as they find good wine, and only think of joyous living; the +latter in their homes, with the frugality of merchants, who for the most +part make but do not spend money, or with the moderation of orderly +burghers, never exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wanting +families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, such as the +Antinori, the Bartolini, the Tornabuoni, the Pazzi, the Borgherini, the +Gaddi, the Rucellai, and among the Salviati, Piero d'Alamanno and +Alamanno d'Jacopo, and some others. At Florence every one is called by +his proper name or his surname; and the common usage, unless there be +some marked distinction of rank or age, is to say <i>thou</i> and not <i>you</i>; +only to knights, doctors, and prebendaries is the title of <i>messere</i> +allowed; to doctors that of <i>maestro</i>, to monks <i>don</i>, and to friars +<i>padre</i>. True, however, is it that since there was a Court at Florence, +first that of Giulio, the Cardinal de' Medici, then that of the Cardinal +of Cortona, which enjoyed more license than the former, the manners of +the city have become more refined—or shall I say more corrupt?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg603" +id="pg603">603</a></span></p> +<h3>APPENDIX III.</h3> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's Story, +Fiorentina, cap. 27.</i> See Chap. vii. p. 412 above.</div> + + +<p>So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity; about +whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and of great +judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his +first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had +bought with gold so high a station, in like manner his government +disagreed not with this base foundation. There were in him, and in full +measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there be imagined +in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into +working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women +and boys, but more especially toward women; and so far did he exceed all +measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own +daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was +exceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in +getting new wealth: and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had +no respect whatever; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, +dispensations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court +dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to +his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. +He caused the death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even be<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg604" +id="pg604">604</a></span> +rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of +seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his +direction many were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less +with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose +favor he acquired the Papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping +of his troth: he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but +what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in his days Rome +was like a den of thieves and murderers: his ambition was boundless, and +such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased: +nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he +was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still +almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made Cardinal and +then Vice-Chancellor: in which high place he continued till his papacy, +with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become Pope, he made +Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the +ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a +bastard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought +proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made +him a layman and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and turned +his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared far better than he +purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, +Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former +Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope +before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, +and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the +Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg605" +id="pg605">605</a></span> the +King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he +showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant +general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that +point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In +one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages +peradventure had been any pope before.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg606" +id="pg606">606</a></span></p> +<h3>APPENDIX IV.</h3> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Religious Revivals in Mediæval Italy.</i> See Chap. viii. p. 491 above.</div> + + +<p>It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance +as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the +phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise +and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were +due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the +Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were +shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of +movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical +revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of +the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their +militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is +necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was +common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its +wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its +pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of mediæval Europe, haunted +with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by +imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon +the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning +and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of +semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. +The celebrated shrines of Europe—Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, +Canterbury—acted<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg607" +id="pg607">607</a></span> like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion +of the mediæval races, like setons to their over-charged imagination. In +all these universal movements the Italians had their share: being more +advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the +crusades to commercial count, and maintained some moderation in the +<i>fakir</i> fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general +history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, +but rather with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which +were peculiar to the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the +political influence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the +preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics or superstitious +terror which seized upon wide districts, and the personal ascendency of +hermits unaccredited by the Church, but believed by the people to be +divinely inspired.</p> + +<p>One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth +century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had +recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. +France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes +were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble +task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that +period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private feuds +crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny +of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It +seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to +agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice +of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in +Bologna during the year 1233. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg608" +id="pg608">608</a></span> citizens and the country folk of the +surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial +wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his +eloquence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation +and forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had +prosecuted hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and +swore to live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him +to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations +by which the peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his +best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his +sanctity had been already spread abroad. The <i>carroccio</i> of the city, on +which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to +many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he +entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace +produced the same results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were +clasped which had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. +Treviso, Feltre, Beliuno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the +grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas +were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves +at the disposition of the monk, and prayed him to reform their +constitution. But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate +community, to reconcile household with household, and to efface the +miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza aimed at consolidating the +Lombard cities in one common bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers +of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of +Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of August was the day fixed +for this great national assembly. More than four hundred thousand +persons, according to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg609" +id="pg609">609</a></span> the computation of Parisio di Cereta, appeared +upon the scene. This multitude included the populations of Verona, +Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several +standards, together with contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, +Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly confined to the common +folk. The bishops of these flourishing cities, the haughty Marquis of +Este, the fierce lord of Romano, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, obeyed +the invitation of the friar. There, on the banks of the Adige, and +within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended a pulpit that had +been prepared for him, and preached a sermon on the text, <i>Pacem meam do +vobis, pacem relinquo vobis</i>. The horrors of war, and the Christian duty +of reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the end of which +he constrained the Lombards to ratify a solemn league of amity, vowing +to eternal perdition all who should venture to break the same, and +imprecating curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and +everything they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of Este to take +in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Romano. Up to this moment John of +Vicenza had made a noble use of the strange power which he possessed. +But his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of confining +himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now demanded to be +made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive +the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a +saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first things he +did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty +citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The +Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms, +he was beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at the<span +class="pagenum"><a name="pg610" id="pg610">610</a></span> intercession +of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige annihilated.<a +name="FNanchor_1_439" id="FNanchor_1_439" /><a href="#Footnote_1_439" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_439" id="Footnote_1_439" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_439"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza +are to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of Rolandini and +Gerardus Maurisius.</p></div> + +<p>The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of +Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political +authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, +he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for +sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the +year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to +preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote +Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons +so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the +devotion they inspired increased marvelously. And he, seeing the +concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce +vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and +thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the +tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and +the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia +who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time +ruled Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed +against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay +him. But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so +powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria +and established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were +laying siege to Pavia: the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied +by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade. +Fra<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg611" +id="pg611">611</a></span> Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his +eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. They broke +through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the +freedom of Pavia. What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed +over to the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into +the scale of the Visconti: so that at the end of a three years' manful +conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359. Fra Jacopo +made the best terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to +secure his own safety. He was consigned by the conquerors to the +superiors of his order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at +Vercelli. In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the +eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had been strictly +subordinated to political aims in the interests of republican liberty. +Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with Savonarola: like Savonarola, he fell a +victim to the selfish and immoral oppressors of his country. As in the +case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which subsisted in Italy +between a high standard of morality and patriotic heroism.<a name="FNanchor_1_440" id="FNanchor_1_440" /><a href="#Footnote_1_440" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_440" id="Footnote_1_440" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_440"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo +are Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his Chronicle +(Groevius, vol. ix.).</p></div> + +<p>San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preachers, who, without +taking a prominent part in contemporary politics, devoted all their +energies to the moral regeneration of the people. His life, written by +Vespasiano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents which we +possess for the religious history of Italy in the first half of the +fifteenth century. His parents, who were people of good condition, sent +him at an early age to study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him +for a lucrative<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg612" +id="pg612">612</a></span> and important office in the Church. But, while yet a +youth, he was seized with a profound conviction of the degradation of +his countrymen. The sense of sin so weighed upon him that he sold all +his substance, entered the order of S. Francis, and began to preach +against the vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. After +traveling through the length and breadth of the peninsula, and winning +all men by the magic of his eloquence, he came to Florence. 'There,' +says Vespasiano, 'the Florentines being by nature very well disposed +indeed to truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole State and gave +it, one may say, a second birth. And in order to abolish the false hair +which the women wore, and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused +a sort of large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and +bade every one who possessed any of these vanities to place them there; +and so they did; and he set fire thereto and burned the whole.' S. +Bernardino preached unremittingly for forty-two years in every quarter +of Italy, and died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness. 'Of many +enmities and deaths of men he wrought peace and removed deadly hatreds; +and numberless princes, who harbored feuds to the death, he reconciled, +and restored tranquillity to many cities and peoples.' A vivid picture +of the method adopted by S. Bernardino in his dealings with these cities +is presented to us by Graziani, the chronicler of Perugia: 'On September +23, 1425, a Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards of +3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from the Sacred +Scripture, reproving men of every vice and sin, and teaching Christian +living. Then he began to rebuke the women for their paints and +cosmetics, and false hair, and such like wanton customs; and in like +manner the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and amulets<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg613" +id="pg613">613</a></span> +and charms: insomuch that within a fortnight the women sent all their +false hair and gewgaws to the Convent of S. Francis, and the men their +dice, cards, and such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on October +29 Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things on the piazza, +where he erected a kind of wooden castle between the fountain and the +Bishop's palace; and in this he put all the said articles, and set fire +to them; and the fire was so great that none durst go near; and in the +fire were burned things of the greatest value, and so great was the +haste of men and women to escape that fire that many would have perished +but for the quick aid of the burghers.' Together with this onslaught +upon vanities, Fra Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and +amity. It is noticeable that while his sermon lasted and the great bell +of S. Lorenzo went on tolling, no man could be taken or imprisoned in +the city of Perugia.<a name="FNanchor_1_441" id="FNanchor_1_441" /><a href="#Footnote_1_441" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_441" id="Footnote_1_441" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_441"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Vespasiano, <i>Vite di Uomini Illustri,</i> pp. 185-92. +Graziani, <i>Archivio Storico,</i> vol. xvi. part i. pp. 313, 314.</p></div> + +<p>The same city was the scene of many similar displays. During the +fifteenth century it remained in a state of the most miserable internal +discord, owing to the feuds of its noble families. Graziani gives an +account of the preaching there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445: on +this occasion a temporary truce was patched up between old enemies, a +witch was burned for the edification of the burghers, the people were +reproved for their extravagance in dress, and two peacemakers +(<i>pacieri</i>) were appointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing +this discipline, the whole of Perugia seemed to have repented of its +sins; but the first entry for April 15 is the murder of one of the +Ranieri family by another of the same house. So transitory were the +effects of such revivals.<a name="FNanchor_1_442" id="FNanchor_1_442" +/><a href="#Footnote_1_442" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Another<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg614" +id="pg614">614</a></span> entry in +Graziani's <i>Chronicle</i> deserves to be noticed. He describes how, in +1448, Fra Roberto da Lecce (like S. Bernardino and Fra Jacopo della +Marca, a Franciscan of the Order of Observance) came to preach in +January. He was only twenty-two years of age; but his fame was so great +that he drew about 15,000 persons into the piazza to listen to him. The +stone pulpit, we may say in passing, is still shown, from which these +sermons were delivered. It is built into the wall of the Cathedral, and +commands the whole square. Roberto da Lecce began by exhibiting a +crucifix, which moved the audience to tears; 'and the weeping and +crying, <i>Jesu misericordia!</i> lasted about half an hour. Then he made +four citizens be chosen for each gate as peacemakers.' What follows in +Graziani is an account of a theatrical show, exhibited upon the steps of +the Cathedral. On Good Friday the friar assembled all the citizens, and +preached; and when the moment came for the elevation of the crucifix, +'there issued forth from San Lorenzo Eliseo di Christoforo, a barber of +the quarter of Sant Angelo, like a naked Christ with the cross on his +shoulder, and the crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh seemed to +be bruised as when Christ was scourged.' The people were immensely moved +by this sight. They groaned and cried out, <i>'Misericordia!'</i> and many +monks were made upon the spot. At last, on April 7, Fra Roberto took his +leave of the Perugians, crying as he went, <i>'La pace sia con voi!'</i><a +name="FNanchor_2_443" id="FNanchor_2_443" /><a href="#Footnote_2_443" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> We have a glimpse of the same Fra Roberto da +Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The feuds of the noble families della +Croce and della Valle were then raging in the streets of Rome. On the +night of April 3 they fought a pitched battle in the neighborhood of the +Pantheon, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg615" +id="pg615">615</a></span> factions of Orsini and Colonna joining in the fray. Many +of the combatants were left dead before the palaces of the Vallensi; the +numbers of the wounded were variously estimated; and all Rome seemed to +be upon the verge of civil war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing large +congregations, not only of the common folk, but also of the Roman +prelates, to his sermons at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, interrupted his +discourse upon the following Friday, and held before the people the +image of their crucified Saviour, entreating them to make peace. As he +pleaded with them, he wept; and they too fell to weeping—fierce +satellites of the rival factions and worldly prelates lifting up their +voice in concert with the friar who had touched their hearts.<a +name="FNanchor_3_444" id="FNanchor_3_444" /><a href="#Footnote_3_444" +class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Another member of the Franciscan Order of +Observance should be mentioned after Fra Roberto. This was Fra Giovanni +da Capistrano, of whose preaching at Brescia in 1451 we have received a +minute account. He brought with him a great reputation for sanctity and +eloquence, and for the miraculous cures which he had wrought. The +Rectors of the city, together with 300 of the most distinguished +burghers upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on foot, went +out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements were made for the +entertainment of himself and 100 followers, at public cost. Next +morning, three hours before dawn, there were already assembled upwards +of 10,000 people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. 'Think, +therefore,' says the <i>Chronicle,</i> 'how many there must have been in the +daytime! and mark this, that they came less to hear his sermon than to +see him.' As he made his way through the throng, his frock was almost +torn to pieces on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.<a +name="FNanchor_4_445" id="FNanchor_4_445" /><a href="#Footnote_4_445" +class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_442" id="Footnote_1_442" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_442"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Graziani, pp. 565-68.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_443" id="Footnote_2_443" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_443"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Graziani, pp, 597-601.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_444" id="Footnote_3_444" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_444"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Jacobus Volaterranus. Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, 156, 167.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_445" id="Footnote_4_445" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_445"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See <i>Istoria Bresciana.</i> Muratori, xxi. 865.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg616" id="pg616">616</a></span>>It did not always need the interposition of a friar to arouse a strong +religious panic in Italian cities. After an unusually fierce bout of +discord the burghers themselves would often attempt to give the sanction +of solemn rites and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. +Siena, which was always more disturbed by civil strife than any of her +neighbors, offered a notable example of this custom in the year 1494. +The factions of the Monti de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging; the +city was full of feud and suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by the +French invasion. It seemed good, therefore, to the heads of the chief +parties that an oath of peace should be taken by the whole body of the +burghers. Allegretti's account of the ceremony, which took place at dead +of night in the beautiful Cathedral of Siena, is worthy to be +translated. 'The conditions of the peace were then read, which took up +eight pages, together with an oath of the most horrible sort, full of +maledictions, imprecations, excommunications, invocations of evil, +renunciation of benefits temporal and spiritual, confiscation of goods, +vows, and so many other woes that to hear it was a terror; <i>et etiam</i> +that <i>in articulo mortis</i> no sacrament should accrue to the salvation, +but rather to the damnation of those who might break the said +conditions; insomuch that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, being +present, believe that never was made or heard a more awful and horrible +oath. Then the notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side of +the altar, wrote down the names of all the citizens, who swore upon the +crucifix, for on each side there was one, and every couple of the one +and the other faction kissed; and the bells clashed, and <i>Te Deum +laudamus</i> was sung with the organs and the choir while the oath was +being taken. All this happened between one and two hours of the night, +with many torches lighted. Now may God<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg617" +id="pg617">617</a></span> will that this be peace indeed, +and tranquillity for all citizens, whereof I doubt.'<a name="FNanchor_1_446" id="FNanchor_1_446" /><a href="#Footnote_1_446" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The doubt of +Allegretti was but too reasonable. Siena profited little by these +dreadful oaths and terrifying functions. Two years later on, the same +chronicler tells how it was believed that blood had rained outside the +Porta a Laterino, and that various visions of saints and specters had +appeared to holy persons, proclaiming changes in the state, and +commanding a public demonstration of repentance. Each parish organized a +procession, and all in turn marched, some by day and some by night, +singing Litanies, and beating and scourging themselves, to the +Cathedral, where they dedicated candles; and 'one ransomed prisoners, +for an offering, and another dowered a girl in marriage.'</p> + +<p>In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the occasion of an +outbreak of the plague. 'Flagellants went round the city, and when they +came to a cross, they all cried with a loud voice: <i>Misericordia! +misericordia!</i> For eight days there was a strict fast; the butchers shut +their shops.' What follows in the Chronicle is comic: 'Meretrices ad +concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quâdam quæ cupiditate lucri +adolescentem admiserat, deprehensâ, aliæ meretrices ita illius nates +nudas corrigiis percusserunt, ut sanguinem emitteret.'<a name="FNanchor_2_447" id="FNanchor_2_447" /><a href="#Footnote_2_447" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Ferrara +exhibited a like devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About this +time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the passage of +Charles VIII., and by the changes in states and kingdoms which +Savonarola had predicted. The Ferrarese, to quote the language of their +chronicler, expected that 'in this year, throughout Italy, would be the +greatest famine, war, and want that had ever been since the world +began.' Therefore they fasted, and 'the Duke of Ferrara<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg618" +id="pg618">618</a></span> fasted together +with the whole of his court. At the same time a proclamation was made +against swearing, games of hazard, and unlawful trades: and it was +enacted that the Jews should resume their obnoxious yellow gaberdine +with the O upon their breasts. In 1500 these edicts were repeated. The +condition of Italy had grown worse and worse: it was necessary to +besiege the saints with still more energetic demonstrations. Therefore +'the Duke Ercole d' Este, for good reasons to him known, <i>and because it +is always well to be on good terms with God,</i> ordained that processions +should be made every third day in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and +about 4,000 children or more from twelve years of age upwards, dressed +in white, and each holding a banner with a painted Jesus. His lordship, +and his sons and brothers, followed this procession, namely the Duke on +horseback, because he could not then walk, and all the rest on foot, +behind the Bishop.'<a name="FNanchor_3_448" id="FNanchor_3_448" /><a href="#Footnote_3_448" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> A certain amount of irony transpires in this +quotation, which would make one fancy that the chronicler suspected the +Duke of ulterior, and perhaps political, motives.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_446" id="Footnote_1_446" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_446"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_447" id="Footnote_2_447" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_447"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Annales Bononienses.</i> Mur. xxiii. 890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_448" id="Footnote_3_448" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_448"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Diario Ferrarese.</i> Mur. xxiv. pp. 17-386.</p></div> + +<p>It sometimes happened that the contagion of such devotion spread from +city to city; on one occasion, in 1399, it traveled from Piedmont +through the whole of Italy. The epidemic of flagellants, of which +Giovanni Villani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also in +Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The Florentine +authorities refused entrance to these fanatics into their territory. In +1334, Villani mentions another outburst of the same devotion (lib xi. +cap. 23), which was excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da +Bergamo. The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg619" +id="pg619">619</a></span> the +olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves +before the altars of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred +at a time, in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the <i>Storia di +Milano</i> (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 'white +penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 'Multitudes of men, +women, girls, boys, small and great, townspeople and countryfolk, nobles +and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white +sheets from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every +district in succession. 'On their journey, when they came to a +cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying +<i>Misericordia</i> three times; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the +Ave Maria. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing <i>Stabat +Mater dolorosa</i> and other litanies and prayers. The population of the +places to which they came were divided: for some went forth and told +those who staid that they should assume the same habit, so that at one +time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000 of +them.' After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many cases +penitence, amity, and alms-giving, Corio goes on to observe: 'However, +men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It is +noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague; and +it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents +together on the highways and in the cities led to this result.</p> + +<p>During the anarchy of Italy between 1494—the date of the invasion of +Charles VIII.—and 1527—the date of the sack of Rome—the voice of +preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always +to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the +center of the military operations of the French, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg620" +id="pg620">620</a></span> Swiss, the +Spaniards, and the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none +were fanatical prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516 +there appeared in Milan 'a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond +measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly +hair and beard, and so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit.' +He lived on water and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms +of all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the +opposition of the Archbishop and the Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his +theater; and there he denounced the vices of the priests and monks to +vast congregations of eager listeners. In a word, he engaged in open +warfare with the clergy on their own ground. But they of course proved +too strong for him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a native +of Siena, aged 30.<a name="FNanchor_1_449" id="FNanchor_1_449" /><a href="#Footnote_1_449" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> We may compare with this picturesque apparition of +Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome +like birds of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of Clement +VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went +about preaching and predicting the ruin of Italy and the end of the +world with wild cries and threats.'<a name="FNanchor_2_450" id="FNanchor_2_450" /><a href="#Footnote_2_450" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In 1523 Milan beheld the +spectacle of a parody of the old preachers. There appeared a certain +Frate di S. Marco, whom the people held for a saint, and who 'encouraged +the Milanese against the French, saying it was a merit with Jesus Christ +to slay those Frenchmen, and that they were pigs.' He seems to<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg621" +id="pg621">621</a></span> have +been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head had been turned by the +examples of Bussolaro and Savonarola.<a name="FNanchor_3_451" id="FNanchor_3_451" /><a href="#Footnote_3_451" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Again, in 1529, we find a +certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great +commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very +lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, +this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended +deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, +and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed +in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They +promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting <i>Misericordia!</i> +and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, the Bishop and the +Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the devotion.<a name="FNanchor_4_452" id="FNanchor_4_452" /><a href="#Footnote_4_452" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> These +gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national importance. +Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought them +worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus we find Pitti, +in the <i>Storia Fiorentina (Arch. Stor.</i> vol. i. p. 112), describing what +happened at Florence in 1514: 'There appeared in Santa Croce a Frate +Francesco da Montepulciano, very young, who rebuked vice with severity, +and affirmed that God had willed to scourge Italy, especially Florence +and Rome, in sermons so terrible that the audience kept crying with +floods of tears, <i>Misericordia!</i> The whole people were struck dumb with +horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd, +listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached +a sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost +their senses; for he promised to reveal upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg622" +id="pg622">622</a></span> the third day how and from +what source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the +pulpit, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the +lungs, which soon put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the +frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused +all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for +the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici +endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and public +shows.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_449" id="Footnote_1_449" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_449"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See Prato and Burigozzo, <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iii. pp. 357, +431. It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil discord, +was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. Caterina, S. +Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the mind.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_450" id="Footnote_2_450" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_450"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Storia Fiorintina,</i> vol. i. p. 87.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_451" id="Footnote_3_451" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_451"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Arch. Stor.</i> vol. iii. p. 443.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_452" id="Footnote_4_452" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_452"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Burigozzo, pp. 485-89.</p></div> + +<p>Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate +the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the +Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been +said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto +da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was +by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining +the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the +sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a rôle, which had been often +played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar +genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander +VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet +which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions +which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects +of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while +they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic +scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of +these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. +The momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, +Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg623" +id="pg623">623</a></span> proportion to the +slight intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has +nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the +duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral +abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his +audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, +when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the +nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he +obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is +as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which +removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 20%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg624" +id="pg624">624</a></span></p> +<h3>APPENDIX V.</h3> + +<div style="text-align: center;"><i>The 'Sommario della Storia d'Italia dal</i> 1511 <i>al</i> 1527,'<i> by Francesco +Vettori.</i><a name="FNanchor_1_453" id="FNanchor_1_453" /><a href="#Footnote_1_453" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></div> + + +<p>I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history +written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not +because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous +chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate +in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it +supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family +which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to +the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, +remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous +times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in +1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in +1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican policy, he continued in +secret stanch to the family by whom he hoped to obtain honors and +privileges in the state. Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by +Pitti, Francesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his +expectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their native city, +and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they were condemned to exile, +death, imprisonment, or frosty toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two +years after Cosimo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards of<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg625" +id="pg625">625</a></span> +sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the princes to whose +service he had consecrated his life and for whose sake he had helped to +enslave Florence. To respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any +pity for the men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish +expectations, is impossible.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_453" id="Footnote_1_453" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_453"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Printed in <i>Arch. Stor. It.</i> Appendice No. 22, vol. vl.</p></div> + +<p>Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the +Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; +and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were +spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, +resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together +with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on +the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and +Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of +the men whose characters he weighed in his <i>Sommario</i>, and of obtaining +a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place +upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter +V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, +had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than +theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini +and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter +are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco +Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain +the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical +philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear +comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found +in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he +writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian +philosophy<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg626" +id="pg626">626</a></span> was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many +inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth +century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who +only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or +skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics.</p> + +<p>In the dedication of the <i>Sommario della Storia d' Italia</i> to Francesco +Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he +retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical +narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to +transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but +rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of +Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the views of men and morals +adopted in my previous chapters.</p> + +<p>After touching on the sack of Prato and the consternation which ensued +in Florence, Vettori describes the return of the Medici in 1512. +Giuliano, the son of Lorenzo, was the first to appear: after him came +the Cardinal Giovanni, and Giuliano's son Giulio.<a name="FNanchor_1_454" id="FNanchor_1_454" /><a href="#Footnote_1_454" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The elder among +their partisans persuaded them to call a Parlamento and assume the +government in earnest. On September 16, accordingly, the Cardinal took +possession of the palace, <i>fece pigliare il Palazzo</i>; the Signory +summoned the people into the piazza—a mere matter of form; a Balia of +forty men was appointed; the Gonfalonier Ridolfi resigned; and the city +was reduced to the will and pleasure of the Cardinal de' Medici. Then +reasons sons Vettori:<a name="FNanchor_2_455" id="FNanchor_2_455" /><a href="#Footnote_2_455" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 'This was what is called an absolute tyranny; +yet, speaking of the things of this world without prejudice<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg627" +id="pg627">627</a></span> and +according to the truth, I say that if it were possible to institute +republics like that imagined by Plato, or feigned to exist in Utopia by +Thomas More, we might affirm they were not tyrannical governments: but +all the commonwealths or kingdoms I have seen or read of, have, it seems +to me, a savor of tyranny. Nor is it a matter for astonishment that +parties and factions have often prevailed in Florence, and that one man +has arisen to make himself the chief, when we reflect that the city is +very populous, that many of the burghers desire to share in its +advantages, and that there are few prizes to distribute: wherefore one +party always must have the upper hand and enjoy the honors and benefits +of the state, while the other stands by to watch the game.' He then +proceeds to criticise France, where the nobles alone bear arms and pay +no taxes, and where the administration of justice is slow and expensive; +and Venice, where three thousand gentlemen keep more than 100,000 of the +inhabitants below their feet, unhonored, powerless, unprivileged, +oppressed. Having demonstrated the elements of tyranny and injustice +both in a kingdom and a commonwealth reputed prosperous and free, he +shows that, according to his own philosophy, no blame attaches to a +burgher who succeeds in usurping the sole mastery of a free state, +provided he rule wisely; for all kingdoms were originally founded either +by force or by craft. 'We ought not therefore to call that private +citizen a tyrant who has usurped the government of his state, if he be a +good man; nor again to call a man the real lord of a city who, though he +has the investiture of the Emperor, is bad and malevolent.' This +critique of constitutions from the pen of a doctrinaire, who was also a +man of experience, is interesting, partly for its positive frankness, +and partly as showing what elementary notions still prevailed about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg628" +id="pg628">628</a></span> +purposes of government. Vettori's ultimate criterion is the personal +quality of the ambitious ruler.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_454" id="Footnote_1_454" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_454"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Giovanni and Giulio were afterwards Leo X. and Clement +VII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_455" id="Footnote_2_455" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_455"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> P. 293.</p></div> + +<p>Passing to what he says about Leo X.,<a name="FNanchor_1_456" id="FNanchor_1_456" /><a href="#Footnote_1_456" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> it is worth while to note that +he attributes his election chiefly to the impression produced upon the +Cardinals by Alexander and Julius. 'During the reign of two fierce and +powerful Pontiffs, Cardinals had been put to death, imprisoned, deprived +of their property, exiled, and kept in continual alarm; and so great was +the dread among them now of electing another such Pope, that they +unanimously chose Giovanni de' Medici. Up to that time he had always +shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in squandering the +little that he owned; he had moreover managed so to dissemble as to +acquire a reputation for most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds +that his power in Florence helped him, and that he owed much to the +ability displayed by Bernardo da Bibbiena in winning votes. The joy of +the Florentines at his election is attributed to mean motives: 'being +all of them given over to commerce and gain, they thought they ought to +get some profit from this Papacy.'<a name="FNanchor_2_457" id="FNanchor_2_457" /><a href="#Footnote_2_457" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>The government which Lorenzo, afterwards Duke of Urbino, now established +in Florence is very favorably described by Vettori.<a name="FNanchor_3_458" id="FNanchor_3_458" /><a href="#Footnote_3_458" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'Lorenzo, though +still a young man, applied himself with great attention to the business +of the city, providing that equal justice should be administered to all, +that the public moneys should be levied and spent with frugality, and +that disputes should be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. His +rule was tolerated, because, while the revenues were large and the +expenses small, the citizens were not troubled with taxes; and this is +the chief way to please a people, seeing their affection for a prince is +measured by the good they get from him. Taking<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg629" +id="pg629">629</a></span> this opinion of Lorenzo, +it is possible for Vettori in another place to say of him that 'he +governed Florence like a citizen;'<a name="FNanchor_4_459" id="FNanchor_4_459" /><a href="#Footnote_4_459" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and on the occasion of his death +in 1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his character. 'His +death was a misfortune for Florence, which it would be difficult to +describe. Though young, he had the qualities of virtuous maturity. He +bore a real affection toward the citizens, was parsimonious of the +moneys of the Commune, prodigal of his own; while a foe to vice, he was +not too severe on those who erred. Though he began his military life at +twenty-three, he always bore the cuirass of a man at arms upon his +shoulders day and night on active service. He slept very little, was +sober in his diet, temperate in love. The Florentines did not love him, +because it is not possible for men used to freedom to love a ruler; but +he, for his part, had not sought the office which was thrust upon him by +the will of others. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopularity +upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Florentines, who noticed every +detail, thought her grasping: and though he wanted to restrain her, he +found himself unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held +her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth +to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable +portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his <i>Principe</i>. The +somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, +his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, +combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, +are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare +Borgia was almost the exact opposite. The impression produced by +Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by what<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg630" +id="pg630">630</a></span> he says about +Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake the Duchy of Urbino.<a name="FNanchor_5_460" id="FNanchor_5_460" /><a href="#Footnote_5_460" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_456" id="Footnote_1_456" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_456"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. 297.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_457" id="Footnote_2_457" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_457"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> P. 300.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_458" id="Footnote_3_458" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_458"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_459" id="Footnote_4_459" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_459"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> P. 306.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_460" id="Footnote_5_460" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_460"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> P. 321. See too p. 307.</p></div> + +<p>But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. Vettori marks his +interference in the affairs of Lucca as the first great mistake he +made.<a name="FNanchor_1_461" id="FNanchor_1_461" /><a href="#Footnote_1_461" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His advisers in Florence had not reflected 'what infamy it +would bring upon the Pope in the opinion of all men, or what suspicion +it would rouse among the princes, if in the first months of his power he +were led to sanction an attack by the Florentines upon the Lucchese, +their neighbors and allies. How too could the burghers of Florence, who +had urged him to this step, remind the pontiff that he ought to moderate +his desire of gaining dominion for the Church and for his kin, by the +example of former Popes, all of whom, in the interest of their +dependents, had acquired to their own dishonor with peril and expense +what in a few days upon their death returned to the old and rightful +owners?' The conduct of Leo with regard to Lucca, his policy in +Florence, and the splendor maintained by his brother at Rome, did in +fact rouse the jealousy of the Italian powers both great and small.<a name="FNanchor_2_462" id="FNanchor_2_462" /><a href="#Footnote_2_462" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +'King Ferdinand remarked: If Giuliano has left Florence, he must be +aiming at something better, which can be nothing but the realm of +Naples. The Dukes of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino said the same. The +Sienese thought: If the pope allows the Florentines to attack Lucca, +which is so strong, well furnished, and harmonious, far more will he +consent to their encroaching upon us, who are weak, ill-provided, and at +odds among ourselves. The Duke of Ferrara had further reasons for +discontent in respect to Modena and Reggio.' Altogether, Leo began to +lose credit. Secret alliances were formed against him by the della +Rovere, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci; and though he<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg631" +id="pg631">631</a></span> took care to +attend public services and to fast more than etiquette required, nobody +believed in him. Vettori's comment reads like an echo of Machiavelli and +Guicciardini.<a name="FNanchor_3_463" id="FNanchor_3_463" /><a href="#Footnote_3_463" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'Assuredly it is most difficult to combine temporal +lordship with a reputation for religion: for they are two things which +will not harmonize. He who well considers the law of the Gospel will +observe that the pontiffs, though called Christ's Vicars, have +originated a new religion unlike that of Christ except in name. His +enjoins poverty; they desire riches. He preached humility; they follow +after pride. He commanded obedience; they aim at universal sovereignty. +I could enlarge upon their other vices; but it is enough to allude to +these, without entering into inconvenient discourses.' While treating of +the affairs of Urbino,<a name="FNanchor_4_464" id="FNanchor_4_464" /><a href="#Footnote_4_464" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> however, Vettori remarks that Leo could not +have done otherwise than punish Francesco Maria della Rovere, if he +wished to maintain the Papacy at the height of reputation to which it +had been raised by his predecessors.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_461" id="Footnote_1_461" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_461"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. 301.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_462" id="Footnote_2_462" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_462"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> P. 303.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_463" id="Footnote_3_463" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_463"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> P. 304.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_464" id="Footnote_4_464" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_464"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> P. 319.</p></div> + +<p>In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all that we know about +this Pope from other sources. He insists more perhaps than other +historians upon the able diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of +Tricarico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,<a name="FNanchor_1_465" id="FNanchor_1_465" /><a href="#Footnote_1_465" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and traces Leo's +fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the influence of Jeronimo +Adorno.<a name="FNanchor_2_466" id="FNanchor_2_466" /><a href="#Footnote_2_466" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The secret springs of Leo's conduct, when he was vainly +endeavoring to steer to his own profit between the great rivals for +power in Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of these +points. Of the prodigality which helped to ruin this Pope, and which +made his two successors impotent, he speaks with sneering sarcasm. 'It +was as easy for him to keep 1,000 ducats together as for a stone to fly +into<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg632" +id="pg632">632</a></span> the air by its own weight.'<a name="FNanchor_3_467" id="FNanchor_3_467" /><a href="#Footnote_3_467" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> When the news of the capture of +Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo was at the Villa Magliana in +the neighborhood of Rome.<a name="FNanchor_4_468" id="FNanchor_4_468" /><a href="#Footnote_4_468" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Whether he took cold at a window, or +whether his anxiety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori +remains uncertain. At any rate, he was attacked with fever, returned to +Rome, and died. 'It was said that his death was caused by poison; but +these stories are always circulated about men of high estate, especially +when they succumb to acute disease. Those, however, who knew the +constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and his habits of life, +will rather wonder that he lived so long.' After summing up the +vicissitudes of his career and passing a critique upon his vacillating +policy, Vettori resumes:<a name="FNanchor_5_469" id="FNanchor_5_469" /><a href="#Footnote_5_469" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> 'while on the one hand he would fain have +never had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desirous of fame +and sought to aggrandize his kindred. Fortune, to rid him of this +ambition, removed his brother and his nephew in his lifetime. Lastly, +when he had engaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if he +won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, fortune removed him +from the world so that he might not see his own mischance. In his +pontificate at Rome there was no plague, no poverty, no war. Letters and +the arts flourished, and the vices were also at their height. Alexander +and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance not only of the +prelates but of every little priest or clerk who died in Rome. Leo +abstained entirely from such practices. Therefore people came in crowds; +and it may be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, +the population of Rome increased by one third.' Vettori prudently +refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo's character in one decisive +sentence. He notes, however, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg633" +id="pg633">633</a></span> he was blamed for not keeping to his +word: 'it was a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give +such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; accordingly he +made so many promises; and fed people with such great expectations, that +it became impossible to please them.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_465" id="Footnote_1_465" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_465"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. 313.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_466" id="Footnote_2_466" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_466"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> P. 334.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_467" id="Footnote_3_467" /><a href="#FNanchor_3_467"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> P. 322.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_468" id="Footnote_4_468" /><a href="#FNanchor_4_468"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> P. 338.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_469" id="Footnote_5_469" /><a href="#FNanchor_5_469"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> P. 339.</p></div> + +<p>The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to the mutual hatred +and jealousy of the Cardinals.<a name="FNanchor_1_470" +id="FNanchor_1_470" /><a href="#Footnote_1_470" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +He ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the Pope's want of interest in great +affairs, adds his testimony to his private excellence and public +incapacity, and dismisses him without further notice.<a +name="FNanchor_2_471" id="FNanchor_2_471" /><a href="#Footnote_2_471" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_470" id="Footnote_1_470" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_470"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. 341.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_471" id="Footnote_2_471" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_471"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Pp. 343, 347.</p></div> + +<p>What he tells us about Clement is more interesting. In the dedication +to the <i>Sommario</i> he apologized in express terms for the high opinion +recorded of this Pope. Yet the impression which he leaves upon our mind +by what he writes is so unfavorable as to make it clear what Clement's +foes habitually said against him. He remarks, as one excuse for his +ill-success in office, that he succeeded to a Papacy ruined by the +prodigality in war and peace of Leo.<a name="FNanchor_1_472" +id="FNanchor_1_472" /><a href="#Footnote_1_472" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +As knight of Rhodes, as governor of Florence, and as Cardinal, Clement +had shown himself an able man. Fortune heaped her favors on him then. As +soon as he was made Pope, she veered round. 'From a puissant and +respected Cardinal, he became a feeble and discredited Pope.' His first +care was to provide for the government of Florence. In order to arrive +at a decision, he asked council of the Florentine orators and four other +noble burghers then in Rome, as to whether he could advantageously +intrust the city to the Cardinal of Cortona in guardianship over +Ippolito and Alessandro, the young bastards of the Medici.<a +name="FNanchor_2_473" id="FNanchor_2_473" /><a href="#Footnote_2_473" +class="fnanchor">[2]</a> 'All men nearly,' says<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg634" +id="pg634">634</a></span> Vettori, 'are +flatterers, and say what they believe will please great folk, although +they think the contrary. Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten +advised him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship of the +Cardinal of Cortona.' The remaining three, who were Ruberto Acciajuoli, +Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of +administering a free city through a priest who held his title from a +subject town. They recommended the appointment of a Gonfalonier for one +year, and so on, till a member of the Medicean family could take the +lead. Clement, however, decided on the other course; and to this cause +may be traced half the troubles of his reign.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_472" id="Footnote_1_472" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_472"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. 348.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_473" id="Footnote_2_473" /><a href="#FNanchor_2_473"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> P. 349. They were 14 and 13 years of age respectively.</p></div> + +<p>The greater part of what remains of the <i>Sommario</i> is occupied with +the wars and intrigues of Francis, Charles, and Clement. Vettori, it may +be said in passing, records a very unfavorable opinion of the Marquis of +Pescara, who was, he hints, guilty of first turning a favorable ear to +Moroni's plot and then of discovering the whole to his master.<a +name="FNanchor_1_474" id="FNanchor_1_474" /><a href="#Footnote_1_474" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A few days after his breach of faith with the +Milanese, he fell ill and died. 'He was a man whose military excellence +cannot be denied; but proud beyond all measure, envious, ungrateful, +avaricious, venomous, cruel, without religion or humanity, he was born +to be the ruin of Italy; and it may be truly said that of the evil she +has suffered and still suffers, a large part was caused by him.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_474" id="Footnote_1_474" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_474"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Pp. 358, 359.</p></div> + +<p>Of the breach of faith of Francis, after he had left his Spanish +prison, Vettori speaks in terms of the very highest commendation.<a +name="FNanchor_1_475" id="FNanchor_1_475" /><a href="#Footnote_1_475" +class="fnanchor">[1]</a> His refusal to cede Burgundy to Charles was +just and patriotic. That he broke his faith was no crime; for, though a +man ought rather to die than forswear himself, yet his first duty is to +God, his second<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg635" +id="pg635">635</a></span> to his country, Francis was clearly acting for the +benefit of his kingdom; and had he not left his two sons as hostages in +Spain? The whole defense is a good piece of specious pleading, and might +be used to illustrate the chapter on the Faith of Princes in the +<i>Principe</i>.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_475" id="Footnote_1_475" +/><a href="#FNanchor_1_475"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> P. +362.</p></div> + +<p>By far the most striking passage in Vettori's <i>Sommario</i> is the +description of the march of Frundsberg's and De Bourbon's army upon +Rome.<a name="FNanchor_1_476" id="FNanchor_1_476" /><a href="#Footnote_1_476" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He makes it clear to what extent the calamity of the sack was +due to the selfishness and cowardice of the Italian princes. First of +all the Venetians refused to offer any obstacles before the passage of +the Po, feeling that by doing so they might draw trouble on their own +provinces. Then the Duke of Ferrara supplied the Lutherans with +artillery, of which they hitherto had stood in need. The first use they +made of their fire-arms was to shoot the best captain in Italy, Giovanni +de' Medici of the Black Bands. The Duke of Urbino, the Marquis of +Saluzzo, and Guido Rangoni watched them cross the river and proceed by +easy stages through the district of Piacenza, 'following them like +lacqueys waiting on their lords.' The same thing happened at Parma and +Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying the foreigners with +food and money. Clement meanwhile was penniless in Rome. Rich as the +city was, he had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, +and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, moreover, who +had recently plundered the Vatican, kept him in a state of terror. As +the invaders, now commanded by the Constable de Bourbon, approached +Tuscany, the youth of Florence demanded to be armed in defense of their +hearths and homes. The Cardinal of Cortona, fearing a popular rising, +refused to grant their request. A riot broke out, and the Medici were +threatened with<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg636" +id="pg636">636</a></span> expulsion: but by the aid of influential citizens a +revolution was averted. The Constable, avoiding Florence and Siena, +marched straight on Rome, still watched but unmolested by the armies of +the League. He left his artillery on the road, and, as is well known, +carried the walls of Rome by assault on the morning of May 3, dying +himself at the moment of victory. From what has just been rapidly +narrated, it will be seen how utterly abject was the whole of Italy at +this moment, when a band of ruffians, headed by a rebel from his +sovereign, in disobedience to the viceroy of the king he pretended to +serve, was not only allowed but actually helped to traverse rivers, +plains, and mountains, on their way to Rome. What happened after the +capture of the Transteverine part of the city moves even deeper scorn. +'It still remained for the Imperial troops to enter the populous and +wealthy quarters; and these they had to reach by one of three bridges. +They numbered hardly more than 25,000 men, all told. In Rome were at +least 30,000 men fit to bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, +and among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds of Romans, +swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, with beards upon their +breasts. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get 500 together in +one band for the defense of one of the three bridges.' What immediately +follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a translation of +it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 'The soldiers slew at +pleasure; pillaged the houses of the middle classes and small folk, the +palaces of the nobles, the convents of both sexes, and the churches. +They made prisoners of men, women, and even of little children, without +regard to age, or vows, or any other claim on pity. The slaughter was +not great, for men rarely kill those who offer no resistance: but the +booty was incalculable, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg637" +id="pg637">637</a></span> coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, +clothes, tapestries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this +should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum that, if set down, +would win no credence. Let any one consider through how many years the +money of all Christendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there +in a great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bishops, Prelates, +and public officers, the wealthy merchants, both Roman and foreign, +selling at high prices, letting their houses at dear rents, and paying +nothing in the way of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the +poorer folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a city +sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater store of treasure +could be drawn. Though Rome has at other times been taken and pillaged, +yet never before was it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted +so long that what might not perhaps have been discovered on the first +day sooner or later came to light. This disaster was an example to the +world that men proud, avaricious, envious, murderous, lustful, +hypocritical, cannot long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied +that the inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained with +all these vices, and with many greater.'</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_476" id="Footnote_1_476" /><a href="#FNanchor_1_476"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Pp. 372-82.</p></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg639" +id="pg639">639</a></span></p> + +<h2>INDEX</h2> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">A</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Abelard, <a href="#pg009">9.</a></li> +<li>Ahmed, <a href="#pg589">589.</a></li> +<li>Albigenses, <a href="#pg009">9.</a></li> +<li>Aldi, the, <a href="#pg023">23</a>.</li> +<li>Aleander, <a href="#pg027">27.</a></li> +<li>Alexander VI., <a href="#pg406">406</a>., <a href="#pg407">407.</a> <i>seq.</i>., <a href="#pg603">603;</a> + <ul> + <li>death, <a href="#pg430">430.</a> (see Papacy).</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Alfonso I. of Naples, <a href="#pg568">568.</a></li> +<li>Alfonso II., <a href="#pg119">119</a>, <a href="#pg572">572</a>.</li> +<li>Allegre, <a href="#pg418">418</a>,</li> +<li>Allegretti, works, <a href="#pg292">292</a>; + <ul> + <li>cited, <a href="#pg165">165</a>;</li> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg616">616</a></li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>America, effects of its discovery, <a href="#pg540">540</a>.</li> +<li>Ammanati, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> +<li>Anjou, house of, transfers its claims to Sicily, <a href="#pg539">539</a>.</li> +<li>Appiani, <a href="#pg148">148</a>.</li> +<li>Ariosto, works, <a href="#pg119">119</a>; + <ul> + <li>cited, <a href="#pg413">413</a>;</li> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg130">130</a></li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Aristotle, influence of his writings, <a href="#pg197">197</a>; + <ul> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg234">234</a>, <a href="#pg235">235</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Art in Middle Age, <a href="#pg017">17</a>; + <ul> + <li> effect of religious conventionalism, <a href="#pg018">18</a>;</li> + <li> revolution made by Renaissance, <a href="#pg018">18</a>, <a href="#pg019">19</a>.</li> + <li> Italian, inimical to ugliness, <a href="#pg490">490</a>;</li> + <li> flourishes under despots, <a href="#pg079">79</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Ascham, R., quoted, <a href="#pg472">472</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">B</p> + + <ul class="IX"> +<li>Bacon, Francis, <a href="#pg026">26</a>;</li> +<li>——, Roger, <a href="#pg009">9</a>, <a href="#pg010">10.</a>.</li> +<li>Baglioni, <a href="#pg122">122</a>, <a href="#pg148">148</a>.</li> +<li>Barbiano, <a href="#pg159">159</a>.</li> +<li>Bartoli, A., cited, <a href="#pg252">252</a>.</li> +<li>Beccadelli, <a href="#pg174">174</a>.</li> +<li>Bellini, works, <a href="#pg488">488</a>.</li> +<li>Bentivogli, <a href="#pg102">102</a>, <a href="#pg115">115</a>, <a href="#pg123">123</a>.</li> +<li>Bergamo, V. da, <a href="#pg618">618</a>.</li> +<li>Bernard, St., <a href="#pg013">13</a>.</li> +<li>Berni cited, <a href="#pg443">443</a>.</li> +<li>Bibbiena, <a href="#pg184">184</a>; + <ul> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg190">190</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Bologna, <a href="#pg123">123</a>, <a href="#pg617">617</a>.</li> +<li>Boniface VIII., <a href="#pg076">76</a>.</li> +<li>Borgia, Cesare, <a href="#pg117">117</a>, <a href="#pg324">324</a>, <a href="#pg345">345</a> <i>seq.</i>, <a href="#pg426">426</a>, <a href="#pg577">577</a>; + <ul> + <li>murders, <a href="#pg352">352</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Borgia, Lucrezia, <a href="#pg419">419</a>; + <ul> + <li>character cleared of calumny, <a href="#pg420">420</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Borgia, Roderigo (see Alexander VI).</li> +<li>Boscoli, P. P., <a href="#pg466">466</a>.</li> +<li>Bracciolini, P., <a href="#pg274">274</a>.</li> +<li>Brantôme quoted, <a href="#pg117">117</a>.</li> +<li>Brescia, <a href="#pg615">615</a>; + <ul> + <li>Arnold of, <a href="#pg064">64</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Browning, R., quoted, <a href="#pg013">13</a>.</li> +<li>Bruni, L., <a href="#pg274">274</a>.</li> +<li>Buonarottí, <a href="#pg491">491</a>; + <ul> + <li>works, <a href="#pg019">19</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Burchard cited, <a href="#pg430">430</a>, <a href="#pg431">431</a>.</li> +<li>Burckhardt cited, <a href="#pg428">428</a>; + <ul> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg434">434</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Burton, Robert, cited, <a href="#pg475">475</a>.</li> +<li>Bussolaro, J. del, <a href="#pg610">610</a>.</li> +<li>Byzantine empire, effect of its fall, <a href="#pg014">14</a>.</li> + </ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">C</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Capistrano, G. da, <a href="#pg615">615</a>.</li> +<li>Capponi, P., <a href="#pg284">284</a>, <a href="#pg563">563</a>.</li> +<li>Carducci, <a href="#pg284">284</a>, <a href="#pg289">289</a>; + <ul> + <li>works, <a href="#pg293">293</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Carmagnuola, F., <a href="#pg161">161</a>.</li> +<li>"Carmina Burana," <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Carrara, <a href="#pg149">149</a>.</li> +<li>Carroccio, <a href="#pg058">58</a>.</li> +<li>Castiglione, works, <a href="#pg183">183</a>, <a href="#pg457">457</a>.</li> +<li>Catholic Church (see Papacy). + <ul> + <li>Support of Church required by good society, <a href="#pg455">455</a>;</li> + <li>philosophy and theology fused, <a href="#pg456">456</a>;</li> + <li>religion divorced from morality, <a href="#pg462">462</a>, <a href="#pg493">493</a>;</li> + <li>influence of ancient literature, <a href="#pg464">464</a>;</li> + <li>æstheticism, <a href="#pg465">465</a>;</li> + <li>humanism antagonistic to Christianity, <a href="#pg493">493</a>;</li> + <li>its corruption, <a href="#pg448">448</a> <i>seq.</i>;</li> + <li>not universal, <a href="#pg470">470</a>;</li> + <li>immorality of priests, <a href="#pg458">458</a>, <a href="#pg459">459</a>;</li> + <li>power of ecclesiastical eloquence, <a href="#pg491">491</a>;</li> + <li>revivals, <a href="#pg490">490</a>, <a href="#pg606">606</a> <i>seq</i>.;</li> + <li>indestructable vigor of religious faith, <a href="#pg469">469</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Cellini, B., <a href="#pg104">104</a>, <a href="#pg462">462</a>, <a href="#pg492">492</a>; + <ul> + <li>memoirs, <a href="#pg325">325</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Charles VIII. (see Italy, history), <a href="#pg540">540</a> <i>seq</i>.; + <ul> + <li> escape, <a href="#pg580">580</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Charles of Anjou, <a href="#pg075">75</a>.</li> +<li>Charles the Great, <a href="#pg050">50</a>.</li> +<li>Chivalry, <a href="#pg483">483</a>.</li> +<li>Christianity (see Catholic Church, Morals), + <ul> + <li>influence in forming modern society, <a href="#pg007">7</a>;</li> + <li>how affected by Renaissance, <a href="#pg025">25</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Clement VII., <a href="#pg443">443</a>, <a href="#pg633">633</a>.</li> +<li>Colonnesi, <a href="#pg375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Columbus, <a href="#pg015">15</a>.</li> +<li>Comines cited, <a href="#pg416">416</a>; + <ul> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg214">214</a>, <a href="#pg475">475</a>, <a href="#pg541">541</a>, <a href="#pg553">553</a>, <a href="#pg572">572</a>, <a href="#pg578">578</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Condottieri, <a href="#pg086">86</a>, <a href="#pg113">113</a>, <a href="#pg131">131</a>, <a href="#pg156">156</a> <i>seq</i>.; <a href="#pg245">245</a>, <a href="#pg361">361</a>; + <ul> + <li>character of warfare, <a href="#pg102">102</a>, <a href="#pg363">363</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Compagni, Dino, chronicle of, <a href="#pg262">262</a>; + <ul> + <li>its authenticity, <a href="#pg266">266</a> <i>seq</i>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Copernicus, <a href="#pg015">15</a>.</li> +<li>Corio, works, <a href="#pg292">292</a>; + <ul> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg135">135</a>, <a href="#pg143">143</a>, <a href="#pg145">145</a>, <a href="#pg152">152</a>. <a href="#pg160">160</a>, <a href="#pg385">385</a>, <a href="#pg391">391</a>, <a href="#pg392">392</a>, <a href="#pg619">619</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Coryat, T., quoted, <a href="#pg475">475</a>.</li> +<li>Croce, della, <a href="#pg614">614</a>.</li> +<li>Cromwell, <a href="#pg454">454</a>.</li> +<li>Cruelty (see Blood-madness), + <ul> + <li>instances of, <a href="#pg151">151</a>, <a href="#pg478">478</a>, <a href="#pg571">571</a>;</li> + <li>of French, <a href="#pg557">557</a>, <a href="#pg583">583</a>;</li> + <li>its use, <a href="#pg354">354</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Crusades, <a href="#pg007">7</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">D</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Dante, political views, <a href="#pg261">261</a>; + <ul> + <li>works, <a href="#pg010">10</a>, <a href="#pg011">11</a>, <a href="#pg073">73</a>, <a href="#pg260">260</a>;</li> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg073">73</a>, <a href="#pg076">76</a>, <a href="#pg077">77</a>, <a href="#pg133">133</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Democratic idea, its gradual growth, <a href="#pg008">8</a>.</li> +<li>Dennistoun cited, <a href="#pg160">160</a>.</li> +<li>Descartes, <a href="#pg026">26</a>.</li> +<li>Djem, <a href="#pg415">415</a>, <a href="#pg566">566</a>, <a href="#pg576">576</a>.</li> +<li>Dürer, works, <a href="#pg490">490</a>; + <ul> + <li>cited, <a href="#pg475">475</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">E</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Erasmus, <a href="#pg024">24</a>, 27.</li> +<li>Este, house of, <a href="#pg395">395</a>, <a href="#pg420">420</a>; + <ul> + <li>Nicolo, <a href="#pg168">168</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">F</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Fanfoni, P., cited, <a href="#pg263">263</a>, <a href="#pg268">268</a>.</li> +<li>Feltre, V. da, <a href="#pg171">171</a>, <a href="#pg176">176</a>.</li> +<li>Ferdinand of Arragon, <a href="#pg296">296</a>, <a href="#pg358">358</a>; + <ul> + <li>of Naples, <a href="#pg570">570</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Ferrara, <a href="#pg499">499</a>, <a href="#pg617">617</a>; court, <a href="#pg423">423</a>.</li> +<li>Ficino, <a href="#pg175">175</a>, <a href="#pg456">456</a>.</li> +<li>Fiesole, G. da, Works, <a href="#pg488">488</a>.</li> +<li>Filelfo, <a href="#pg171">171</a>; quoted, <a href="#pg381">381</a>.</li> +<li>Flora, Joachim of, <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Florence, its constitution, <a href="#pg195">195</a>, <a href="#pg201">201</a>, <a href="#pg592">592</a>, <a href="#pg596">596</a>, <a href="#pg598">598</a>; + <ul> + <li>number of citizens, <a href="#pg598">598</a>;</li> + <li>parties, <a href="#pg211">211</a>;</li> + <li>perpetual flux, <a href="#pg221">221</a>;</li> + <li>government by merchants, <a href="#pg225">225</a>;</li> + <li>the "parlamento," <a href="#pg230">230</a>;</li> + <li>cause of failure of popular government, <a href="#pg231">231</a>;</li> + <li>population, <a href="#pg256">256</a>;</li> + <li>the "arti," <a href="#pg597">597</a>;</li> + <li>militia, its value, <a href="#pg601">601</a>;</li> + <li>Machiavelli's reforms, <a href="#pg312">312</a>;</li> + <li>revenues, <a href="#pg255">255</a>;</li> + <li>topography, <a href="#pg595">595</a>;</li> + <li>history (see Italy),</li> + <li>rule of the Medici, <a href="#pg277">277</a>, <a href="#pg305">305</a>, <a href="#pg629">629</a>, years 1527-31, <a href="#pg282">282</a>;</li> + <li>recovers liberty through the French, <a href="#pg560">560</a>;</li> + <li>occupation, <a href="#pg562">562</a>;</li> + <li>commonwealth, <a href="#pg282">282</a>;</li> + <li>divisions of popular party, <a href="#pg283">283</a>;</li> + <li>siege, <a href="#pg285">285</a>;</li> + <li>effect of Savonarola's prophecies, <a href="#pg290">290</a>;</li> + <li>Pazzi conspiracy, <a href="#pg398">398</a>;</li> + <li>final subjugation, <a href="#pg446">446</a>;</li> + <li>character of its historians, <a href="#pg248">248</a> <i>seq</i>., <a href="#pg274">274</a>.</li> + <li>Society, character of people, <a href="#pg600">600</a>;</li> + <li>their enlightenment and immorality, <a href="#pg504">504</a>;</li> + <li>absence of religious faith, <a href="#pg295">295</a>;</li> + <li>excess of intellectual mobility, <a href="#pg237">237</a>;</li> + <li>commercial character, <a href="#pg238">238</a>;</li> + <li>social life, <a href="#pg242">242</a>.</li> + <li>A city of intelligence, <a href="#pg232">232</a>, <a href="#pg246">246</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Fondulo, G., <a href="#pg463">463</a>.</li> +<li>Ford, J., cited, <a href="#pg477">477</a>.</li> +<li>Foscari, F., <a href="#pg215">215</a>; quoted, <a href="#pg600">600</a>.</li> +<li>Francia, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> +<li>Frattcelli, <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Frederick I., <a href="#pg063">63</a>.</li> +<li>Frederick II., <a href="#pg010">10</a>, <a href="#pg068">68</a>, <a href="#pg105">105</a>.</li> +<li>Froben, J., <a href="#pg023">23</a>.</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">G</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Gambacorta, <a href="#pg147">147</a>.</li> +<li>Gemistos Plethon, <a href="#pg173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Genezzano, <a href="#pg506">506</a>, <a href="#pg522">522</a>.</li> +<li>Genoa, <a href="#pg079">79</a>; + <ul> + <li>history, <a href="#pg201">201</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Giacomini, <a href="#pg313">313</a>.</li> +<li>Giannotti cited, <a href="#pg217">217</a>; + <ul> +<li>quoted, <a href="#pg169">169</a>,<a href="#pg196">196</a>, <a href="#pg216">216</a>, <a href="#pg238">238</a>, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg280">280</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Giotto, works, <a href="#pg488">488</a>.</li> +<li>Giovio, quoted, <a href="#pg249">249</a>.</li> +<li>God, medieval idea of, <a href="#pg016">16</a>.</li> +<li>Gonzaghi, <a href="#pg146">146</a>.</li> +<li>Government, Guicciardini's theories, <a href="#pg305">305</a>. [See Machiavelli.]</li> +<li>Graziani quoted, <a href="#pg614">614</a>.</li> +<li>Greek, knowledge of, in Renaissance, <a href="#pg182">182</a>.</li> +<li>Greene, R., quoted, <a href="#pg473">473</a>.</li> +<li>Gregorovius cited, <a href="#pg421">421</a>, <a href="#pg430">430</a>, <a href="#pg479">479</a>,.</li> +<li>Guarino, <a href="#pg171">171</a>.</li> +<li>Guarnieri, <a href="#pg158">158</a>.</li> +<li>Guelphs and Ghibeliines, <a href="#pg069">69</a>, <a href="#pg206">206</a>.</li> +<li>Guicciardini, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg280">280</a>, <a href="#pg285">285</a>, <a href="#pg295">295</a>, <a href="#pg482">482</a>; + <ul> + <li>works, <a href="#pg291">291</a>, <a href="#pg294">294</a>, <a href="#pg301">301</a> <i>seq</i>.;</li> + <li>political theories analyzed, <a href="#pg304">304</a> <i>seq</i>.;</li> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg044">44</a>, <a href="#pg091">91</a>, <a href="#pg092">92</a>, <a href="#pg119">119</a>, <a href="#pg169">169</a>, <a href="#pg223">223</a>, <a href="#pg284">284</a>, <a href="#pg404">404</a>, <a href="#pg409">409</a>, <a href="#pg412">412</a>, <a href="#pg417">417</a>, <a href="#pg431">431</a>, <a href="#pg434">434</a>, + <a href="#pg451">451</a>, <a href="#pg536">536</a>. <a href="#pg541">541</a>. <a href="#pg547">547</a>, <a href="#pg549">549</a>, <a href="#pg582">582</a>, <a href="#pg583">583</a>, <a href="#pg603">603</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">H</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Hawkwood, J., <a href="#pg113">113</a>.</li> +<li>Hegel quoted, <a href="#pg367">367</a>.</li> +<li>Hegel, C, cited, <a href="#pg252">252</a>.</li> +<li>Heribert, <a href="#pg058">58</a>.</li> +<li>Hildebrand, <a href="#pg059">59</a>.</li> +<li>Hirsch cited, <a href="#pg567">567</a>.</li> +<li>Hogarth, works, <a href="#pg490">490</a>.</li> +<li>Howell cited, <a href="#pg473">473</a>.</li> +<li>Hussites, <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Hutten, 27.</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">I</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Infessura, works, <a href="#pg292">292</a>; + <ul> + <li> cited, <a href="#pg405">405</a>;</li> + <li>quoted, <a href="#pg395">395</a>, <a href="#pg404">404</a>, <a href="#pg474">474</a>,</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li> Innocent VIII., <a href="#pg403">403</a>.</li> +<li>Inquisition in Spain, <a href="#pg399">399</a>.</li> +<li>Inventions of Renaissance, <a href="#pg029">29</a>.</li> +<li>Italy, history (see Condottieri, Papacy), + <ul> +<li>its character, <a href="#pg032">32</a>;</li> +<li>papacy and empire, <a href="#pg033">33</a>, <a href="#pg041">41</a>, <a href="#pg043">43</a>, <a href="#pg094">94</a>, <a href="#pg097">97</a>, <a href="#pg099">99</a>;</li> +<li>variety of governments, <a href="#pg035">35</a>, <a href="#pg043">43</a>;</li> +<li>their influence on national development, <a href="#pg044">44</a>;</li> +<li>politics, <a href="#pg036">36</a>;</li> +<li>invasions, <a href="#pg039">39</a>;</li> +<li>want of historical continuity, <a href="#pg041">41</a>;</li> +<li>the despotisms, <a href="#pg042">42</a>;</li> +<li>origin of modern history, <a href="#pg046">46</a>;</li> +<li>the Lombards, <a href="#pg048">48</a>;</li> +<li>Charles the Great, <a href="#pg051">51</a>;</li> +<li>Berengar, <a href="#pg052">52</a>;</li> +<li>Otho I., <a href="#pg052">52</a>;</li> +<li>growth of power of Church, <a href="#pg053">53</a>;</li> +<li>Frederick I., <a href="#pg063">63</a>;</li> +<li>Charles of Anjou, <a href="#pg075">75</a>;</li> +<li>convulsions of 14th century, <a href="#pg081">81</a>;</li> +<li>states of 15th century, <a href="#pg088">88</a>;</li> +<li>obstacles to unity, <a href="#pg089">89</a>;</li> +<li>to monarchy, <a href="#pg092">92</a>;</li> +<li>to federalism, <a href="#pg095">95</a>;</li> +<li>in time of Machiavelli, <a href="#pg365">365</a>;</li> +<li>policy of Lorenzo, <a href="#pg543">543</a>;</li> +<li>equilibrium destroyed, <a href="#pg545">545</a>;</li> +<li>French invasion, <a href="#pg549">549</a>;</li> +<li>character of their army, <a href="#pg565">565</a>;</li> +<li>league against them, <a href="#pg576">576</a>;</li> +<li>cause of their failure, <a href="#pg340">340</a>;</li> +<li>effect of their example, <a href="#pg583">583</a>;</li> +<li>on other nations, <a href="#pg585">585</a>;</li> +<li>Charles V., <a href="#pg098">98</a>.</li> +<li>Italians incapable of helping themselves, <a href="#pg586">586</a>;</li> +<li>responsible for their despots, <a href="#pg115">115</a>;</li> +<li>development precocious and unsound, <a href="#pg495">495</a>;</li> +<li>fatal effects of want of union, <a href="#pg538">538</a>, <a href="#pg552">552</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li><i>The Republics</i>, character of their history, <a href="#pg033">33</a>, <a href="#pg193">193</a>; +<ul> +<li>beginning of the power of the cities, <a href="#pg053">53</a>;</li> +<li>their origin, <a href="#pg054">54</a>;</li> +<li>count and bishop, <a href="#pg055">55</a>; "people," <a href="#pg055">55</a>;</li> +<li>commune, <a href="#pg056">56</a>;</li> +<li>consuls, <a href="#pg056">56</a>;</li> +<li>effect of struggle of papacy and empire, <a href="#pg061">61</a>;</li> +<li>influence of latter, <a href="#pg198">198</a>;</li> +<li>Guelphs and Ghibeliines, <a href="#pg069">69</a>, <a href="#pg080">80</a>, <a href="#pg206">206</a>;</li> +<li>wars of cities, <a href="#pg062">62</a>;</li> +<li>Frederic I., <a href="#pg064">64</a>;</li> +<li>struggle with nobles, <a href="#pg066">66</a>;</li> +<li>the podesta, <a href="#pg067">67</a>;</li> +<li>"captain of the people," <a href="#pg071">71</a>;</li> +<li>the "arti," <a href="#pg072">72</a>;</li> +<li>distinction between parties, <a href="#pg074">74</a>;</li> +<li>not representative governments, <a href="#pg196">196</a>;</li> +<li>not democratic, <a href="#pg195">195</a>;</li> +<li>factions, <a href="#pg195">195</a>, <a href="#pg210">210</a>;</li> +<li>small number of active citizens, <a href="#pg209">209</a>;</li> +<li>temporal character of alliances, <a href="#pg212">212</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li><i>The Despotisms</i>, <a href="#pg042">42</a>, <a href="#pg076">76</a>; +<ul> +<li>their justification, <a href="#pg083">83</a>;</li> +<li>idea of liberty, <a href="#pg078">78</a>;</li> +<li>republican freedom unknown, <a href="#pg091">91</a>;</li> +<li>policy commercial, <a href="#pg085">85</a>;</li> +<li>taxation, <a href="#pg086">86</a>;</li> +<li>diplomacy substituted for warfare, <a href="#pg087">87</a>;</li> +<li>illegitimacy, <a href="#pg102">102</a>;</li> +<li>good government, <a href="#pg103">103</a>;</li> +<li>bad effect of their example, <a href="#pg104">104</a>;</li> +<li>courts, <a href="#pg106">106</a>, <a href="#pg186">186</a>;</li> +<li>varieties of despotisms, <a href="#pg109">109</a>;</li> +<li>claims of despots due to force, not rank, <a href="#pg116">116</a>;</li> +<li>their democratic character, <a href="#pg117">117</a>;</li> +<li>uncertainty of tenure of power, <a href="#pg117">117</a>, <a href="#pg129">129</a>;</li> +<li>domestic crime, <a href="#pg119">119</a>;</li> +<li>murders, <a href="#pg120">120</a>;</li> +<li>tastes and pursuits, <a href="#pg126">126</a>;</li> +<li>degeneracy of their houses, <a href="#pg126">126</a>, <a href="#pg151">151</a>;</li> +<li>bad effects of rule, <a href="#pg130">130</a>;</li> +<li>centralizing tendencies, <a href="#pg131">131</a>;</li> +<li>cruelty, <a href="#pg151">151</a>;</li> +<li>absence of all morality, <a href="#pg168">168</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li><i>Society</i>. Why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance, <a href="#pg005">5</a>; +<ul> +<li>Italians gentle and humane, <a href="#pg478">478</a>;</li> +<li>not gluttons, <a href="#pg479">479</a>;</li> +<li>personal originality not discouraged, <a href="#pg488">488</a>;</li> +<li>Italy originates type of gentleman, <a href="#pg192">192</a>;</li> +<li>courtiers, idea of nobility, <a href="#pg186">186</a>;</li> +<li>community of interest with that of Roman Church, <a href="#pg470">470</a>;</li> +<li>immorality not great relatively, <a href="#pg487">487</a>;</li> +<li>superiority to their contemporaries, <a href="#pg489">489</a>;</li> +<li>purity of their art shows that heart of the people was not vitiated, <a href="#pg488">488</a>;</li> +<li>commercial integrity, <a href="#pg474">474</a>;</li> +<li>demoralization of society, <a href="#pg472">472</a>;</li> +<li>immorality came from above, <a href="#pg489">489</a>;</li> +<li>commonness of crime, <a href="#pg170">170</a>, <a href="#pg480">480</a>;</li> +<li>exceptions to rule, <a href="#pg183">183</a>;</li> +<li>murders, <a href="#pg480">480</a>;</li> +<li>deficiency in sense of honor, <a href="#pg481">481</a>;</li> +<li>chastity in women, <a href="#pg486">486</a>;</li> +<li>unnatural passions, <a href="#pg477">477</a>;</li> +<li>charms of illicit love, <a href="#pg476">476</a>;</li> +<li>immoral literature, <a href="#pg475">475</a>.</li> +<li>Literature, early, <a href="#pg053">53</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">J</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Jews, expulsion from Spain, <a href="#pg400">400</a>.</li> +<li>Julia, daughter of Claudius, <a href="#pg022">22</a>, <a href="#pg023">23</a>.</li> +<li>Julius II., <a href="#pg389">389</a>, <a href="#pg406">406</a>, <a href="#pg432">432</a> seq.</li> + + </ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">L</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Lecce, Roberto da, <a href="#pg614">614</a>.</li> +<li>Leo X., <a href="#pg435">435</a>, <a href="#pg630">630</a>.</li> +<li>Libraries of Renaissance, <a href="#pg021">21</a>.</li> +<li>Locke, J., <a href="#pg026">26</a>.</li> +<li>Lombards, <a href="#pg048">48</a> seq.</li> +<li>London, mediæval, <a href="#pg137">137</a>.</li> +<li>Louis XII., <a href="#pg339">339</a>.</li> +<li>Luini, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> +<li>Lungo, del, cited, <a href="#pg273">273</a>.</li> +<li>Luther, <a href="#pg026">26</a>, <a href="#pg442">442</a>, <a href="#pg454">454</a>, <a href="#pg530">530</a>,</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">M</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Macaulay on the despots, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href="#pg320">320</a>.</li> + +<li>Machiavelli, <a href="#pg232">232</a>, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg308">308</a> seq.; + <ul> +<li>property, <a href="#pg309">309</a>;</li> +<li>education, <a href="#pg310">310</a>;</li> +<li>political career, <a href="#pg311">311</a>;</li> +<li>cringing character, <a href="#pg317">317</a>;</li> +<li>intercourse with Cesare Borgia, <a href="#pg347">347</a>;</li> +<li>compared with Savonarola, <a href="#pg368">368</a>;</li> +<li>last years, <a href="#pg328">328</a>;</li> +<li>death, <a href="#pg333">333</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li>Works, <a href="#pg076">76</a>, <a href="#pg169">169</a>, <a href="#pg203">203</a>, <a href="#pg249">249</a>, <a href="#pg332">332</a>, <a href="#pg369">369</a>, <a href="#pg457">457</a>, <a href="#pg494">494</a>; +<ul> +<li>military system, <a href="#pg312">312</a>;</li> +<li>Art of War, <a href="#pg328">328</a>;</li> +<li>History, <a href="#pg331">331</a>;</li> +<li>The Prince, <a href="#pg319">319</a>;</li> +<li>object in writing it, <a href="#pg321">321</a>;</li> +<li>appeal to the Medici, <a href="#pg366">366</a>;</li> +<li>apology for the author, <a href="#pg367">367</a>;</li> +<li>morality of the work, <a href="#pg324">324</a>-6;</li> +<li>author's sincerity, <a href="#pg333">333</a>;</li> +<li>not the inventor of Machiavellianism, <a href="#pg335">335</a>;</li> +<li>it assumes Reparation of statecraft and morality, <a href="#pg335">335</a>;</li> +<li>an abstract of political expediency, <a href="#pg336">336</a>;</li> +<li>how permanently to assimilate provinces, <a href="#pg338">338</a>;</li> +<li>colonies, <a href="#pg338">338</a>;</li> +<li>founders of monarchies, <a href="#pg343">343</a>;</li> +<li>distinction between monarch and despot, <a href="#pg341">341</a>;</li> +<li>use of cruelty, <a href="#pg354">354</a>;</li> +<li>value of distrust, <a href="#pg358">358</a>;</li> +<li>military precautions, <a href="#pg360">360</a>;</li> +<li>the work condemned by the Inquisition, <a href="#pg336">336</a>;</li> +<li>opinion of it in France, <a href="#pg326">326</a>;</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<p> </p> +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li>quoted, <a href="#pg045">45</a>, <a href="#pg082">82</a>, <a href="#pg084">84</a>, <a href="#pg096">96</a>, <a href="#pg098">98</a>, <a href="#pg115">115</a>, <a href="#pg116">116</a>, <a href="#pg146">146</a>, <a href="#pg152">152</a>, <a href="#pg187">187</a>, <a href="#pg202">202</a>, <a href="#pg214">214</a>, <a href="#pg215">215</a>, <a href="#pg245">245</a>, <a href="#pg325">325</a>, <a href="#pg447">447</a>, <a href="#pg450">450</a>, <a href="#pg453">453</a>, <a href="#pg460">460</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Madonna, conventional idea of, <a href="#pg018">18</a>.</li> +<li>Malatesta, <a href="#pg172">172</a>.</li> +<li>Malespini, chronicle, 251.</li> +<li>Mantegna, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> +<li>Mantuanus, B., quoted, <a href="#pg394">394</a>.</li> +<li>Marlowe quoted, <a href="#pg336">336</a>.</li> +<li>Marston, cited, <a href="#pg473">473</a>, <a href="#pg475">475</a>.</li> +<li>Massa, B. da, <a href="#pg611">611</a>.</li> +<li>Masuccio quoted, <a href="#pg458">458</a>, <a href="#pg486">486</a>.</li> +<li>Matarazzo, works, <a href="#pg292">292</a>; quoted, <a href="#pg583">583</a>.</li> +<li>Medici, their policy, <a href="#pg087">87</a>, <a href="#pg090">90</a>, <a href="#pg128">128</a>, <a href="#pg155">155</a>, <a href="#pg228">228</a>, <a href="#pg230">230</a>; + <ul> +<li>expulsion, <a href="#pg222">222</a>;</li> +<li>connection with papacy, <a href="#pg404">404</a>;</li> +<li>services to literature, <a href="#pg600">600</a>.</li> +<li>Alessandro, <a href="#pg298">298</a>;</li> +<li>Cosimo, <a href="#pg300">300</a>, <a href="#pg492">492</a>;</li> +<li>Lorenzo, <a href="#pg504">504</a>, <a href="#pg628">628</a>;</li> +<li>death, <a href="#pg523">523</a>;</li> +<li>Piero, <a href="#pg558">558</a>.</li> + </ul> + </li> + +<li>Michelet quoted, <a href="#pg015">15</a>, <a href="#pg585">585</a>.</li> +<li>Middle Age: mental condition, <a href="#pg006">6</a>, <a href="#pg013">13</a>; + <ul> +<li>inaccessibility to mental ideas, <a href="#pg007">7</a>;</li> +<li>political character, <a href="#pg008">8</a>;</li> +<li>art, <a href="#pg017">17</a>;</li> +<li>scholarship, <a href="#pg020">20</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Milan, <a href="#pg058">58</a>; Visconti and Sforza, <a href="#pg154">154</a>.</li> +<li>Milman quoted, <a href="#pg530">530</a>.</li> +<li>Milton, <a href="#pg454">454</a>.</li> +<li>Mirandola, <a href="#pg171">171</a>, <a href="#pg456">456</a>, <a href="#pg520">520</a>; + <ul> +<li> quoted, 401, <a href="#pg511">511</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Monaldeschi, L. B., <a href="#pg252">252</a>.</li> +<li>Montferrat, <a href="#pg146">146</a>.</li> +<li>Montone, B. da, <a href="#pg123">123</a>, <a href="#pg159">159</a>.</li> +<li>Morals (see Italy, society; Papacy, court; Virtu;) in Cellini's memoirs, <a href="#pg325">325</a>; +<ul> +<li>sexual immorality,<a href="#pg474">474</a>;</li> +<li>tyrannicide defended, <a href="#pg468">468</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>Müntz, E., cited, <a href="#pg384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Muzio quoted, <a href="#pg174">174</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">N</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Naples (see Italy), attraction for foreigners, <a href="#pg566">566</a>; + <ul> +<li> claims of house of Anjou, <a href="#pg539">539</a>;</li> +<li> flight of king, <a href="#pg574">574</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Nardi, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg280">280</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>; + <ul> +<li>works, <a href="#pg291">291</a>;</li> +<li>quoted, <a href="#pg292">292</a>, <a href="#pg511">511</a>, <a href="#pg534">534</a>, <a href="#pg592">592</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Nerli, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>; + <ul> +<li>works, <a href="#pg293">293</a> seq.;</li> +<li>quoted, <a href="#pg328">328</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Nicholas V., <a href="#pg378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Normans In Italy, <a href="#pg058">58</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">O</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Olgiati, <a href="#pg166">166</a>.</li> +<li>Orsini, <a href="#pg375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Otho <a href="#pg001">1.</a>, <a href="#pg052">52</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">P</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Pamponazzo, <a href="#pg456">456</a>..</li> +<li>Pandolfini, <a href="#pg239">239</a>; works, <a href="#pg241">241</a>.</li> +<li>Papacy (see Catholic Church), "the ghost of the Roman empire," <a href="#pg006">6</a>; + <ul> +<li>church and state, <a href="#pg008">8</a>;</li> +<li>Charles the Great, <a href="#pg051">51</a>;</li> +<li>imperial nominees, <a href="#pg059">59</a>;</li> +<li>change in mode of election, <a href="#pg060">60</a>;</li> +<li>effect of crushing the Hohenstauffen, <a href="#pg101">101</a>;</li> +<li>nepotism, <a href="#pg114">114</a>;</li> +<li>authority in 14th century, <a href="#pg371">371</a>, <a href="#pg375">375</a>;</li> +<li>secularization, <a href="#pg371">371</a>, <a href="#pg375">375</a>;</li> +<li>temporal power, <a href="#pg376">376</a>;</li> +<li>its consolidation, <a href="#pg378">378</a>;</li> +<li>its extent, <a href="#pg434">434</a>;</li> +<li>persecution, <a href="#pg402">402</a>;</li> +<li>of Platonists, <a href="#pg417">417</a>;</li> +<li>its effect, <a href="#pg418">418</a>;</li> +<li>plan to transform Papacy to kingdom, <a href="#pg392">392</a>;</li> +<li>sale of pardons, <a href="#pg404">404</a>, <a href="#pg439">439</a>;</li> +<li>no horror felt at election of Alexander VI., <a href="#pg410">410</a>;</li> +<li>Turks invited to Italy, <a href="#pg415">415</a>, <a href="#pg551">551</a>;</li> +<li>censure of press, <a href="#pg416">416</a>:</li> +<li>alliance with France, <a href="#pg427">427</a>, <a href="#pg566">566</a>;</li> +<li>political crimes of Alexander VI., <a href="#pg428">428</a>;</li> +<li>tide turns with Julius II., <a href="#pg433">433</a>;</li> +<li>reforms of Adrian VI., <a href="#pg441">441</a>;</li> +<li>moral advantage of sack of Rome, <a href="#pg445">445</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li> +<ul> +<li>Court, <a href="#pg372">372</a>; +<ul> +<li>its scandalous history, <a href="#pg390">390</a>, <a href="#pg403">403</a>, <a href="#pg411">411</a>, <a href="#pg414">414</a>, <a href="#pg420">420</a>, <a href="#pg424">424</a>, <a href="#pg439">439</a>, <a href="#pg457">457</a>;</li> +<li>extravagance, <a href="#pg390">390</a>, <a href="#pg436">436</a>, <a href="#pg437">437</a>;</li> +<li>extortion, <a href="#pg437">437</a>;</li> +<li>monopolies, <a href="#pg394">394</a>;</li> +<li>nepotism, <a href="#pg419">419</a>, <a href="#pg438">438</a>;</li> +<li>simony, <a href="#pg394">394</a>, <a href="#pg405">405</a>, <a href="#pg414">414</a>;</li> +<li>art patronage, <a href="#pg384">384</a>, 401, <a href="#pg433">433</a>, <a href="#pg436">436</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li>Paterini, <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Pazzi conspiracy, <a href="#pg396">396</a>.</li> +<li>Perrotti quoted, <a href="#pg179">179</a>.</li> +<li>Perugia, <a href="#pg612">612</a>.</li> +<li>Pescara, marquis of, <a href="#pg634">634</a>.</li> +<li>Petrarch, <a href="#pg011">11</a>, <a href="#pg020">20</a>; + <ul> +<li>quoted, <a href="#pg250">250</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Poliziano, <a href="#pg171">171</a>,</li> +<li>Poontano cited, <a href="#pg481">481</a>.</li> +<li>Printers of Renaissance, <a href="#pg023">23</a>,</li> +<li>Provence, civilization of, <a href="#pg009">9</a>.</li> +<li>Puritanism, <a href="#pg025">25</a>, <a href="#pg037">37</a>.</li> +</ul> + + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">R</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Raffaella quoted, <a href="#pg483">483</a>.</li> +<li>Raphael, works, <a href="#pg488">488</a>.</li> +<li>Reformation, <a href="#pg433">433</a>; + <ul> +<li> how affected by Renaissance, 27.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Rembrandt, works, <a href="#pg490">490</a>.</li> +<li>Renaissance (see Middle Age), not synonymous with "revival of learning," <a href="#pg001">1</a>; + <ul> +<li>not completed, <a href="#pg002">2</a>;</li> +<li>extent of signification, <a href="#pg002">2-3</a>;</li> +<li>origin, <a href="#pg003">3</a>;</li> +<li>idea not separable from "Reformation," "Revolution," <a href="#pg005">5</a>;</li> +<li>effect on old beliefs, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg016">16</a>;</li> +<li>all its tendencies worldly, <a href="#pg455">455</a>;</li> +<li>restores double past, Christian and pagan, <a href="#pg506">506</a>;</li> +<li>obstacles in the way, <a href="#pg005">5</a>;</li> +<li>preparation, <a href="#pg009">9</a>;</li> +<li>opposition of the Church, <a href="#pg010">10</a>;</li> +<li>character of the men, <a href="#pg012">12</a>;</li> +<li>discoveries, <a href="#pg015">15</a>;</li> +<li>scholarship, <a href="#pg020">20</a>;</li> +<li>assimilation of paganism, <a href="#pg025">25</a>;</li> +<li>reaction against enlightenment, <a href="#pg025">25</a>;</li> +<li>inventions, <a href="#pg029">29</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Reuchlin, 27.</li> +<li>Reumont, A. von, cited, <a href="#pg212">212</a>, <a href="#pg524">524</a>.</li> +<li>Ripamonti quoted, <a href="#pg163">163</a>, <a href="#pg167">167</a>.</li> +<li>Robbia, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> +<li>Romagna, <a href="#pg349">349</a>.</li> +<li>Romano, Ezzelino da, <a href="#pg069">69</a>, <a href="#pg075">75</a>, <a href="#pg106">106</a>, <a href="#pg119">119</a>; + <ul> +<li> Giulio, works, <a href="#pg490">490</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Rome (see Italy, Papacy), effect of its ruins, <a href="#pg253">253</a>; + <ul> +<li>appearance at time of French occupation, <a href="#pg564">564</a>;</li> +<li>early mediæval history, <a href="#pg047">47</a>;</li> +<li>opposition to Lombards, <a href="#pg049">49</a>;</li> +<li>government semi-independent of pope, <a href="#pg376">376</a>;</li> +<li>advantages derived from presence of papal court, <a href="#pg377">377</a>;</li> +<li>improvements under Nicholas V., <a href="#pg378">378</a>,</li> +<li>impunity of criminals, <a href="#pg405">405</a>;</li> +<li>factions destroyed, <a href="#pg413">413</a>;</li> +<li>rising of Colonnas, <a href="#pg443">443</a>;</li> +<li>sack, <a href="#pg444">444</a>, <a href="#pg636">636</a>;</li> +<li>prostitutes, <a href="#pg474">474</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> + +<li>Romeo and Juliet, <a href="#pg074">74</a>,</li> +<li>Rosellini, works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>,</li> +<li>Rosenbaum cited, <a href="#pg567">567</a>.</li> +<li>Royere, F. della (see Sixtus IV.); + <ul> +<li> Francesco Maria, <a href="#pg393">393</a>;</li> +<li> Giuliano (see Julius II,);</li> +<li> Pietro, <a href="#pg390">390</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Rubens, works, <a href="#pg490">490</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">R</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Sadoleto, quoted, <a href="#pg446">446</a>.</li> +<li>Savelli, <a href="#pg375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Savonarola, <a href="#pg202">202</a>, <a href="#pg221">221</a>, <a href="#pg230">230</a>, <a href="#pg277">277</a>, <a href="#pg283">283</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>, <a href="#pg345">345</a>, <a href="#pg368">368</a>, <a href="#pg453">453</a>, <a href="#pg454">454</a>, <a href="#pg456">456</a>, <a href="#pg491">491</a>, <a href="#pg498">498</a> seq., <a href="#pg561">561</a>, <a href="#pg622">622</a>; + <ul> +<li> poems, <a href="#pg502">502</a>;</li> +<li> settles in Florence, <a href="#pg504">504</a>;</li> +<li> portraits, <a href="#pg508">508</a>;</li> +<li> eloquence, <a href="#pg510">510</a>;</li> +<li> creed, <a href="#pg513">513</a>;</li> +<li> prophecies, <a href="#pg514">514</a>;</li> +<li> political career, <a href="#pg526">526</a>;</li> +<li> hatred of secular culture, <a href="#pg527">527</a>;</li> +<li> dares not break with Rome, <a href="#pg531">531</a>;</li> +<li> martyrdom, <a href="#pg533">533</a>;</li> +<li> works, <a href="#pg536">536</a>;</li> +<li> quoted, <a href="#pg128">128</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>Savoy, <a href="#pg146">146</a>.</li> +<li>Scala, della, family, <a href="#pg145">145</a>, <a href="#pg258">258</a>.</li> +<li>Scheffer-Bolchorst cited, <a href="#pg252">252</a>, <a href="#pg269">269</a>.</li> +<li>Segal, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg280">280</a>, <a href="#pg289">289</a>; + <ul> +<li> works <a href="#pg292">292</a>, seq.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Sforza family, <a href="#pg131">131</a> seq.; + <ul> +<li> their magnificience, <a href="#pg164">164</a>;</li> +<li> to be made kings of Lombardy, <a href="#pg392">392</a>;</li> +<li> Francesco, <a href="#pg153">153</a>, <a href="#pg159">159</a> seq., <a href="#pg345">345</a>;</li> +<li> Galeazzo, <a href="#pg165">165</a>;</li> +<li> Ludovico, <a href="#pg543">543</a> seq.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Shelley cited, <a href="#pg477">477</a>.</li> +<li>Siena, <a href="#pg207">207</a>, <a href="#pg616">616</a>.</li> +<li>Sismondi quoted, <a href="#pg138">138</a>, <a href="#pg144">144</a>, <a href="#pg159">159</a>, <a href="#pg226">226</a>, <a href="#pg533">533</a>.</li> +<li>Sixtus IV., <a href="#pg388">388</a> seq., <a href="#pg502">502</a>.</li> +<li>Soderini, P., <a href="#pg289">289</a>, <a href="#pg324">324</a>.</li> +<li>Spaniards, cruelty of, <a href="#pg478">478</a>.</li> +<li>Spinoza, <a href="#pg026">26</a>.</li> +<li>Stendhal cited, <a href="#pg482">482</a>.</li> +<li>Stephani, the, <a href="#pg023">23</a>.</li> +<li>Strozzi, Ercole, <a href="#pg423">423</a>; F., <a href="#pg285">285</a>.</li> +<li>Swiss, <a href="#pg450">450</a>.</li> +<li>Syphilis, history of, <a href="#pg567">567</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">T</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Tasso, <a href="#pg486">486</a>.</li> +<li>Temporal Power (see Papacy).</li> +<li>Tenda, Beatrice di, <a href="#pg152">152</a>.</li> +<li>Theodoric, <a href="#pg047">47</a>.</li> +<li>Theology, effect of Renaissance upon, <a href="#pg016">16</a>.</li> +<li>Tiraboschi, quoted, <a href="#pg173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Titian, works, <a href="#pg019">19</a>.</li> +<li>Torre, della, <a href="#pg132">132</a>.</li> +<li>Trinci, <a href="#pg122">122</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">U</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Urbino, dukes of, <a href="#pg174">174</a> seq., <a href="#pg393">393</a>, <a href="#pg438">438</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">V</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Valois, Charles of, <a href="#pg076">76</a>.</li> +<li>Varani, <a href="#pg121">121</a>.</li> +<li>Varchi, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>; + <ul> +<li> works, <a href="#pg279">279</a>, <a href="#pg303">303</a> seq.;</li> +<li> quoted, <a href="#pg204">204</a>, <a href="#pg244">244</a>, <a href="#pg505">505</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Venice, <a href="#pg079">79</a>, <a href="#pg088">88</a>, <a href="#pg091">91</a>; + <ul> +<li> an exception among the republics, <a href="#pg195">195</a>, <a href="#pg214">214</a>;</li> +<li> constitution, <a href="#pg215">215</a>;</li> +<li> the Ten, <a href="#pg218">218</a>;</li> +<li> fascination exercised by government, <a href="#pg220">220</a>;</li> +<li> military system, <a href="#pg220">220</a>;</li> +<li> no initiative mining citizens, <a href="#pg233">233</a>;</li> +<li> compared with Sparta, <a href="#pg234">234</a>;</li> +<li> indifference to prosperity of Italy, <a href="#pg550">550</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Vespusiano quoted, <a href="#pg174">174</a>, <a href="#pg477">477</a>, <a href="#pg612">612</a>.</li> +<li>Vettori, F., <a href="#pg624">624</a>; + <ul> +<li> works, <a href="#pg626">626</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Vicenza, John of, <a href="#pg607">607</a>.</li> +<li>Villani, M., works, 251 seq., + <ul> +<li> quoted, <a href="#pg128">128</a>, <a href="#pg139">139</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Villari, quoted, <a href="#pg195">195</a>, <a href="#pg500">500</a>.</li> +<li>Vinci, da, <a href="#pg326">326</a>, <a href="#pg548">548</a>; + <ul> +<li> works, <a href="#pg489">489</a>.</li> + </ul> +</li> +<li>Virgil, <a href="#pg020">20</a>.</li> +<li>Virtu, <a href="#pg171">171</a>, <a href="#pg337">337</a>, <a href="#pg345">345</a>, <a href="#pg484">484</a>, <a href="#pg493">493</a>.</li> +<li>Visconti, family, <a href="#pg131">131</a> seq.; +<ul> +<li> their realm falls to pieces, <a href="#pg150">150</a>;</li> +<li> Filippo, <a href="#pg152">152</a>;</li> +<li> Gisa, <a href="#pg141">141</a>;</li> +<li> Violante, <a href="#pg137">137</a>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 40px;">W</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Webster, J., quoted, <a href="#pg119">119</a>, <a href="#pg557">557</a>.</li> +<li>Witchcraft persecutions, <a href="#pg402">402</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p style="margin-left: 20px;">Y</p> + + <ul class="IX"> + +<li>Yriarte, quoted, <a href="#pg210">210</a>, <a href="#pg217">217</a>.</li> + +</ul> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF 7)***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 15400-h.txt or 15400-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/4/0/15400">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/0/15400</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) + +Author: John Addington Symonds + +Release Date: March 18, 2005 [eBook #15400] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF +7)*** + + +E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Turgut Dincer, Leonard Johnson, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +RENAISSANCE IN ITALY + +The Age of the Despots + +by + +JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS + +Author of _Studies of the Greek Poets_, _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, +etc. + + + + + + + +'Di questi adunque oziosi principi, e di queste vilissime armi, sara +piena la mia Istoria' + +Mach. 1_st_. _Fior_. lib. i. + + + + +New York +Henry Holt and Company + +1888 + + + + +TO + +MY FRIEND + +JOHN BEDDOE, M.D., F.R.S., + + +I DEDICATE MY WORK + +ON + +THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. + + +AUTHOR'S EDITION + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. + +Though these books taken together and in the order planned by the author +form one connected study of Italian culture at a certain period of +history, still each aims at a completeness of its own, and each can be +read independently of its companions. That the author does not regard +acquaintance with any one of them as essential to a profitable reading +of any other has been shown by the publication of each with a separate +title-page and without numeration of the volumes, while all three bear +the same general heading of "Renaissance in Italy." + + + + +PREFACE. + + +This volume is the First Part of a work upon the 'Renaissance in Italy.' +The Second Part treats of the Revival of Learning. The Third, of the +Fine Arts. The Fourth Part, in two volumes, is devoted to Italian +Literature. + +Owing to the extent of the ground I have attempted to traverse, I feel +conscious that the students of special departments will find much to be +desired in my handling of each part. In some respects I hope that the +several portions of the work may complete and illustrate each other. +Many topics, for example, have been omitted from Chapter VIII. in this +volume because they seemed better adapted to treatment in the future. + +One of the chief difficulties which the critic has to meet in dealing +with the Italian Renaissance is the determination of the limits of the +epoch. Two dates, 1453 and 1527, marking respectively the fall of +Constantinople and the sack of Rome, are convenient for fixing in the +mind that narrow space of time during which the Renaissance culminated. +But in order to trace its progress up to this point, it is necessary to +go back to a far more remote period; nor, again, is it possible to +maintain strict chronological consistency in treating of the several +branches of the whole theme. + +The books of which the most frequent use has been made in this first +portion of the work are Sismondi's 'Republiques Italiennes'; Muratori's +'Rerum Italicarum Scriptores'; the 'Archivio Storico Italiano'; the +seventh volume of Michelet's 'Histoire de France'; the seventh and +eighth volumes of Gregorovius' 'Geschichte der Stadt Rom'; Ferrari's +'Rivoluzioni d' Italia'; Alberi's series of Despatches; Gino Capponi's +'Storia della Repubblica di Firenze'; and Burckhardt's 'Cultur der +Renaissance in Italien.' To the last-named essay I must acknowledge +especial obligations. It fell under my notice when I had planned, and in +a great measure finished, my own work. But it would be difficult for me +to exaggerate the profit I have derived from the comparison of my +opinions with those of a writer so thorough in his learning and so +delicate in his perceptions as Jacob Burckhardt, or the amount I owe to +his acute and philosophical handling of the whole subject. I must also +express a special debt to Ferrari, many of whose views I have adopted in +the Chapter on 'Italian History.' With regard to the alterations +introduced into the substance of the book in this edition, it will be +enough to say that I have endeavored to bring each chapter up to the +level of present knowledge. + +In conclusion, I once more ask indulgence for a volume which, though it +aims at a completeness of its own, is professedly but one part of a long +inquiry. + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. + +THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. + +Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation +of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediaeval +Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provencals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of +Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of +the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance P. 1. + + +CHAPTER II. + +ITALIAN HISTORY. + +The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of +leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The +People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the +Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The +Consuls--The Podestas--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The +Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The +Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been +achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part +played by the Papacy P. 32. + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. + +Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of +Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino da +Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the +Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of +Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-government in +Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The +Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian +Tyrant--Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Descriptions of a Tyrant--The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza +Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino and +the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of the +Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect P. 99. + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE REPUBLICS. + +The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's +Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests +and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of +Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and +Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece +and Italy--Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms P. 193. + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. + +Florence, the City of Intelligence--Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty--Florentine Historical Literature--Philosophical Study of +History--Ricordano Malespini--Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns--The Villani--The Date +1300--Statistics--Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets--Dino +Compagni--Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century--Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini--The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century--Men of Action and Men of Letters; the +Doctrinaires--Florence between 1494 and 1537--Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini--The Political Importance of these +Writers--The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529--State of Parties--Filippo Strozzi--Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians--Their Literary Qualities--Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli--Scientific Statists--Discord +between Life and Literature--The Biography of Guicciardini--His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'--Biography of Machiavelli--His Scheme of a National +Militia--Dedication of 'The Prince'--Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance--The 'Discorsi'--The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence. P. 246. + + +CHAPTER VI. + +'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI. + +The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay--Machiavellism--His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory--Analysis of 'The +Prince'--Nine Conditions of Principalities--The Interest of the +Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy--Critique of +Louis XII.--Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism--Three Ways of +subduing a free City--Example of Pisa--Principalities founded by +Adventurers--Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus--Savonarola--Francesco +Sforza--Cesare Borgia--Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him--Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius--A Sketch of Cesare's +Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d' +Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of +Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a +powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of +National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola P. 334. + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. + +The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas +V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The +Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the +Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in +Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander +VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the +Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of +Gandia--Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius +II.--His violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo +X.--His Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian +VI.--His Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence P. 371. + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE CHURCH AND MORALITY. + +Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between +Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad +Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic +Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General +Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism P. 447. + + +CHAPTER IX. + +SAVONAROLA. + +The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the +Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San +Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His +Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 +and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to +call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial +and Execution of Savonarola P. 497. + + +CHAPTER X. + +CHARLES VIII. + +The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe--Policy of Louis +XI. of France--Character of Charles VIII.--Preparations for the Invasion +of Italy--Position of Lodovico Sforza--Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy +after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici--Weakness of the Republics--Il +Moro--The year 1494---Alfonso of Naples--Inefficiency of the Allies to +cope with France--Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of +Italy by Giuliano della Rovere--Charles at Asti and Pavia--Murder of +Gian Galeazzo Sforza--Mistrust in the French Army--Rapallo and +Fivizzano--The Entrance into Tuscany--Part played by Piero de' +Medici--Charles at Pisa--His Entrance into Florence--Piero Capponi--The +March on Rome--Entry into Rome--Panic of Alexander VI.--The March on +Naples--The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand--Alfonso II. escapes +to Sicily--Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia--Charles at Naples--The +League against the French--De Comines at Venice--Charles makes his +Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli--The Battle of +Fornovo--Charles reaches Asti and returns to France--Italy becomes the +Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance of the +Expedition of Charles VIII. P. 537. + + + * * * * * + +APPENDICES. + +No. I.--The Blood-madness of Tyrants 589 + +No. II.--Translations of Nardi, 'Istorie di Firenze,' lib. l. cap. 4; + and of Varchi, 'Storia Fiorentina,' lib. iii. caps. 20, + 21, 22; lib. ix. caps. 48, 49, 46 592 + +No. III.--The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's + 'Storia Fiorentina,' cap. 27 603 + +No. IV.--Religious Revivals in Mediaeval Italy 606 + +No. V.--The 'Sommario della Storia d' Italia dal 1511 al 1527, + by Francesco Vettori 624 + + + + +RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. + + +Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation +of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediaeval +Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the +Provencals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, +Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The +Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe +and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes +the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of +Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of +Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of +the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical +Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance. + + +The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended +significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent--the +Revival of Learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the +Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to assign +certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we +cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say--between this year and +that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to +name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended +Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. The +truth is, that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The +evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is +progressive. As in the transformation scene of some great Masque, so +here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at +first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now +the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether +the new scene be finally set up? + +In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to +any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one +department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they +mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution +effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of +antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see +in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for +antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a +correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new +systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the +Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science +will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and +Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation +of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point +which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, +again, has his own answer to the question. The extinction of feudalism, +the development of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of +monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority and the +erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place +the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in +the Revolution; these are the aspects of the movement which engross his +attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal fictions based +upon the false decretals, the acquisition of a true text of the Roman +Code, and the attempt to introduce a rational method into the theory of +modern jurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of international +law. Men whose attention has been turned to the history of discoveries +and inventions will relate the exploration of America and the East, or +will point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of +printing and engraving, by the compass and the telescope, by paper and +by gunpowder; and will insist that at the moment of the Renaissance all +these instruments of mechanical utility started into existence, to aid +the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and +perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither any one of +these answers taken separately, nor indeed all of them together, will +offer a solution of the problem. By the term Renaissance, or new birth, +is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that +characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity for which +at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we +still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of +arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or even of nations. It is the +history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit +manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no +new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The +arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly +became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on +the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not +their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the +intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which +enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then +generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the +modern world. + +How was it, then, that at a certain period, about fourteen centuries +after Christ, to speak roughly, the intellect of the Western races awoke +as it were from slumber and began once more to be active? That is a +question which we can but imperfectly answer. The mystery of organic +life defeats analysis; whether the subject of our inquiry be a +germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the commencement of a new +religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a new phase in +civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to state the +conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point out what +are its manifestations. In doing so, moreover, we must be careful not +to be carried away by words of our own making. Renaissance, Reformation, +and Revolution are not separate things, capable of being isolated; they +are moments in the history of the human race which we find it convenient +to name; while history itself is one and continuous, so that our utmost +endeavors to regard some portion of it independently of the rest will be +defeated. + +A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the +dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no immediate +possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had +deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism: the fragments of Roman +civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated: the Germanic +nations had to receive culture and religion from the people they had +superseded; the Church had to be created, and a new form given to the +old idea of the Empire. It was further necessary that the modern +nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be +formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth +accumulated, before the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of +the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which +fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The +reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy +possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and +commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were still +semi-barbarous. Where the human spirit had been buried in the decay of +the Roman Empire, there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the +Papacy, called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, seated, +throned and crowned, upon the ashes thereof, to some extent bridged over +the gulf between the two periods. + +Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the +Renaissance was intellectual, that it was the emancipation of the reason +for the modern world, we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. +The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration +before the idols of the Church--dogma and authority and scholasticism. +Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by +the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the +outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, +without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, without the +traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state of utter +rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a difficult +hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved during the Middle +Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was done +unconsciously--that it was a gradual and instinctive process of +becoming. The reason, in one word, was not awake; the mind of man was +ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to +think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated +sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole +systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles +hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the +time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and +Aristotle were alive but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the +Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern +mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of +humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but +unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life +down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping the +sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and +with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time within their +breasts and brains the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but +unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which erelong was destined to +restore its birthright to the world. + +Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own work. Slowly and +obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations +and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took +shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters, +and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed. +The qualities which render modern society different from that of the +ancient world, were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, +by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came a further +phase. After the nations had been molded, their monarchies and dynasties +were established. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into various forms of +more or less defined autocracy. In Italy and Germany numerous +principalities sprang into pre-eminence; and though the nation was not +united under one head, the monarchical principle was acknowledged. +France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of which the king +could say, 'L'Etat c'est moi.' England developed her complicated +constitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At the same time +the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation. The +Papacy became more autocratic. Like the king, the Pope began to say, +'L'Eglise c'est moi.' This merging of the mediaeval State and mediaeval +Church in the personal supremacy of King and Pope may be termed the +special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the +Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary conditions and external +circumstances were prepared. The organization of the five great nations, +and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political +and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of +which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the +Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still +evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea. + +Meanwhile, it must not be imagined that the Renaissance burst suddenly +upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms. +Far from that: within the middle age itself, over and over again, the +reason strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in the twelfth +century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and +words was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the beginning of +the thirteenth century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed that +man, by use of nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora, intermediate +between the two, drank one drop of the cup of prophecy offered to his +lips, and cried that 'the Gospel of the Father was past, the Gospel of +the Son was passing, the Gospel of the Spirit was to be.' These three +men, each in his own way, the Frenchman as a logician, the Englishman as +an analyst, the Italian as a mystic, divined the future but inevitable +emancipation of the reason of mankind. Nor were there wanting signs, +especially in Provence, that Aphrodite and Phoebus and the Graces were +ready to resume their sway. The premature civilization of that favored +region, so cruelly extinguished by the Church, was itself a reaction of +nature against the restrictions imposed by ecclesiastical discipline; +while the songs of the wandering students, known under the title of +_Carmina Burana_, indicate a revival of Pagan or pre-Christian feeling +in the very stronghold of mediaeval learning. We have, moreover, to +remember the Cathari, the Paterini, the Fraticelli, the Albigenses, the +Hussites--heretics in whom the new light dimly shone, but who were +instantly exterminated by the Church. We have to commemorate the vast +conception of the Emperor Frederick II., who strove to found a new +society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the +advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were +exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that +the Sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal +Europe. In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus +early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those +headless trunks and zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, in +the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The +nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for +venturing to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Dominicans +preaching crusades against the cultivated nobles of Toulouse; Popes +stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the +masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies +and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity +devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy +sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled +the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations +of the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile. + +Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a work of conscious art, +conceived in a modern spirit and written in a modern tongue, was the +first true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had +shaken off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal, of antique culture +as the everlasting solace and the universal education of the human race, +his lifelong effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and +speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of the +Renaissance--its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After +Petrarch, Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of +freedom. His conception of human existence as joy to be accepted with +thanksgiving, not as a gloomy error to be rectified by suffering, +familiarized the fourteenth century with that form of semi-pagan +gladness which marked the real Renaissance. + +In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recovered the consciousness of +intellectual liberty. What we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived; +but their achievement rendered its appearance in due season certain. +With Dante the genius of the modern world dared to stand alone and to +create confidently after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same genius +reached forth across the gulf of darkness, resuming the tradition of a +splendid past. With Boccaccio the same genius proclaimed the beauty of +the world, the goodliness of youth and strength and love and life, +unterrified by hell, unappalled by the shadow of impending death. + +It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy had +lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire in her Communes of the +thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that +repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last +began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried +the civilization of the old world. Behind stretched the centuries of +mediaevalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were +as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who +were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted; +their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of +enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life artificially +preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had sapped the fiber of the men who +were about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to +delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their +capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No +generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them +down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair of +thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses +rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They +yearned for magnificence, and instinctively comprehended splendor. At +the same time the period of satiety was still far off. Everything seemed +possible to their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon +their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and +faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted nor +the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of +wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first +transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable +than the fullness of the life that throbbed in them. Natures rich in all +capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor +was there any limit to the play of personality in action. We may apply +to them what Mr. Browning has written of Sordello's temperament:-- + + A footfall there + Suffices to upturn to the warm air + Half germinating spices, mere decay + Produces richer life, and day by day + New pollen on the lily-petal grows, + And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. + +During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not +seen the beauty of the world or had seen it only to cross himself, and +turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like S. Bernard traveling along +the shores of the Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the +waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the +mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a +thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his mule; even like this +monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of +sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had +scarcely known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. +Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man +fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell +everlasting, heaven hard to win; ignorance is acceptable to God as a +proof of faith and submission; abstinence and mortification are the only +safe rules of life: these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediaeval +Church. The Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick +veil which they had drawn between the mind of man and the outer world, +and flashing the light of reality upon the darkened places of his own +nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted culture in +the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man +strove to make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his +privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation +of the reason from a dungeon, the double discovery of the outer and the +inner world. + +An external event determined the direction which this outburst of the +spirit of freedom should take. This was the contact of the modern with +the ancient mind which followed upon what is called the Revival of +Learning. The fall of the Greek Empire in 1453, while it signalized the +extinction of the old order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated +forces of the new. A belief in the identity of the human spirit under +all previous manifestations and in its uninterrupted continuity was +generated. Men found that in classical as well as Biblical antiquity +existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual, by which +they might profit in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in +its own energies when it learned what the ancients had achieved. The +guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of the moderns. The +whole world's history seemed once more to be one. + +The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the +world and the discovery of man.[1] Under these two formulae may be +classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The +discovery of the world divides itself into two branches--the exploration +of the globe, and that systematic exploration of the universe which is +in fact what we call Science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the +Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar +system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain +statement; for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid +what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is +only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with +the four centuries which have ensued, that we can estimate the magnitude +of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been +added to civilization. In like manner, it is worth while to pause a +moment and consider what is implied in the substitution of the +Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, regarded in old times +as the center of all things, the apple of God's eye, for the sake of +which were created sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to be one +of the many balls that roll round a giant sphere of light and heat, +which is itself but one among innumerable suns attended each by a +_cortege_ of planets, and scattered, how we know not, through infinity. +What has become of that brazen seat of the old gods, that Paradise to +which an ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds, and hidden +for a moment from the eyes of his disciples. The demonstration of the +simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were +most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their +symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the +world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one +proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most +cherished conceptions, to the very core of her mythology. Science was +born, and the warfare between scientific positivism and religious +metaphysic was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshiped under the +forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had been given to +the words: 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him +in spirit and in truth.' The reason of man was at last able to study the +scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to ascertain the +actual laws by which it is governed. Three centuries and a half have +elapsed since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only by +reflecting on the mass of knowledge we have since acquired, knowledge +not only infinitely curious but also incalculably useful in its +application to the arts of life, and then considering how much ground of +this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the +Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force +which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hand of astrology, +geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, +as far as to the present moment she has never ceased to grow. +Progressive and durable, Science may be called the first-born of the +spirit of the modern world. + + [1] It is to Michelet that we owe these formulae, which have + passed into the language of history. + +Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the one hand the +appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners of the habitable +globe, and on the other the conquest by Science of all that we now know +about the nature of the universe. In the discovery of man, again, it is +possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations, +illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, +illustrated by Biblical antiquity; these are the two regions, at first +apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpenetrative, which the +critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for +investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at +work, art and scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, like +philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless scholasticism--a +frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without +inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected +with the religious feelings of the people, formulae from which to deviate +would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshiper. +Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and +stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even +had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms +he saw around him. But with the dawning of the Renaissance, a new spirit +in the arts arose. Men began to conceive that the human body is noble in +itself and worthy of patient study. The object of the artist then became +to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the +utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of delineation. He studied from +the nude; he drew the body in every posture; he composed drapery, +invented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures and the +expression of his faces to the subject he had chosen. In a word, he +humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister-frescoes upon which he +worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols, and +brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living +human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently +substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the +principles of the Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for the +display of physical perfection, and to introduce 'un bel corpo ignudo' +into the composition was of more moment to them than to represent the +macerations of the Magdalen. Men thus learned to look beyond the +relique and the host, and to forget the dogma in the lovely forms which +gave it expression. Finally, when the classics came to aid this work of +progress, a new world of thought and fancy, divinely charming, wholly +human, was revealed to their astonished eyes. Thus art, which had begun +by humanizing the legends of the Church, diverted the attention of its +students from the legend to the work of beauty, and lastly, severing +itself from the religious tradition, became the exponent of the majesty +and splendor of the human body. This final emancipation of art from +ecclesiastical trammels culminated in the great age of Italian painting. +Gazing at Michael Angelo's prophets in the Sistine Chapel, we are indeed +in contact with ideas originally religious. But the treatment of these +ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of +Pheidias. Titian's Virgin received into Heaven, soaring midway between +the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to +follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of +humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is +nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of +the Renaissance stop here. It went further, and plunged into Paganism. +Sculptors and painters combined with architects to cut the arts loose +from their connection with the Church by introducing a spirit and a +sentiment alien to Christianity. + +Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the ideas which art +introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought for the modern world +a real resurrection of the body, which, since the destruction of antique +civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts and cerements within +the tomb of the mediaeval cloister. It was scholarship which revealed to +men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human thought, the +value of human speculation, the importance of human life regarded as a +thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages a +few students had possessed the poems of Virgil and the prose of +Boethius--and Virgil at Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had actually been +honored as saints--together with fragments of Lucan, Ovid, Statius, +Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. The Renaissance opened to the whole reading +public the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At the same +time the Bible in its original tongues was rediscovered. Mines of +Oriental learning were laid bare for the students of the Jewish and +Arabic traditions. The Aryan and Semitic revelations were for the first +time subjected to something like a critical comparison. With unerring +instinct the men of the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-matter +of scholarship 'Litterae Humaniores,'--the more human literature, or the +literature that humanizes. + +There are three stages in the history of scholarship during the +Renaissance. The first is the age of passionate desire; Petrarch poring +over a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity +learning Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head of +poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the +Italians with a thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of +acquisition and of libraries. Nicholas V., who founded the Vatican +Library in 1453, Cosimo de Medici, who began the Medicean Collection a +little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and +convents of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers of Greek, +who in the first half of the fifteenth century escaped from +Constantinople with precious freights of classic literature, are the +heroes of this second period. It was an age of accumulation, of +uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshiped by +these men, just as the reliques of Holy Land had been adored by their +great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the Crusades was revived in this +quest of the Holy Grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of Pagan +authors were valued like precious gems, reveled in like odoriferous and +gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes +of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received +an almost equal homage. Criticism had not yet begun. The world was bent +on gathering up its treasures, frantically bewailing the lost books of +Livy, the lost songs of Sappho--absorbing to intoxication the strong +wine of multitudinous thoughts and passions that kept pouring from those +long-buried amphora of inspiration. What is most remarkable about this +age of scholarship is the enthusiasm which pervaded all classes in +Italy for antique culture. Popes and princes, captains of adventure and +peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike became +scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the +temper of the times with singular felicity. On the 18th of April 1485 a +report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a +Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, +engraved with the inscription, 'Julia, Daughter of Claudius,' and inside +the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, +preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. +The bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and +mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. She was +instantly removed, so goes the legend, to the Capitol; and then began a +procession of pilgrims from all the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this +saint of the old Pagan world. In the eyes of those enthusiastic +worshipers, her beauty was beyond imagination or description: she was +far fairer than any woman of the modern age could hope to be. At last +Innocent VIII. feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new +cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his +direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble +coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in +Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was +yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for +the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us +rather use the mythus as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which +prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty +in the tomb of the classic world.[1] + + [1] The most remarkable document regarding the body of Julia + which has yet been published is a Latin letter, written by + Bartholomaeus Fontius to his friend Franciscus Saxethus, + minutely describing her, with details which appear to prove + that he had not only seen but handled the corpse. It is printed + in Janitschek, _Die Gesellschaft der R. in It._: Stuttgart, + 1879, p. 120. + +Then came the third age of scholarship--the age of the critics, +philologers, and printers. What had been collected by Poggio and Aurispa +had now to be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. They began +their task by digesting and arranging the contents of the libraries. +There were then no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no +dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology +and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of +classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, +and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. +Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. +The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing +scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose +work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, +to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place beyond the reach of +monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace of humanity +which exists in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field +of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men, +who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the +accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer +in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1513. They then became the +inalienable heritage of mankind. But what vigils, what anxious +expenditure of thought, what agonies of doubt and expectation, were +endured by those heroes of humanizing scholarship, whom we are apt to +think of merely as pedants! Which of us now warms and thrills with +emotion at hearing the name of Aldus Manutius, or of Henricus Stephanus, +or of Johannes Froben? Yet this we surely ought to do; for to them we +owe in a great measure the freedom of our spirit, our stores of +intellectual enjoyment, our command of the past, our certainty of the +future of human culture. + +This third age in the history of the Renaissance Scholarship may be said +to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed +on the torch of learning to the northern nations. The publication of his +"Adagia" in 1500, marks the advent of a more critical and selective +spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining strength +in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and +sifting, is one of the points which distinguish the moderns from the +ancients; and criticism was developed by the process of assimilation, +comparison, and appropriation, which was necessary in the growth of +scholarship. The ultimate effect of this recovery of classic literature +was, once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The modern world was +brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, +and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to +judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in +the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely +from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The +minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval +ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew +to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This +extravagance led of necessity to a reaction--in the north to Puritanism, +in the south to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected +under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that +most precious possession of the modern world, was never seriously +imperiled by the classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance; nor, on the +other hand, was the progressive emancipation of the reason materially +retarded by the reaction it produced. + +The transition at this point to the third branch in the discovery of +man, the revelation to the consciousness of its own spiritual freedom, +is natural. Not only did scholarship restore the classics and encourage +literary criticism; it also restored the text of the Bible, and +encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of theological freedom +followed a free philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the +Church. To purge the Christian faith from false conceptions, to liberate +the conscience from the tyranny of priests, and to interpret religion to +the reason has been the work of the last centuries; nor is this work as +yet by any means accomplished. On the one side Descartes and Bacon, +Spinoza and Locke, are sons of the Renaissance, champions of new-found +philosophical freedom; on the other side, Luther is a son of the +Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom. The whole +movement of the Reformation is a phase in that accelerated action of the +modern mind which at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a +mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated phenomenon or as a mere +effort to restore the Church to purity. The Reformation exhibits in the +region of religious thought and national politics what the Renaissance +displays in the sphere of culture, art, and science--the recovered +energy and freedom of the reason. We are too apt to treat of history in +parcels, and to attempt to draw lessons from detached chapters in the +biography of the human race. To observe the connection between the +several stages of a progressive movement of the human spirit, and to +recognize that the forces at work are still active, is the true +philosophy of history. + +The Reformation, like the revival of science and of culture, had its +mediaeval anticipations and foreshadowings. The heretics whom the Church +successfully combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia were the +precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way in the fifteenth +century. Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type--Reuchlin in +Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as +a humanist--contribute each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, +incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the +necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity, as +distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the +individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for +himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between the human soul +and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. +Thus the principles involved in what we call the Reformation were +momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of +texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on +the other side with the intolerance of mere authority it led to what has +since been named rationalism--the attempt to reconcile the religious +tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie +the conceptions of the popular religious consciousness. Again, by +promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, and by connecting itself +with national politics, the reformation was linked historically to the +revolution. It was the Puritan Church in England stimulated by the +patriotism of the Dutch Protestants, which established our +constitutional liberty, and introduced in America the general principle +of the equality of men. This high political abstraction, latent in +Christianity, evolved by criticism, and promulgated as a gospel in the +second half of the last century, was externalized in the French +Revolution. The work that yet remains to be accomplished for the modern +world is the organization of society in harmony with democratic +principles. + +Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth to liberty--the +spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of +self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world, and of +the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the +conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and +establishing the principle of political freedom. The Church was the +schoolmaster of the Middle Ages. Culture was the humanizing and refining +influence of the Renaissance. The problem for the present and the future +is how through education to render knowledge accessible to all--to break +down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set between clerk and +layman, and which in the intermediate period has arisen between the +intelligent and ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern world, +in which all men shall enjoy the same social, political, and +intellectual advantages, be realized or not, we cannot doubt that the +whole movement of humanity from the Renaissance onward has tended in +this direction. To destroy the distinctions, mental and physical, which +nature raises between individuals, and which constitute an actual +hierarchy, will always be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the +future no civilized man will lack the opportunity of being physically +and mentally the best that God has made him. + +It remains to speak of the instruments and mechanical inventions which +aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern age. Discovered over +and over again, and offered at intervals to the human race at various +times and on divers soils, no effective use was made of these material +resources until the fifteenth century. The compass, discovered according +to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for +the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in +the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus +to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to +substantiate his theory of the planetary system. Printing, after +numerous useless revelations to the world of its resources, became an +art in 1438; and paper, which had long been known to the Chinese, was +first made of cotton in Europe about 1000, and of rags in 1319. +Gunpowder entered into use about 1320. As employed by the Genius of the +Renaissance, each one of these inventions became a lever by means of +which to move the world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war. The +feudal castle, the armor of the Knight and his battle-horse, the prowess +of one man against a hundred, and the pride of aristocratic cavalry +trampling upon ill-armed militia, were annihilated by the flashes of the +canon. Courage became more a moral than a physical quality. The victory +was delivered to the brain of the general. Printing has established, as +indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property +of every one, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing +cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite, and must occur to +every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the +inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious +calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when +we direct it to the phenomena of the Renaissance. + +In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared. +But it must never be forgotten that as a matter of history the true +Renaissance began in Italy. It was there that the essential qualities +which distinguish the modern from the ancient and the mediaeval world +were developed. Italy created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture +and of intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath of the +European races. As the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people of +divine revelation, so may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar +vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in +science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern +intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and France and +England the restored humanities complete. Spain and England have since +done more for the exploration and colonization of the world. Germany +achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has +collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible +energy. But if we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we +find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had +already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and +to set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and +live. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +ITALIAN HISTORY. + + +The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of +leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The +People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the +Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The +Consuls--The Podestas--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The +Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The +Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been +achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part +played by the Papacy. + + +After a first glance into Italian history the student recoils +as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To fix the moment of +transition from ancient to modern civilization seems impossible. There +is no formation of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France or +England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the Italian races do in +their original type; Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins, +Iapygians, Greeks have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman +rule into a nation that survives political mutations and the disasters +of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lombards, and Franks blend successively +with the masses of this complex population, and lose the outlines of +their several personalities. The western Empire melts imperceptibly +away. The Roman Church grows no less imperceptibly, and forms the Holy +Roman Empire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness in the +sphere of secular authority. These two institutions, the crowning +monuments of Italian creative genius, dominate the Middle Ages, powerful +as facts, but still more powerful as ideas. Yet neither of them controls +the evolution of Italy in the same sense as France was controlled by the +monarchical, and Germany by the federative, principle. The forces of the +nation, divided and swayed from side to side by this commanding dualism, +escaped both influences in so far as either Pope or Emperor strove to +mold them into unity. Meanwhile the domination of Byzantine Greeks in +the southern provinces, the kingdom of the Goths at Ravenna, the kingdom +of the Lombards and Franks at Pavia, the incursions of Huns and +Saracens, the kingdom of the Normans at Palermo, formed but accidents +and moments in a national development which owed important modifications +to each successive episode, but was not finally determined by any of +them. When the Communes emerge into prominence, shaking off the +supremacy of the Greeks in the South, vindicating their liberties +against the Empire in the North, jealously guarding their independence +from Papal encroachment in the center, they have already assumed shapes +of marked distinctness and bewildering diversity. Venice, Milan, Genoa, +Florence, Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Amalfi, Lucca, Pisa, to mention only +a few of the more notable, are indiscriminately called Republics. Yet +they differ in their internal type no less than in external conditions. +Each wears from the first and preserves a physiognomy that justifies our +thinking and speaking of the town as an incarnate entity. The cities of +Italy, down to the very smallest, bear the attributes of individuals. +The mutual attractions and repulsions that presided over their growth +have given them specific qualities which they will never lose, which +will be reflected in their architecture, in their customs, in their +language, in their policy, as well as in the institutions of their +government. We think of them involuntarily as persons, and reserve for +them epithets that mark the permanence of their distinctive characters. +To treat of them collectively is almost impossible. Each has its own +biography, and plays a part of consequence in the great drama of the +nation. Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian literature, +Italian art, is really not the study of one national genius, but of a +whole family of cognate geniuses, grouped together, conscious of +affinity, obeying the same general conditions, but issuing in markedly +divergent characteristics. Democracies, oligarchies, aristocracies +spring into being by laws of natural selection within the limits of a +single province. Every municipality has a separate nomenclature for its +magistracies, a somewhat different method of distributing administrative +functions. In one place there is a Doge appointed for life; in another +the government is put into commission among officers elected for a +period of months. Here we find a Patrician, a Senator, a Tribune; there +Consuls, Rectors, Priors, Ancients, Buonuomini, Conservatori. At one +period and in one city the Podesta seems paramount; across the border a +Captain of the People or a Gonfaloniere di Giustizia is supreme. Vicars +of the Empire, Exarchs, Catapans, Rectors for the Church, Legates, +Commissaries, succeed each other with dazzling rapidity. Councils are +multiplied and called by names that have their origin and meaning buried +in the dust of archaeology. Consigli del Popolo, Credenza, Consiglio del +Comune, Senato, Gran Consiglio, Pratiche, Parlamenti, Monti, Consiglio +de' Savi, Arti, Parte Guelfa, Consigli di Dieci, di Tre, I Nove, Gli +Otto, I Cento--such are a few of the titles chosen at random from the +constitutional records of different localities. + +Not one is insignificant. Not one but indicates some moment of +importance in the social evolution of the state. Not one but speaks of +civil strife, whereby the burgh in question struggled into individuality +and defined itself against its neighbor. Like fossils, in geological +strata, these names survive long after their old uses have been +forgotten, to guide the explorer in his reconstruction of a buried past. +While one town appears to respect the feudal lordship of great families, +another pronounces nobility to be a crime, and forces on its citizens +the reality or the pretense of labor. Some recognize the supremacy of +ecclesiastics. Others, like Venice, resist the least encroachment of the +Church, and stand aloof from Roman Christianity in jealous isolation. +The interests of one class are maritime, of another military, of a third +industrial, of a fourth financial, of a fifth educational. Amalfi, Pisa, +Genoa, and Venice depend for power upon their fleets and colonies; the +little cities of Romagna and the March supply the Captains of adventure +with recruits; Florence and Lucca live by manufacture; Milan by banking; +Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, owe their wealth to students attracted by their +universities. Foreign alliances or geographical affinities connect one +center with the Empire of the East, a second with France, a third with +Spain. The North is overshadowed by Germany; the South is disquieted by +Islam. The types thus formed and thus discriminated are vital, and +persist for centuries with the tenacity of physical growths. Each +differentiation owes its origin to causes deeply rooted in the locality. +The freedom and apparent waywardness of nature, when she sets about to +form crystals of varying shapes and colors, that shall last and bear her +stamp for ever, have governed their uprising and their progress to +maturity. At the same time they exhibit the keen jealousies and mutual +hatreds of rival families in the animal kingdom. Pisa destroys Amalfi; +Genoa, Pisa; Venice, Genoa; with ruthless and remorseless egotism in the +conflict of commercial interests. Florence enslaves Pisa because she +needs a way to the sea. Siena and Perugia, upon their inland altitudes, +consume themselves in brilliant but unavailing efforts to expand. Milan +engulfs the lesser towns of Lombardy. Verona absorbs Padua and Treviso. +Venice extends dominion over the Friuli and the Veronese conquests. +Strife and covetousness reign from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. But it is +a strife of living energies, the covetousness of impassioned and +puissant units. Italy as a whole is almost invisible to the student by +reason of the many-sided, combative, self-centered crowd of numberless +Italian communities. Proximity foments hatred and stimulates hostility. +Fiesole looks down and threatens Florence. Florence returns frown for +frown, and does not rest till she has made her neighbor of the hills a +slave. Perugia and Assissi turn the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of +wolves by their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another across the +Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her +Becca Questa in responsive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno +receives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife and fierce +town-rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing satire and insulting epithet, +for no apparent reason but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same +water and to breathe the same air as Florence. It would seem as though +the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended +for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the +indigenous populations of Italy, tamed by antique culture, were +reverting to their primal instincts, with all the discords and divisions +introduced by the military system of the Lombards, the feudalism of the +Franks, the alien institutions of the Germans, superadded to +exasperate the passions of a nation blindly struggling against obstacles +that block the channel of continuous progress. Nor is this the end of +the perplexity. Not only are the cities at war with one another, but +they are plunged in ceaseless strife within the circuit of their +ramparts. The people with the nobles, the burghs with the castles, the +plebeians with the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with the men +of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and Ghibellines, clash together in +persistent fury. One half the city expels the other half. The exiles +roam abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their conquerors. +Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions follow. Again alliances are made +and revolutions accomplished, till the ancient feuds of the towns are +crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness that defies +analysis. Through the medley of quarreling, divided, subdivided, and +intertwisted factions, ride Emperors followed by their bands of knights, +appearing for a season on vain quests, and withdrawing after they have +tenfold confounded the confusion. Papal Legates drown the cities of the +Church in blood, preach crusades, fulminate interdictions, rouse +insurrections in the States that own allegiance to the Empire. Monks +stir republican revivals in old cities that have lost their liberties, +or assemble the populations of crime-maddened districts in aimless +comedies of piety and false pacification, or lead them barefooted and +intoxicated with shrill cries of 'Mercy' over plain and mountain. +Princes of France, Kings of Bohemia and Hungary, march and countermarch +from north to south and back again, form leagues, establish realms, head +confederations, which melt like shapes we form from clouds to nothing. +At one time the Pope and Emperor use Italy as the arena of a deadly +duel, drawing the congregated forces of the nation into their dispute. +At another they join hands to divide the spoil of ruined provinces. +Great generals with armies at their backs start into being from apparent +nothingness, dispute the sovereignty of Italy in bloodless battles, +found ephemeral dynasties, and pass away like mists upon a mountain-side +beneath a puff of wind. Conflict, ruin, desolation, anarchy are ever +yielding place to concord, restoration, peace, prosperity, and then +recurring with a mighty flood of violence. Construction, destruction, +and reconstruction play their part in crises that have to be counted by +the thousands. + +In the mean time, from this hurricane of disorder rises the clear ideal +of the national genius. Italy becomes self-conscious and attains the +spiritual primacy of modern Europe. Art, Learning, Literature, +State-craft, Philosophy, Science build a sacred and inviolable city of +the soul amid the tumult of seven thousand revolutions, the dust and +crash of falling cities, the tramplings of recurrent invasions, the +infamies and outrages of tyrants and marauders who oppress the land. +Unshaken by the storms that rage around it, this refuge of the spirit, +raised by Italian poets, thinkers, artists, scholars, and discoverers, +grows unceasingly in bulk and strength, until the younger nations take +their place beneath its ample dome. Then, while yet the thing of wonder +and of beauty stands in fresh perfection, at that supreme moment when +Italy is tranquil and sufficient to fulfill the noblest mission for the +world, we find her crushed and trampled under foot. Her tempestuous but +splendid story closes in the calm of tyranny imposed by Spain. + +Over this vertiginous abyss of history, where the memories of antique +civilization blend with the growing impulses of modern life in an +uninterrupted sequence of national consciousness; through this +many-chambered laboratory of conflicting principles, where the ideals of +the Middle Age are shaped, and laws are framed for Europe; across this +wonder-land of waning and of waxing culture, where Goths, Greeks, +Lombards, Franks, and Normans come to form themselves by contact with +the ever-living soul of Rome; where Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swiss, and +Germans at a later period battle for the richest prize in Europe, and +learn by conquest from the conquered to be men; how shall we guide our +course? If we follow the fortunes of the Church, and make the Papacy the +thread on which the history of Italy shall hang, we gain the advantage +of basing our narrative upon the most vital and continuous member of the +body politic. But we are soon forced to lose sight of the Italians in +the crowd of other Christian races. The history of the Church is +cosmopolitan. The Sphere of the Papacy extends in all directions around +Italy taken as a local center. Its influence, moreover, was invariably +one of discord rather than of harmony within the boundaries of the +peninsula. If we take the Empire as our standing-ground, we have to +write the annals of a sustained struggle, in the course of which the +Italian cities were successful, when they reduced the Emperor to the +condition of an absentee with merely nominal privileges. After Frederick +II. the Empire played no important part in Italy until its rights were +reasserted by Charles V. upon the platform of modern politics. A power +so external to the true life of the nation, so successfully resisted, +so impotent to control the development of the Italians, cannot be chosen +as the central point of their history. If we elect the Republics, we are +met with another class of difficulties. The historian who makes the +Commune his unit, who confines attention to the gradual development, +reciprocal animosities, and final decadence of the republics, can hardly +do justice to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papacy, which +occupy no less than half the country. Again, the great age of the +Renaissance, when all the free burghs accepted the rule of despots, and +when the genius of the Italians culminated, is for him a period of +downfall and degradation. Besides, he leaves the history of the Italian +people before the starting-point of the Republics unexplained. He has, +at the close of their career, to account for the reason why these +Communes, so powerful in self-development, so intelligent, so wealthy, +and so capable of playing off the Pope against the Empire, failed to +maintain their independence. In other words he selects one phase of +Italian evolution, and writes a narrative that cannot but be partial. If +we make the Despots our main point, we repeat the same error in a worse +form. The Despotisms imply the Communes as their predecessors. Each and +all of them grew up and flourished on the soil of decadent or tired +Republics. Though they are all-important at one period of Italian +history--the period of the present work--they do but form an episode in +the great epic of the nation. He who attempts a general history of Italy +from the point of view of the despotisms, is taking a single scene for +the whole drama. Finally we might prefer the people--that people, +instinctively and persistently faithful to Roman traditions, which +absorbed into itself the successive hordes of barbarian invaders, +civilized them, and adopted them as men of Italy; that people which +destroyed the kingdoms of the Goths and Lombards humbled the Empire at +Legnano, and evolved the Communes; that people which resisted alien +feudalism, and spent its prime upon eradicating every trace of the +repugnant system from its midst; that people which finally attained to +the consciousness of national unity by the recovery of scholarship and +culture under the dominion of despotic princes. This people is Italy. +But the documents that should throw light upon the early annals of the +people are deficient. It does not appear upon the scene before the reign +of Otho I. Nor does it become supreme till after the Peace of Constance. +Its biography is bound up with that of the republics and the despots. +Before the date of their ascendency we have to deal with Bishops of +Rome, Emperors of the East and West, Exarchs and Kings of Italy, the +feudal Lords of the Marches, the Dukes and Counts of Lombard and +Frankish rulers. Through that long period of incubation, when Italy +freed herself from dependence upon Byzantium, created the Papacy and +formed the second Roman Empire, the people exists only as a spirit +resident in Roman towns and fostered by the Church, which effectually +repelled all attempts at monarchical unity, playing the Lombards off +against the Goths, the Franks against the Lombards, the Normans against +the Greeks, merging the Italian Kingdom in the Empire when it became +German, and resisting the Empire of its own creation when the towns at +last were strong enough to stand alone. To speak about the people in +this early period is, therefore, to invoke a myth; to write its history +is the same as writing an ideal history of mediaeval Europe. + +The truth is that none of these standpoints in isolation suffices for +the student of Italy. Her inner history is the history of social and +intellectual progress evolving itself under the conditions of attraction +and repulsion generated by the double ideas of Papacy and Empire. +Political unity is everywhere and at all times imperiously rejected. The +most varied constitutional forms are needed for the self-effectuation of +a race that has no analogue in Europe. The theocracy of Rome, the +monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, the democracy of +Florence, the tyranny of Milan are equally instrumental in elaborating +the national genius that gave art, literature, and mental liberty to +modern society. The struggles of city with city for supremacy or bare +existence, the internecine wars of party against party, the never-ending +clash of principles within the States, educated the people to +multifarious and vivid energy. In the course of those long complicated +contests, the chief centers acquired separate personalities, assumed the +physiognomy of conscious freedom, and stamped the mark of their own +spirit on their citizens. At the end of all discords, at the close of +all catastrophes, we find in each of the great towns a population +released from mental bondage and fitted to perform the work of +intellectual emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the essential +characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled and harmonized by an +ideal rhythm of progressive movement.[1] We who are mainly occupied in +this book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in society, +scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most brilliant period of +renascence, may accept this fact of political dismemberment with +acquiescence. It was to the variety of conditions offered by the Italian +communities that we owe the unexampled richness of the mental life of +Italy. Yet it is impossible to overlook the weakness inflicted on the +people by those same conditions when the time came for Italy to try her +strength against the nations of Europe.[2] It was then shown that the +diversities which stimulated spiritual energy were a fatal source of +national instability. The pride of the Italians in their local +independence, their intolerance of unification under a single head, the +jealousies that prevented them from forming a permanent confederation, +rendered them incapable of coping with races which had yielded to the +centripetal force of monarchy. If it is true that the unity of the +nation under a kingdom founded at Pavia would have deprived the world of +much that Italy has yielded in the sphere of thought and art, it is +certainly not less true that such centralization alone could have +averted the ruin of the sixteenth century which gives the aspect of a +tragedy to each volume of my work on the Renaissance. + + [1] See Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28) for an eloquent + demonstration of the happiness, prosperity, and splendor conferred + on the Italians by the independence of their several centers. He is + arguing against Machiavelli's lamentation over their failure to + achieve national unity. + + [2] This was the point urged by Machiavelli, in the _Principe_, the + _Discorsi_, and the _Art of War_. With keener political insight than + Guicciardini, he perceived that the old felicity of Italy was about + to fail her through the very independence of her local centers, + which Guicciardini rightly recognized as the source of her + unparalleled civilization and wealth. The one thing needful in the + shock with France and Spain was unity. + +Without seeking to attack the whole problem of Italian history, two main +topics must be briefly discussed in the present chapter before entering +on the proper matter of this work. The first relates to the growth of +the Communes, which preceded, necessitated, and determined the +despotisms of the fifteenth century. The second raises the question why +Italian differs from any other national history, why the people failed +to achieve unity either under a sovereign or in a powerful +confederation. These two subjects of inquiry are closely connected and +interdependent. They bring into play the several points that have been +indicated as partially and imperfectly explanatory of the problem of +Italy. But, since I have undertaken to write neither a constitutional +nor a political history, but a history of culture at a certain epoch, it +will be enough to treat of these two questions briefly, with the special +view of showing under what conditions the civilization of the +Renaissance came to maturity in numerous independent Communes, reduced +at last by necessary laws of circumstance to tyranny; and how it was +checked at the point of transition to its second phase of modern +existence, by political weakness inseparable from the want of national +coherence in the shock with mightier military races. + +Modern Italian history may be said to begin with the retirement of +Honorius to Ravenna and the subsequent foundation of Odoacer's Kingdom +in 476. The Western Empire ended, and Rome was recognized as a Republic. +When Zeno sent the Goths into Italy, Theodoric established himself at +Ravenna, continued the institutions and usages of the ancient Empire, +and sought by blending with the people to naturalize his alien +authority. Rome was respected as the sacred city of ancient culture and +civility. Her Consuls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed in due +course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric made himself the vicegerent +of the Caesars rather than an independent sovereign. When we criticise +the Ostro-Gothic occupation by the light of subsequent history, it is +clear that this exclusion of the capital from Theodoric's conquest and +his veneration for the Eternal City were fatal to the unity of the +Italian realm. From the moment that Rome was separated from the +authority of the Italian Kings, there existed two powers in the +Peninsula--the one secular, monarchical, with the military strength of +the barbarians imposed upon its ancient municipal organization; the +other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the undefined ambitions of +S. Peter's See and the unconquered instincts of the Roman people +scattered through the still surviving cities.[1] Justinian, bent upon +asserting his rights as the successor of the Caesars, wrested Italy from +the hands of the Goths; but scarcely was this revolution effected when +Narses, the successor of Belisarius, called a new nation of barbarians +to support his policy in Italy. Narses died before the advent of the +Lombards; but they descended, in forces far more formidable than the +Goths, and established a second kingdom at Pavia. Under the Lombard +domination Rome was left untouched. Venice, with her population gathered +from the ruins of the neighboring Roman cities, remained in +quasi-subjection to the Empire of the East. Ravenna became a Greek +garrison, ruling the Exarchate and Pentapolis under the name of the +Byzantine Emperors. The western coast escaped the Lombard domination; +for Genoa grew slowly into power upon her narrow cornice between hills +and sea, while Pisa defied the barbarians intrenched in military +stations at Fiesole and Lucca. In like manner the islands, Sicily, +Sardinia, and Corsica, were detached from the Lombard Kingdom; and the +maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta +asserted independence under the shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the +Lombards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed to accomplish, +decided the future of Italy. They broke the country up into unequal +blocks; for while the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while +the great duchies of Spoleto in the center and of Benevento in the south +owned the nominal sway of Alboin's successors,[2] Venice and the +Riviera, Pisa and the maritime republics of Apulia and Calabria, +Ravenna and the islands, repelled their sovereignty. Rome remained +inviolable beneath the aegis of her ancient prestige, and the decadent +Empire of the East was too inert to check the freedom of the towns which +recognized its titular supremacy. + + [1] When I apply the term Roman here and elsewhere to the + inhabitants of the Italian towns, I wish to indicate the indigenous + Italic populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity. The + resurgence of this population and its reattainment of intellectual + consciousness by the recovery of past traditions and the rejection + of foreign influence constitutes the history of Italy upon the close + of the Dark Ages. + + [2] It will be remembered by students of early Italian history that + Benevento and Spoleto joined the Church in her war upon the Lombard + kingdom. Spoleto was broken up. Benevento survived as a Lombard + duchy till the Norman Conquest. + +The kingdom of the Lombards endured two centuries, and left ineffaceable +marks upon Italy. A cordon of military cities was drawn round the old +Roman centers in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Duchy of Spoleto. Pavia rose +against Milan, which had been a second Rome, Cividale against Aquileia, +Fiesole against Florence, Lucca against Pisa. The country was divided +into Duchies and Marches; military service was exacted from the +population, and the laws of the Lombards, _asininum jus, quoddam jus +quod faciebant reges per se_, as the jurists afterwards defined them, +were imposed upon the descendants of Roman civilization. Yet the +outlying cities of the sea-coast, as we have already seen, were +independent; and Rome remained to be the center of revolutionary ideas, +the rallying-point of a policy inimical to Lombard unity. Not long after +their settlement, the princes of the Lombard race took the fatal step of +joining the Catholic communion, whereby they strengthened the hands of +Rome and excluded themselves from tyrannizing in the last resort over +the growing independence of the Papal See. The causes of their +conversion from Arianism to orthodox Latin Christianity are buried in +obscurity. But it is probable that they were driven to this measure by +the rebelliousness of their great vassals and the necessity of resting +for support upon the indigenous populations they had subjugated. Rome, +profiting by the errors and the weakness of her antagonists, extended +her spiritual dominion by enforcing sacraments, ordeals, and appeals to +ecclesiastical tribunals, organized her hierarchy under Gregory the +Great, and lost no opportunity of enriching and aggrandizing her +bishoprics. In 718 she shook off the yoke of Byzantium by repelling the +heresies of Leo the Isaurian; and when this insurrection menaced her +with the domestic tyranny of the Lombard Kings, who possessed themselves +of Ravenna in 728, she called the Franks to her aid against the now +powerful realm. Stephen II. journeyed in 753 to Gaul, named Pippin +Patrician of Rome, and invited him to the conquest of Italy. In the war +that followed, the Franks subdued the Lombards, and Charles the Great +was invested with their kingdom and crowned Emperor in 800 by Leo III. +at Rome. + +The famous compact between Charles the Great and the Pope was in effect +a ratification of the existing state of things. The new Emperor took for +himself and converted into a Frankish Kingdom all the provinces that had +been wrested from the Lombards. He relinquished to the Papacy Rome with +its patrimony, the portions of Spoleto and Benevento that had already +yielded to the See of S. Peter, the southern provinces that owned the +nominal ascendency of Byzantium, the islands and the cities of the +Exarchate and Pentapolis which formed no part of the Lombard conquest. +By this stipulation no real temporal power was accorded to the Papacy, +nor did the new Empire surrender its paramount rights over the peninsula +at large. The Italian kingdom, transferred to the Franks in 800, was the +kingdom founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered +districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which had +guided their emancipation. Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by +Theodoric's veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the +Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement whereby the Pope gave a +new Empire to Western Christendom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime +Republics of the south, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue +their own course of independence; and this is the chief among many +reasons why they rose so early into prominence. Rome consolidated her +ancient patrimonies and extended her rectorship in the center, while the +Frankish kings, who succeeded each other through eight reigns, developed +the Regno upon feudal principles by parceling the land among their +Counts. New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric +and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom. Thus the great +vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against +Pavia. The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious +nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the +last independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of +Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation. + +The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the +Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles +summoned into Italy in 951. When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned +Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy. Thus the +Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital. +Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed +Pontiff and an absent Emperor. The subsequent history of the Italians +shows how they succeeded in reducing both these powers to the condition +of principles, maintaining the pontifical and imperial ideas, but +repelling the practical authority of either potentate. Otho created new +marches and gave them to men of German origin. The houses of Savoy and +Montferrat rose into importance in his reign. To Verona were intrusted +the passes between Germany and Italy. The Princes of Este at Ferrara +held the keys of the Po, while the family of Canossa accumulated fiefs +that stretched from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over the +Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto. Thus the ancient Italy of +Lombards and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, +owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in the +provinces beyond the Alps. At the same time the organization of the +Church was fortified. The Bishops were placed on an equality with the +Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts were created to represent +their civil jurisdiction. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance +of Otho's concessions to the Bishops. During the preceding period of +Frankish rule about one third of the soil of Italy had been yielded to +the Church, which had the right of freeing its vassals from military +service; and since the ecclesiastical sees were founded upon ancient +sites of Roman civilization, without regard to the military centers of +the barbarian kingdoms, the new privileges of the Bishops accrued to the +benefit of the indigenous population. Milan, for example, down-trodden +by Pavia, still remained the major See of Lombardy. Aquileia, though a +desert, had her patriarch, while Cividale, established as a fortress to +coerce the neighboring Roman towns, was ecclesiastically but a village. +At this epoch a third power emerged in Italy. Berengar had given the +cities permission to inclose themselves with walls in order to repel the +invasions of the Huns.[1] Otho respected their right of self-defense, +and from the date of his coronation the history of the free burghs +begins in Italy. It is at first closely connected with the changes +wrought by the extinction of the kingdom of Pavia, by the exaltation of +the clergy, and by the dislocation of the previous system of +feud-holding, which followed upon Otho's determination to remodel the +country in the interest of the German Empire. The Regno was abolished. +The ancient landmarks of nobility were altered and confused. The cities +under their Bishops assumed a novel character of independence. Those of +Roman origin, being ecclesiastical centers, had a distant advantage over +the more recent foundations of the Lombard and the Frankish monarchs. +The Italic population everywhere emerged and displayed a vitality that +had been crushed and overlaid by centuries of invasion and military +oppression. + + [1] It is worthy of notice that to this date belongs the war-chant + of the Modenese sentinels, with its allusions to Troy and Hector, + which is recognized as the earliest specimen of the Italian + hendecasyllabic meter. + +The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as luminous points in the dense +darkness of feudal aristocracy.[1] Gathering round their Cathedral as a +center, the towns inclose their dwellings with bastions, from which they +gaze upon a country bristling with castles, occupied by serfs, and +lorded over by the hierarchical nobility. Within the city the Bishop +and the Count hold equal sway; but the Bishop has upon his side the +sympathies and passions of the burghers. The first effort of the towns +is to expel the Count from their midst. Some accident of misrule +infuriates the citizens. They fly to arms and are supported by the +Bishop. The Count has to retire to the open country, where he +strengthens himself in his castle.[2] Then the Bishop remains victor in +the town, and forms a government of rich and noble burghers, who control +with him the fortunes of the new-born state. At this crisis we begin to +hear for the first time a word that has been much misunderstood. The +_Popolo_ appears upon the scene. Interpreting the past by the present, +and importing the connotation gained by the word _people_ in the +revolutions of the last two centuries, students are apt to assume that +the Popolo of the Italian burghs included the whole population. In +reality it was at first a close aristocracy of influential families, to +whom the authority of the superseded Counts was transferred in +commission, and who held it by hereditary right.[3] Unless we firmly +grasp this fact, the subsequent vicissitudes of the Italian +commonwealths are unintelligible, and the elaborate definitions of the +Florentine doctrinaires lose half their meaning. The internal +revolutions of the free cities were almost invariably caused by the +necessity of enlarging the Popolo, and extending its franchise to the +non-privileged inhabitants. Each effort after expansion provoked an +obstinate resistance from those families who held the rights of +burghership; and thus the technical terms _primo popolo_, _secondo +popolo_, _popolo grasso_, _popolo minuto_, frequently occurring in the +records of the Republics, indicate several stages in the progress from +oligarchy to democracy. The constitution of the city at this early +period was simple. At the head of its administration stood the Bishop, +with the Popolo of enfranchised burghers. The _Commune_ included the +Popolo, together with the non-qualified inhabitants, and was represented +by Consuls, varying in number according to the division of the town into +quarters.[4] Thus the Commune and the Popolo were originally separate +bodies; and this distinction has been perpetuated in the architecture of +those towns which still can show a Palazzo del Popolo apart from the +Palazzo del Commune. Since the affairs of the city had to be conducted +by discussion, we find Councils corresponding to the constituent +elements of the burgh. There is the _Parlamento_, in which the +inhabitants meet together to hear the decisions of the Bishop and the +Popolo, or to take measures in extreme cases that affect the city as a +whole; the _Gran Consiglio_, which is only open to duly qualified +members of the Popolo; and the _Credenza_, or privy council of specially +delegated burghers, who debate on matters demanding secrecy and +diplomacy. Such, generally speaking, and without regard to local +differences, was the internal constitution of an Italian city during the +supremacy of the Bishops. + + [1] It is not necessary to raise antiquarian questions here relating + to the origin of the Italian Commune. Whether regarded as a survival + of the ancient Roman _municipium_ or as an offshoot from the Lombard + _guild_, it was a new birth of modern times, a new organism evolved + to express the functions of Italian as different from ancient Roman + or mediaeval Lombard life. The affection of the people for their past + induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility for the + officers and councils of the Commune. Thus a specious air of + classical antiquity, rather literary and sentimental than real, was + given to the Commune at the outset. Moreover, it must be remembered + that Rome herself had suffered no substantial interruption of + republican existence during the Dark Ages. Therefore the free + burghs, though their vitality was the outcome of wholly new + conditions, though they were built up of guilds and associations + representing interests of modern origin, flattered themselves with + an uninterrupted municipal succession from the Roman era, and + pointed for proof to the Eternal City. + + [2] The Italian word _contado_ is a survival from this state of + things. It represents a moment in the national development when the + sphere of the Count outside the city was defined against the sphere + of the municipality. The _Contadini_ are the people of the Contado, + the Count's men. + + [3] Even Petrarch, in his letter to four Cardinals (Lett. Fam. xi. + 16, ed. Fracassetti) on the reformation of the Roman Commonwealth, + recommends the exclusion of the neighboring burghs and all + strangers, inclusive of the Colonna and Orsini families, from the + franchise. None but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the + _colluviet omnium gentium_ deposited upon the Seven Hills by + centuries of immigration he does not clearly say, should be chosen + to revive the fallen majesty of the Republic. See in particular the + peroration of his argument (op. cit. vol. iii. p. 95). In other + words, he aims at a narrow Popolo, a _pura cittadinanza_, in the + sense of Cacciaguida Par. xvi. + + [4] In some places we find as many as twelve Consuls. It appears + that both the constituent families of the Popolo and the numbers of + the Consuls were determined by the Sections of the city, so many + being told off for each quarter. + +In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals, among whom may +be mentioned the houses of Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, +creations of the Salic Emperors, looked with favor upon the development +of the towns, while some nobles went so far as to constitute themselves +feudatories of Bishops.[1] The angry warfare carried on against Canossa +by the Lombard barons has probably to be interpreted by the jealousy +this popular policy excited. At the same time, while Lombardy and +Tuscany were establishing their municipal liberties, a sympathetic +movement began in Southern Italy, which resulted in the conquest of +Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily by the Normans. Omitting all the details of +this episode, than which nothing more dramatic is presented by the +history of modern nations, it must be enough to point out here that the +Normans finally severed Italy from the Greek Empire, gave a monarchical +stamp to the south of the peninsula, and brought the Regno they +consolidated into the sphere of national politics under the protection +of the Pope. Up to the date of their conquest Southern Italy had a +separate and confused history. It now entered the Italian community, and +by the peculiar circumstances of its cession to the Holy See was +destined in the future to become the chief instrument whereby the Popes +disturbed the equilibrium of the peninsula in furtherance of their +ambitious schemes. + + [1] The Pelavicini of S. Donnino, for example, gave themselves to + Parma. + +The greatness of the Roman cities under the popular rule of their +Bishops is illustrated by Milan, second only to Rome in the last days of +the Empire. Milan had been reduced to the condition of abject misery by +the Kings, who spared no pains to exalt Pavia at the expense of her +elder sister. After the dissolution of the kingdom, she started into a +new life, and in 1037 her archbishop, Heribert, was singled out by +Conrad II. as the protagonist of the episcopal revolution against +feudalism.[1] Heribert was in truth the hero of the burghs in their +first strife for independence. It was he who devised the _Carroccio_, an +immense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner of the Commune, with an +altar and priests ministrant, around which the pikemen of the city +mustered when they went to war. This invention of Heribert's was soon +adopted by the cities throughout Italy. It gave cohesion and confidence +to the citizens, reminded them that the Church was on their side in the +struggle for freedom, and served as symbol of their military strength in +union. The first authentic records of a Parliament, embracing the nobles +of the Popolo, the clergy, and the multitude, are transmitted to us by +the Milanese Chronicles, in which Heribert figures as the president of a +republic. From this date Milan takes the lead in the contests for +municipal independence. Her institutions like that of the Carroccio, +together with her tameless spirit, are communicated to the neighboring +cities of Lombardy, cross the Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs +of Tuscany. + + [1] He was summoned before the Diet of Pavia for having dispossessed + a noble of his feud. + +Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal presidency, the cities +now proceeded to claim the right of choosing their own Bishops. They +refused the prelates sent them by the Emperor, and demanded an election +by the Chapters of each town. This privilege was virtually won when the +war of Investitures broke out in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. in +1046, the Emperors resolved to enforce their right of nominating the +Popes. The two first prelates imposed on Rome, Clement II. and Damatus +II., died under suspicion of poison. Thus the Roman people refused a +foreign Pope, as the Lombards had rejected the bishops sent to rule +them. The next Popes, Leo IX. and Victor II., were persuaded by +Hildebrand, who now appears upon the stage, to undergo a second +election at Rome by the clergy and the people. They escaped +assassination. But the fifth German, Stephen X., again died suddenly; +and now the formidable monk of Soana felt himself powerful enough to +cause the election of his own candidate, Nicholas II. A Lateran council, +inspired by Hildebrand, transferred the election of Popes to the +Cardinals, approved by the clergy and people of Rome, and confirmed the +privilege of the cities to choose their bishops, subject to Papal +ratification. In 1073 Hildebrand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and +declared a war that lasted more than forty years against the Empire. At +its close in 1122 the Church and the Empire were counterposed as +mutually exclusive autocracies, the one claiming illimitable spiritual +sway, the other recognized as no less illimitably paramount in civil +society. From the principles raised by Hildebrand and contested in the +struggles of this duel, we may date those new conceptions of the two +chief powers of Christendom which found final expression in the +theocratic philosophy of the _Summa_ and the imperial absolutism of the +_De Monarchia_. Meanwhile the Empire and the Papacy, while trying their +force against each other, had proved to Italy their essential weakness. +What they gained as ideas, controlling the speculations of the next two +centuries, they lost as potentates in the peninsula. It was impossible +for either Pope or Emperor to carry on the war without bidding for the +support of the cities; and therefore, at the end of the struggle, the +free burghs found themselves strengthened at the expense of both powers. +Still it must not be forgotten that the wars of Investitures, while they +developed the independent spirit and the military energies of the +Republics, penetrated Italy with the vice of party conflict. The +ineradicable divisions of Guelf and Ghibelline were a heavy price to pay +for a step forward on the path of emancipation; nor was the +ecclesiastical revolution, which tended to Italianize the Papacy, while +it magnified its cosmopolitan ascendency, other than a source of evil to +the nation. + +The forces liberated in the cities by these wars brought the Consuls to +the front. The Bishops had undermined the feudal fabric of the kingdom, +depressed the Counts, and restored the Roman towns to prosperity. During +the war both Popolo and Commune grew in vigor, and their Consuls began +to use the authority that had been conquered by the prelates. At first +the Consuls occupied a subordinate position as men of affairs and +notaries, needed to transact the business of the mercantile inhabitants. +They now took the lead as political agents of the first magnitude, +representing the city in its public acts, and superseding the +ecclesiastics. The Popolo was enlarged by the admission of new burgher +families, and the ruling caste, though still oligarchical, became more +fairly representative of the inhabitants. This progress was inevitable, +when we remember that the cities had been organized for warfare, and +that, except their Consuls, they had no officials who combined civil +and military functions. Under the jurisdiction of the Consuls Roman law +was everywhere substituted for Lombard statutes, and another strong blow +was thus dealt against decaying feudalism. The school of Bologna +eclipsed the university of Pavia. Justinian's Code was studied with +passionate energy, and the Italic people enthusiastically reverted to +the institutions of their past. In the fable of the Codex of the +_Pandects_ brought by Pisa from Amalfi we can trace the fervor of this +movement, whereby the Romans of the cities struggled after resurrection. + +One of the earliest manifestations of municipal vitality was the war of +city against city, which began to blaze with fury in the first half of +the twelfth century, and endured so long as free towns lasted to +perpetuate the conflict. No sooner had the burghs established themselves +beneath the presidency of their Consuls than they turned the arms they +had acquired in the war of independence, against their neighbors. The +phenomenon was not confined to any single district. It revealed a new +necessity in the very constitution of the commonwealths. Penned up +within the narrow limits of their petty dependencies, throbbing with +fresh life, overflowing with a populace inured to warfare, demanding +channels for their energies in commerce, competing with each other on +the paths of industry, they clashed in deadliest duels for breathing +space and means of wealth. The occasions that provoked one Commune to +declare war upon its rival were trivial. The animosity was internecine +and persistent. Life or death hung in the balance. It was a conflict for +ascendency that brought the sternest passions into play, and decided the +survival of the fittest among hundreds of competing cities. The deeply +rooted jealousies of Roman and feudal centers, the recent partisanship +of Papal and Imperial principles, imbittered this strife. But what lay +beneath all superficial causes of dissension was the economic struggle +of communities, for whom the soil of Italy already had begun to seem too +narrow. So superabundant were the forces of her population, so vast were +the energies emancipated by her attainment of municipal freedom, that +this mighty mother of peoples could not afford equal sustenance to all +her children. New-born, they had to strangle one another as they hung +upon the breast that gave them nourishment. It was impossible for the +Emperor to overlook the apparent anarchy of his fairest province. +Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his first +thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire to order. Soon after his +election he descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues among the +cities of the North, the one headed by Pavia, the center of the +abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome +and contained within her loins the future of Italian freedom. It is not +necessary to follow in detail the conflict of the Lombard burghs with +Frederick, so enthusiastically described by their historian, Sismondi, +It is enough for our present purpose to remember that in the course of +that contention both leagues made common cause against the Emperor, drew +the Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 1183, after +the victory of Legnano had convinced Frederick of his weakness, extorted +by the Peace of Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was amply +guaranteed and recognized. The advantages won by Milan who sustained the +brunt of the imperial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyrdom +surmounted the petty jealousies of her municipal rivals, were extended +to the cities of Tuscany. After the date of that compact signed by the +Emperor and his insurgent subjects, the burghs obtained an assured +position as a third power between the Empire and the Church. The most +remarkable point in the history of this contention is the unanimous +submission of the Communes to what they regarded as the just suzerainty +of Caesar's representative. Though they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they +took no measures for closing the gates of the Alps against the Germans. +The Emperor was free to come and go as he listed; and when peace was +signed, he reckoned the burghers who had beaten him by arms and policy, +among his loyal vassals. Still the spirit of independence in Italy had +been amply asserted. This is notably displayed in the address presented +to Frederick, before his coronation, by the senate of Rome. Regenerated +by Arnold of Brescia's revolutionary mission, the Roman people assumed +its antique majesty in these remarkable words: 'Thou wast a stranger; I +have made thee citizen; thou camest from regions from beyond the Alps; I +have conferred on thee the principality.'[1] Presumptuous boast as this +sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved that the Italic nation had +now sharply defined itself against the Church and the barbarians. It +still accepted the Empire because the Empire was the glory of Italy, the +crown that gave to her people the presidency of civilization. It still +recognized the authority of the Church because the Church was the eldest +daughter of Italy emergent from the wrecks of Roman society. But the +nation had become conscious of its right to stand apart from either. + + [1]: 'Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex transalpinis + partibus, principem constitui. Quod meum jure fuit, tibi dedi.' See + _Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronicon_, De Rebus Gestis Frid. i. + Imp. Lib. ii. cap. 21. Basileae, 1569. The Legates appointed by the + Senate met the Emperor at Sutri, and delivered the oration of which + the sentence just quoted was part. It began: 'Urbis legati nos, rex + optime, ad tuam a Senatu, populoque Romano destinati sumus + excellentiam,' and contained this remarkable passage: 'Orbis + imperium affectas, coronam praebitura gratanter assurgo, jocanter + occurro ... indebitum clericorum excussurus jugum.' If the words are + faithfully reported, the Republic separates itself abruptly from the + Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in honor before the Empire. + Frederick is said to have interrupted the Legates in a rage before + they could finish their address, and to have replied with angry + contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a rhetorical + composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. 'Multa de + Romanorum sapientia seu fortitudine hactenus audivimus, magis tamen + de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba vestra + plus arrogantiae tumore insipida quam sale sapientiae condita + sentimus.... Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quondam + dico, atque o utinam tam veracitur quam libenter nunc dicere + possemus,' etc. + +Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Barbarossa, recognized in +their rights as belligerent powers, and left to their own guidance by +the Empire, the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon the +remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learned to know it, was +surrounded by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held still +undisputed authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cordon of +fortresses every city with singular unanimity directed the forces it had +formed in the preceding conflicts. At the same time the municipal +struggles of Commune against Commune lost none of their virulence. The +Counts, pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up around them, +adopted the policy of pitting one burgh against another. When a noble +was attacked by the township near his castle, he espoused the +animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by +accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his +natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In +his desperation he emancipated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado +profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This +new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined +period, assuming different characters in different centers; but the end +of it was that the nobles were forced to submit to the cities. They were +admitted to the burghership, and agreed to spend a certain portion of +every year in the palaces they raised within the circuit of the walls. +Thus the Counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the +Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself the relics of +Lombard, Frank, and German aristocracy. Still the gain upon the side of +the republics was not clear. Though the feudal lordship of the nobles +had been destroyed, their wealth, their lands, and their prestige +remained untouched. In the city they felt themselves but aliens. Their +real home was still the castle on the neighboring mountain. Nor, when +they stooped to become burghers, had they relinquished the use of arms. +Instead of building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they filled +its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence they carried on feuds +among themselves and imperiled the safety of the streets. It was +speedily discovered that the war against the Castles had become a war +against the Palaces, and that the arena had been transferred from the +open Contado to the Piazza and the barricade. The authority of the +consuls proved insufficient to maintain an equilibrium between the +people and the nobles. Accordingly a new magistrate started into being, +combining the offices of supreme justiciary and military dictator. When +Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard cities +in the common interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a +foreign judge, called Podesta _quasi habens potestatem Imperatoris in +hac parte_. This institution only served at the moment to inflame and +imbitter the resistance of the Communes: but the title of Podesta was +subsequently conferred upon the official summoned to maintain an equal +balance between the burghers and the nobles. He was invariably a +foreigner, elected for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in +all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life and death, and +disposing of the municipal militia. The old constitution of the Commune +remained to control this dictator and to guard the independence of the +city. All the Councils continued to act, and the Consuls were fortified +by the formation of a College of Ancients or Priors. The Podesta was +created with the express purpose of effecting a synthesis between two +rival sections of the burgh. He was never regarded as other than an +alien to the city, adopted as a temporary mediator and controller of +incompatible elements. The lordship of the burgh still resided with the +Consuls, who from this time forward began to lose their individuality in +the College of the _Signoria_--called _Priori_, _Anziani_, or _Rettori_, +as the case might be in various districts. + +The Italian republics had reached this stage when Frederick II. united +the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the +utmost moment for Italian independence. Master of the South, Frederick +sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and +Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting +Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The +warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of +Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom. +They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy +and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the +cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was +devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da +Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the +parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable +force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed +by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, +the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the +friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the +naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of +feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with +disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while +the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a +matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war +lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to +possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted +principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the +precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety +of the whole people. A city does not pronounce itself either Guelf or +Ghibelline till half the burghers have been exiled. The victorious +party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself +in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at +home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and +confiscations.[1] The exiles make common cause with members of their own +faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and +Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a +common dualism. In this way we are justified in saying that Italy +achieved her national consciousness through strife and conflict; for the +Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues, or +engaged in merely local conflicts. They were brought together and +connected by the sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which +embraced and dominated the municipalities, set Republics and Regno on +equal footing, and merged the titular leaders of the struggle, Pope and +Emperor, in the uncontrollable tumult. The issue was no vulgar one; no +merely egotistic interests were at stake. Guelfs and Ghibellines alike +interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for +the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse +senses. The Ghibelline heard Italy calling upon him to build a citadel +that should be guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where the +hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais of the Empire, might +dispense culture and civil order in due measure to the people. The Guelf +believed that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds within the +burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, who stood for Christ, the +preacher of equality and peace for all mankind, in order that the +beehive of industry should in course of time evolve a civil order and a +culture representative of its own freely acting forces. + + [1] It is enough to refer to the importance of the _Parte Guelfa_ in + the history of Florence. + +During the stress and storm of the fierce warfare carried on by Guelfs +and Ghibellines, the Podesta fell into the second rank. He had been +created to meet an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement for +arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the title of _Captain of +the People_. Chosen when one or other of the factions gains supreme +power in the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes the lead +in proscribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the +changes introduced into the constitution. The old magistracies and +councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with +the Capitano at its head, takes the lead; and a new member, called the +Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain the +policy of the victorious faction. But the Consiglio del Comune, with the +Podesta, who has not ceased to exercise judicial functions, still +subsists. The Priors form the signory as of old. The Credenza goes on +working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body of privileged +burghers. The party does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, +and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this +clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower classes +of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular +revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now assert +their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the _Arti_ is the chief +social phenomenon of the crisis.[1] Thus the final issue of the conflict +was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood, +because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse +currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in +antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial +and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the +old nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of +earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the +port asserted themselves against the mountain fastness and the +barrackburgh. The several classes of society, triturated, shaken +together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but +few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however +humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism +disappeared; but the constitution of the city itself was confused, and +the Popolo, whether 'primo' or 'secondo or even 'terzo,' was diluted +with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'[2] +The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and +Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante +finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood +aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in +Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never +felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the +skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even +so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other +hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating +from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased +to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed +themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic +colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the +feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines +cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some +Calabrians were murdered by their host, who discovered from their way of +slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. Ghibellines drank +out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore +white, and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing +dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for +distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the +middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ +from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he +turned his face to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city has a tale of +love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into +the region of romance and legend. Florence dated her calamities from the +insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a +broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi +stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. The story +of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into +play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the +ineffectual efforts of the Podesta to curb the violence of party +warfare. + + [1] The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that of + any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in + politics at this epoch of the civil wars. + + [2] This is the sting of Cacciaguida's scornful lamentation over + Florence Par. xvi. + + Ma la cittadinanza, ch' e or mista + Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine, + Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista. + + Tal fatto e fiorentino, e cambia e merca, + Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti, + La dove andava l' avolo alia cerca. + + Sempre la confusione delle persone + Principio fu del mal della cittade, + Come del corpo il cibo che s' appone. + +So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter the exhaustion, that the +distracted Communes were fain at last to find some peace in tyranny. At +the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the +Popes called Charles of Anjou into Italy. The final issue of that policy +for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this +work. It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da Romano +introduced despotism in its worst form as a party leader of the +Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf +interest. He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the +Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him +as the price of his dictatorship. The republics almost simultaneously +entered upon a new phase. Democratized by the extension of the +franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli's phrase, in their old +organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of +tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of +the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle class for +the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.[1] Placing himself above +the law, manipulating the machinery of the State for his own ends, +substituting the will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile +passions in the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquillity +upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy of the people was conferred +upon him.[2] The Councils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The +aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. Under his rule +commerce flourished; the towns were adorned with splendid edifices; +foreign wars were carried on for the aggrandizement of the State without +regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked the first emergence +of personality supreme within the State, resuming its old forces in an +autocratic will, superseding and at the same time consciously +controlling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses of previous +revolutions. His advent was welcomed as a blessing by the recently +developed people of the cities he reduced to peace. But the great +families and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, as a +reptile spawned by the corruption and disease of the decaying body +politic. In their fury they addressed themselves to the two chiefs of +Christendom. Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a +second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the titles of Marquis of +Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce +Italy to order on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes +invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless march of Henry VII. +Neither Pope nor Emperor was strong enough to control the currents of +the factions which were surely whirling Italy into the abyss of +despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sciarra Colonna, the terrible +Ghibelline's outrage at Anagni, and the Papal Court was transferred to +Avignon in 1316. Henry VII. expired, of poison probably, at +Buonconvento, in 1313. The parties tore each other to fragments. Tyrants +were murdered. Whole families were extirpated. Yet these convulsions +bore no fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was in +despotism--the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as at Florence, or the +despotism of new tyrants in Lombardy and the Romagna.[3] + + [1] Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which took + the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth + century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da + Faggiuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke + of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from + Uguccione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the + Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the basement of Ghibellinism; + while the rebellion of 1343 averted tyranny from Florence for + another century. + + [2] Machiavelli's _Vita di Castruccio Castracane_, though it is + rather a historical romance than a trustworthy biography, + illustrates the gradual advances made by a bold and ambitious leader + from the Captaincy of the people, conferred upon him for one year, + to the tyranny of his city. + + [3] The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of + Italian tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history + of the civil wars: + + Che le terre d' Italia tutte piene + Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa + Ogni villan che parteggiando viene. + + Those lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy (_Purg._ vi.) where + Dante refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme + authority in Europe. + +Meanwhile the perils to which the tyrants were exposed taught them to +employ cruelty and craft in combination. From the confused and spasmodic +efforts of the thirteenth century, when Captains of the people and +leaders of the party seized a momentary gust of power, there arose a +second sort of despotism, more cautious in its policy, more methodic in +its use of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing the Italian +cities and preparing the great age of the Renaissance. It would be +sentimental to utter lamentations over this change, and unphilosophical +to deplore the diminution of republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The +divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no +other solution of the political problem. All branches of the municipal +administration, strained to the cracking-point by the tension of party +conflict, were now isolated from the organism, abnormally developed, +requiring the combining effort of a single thinker to reunite their +scattered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. The indirect +restraints which a calmer period of municipal vitality had placed upon +tyrannic ambition, were removed by the leveling of classes and the +presentation of an equal surface to the builder of the palace-dome of +monarchy. Moreover, it must be remembered that what the Italians then +understood by freedom was municipal autonomy controlled by ruling houses +in the interest of the few. These considerations need not check our +sympathy with Florence in the warfare she carried on against the +Milanese tyrants. But they should lead us to be cautious in adopting the +conclusions of Sismondi, who saw Italian greatness only in her free +cities. The obliteration of the parties beneath despotism was needed, +under actual conditions, for that development of arts and industry which +raised Italy to a first place among civilized nations. Of the manners of +the Despots, and of the demoralization they encouraged in the cities of +their rule, enough will be said in the succeeding chapters, which set +forth the social conditions of the Renaissance in Italy. But attention +should here be called to the general character of despotic authority, +and to the influence the Despots exercised for the pacification of the +country. We are not justified by facts in assuming that had the free +burghs continued independent, arts and literature would have risen to a +greater height. Venice, in spite of an uninterrupted republican career, +produced no commanding men of letters, and owed much of her splendor in +the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castelfranco, and Verona. +Genoa remained silent and irresponsive to the artistic movement of Italy +until the last days of the republic, when her independence was but a +shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, +while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune. +Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of +Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature. The +art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families. +The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin to Lodovico Sforza, +and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more +than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Next to +Florence, the most brilliant centers of literary activity during the +bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples. +Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its +first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome +remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary +evolution. Thus the facts of the case seem to show that culture and +republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some +historians would seek to make us believe. On the other hand it is +impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were +necessary to the perfecting of art and literature. All that can be +safely advanced upon this subject, is that the pacification of Italy was +demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to +pass through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the +oligarchies of Venice and Florence. It might further be urged that the +Despots were in close sympathy with the masses of the people, shared +their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry. When the classical +revival took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined +this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all +encouragement. To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, +the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an +impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the +development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting +is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes +her magnificence to the despotic Popes. Even the pottery of Gubbio was a +creation of the ducal house of Urbino. + +After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning of the Papal exile at +Avignon, the Guelf party became the rallying-point of municipal +independence, with its headquarters in Florence. Ghibellinism united +the princes in an opposite camp. 'The Guelf party,' writes Giovanni +Villani, 'forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and +is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he +must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline.' Milan, first to +assert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of +despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the +long struggle between Florence and the Visconti. The chronicle of the +Villani and the Florentine history of Poggio contain the record of this +strife, which seemed to them the all-important crisis of Italian +affairs. In the Milanese annals of Galvano Fiamma and Mussi, on the +other hand, the advantages of a despotic sovereignty in giving national +coherence, the crimes of the Papacy, which promoted anarchy in its +ill-governed States, and the prospect of a comprehensive Italian tyranny +under the great house of the Visconti, are eloquently pleaded. The terms +of the main issue being thus clearly defined, we may regard the warfare +carried on by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the interests of +Church and Empire, the splendid campaigns of Egidio d'Albornoz, and the +delirious cruelty of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory +excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main profits of those +convulsions, which drowned Italy in blood during nearly all the +fourteenth century, accrued to the Despots, who held their ground in +spite of all attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses, notably +the Visconti, acquired strength by revolutions in which the Church and +Empire neutralized each other's action. The lesser families struck firm +roots into cities, infuriated rather than intimidated by such acts of +violence as the massacres of Faenza and Cesena in 1377. The relations of +the imperial and pontifical parties were confused; while even in the +center of republican independence, at Florence, social changes, +determined in great measure by the exhaustion of the city in its +conflict, prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny. Neither the Church +nor the Empire gained steady footing in Italy, while the prestige of +both was ruined.[1] Municipal freedom, instead of being enlarged, was +extinguished by the ambition of the Florentine oligarchs, who, while +they spent the last florin of the Commune in opposing the Visconti, +never missed an opportunity of enslaving the sister burghs of Tuscany. +In a word, the destiny of the nation was irresistibly impelling it +toward despotism. + + [1] Machiavelli, in his _Istorie Fiorentine_ (Firenze, 1818, vol. i. + pp. 47, 48), points out how the competition of the Church and + Empire, during the Papacies of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. and the + reign of Louis strengthened the tyrants of Lombardy, Romagna, and + the March. Each of the two contending powers gave away what did not + belong to them, bidding against each other for any support they + might obtain from the masters of the towns. + +In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the +clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must +remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted +burghs, the heroes of the middle classes and the multitude, the quellers +of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers +of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the +praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo +in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:[1] +'He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and +daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue, +was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and +justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which +removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew +in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through +love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his +mantle.' These verses set forth the qualities which united the mass of +the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial +classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of +personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon +the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud +than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers, +brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered +local vanity by continuing the municipal machinery in its functions of +parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their +pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the +burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from +attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the +gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy +height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where +a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the +man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on +his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it +by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political +necessities, an equilibrium of forces, substituted without legal title +for the Church and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic +individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of +consuls, Podestas, and Captains of the people. The chief danger he had +to fear was conspiracy; and in providing himself against this peril he +expended all the resources suggested by refined ingenuity and heightened +terror. Yet, when the Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of +necessity that the successful conspirator became in turn a tyrant. +'Cities,' wrote Machiavelli,[2] 'that are once corrupt and accustomed to +the rule of princes, can never acquire freedom, even though the prince +with all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish +another; and the city has no rest except by the creation of a new lord, +unless it chance that one burgher by his goodness and great qualities +may during his lifetime preserve its temporary independence.' Palace +intrigues, therefore, took the place of Piazza revolutions, and +dynasties were swept away to make room for new tyrants without material +change in the condition of the populace. + + [1] _Mur. Scr. R. It._ xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote about + Azzo Visconti: 'He conciliated the people to him by equal justice + without distinction of Guelf or Ghibelline.' + + [2] _Discorsi_. i. 17. + +It was the universal policy of the Despots to disarm their subjects. +Prompted by considerations of personal safety, and demanded by the +necessity of extirpating the factions, this measure was highly popular. +It relieved the burghers of that most burdensome of all public duties, +military service. A tax on silver and salt was substituted in the +Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs, +actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country. The +effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions +all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of +Italian powers. The principalities were transformed into great banks, +where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and +calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire +by bargain. At first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, buying +up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when +it had been accomplished. But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to +the sense of their own power, and placed themselves beneath captains who +secured them a certainty of pay with continuity of profitable service. +Thus the Condottieri came into existence, and Italy beheld the spectacle +of moving despotisms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect establishment +upon the weakest, worst-defended points of the peninsula. They proved a +grave cause of disquietude alike to the tyrants and the republics; and +until the settlement of Francesco Sforza in the Duchy of Milan, when the +employers of auxiliaries had come to understand the arts of dealing with +them by perfidy, secret assassination, and a system of elaborate +counter-checks, the equilibrium of power in Italy was seriously +threatened. The country suffered at first from marauding excursions +conducted by piratical leaders of adventurous troops, by Werner of +Urslingen, the Conte Lando, and Fra Moriale; afterwards from the +discords of Braccio da Montone and Sforza Attendolo, incessantly +plotting to carve duchies for themselves from provinces they had been +summoned by a master to subdue. At this period gold ruled the destinies +of Italy. The Despots, relying solely on their exchequer for their +power, were driven to extortion. Cities became bankrupt, pledged their +revenues, or sold themselves to the highest bidder.[1] Indescribable +misery oppressed the poorer classes and the peasants. A series of +obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a +vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become +unbearable. The lower classes of the burghers rose against the 'popolani +grassi,' and a new class of princes emerged at the close of the crisis. +Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on +Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia and the Petrucci on Siena. + + [1] Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country + population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, + upon her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for + 1,500. Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388. + +The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth +century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and +the financial distress which ensued upon the substitution of mercenary +for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, +and marked a new period in the history of despotism. From the date of +Francesco Sforza's entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes +became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious. Having +begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms +themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person +and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and +substituting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare. Gold +still ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery. To the ambitious +military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti succeeded the commercial +cynicism of Cosimo de' Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute +demoralization.[1] The spirit of the age was materialistic and positive. +The Despots held their state by treachery, craft, and corruption. The +element of force being virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained +undivided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli was realized +with more or less completeness in all parts of the peninsula. At this +moment and by these means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of +peace beneath the confederation of her great powers. Nicholas V. had +restored the Papal court to Rome in 1447; where he assumed the manners +of despotism and counted as one among the Italian Signori. Lombardy +remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco Sforza, and Tuscany under +that of the Casa Medici. The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of +Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of enlightened +despotism, while Venice, who had so long formed a state apart, by her +recent acquisition of a domain on terra firma, entered the community of +Italian politics. Thus the country had finally resolved itself into five +grand constituent elements--the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, +Florence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples--all of them, though widely +differing in previous history and constitutional peculiarities, now +animated by a common spirit.[2] Politically they tended to despotism; +for though Venice continued to be a republic, the government of the +Venetian oligarchy was but despotism put into commission. +Intellectually, the same enthusiasm for classical studies, the same +artistic energy, and the same impulse to revive Italian literature +brought the several centers of the nation into keener sympathy than they +had felt before. A network of diplomacy embraced the cities; and round +the leaders of the confederation were grouped inferior burghs, +republican or tyrannical as the case might be, like satellites around +the luminaries of a solar system. When Constantinople was taken by the +Turks in 1453, Italy felt the need of suppressing her old jealousies, +and Nicholas V. induced the four great powers to sign with him a treaty +of peace and amity. The political tact and sagacity of Lorenzo de' +Medici enabled him to develop and substantiate the principle of balance +then introduced into Italian politics; nor was there any apparent reason +why the equilibrium so hardly won, so skillfully maintained, should not +have subsisted but for Lodovico Sforza's invitation to the French in +1494. Up to that date the more recent wars of Italy had been principally +caused by the encroachments of Venice and the nepotism of successive +Popes. They raised no new enthusiasm hostile to the interests of peace. +The Empire was eliminated and forgotten as an obsolete antiquity. Italy +seemed at last determined to manage her own affairs by mutual agreement +between the five great powers. + + [1] I have attempted to analyze Cosimo's method in the article on + 'Florence and the Medici,' _Studies and Sketches in Italy_. + + [2] This centralization of Italy in five great powers was not + obtained without the depression or total extinction of smaller + cities. Ferrari counts seventeen towns, who died, to use his + forcible expression, at the close of the civil wars. _Storia delle + Rivoluzioni d' Italia_, iii. 239. + +Still the ground beneath this specious fabric of diplomacy rung hollow. +The tyrannies represented a transient political necessity. They were not +the product of progressive social growth, satisfying and regulating +organic functions of the nation. Far from being the final outcome of a +slow, deliberate accretion in the states they had absorbed, we see in +them the climax of conflicting humors, the splendid cancers and +imposthumes of a desperate disease. That solid basis of national +morality which grounds the monarch firm upon the sympathies and +interests of the people whom he seems to lead, but whom he in reality +expresses, failed them. Therefore each individual despot trembled for +his throne, while Italy, as in the ominous picture drawn by her +historian, felt that all the elements were combining to devour her with +a coming storm. The land of earthquakes divined a cataclysm, to cope +with which she was unable. An apparently insignificant event determined +the catastrophe. The Sforza appealed to France, and after the disastrous +descent of Charles VIII. the whole tide of events turned. Instead of +internal self-government by any system of balance, Italy submitted to a +succession of invasions terminating in foreign tyranny. + +The problem why the Italians failed to achieve the unity of a coherent +nation has been implicitly discussed in the foregoing pages upon the +history of the Communes and the development of despotism. We have +already seen that their conception of municipal independence made a +narrow oligarchy of enfranchised burghers lords of the city, which in +its turn oppressed the country and the subject burghs of its domain. +Every conquest by a republic reduced some village or center of civil +life to the condition of serfdom. The voices of the inhabitants were no +longer heard debating questions that affected their interests. They +submitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised few in the +ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guicciardini pointed out in his +'Considerations on the Discourses of Machiavelli,' the subjection of +Italy by a dominant republic would have meant the extinction of +numberless political communities and the sway of a close oligarchy from +the Alps to the Ionian Sea.[1] The 3,200 burghers who constituted +Florence in 1494, or the nobles of the Golden Book at Venice, would by +such unification of the country under a victorious republic have become +sovereigns, administering the resources of the nation for their profit. +The dread of this catastrophe rendered Venice odious to her sister +commonwealths at the close of the fifteenth century, and justified, +according to Guicciardini's views of history, the action taken by Cosimo +de' Medici in 1450, when he rendered Milan strong by supporting her +despot, Francesco Sforza.[2] In a word republican freedom, as the term +is now understood, was unknown in Italy. Municipal autonomy, implying +the right of the municipality to rule its conquests for its own +particular profit, was the dominant idea. To have advanced from this +stage of thought to the highly developed conception of a national +republic, centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time giving +free play to its local energies, would have been impossible. This kind +of republican unity implies a previous unification of the people in some +other form of government. It furthermore demands a system of +representation extended to all sections of the nation. Their very +nature, therefore, prevented the republican institutions won by the +Italians in the early Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence +in a national republic. + + [1] _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 28. + + [2] _Ib._ vol. iii. p. 8. + +It may with more reason be asked in the next place why Italy did not +become a monarchy, and again why she never produced a confederation, +uniting the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were combined for mutual +support and self-defense. When we attack the first of these two +questions, our immediate answer must be that the Italians had a rooted +disinclination for monarchical union.[1] Their most strenuous efforts +were directed against it when it seemed to threaten them. It may be +remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to +secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome +they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy +of municipalities governed and directed by the mistress of the globe. +When Rome passed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy, +though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that +joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that +the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in +their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no +fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name +of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them. +Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for +their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was +there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local +independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It +was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that +unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized +armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard +was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection +to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman +culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much +to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem +of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that +of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct +of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a +monarchical state were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of +the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastical Rome. We +have seen how the Goths erred by submitting-to the Empire and merging +their authority in a declining organization. We have seen again how the +Lombards erred by adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling +themselves in the policy of Papal Rome. Both Goths and Lombards +committed the mistake of sparing the Eternal City; or it may be more +accurate to say that neither of them were strong enough to lay hands of +violence upon the sacred and mysterious metropolis and hold it as their +seat of monarchy against the world. So long as Rome remained +independent, neither Ravenna nor Pavia could head a kingdom in the +peninsula. Meanwhile Rome lent her prestige to the advancement of a +spiritual power which, subject to no dynastic weakness, with the +persistent force of an idea that cannot die, was bent on subjugating +Europe. The Papacy needed Italy as the basis of its operations, and +could not brook a rival that might reduce the See of S. Peter to the +level of an ordinary bishopric. Rome therefore, generation after +generation, upheld the so-called liberties of Italy against all comers; +and when she summoned the Franks, it was to break the growing power of +the Lombard monarchs. The pact between the Popes and Charles the Great, +however we may interpret its meaning, still further removed the +possibility of a kingdom by dividing Italy into two sections with +separate allegiances; and since the sway of neither Pope nor Emperor, +the one unarmed, the other absent, was stringent enough to check the +growth of independent cities, a third and all-important factor was added +to the previous checks upon national unity. + + [1] Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ i. 29) remarks: 'O sia per qualche + fato d' Italia, o per la complessione degli uomini temperata in modo + che hanno ingegno e forze, non e mai questa provincia stata facile a + ridursi sotto uno imperio.' He speaks again of her disunion as + 'quello modo di vivere che e piu secondo la antiquissima + consuetudine e inclinazione sua.' But Guicciardini, with that defect + of vision which rendered him incapable of appreciating the whole + situation while he analyzed its details so profoundly, was reckoning + without the great nations of Europe. See above, pp. 40, 41. + +After 1200 the problem changes its aspect. We have now to ask ourselves +why, when the struggle with the Empire was over, when Frederick +Barbarossa had been defeated at Legnano, when the Lombard and the Tuscan +Leagues were in full vigor before the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had +confused the mainsprings of political activity, and while the national +militia was still energetic, the Communes did not advance from the +conception of local and municipal independence to that of national +freedom in a confederacy similar to the Swiss Bund. The Italians, it may +be suggested, saw no immediate necessity for a confederation that would +have limited the absolute autonomy of their several parcels. Only the +light cast by subsequent events upon their early history makes us +perceive that they missed an unique opportunity at this moment. What +they then desired was freedom for expansion each after his own political +type, freedom for the development of industry and commerce, freedom for +the social organization of the city beloved by its burghers above the +nation as a whole. Special difficulties, moreover, lay in the way of +confederation. The Communes were not districts, like the Swiss Cantons, +but towns at war with the Contado round them and at war among +themselves. Mutually jealous and mistrustful, with a country population +that but partially obeyed their rule, these centers of Italian freedom +were in a very different position from the peasant communities of +Schwytz, Uri, Untenvalden. Italy, moreover, could not have been +federally united without the consent of Naples and the Church. The +kingdom of the Two Sicilies, rendered definitely monarchical by the +Norman Conquest, offered a serious obstacle; and though the Regno might +have been defied and absorbed by a vigorous concerted movement from the +North and center, there still remained the opposition of the Papacy. It +had been the recent policy of the Popes to support the free burghs in +their war with Frederick. But they did this only because they could not +tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power; and the very +reasons which had made them side with the cities in the wars of +liberation would have roused their hostility against a federative union. +To have encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which they would +have found the Church unarmed and on a level with the puissant towns of +Lombardy and Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. Such a +coalition, if attempted, could not but have been opposed with all their +might; for the whole history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right +when he asserted that the Church had persistently maintained the nation +in disunion for the furtherance of her own selfish ends. We have +furthermore to add the prestige which the Empire preserved for the +Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized, human society whereof +the representative of Caesar should not be the God-appointed head. Though +the material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it still existed as +a dominant idea. Italy was still the Garden of the Empire no less than +the Throne of Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what they +regarded as their reasonable rights and privileges from Frederick, they +laid down their arms, and were content to flourish beneath the imperial +shadow. To raise up a political association as a bulwark against the +Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of this defense to become an +independent and united nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of +scattered townships, would have seemed to their minds little short of +sacrilege. Up to this point the Church and the Empire had been, +theoretically at least, concordant. They were the sun and moon of a +sacred social system which ruled Europe with light and might. But the +Wars of Investiture placed them in antagonism, and the result of that +quarrel was still further to divide the Italians, still further to +remove the hope of national unity into the region of things +unattainable. The great parties accentuated communal jealousies and gave +external form and substance to the struggles of town with town. So far +distant was the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that every +city strove within itself to establish one of two contradictory +principles, and the energies of the people were expended in a struggle +that set neighbor against neighbor on the field of war and in the +market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralization engendered +by these conflicts determined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 +Italy could only have been united under a tyrant's iron rule. At such an +universal despotism Gian Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague +cut short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest stakes for it. +Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. Machiavelli, at the end of the +_Principe_, when the tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked +it. But even for this last chance of unification it was now too late. +The great nations of Europe were in movement, and the destinies of Italy +depended upon France and Spain. When Charles V. remained victor in the +struggle of the sixteenth century, he stereotyped and petrified the +divisions of Italy in the interest of his own dynastic policy. The only +Italian power that remained unchangeable throughout all changes was the +Papacy--the first to emerge into prominence after the decay of the old +Western Empire, the last to suffer diminution in spite of vicissitudes, +humiliations, schisms, and internal transformation. As the Papacy had +created and maintained a divided Italy, as it had opposed itself to +every successive prospect of unification, so it survived the extinction +of Italian independence, and lent its aid to that imperial tyranny +whereby the disunion of the nation was confirmed and prolongated till +the present century. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. + + +Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in +Italy--Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church--The +Illegitimate Title of Italian Potentates--The Free Emergence of +Personality--Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example--Ezzelino +da Romano--Six Sorts of Italian Despots--Feudal Seigneurs--Vicars of the +Empire--Captains of the People--Condottieri--Nephews and Sons of +Popes--Eminent Burghers--Italian Incapacity for Self-Government in +Commonwealths--Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability--The +Condition of the Despot's Life--Instances of Domestic Crime in the +Ruling Houses--Macaulay's Description of the Italian Tyrant-- +Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Description of a Tyrant--The +Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth +Century--History of the Visconti--Francesco Sforza--The Part played in +Italian Politics by Military Leaders--Mercenary Warfare--Alberico da +Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo--History of the Sforza +Dynasty--The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza--The Ethics of Tyrannicide +in Italy--Relation of the Despots to Arts and Letters--Sigismondo +Pandolfo Malatesta--Duke Federigo of Urbino--The School of Vittorino +and the Court of Urbino--The Cortegiano of Castiglione--The Ideals of +the Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman--General Retrospect. + + +The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be called the Age of the +Despots in Italian history, as the twelfth and thirteenth are the Age of +the Free Burghs, and as the sixteenth and seventeenth are the Age of +Foreign Enslavement. It was during the age of the Despots that the +conditions of the Renaissance were evolved, and that the Renaissance +itself assumed a definite character in Italy. Under tyrannies, in the +midst of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar individuality of +the Italians obtained its ultimate development. This individuality, as +remarkable for salient genius and diffused talent as for self-conscious +and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the Renaissance and +affected by example the whole of Europe. Italy led the way in the +education of the Western races, and was the first to realize the type of +modern as distinguished from classical and mediaeval life. + +During this age of the despots, Italy presents the spectacle of a nation +devoid of central government and comparatively uninfluenced by +feudalism. The right of the Emperor had become nominal, and served as a +pretext for usurpers rather than as a source of order. The visits, for +instance, of Charles IV. and Frederick III. were either begging +expeditions or holiday excursions, in the course of which ambitious +adventurers bought titles to the government of towns, and meaningless +honors were showered upon vain courtiers. It was not till the reign of +Maximilian that Germany adopted a more serious policy with regard to +Italy, which by that time had become the central point of European +intrigue. Charles V. afterwards used force to reassert imperial rights +over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the +Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same +time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of +the Empire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized +except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the +House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant the investiture +of the kingdom of Naples to foreigners, the Popes not only struck a +death-blow at imperial influence, but also prepared the way for their +own exile to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second great +authority to which Italy had been accustomed to look for the maintenance +of some sort of national coherence. Moreover, the Church, though +impotent to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power enough to +prevent the formation either by Milan or Venice or Naples of a +substantial kingdom. The result was a perpetually recurring process of +composition, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, of +the scattered elements of Italian life. The Guelf and Ghibelline +parties, inherited from the wars of the thirteenth century, survived the +political interests which had given them birth, and proved an +insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real +significance, to the pacification of the country.[1] The only important +state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however +disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. +The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Of these, +Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was +overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was +destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of +despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the +Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was +illegitimate--based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in +no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or +extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns. + + [1] So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming + (_Orlandino_, ii. 59)-- + + Che se non fusser le gran parti in quella, + Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella. + +If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we find abundant +proofs of their despotic nature. The succession from father to son was +always uncertain. Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last La +Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in Naples descended from a +bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half-brothers the heritage +of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of +more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of +Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the +same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli +at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to +an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the +wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons +of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was +less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power +once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling +families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed +were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully +established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a +quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or +wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile +the people at large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and +intelligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life peculiar to +political and social centers in a condition of continued rivalry and +change. + +Under the Italian despotisms we observe nearly the opposite of all the +influences brought to bear in the same period upon the nations of the +North. There is no gradual absorption of the great vassals in +monarchies, no fixed allegiance to a reigning dynasty, no feudal aid or +military service attached to the tenure of the land, no tendency to +centralize the whole intellectual activity of the race in any capital, +no suppression of individual character by strongly biased public +feeling, by immutable law, or by the superincumbent weight of a social +hierarchy. Everything, on the contrary, tends to the free emergence of +personal passions and personal aims. Though the vassals of the despot +are neither his soldiers nor his loyal lieges, but his courtiers and +taxpayers, the continual object of his cruelty and fear, yet each +subject has the chance of becoming a prince like Sforza or a companion +of princes like Petrarch. Equality of servitude goes far to democratize +a nation, and common hatred of the tyrant leads to the combination of +all classes against him. Thence follows the fermentation of arrogant and +self-reliant passions in the breasts of the lowest as well as the +highest.[1] The rapid mutations of government teach men to care for +themselves and to depend upon themselves alone in the battle of the +world; while the necessity of craft and policy in the conduct of +complicated affairs sharpens intelligence. The sanction of all means +that may secure an end under conditions of social violence encourages +versatility unprejudiced by moral considerations. At the same time the +freely indulged vices of the sovereign are an example of self-indulgence +to the subject, and his need of lawless instruments is a practical +sanction of force in all its forms. Thus to the play of personality, +whether in combat with society and rivals, or in the gratification of +individual caprice, every liberty is allowed. Might is substituted for +right, and the sense of law is supplanted by a mere dread of coercion. +What is the wonder if a Benvenuto Cellini should be the outcome of the +same society as that which formed a Cesare Borgia? What is the miracle +if Italy under these circumstances produced original characters and +many-sided intellects in greater profusion than any other nation at any +other period, with the single exception of Greece on her emergence from +the age of her despots? It was the misfortune of Italy that the age of +the despots was succeeded not by an age of free political existence, but +by one of foreign servitude. + + [1] See Guicciardini, 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' _Op. + Ined._ vol. ii. p. 53, for a critique of the motives of tyrannicide + in Italy. + +Frederick II. was at the same time the last emperor who maintained +imperial sway in Italy in person, and also the beginner of a new system +of government which the despots afterwards pursued. His establishment of +the Saracen colony at Nocera, as the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill +his orders with scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and customs, +taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects to a state of unarmed +passivity, and to carry on their wars by the aid of German, English, +Swiss, Gascon, Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might be. +Frederick, again, derived from his Mussulman predecessors in Sicily the +arts of taxation to the utmost limits of the national capacity, and +founded a precedent for the levying of tolls by a Catasto or schedule of +the properties attributed to each individual in the state. He also +destroyed the self-government of burghs and districts, by retaining for +himself the right to nominate officers, and by establishing a system of +judicial jurisdiction which derived authority from the throne. Again, he +introduced the example of a prince making profit out of the industries +of his subjects by monopolies and protective duties. In this path he was +followed by illustrious successors--especially by Sixtus IV. and Alfonso +II. of Aragon, who enriched themselves by trafficking in the corn and +olive-oil of their famished provinces. Lastly, Frederick established the +precedent of a court formed upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans, +in which chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of hereditary +nobles, and functions of state were confided to the body-servants of the +monarch. This court gave currency to those habits of polite culture, +magnificent living, and personal luxury which played so prominent a part +in all subsequent Italian despotism. It is tempting to overstrain a +point in estimating the direct influence of Frederick's example. In many +respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in advance of his age; and +what we may be inclined to ascribe to him personally, would have +followed in the natural evolution of events. Yet it remains a fact that +he first realized the type of cultivated despotism which prevailed +throughout Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Italian +literature began in his court, and many Saracenic customs of statecraft +were transmitted through him from Palermo to Lombardy. + +While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively modern tyrants of the +coming age, his Vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, +represented the atrocities towards which they always tended to +degenerate. Regarding himself with a sort of awful veneration as the +divinely appointed scourge of humanity, this monster in his lifetime was +execrated as an aberration from 'the kindly race of men,' and after his +death he became the hero of a fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding +centuries of Italian history his kind was only too common; the +immorality with which he worked out his selfish aims was systematically +adopted by princes like the Visconti, and reduced to rule by theorists +like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his +face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold +to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one +passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood. +Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, he founded his illegal +authority upon the captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by +Frederick. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno made him their +captain in the Ghibelline interest, conferring on him judicial as well +as military supremacy. How he fearfully abused his power, how a crusade +was preached against him,[1] and how he died in silence, like a boar at +bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes had placed to +keep him alive, are notorious matters of history. At Padua alone he +erected eight prisons, two of which contained as many as three hundred +captives each; and though the executioner never ceased to ply his trade +there, they were always full. These dungeons were designed to torture by +their noisomeness, their want of air and light and space. Ezzelino made +himself terrible not merely by executions and imprisonments but also by +mutilations and torments. When he captured Friola he caused the +population, of all ages, sexes, occupations, to be deprived of their +eyes, noses, and legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the +elements. On another occasion he walled up a family of princes in a +castle and left them to die of famine. Wealth, eminence, and beauty +attracted his displeasure no less than insubordination or disobedience. +Nor was he less crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends +their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his promises. A +gigantic instance of his scheming was the coup-de-main by which he +succeeded in entrapping 11,000 Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped +the miseries of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of law, his +inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, and his infliction of +plagues upon whole peoples, Ezzelino established the ideal in Italy of a +tyrant marching to his end by any means whatever. In vain was the +humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. Vainly did the +monks assemble pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara to +atone with tears and penitence for the insults offered to the saints in +heaven by Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian +imagination, and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to +fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are apt to ask ourselves +whether such men are mad--whether in the case of a Nero or a Marechal +de Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst for blood are not +a monomaniacal perversion of barbarous passions which even in a cannibal +are morbid.[2] Is there in fact such a thing as Haematomania, +Bloodmadness? But if we answer this question in the affirmative, we +shall have to place how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias, +Farnesi, and princes of the houses of Anjou and Aragon in the list of +these maniacs? Ezzelino was indeed only the first of a long and horrible +procession, the most terror-striking because the earliest, prefiguring +all the rest. + + [1] Alexander IV. issued letters for this crusade in 1255. It was + preached next year by the Archbishop of Ravenna. + + [2] See Appendix, No. I. + +Ezzelino's cruelty was no mere Berserkir fury or Lycanthropia coming +over him in gusts and leaving him exhausted. It was steady and +continuous. In his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, there +was method; he used it to the end of the consolidation of his tyranny. +Yet, inasmuch as it passed all limits and prepared his downfall, it may +be said to have obtained over his nature the mastery of an insane +appetite. While applying the nomenclature of disease to these +exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at +first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing +more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion--lust, violence, +cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less +influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a +greed for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions +in his nature. He then is not unjustly termed a monomaniac. Within the +circle of his vitiated appetite he proves himself irrational. He becomes +the puppet of passions which the sane man cannot so much as picture to +his fancy, the victim of desire, ever recurring and ever destined to +remain unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lunacy than +the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul thirstier than it was before, +the paroxysm of unnatural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave +for it. + +In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant, +we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy. +Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the +people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a +consciousness of tyranny in the minds of irresponsible rulers. + +During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find, roughly speaking, +six sorts of despots in Italian cities.[1] Of these the _first_ class, +which is a very small one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing +from long seignioral possession of their several districts. The most +eminent are the houses of Montferrat and Savoy, the Marquises of +Ferrara, the Princes of Urbino. At the same time it is difficult to know +where to draw the line between such hereditary lordship as that of the +Este family, and tyranny based on popular favor. The Malatesti of +Rimini, Polentani of Ravenna, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli, +Chiavelli of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might claim to +rank among the former, since their cities submitted to them without a +long period of republican independence like that which preceded +despotism in the cases to be next mentioned. Yet these families styled +themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled; and in many instances they +obtained the additional title of Vicars of the Church.[2] Even the +Estensi were made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the +thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the supremacy of the +Papacy. There was in fact no right outside the Empire in Italy; and +despots of whatever origin or complexion gladly accepted the support +which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or the People might +give. Brought to the front amid the tumults of the civil wars, and +accepted as pacificators of the factions by the multitude, they gained +the confirmation of their anomalous authority by representing themselves +to be lieutenants or vicegerents of the three great powers. The _second_ +class comprise those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the +Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in +Lombardy. Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are +illustrious instances. Finding in their official capacity a ready-made +foundation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of +the Empire constituted dynasties. The _third_ class is important. Nobles +charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestas, by the +free burghs, used their authority to enslave the cities they were chosen +to administer. It was thus that almost all the numerous tyrants of +Lombardy, Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth, +first erected their despotic dynasties. This fact in the history of +Italian tyranny is noticeable. The font of honor, so to speak, was in +the citizens of these great burghs. Therefore, when the limits of +authority delegated to their captains by the people were overstepped, +the sway of the princes became confessedly illegal. Illegality carried +with it all the consequences of an evil conscience, all the insecurities +of usurped dominion all the danger from without and from within to which +an arbitrary governor is exposed. In the _fourth_ class we find the +principle of force still more openly at work. To it may be assigned +those Condottieri who made a prey of cities at their pleasure. The +illustrious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to follow up his +victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, in order that he might cement +his power in Lucca and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of +tyrant. His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of Machiavelli's +romance, is another. But it was not until the first half of the +fifteenth century that professional Condottieri became powerful enough +to found such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco Sforza at +Milan.[3] The _fifth_ class includes the nephews or sons of Popes. The +Riario principality of Forli, the Della Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of +Romagna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species of despotisms; +but all these are of a comparatively late origin. Until the Papacies of +Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of +providing in this way for their relatives. Also, it may be remarked, +there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies. Since they had to be +carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his +son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a +province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to +bestow it on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could not long +have stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the +dynastic possession of Church property. Luckily for the continuance of +the Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in after the sack +of Rome and the great Northern Schism, put a stop to nepotism in its +most barefaced form. + + [1] This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many + of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I + have mentioned. + + [2] See Guicc. _Ist._ end of Book 4. + + [3] John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held + Cotignola and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI. In the second half of + the fifteenth century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect + tyrannies were most frequent. Braccio da Montone established himself + in Perugia in 1416, and aspired, not without good grounds for hope, + to acquiring the kingdom of Italy. Francesco Sforza, before gaining + Milan, had begun to form a despotism at Ancona. Sforza's rival, + Giacomo Piccinino, would probably have succeeded in his own attempt, + had not Ferdinand of Aragon treacherously murdered him at Naples in + 1465. In the disorganization caused by Charles VIII., Vidovero of + Brescia in 1495 established himself at Cesena and Castelnuovo, and + had to be assassinated by Pandolfo Malatesta at the instigation of + Venice. After the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402, the + generals whom he had employed in the consolidation of his vast + dominions attempted to divide the spoil among themselves. Naples, + Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence were in course of time made keenly + alive to the risk of suffering a captain of adventure to run his + course unchecked. + +There remains the _sixth_ and last class of despots to be mentioned. +This again is large and of the first importance. Citizens of eminence, +like the Medici at Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglioni of +Perugia, the Vitelli of Citta di Castello, the Gambacorti of Pisa, like +Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (1502), Romeo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna +(1323), the plebeian, Alticlinio, and Agolanti of Padua (1313), Giovanni +Vignate, the millionaire of Lodi (1402), acquired more than their due +weight in the conduct of affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In +most of these cases great wealth was the original source of despotic +ascendency. It was not uncommon to buy cities together with their +Signory. Thus the Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins in 1333; the +Appiani sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza and Imola in 1377. In +1444 Galeazzo Malatesta sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and +Fossombrone to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by the same +family. Franceschetto Cibo purchased the County of Anguillara. Towns at +last came to have their market value. It was known that Bologna was +worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 Lucca 30,000, and so +forth. But personal qualities and nobility of blood might also produce +despots of the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent from a +bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., who was for a long time an +honorable prisoner in Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle +with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy to ability and vigor +in the last years of the fifteenth century. But the neighborhood of the +Papal power, and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold of +this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the case of the Medici and +the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher +families assumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were always +advancing. + +The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth +century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward +tyranny. Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not +answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.' +But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead +of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of +social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for +municipalities at the end of those fierce internal conflicts and +exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli, +with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the +most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom. 'No +accident, however weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan or +Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. This is clear from +the fact that after the death of Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to +regain freedom, she was unable to preserve it.'[1] Whether Machiavelli +is right in referring this incapacity for self-government to the +corruption of morals and religion may be questioned. But it is certain +that throughout the states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice, +causes were at work inimical to republics and favorable to despotisms. + + [1] _Discorsi_, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in the + same passage, 'Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of a + prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince with + all his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to + extinguish another; and the city has no rest except by the creation + of a new lord, unless one burgher by his goodness and his great + qualities may chance to preserve its independence during his + lifetime.' + +It will be observed in this classification of Italian tyrants that the +tenure of their power was almost uniformly forcible. They generally +acquired it through the people in the first instance, and maintained it +by the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do with their claims. +The bastards of Popes, who like Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants +like the Medici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a rich +usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with nobles of the ancient +houses of Este, Visconti, or Malatesta. The chief point in favor of the +latter was the familiarity which through long years of authority had +accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, they had a better +chance of return to power than parvenus, whose party-cry and ensigns +were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty--if indeed +the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established +and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of +doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta. +Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece was democratic. It recruited its +ranks from all classes and erected its thrones upon the sovereignty of +the peoples it oppressed. The impulse to the free play of ambitious +individuality which this state of things communicated was enormous. +Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the chair of S. Peter's, the +meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity, vigor, unscrupulous +crime were the chief requisites for success. It was not till Cesare +Borgia displayed his magnificence at the French Court, till the Italian +adventurer matched himself with royalty in its legitimate splendor, that +the lowness of his origin and the frivolity of his pretensions appeared +in any glaring light.[1] In Italy itself, where there existed no +time-honored hierarchy of classes and no fountain of nobility in the +person of a sovereign, one man was a match for another, provided he knew +how to assert himself. To the conditions of a society based on these +principles we may ascribe the unrivaled emergence of great +personalities among the tyrants, as well as the extraordinary tenacity +and vigor of such races as the Visconti. In the contest for power, and +in the maintenance of an illegal authority, the picked athletes came to +the front. The struggle by which they established their tyranny, the +efforts by which they defended it against foreign foes and domestic +adversaries, trained them to endurance and to daring. They lived +habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies. +Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their +vehement vitality. About such men there could be nothing on a small or +mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his +brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only +gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and +moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, +scientific in the use of cruelty and terror, employing first-rate +faculties of brain and will and bodily powers in the service of +transcendent egotism, only the _virtuosi_ of political craft as +theorized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their own upon this +perilous arena. + + [1] Brantome _Capitaines Etrangers_, Discours 48, gives an account + of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds: 'The + king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doubt + how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the + petty Duke of Valentinois.' + +The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. Immured in +strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the +Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops, +protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and +drink lest they should be poisoned. His chief associates were artists, +men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and exiles. He had no real +friends or equals, and against his own family he adopted an attitude of +fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he was +exposed.[1] His timidity verged on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of +Naples, he was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled victims; +like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious fascination of astrology; like +Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at the sound of thunder, and set one +band of body-guards to watch another next his person. He dared not hope +for a quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of a prince: +princes must be poisoned or poignarded.[2] Out of thirteen of the +Carrara family, in little more than a century (1318-1435), three were +deposed or murdered by near relatives, one was expelled by a rival from +his state, four were executed by the Venetians. Out of five of the La +Scala family, three were killed by their brothers, and a fourth was +poisoned in exile. + + [1] See what Guicciardini in his _History of Florence_ says about + the suspicious temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and + philosophical Lorenzo de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent + and penetrating allegory of _Sospetto_, and its application to the + tyrants of Italy in Ariosto's _Cinque Canti_ (C. 2. St. 1-9). + + [2] Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fascinated by + the crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim + on his death-bed:-- + + 'O thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin + To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet + Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl + Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf + Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse, + Whilst horror waits on princes.' + + Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred. + Besides those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to + notice the murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at + Mirandola (1533); the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo; + the assassination of Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerino + (1434); Ostasio da Polenta's fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's + fratricide in the next generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga + by his brothers; Gian Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the + poisoning of Francesco Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of + Montalto, with her little girl, by her aunt; and the murder of + Galeotto Manfredi, by his wife, at Faenza (1488). + +To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning families, occurring in the +fifteenth century alone, would be quite impossible within the limits of +this chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more important that any +adequate notion of the perils of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus +Girolamo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli (1488), and +Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo[1] +(1387). At Lodi in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief members of the +ruling house of Vistarini on the public square, and died himself of +poison after a few months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni +Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Visconti in a wooden cage at +Pavia, and beat his brains out in despair against its bars. At the same +epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy of the Cavalcabo family +together in his castle of Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring +their tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards beheaded as a traitor at +Milan (1425). Ottobon Terzi was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola +Borghese at Siena (1499). Altobello Dattiri at Todi (about 1500), +Raimondo and Pandolfo Malatesta at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di +Montefeltro at Urbino (1444).[2] The Varani were massacred to a man in +the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino (1434), the Trinci at Foligno +(1434), and the Chiavelli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day +(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reigning families introduces +one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Italian despotism. +From the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio Cesare, a boy of +two years old, was saved by his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss +of hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. Hardly had she gained +this refuge, when the Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with her +burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There the same scenes of bloodshed +awaited her. A third time she took to flight, and now concealed her +precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was afterwards stolen from the +town on horseback by a soldier of adventure. After surviving three +massacres of kith and kin, he returned as despot at the age of twelve to +Camerino, and became a general of distinction. But he was not destined +to end his life in peace. Cesare Borgia finally murdered him, together +with three of his sons, when he had reached the age of sixty. Less +romantic but not less significant in the annals of tyranny is the story +of the Trinci. A rival noble of Foligno, Pietro Rasiglia, had been +injured in his honor by the chief of the ruling house. He contrived to +assassinate two brothers, Nicola and Bartolommeo, in his castle of +Nocera; but the third, Corrado Trinci, escaped, and took a fearful +vengeance on his enemy. By the help of Braccio da Montone he possessed +himself of Nocera and all its inhabitants, with the exception of Pietro +Rasiglia's wife, whom her husband flung from the battlements. Corrado +then butchered the men, women, and children of the Rasiglia clan, to the +number of three hundred persons, accomplishing his vengeance with +details of atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. It is +recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their mangled limbs paraded +the streets of Foligno as a terror-striking spectacle for the +inhabitants. He then ruled the city by violence, until the warlike +Cardinal dei Vitelleschi avenged society of so much mischief by +destroying the tyrant and five of his sons, in the same year. Equally +fantastic are the annals of the great house of the Baglioni at Perugia. +Raised in 1389 upon the ruins of the bourgeois faction called Raspanti, +they founded their tyranny in the person of Pandolfo Baglioni, who was +murdered together with sixty of his clan and followers by the party +they had dispossessed. The new despot, Biordo Michelotti, was stabbed in +the shoulders with a poisoned dagger by his relative, the abbot of S. +Pietro. Then the city, in 1416, submitted to Braccio da Montone, who +raised it to unprecedented power and glory. On his death it fell back +into new discords, from which it was rescued again by the Baglioni in +1466, now finally successful in their prolonged warfare with the rival +family of Oddi. But they did not hold their despotism in tranquillity. +In 1500 one of the members of the house, Grifonetto degli Baglioni, +conspired against his kinsmen and slew them in their palaces at night. +As told by Matarazzo, this tragedy offers an epitome of all that is +most, brilliant and terrible in the domestic feuds of the Italian +tyrants.[3] The vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present +another series of catastrophes, due less to their personal crimes than +to the fury of the civil strife that raged around them. Giovanni +Bentivoglio began the dynasty in 1400. The next year he was stabbed to +death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated populace, who thought +he had betrayed their interests in battle. His son, Antonio, was +beheaded by a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the family on their +return from exile suffered the same fate. In course of time the +Bentivogli made themselves adored by the people; and when Piccinino +imprisoned the heir of their house, Annibale, in the castle of Varano, +four youths of the Marescotti family undertook his rescue at the peril +of their lives, and raised him to the Signory of Bologna. In 1445 the +Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popular dynasty, invited +Annibale and all his clan to a christening feast, where they +exterminated every member of the reigning house. Not one Bentivoglio was +left alive. In revenge for this massacre, the Marescotti, aided by the +populace, hunted down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, and +nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the Bentivoglio palace. They +then drew from his obscurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio, +who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool-factory to a throne. +Whether he was a genuine Bentivoglio or not, mattered little. The house +had become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity had been baptized in +the bloodshed of four massacres. What remains of its story can be +briefly told. When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Marescotti +intrigued with him, and eight of their number were sacrificed by the +Bentivogli in spite of their old services to the dynasty. The survivors, +by the help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to witness the +final banishment of the Bentivogli and to take part in the destruction +of the palace, where their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the +Canetoli upon the walls. + + [1] The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their castle + and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds. + + [2] Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back. + Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law. + Raimondo Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as + hermits. Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by + the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate + it--distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament + among themselves. + + [3] See the article 'Perugia' in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_. + +To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled +by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, +would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing +nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic +and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable +by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting +through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the +spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough +however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the +tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever +capable of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well based in its +dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi +offers a long list of terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for +adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the +throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned +by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal +against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life +(1506). Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force +repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by +Tasso lived. + +Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and +timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his +amusement, and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to +extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable +and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs +with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures. +From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for +states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the +utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance. It would +be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this +sort. The saner, better, and nobler among them--men of the stamp of Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico +Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation of their +empire, the cementing of their alliances, the society of learned men, +the friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, the +building of palaces and churches, the execution of vast schemes of +conquest. Others, like Galeazzo Visconti, indulged a comparatively +innocent taste for magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo +Malatesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the enthusiasm of a +scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo de' Medici and Frederick of Urbino, +exhibited the model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width of +culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal in all the despotic +houses. The strain of tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and +the sense of peril, descending from father to son, produced monsters in +the shape of men. The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last +Sforzas, the last Malatestas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici are +among the worst specimens of human nature. + +Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian tyrant in his essay on +Machiavelli deserves careful study. It may, however, be remarked that +the picture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker crimes of the +despots, and draws his portrait almost exclusively from such men as Gian +Galeazzo Visconti, Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino, +and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to establish--that +political immorality in Italy was the national correlative to Northern +brutality--leads him to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined +passions, the firm and astute policy, the power over men, and the +excellent government which distinguished the noblest Italian princes. +When he says 'Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the contrary, +where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and +humane'; he seems to have forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci, +Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. When he writes, 'His +passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their +most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been +accustomed,' he leaves Francesco Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria +Sforza, Pier Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. If all +the despots had been what Macaulay describes, the revolutions and +conspiracies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have +taken place. It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth +century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects assumed an +external form of mildness. As Italy mixed with the European nations, and +as tyranny came to be legalized in the Italian states, the despots +developed a policy not of terrorism but of enervation (Lorenzo de' +Medici is the great example), and aspired to be paternal governors. + +What I have said about Italian despotism is no mere fancy picture. The +actual details of Milanese history, the innumerable tragedies of +Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the ascendency of +despotic families, are far more terrible than any fiction; nor would it +be easy for the imagination to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage +barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's denunciations[1] and +Villani's descriptions of a despot read like passages from Plato's +Republic, like the most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny. +The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's Chronicle may be +cited as a fair specimen of the judgment passed by contemporary Italian +thinkers upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): 'The crimes of +despots always hinder and often neutralize the virtues of good men. +Their pleasures are at variance with morality. By them the riches of +their subjects are swallowed up. They are foes to men who grow in +wisdom and in greatness of soul in their dominions. They diminish by +their imposts the wealth of the peoples ruled by them. Their unbridled +lust is never satiated, but their subjects have to suffer such outrages +and insults as their fancy may from time to time suggest. But inasmuch +as the violence of tyranny is manifested to all eyes by these and many +other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh. It is enough to +select one feature, strange in appearance but familiar in fact; for what +can be more extraordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustrious +lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of high descent and +time-honored nobility frequenting their tables and accepting their +bounties? Yet if we consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants +often turns to misery and ruin. Who can exaggerate their wretchedness? +They know not where to place their confidence; and their courtiers are +always on the lookout for the despot's fall, gladly lending their +influence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of previous servility. +This does not happen to hereditary kings, because their conduct toward +their subjects, as well as their good qualities and all their +circumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants. Therefore +the very causes which produce and fortify and augment tyrannies, conceal +and nourish in themselves the sources of their overthrow and ruin. This +indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.' + + [1] See the passage condensed from his Sermons in Villari's Life of + Savonarola (Eng. Tr. vol. ii. p. 62). The most thorough-going + analysis of despotic criminality is contained in Savonarola's + _Tractato circa el Reggimento e Governo della Citta di Firenze_, + Trattato ii. cap. 2. _Della Malitia e pessime Conditioni del + Tyranno_. + +It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a +Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an +invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of +burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the +censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the +house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction they +conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly concerning the +pernicious effects of their misgovernment.[1] It is to be noticed that +Villani and Matarazzo agree about the special evils brought upon the +populations by their tyrants. Lust and violence take the first place. +Next comes extortion; then the protection of the lawless and the +criminal against the better sort of citizens. But the Florentine, with +intellectual acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of their +rule. They retard the development of mental greatness in their states, +and check the growth of men of genius. Ariosto, in the comparative calm +of the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to the protectorate +of Spain, sums up the records of the past in the following memorable +passage:[2] 'Happy the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless man +gives law! Wretched indeed and pitiable are those where injustice and +cruelty hold sway, where burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid +upon the people by tyrants like those who now abound in Italy, whose +infamy will be recorded through years to come as no less black than +Caligula's or Nero's.' Guicciardini, with pregnant brevity, observes:[3] +'The mortar with which the states of the tyrants are cemented is the +blood of the citizens.' + + [1] Arch. Stor. xvi. 102. See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p. + 84. + + [2] Cinque Canti, ii. 5. + + [3] Ricordi Politici, ccxlii. + +In the history of Italian despotism two points of first-rate importance +will demand attention. The first is the process by which the greater +tyrannies absorbed the smaller during the fourteenth century. The second +is the relation of the chief Condottieri to the tyrants of the fifteenth +century. The evolution of these two phenomena cannot be traced more +clearly than by a study of the history of Milan, which at the same time +presents a detailed picture of the policy and character of the Italian +despot during this period. The dynasties of Visconti and Sforza from +1300 to 1500 bridged over the years that intervened between the Middle +Age and the Renaissance, between the period of the free burghs and the +period during which Italy was destined to become the theater of the +action of more powerful nations. Their alliances and diplomatic +relations prepared the way for the interference of foreigners in Italian +affairs. Their pedigree illustrates the power acquired by military +adventurers in the peninsula. The magnitude of their political schemes +displays the most soaring ambition which it was ever granted to Italian +princes to indulge. The splendor of their court and the intelligence of +their culture bear witness to the high state of civilization which the +Italians had reached. + +The power of the Visconti in Milan was founded upon that of the Della +Torre family, who preceded them as Captains General of the people at the +end of the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, first laid a +substantial basis for the dominion of his house by imprisoning Napoleone +Della Torre and five of his relatives in three iron cages in 1277, and +by causing his nephew Matteo Visconti to be nominated both by the +Emperor and by the people of Milan as imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed +the Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of a prudent Italian +despot. From the date 1311, when he finally succeeded in his attempts +upon the sovereignty of Milan, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor of +his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of character, craft, and +insight, more than by violence or cruelty. Excellent as a general, he +was still better as a diplomatist, winning more cities by money than by +the sword. All through his life, as became a Ghibelline chief at that +time, he persisted in fierce enmity against the Church. But just before +his death a change came over him. He showed signs of superstitious +terror, and began to fear the ban of excommunication which lay upon him. +This weakness alarmed the suspicions of his sons, terrible and wolf-like +men, whom Matteo had hitherto controlled with bit and bridle. They +therefore induced him to abdicate in 1322, and when in the same year he +died, they buried his body in a secret place, lest it should be exhumed, +and scattered to the winds in accordance with the Papal edict against +him.[1] Galeazzo, his son, was less fortunate than Matteo, surnamed Il +Grande by the Lombards. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria threw him into +prison on the occasion of his visit to Milan in 1327, and only released +him at the intercession of his friend Castruccio Castracane. To such an +extent was the growing tyranny of the Visconti still dependent upon +their office delegated from the Empire. This Galeazzo married Beatrice +d' Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, of whom Dante speaks in the +eighth canto of the Purgatory, and had by her a son named Azzo. Azzo +bought the city, together with the title of Imperial Vicar, from the +same Louis who had imprisoned his father.[2] When he was thus seated in +the tyranny of his grandfather, he proceeded to fortify it further by +the addition of ten Lombard towns, which he reduced beneath the +supremacy of Milan. At the same time he consolidated his own power by +the murder of his uncle Marco in 1329, who had grown too mighty as a +general. Giovio describes him as fair of complexion, blue-eyed, +curly-haired, and subject to the hereditary disease of gout.[3] Azzo +died in 1339, and was succeeded by his uncle Lucchino. In Lucchino the +darker side of the Visconti character appears for the first time. Cruel, +moody, and jealous, he passed his life in perpetual terror. His nephews, +Galeazzo and Barnabas, conspired against him, and were exiled to +Flanders. His wife, Isabella Fieschi, intrigued with Galeazzo and +disgraced him by her amours with Ugolino Gonzaga and Dandolo the Doge of +Venice. Finally suspicion rose to such a pitch between this ill-assorted +couple, that, while Lucchino was plotting how to murder Isabella, she +succeeded in poisoning him in 1349. In spite of these domestic +calamities, Lucchino was potent as a general and governor. He bought +Parma from Obizzo d' Este, and made the town of Pisa dependent upon +Milan. Already in his policy we can trace the encroachment which +characterized the schemes of the Milanese despots, who were always +plotting to advance their foot beyond the Apennines as a prelude to the +complete subjugation of Italy. Lucchino left sons, but none of proved +legitimacy.[4] Consequently he was succeeded by his brother Giovanni, +son of old Matteo il Grande, and Archbishop of Milan. This man, the +friend of Petrarch, was one of the most notable characters of the +fourteenth century. Finding himself at the head of sixteen cities, he +added Bologna to the tyranny of the Visconti in 1350, and made himself +strong enough to defy the Pope. Clement VI., resenting his encroachments +on Papal territory, summoned him to Avignon. Giovanni Visconti replied +that he would march thither at the head of 12,000 cavalry and 6,000 +infantry. In the Duomo of Milan he ascended his throne with the crosier +in his left hand and a drawn sword in his right; and thus he is always +represented in pictures. The story of Giovanni's answer to the Papal +Legate is well told by Corio:[5] 'After Mass in the Cathedral the +great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a flashing sword, which he had +girded on his thigh, and with his left hand seized the cross, saying, +"This is my spiritual scepter, and I will wield the sword as my +temporal, in defense of all my empire."' Afterwards he sent couriers to +engage lodgings for his soldiers and his train for six months. Visitors +to Avignon found no room in the city, and the Pope was fain to decline +so terrible a guest. In 1353 Giovanni annexed Genoa to the Milanese +principality, and died in 1354, having established the rule of the +Visconti over the whole of the North of Italy, with the exception of +Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice. + + [1] We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the + 'Purgatory' (canto iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests + against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense + of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the + sentence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of + partisans; yet the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo + Visconti prove how terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences + continued to be. Few had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di + Mirandola, who expired in 1499 under the ban of the Church, which he + had borne for sixteen years. + + [2] This was in 1328. Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins. The vast + wealth of the Visconti amassed during their years of peaceful + occupation always stood them in good stead when bad times came, and + when the Emperor was short of cash. Azzo deserves special + commendation from the student of art for the exquisite octagonal + tower of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta with marble + pilasters, in Milan. It is quite one of the loveliest monuments of + mediaeval Italian architecture. + + [3] Lucchino and Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout, + the latter to such an extent as to be almost crippled. + + [4] This would not have been by itself a bar to succession in an + Italian tyranny. But Lucchino's bastards were not of the proper + stuff to continue their father's government, while their fiery uncle + was precisely the man to sustain the honor and extend the power of + the Visconti. + + [5] Storia di Milano, 1554, p. 223. + +The reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a new epoch in the despotism +of the Visconti. They are now no longer the successful rivals of the +Della Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but self-made +sovereigns, with a well-established power in Milan and a wide extent of +subject territory. Their dynasty, though based on force and maintained +by violence, has come to be acknowledged; and we shall soon see them +allying themselves with the royal houses of Europe. After the death of +Giovanni, Matteo's sons were extinct. But Stefano, the last of his +family, had left three children, who now succeeded to the lands and +cities of the house. They were named Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. +Between these three princes a partition of the heritage of Giovanni +Visconti was effected. Matteo took Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, +Bobbio, and some other towns of less importance. Bernabo received +Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo. Galeazzo held Como, Novara, +Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and Alessandria. Milan and Genoa were to be +ruled by the three in common. It may here be noticed that the +dismemberment of Italian despotisms among joint-heirs was a not +unfrequent source of disturbance and a cause of weakness to their +dynasties. At the same time the practice followed naturally upon the +illegal nature of the tyrant's title. He dealt with his cities as so +many pieces of personal property, which he could distribute as he chose, +not as a coherent whole to be bequeathed to one ruler for the common +benefit of all his subjects. In consequence of such partition, it became +the interest of brother to murder brother, so as to effect a +reconsolidation of the family estates. Something of the sort happened on +this occasion. Matteo abandoned himself to bestial sensuality; and his +two brothers, finding him both feeble and likely to bring discredit on +their rule, caused him to be assassinated in 1355.[1] They then jointly +swayed the Milanese, with unanimity remarkable in despots. Galeazzo was +distinguished as the handsomest man of his age. He was tall and +graceful, with golden hair, which he wore in long plaits, or tied up in +a net, or else loose and crowned with flowers. Fond of display and +magnificence, he spent much of his vast wealth in shows and festivals, +and in the building of palaces and churches. The same taste for splendor +led him to seek royal marriages for his children. His daughter Violante +was wedded to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England, who +received with her for dowry the sum of 200,000 golden florins, as well +as five cities bordering on Piedmont.[2] It must have been a strange +experience for this brother of the Black Prince, leaving London, where +the streets were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds laid on +straw, and where wine was sold as medicine, to pass into the luxurious +palaces of Lombardy, walled with marble, and raised high above smooth +streets of stone. Of his marriage with Violante Giovio gives some +curious details. He says that Galeazzo on this occasion made splendid +presents to more than 200 Englishmen, so that he was reckoned to have +outdone the greatest kings in generosity. At the banquet Gian Galeazzo, +the bride's brother, leading a choice company of well-born youths, +brought to the table with each course fresh gifts.[3] 'At one time it +was a matter of sixty most beautiful horses with trappings of silk and +silver; at another, plate, hawks, hounds, horse-gear, fine cuirasses, +suits of armor fashioned of wrought steel, helmets adorned with crests, +surcoats embroidered with pearls, belts, precious jewels set in gold, +and great quantities of cloth of gold and crimson stuff for making +raiment. Such was the profusion of this banquet that the remnants taken +from the table were enough and to spare for 10,000 men.' Petrarch, we +may remember, assisted at this festival and sat among the princes. It +was thus that Galeazzo displayed his wealth before the feudal nobles of +the North, and at the same time stretched the hand of friendly patronage +to the greatest literary man of Europe. Meanwhile he also married his +son Gian Galeazzo to Isabella, daughter of King John of France, spending +on this occasion, it is said, a similar sum of money for the honor of a +royal alliance.[4] + + [1] M. Villani, v. 81. Compare Corio, p. 230. Corio gives the date + 1356. + + [2] Namely, Alba, Cuneo, Carastro, Mondovico, Braida. See Corio, p. + 238, who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu l' ultima roina del + suo stato.' + + [3] Corio (pp. 239, 240) gives the bill of fare of the banquet. + + [4] Sismondi says he gave 600,000 florins to Charles, the brother of + Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount. + +Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother reigned at Milan. Bernabo +displayed all the worst vices of the Visconti. His system of taxation +was most oppressive, and at the same time so lucrative that he was able, +according to Giovio's estimate, to settle nine of his daughters at an +expense of something like two millions of gold pieces. A curious +instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting establishment. Having +saddled his subjects with the keep of 5,000 boar-hounds, he appointed +officers to go round and see whether these brutes were either too lean +or too well-fed to be in good condition for the chase. If anything +appeared defective in their management, the peasants on whom they were +quartered had to suffer in their persons and their property.[1] This +Bernabo was also remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. Together with +his brother, he devised and caused to be publicly announced by edict +that State criminals would be subjected to a series of tortures +extending over the space of forty days. In this infernal programme +every variety of torment found a place, and days of respite were so +calculated as to prolong the lives of the victims for further suffering, +till at last there was little left of them that had not been hacked and +hewed and flayed away.[2] To such extremities of terrorism were the +despots driven in the maintenance of their illegal power. + + [1] 'Per cagione di questa caccia continoamente teneva cinque mila + cani; e la maggior parte di quelle distribuiva alla custodia de i + cittadini, e anche a i contadini, i quali niun altro cane che quelli + potevano tenere. Questi due volte il mese erano tenuti a far la + mostra. Onde trovandoli macri in gran somma di danari erano + condannati, e se grossi erano, incolpandoli del troppo, erano + multati; se morivano, li pigliava il tutto.--Corio, p. 247. + + Read M. Villani, vii. 48, for the story of a peasant who was given + to Bernabo's dogs to be devoured for having killed a hare. Corio (p. + 247) describes the punishments which he inflicted on his subjects + who were convicted of poaching--eyes put out, houses burned, etc. A + young man who dreamed of killing a boar had an eye put out and a + hand cut off because he imprudently recounted his vision of sport in + sleep. On one occasion he burned two friars who ventured to + remonstrate. We may compare Pontanus, 'De Immanitate,' vol. i. pp. + 318, 320, for similar cruelty in Ferdinand, King of Naples. + + [2] This programme may be read in Sismondi, iv. 282. + +Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own portion of the +Visconti domain by his son Gian Galleazzo. Now began one of those long, +slow, internecine struggles which were so common between the members of +the ruling families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons schemed to get +possession of the young prince's estate. He, on the other hand, +determined to supplant his uncle, and to reunite the whole Visconti +principality beneath his own sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose +in this encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made no disguise of +his physical cowardice, which was real, while he simulated a timidity of +spirit wholly alien to his temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in +religious observances, and gradually induced his uncle and cousins to +despise him as a poor creature whom they could make short work of when +occasion served. In 1385, having thus prepared the way for treason, he +avowed his intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of +Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body guard of Germans, he passed near +Milan, where his uncle and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian +Galeazzo feigned a courteous greeting; but when he saw his relatives +within his grasp, he gave a watchword in German to his troops, who +surrounded Bernabo and took him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo +marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle in a dungeon, and +proclaimed himself sole lord of the Visconti heirship.[1] + + [1] The narrative of this coup-de-main may be read with advantage in + Corio, p. 258. + +The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this coup-de-main +(1385-1402), forms a very important chapter in Italian history. We may +first see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to trace his aims +and achievements. Giovio describes him as having been a remarkably +sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends +feared he would not grow to man's estate. No pleasures in after-life +drew him away from business. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no +charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the preservation of his +health, read and meditated much, and relaxed himself in conversation +with men of letters. Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect +independence in this prince, who was far above the boisterous pleasures +and violent activities of the age in which he lived. In the erection of +public buildings he was magnificent. The Certosa of Pavia and the Duomo +of Milan owed their foundation to his sense of splendor. At the same +time he completed the palace of Pavia, which his father had begun, and +which he made the noblest dwelling-house in Europe. The University of +Pavia was raised by him from a state of decadence to one of great +prosperity, partly by munificent endowments and partly by a wise choice +of professors. In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred taste +for vast engineering projects. He contemplated and partly carried out a +scheme for turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels, and +for drying up the lagoons of Venice. In this way he purposed to attack +his last great enemy, the Republic of S. Mark, upon her strongest point. +Yet in the midst of these huge designs he was able to attend to the most +trifling details of economy. His love of order was so precise that he +may be said to have applied the method of a banker's office to the +conduct of a state. It was he who invented Bureaucracy by creating a +special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments. Their duty +consisted in committing to books and ledgers the minutest items of his +private expenditure and the outgoings of his public purse; in noting the +details of the several taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of +the whole state revenue; and in recording the names and qualities and +claims of his generals, captains, and officials. A separate office was +devoted to his correspondence, of all of which he kept accurate +copies.[1] By applying this mercantile machinery to the management of +his vast dominions, at a time when public economy was but little +understood in Europe, Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth enormously above +that of his neighbors. His income in a single year is said to have +amounted to 1,200,000 golden florins, with the addition of 800,000 +golden florins levied by extraordinary calls.[2] The personal timidity +of this formidable prince prevented him from leading his armies in the +field. He therefore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and took +into his service all the chief Condottieri of the day, thus giving an +impulse to the custom which was destined to corrupt the whole military +system of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how to choose, he was +himself the brain and moving principle. He might have boasted that he +never took a step without calculating the cost, carefully considering +the object, and proportioning the means to his end. How mad to such a +man must have seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the +chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their +force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the +subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his +character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said +to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. +Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the +following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity: +'False and pitiless, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius for +enterprise, and to immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did +not endeavor to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him +into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers +to guard his palace, or took such multiplied precautions of distrust. He +seemed to acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. But the +vices of tyranny had not weakened his ability. He employed his immense +wealth without prodigality; his finances were always flourishing; his +cities well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; all the +captains of adventure scattered throughout Italy received pensions from +him, and were ready to return to his service whenever called upon. He +encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; he knew well how to +distinguish, reward, and win their attachment.'[3] Such was the tyrant +who aimed at nothing less than the reduction of the whole of Italy +beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who might have achieved his +purpose had not his career of conquest been checked by the Republic of +Florence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death. + + [1] Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne gli + armari de' suoi Archivi maravigliosi libri in carta pecora, i quali + contenevano d' anno in anno i nomi de' capitani, condottieri, e + soldati vecchi, e le paghe di ogn' uno, e 'l rotulo delle + cavallerie, et delle fanterie: v' erano anco registrate le copie + delle lettere le quali negli importantissimi maneggi di far guerra o + pace, o egli haveva scritto ai principi o haveva ricevuto da loro.' + + [2] The description given by Corio (pp. 260, 266-68) of the dower in + money, plate, and jewels brought by Valentina Visconti to Louis + d'Orleans is a good proof of Gian Galeazzo's wealth. Besides the + town of Asti, she took with her in money 400,000 golden florins. Her + gems were estimated at 68,858 florins, and her plate at 1,667 marks + of Paris. The inventory is curious. + + [3] 'History of the Italian Republics' (1 vol. Longmans), p. 190. + +At the time of his accession the Visconti had already rooted out the +Correggi and Rossi of Parma, the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of +San Donnino, the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabo of +Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the +Brusati of Brescia. Their viper had swallowed all these lesser +snakes.[1] But the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga at +Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house of Scala was in +possession of Verona. Gian Galeazzo's schemes were first directed +against the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of the Visconti, upon the +imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height under the Ghibelline +general Can Grande and his nephew Mastino, in the first half of the +fourteenth century (1312-51). Mastino had himself cherished the project +of an Italian Kingdom; but he died before approaching its +accomplishment. The degeneracy of his house began with his three sons. +The two younger killed the eldest; of the survivors the stronger slew +the weaker and then died in 1374, leaving his domains to two of his +bastards. One of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,[2] and +afterwards fell a prey to the Visconti in 1387. In his subjugation of +Verona Gian Galeazzo contrived to make use of the Carrara family, +although these princes were allied by marriage to the Scaligers, and had +everything to lose by their downfall. He next proceeded to attack Padua, +and gained the co-operation of Venice. In 1388 Francesco da Carrara had +to cede his territory to Visconti's generals, who in the same year +possessed themselves for him of the Trevisan Marches. It was then that +the Venetians saw too late the error they had committed in suffering +Verona and Padua to be annexed by the Visconti, when they ought to have +been fortified as defenses interposed between his growing power and +themselves. Having now made himself master of the North of Italy,[3] +with the exception of Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna, Gian Galeazzo turned +his attention to these cities. Alberto d' Este was ruling in Ferrara; +Francesco da Gonzaga in Mantua. It was the Visconti's policy to enfeeble +these two princes by causing them to appear odious in the eyes of their +subjects.[4] Accordingly he roused the jealousy of the Marquis of +Ferrara against his nephew Obizzo to such a pitch that Alberto beheaded +him together with his mother, burned his wife, and hung a third member +of his family, besides torturing to death all the supposed accomplices +of the unfortunate young man. Against the Marquis of Mantua Gian +Galeazzo devised a still more diabolical plot. By forged letters and +subtly contrived incidents he caused Francesco da Gonzaga to suspect his +wife of infidelity with his secretary.[5] In a fit of jealous fury +Francesco ordered the execution of his wife, the mother of several of +his children, together with the secretary. Then he discovered the +Visconti's treason. But it was too late for anything but impotent +hatred. The infernal device had been successful; the Marquis of Mantua +was no less discredited than the Marquis of Ferrara by his crime. It +would seem that these men were not of the stamp and caliber to be +successful villans, and that Gian Galeazzo had reckoned upon this defect +in their character. Their violence caused them to be rather loathed than +feared. The whole of Lombardy was now prostrate before the Milanese +tyrant. His next move was to set foot in Tuscany. For this purpose Pisa +had to be acquired; and here again he resorted to his devilish policy of +inciting other men to crimes by which he alone would profit in the +long-run. Pisa was ruled at that time by the Gambacorta family, with an +old merchant named Pietro at their head. This man had a friend and +secretary called Jacopo Appiano, whom the Visconti persuaded to turn +Judas, and to entrap and murder his benefactor and his children. The +assassination took place in 1392. In 1399 Gherardo, son of Jacopo +Appiano, who held Pisa at the disposal of Gian Galeazzo, sold him this +city for 200,000 florins.[6] Perugia was next attacked. Here Pandolfo, +chief of the Baglioni family, held a semi-constitutional authority, +which the Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, and +then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his own.[7] All Italy and +even Germany had now begun to regard the usurpations of the Milanese +despot with alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus refused to take +action against him; nay, in 1395 he granted to the Visconti the +investiture of the Duchy of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only +Pavia for himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and in the next +two years the plague came to his assistance by enfeebling the ruling +families of Lucca and Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that +he was now able to take possession of those cities. + + [1] Il Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly given + to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in allusion + to their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth. + + [2] Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio + tried to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his + death in the prosecution of infamous amours. + + [3] Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the Marquisate of + Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir + in a kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in + formidable neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests. + + [4] The policy adopted by the Visconti against the Estensi and the + Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc. iii. 32): + 'quando alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto l' + animo ad uno accordo, non ci e altro modo piu vero, ne piu stabile, + che fargli usare qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il + qual tu non vuoi che l' accordo si faccia.' + + [5] This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian + Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina, + daughter of Bernabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy + the more disgraceful. + + [6] The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty + despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, is + similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the + Vistarini of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the + Ducal house of Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino + Buonacolsi. + + [7] Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed himself + of Perugia in 1400, having paved his way for the usurpation by + causing Biordo Michelotti, the successor of the Baglioni to be + assassinated by his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed + that he proceeded slowly and surely in the case of each annexation, + licking over his prey after he had throttled it and before he + swallowed it, like a boa-constrictor. + +There remained no power in Italy, except the Republic of Florence and +the exiled but invincible Francesco da Carrara, to withstand his further +progress. Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Francesco managed +to return to Padua. Still the peril which threatened the whole of Italy +was imminent. The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood--rich, +prosperous, and full of mental force. His acquisitions were well +cemented; his armies in good condition; his treasury brim full; his +generals highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp respected +the iron will and the deep policy of the despot who swayed their action +from his arm-chair in Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains and +hands that did him service, to keep them mutually in check, and by their +regulated action to make himself not one but a score of men. At last, +when all other hope of independence for Italy had failed, the plague +broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo retired to his isolated +fortress of Marignano in order to escape infection. Yet there in 1402 he +sickened. A comet appeared in the sky, to which he pointed as a sign of +his approaching death--'God could not but signalize the end of so +supreme a ruler,' he told his attendants. He died aged 55. Italy drew a +deep breath. The danger was passed. + +The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo for the enslavement of +Italy, the ability and force of intellect which sustained him in its +execution, and the power with which he bent men to his will, are +scarcely more extraordinary than the sudden dissolution of his dukedom +at his death. Too timid to take the field himself, he had trained in his +service a band of great commanders, among whom Alberico da Barbino, +Facino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, Gabrino Fondulo, and +Ottobon Terzo were the most distinguished. As long as he lived and held +them in leading strings, all went well. But at his death his two sons +were still mere boys. He had to intrust their persons, together with the +conduct of his hardly won dominions, to these captains in conjunction +with the Duchess Catherine and a certain Francesco Barbavara. This man +had been the Duke's body-servant, and was now the paramour of the +Duchess. The generals refused to act with them; and each seized upon +such portions of the Visconti inheritance as he could most easily +acquire. The vast tyranny of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a +day. The whole being based on no legal right, but held together +artificially by force and skill, its constituent parts either reasserted +their independence or became the prey of adventurers.[1] Many scions of +the old ejected families recovered their authority in the subject towns. +We hear again of the Scotti at Piacenza, the Rossi and Correggi at +Parma, the Benzoni at Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and +Colleoni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcabo at Cremona. +Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia; +Ottonbon Terzo established himself in Parma. Meanwhile Giovanni Maria +Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria +occupied Pavia. Gabriello, a bastard son of the first duke, fortified +himself in Crema. + + [1] The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian Galeazzo's + death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of these + usurpations. Corio, pp. 292 et seq., contain the details. + +In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, there was a +progressive tendency to degeneration. The strain of tyranny sustained by +force and craft for generations, the abuse of power and pleasure, the +isolation and the dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a +kind of hereditary madness.[1] In the case of Giovanni Maria and Filippo +Maria Visconti these predisposing causes of insanity were probably +intensified by the fact that their father and mother were first cousins, +the grandchildren of Stefano, son of Matteo il Grande. Be this as it +may, the constitutional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in +Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something akin to madness +in his brother. Gian Maria, Duke of Milan in nothing but in name, +distinguished himself by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his +ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men. All the +criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get denounced as criminals, +even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his +infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to their +duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his +victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.[2] In 1412 some +Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse +into the street. A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses. +Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,[3] who +brought him nearly half a million of florins for dowry, together with +her husband's soldiers and the cities he had seized after Gian +Galeazzo's death. By the help of this alliance Filippo was now gradually +recovering the Lombard portion of his father's dukedom. The minor +cities, purged by murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the +grasp of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and political +tragedies that drenched their streets with blood. Piacenza was utterly +depopulated. It is recorded that for the space of a year only three of +its inhabitants remained within the walls. + + [1] I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a scientific + statement of the theory of madness developed by accumulated and + hereditary vices. + + [2] Corio, p. 301, mentions by name Giovanni da Pusterla and + Bertolino del Maino as 'lacerati da i cani del Duca.' Members of the + families of these men afterwards helped to kill him. + + [3] Beatrice di Tenda, the wife of Facino Cane, was twenty years + older than the Duke of Milan. As soon as the Visconti felt himself + assured in his duchy, he caused a false accusation to be brought + against her of adultery with the youthful Michele Oranbelli, and, in + spite of her innocence, beheaded her in 1418. Machiavelli relates + this act of perfidy with Tacitean conciseness (1st. Fior. lib. i. + vol. i. p. 55): 'Dipoi per esser grato de' benefici grandi, come + sono quasi sempre tutti i Principi, accuse Beatrice sua moglie di + stupro e la fece morire.' + +Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was extremely ugly, and so +sensitive about his ill-formed person that he scarcely dared to show +himself abroad. He habitually lived in secret chambers, changed +frequently from room to room, and when he issued from his palace refused +salutations in the streets. As an instance of his nervousness, the +chroniclers report that he could not endure to hear the noise of +thunder.[1] At the same time he inherited much of his father's insight +into character, and his power of controlling men more bold and active +than himself. But he lacked the keen decision and broad views of Gian +Galeazzo. He vacillated in policy and kept planning plots which seemed +to have no object but his own disadvantage. Excess of caution made him +surround the captains of his troops with spies, and check them at the +moment when he feared they might become too powerful. This want of +confidence neutralized the advantage which he might have gained by his +choice of fitting instruments. Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza +for his general against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But he +could not attach the great soldier of fortune to himself. Sforza took +the pay of Florence against his old patron, and in 1441 forced him to a +ruinous peace; one of the conditions of which was the marriage of the +Duke of Milan's only daughter, Bianca, to the son of the peasant of +Cotignola. Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no male heir. +The great family of the Visconti had dwindled away. Consequently, after +the duke's death in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of +Milan, which he first secured by force and then claimed in right of his +wife. An adverse claim was set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of +Orleans having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of Gian +Galeazzo.[2] But both of these claims were invalid, since the +investiture granted by Wenceslaus to the first duke excluded females. So +Milan was once again thrown open to the competition of usurpers. + + [1] The most complete account of Filippo Maria Visconti written by a + contemporary is that of Piero Candido Decembrio (Muratori, vol. + xx.). The student must, however, read between the lines of this + biography, for Decembrio, at the request of Leonello d' Este, + suppressed the darker colors of the portrait of his master. See the + correspondence in Rosmini's Life of Guarino da Verona. + + [2] This claim of the House of Orleans to Milan was one source of + French interference in Italian affairs. Judged by Italian custom, + Sforza's claim through Bianca was as good as that of the Orleans + princes through Valentina, since bastardy was no real bar in the + peninsula. It is said that Filippo Maria bequeathed his duchy to the + Crown of Naples, by a will destroyed after his death. Could this + bequest have taken effect, it might have united Italy beneath one + sovereign. But the probabilities are that the jealousies of + Florence, Venice, and Rome against Naples would have been so + intensified as to lead to a bloody war of succession, and to hasten + the French invasion. + +The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan blazed forth upon the +death of the last duke. In spite of so many generations of despots, the +people still regarded themselves as sovereign, and established a +republic. But a state which had served the Visconti for nearly two +centuries, could not in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon +itself alone. The republic, feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, was +short-sighted enough to engage Francesco Sforza as commander-in-chief +against the Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy in +Lombardy to push their power west of the Adda. + +Sforza, though the ablest general of the day, was precisely the man whom +common prudence should have prompted the burghers to mistrust. In one +brilliant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond the Adda, burned +their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the Po, and utterly defeated their army +at Caravaggio. Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the +surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their capital, and forced +them to receive him as their Duke in 1450. Italy had lost a noble +opportunity. If Florence and Venice had but taken part with Milan, and +had stimulated the flagging energies of Genoa, four powerful republics +in federation might have maintained the freedom of the whole peninsula +and have resisted foreign interference. But Cosimo de' Medici, who was +silently founding the despotism of his own family in Florence, preferred +to see a duke in Milan; and Venice, guided by the Doge Francesco +Foscari, thought only of territorial aggrandizement. The chance was +lost. The liberties of Milan were extinguished. A new dynasty was +established in the duchy, grounded on a false hereditary claim, which, +as long as it continued, gave a sort of color to the superior but still +illegal pretensions of the house of Orleans. It is impossible at this +point in the history of Italy to refrain from judging that the Italians +had become incapable of local self-government, and that the prevailing +tendency to despotism was not the results of accidents in any +combination, but of internal and inevitable laws of evolution. + +It was at this period that the old despotisms founded by Imperial Vicars +and Captains of the People came to be supplanted or crossed by those of +military adventurers, just as at a somewhat later time the Condottiere +and the Pope's nominee were blent in Cesare Borgia. This is therefore +the proper moment for glancing at the rise and influence of mercenary +generals in Italy, before proceeding to sketch the history of the Sforza +family. + +After the wars in Sicily, carried on by the Angevine princes, had ceased +(1302), a body of disbanded soldiers, chiefly foreigners, was formed +under Fra Ruggieri, a Templar, and swept the South of Italy. Giovanni +Villani marks this as the first sign of the scourge which was destined +to prove so fatal to the peace of Italy.[1] But it was not any merely +accidental outbreak of Banditti, such as this, which established the +Condottiere system. The causes were far more deeply seated, in the +nature of Italian despotism and in the peculiar requirements of the +republics. We have already seen how Frederick II. found it convenient to +employ Saracens in his warfare with the Holy See. The same desire to +procure troops incapable of sympathizing with the native population +induced the Scala and Visconti tyrants to hire German, Breton, Swiss, +English, and even Hungarian guards. These foreign troops remained at +the disposal of the tyrants and superseded the national militia. The +people of Italy were reserved for taxation; the foreigners carried on +the wars of the princes. Nor was this policy otherwise than popular. It +relieved all classes from the conscription, leaving the burgher free to +ply his trade, the peasant to till his fields, and disarming the nobles +who were still rebellious and turbulent within the city walls. The same +custom gained ground among the Republics. Rich Florentine citizens +preferred to stay at home at ease, or to travel abroad for commerce, +while they intrusted their military operations to paid generals.[2] +Venice, jealous of her own citizens, raised no levies in her immediate +territory, and made a rule of never confiding her armies to Venetians. +Her admirals, indeed, were selected from the great families of the +Lagoons. But her troops were placed beneath the discipline of +foreigners. The warfare of the Church, again, had of necessity to be +conducted on the same principles; for it did not often happen that a +Pope arose like Julius II., rejoicing in the sound of cannon and the +life of camps. In this way principalities and republics gradually +denationalized their armies, and came to carrying on campaigns by the +aid of foreign mercenaries under paid commanders. The generals, wishing +as far as possible to render their troops movable and compact, +suppressed the infantry, and confined their attention to perfecting the +cavalry. Heavy-armed cavaliers, officered by professional captains, +fought the battles of Italy; while despots and republics schemed in +their castles, or debated in their council-chambers, concerning objects +of warfare about which the soldiers of fortune were indifferent. The pay +received by men-at-arms was more considerable than that of the most +skilled laborers in any peaceful trade. The perils of military service +in Italy, conducted on the most artificial principles, were but slight; +while the opportunities of self-indulgence--of pillage during war and of +pleasure in the brief intervals of peace--attracted all the hot blood of +the country to this service.[3] Therefore, in course of time, the +profession of Condottiere fascinated the needier nobility of Italy, and +the ranks of their men-at-arms were recruited by townsfolk and peasants, +who deliberately chose a life of adventure. + + [1] VIII. 51. + + [2] We may remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325, + misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members + of the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money + from them as the price of freedom from perilous or irksome service. + + [3] Matarazzo, in his Chronicle of Perugia, gives a lively picture + of an Italian city, in which the nobles for generations followed the + trade of Condottieri, while the people enlisted in their bands--to + the utter ruin of the morals and the peace of the community. + +At first the foreign troops of the despots were engaged as body-guards, +and were controlled by the authority of their employers. But the +captains soon rendered themselves independent, and entered into military +contracts on their own account. The first notable example of a roving +troop existing for the sake of pillage, and selling its services to any +bidder, was the so-called Great Company (1343), commanded by the German +Guarnieri, or Duke Werner who wrote upon his corselet: 'Enemy of God, of +Pity and of Mercy.' This band was employed in 1348 by the league of the +Montferrat, La Scala, Carrara, Este, and Gonzaga houses, formed to check +the Visconti. + +'In the middle of the fourteenth century,' writes Sismondi,[1] 'all the +soldiers who served in Italy were foreigners: at the end of the same +century they were all, or nearly all, Italian.' This sentence indicates +a most important change in the Condottiere system, which took place +during the lifetime of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Alberico da Barbiano, a +noble of Romagna, and the ancestor of the Milanese house of Belgiojoso, +adopted the career of Condottiere, and formed a Company, called the +Company of S. George, into which he admitted none but Italians. The +consequence of this rule was that he Italianized the profession of +mercenary arms for the future. All the great captains of the period were +formed in his ranks, during the course of those wars which he conducted +for the Duke of Milan. Two rose to paramount importance--Braccio da +Montone, who varied his master's system by substituting the tactics of +detached bodies of cavalry for the solid phalanx in which Barbiano had +moved his troops; and Sforza Attendolo, who adhered to the old method. +Sforza got his name from his great physical strength. He was a peasant +of the village of Cotignola, who, being invited to quit the mattock for +a sword, threw his pickax into an oak, and cried, 'If it stays there, it +is a sign that I shall make my fortune.' The ax stuck in the tree, and +Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.[2] After the death of +Barbiano in 1409, Sforza and Braccio separated and formed two distinct +companies, known as the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi, who carried on +between them, sometimes in combination, but usually in opposition, all +the wars of Italy for the next twenty years. These old comrades, who had +parted in pursuit of their several advantage, found that they had more +to lose than to gain by defeating each other in any bloody or +inconveniently decisive engagement. Therefore they adopted systems of +campaigning which should cost them as little as possible, but which +enabled them to exhibit a chess-player's capacity for designing clever +checkmates.[3] Both Braccio and Sforza died in 1424, and were succeeded +respectively by Nicolo Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. These two men +became in their turn the chief champions of Italy. At the same time +other Condottieri rose into notice. The Malatesta family at Rimini, the +ducal house of Urbino, the Orsini and the Vitelli of the Roman States, +the Varani of Camerino, the Baglioni of Perugia, and the younger +Gonzaghi furnished republics and princes with professional leaders of +tried skill and independent resources. The vassals of these noble houses +were turned into men-at-arms, and the chiefs acquired more importance in +their roving military life than they could have gained within the narrow +circuit of their little states. + + [1] Vol. v. p. 207. + + [2] This is the commonly received legend. Corio, p. 255, does not + draw attention to the lowness of Sforza's origin, but says that he + was only twelve years of age when he enlisted in the corps of + Boldrino da Panigale, condottiere of the Church. His robust physical + qualities were hereditary for many generations in his family. His + son Francesco was tall and well made, the best runner, jumper, and + wrestler of his day. He marched, summer and winter, bareheaded; + needed but little sleep; was spare in diet, and self-indulgent only + in the matter of women. Galeazzo Maria, though stained by despicable + vices was a powerful prince, who ruled his duchy with a strong arm. + Of his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the wife of Girolamo Riario, + a story is told, which illustrates the strong coarse vein that still + distinguished this brood of princes. [See Dennistoun, 'Dukes of + Urbino,' vol. i. p. 292, for Boccalini's account of the Siege of + Forli, sustained by Caterina in 1488. Compare Sismondi, vol. vii. p. + 251.] Caterina Riario Sforza, as a woman, was no unworthy inheritor + of her grandfather's personal heroism and genius for government. + + [3] I shall have to notice the evils of this system in another + place, while reviewing the _Principe_ of Machiavelli. In that + treatise the Florentine historian traces the whole ruin of Italy + during the sixteenth century to the employment of mercenaries. + +The biography of one of these Condottieri deserves special notice, since +it illustrates the vicissitudes of fortune to which such men were +exposed, as well as their relations to their patrons. Francesco +Carmagnuola was a Piedmontese. He first rose into notice at the battle +of Monza in 1412, when Filippo Maria Visconti observed his capacity and +bravery, and afterwards advanced him to the captaincy of a troop. Having +helped to reduce the Visconti duchy to order, Carmagnuola found himself +disgraced and suspected without good reason by the Duke of Milan; and in +1426 he took the pay of the Venetians against his old master. During the +next year he showed the eminence of his abilities as a general; for he +defeated the combined forces of Piccinino, Sforza, and other captains of +the Visconti, and took them prisoners at Macalo. Carmagnuola neither +imprisoned nor murdered his foes.[1] He gave them their liberty, and +four years later had to sustain a defeat from Sforza at Soncino. Other +reverses of fortune followed, which brought upon him the suspicion of +bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received +their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his +admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet +clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a +secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with +his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned for +this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been convicted of treason? Was he +being punished for his ill success in the campaign of the preceding +years? The Republic of Venice, by the secrecy in which she enveloped +this dark act of vengeance, sought to inspire the whole body of her +officials with vague alarm. + + [1] Such an act of violence, however consistent with the morality of + a Cesare Borgia, a Venetian Republic, or a Duke of Milan, would have + been directly opposed to the code of honor in use among Condottieri. + Nothing, indeed, is more singular among the contradictions of this + period than the humanity in the field displayed by hired captains. + War was made less on adverse armies than on the population of + provinces. The adventurers respected each other's lives, and treated + each other with courtesy. They were a brotherhood who played at + campaigning, rather than the representatives of forces seriously + bent on crushing each other to extermination. Machiavelli says + (Princ. cap. xii.) 'Aveano usato ogni industria per levar via a se e + a' soldati la fatica e la paura, non s'ammazzando nelle zuffe, ma + pigliandosi prigioni e senza taglia.' At the same time the license + they allowed themselves against the cities and the districts they + invaded is well illustrated by the pillage of Piacenza in 1447 by + Francesco Sforza's troops. The anarchy of a sack lasted forty days, + during which the inhabitants were indiscriminately sold as slaves, + or tortured for their hidden treasure. Sism. vi. 170. + +But to return to the Duchy of Milan. Francesco Sforza entered the +capital as conqueror in 1450, and was proclaimed Duke. He never obtained +the sanction of the Empire to his title, though Frederick III. was +proverbially lavish of such honors. But the great Condottiere, +possessing the substance, did not care for the external show of +monarchy. He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times well, attending +to the prosperity of his states, maintaining good discipline in his +cities, and losing no ground by foolish or ambitious schemes. Louis XI. +of France is said to have professed himself Sforza's pupil in +statecraft, than which no greater tribute could be paid to his political +sagacity. In 1466 he died, leaving three sons, Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, +the Cardinal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro. + +'Francesco's crown,' says Ripamonti, 'was destined to pass to more than +six inheritors, and these five successions were accomplished by a series +of tragic events in his family. Galeazzo, his son, was murdered because +of his abominable crimes, in the presence of his people, before the +altar, in the middle of the sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who +followed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico was +imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a dungeon.[1] One of his +sons perished in the same way; the other, after years of misery and +exile, was restored in his childless old age to a throne which had been +undermined, and when he died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the +recompense for the treason of Francesco to the State of Milan. It was +for such successes that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and +danger.' In these rapid successions we trace, besides the demoralization +of the Sforza family, the action of new forces from without. France, +Germany, and Spain appeared upon the stage; and against these great +powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless. + + [1] In the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly painted + wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room known + as his prison, with this legend, _Voila un qui n'est pas content_. + Tradition gives it to Il Moro. + +We have now reached the threshold of the true Renaissance, and a new +period is being opened for Italian politics. The despots are about to +measure their strength with the nations of the North. It was Lodovico +Sforza who, by his invitation of Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated +the age of Foreign Enslavement. His biography belongs, therefore, to +another chapter. But the life of Galeazzo Maria, husband of Bona of +Savoy, and uncle by marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an +integral part of that history of the Milanese despots which we have +hitherto been tracing. In him the passions of Gian Maria Visconti were +repeated with the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice in +particular his parade-expedition in 1471 to Florence, when he flaunted +the wealth extorted from his Milanese subjects before the soberminded +citizens of a still free city. Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, fifty +chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; a hundred men-at-arms +and five hundred foot soldiers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of +hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him. His suite of courtiers +numbered two thousand on horseback: 200,000 golden florins were expended +on this pomp. Machiavelli (1st. Fior. lib. 7) marks this visit of the +Duke of Milan as a turning-point from austere simplicity to luxury and +license in the manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de' Medici was +already bending to his yoke. The most extravagant lust, the meanest and +the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.[1] He +it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them +alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom he +had made his confidants and friends. The details of his assassination, +in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for +pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral +characteristic of this period which is intimately connected with the +despotism. Three young nobles of Milan, educated in the classic +literature by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had imbibed +from their studies of Greek and Latin history an ardent thirst for +liberty and a deadly hatred of tyrants.[2] Their names were Carlo +Visconti, Girolamo Olgiati, and Giannandrea Lampugnani. Galeazzo Sforza +had wounded the two latter in the points which men hold dearest--their +honor and their property[3]--by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by +depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Abbey of Miramondo. The +spirit of Harmodius and Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they +determined to rid Milan of her despot. After some meetings in the garden +of S. Ambrogio, where they matured their plans, they laid their project +of tyrannicide as a holy offering before the patron saint of Milan.[4] +Then having spent a few days in poignard exercise for the sake of +training,[5] they took their place within the precincts of S. Stephen's +Church. There they received the sacrament and addressed themselves in +prayer to the Protomartyr, whose fane was about to be hallowed by the +murder of a monster odious to God and man. It was on the morning of +December 26, 1476, that the duke entered San Stefano. At one and the +same moment the daggers of the three conspirators struck him--Olgiati's +in the breast, Visconti's in the back, Lampugnani's in the belly. He +cried 'Ah, Dio!' and fell dead upon the pavement. The friends were +unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lampugnani were killed on the +spot; Olgiati was seized, tortured, and torn to death. + + [1] Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 777, + and Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures. + See too his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. + 316. Yet Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with + the vice of unbridled sensuality. + + [2] The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this + time, as also during the French Revolution, fired the + imagination of patriots. Lorenzino de' Medici appealed to the + example of Timoleon in 1537, and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that + of Brutus in 1513. + + [3] 'Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o + nell' onore.... La roba e l'onore sono quelle due cose che + offendono piu gli uomini che alcun' altra offesa, e dalle quali + il principe si debbe guardare: perche e' non puo mai spogliare + uno tanto che non gli resti un coltello da vendicarsi; non puo + tanto disonorare uno che non gli resti un animo ostinato alla + vendetta.' Mach. Disc. iii. 6. + + [4] See Olgiati's prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87, + and in Mach. Ist. Fior. lib. 7. + + [5] Giovanni Sanzi's chronicle, quoted by Dennistoun, vol. i. + p. 223, describes the conspirators rehearsing on a wooden + puppet. + +In the interval which elapsed between the rack and the pincers, Olgiati +had time to address this memorable speech to the priest who urged him to +repent: 'As for the noble action for which I am about to die, it is this +which gives my conscience peace; to this I trust for pardon from the +Judge of all. Far from repenting, if I had to come ten times to life in +order ten times to die by these same torments, I should not hesitate to +dedicate my blood and all my powers to an object so sublime.' When the +hangman stood above him, ready to begin the work of mutilation, he is +said to have exclaimed: Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memora +facti--my death is untimely, my fame eternal, the memory of the deed +will last for aye.' He was only twenty-two years of age.[1] There is an +antique grandeur about the outlines of this story, strangely mingled +with mediaeval Catholicism in the details, which makes it typical of the +Renaissance. Conspiracies against rulers were common at the time in +Italy; but none were so pure and honorable as this. Of the Pazzi +Conjuration (1478) which Sixtus IV. directed to his everlasting infamy +against the Medici, I shall have to speak in another place. It is enough +to mention here in passing the patriotic attempt of Girolamo Gentile +against Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa in 1476, and the more selfish plot of +Nicolo d' Este, in the same year, against his uncle Ercole, who held the +Marquisate of Ferrara to the prejudice of his own claim. The latter +tragedy was rendered memorable by the vengeance taken by Ercole. He +beheaded Nicolo and his cousin Azzo together with twenty-five of his +comrades, effectually preventing by this bloodshed any future attempt to +set aside his title. Falling as these four conspiracies do within the +space of two years, and displaying varied features of antique heroism, +simple patriotism, dynastic dissension, and ecclesiastical perfidy, they +present examples of the different forms and causes of political +tragedies with a noteworthy and significant conciseness.[2] + + [1] The whole story may be read in Ripamonti, under the head of + 'Confessio Olgiati;' in Corio, who was a page of the Duke's and an + eye-witness of the murder; and in the seventh book of Machiavelli's + 'History.' Sismondi's summary and references, vol. vii. pp. 86-90, + are very full. + + [2] It is worthy of notice that very many tyrannicides took + place in Church--for example, the murders of Francesco Vico dei + Prefetti, of the Varani, the Chiavelli, Giuliano de' Medici, + and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The choice of public service, as the + best occasion for the commission of these crimes, points to the + guarded watchfulness maintained by tyrants in their palaces and + on the streets. Banquets and festivities offered another kind + of opportunity; and it was on such occasions that domestic + tragedies, like Oliverotto's murder of his uncle and Grifonetto + Baglioni's treason, were accomplished. + +Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth +century. Neither public nor private morality in our sense of the word +existed. The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the +members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime +in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. +Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, 'He who gives his own +life can take a tyrant's,' had worked itself into popular language. At +this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public +murder which prevailed in Italy. Machiavelli, in the _Discorsi_ iii. 6, +discusses the whole subject with his usual frigid and exhaustive +analysis. It is no part of his critical method to consider the morality +of the matter. He deals with the facts of history scientifically. The +esteem in which tyrannicide was held at Florence is proved by the +erection of Donatello's Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo +Pubblico, with this inscription, _exemplum salutis publicae cives +posuere_. All the political theorists agree that to rid a state of its +despot is a virtuous act. They only differ about its motives and its +utility. In Guicciardini's Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. pp. +53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide are discussed, and it is +concluded that _pochissimi sono stati quelli che si siano mossi +meramente per amore della liberta della sua patria, a' quali si conviene +suprema laude_.[1] Donato Giannotti (Opere, vol. i. p. 341) bids the +conspirator consider whether the mere destruction of the despot will +suffice to restore his city to true liberty and good government--a +caution by which Lorenzino de' Medici in his assassination of Duke +Alessandro might have profited; for he killed one tyrant in order only +to make room for another. Lorenzino's own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. pp. +283-295) is an important document, as showing that the murderer of a +despot counted on the sympathy of honorable men. So, too, is the verdict +of Boscolo's confessor (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who pronounced that +conspiracy against a tyrant was no crime. Nor did the demoralization of +the age stop here. Force, which had been substituted for Law in +government, became, as it were, the mainspring of society. Murders, +poisoning, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as of +public life.[2] In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an +inconceivably low rate. A man's life was worth scarcely more than that +of a horse. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional +cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the +right of sanctuary. Popes sold absolution for the most horrible +excesses, and granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of +crimes of lust and violence. Success was the standard by which acts were +judged; and the man who could help his friends intimidate his enemies, +and carve a way to fortune for himself by any means he chose, was +regarded as a hero. Machiavelli's use of the word _virtu_ is in this +relation most instructive. It has altogether lost the Christian sense of +_virtue_, and retains only so much of the Roman _virtus_ as is +applicable to the courage, intellectual ability, and personal prowess of +one who has achieved his purpose, be that what it may. The upshot of +this state of things was that individuality of character and genius +obtained a freer scope at this time in Italy than during any other +period of modern history. + + [1] 'Very few indeed have those been, whose motive for tyrannicide + was a pure love of their country's liberty; and these deserve the + highest praise.' + + [2] It is quite impossible to furnish a complete view of + Italian society under this aspect. Students must be referred to + the stories of the novelists, who collected the more dramatic + incidents and presented them in the form of entertaining + legends. It may suffice here to mention Bartolommeo Colleoni, + Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, all of whom owed their start in + life to the murder of their respective fathers by assassins; to + Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were attempted by cut-throats; + to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in each of whose + biographies poison and the knife play their parts. If men of + letters and artists were exposed to these perils, the dangers + of the great and noble may be readily imagined. + +At the same time it must not be forgotten that during this period the +art and culture of the Renaissance were culminating. Filelfo was +receiving the gold of Filippo Maria Visconti. Guarino of Verona was +instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da Feltre was educating +the children of the Marquis of Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan +with his music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was pouring +forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino was expounding Plato. +Boiardo was singing the prelude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara. Pico +della Mirandola was dreaming of a reconciliation of the Hebrew, Pagan, +and Christian traditions. It is necessary to note these facts in +passing; just as when we are surveying the history of letters and the +arts, it becomes us to remember the crimes and the madness of the +despots who patronized them. This was an age in which even the wildest +and most perfidious of tyrants felt the ennobling influences and the +sacred thirst of knowledge. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of +Rimini, might be selected as a true type of the princes who united a +romantic zeal for culture with the vices of barbarians.[1] The coins +which bear the portraits of this man, together with the medallions +carved in red Verona marble on his church at Rimini, show a narrow +forehead, protuberant above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow +cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips. The whole face seems +ready to flash with sudden violence, to merge its self-control in a +spasm of fury. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta killed three wives in +succession, violated his daughter, and attempted the chastity of his own +son. So much of him belongs to the mere savage. He caused the +magnificent church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo Alberti +in a manner more worthy of a Pagan Pantheon than of a Christian temple. +He incrusted it with exquisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of +the earliest Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns upon +every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in the building, and +dedicated a shrine there to his concubine--_Divae Isottae Sacrum_. So much +of him belongs to the Neo-Pagan of the fifteenth century. He brought +back from Greece the mortal remains of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon, +buried them in a sarcophagus outside his church, and wrote upon the tomb +this epigraph: 'These remains of Gemistus of Byzantium, chief of the +sages of his day, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, +commander in the war against the king of the Turks in the Morea, induced +by the mighty love with which he burns for men of learning, brought +hither and placed within this chest. 1466.' He, the most fretful and +turbulent of men, read books with patient care, and bore the +contradictions of pedants in the course of long discussions on +philosophy and arts and letters. So much of him belonged to the new +spirit of the coming age, in which the zeal for erudition was a passion, +and the spell of science was stronger than the charms of love. At the +same time, as Condottiere, he displayed all the treasons, duplicities, +cruelties, sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which the most +accomplished villain of the age could have aspired. + + [1] For a fuller account of him, see my 'Sketches in Italy and + Greece,' article _Rimini_. + +It would be easy, following in the steps of Tiraboschi, to describe the +patronage awarded in the fifteenth century to men of letters by +princes--the protection extended by Nicholas III. of Ferrara to Guarino +and Aurispa--the brilliant promise of his son Leonello, who corresponded +with Poggio, Filelfo, Guarino, Francesco Barbaro, and other +scholars--the liberality of Duke Borso, whose purse was open to poor +students. Or we might review the splendid culture of the court of +Naples, where Alfonso committed the education of his terrible son +Ferdinand to the care of Lorenzo Valla and Antonio Beccadelli.[1] More +insight, however, into the nature of Italian despotism in all its phases +may be gained by turning from Milan to Urbino, and by sketching a +portrait of the good Duke Frederick.[2] The life of Frederick, Count of +Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 1474 by Pope Sixtus IV., covers +the better part of the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little +corner of old Umbria lying between the Apennines and the Adriatic, +Rimini and Ancona, formed his patrimony. Speaking roughly, the whole +duchy was but forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of +bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor territory became the +center of a splendid court. 'Federigo,' says his biographer, Muzio, +'maintained a suite so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal +household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino in order to learn +manners and the art of war from the most noble general of his day. 'His +household,' we hear from Vespasiano, 'which consisted of 500 mouths +entertained at his own cost, was governed less like a company of +soldiers than a strict religious community. There was no gaming nor +swearing, but the men conversed with the utmost sobriety.' In a list of +the court officers we find forty-five counts of the duchy and of other +states, seventeen gentlemen, five secretaries, four teachers of grammar, +logic, and philosophy, fourteen clerks in public offices, five +architects and engineers, five readers during meals, four transcribers +of MSS. The library, collected by Vespasiano during fourteen years of +assiduous labor, contained copies of all the Greek and Latin authors +then discovered, the principal treatises on theology and church history, +a complete series of Italian poets, historiographers, and commentators, +various medical, mathematical, and legal works, essays on music, +military tactics and the arts, together with such Hebrew books as were +accessible to copyists. Every volume was bound in crimson and silver, +and the whole collection cost upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses +of so large a household, and the maintenance of this fine library, not +to mention a palace that was being built and churches that required +adornment, the mere revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed. +Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a general. Military +service formed his trade. 'In 1453,' says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from +Alfonso of Naples exceeded 8,000 ducats a month, and for many years he +had from him and his son an annual peace-pension of 6,000 in name of +past services. At the close of his life, when captain-general of the +Italian league, he drew in war 165,000 ducats of annual stipend, 45,000 +being his own share; in peace, 65,000 in all.' As a Condottiere, +Federigo was famous in this age of broken faith for his plain dealing +and sincerity. Only one piece of questionable practice--the capture of +Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo +Malatesta--stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the +field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and +merciful.[3] 'In military science,' says Vespasiano, 'he was excelled by +no commander of his time; uniting energy with judgment, he conquered by +prudence as much as by force. The like wariness was observed in all his +affairs; and in none of his many battles was he worsted. Nor may I omit +the strict observance of good faith, wherein he never failed. All to +whom he once gave his word, might testify to his inviolate performance +of it.' The same biographer adds that 'he was singularly religious, and +most observant of the Divine commands. No morning passed without his +hearing mass upon his knees.' + + [1] The Panormita; author, by the way, of the shameless + 'Hermaphroditus.' This fact is significant. The moral sense was + extinct when such a pupil was intrusted to such a tutor. + + [2] For the following details I am principally indebted to 'The + Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,' by James Dennistoun; 3 vols., + Longmans, 1851. Vespasiano's Life of Duke Frederick (Vite di + uomini illustri, pp. 72-112) is one of the most charming + literary portraits extant. It has, moreover, all the value of a + personal memoir, for Vespasiano had lived in close relation + with the Duke as his librarian. + + [3] See the testimony of Francesco di Giorgio; Dennistoun, vol. + i. p. 259. The sack of Volterra was, however, a blot upon his + humanity. + +While a boy, Federigo had been educated in the school of Vittorino da +Feltre at Mantua. Gian Francesco Gonzaga invited that eminent scholar to +his court in 1425 for the education of his sons and daughter, assembling +round him subordinate teachers in grammar, mathematics, music, painting, +dancing, riding, and all noble exercises. The system supervised by +Vittorino included not only the acquisition of scholarship, but also +training in manly sports and the cultivation of the moral character. +Many of the noblest Italians were his pupils. Ghiberto da Correggio, +Battista Pallavicini, Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, Gabbriello da Cremona, +Francesco da Castiglione, Niccolo Perrotti, together with the Count of +Montefeltro, lived in Vittorino's house, associating with the poorer +students whom the benevolent philosopher instructed for the love of +learning. Ambrogio Camaldolese in a letter to Niccolo Niccoli gives this +animated picture of the Mantuan school: 'I went again to visit Vittorino +and to see his Greek books. He came to meet me with the children of the +prince, two sons and a daughter of seven years. The eldest boy is +eleven, the younger five. There are also other children of about ten, +sons of nobles, as well as other pupils. He teaches them Greek, and they +can write that language well. I saw a translation from Saint Chrysostom +made by one of them which pleased me much.' And again a few years later: +'He brought me Giovanni Lucido, son of the Marquis, a boy of about +fourteen, whom he has educated, and who then recited two hundred lines +composed by him upon the shows with which the Emperor was received in +Mantua. The verses were most beautiful, but the sweetness and elegance +of his recitation made them still more graceful. He also showed me two +propositions added by him to Euclid, which prove how eminent he promises +to be in mathematical studies. There was also a little daughter of the +Marquis, of about ten, who writes Greek beautifully; and many other +pupils, some of noble birth, attended them.' The medal struck by +Pisanello in honor of Vittorino da Feltre bears the ensign of a pelican +feeding her young from a wound in her own breast--a symbol of the +master's self-sacrifice.[1] I hope to return in the second volume of +this work to Vittorino. It is enough here to remark that in this good +school the Duke of Urbino acquired that solid culture which +distinguished him through life. In after years, when the cares of his +numerous engagements fell thick upon him, we hear from Vespasiano that +he still prosecuted his studies, reading Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, +and Physics, listening to the works of S. Thomas Aquinas and Scotus read +aloud, perusing at one time the Greek fathers and at another the Latin +historians.[2] How profitably he spent his day at Urbino may be gathered +from this account of his biographer: 'He was on horseback at daybreak +with four or six mounted attendants and not more, and with one or two +foot servants unarmed. He would ride out three or four miles, and be +back again when the rest of his court rose from bed. After dismounting, +he heard mass. Then he went into a garden open at all sides, and gave +audience to those who listed until dinner-time. At table, all the doors +were open; any man could enter where his lordship was; for he never ate +except with a full hall. According to the season he had books read out +as follows--in Lent, spiritual works; at other times, the history of +Livy; all in Latin. His food was plain; he took no comfits, and drank no +wine, except drinks of pomegranate, cherry, or apples.' After dinner he +heard causes, and gave sentence in the Latin tongue. Then he would visit +the nuns of Santa Chiara or watch the young men of Urbino at their +games, using the courtesy of perfect freedom with his subjects. His +reputation as a patron of the arts and of learning was widely spread. +'To hear him converse with a sculptor,' says Vespasiano, 'you would have +thought he was a master of the craft. In painting, too, he displayed the +most acute judgment; and as he could not find among the Italians worthy +masters of oil colors, he sent to Flanders for one, who painted for him +the philosophers and poets and doctors of the Church. He also brought +from Flanders masters in the art of tapestry.' Pontano, Ficino, and +Poggio dedicated works of importance to his name; and Pirro Perrotti, in +the preface to his uncle's 'Cornucopia,' draws a quaint picture of the +reception which so learned a book was sure to meet with at Urbino.[3] +But Frederick was not merely an accomplished prince. Concurrent +testimony proves that he remained a good husband and a constant friend +throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quickness of temper, +and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age of lax morality he +might have indulged without reproach. In his relations to his subjects +he showed what a paternal monarch should be, conversing familiarly with +the citizens of Urbino, accosting them with head uncovered, inquiring +into the necessities of the poorer artisans, relieving the destitute, +dowering orphan girls, and helping distressed shopkeepers with loans. +Numerous anecdotes are told which illustrate his consideration for his +old servants, and his anxiety for the welfare and good order of his +state. At a time when the Pope and the King of Naples were making money +by monopolies of corn, the Duke of Urbino filled his granaries from +Apulia, and sold bread during a year of scarcity at a cheap rate to his +poor subjects. Nor would he allow his officers to prosecute the indigent +for debts incurred by such purchases. He used to say: 'I am not a +merchant; it is enough to have saved my people from hunger.' We must +remember that this excellent prince had a direct interest in +maintaining the prosperity and good-will of his duchy. His profession +was warfare, and the district of Urbino supplied him with his best +troops. Yet this should not diminish the respect due to the foresight +and benevolence of a Condottiere who knew how to carry on his calling +with humanity and generosity. Federigo wore the Order of the Garter, +which Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan Order of the Ermine, +and the Papal decorations of the Rose, the Hat, the Sword. He served +three pontiffs, two kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The +Republic of Florence and more than one Italian League appointed him +their general in the field. If his military career was less brilliant +than that of the two Sforzas, Piccinino, or Carmagnuola, he avoided the +crimes to which ambition led some of these men and the rocks on which +they struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing duchy, a +cultivated court, a renowned name, and the leadership of the Italian +League to his son Guidobaldo. + + [1] Prendilacqua, the biographer of Vittorino, says that he died so + poor that his funeral expenses had to be defrayed. + + [2] Pius II. in his Commentaries gives an interesting account + of the conversations concerning the tactics of the ancients + which he held with Frederick, in 1461, in the neighborhood of + Tivoli. + + [3] The preface to the original edition of the 'Cornucopia' is + worth reading for the lively impression which it conveys of + Federigo's personality: 'Admirabitur in te divinam illam + corporis proceritatem, membrorum robur eximium, venerandam oris + dignitatem, aetatis maturam gravitatem, divinam quandam + majestatem cum humanitate conjunctam, totum praeterea talem + qualem esse oportebat eum principem quem nuper pontifex maximus + et universus senatus omnium rerum suarum et totius + ecclesiastici imperii ducem moderatoremque constituit.' + +The young Duke, whose court, described by Castiglione, may be said to +have set the model of good breeding to all Europe, began life under the +happiest auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear that even in +boyhood he cared only for study and for manly sports. His memory was so +retentive that he could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse +of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what he had resolved to +retain. In the Latin and Greek languages he became an accomplished +scholar,[1] and while he appreciated the poets, he showed peculiar +aptitude for philosophy and history. But his development was precocious. +His zeal for learning and the excessive ardor with which he devoted +himself to physical exercises undermined his constitution. He became an +invalid and died childless, after exhibiting to his court for many years +an example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness under +the restraints of enforced inaction. His wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, one +of the most famous women of her age, was no less a pattern of noble +conduct and serene contentment. + +Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro dynasty.[2] It is +necessary to bear their virtues in mind while dwelling on the +characteristics of Italian despotism in the fifteenth century. The Duchy +of Urbino, both as an established dynasty not founded upon violence, and +also as a center of really humane culture, formed, it is true, an +exception to the rule of Italian tyrannies: yet, if we omitted this +state from our calculation, confining our attention to the extravagant +iniquities of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities of the +Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court of Naples, we should gain a +false notion of the many-sided character of Italy, in which at that time +vices and virtues were so strangely blended. We must never forget that +the same society which produced a Filippo Maria Visconti, a Galeazzo +Maria Sforza, a Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, gave birth +also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da Montefeltro. It is only +by studying the lives of all these men in combination that we can obtain +a correct conception of the manifold personality, the mingled polish and +barbarism, of the Italian Renaissance. + + [1] It is not easy to say what a panegyrist of that period intended + by 'a complete knowledge of Greek,' or 'fluent Greek writing,' in a + Prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by these + phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, but + rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of Latin + books to understand allusions and quotations. Poliziano, it may be + remarked, thought it worth while to flatter Guidobaldo in a Greek + epigram. + + [2] After Guidobaldo's death the duchy was continued by the + Della Rovere family, one of whom, Giovanni, Prefect of Rome and + nephew of Sixtus IV., married the Duke's sister Giovanna in + 1474. + +Some more detailed account of Baldassare Castiglione's treatise _Il +Cortegiano_ will form a fitting conclusion to this Chapter on the +Despots. It is true that his book was written later than the period we +have been considering,[1] and he describes court life in its most +graceful aspect. Yet all the antecedent history of the past two +centuries had been gradually producing the conditions under which his +courtier flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he appeared +to the rest of Europe, was such a gentleman as he depicts. For the +historian his book is of equal value in its own department with the +Principe of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, and the +Diary of Burchard. + + [1] It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the Aldi + of Venice in 1528. We find an English translation so early as 1561 + by Thomas Hoby. At this time it was in the hands of all the + gentlefolk of Europe. It is interesting to compare the 'Cortegiano' + with Della Casa's 'Galateo,' published in 1558. The 'Galateo' + professes to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the + minute rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the + present century. In manners and their ethical analysis we have + certainly gained nothing during the last three centuries. The + principle upon which these precepts of conduct are founded is not + etiquette or fashion, but respect for the sensibilities of others. + It would be difficult to compose a more philosophical treatise on + the lesser duties imposed upon us by the conditions of society--such + minute matters as the proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin, + being referred to the one rule of acting so as to cause no + inconvenience to our neighbors. + +In the opening of his 'Cortegiano' Castiglione introduces us to the +court of Urbino--refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated, +gentle--confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy. He +brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of +Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of +Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters +in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author +of 'Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to +estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, +of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San +Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to +fame--two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of +Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l' Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the +humorist. These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the +custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four +consecutive evenings. The theme of their conversation is the Perfect +Courtier. What must that man be who deserves the name of Cortegiano, +and how must he conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries us at +once into a bygone age. No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier; +but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to +despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing +pages, the question was one of the most serious importance. Culture and +good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the +intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect +of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite +knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than +in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation +whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to +court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or +even in humbler offices of state. To be able, therefore, to conduct +himself with dignity, to know how to win the favor of his master and to +secure the good-will of his peers, to retain his personal honor and to +make himself respected without being hated, to inspire admiration and to +avoid envy, to outshine all honorable rivals in physical exercises and +the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and retinue, to be +instructed in the arts of polite intercourse, to converse with ease and +wit, to be at home alike in the tilting-yard, the banquet-hall, the +boudoir, and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to live +before the world and yet to keep a fitting privacy and distance,--these +and a hundred other matters were the climax and perfection of the +culture of a gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in which it +was possible for a man of birth and talents to shine, it followed that +the perfect courtier and the perfect gentleman were synonymous terms. +Castiglione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on the character +of the true gentleman as he appeared in Italy. Eliminating all qualities +that are special to any art or calling, he defines those essential +characteristics which were requisite for social excellence in the +sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how unchangeable are the +laws of real politeness and refinement. Castiglione's courtier is, with +one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as +all men of education at the present day would wish to be. + +The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he must be noble. The +Count of Canossa, who proposed the subject of debate, lays down this as +an axiom. Gaspar Pallavicino denies the necessity[1] But after a lively +discussion, his opinion is overruled, on the ground that, although the +gentle virtues may be found among people of obscure origin, yet a man +who intends to be a courtier must start with the prestige of noble +birth. Next he must be skillful in the use of weapons and courageous in +the battle-field. He is not, however, bound to have the special science +of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess unique devotion to +the art of war: that would argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory. +Again, he must excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if +possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill +on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of +display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and +not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he +does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every +form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most +perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to +hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without +effort or deliberation.' This vice of affectation in all its kinds, and +the ways of avoiding it, are discussed with a delicacy of insight which +would do credit to a Chesterfield of the present century, sending forth +his son into society for the first time. Castiglione goes so far as to +condemn the pedantry of far-fetched words and the coxcombry of elaborate +costumes, as dangerous forms of affectation. His courtier must speak and +write with force and freedom. He need not be a purist in his use of +language, but may use such foreign phrases and modern idioms as are +current in good society, aiming only at simplicity and clearness. He +must add to excellence in arms polite culture in letters and sound +scholarship, avoiding that barbarism of the French, who think it +impossible to be a good soldier and an accomplished student at the same +time. Yet his learning should be always held in reserve, to give +brilliancy and flavor to his wit, and not brought forth for merely +erudite parade. He must have a practical acquaintance with music and +dancing; it would be well for him to sing and touch various stringed and +keyed instruments, so as to relax his own spirits and to make himself +agreeable to ladies. If he can compose verses and sing them to his own +accompaniment, so much the better. Finally, he ought to understand the +arts of painting and sculpture; for criticism, even though a man be +neither poet nor artist, is an elegant accomplishment. Such are the +principal qualities of the Cortegiano. + + [1] Italy, earlier than any other European nation, developed + theoretical democracy. Dante had defined true nobility to consist of + personal excellence in a man or in his ancestors; he also called + 'nobilta' sister of 'filosofia.' Poggio in his 'Dialogue De + Nobilitate,' into which he introduces Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo + de' Medici (Cosimo's brother), decides that only merit constitutes + true nobility. Hawking and hunting are far less noble occupations + than agriculture; descent from a long line of historic criminals is + no honor. French and English castle-life, and the robber-knighthood + of Germany, he argues, are barbarous. Lorenzo pleads the authority + of Aristotle in favor of noble blood; Poggio contests the passage + quoted, and shows the superiority of the Latin word 'nobilitas' + (distinction) over the Greek term [Greek: _eugeneia_] (good birth). + The several kinds of aristocracy in Italy are then discussed. In + Naples the nobles despise business and idle their time away. In Rome + they manage their estates. In Venice and Genoa they engage in + commerce. In Florence they either take to mercantile pursuits or + live upon the produce of their land in idleness. The whole way of + looking at the subject betrays a liberal and scientific spirit, + wholly free from prejudice. Machiavelli ('Discorsi,' i. 55) is very + severe on the aristocracy, whom he defines as 'those who live in + idleness on the produce of their estates, without applying + themselves to agriculture or to any other useful occupation.' He + points out that the Venetian nobles are not properly so called, + since they are merchants. The different districts of Italy had + widely different conceptions of nobility. Naples was always + aristocratic, owing to its connection with France and Spain. Ferrara + maintained the chivalry of courts. Those states, on the other hand, + which had been democratized, like Florence, by republican customs, + or like Milan, by despotism, set less value on birth than on talent + and wealth. It was not until the age of the Spanish ascendency + (latter half of sixteenth century) that Cosimo I. withdrew the young + Florentines from their mercantile pursuits and enrolled them in his + order of S. Stephen, and that the patricians of Genoa carried + daggers inscribed 'for the chastisement of villeins.' + +The precepts which are laid down for the use of his acquirements and his +general conduct, resolve themselves into a strong recommendation of tact +and caution. The courtier must study the nature of his prince, and show +the greatest delicacy in approaching him, so as to secure his favor, and +to avoid wearying him with importunities. In tendering his advice he +must be modest; but he should make a point of never sacrificing his own +liberty of judgment. To obey his master in dishonorable things would be +a derogation from his dignity; and if he discovers any meanness in the +character of the prince, it is better to quit his service.[1] A courtier +must be careful to create beforehand a favorable opinion of himself in +places he intends to visit. Much stress is laid upon his choice of +clothes and the equipment of his servants. In these respects he should +aim at combining individuality with simplicity, so as to produce an +impression of novelty without extravagance or eccentricity. He must be +very cautious in his friendships, selecting his associates with care, +and admitting only one or two to intimacy. + + [1] From many passages in the 'Cortegiano' it is clear that + Castiglione is painting the character of an independent gentleman, + to whom self-culture in all humane excellence is of far more + importance than the acquisition of the art of pleasing. + Circumstances made the life of courts the best obtainable; but there + is no trace of French 'oeil-de-boeuf' servility. + +In connection with the general subject of tact and taste, the Cardinal +Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of +jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of +wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad +taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere +obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many +jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the +essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth +by cleverness, and not by mere tricks and clumsy inventions. + +In bringing this chapter on Italian Despotism in the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries to a conclusion, it will be well to cast a backward +glance over the ground which has been traversed. A great internal change +took place and was accomplished during this period. The free burghs +which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to +tyrannies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and maintained by +force. In the absence of dynastic right, violence and craft were +instruments by means of which the despots founded and preserved their +power. Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large were not unfavorable +to the growth of principalities. On the contrary, the forces which move +society, the inner instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress and +development, tended year by year more surely to the consolidation of +despotisms. City after city lost its faculty for self-government, until +at last Florence, so long the center of political freedom, fell beneath +the yoke of her merchant princes. It is difficult for the historian not +to feel either a monarchical or a republican bias. Yet this internal and +gradual revolution in the states of Italy may be regarded neither as a +matter for exultation in the cause of sovereignty, nor for lamentation +over the decay of liberty. It was but part of an inevitable process +which the Italians shared, according to the peculiarities of their +condition, in common with the rest of Europe. + +In tracing the history of the Visconti and the Sforzas our attention has +been naturally directed to the private and political vices of the +despot. As a contrast to so much violence and treachery, we have studied +the character of one of the best princes produced in this period. Yet it +must be borne in mind that the Duke of Urbino was far less +representative of his class than Francesco Sforza, and that the aims and +notions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti formed the ideal to which an Italian +prince of spirit, if he had the opportunity, aspired. The history of art +and literature in this period belongs to another branch of the inquiry; +and a separate chapter must be devoted to the consideration of political +morality as theorized by the Italians at the end of these two centuries +of intrigue. But having insisted on the violence and vices of the +tyrants, it seemed necessary to close the review of their age by +describing the Italian nobleman as court-life made him. Castiglione +shows him at the very best: the darker shadows of the picture are +omitted; the requirements of the most finished culture and the tone of +the purest society in Italy are depicted with the elegance of a scholar +and the taste of a true gentleman. The fact remains that the various +influences at work in Italy during the age of the despots had rendered +the conception of this ideal possible. Nowhere else in Europe could a +portrait of so much dignity and sweetness, combining the courage of a +soldier with the learning of a student and the accomplishments of an +artist, the liberality of freedom with the courtesies of service, have +been painted from the life and been recognized as the model which all +members of polite society should imitate. Nobler characters and more +heroic virtues might have been produced by the Italian commonwealths if +they had continued to enjoy their ancient freedom of self-government. +Meanwhile we must render this justice to Italian despotism, that beneath +its shadow was developed the type of the modern gentleman. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE REPUBLICS. + + +The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of +their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of +Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of +Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's +Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests +and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual +Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of +Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast +of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and +Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in +respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece +and Italy--Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian +Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of +Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms. + + +The despotisms of Italy present the spectacle of states founded upon +force, controlled and molded by the will of princes, whose object in +each case has been to maintain usurped power by means of mercenary arms +and to deprive the people of political activity. Thus the Italian +principalities, however they may differ in their origin, the character +of their administration, or their relation to Church and Empire, all +tend to one type. The egotism of the despot, conscious of his selfish +aims and deliberate in their execution, formed the motive principle in +all alike. + +The republics on the contrary are distinguished by strongly marked +characteristics. The history of each is the history of the development +of certain specific qualities, which modified the type of municipal +organization common to them all. Their differences consist chiefly in +the varying forms which institutions of a radically similar design +assumed, and also in those peculiar local conditions which made the +Venetians Levant merchants, the Perugians captains of adventure, the +Genoese admirals and pirates, the Florentines bankers, and so forth. +Each commonwealth contracted a certain physiognomy through the prolonged +action of external circumstances and by the maintenance of some +political predilection. Thus Siena, excluded from maritime commerce by +its situation, remained, broadly speaking, faithful to the Ghibelline +party; while Perugia at the distance of a few miles, equally debarred +from mercantile expansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity. +The annals of the one city record a long succession of complicated party +quarrels, throughout the course of which the State continued free; the +Guelf leanings of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment of +the Popes, while its civic independence was imperiled and enfeebled by +the contests of a few noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner +are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a state of feud and +faction which delivered it bound hand and foot to Florence, the former +after many vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the dominion of a +narrow oligarchy. + +But while recognizing these differences, which manifest themselves +partly in what may be described as national characteristics, and partly +in constitutional varieties, we may trace one course of historical +progression in all except Venice. This is what natural philosophers +might call the morphology of Italian commonwealths. To begin with, the +Italian republics were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek +states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the +privileges of government, together with a larger population, who, +though they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages +of the city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was +hereditary in those families by whom it had been once acquired, each +republic having its own criterion of the right, and guarding it +jealously against the encroachments of non-qualified persons. In +Florence, for example, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.[1] +In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the Golden Book. The +rivalries to which this system of municipal government gave rise were a +chief source of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor did the +burghers see far enough or philosophically enough to recruit their +numbers by a continuous admission of new members from the wealthy but +unfranchised citizens.[2] This alone could have saved them from the +death by dwindling and decay to which they were exposed. The Italian +conception of citizenship may be set forth in the words of one of their +acutest critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors +in a state:[3] 'Non dico tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti +quelli che hanno grado; cioe che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli +antichi loro, faculta d'ottenere i magistrate; e in somma che sono +_participes imperandi et parendi_.' No Italian had any notion of +representative government in our sense of the term. The problem was +always how to put the administration of the state most conveniently +into the hands of the fittest among those who were qualified as +burghers, and how to give each burgher his due share in the government; +not how to select men delegated from the whole population. The wisest +among their philosophical politicians sought to establish a mixed +constitution, which should combine the advantages of principality, +aristocracy, and democracy. Starting with the fact that the eligible +burghers numbered some 5,000, and with the assumption that among these +the larger portion would be content with freedom and a voice in the +administration, while a certain body were ambitious of honorable +distinctions, and a few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they +thought that these several desires might be satisfied and reconciled in +a republic composed of a general assembly of the citizens, a select +Senate, and a Doge. In these theories the influence of Aristotelian +studies[4] and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it +is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 +who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the +city.[5] The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like +that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's +speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, +with which we Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth century, +or that again of the rights of men, on which the democracies of France +and America were founded. The right contemplated by the Italian +politicians is that of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for their +advantage. As a matter of fact, Venice was the only Italian republic +which maintained this kind of oligarchy with success through centuries +of internal tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a series of +revolutions which ended at last in their enslavement. + + [1] Villari, _Life of Savonarola_, vol. i. p. 259, may be consulted + concerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, + Aggravezzati, at Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. + Consult Appendix ii. + + [2] It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting deserving + individuals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine + Constitution of 1495. The principle was not, however, recognized at + large by the republics. + + [3] On the Government of Siena (vol. i. p. 351 of his collected + works): 'I say not all the inhabitants of the state, but all those + who have rank; that is, who have acquired, either in their own + persons or through their ancestors, the right of taking magistracy, + in short those who are participes imperandi et parendi.' What has + already been said in Chapter II. about the origin of the Italian + Republics will explain this definition of burghership. + + [4] It would be very interesting to trace in detail the influence of + Aristotle's Politics upon the practical and theoretical statists of + the Renaissance. The whole of Giannotti's works; the discourses of + de' Pazzi, Vettori, Acciaiuoli, and the two Guicciardini on the + State of Florence (_Arch. St. It._ vol. i.); and Machiavelli's + _Discorso sul Reggimento di Firenze_, addressed to Leo X., + illustrate in general the working of Aristotelian ideas. At + Florence, in 1495, Savonarola urged his Constitution on the burghers + by appeals to Aristotle's doctrine and to the example of Venice [see + Segni, p. 15, and compare the speeches of Pagolo Antonio Soderini + and Guido Antonio Vespucci, in Guicciardini's _Istoria d' Italia_, + vol. ii. p. 155 of Rosini's edition, on the same occasion]. Segni, + p. 86, mentions a speech of Pier Filippo Pandolfini, the arguments + of which, he says, were drawn from Aristotle and illustrated by + Florentine history. The Italian doctrinaires seem to have imagined + that, by clever manipulation of existing institutions, they could + construct a state similar to that called [Greek: _politeia_] by + Aristotle, in which all sections of the community should be fairly + represented. Venice, meanwhile, was a practical instance of the + possible prosperity of such a constitution with a strong + oligarchical complexion. + + [5] These numbers, 100,000 for the population, and 5,000 for the + burghers, are stated roundly. In Florence, when the Consiglio + Maggiore was opened in 1495, it was found that the Florentines + altogether numbered about 90,000, while the qualified burghers were + not more than 3,200. In 1581 the population of Venice numbered + 134,890, whereof 1,843 were adult patricians [see below, p. 209]. + +Intolerant of foreign rule, and blinded by the theoretical supremacy of +the Empire to the need of looking beyond its own municipal institutions, +each city in the twelfth century sought to introduce such a system into +the already existing machinery of the burgh as should secure its +independence and place the government in the hands of its citizens. But +the passing of bad laws, or the non-observance of wise regulations, or, +again, the passions of individuals and parties, soon disturbed the +equilibrium established in these little communities. Desire for more +power than their due prompted one section of the burghers to violence. +The love of independence, or simple insubordination, drove another +portion to resistance. Matters were further complicated by resident or +neighboring nobles. Then followed the wars of factions, proscriptions, +and exiles. Having banished their rivals, the party in power for the +time being remodeled the institutions of the republic to suit their own +particular interest. Meanwhile the opposition in exile fomented every +element of discontent within the city, which this short-sighted policy +was sure to foster. Sudden revolutions were the result, attended in most +cases by massacres consequent upon the victorious return of the outlaws. +To the action of these peccant humors--_umori_ is the word applied by +the elder Florentine historians to the troubles attendant upon +factions--must be added the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity +of intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, +the treason and the egotism of mercenary generals, and the false foreign +policy which led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany or +Spain. Little by little, under the prolonged action of these disturbing +forces, each republic in turn became weaker, more confused in policy, +more mistrustful of itself and its own citizens, more subdivided into +petty but ineradicable factions, until at last it fell a prey either to +some foreign potentate, or to the Church, or else to an ambitious family +among its members. The small scale of the Italian commonwealths, taken +singly, favored rapid change, and gave an undue value to distinguished +wealth or unscrupulous ability among the burghers. The oscillation +between democracy and aristocracy and back again, the repetition of +exhausting discords, and the demoralizing influences of occasional +despotism, so broke the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the +citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were glad to accept +tyranny for the sake of the protection it professed to extend to life +and property. + +To these vicissitudes all the republics of Italy, with the exception of +Venice, were subject. In like manner, they shared in common the belief +that constitutions could be made at will, that the commonwealth was +something plastic, capable of taking the complexion and the form +impressed upon it by speculative politicians. So firmly rooted was this +conviction, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen of Italy +become, partly by the experience of their shifting history, and partly +by their study of antiquity, that the idea of the State as something +possessed of organic vitality can scarcely be said to have existed among +them. The principle of gradual growth, which gives its value, for +example, to the English Constitution, was not recognized by the +Italians. Nor again had their past history taught them the necessity, so +well defined and recognized by the Greek statesmen, of maintaining a +fixed character at any cost in republics, which, in spite of their small +scale, aspired to permanence.[1] The most violent and arbitrary changes +which the speculative faculty of a theorist could contrive, or which the +prejudices of a party could impose, seemed to them not only possible but +natural. + + [1] The value of the [Greek: _ethos_] was not wholly unrecognized by + political theorists. Giannotti (vol. i. p. 160, and vol. ii. p. 13), + for example translates it by the word 'temperamento.' + +A very notable instance of this tendency to treat the State as a plastic +product of political ingenuity, is afforded by the annals of Genoa. +After suffering for centuries from the vicissitudes common to all +Italian free cities--discords between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, +between the nobles and the people, between the enfranchised citizens and +the proletariat--after submitting to the rule of foreign masters, +especially of France and Milan, and after being torn in pieces by the +rival houses of Adorni and Fregosi, the Genoese at last received liberty +from the hands of Andrea Doria in 1528. They then proceeded to form a +new Constitution for the protection of their freedom; and in order to +destroy the memory of the old parties which had caused their ruin, they +obliterated all their family names with the exception of twenty, under +one or other of which the whole body of citizens were bound to enroll +themselves.[1] This was nothing less than an attempt to create new +_gentes_ by effacing the distinctions established by nature and +tradition. To parallel a scheme so artificial in its method, we must go +back to the history of Sicyon and the changes wrought in the Dorian +tribes by Cleisthenes. + + [1] See Varchi, _St. F._ lib. vii. cap. 3. + +Short of such violent expedients as these, the whole history of towns +like Florence reveals a succession of similar attempts. When, for +example, the Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines found +themselves without a working constitution, and proceeded to frame one. +The matter was at first referred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio +Vespucci and Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and against the +establishment of a Grand Council on the Venetian model, before the +Signory in the Palazzo. At this juncture Savonarola in his sermon for +the third Sunday in Advent[1] suggested that each of the sixteen +Companies should form a plan, that these should be submitted to the +Gonfaloniers, who should choose the four best, and that from these four +the Signory should select the most perfect. At the same time he +pronounced himself in favor of an imitation of the Venetian Consiglio +Grande. His scheme, as is well known, was adopted.[2] Running through +the whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers and +historians, we find the same belief in artificial and arbitrary +alterations of the state. Machiavelli pronounces his opinion that, in +spite of the corruption of Florence, a wise legislator might effect her +salvation.[3] Skill alone was needed. There lay the wax; the scientific +artist had only to set to his hand and model it. + + [1] December 12, 1494. + + [2] Segni (pp. 15, 16) says that Savonarola deserved to be honored + for this Constitution by the Florentines no less than Numa by the + Romans. Varchi (vol. i. p. 169) judges the Consiglio Grande to have + been the only good institution ever adopted by the Florentines. We + may compare Giannotti (_Sopra la Repubblica di Siena_ p. 346) for a + similar opinion. Guicciardini, both in the _Storia d' Italia_ and + the _Storia di Firenze_, gives to Savonarola the whole credit of + having passed this Constitution. Nardi and Pitti might be cited to + the same effect. None of these critics doubt for a moment that what + was theoretically best ought to have been found practically + feasible. + + [3] _St. Fior._ lib. iii. 1. 'Firenze a quel grado e pervenuta che + facilmente da uno savio dator di leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque + forma di governo riordinata.' + +This is the dominant thought which pervades his treatise on the right +ordering of the State of Florence addressed to Leo X.[1] A more +consummate piece of political mechanism than that devised by Machiavelli +in this essay can hardly be imagined. It is like a clock with separate +actions for hours, minutes, seconds, and the revolutions of the moon and +planets. All the complicated interest of parties and classes in the +state, the traditional pre-eminence of the Medicean family, the rights +of the Church, and the relation of Florence to foreign powers, have been +carefully considered and provided for. The defect of this consummate +work of art is that it remained a mere machine, devised to meet the +exigencies of the moment, and powerless against such perturbations as +the characters and passions of living men must introduce into the +working of a Commonwealth. Had Florence been a colony established in a +new country with no neighbors but savages, or had it been an institution +protected from without against the cupidity of selfish rivals, then +such a constitution might have been imposed on it with profit. But to +expect that a city dominated by ancient prejudices, connected by a +thousand subtle ties not only with the rest of Italy but also with the +states of Europe, and rotten to the core in many of its most important +members, could be restored to pristine vigor by a doctrinaire however +able, was chimerical. The course of events contradicted this vain +expectation. Meanwhile a few clear-headed and positive observers were +dimly conscious of the instability of merely speculative +constitution-making. Varchi, in a weighty passage on the defects of the +Florentine republic, points out that its weakness arose partly from the +violence of factions, but also in a great measure from the implicit +faith reposed in doctors of the law.[2] The history of the Florentine +Constitution, he says, is the history of changes effected by successions +of mutually hostile parties, each in its own interest subverting the +work of its predecessor, and each in turn relying on the theories of +jurists, who without practical genius for politics make arbitrary rules +for the control of state-affairs. Yet even Varchi shares the prevailing +conviction that the proper method is first to excogitate a perfect +political system, and then to impress that like a stamp upon the +material of the commonwealth. His criticism is directed against lawyers, +not against philosophers and practical diplomatists. + + [1] The language of this treatise is noteworthy. After discoursing + on the differences between republics and principalities, and showing + that Florence is more suited to the former, and Milan to the latter, + form of government, he says: 'Ma perche _fare_ principato dove + starebbe bene repubblica,' etc. ... 'si perche Firenze _e subietto + attissimo di pigliare questa forma_,' etc. The phrases in italics + show how thoroughly Machiavelli regarded the commonwealth as + plastic. We may compare the whole of Guicciardini's elaborate essay + 'Del Reggimento di Firenze' (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii.), as well as the + 'Discourses' addressed by Alessandro de' Pazzi, Francesco Vettori, + Ruberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Guicciardini, and Luigi Guicciardini, + to the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, on the settlement of the + Florentine Constitution in 1522 (_Arch. Stor._ vol. i.). Not one of + these men doubted that his nostrum would effect the cure of the + republic undermined by slow consumption. + + [2] _St. Fior._ lib. vi. cap. 4; vol. i. p. 294. + +In this sense and to this extent were the republics of Italy the +products of constructive skill; and great was the political sagacity +educed among the Italians by this state of things. The citizens +reflected on the past, compared their institutions with those of +neighboring states, studied antiquity, and applied the whole of their +intelligence to the one aim of giving a certain defined form to the +commonwealth. Prejudice and passion distorted their schemes, and each +successive modification of the government was apt to have a merely +temporary object. Thus the republics, as I have already hinted, lacked +that safeguard which the Greek states gained by clinging each to its own +character. The Greeks were no less self-conscious in their political +practice and philosophy; but after the age of the Nomothetae, when they +had experienced nearly every phase through which a commonwealth can +pass, they recognized the importance of maintaining the traditional +character of their constitutions inviolate. Sparta adhered with singular +tenacity to the code of Lycurgus; and the Athenians, while they advanced +from step to step in the development of a democracy, were bent on +realizing the ideal they had set before them. + +Religion, which in Greece, owing to its local and genealogical +character, was favorable to this stability, proved in Italy one of the +most potent causes of disorder. The Greek city grew up under the +protection of a local deity, whose blood had been transmitted in many +instances to the chief families of the burgh. This ancestral god gave +independence and autonomy to the State; and when the Nomothetes +appeared, he was understood to have interpreted and formulated the +inherent law that animated the body politic. Thus the commonwealth was a +divinely founded and divinely directed organism, self-sufficing, with no +dependence upon foreign sanction, with no question of its right. The +Italian cities, on the contrary, derived their law from the common _jus_ +of the Imperial system, their religion from the common font of +Christianity. They could not forget their origin, wrung with difficulty +from existing institutions which preceded them and which still remained +ascendant in the world of civilized humanity. The self-reliant autonomy +of a Greek state, owing allegiance only to its protective deity and its +inherent Nomos, had no parallel in Italy outside Venice. All the other +republics were conscious of dependence on external power, and regarded +themselves as _ab initio_ artificial rather than natural creations. + +Long before a true constitutional complexion had been given to any +Italian State but Venice, parties had sprung up, and taken such firm +root that the subsequent history of the republics was the record of +their factions. To this point I have already alluded; but it is too +important to be passed by without further illustration. The great +division of Guelf and Ghibelline introduced a vital discord into each +section of the people, by establishing two antagonistic theories +respecting the right of supreme government. Then followed subordinate +quarrels of the nobles with the townsfolk, schisms between the +wealthier and poorer burghers, jealousies of the artisans and merchants, +and factions for one or other eminent family. These different elements +of discord succeed each other with astonishing rapidity; and as each +gives place to another, it leaves a portion of its mischief rankling in +the body politic, until last there remains no possibility of +self-government.[1] The history of Florence, or Genoa, or Pistoja would +supply us with ample illustrations of each of these obstacles to the +formation of a solid political temperament. But Siena furnishes perhaps +the best example of the extent to which such feuds could disturb a +state. The way in which this city conducted its government for a long +course of years, justified Varchi in calling it 'a jumble, so to speak, +and chaos of republics, rather than a well-ordered and disciplined +commonwealth.'[2] The discords of Siena were wholly internal. They +proceeded from the wrangling of five successive factions, or Monti, as +the people of Siena called them. The first of these was termed the +_Monte de' Nobili_; for Siena, like all Italian free burghs, had +originally been controlled by certain noble families, who formed the +people and excluded the other citizens from offices of state. In course +of time the plebeians acquired wealth, and the nobles split into parties +among themselves. To such a pitch were the quarrels of these nobles +carried, that at last they found it impossible to conduct the +government, and agreed to relinquish it for a season to nine plebeian +families chosen from among the richest and most influential. This gave +rise to the _Monte de' Nove_, who were supposed to hold the city in +commission for the nobles, while the latter devoted themselves to the +prosecution of their private animosities. Weakened by feuds, the +patricians fell a prey to their own creatures, the _Monte de' Nove_, who +in their turn ruled Siena like oligarchs, refusing to give up the power +which had been intrusted to them. In time, however, their insolence +became insufferable. The populace rebelled, deposed the _Nove_, and +invested with supreme authority twelve other families of mixed origin. +The _Monte de' Dodici_, created after this fashion, ran nearly the same +course as their predecessors, except that they appear to have +administered the city equitably. Getting tired of this form of +government, the people next superseded them by sixteen men, chosen from +the dregs of the plebeians, who assumed the title of _Riformatori_. This +new _Monte de' Sedici_ or _de' Riformatori_ showed much integrity in +their management of affairs, but, as is the wont of red republicans, +they were not averse to bloodshed. Their cruelty caused the people, with +the help of the surviving patrician houses, together with the _Nove_ +and the _Dodici_, to rise and shake them off. The last governing body +formed in this diabolical five-part fugue of crazy statecraft received +the name of _Monte del Popolo_, because it included all who were then +eligible to the Great Council of the State. Yet the factions of the +elder _Monti_ still survived; and to what extent they had absorbed the +population may be gathered from the fact that, on the defeat of the +_Riformatori_, 4,500 of the Sienese were exiled. It must be borne in +mind that with the creation of each new _Monte_ a new party formed +itself in the city, and the traditions of these parties were handed down +from generation to generation. At last, in the beginning of the +sixteenth century, Pandolfo Petrucci, who belonged to the _Monte de' +Nove_, made himself in reality, if not in name, the master of Siena, and +the Duke of Florence, later on in the same century extended his dominion +over the republic.[3] There is something almost grotesque in the bare +recital of these successive factions; yet we must remember that beneath +their dry names they conceal all elements of class and party discord. + + [1] Machiavelli, in spite of his love of freedom, says (_St. Fior._ + lib. vii. 1): 'Coloro che sperano che una repubblica possa essere + unita assai di questa speranza s'ingannano.' + + [2] Vol. i. pp. 324-30. See, too, Segni, p. 213, and Giannotti, vol. + i. p. 341. De Comines describes Siena thus: 'La ville est de tout + temps en partialite, et se gouverne plus follement que ville + d'Italie.' + + [3] Siena capitulated, in 1555, to the Spanish troops, who resigned + it to Duke Cosmo I. in 1557. + +What rendered the growth of parties still more pernicious, as already +mentioned, was the smallness of Italian republics. Varchi reckoned +10,000 _fuochi_ in Florence, 50,000 _bocche_ of seculars, and 20,000 +_bocche_ of religious. According to Zuccagni Orlandini there were 90,000 +Florentines in 1495, of whom only 3,200 were burghers. Venice, according +to Giannotti, counted at about the same period 20,000 _fuochi_, each of +which supplied the state with two men fit to bear arms. These +calculations, though obviously rough and based upon no accurate returns, +show that a republic of 100,000 souls, of whom 5,000 should be citizens, +would have taken distinguished rank among Italian cities.[1] In a state +of this size, divided by feuds of every kind, from the highest political +antagonism down to the meanest personal antipathy, changes were very +easily effected. The slightest disturbance of the equilibrium in any +quarter made itself felt throughout the city.[2] The opinions of each +burgher were known and calculated. Individuals, by their wealth, their +power of aiding or of suppressing poorer citizens, and the force of +their personal ability, acquired a perilous importance. At Florence the +political balance was so nicely adjusted that the ringing of the great +bell in the Palazzo meant a revolution, and to raise the cry of _Palle_ +in the streets was tantamount to an outbreak in the Medicean interest. +To call aloud _Popolo e liberta_ was nothing less than riot punishable +by law. Segni tells how Jacopino Alamanni, having used these words near +the statue of David on the Piazza in a personal quarrel, was beheaded +for it the same day.[3] The secession of three or four families from one +faction to another altered the political situation of a whole republic, +and led perhaps to the exile of a sixth part of the enfranchised +population.[4] After this would follow the intrigues of the outlaws +eager to return, including negotiations with lukewarm party-leaders in +the city, alliances with hostile states, and contracts which compromised +the future conduct of the commonwealth in the interest of a few +revengeful citizens. The biographies of such men as Cosimo de' Medici +the elder and Filippo Strozzi throw the strongest light upon these +delicacies and complexities of party politics in Florence. + + [1] It may be worth while to compare the accurate return of the + Venetian population in 1581 furnished by Yriarte (Vie d'un Patricien + de Venise, p. 96). The whole number of the inhabitants was 134,600. + Of these 1,843 were adult patricians; 4,309 women and children of + the patrician class; Cittadini of all ages and both sexes, 3,553; + monks, nuns, and priests, 3,969; Jews, 1,043; beggars, 187. + + [2] We might mention, as famous instances, the Neri and Bianchi + factions introduced into Pistoja in 1296 by a quarrel of the + Cancellieri family, the dismemberment of Florence in 1215 by a feud + between the Buondelmonti and Amidei, the tragedy of Imelda + Lambertazzi, which upset Bologna in 1273, the student riot which + nearly delivered Bologna into the hands of Romeo de' Pepoli in 1321, + the whole action of the Strozzi family at the period of the + extinction of Florentine liberty, the petty jealousies of the Cerchi + and Donati detailed by Dino Compagni, in 1294. + + [3] Segni, _St. Fior_. p. 53. + + [4] As an instance, take what Marco Foscari reported in 1527 to the + Venetian Senate respecting the parties in Florence (_Rel. Ven._ + serie ii. vol. i. p. 70). The _Compagnacci_, one of the three great + parties, only numbered 800 persons. + +In addition to the evils of internal factions we must reckon all the +sources of mutual mistrust to which the republics were exposed. As the +Italians had no notion of representative government, so they never +conceived a confederation. The thirst for autonomy in each state was as +great as of old among the cities of Greece. To be independent of a +sister republic, though such freedom were bought at the price of the +tyranny of a native family was the first object of every commonwealth. +At the same time this passion for independence was only equaled by the +greed of foreign usurpation. The second object of each republic was to +extend its power at the expense of its neighbors. As Pisa swallowed +Amalfi, so Genoa destroyed Pisa, and Venice did her best to cripple +Genoa. Florence obliterated the rival burgh of Semifonte, and Milan +twice reduced Piacenza to a wilderness. The notion that the great +maritime powers of Italy or the leading cities of Lombardy should +permanently co-operate for a common purpose was never for a moment +entertained. Such leagues as were formed were understood to be +temporary. When their immediate object had been gained, the members +returned to their initial rivalries. Milan, when, on the occasion of +Filippo Maria Visconti's death, she had a chance of freedom, refused to +recognize the liberties of the Lombard cities, and fell a prey to +Francesco Sforza. Florence, under the pernicious policy of Cosimo de' +Medici, helped to enslave Milan and Bologna instead of entering into a +republican league against their common foes, the tyrants. Pisa, Arezzo, +and the other subject cities of Tuscany were treated by her with such +selfish harshness that they proved her chiefest peril in the hour of +need.[1] Competition in commerce increased the mutual hatred of the +free burghs. States like Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, depending for +their existence upon mercantile wealth, and governed by men of +business, took every opportunity they could of ruining a rival in the +market. So mean and narrow was the spirit of Italian policy that no one +accounted it unpatriotic or dishonorable for Florence to suck the very +life out of Pisa, or for Venice to strangle a competitor so dangerous +as Genoa. + + [1] See the instructions furnished to Averardo dei Medici, quoted by + Von Reumont in his _Life of Lorenzo_, vol. ii. p. 122, German + edition. + +Thus the jealousy of state against state, of party against party, and of +family against family, held Italy in perpetual disunion; while +diplomatic habits were contracted which rendered the adoption of any +simple policy impossible. When the time came for the Italians to cope +with the great nations of Europe, the republics of Venice, Genoa, Milan, +Florence ought to have been leagued together and supported by the weight +of the Papal authority. They might then have stood against the world. +Instead of that, these cities presented nothing but mutual rancors, +hostilities, and jealousies to the common enemy. Moreover, the Italians +were so used to petty intrigues and to a system of balance of power +within the peninsula, that they could not comprehend the magnitude of +the impending danger. It was difficult for a politician of the +Renaissance, accustomed to the small theater of Italian diplomacy, +schooled in the traditions of Lorenzo de' Medici, swayed in his +calculations by the old pretensions of Pope and Emperor, dominated by +the dread of Venice, Milan, and Naples, and as yet but dimly conscious +of the true force of France or Spain, to conceive that absolutely the +only chance of Italy lay in union at any cost and under any form. +Machiavelli indeed seems too late to have discerned this truth. But he +had been lessoned by events, which rendered the realization of his +cherished schemes impossible; nor, could he find a Prince powerful +enough to attempt his Utopia. Of the Republics he had abandoned all +hope. + +To the laws which governed the other republics of Italy, Venice offered +in many respects a notable exception. Divided from the rest of Italy by +the lagoons, and directed by her commerce to the Eastern shores of the +Mediterranean, Venice took no part in the factions which rent the rest +of the peninsula, and had comparatively little to fear from foreign +invasion. Her attitude was one of proud and almost scornful isolation. +In the Lombard Wars of Independence she remained neutral, and her name +does not appear among the Signataries to the Peace of Constance. Both +the Papacy and the Empire recognized her independence. Her true policy +consisted in consolidating her maritime empire and holding aloof from +the affairs of Italy. As long as she adhered to this course, she +remained the envy and the admiration of the rest of Europe.[1] It was +only when she sought to extend her hold upon the mainland that she +aroused the animosity of the Italian powers, and had to bear the brunt +of the League of Cambray alone.[2] Her selfish prudence had been a +source of dread long before this epoch: when she became aggressive, she +was recognized as a common and intolerable enemy. + + [1] De Comines, in his _Memoirs of the Reign of Charles VIII._ (tom. + ii. p, 69), draws a striking picture of the impression made upon his + mind by the good government of the state of Venice. This may be + compared with what he says of the folly of Siena. + + [2] See Mach. _1st. Fior._ lib. i. 'Avendo loro con il tempo + occupata Padova, Vicenza, Trevigi, e dipoi Verona, Bergamo e + Brescia, e nel Reame e in Romagna molte citta, cacciati dalla + cupidita del dominare vennero in tanta opinione di potenza, che non + solamente ai principi Italiani ma ai Re oltramontani erano in + terrore. Onde congiurati quelli contra di loro, in un giorno fu + tolto loro quello stato che si avevano in molti anni con infiniti + spendii guadagnato. E benche ne abbino in questi ultimi tempi + racquistato parte, non avendo racquistata ne la riputazione, ne le + forze, a discrezione d'altri, come tutti gli altri principi Italiani + vivono.' It was Francesco Foscari who first to any important extent + led the republic astray from its old policy. He meddled in Italian + affairs, and sought to encroach upon the mainland. For this, and for + the undue popularity he acquired thereby, the Council of Ten + subjected him and his son Jacopo to the most frightfully protracted + martyrdom that a relentless oligarchy has ever inflicted [1445-57]. + +The external security of Venice was equaled by her internal repose. +Owing to continued freedom from party quarrels, the Venetians were able +to pursue a consistent course of constitutional development. They in +fact alone of the Italian cities established and preserved the character +of their state. Having originally founded a republic under the +presidency of a Doge, who combined the offices of general and judge, and +ruled in concert with a representative council of the chief citizens +(697-1172), the Venetians by degrees caused this form of government to +assume a strictly oligarchical character. They began by limiting the +authority of the Doge, who, though elected for life, was in 1032 +forbidden to associate his son in the supreme office of the state. In +1172 the election of the Doge was transferred from the people to the +Grand Council, who, as a co-opting body, tended to become a close +aristocracy. In 1179 the Ducal power was still further restricted by the +creation of a senate called the Quarantia for the administration of +justice; while in 1229 the Senate of the Pregadi, interposed between the +Doge and the Grand Council, became an integral part of the constitution. +To this latter Senate were assigned all deliberations upon peace and +war, the voting of supplies, the confirmation of laws. Both the +Quarantia and the Pregadi were elected by the Consiglio Grande, which by +this time had become the virtual sovereign of the State of Venice. It is +not necessary here to mention the further checks imposed upon the power +of the Doges by the institution of officials named Correttori and +Inquisitori, whose special business it was to see that the coronation +oaths were duly observed, or by the regulations which prevented the +supreme magistrate from taking any important action except in concert +with carefully selected colleagues. Enough has been said to show that +the constitution of Venice was a pyramid resting upon the basis of the +Grand Council and rising to an ornamented apex, through the Senate, and +the College, in the Doge. But in adopting this old simile--originally +the happy thought of Donato Giannotti, it is said[1]--we must not +forget that the vital force of the Grand Council was felt throughout +the whole of this elaborate system, and that the same individuals were +constantly appearing in different capacities. It is this which makes the +great event of the years 1297-1319 so all-important for the future +destinies of Venice. At this period the Grand Council was restricted to +a certain number of noble families who had henceforth the hereditary +right to belong to it. Every descendant of a member of the Grand Council +could take his seat there at the age of twenty-five; and no new +families, except upon the most extraordinary occasions, were admitted to +this privilege.[2] By the Closing of the Grand Council, as the +ordinances of this crisis were termed, the administration of Venice was +vested for perpetuity in the hands of a few great houses. The final +completion was given to the oligarchy in 1311 by the establishment of +the celebrated Council of Ten,[3] who exercised a supervision over all +the magistracies, constituted the Supreme Court of judicature, and ended +by controlling the whole foreign and internal policy of Venice. The +changes which I have thus briefly indicated are not to be regarded as +violent alterations in the constitution, but rather as successive steps +in its development. Even the Council of Ten, which seems at first sight +the most tyrannous state-engine ever devised for the enslavement of a +nation, was in reality a natural climax to the evolution which had been +consistently advancing since the year 1172. Created originally during +the troublous times which succeeded the closing of the Grand Council, +for the express purpose of curbing unruly nobles and preventing the +emergence of conspirators like Tiepolo, the Council of Ten were +specially designed to act as a check upon the several orders in the +state and to preserve its oligarchical character inviolate. They were +elected by the Consiglio Grande, and at the expiration of their office +were liable to render strict account of all that they had done. Nor was +this magistracy coveted by the Venetian nobles. On the contrary, so +burdensome were its duties, and so great was the odium which from time +to time the Ten incurred in the discharge of their functions, that it +was not always found easy to fill up their vacancies. A law had even to +be passed that the Ten had not completed their magistracy before their +successors were appointed.[4] They may therefore be regarded as a select +committee of the citizens, who voluntarily delegated dictatorial powers +to this small body in order to maintain their own ascendency, to +centralize the conduct of important affairs, to preserve secrecy in the +administration of the republic, and to avoid the criticism to which the +more public government of states like Florence was exposed.[5] The +weakness of this portion of the state machinery was this: created with +ill-defined and almost unlimited authority,[6] designed to supersede the +other public functionaries on occasions of great moment, and composed of +men whose ability placed them in the very first rank of citizens, the +Ten could scarcely fail, as time advanced, to become a permanently +oppressive power--a despotism within the bosom of an oligarchy. Thus in +the whole mechanism of the state of Venice we trace the action of a +permanent aristocracy tolerating, with a view to its own supremacy, an +amount of magisterial control which in certain cases, like that of the +two Foscari, amounted to the sternest tyranny. By submitting to the +Council of Ten the nobility of Venice secured its hold upon the people +and preserved unity in its policy. + + [1] Vol. ii. of his works, p. 37. On p. 29 he describes the + population of Venice as divided into 'Popolari,' or plebeians, + exercising small industries, and so forth: 'Cittadini,' or the + middle class, born in the state, and of more importance than the + plebeians; 'Gentiluomini,' or masters of Venice by sea and land, + about 3,000 in number, corresponding to the burghers of Florence. + What he says about the Constitution refers solely to this upper + class. The elaborate work of M. Yriarte, _La Vie d'un Patricien de + Venise an Seizieme Siecle_, Paris, 1874, contains a complete + analysis of the Venetian state-machine. See in particular what he + says about the helplessness of the Doges, ch. xiii. 'Rex in foro, + senator in curia, captivus in aula,' was a current phrase which + expressed the contrast between their dignity of parade and real + servitude. They had no personal freedom, and were always ruined by + office. It was necessary to pass a law compelling the Doge elect to + accept the onerous distinction thrust upon him. The Venetian + oligarchs argued that it was good that one man should die for the + people. + + [2] See Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 55, for the mention of fifteen, + admitted on the occasion of Baiamonte Tiepolo's conspiracy, and of + thirty ennobled during the Genoese war. + + [3] The actual number of this Council was seventeen, for the Ten + associated with the Signoria, which consisted of the Doge and six + Counselors. + + [4] Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 123. + + [5] The diplomatic difficulties of a popular government, a 'governo + largo,' as opposed to a 'governo stretto,' are set forth with great + acumen by Guicciardini, _Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 84. Cf. vol. iii. p. + 272. + + [6] 'e la sua autorita pari a quella del Consiglio de' Pregati e di + utta la citta,' says Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 120. + +No state has ever exercised a greater spell of fascination over its +citizens than Venice. Of treason against the Republic there was little. +Against the decrees of the Council, arbitrary though they might be, no +one sought to rebel. The Venetian bowed in silence and obeyed, knowing +that all his actions were watched, that his government had long arms in +foreign lands, and that to arouse revolt in a body of burghers so +thoroughly controlled by common interests, would be impossible. Further +security the Venetians gained by their mild and beneficent +administration of subject cities, and by the prosperity in which their +population flourished. When, during the war of the League of Cambray, +Venice gave liberty to her towns upon the mainland, they voluntarily +returned to her allegiance. At home, the inhabitants of the lagoons, who +had never seen a hostile army at their gates, and whose taxes were light +in comparison with those of the rest of Italy, regarded the nobles as +the authors of their unexampled happiness. Meanwhile, these nobles were +merchants. Idleness was unknown in Venice. Instead of excogitating new +constitutions or planning vengeance against hereditary foes the Venetian +attended to his commerce on the sea, swayed distant provinces, watched +the interests of the state in foreign cities, and fought the naval +battles of the republic. It was the custom of Venice to employ her +patricians only on the sea as admirals, and never to intrust her armies +to the generalship of burghers. This policy had undoubtedly its wisdom; +for by these means the nobles had no opportunity of intriguing on a +large scale in Italian affairs, and never found the chance of growing +dangerously powerful abroad. But it pledged the State to that system of +paid condottieri and mercenary troops, jealously watched and scarcely +ever trustworthy, which proved nearly as ruinous to Venice as it did to +Florence. + +It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which is +presented by Florence to Venice. While Venice pursued one consistent +course of gradual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained in +perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions or of +party-leaders varied.[1] When the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, +Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted her in the fourteenth century, she +submitted for a while to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, +who were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party. Thence she passed for +a few months into the hands of a despot in the person of the Duke of +Athens (1342-43). After the confirmation of her republican liberty, +followed a contest between the proletariat and the middle classes +(Ciompi 1378). During the fifteenth century she was kept continually +disturbed by the rivalry of her great merchant families. The rule of the +Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the Florentine territory +by numerous conquests, was virtually the despotism of a close oligarchy. +This phase of her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, who +guided her affairs with a show of constitutional equity for four +generations. In 1494, this state of things was violently shaken. The +Florentines expelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their mask +and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they reconstituted their +Commonwealth as nearly as they could upon the model of Venice, and to +this new form of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic +complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.[2] But the internal +elements of the discord were too potent for the maintenance of this +regime. The Medici were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the +shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. and Clement VII., +through the hands of prelates whom they made the guardians and advisers +of their nephews. In 1527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster +on the noblest of Italian cities. The sack of Rome had paralyzed the +Pope. His family were compelled to quit the Medicean palace. The Grand +Council was restored: a Gonfalonier was elected; Florence suffered the +hardships of her memorable siege. At the end of her trials, menaced +alike by Pope and Emperor, who shook hands over her prostrate corpse, +betrayed by her general, the infamous Malatesta Baglioni, and sold by +her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the hereditary +sovereignty of the Medici. It was in vain that Lorenzino of that house +pretended to play Brutus and murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in +1536. Cosimo succeeded in the same year, and won the title of Grand +Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi-Austrian princes. + + [1] 'Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,' says Marco Foscari (as + quoted above, p. 42 of his report). The flux of Florence struck a + Venetian profoundly. + + [2] The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public Palace, in + 1528, to this effect: 'Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi S.F. + decreto electus.' This inscription is differently given. See Varchi, + vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46. Nothing is more significant of the + difference between Venice and Florence than the political idealism + implied in this religious consecration of the republic by statute. + In my essay on 'Florence and the Medici' (_Sketches and Studies in + Italy_) I have attempted to condense the internal history of the + Republic and to analyze the state-craft of the Medici. + +Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and phase of republican +government was advocated, discussed, and put in practice by the +Florentines. All the arts of factions, all the machinations of exiles, +all the skill of demagogues, all the selfishness of party-leaders, all +the learning of scholars, all the cupidity of subordinate officials, all +the daring of conspirators, all the ingenuity of theorists, and all the +malice of traitors, were brought successively or simultaneously into +play by the burghers, who looked upon their State as something they +might mold at will. One thing at least is clear amid so much apparent +confusion, that Florence was living a vehemently active and +self-conscious life, acknowledging no principle of stability in her +constitution, but always stretching forward after that ideal +_Reggimento_ which was never realized.[1] + + [1] In his 'Proemio' to the 'Trattato del Reggimento di Firenze, + Guicciardini thus describes the desideratum: 'introdurre in Firenze + un governo onesto, bene ordinato, e che veramente si potesse + chiamare libero, il che dalla sua prima origine insino a oggi non e + mai stato cittadino alcuno che abbia saputo o potuto fare.' + +It is worth while to consider more in detail the different magistracies +by which the government of Florence was conducted between the years of +1250 and 1531, and the gradual changes in the constitution which +prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny.[1] It is only thus an +accurate conception of the difference between the republican systems of +Venice and of Florence can be gained. Before the date 1282, which may be +fixed as the turning-point in Florentine history we hear of twelve +Anziani, two chosen for each Sestiere of the city, acting in concert +with a foreign Podesta, and a Captain of the People charged with +military authority. At this time no distinction was made between nobles +and plebeians; and the town, though Guelf, had not enacted rigorous laws +against the Ghibelline families. Towards the end of the thirteenth +century, however, important, changes were effected in the very elements +of the commonwealth. The Anziani were superseded by the Priors of the +Arts. Eight Priors, together with a new officer called the Gonfalonier +of Justice, formed the Signoria, dwelling at public charge in the +Palazzo and holding office only for two months.[2] No one who had not +been matriculated into one of the Arti or commercial guilds could +henceforth bear office in the state. At the same time severe measures, +called Ordinanze della Giustizia, were passed, by which the nobles were +for ever excluded from the government, and the Gonfalonier of Justice +was appointed to maintain civil order by checking their pride and +turbulence.[3] These modifications of the constitution, effected between +1282 and 1292, gave its peculiar character to the Florentine republic. +Henceforward Florence was governed solely by merchants. Both Varchi and +Machiavelli have recorded unfavorable opinions of the statute which +reduced the republic of Florence to a commonwealth of shop-keepers.[4] +But when we read these criticisms, we must bear in mind the internecine +ferocity of party-strife at this period, and the discords to which a +city divided between a territorial aristocracy and a commercial +bourgeoisie was perpetually exposed. If anything could make the +Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would be a cool perusal of +the _Chronicle_ of Matarazzo, which sets forth the wretched state of +Perugia owing to the feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the +Baglioni.[5] Peace for the republic was not, however, secured by these +strong measures. The factions of the Neri and Bianchi opened the +fourteenth century with battles and proscriptions; and in 1323 the +constitution had again to be modified. At this date the Signoria of +eight Priors with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the College of the twelve +Buonuomini, and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the companies--called +collectively _i tre maggiori_, or the three superior magistracies--were +rendered eligible only to Guelf citizens of the age of thirty, who had +qualified in one of the seven Arti Maggiori, and whose names were drawn +by lot. This mode of election, the most democratic which it is possible +to adopt, held good through all subsequent changes in the state. Its +immediate object was to quiet discontent and to remove intrigue by +opening the magistracies to all citizens alike. But, as Nardi has +pointed out, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the burghers, +who, when their names were once included in the bags kept for the +purpose, felt sure of their election, and had no inducement to maintain +a high standard of integrity. Sismondi also dates from this epoch the +withdrawal of the Florentines from military service.[6] Nor, as the +sequel shows, was the measure efficient as a check upon the personal +ambition of encroaching party leaders. The _Squittino_ and the _Borse_ +became instruments in the hands of the Medici for the consolidation of +their tyranny.[7] By the end of the fourteenth century (about 1378)the +Florentines had to meet a new difficulty. The Guelf citizens began to +abuse the so-called Law of Admonition, by means of which the Ghibellines +were excluded from the government. This law had formed an essential part +of the measures of 1323. In the intervening half-century a new +aristocracy, distinguished by the name of _nobili popolani_, had grown +up and were now threatening the republic with a close oligarchy.[8] The +discords which had previously raged between the people and the +patricians were now transferred to this new aristocracy and the +plebeians. It was found necessary to abolish the Admonition, which had +been made a pretext of excluding all _novi homines_ from the government, +and to place the members of the inferior Arti on the same footing as +those of the superior.[9] At this epoch the Medici, who neither belonged +to the ancient aristocracy nor y the more distinguished houses of the +_nobili popolani_, but rather to the so-called _gente grassa_ or +substantial tradesmen, first acquired importance. It was by a law of +Salvestro de' Medici's in 1378 that the constitution received its final +development in the direction of equality. Yet after all this leveling, +and in the vehement efforts made by the proletariat on the occasion of +the Ciompi outbreak, the exclusive nature of the Florentine republic was +maintained. The franchise was never extended to more than the burghers, +and the matter in debate was always virtually, who shall be allowed to +rank as citizen upon the register? In fact, by using the pregnant words +of Machiavelli, we may sum up the history of Florence to this point in +one sentence: 'Di Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, +dipoi i nobili e il popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e molte +volte occorse che una di queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise in +due.'[10] + + [1] I will place in an appendix (No. ii.) translations of Varchi, + book iii. sections 20-22, and Nardi, book i. cap. 4, which give + complete and clear accounts of the Florentine constitution after + 1292. + + [2] See Machiavelli, _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. sect. II. The number of + the Priors was first three, then six, and finally eight. Up to 1282 + the city had been divided into Sestieri. It was then found + convenient to divide it into quarters, and the numbers followed this + alteration. + + [3] Machiavelli, _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. sect. 13, may be consulted + for the history of Giano della Bella and his memorable ordinance. + Dino Compagni's _Chronicle_ contains the account of a contemporary. + + [4] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169; Mach. _Ist. Fior._ end of book ii. + + [5] _Archivio Storico_, vol. xvi. See also the article 'Perugia,' in + my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_. + + [6] Vol. iii. p. 347. + + [7] See App. ii. for the phrases 'Squittino' and 'Borse.' + + [8] Of these new nobles the Albizzi and Ricci, deadly foes, were the + most eminent. The former strove to exclude the Medici from the + government. + + [9] The number of the Arti varied at different times. Varchi treats + of them as finally consisting of seven maggiori and fourteen minori. + + [10] Proemio to _Storia Fiorentina_. 'In Florence the nobles first + split up, then the nobles and the people, lastly the people and the + multitude; and it often happened that when one of these parties got + the upper hand, it divided into two camps.' For the meaning of + _Popolo_ see above, p. 55. + +In the next generation the constitutional history of Florence exhibits a +new phase. The equality which had been introduced into all classes of +the commonwealth, combined with an absence of any state machinery like +that of Venice, exposed Florence at this period to the encroachments of +astute and selfish parvenus. The Medici, who had hitherto been nobodies, +begin now to aspire to despotism. Partly by his remarkable talent for +intrigue, partly by the clever use which he made of his vast wealth, and +partly by espousing the plebeian cause, Cosimo de' Medici succeeded in +monopolizing the government. It was the policy of the Medici to create a +party dependent for pecuniary aid upon their riches, and attached to +their interests by the closest ties of personal necessity. At the same +time they showed consummate caution in the conduct of the state, and +expended large sums on works of public utility. There was nothing mean +in their ambition; and though posterity must condemn the arts by which +they sought to sap the foundations of freedom in their native city, we +are forced to acknowledge that they shared the noblest enthusiasms of +their brilliant era. Little by little they advanced so far in the +enslavement of Florence that the elections of all the magistrates, +though still conducted by lot, were determined at their choice: the +names of none but men devoted to their interests were admitted to the +bags from which the candidates for office were selected, while +proscriptive measures of various degrees of rigor excluded their enemies +from participation in the government.[1] At length in 1480 the whole +machinery of the republic was suspended by Lorenzo de' Medici in favor +of the Board of Seventy, whom he nominated, and with whom, acting like a +Privy Council, he administered the state.[2] It is clear that this +revolution could never have been effected without a succession of coups +d'etat. The instrument for their accomplishment lay ready to the hands +of the Medicean party in the pernicious system of the Parlamento and +Balia, by means of which the people, assembled from time to time in the +public square, and intimidated by the reigning faction, intrusted full +powers to a select committee nominated in private by the chiefs of the +great house.[3] It is also clear that so much political roguery could +not have been successful without an extensive demoralization of the +upper rank of citizens. The Medici in effect bought and sold the honor +of the public officials, lent money, jobbed posts of profit, and winked +at peculation, until they had created a sufficient body of _ames +damnees_, men who had everything to gain by a continuance of their +corrupt authority. The party so formed, including even such +distinguished citizens as the Guicciardini, Baccio Valori, and Francesco +Vettori, proved the chief obstacle to the restoration of Florentine +liberty in the sixteenth century. + + [1] What Machiavelli says (_Ist. Fior._ vii. 1) about the arts of + Cosimo contains the essence of the policy by which the Medici rose. + Compare v. 4 and vii. 4-6 for his character of Cosimo. Guicciardini + (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 68) describes the use made of extraordinary + taxation as a weapon of offense against his enemies, by Cosimo: 'uso + le gravezze in luogo de' pugnali che communemente suole usare chi ha + simili reggimenti nelle mani.' The Marchese Gino Capponi (_Arch. + Stor._ vol. i. pp. 315-20) analyzes the whole Medicean policy in a + critique of great ability. + + [2] Guicciardini (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. pp. 35-49) exposes the + principle and the _modus operandi_ of this Council of Seventy, by + means of which Lorenzo controlled the election of the magistracies, + diverted the public moneys to his own use, and made his will law in + Florence. The councils which he superseded at this date were the + Consiglio del Popolo and the Consiglio del Comune, about which see + Nardi, lib i. cap. 4. + + [3] For the operation of the Parlamento and Balia, see Varchi, vol. + ii. p. 372; Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4. Segni says: 'The + Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the Piazza of + the Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to address the + meeting, the piazza is guarded by armed men, and then the people are + asked whether they wish to give absolute power (Balia) and authority + to the citizens named, for their good. When the answer, yes, + prompted partly by inclination and partly by compulsion, is + returned, the Signory immediately retires into the palace. This is + all that is meant by this parlamento, which thus gives away the full + power of effecting a change in the state.' The description given by + Marco Foscari, p. 44 (loc. cit. supr.) is to the same effect, but + the Venetian exposes more clearly the despotic nature of the + institution in the hands of the Medici. It is well known how hostile + Savonarola was to an institution which had lent itself so easily to + despotism. This couplet he inscribed on the walls of the Council + Chamber, in 1495:-- + + 'E sappi che chi vuol parlamento + Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.' + + Compare the proverb, 'Chi disse parlamento disse guastamento.' + +This tyranny of a commercial family, swaying the republic without the +title and with but little of the pomp of princes, subsisted until the +hereditary presidency of the state was conferred upon Alessandro de' +Medici, Duke of Civita di Penna, in 1531. Cosimo his successor, obtained +the rank of Grand Duke from Pius V. in 1569, and his son received the +imperial sanction to the title in 1575. The re-establishment at two +different periods of a free commonwealth upon the sounder basis of the +Consiglio Grande (1494-1512 and 1527-30) formed but two episodes in the +history of this masked but tenacious despotism. Had Savonarola's +constitution been adopted in the thirteenth instead of at the end of the +fifteenth century, the stability of Florence might have been secured. +But at the latter date the roots of the Medicean influence were too +widely intertwined with private interests, the jealousies of classes and +of factions were too inveterate, for any large and wholesome form of +popular government to be universally acceptable. Besides, the burghers +had been reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which ambition +and avarice took the place of patriotism; while the corruption of +morals, fostered by the Medici for the confirmation of their own +authority, was so widely spread as to justify Segni, Varchi, Giannotti, +Guicciardini, and Machiavelli in representing the Florentines as equally +unable to maintain their liberty and to submit to control. + +The historical vicissitudes of Florence were no less remarkable than the +unity of Venice. If in Venice we can trace the permanent and corporate +existence of a state superior to the individuals who composed it, +Florence exhibits the personal activity and conscious effort of her +citizens. Nowhere can the intricate relations of classes to the +commonwealth be studied more minutely than in the annals of Florence. In +no other city have opinions had greater value in determining historical +events; and nowhere was the influence of character in men of mark more +notable. In this agitated political atmosphere the wonderful Florentine +intelligence, which Varchi celebrated as the special glory of the Tuscan +soil, and which Vasari referred to something felicitous in Tuscan air, +was sharpened to the finest edge.[1] Successive generations of practical +and theoretical statesmen trained the race to reason upon government, +and to regard politics as a science. Men of letters were at the same +time also prominent in public affairs. When, for instance, the exiles of +1529 sued Duke Alessandro before Charles V. at Naples, Jacopo Nardi drew +up their pleas, and Francesco Guicciardini rebutted them in the interest +of his master. Machiavelli learned his philosophy at the Courts of +France and Germany and in the camp of Cesare Borgia. Segni shared the +anxieties of Nicolo Capponi, when the Gonfalonier was impeached for high +treason to the state of Florence. This list might be extended almost +indefinitely, with the object of proving the intimate connection which +subsisted at Florence between the thinkers and the actors. No other +European community of modern times has ever acquired so subtle a sense +of its own political existence, has ever reasoned upon its past history +so acutely, or has ever displayed so much ingenuity in attempting to +control the future. Venice on the contrary owed but little to the +creative genius of her citizens. In Venice the state was everything: the +individual was almost nothing. We find but little reflection upon +politics, and no speculative philosophy of history among the Venetians +until the date of Trifone Gabrielli and Paruta. Their records are all +positive and detailed. The generalizations and comparisons of the +Florentines are absent; nor was it till a late date of the Renaissance +that the Venetian history came to be written as a whole. It would seem +as though the constitutional stability which formed the secret of the +strength of Venice was also the source of comparative intellectual +inertness. This contrast between the two republics displayed itself even +in their art. Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the +liberator of his country, adorned the squares and loggie of Florence. +The painters of Venice represented their commonwealth as a beautiful +queen receiving the homage of her subjects and the world. Florence had +no mythus similar to that which made Venice the Bride of the Sea, and +which justified the Doge in hailing Caterina Cornaro as daughter of S. +Mark's (1471). It was in the personal courage and intelligence of +individual heroes that the Florentines discovered the counterpart of +their own spirit; whereas the Venetians personified their city as a +whole, and paid their homage to the Genius of the State. + + [1] Varchi, ix. 49; Vasari, xii. p. 158; Burckhardt, p. 270. + +It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the city of self-conscious +political activity, variable, cultivated, and ill-adapted by its very +freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based +upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and solid at the +cost of some rigidity, with Venice. As in Greece the philosophers of +Athens, especially Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the immobility of +Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the theorists of Florence, +Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, look with envy at the state +machinery which secured repose and liberty for Venice. The parallel +between Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable when we inquire +into the causes of their decay. Just as the Ephors, introduced at first +as a safeguard to the constitution, by degrees extinguished the +influence of the royal families, superseded the senate, and exercised a +tyrannous control over every department of the state; so the Council of +Ten, dangerous because of its vaguely defined dictatorial functions, +reduced Venice to a despotism.[1] The gradual dwindling of the Venetian +aristocracy, and the impoverishment of many noble families, which +rendered votes in the Grand Council venal, and threw the power into the +hands of a very limited oligarchy, complete the parallel.[2] One of the +chief sources of decay both to Venice and to Sparta was that +shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their +ranks by the admission of new families. The system again of secret +justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which +both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will +upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.[3] +Venice in the end became demoralized in politics and profligate in +private life. Her narrowing oligarchy watched the national degeneration +with approval, knowing that it is easier to control a vitiated populace +than to curb a nation habituated to the manly virtues. + + [1] Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty [Greek: _isotyrannos_]. + Giannotti (vol-ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators. We might + bring the struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty into + comparison with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to + make themselves the chiefs of the republic in more than name. + Mueller, in his _Dorians_, observes that 'the Ephoralty was the + moving element, the principle of change, in the Spartan + constitution, and, in the end, the cause of its dissolution.' + Sismondi remarks that the precautions which led to the creation of + the Council of Ten 'denaturaient entierement la constitution de + l'etat.' + + [2] See what Aristotle in the _Politics_ says about [Greek: + _oliganthropia_], and the unequal distribution of property. As to + the property of the Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, _Vite dei Duchi_, + Murat. xxii. p. 1194, who mentions the benevolences of the richer + families to the poor. They built houses for aristocratic paupers to + live in free of rent. + + [3] A curious passage in Plutarch's _Life of Cleomenes_ (Clough's + Translation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian + statecraft:--'They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do + supernatural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but + thinking their polity is chiefly kept up by fear ... and therefore + the Lacedaemonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the + Ephors, having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.' + +Between Athens and Florence the parallel is not so close. These two +republics, however, resemble one another in the freedom and variety of +their institutions. In Athens, as in Florence, there was constant change +and a highly developed political consciousness. Eminent men played the +same important part in both. In both the genius of individuals was even +stronger than the character of the state. Again, as Athens displayed +more of a Panhellenic feeling than any other Greek city, so Florence was +invariably more alive to the interests of Italy at large than any other +state of the peninsula. Florence, like Athens, was the center of culture +for the nation. Like Athens, she give laws to her sister towns in +language, in literature, in fine arts, poetry, philosophy, and history. +Without Florence it is not probable that Italy would have taken the +place of proud pre-eminence she held so long in Europe. Florence never +attained to the material greatness of Athens, because her power, +relatively to the rest of Italy, was slight, her factions were +incessant, and her connection with the Papacy was a perpetual source of +weakness. But many of the causes which ruined Athens were in full +operation at Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and variable +temper of a democracy, so well described by Plato, and so ably analyzed +by Machiavelli. The want of agreement among the versatile Florentines, +fertile in plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief source +of political debility. Varchi and Segni both relate how, in spite of +wealth, ability, and formidable forces, the Florentine exiles under the +guidance of Filippo Strozzi (1533-37) became the laughing-stock of Italy +through their irresolution. The Venetian ambassadors agree in +representing the burghers of Florence as timid from excess of +intellectual mobility. And Dante, whose insight into national +characteristics was of the keenest, has described in ever-memorable +lines the temperament of his fickle city (_Purg._ vi. 135-51). + +Much of this instability was due to the fact that Florentine, like +Athenian, intelligence was overdeveloped. It passed into mere +cleverness, and overreached itself. Next we may note the tyranny which +both republics exercised over cities that had once been free. Athens +created a despotic empire instead of forming an Ionian Confederation. +Florence reduced Pisa to the most miserable servitude, rendered herself +odious to Arezzo and Volterra, and never rested from attempts upon the +liberties of Lucca and Siena. All these states, which as a Tuscan +federation should have been her strength in the hour of need, took the +first opportunity of throwing off her yoke and helping her enemies. What +Florence spent in recapturing Pisa, after the passage of Charles VIII. +in 1494, is incalculable. And no sooner was she in difficulties during +the siege of 1329, than both Arezzo and Pisa declared for her foes. + +It will not do to push historical parallels too far, interesting as it +may be to note a repetition of the same phenomena at distant periods and +under varying conditions of society. At the same time, to observe +fundamental points of divergence is no less profitable. Many of the +peculiarities of Greek history are attributable to the fact that a Greek +commonwealth consisted of citizens living in idleness, supported by +their slaves, and bound to the state by military service and by the +performance of civic duties. The distinctive mark of both Venice and +Florence, on the other hand, was that their citizens were traders. The +Venetians carried on the commerce of the Levant; the Florentines were +manufacturers and bankers: the one town sent her sons forth on the seas +to barter and exchange; the other was full of speculators, calculating +rates of interest and discount, and contracting with princes for the +conduct of expensive wars. The mercantile character of these Italian +republics is so essential to their history that it will not be out of +place to enlarge a little on the topic. We have seen that the +Florentines rendered commerce a condition of burghership. Giannotti, +writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the republic,[1] says: +'Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la maggior parte de' nostri, cosi +nobili come ignobili.' To quote instances in a matter so clear and +obvious would be superfluous: else I might show how Bardi and Peruzzi, +Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while they ranked with princes at +the Courts of France, or Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees +and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe. The Palle of the +Medici, which emboss the gorgeous ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, +still swing above the pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great +families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully +asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a +surprising fact that the daughter of the mediaeval bankers should have +given a monarch to the French in the sixteenth century. + + [1] _Sulle azioni del Ferruccio_, vol. i. p. 44. The report of Marco + Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, + contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of + illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' + Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a + tradesman. + +A very lively picture of the modes of life and the habits of mind +peculiar to the Italian burgher may be gained by the perusal of Agnolo +Pandolfini's treatise, _Del Governo della Famiglia_. This essay should +be read side by side with Castiglione's _Cortegiano_, by all who wish to +understand the private life of the Italians in the age of the +Renaissance.[1] Pandolfini lived at the time of the war of Florence with +Filippo Visconti the exile, and the return of Cosimo de' Medici. He was +employed by the republic on important missions, and his substance was so +great that, on occasion of extraordinary aids, his contributions stood +third or fourth upon the list. In the Councils of the Republic he always +advocated peace, and in particular he spoke against Impresa di Lucca. As +age advanced, he retired from public affairs, and devoted himself to +study, religious exercises, and country excursions. He possessed a +beautiful villa at Signa, notable for the splendor of its maintenance in +all points which befit a gentleman. There he had the honor on various +occasions of entertaining Pope Eugenius, King Rene, Francesco Sforza, +and the Marchese Piccinino. His sons lived with him, and spent much of +their spare time in hawking and the chase. They were three, Carlo, who +rose to great dignity in the republic, Giannozzo, still more eminent as +a public man, and Pandolfo, who died young. His wife, one of the +Strozzi, died while Agnolo was between thirty and forty; but he never +married again. He was a great friend of Lionardo Aretino, who published +nothing without his approval. He lived to be upwards of eighty-five, and +died in 1446. These facts sufficiently indicate what sort of man was the +supposed author of the "Essay on the Family," proving, as they do, that +he passed his leisure among princes and scholars, and that he played +some part in the public affairs of the State of Florence. Yet his view +of human life is wholly _bourgeois_, though by no means ignoble. In his +conception, the first of all virtues is thrift, which should regulate +the use not only of money, but of all the gifts of nature and of +fortune. The proper economy of the mind involves liberal studies, +courteous manners, honest conduct, and religion.[2] The right use of the +body implies keeping it in good health by continence, exercise and +diet.[3] The thrift of time consists in being never idle. Agnolo's sons, +who are represented as talking with their father in this dialogue, ask +him, in relation to the gifts of fortune, whether he thinks the honors +of the State desirable. This question introduces a long and vehement +invective against the life of a professional statesman, as of necessity +fraudulent, mendacious, egotistic, cruel.[4] The private man of middle +station is really happiest; and only a sense of patriotism should induce +him, not seeking but when sought, to serve the State in public office. +The really dear possessions of a man are his family, his wealth, his +good repute, and his friendships. In order to be successful in the +conduct of the family, a man must choose a large and healthy house, +where the whole of his offspring--children and grandchildren, may live +together. He must own an estate which will supply him with corn, wine, +oil, wood, fowls, in fact with all the necessaries of life, so that he +may not need to buy much. The main food of the family will be bread and +wine. The discussion of the utility of the farm leads Agnolo to praise +the pleasure and profit to be derived from life in the Villa. But at the +same time a town-house has to be maintained; and it is here that the +sons of the family should be educated, so that they may learn caution, +and avoid vice by knowing its ugliness. In order to meet expenses, some +trade must be followed, silk or wool manufacture being preferred; and in +this the whole family should join, the head distributing work of various +kinds to his children, as he deems most fitting, and always employing +them rather than strangers. Thus we get the three great elements of the +Florentine citizen's life: the _casa_, or town-house, the _villa_, or +country-farm, and the _bottega_, or place of business. What follows is +principally concerned with the details of economy. Expenses are of two +sorts: necessary, for the repair of the house, the maintenance of the +farm, the stocking of the shop; and unnecessary, for plate, house +decoration, horses, grand clothes, entertainments. On this topic Agnolo +inveighs with severity against household parasites, bravi, and dissolute +dependents.[5] A little further on he indulges in another diatribe +against great nobles, _i signori_, from whom he would have his sons keep +clear at any cost.[6] It is the animosity of the industrious burgher for +the haughty, pleasure-loving, idle, careless man of blood and high +estate. In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini no one can be +indolent. The men have to work outside and collect wealth, the women to +stay at home and preserve it. The character of a good housewife is +sketched very minutely. Pandolfini describes how, when he was first +married, he took his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all +its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and made her kneel with +him before Madonna, and prayed God to give them wealth, friends, and +male children. After that he told her that honesty would be her great +charm in his eyes, as well as her chief virtue, and advised her to +forego the use of paints and cosmetics. Much sound advice follows as to +the respective positions of the master and the mistress in the +household, the superintendence of domestics, and the right ordering of +the most insignificant matters. The quality of the dress which will +beseem the children of an honored citizen on various occasions, the +pocket money of the boys, the food of the common table, are all +discussed with some minuteness: and the wife is made to feel that she +must learn to be neither jealous nor curious about concerns which her +husband finds it expedient to keep private. + + [1] I ought to state that Pandolfini is at least a century earlier + in date than Casliglione, and that he represents a more primitive + condition of society. The facts I have mentioned about his life are + given on the authority of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The references are + made to the Milanese edition of 1802. It must also be added that + there are strong reasons for assigning the treatise in question to + Leo Battista Alberti. As it professes, however, to give a picture of + Pandolfini's family, I have adhered to the old title. But the whole + question of the authorship of the Famiglia will be fully discussed + in the last section of my book, which deals with Italian literature. + Personally. I accept the theory of Alberti's authorship. + + [2] A beautiful description of the religious temper, p. 74. + + [3] What Pandolfini says about the beauty of the body is worthy of a + Greek: what he says about exercise might have been written by an + Englishman, p. 77. + + [4] Pp. 82-89 are very important as showing how low the art of + politics had sunk in Italy. + + [5] P. 125. + + [6] P. 175. + +The charm of a treatise like that of Pandolfini on the family evaporates +as soon as we try to make a summary of its contents. Enough, however, +has been quoted to show the thoroughly _bourgeois_ tone which prevailed +among the citizens of Florence in the fifteenth century.[1] Very +important results were the natural issue of this commercial spirit in +the State. Talking of the Ordinanze di Giustizia, Varchi observes: +'While they removed in part the civil discords of Florence, they almost +entirely extinguished all nobility of feeling in the Florentines, and +tended as much to diminish the power and haughtiness of the city as to +abate the insolence of the patriciate.'[2] A little further on he says: +'Hence may all prudent men see how ill-ordered in all things, save only +in the Grand Council, has been the commonwealth of Florence; seeing +that, to speak of nought else, that kind of men who in a wisely +constituted republic ought not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the +merchants and artisans of all sorts, are in Florence alone capable of +taking office, to the exclusion of all others.' Machiavelli, less wordy +but far more emphatic than Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This +caused the abandonment by Florence not only of arms, but of all nobility +of soul.'[3] The most notable consequence of the mercantile temper of +the republics was the ruinous system of mercenary warfare, with all its +attendant evils of ambitious captains of adventure, irresponsible +soldiery, and mock campaigns, adopted by the free Italian States. It is +true that even if the Italians had maintained their national militias in +full force, they might not have been able to resist the shock of France +and Spain any better than the armies of Thebes, Sparta, and Athens +averted the Macedonian hegemony. But they would at least have run a +better chance, and not perhaps have perished so ignobly through the +treason of an Alfonso d'Este (1527), of a Marquis of Pescara (1525), of +a Duke of Urbino (1527), and of a Malatesta Baglioni (1530).[4] +Machiavelli, in a weighty passage at the end of the first book of his +Florentine History, sums up the various causes which contributed to the +disuse of national arms among the Italians of the Renaissance. The fear +of the despot for his subjects, the priest-rule of the Church, the +jealousy of Venice for her own nobles, and the commercial sluggishness +of the Florentine burghers, caused each and all of these powers, +otherwise so different, to intrust their armies to paid captains. 'Di +questi adunque oziosi principi e di queste vilissime armi sara piena la +mia istoria,' is the contemptuous phrase with which he winds up his +analysis.[5] + + [1] Varchi (book x. cap. 69) quotes a Florentine proverb: 'Chiunque + non sta a bottega e ladro.' See above, p. 239. + + [2] Varchi, vol. i. p. 168; compare vol. ii. p. 87, however. + + [3] _Ist. Fior._ lib. ii. end. Aristotle's contempt for the [Greek: + _technitai_] emerges in these comments of the doctrinaires. + + [4] To multiply the instances of fraud and treason on the part of + Italian condottieri would be easy. I have only mentioned the notable + examples which fall within a critical period of five years. The + Marquis of Pescara betrayed to Charles V. the league for the + liberation of Italy, which he had joined at Milan. The Duke of + Ferrara received and victualed Bourbon's (then Frundsberg's) army on + its way to sack Rome, because he spited the Pope, and wanted to + seize Modena for himself. The Duke of Urbino, wishing to punish + Clement VII. for personal injuries, omitted to relieve Rome when it + was being plundered by the Lutherans, though he held the commission + of the Italian League. Malatesta Baglioni sold Florence, which he + had undertaken to defend, to the Imperial army under the Prince of + Orange. + + [5] 'With the records of these indolent princes and most abject + armaments, my history will, therefore, be filled.' Compare the + following passage in a letter from Machiavelli to Francesco + Guicciardini (_Op._ vol. x. p. 255): 'Comincio ora a scrivere di + nuovo, e mi sfogo accusando i principi, che hanno fatto ogni cosa + per condurci qui.' + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. + + +Florence, the City of Intelligence--Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love of +Beauty--Florentine Historical Literature--Philosophical Study of +History--Ricordano Malespini--Florentine History compared with the +Chronicles of other Italian Towns--The Villani--The Date +1300--Statistics--Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets--Dino +Compagni--Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Century--Lionardo +Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini--The Historians of the First Half of the +Sixteenth Century--Men of Action and Men of Letters: the +Doctrinaires--Florence between 1494 and 1537--Varchi, Segni, Nardi, +Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini--The Political Importance of these +Writers--The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and the Siege of +1529--State of Parties--Filippo Strozzi--Different Views of Florentine +Weakness taken by the Historians--Their Literary Qualities--Francesco +Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli--Scientific Statists--Discord +between Life and Literature--The Biography of Guicciardini--His 'Istoria +d'Italia,' 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' 'Storia Fiorentina,' +'Ricordi'--Biography of Machiavelli--His Scheme of a National +Militia--Dedication of 'The Prince'--Political Ethics of the Italian +Renaissance--The Discorsi--The Seven Books on the Art of War and the +'History of Florence.' + + +Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times. Other +nations have surpassed the Italians in their genius--the quality which +gave a superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare and an universal +sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole +population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly +intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, +as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in +quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only +they but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples, were +conscious. Boniface VIII., when he received the ambassadors of the +Christian powers in Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1300, +observed that all of them were citizens of Florence. The witticism which +he is said to have uttered, _i Fiorentini essere il quinto elemento_, +'that the men of Florence form a fifth element,' passed into a proverb. +The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, +scholarship, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy. + +When the struggle for existence has been successfully terminated, and +the mere instinct of self-preservation no longer absorbs the activities +of a people, then the three chief motive forces of civilization begin to +operate. These are cupidity, or the desire of wealth and all that it +procures; curiosity, or the desire to discover new facts about the world +and man; and the love of beauty, which is the parent of all art. +Commerce, philosophy, science, scholarship, sculpture, architecture, +painting, music, poetry, are the products of these ruling +impulses--everything in fact which gives a higher value to the life of +man. Different nations have been swayed by these passions in different +degrees. The artistic faculty, which owes its energy to the love of +beauty, has been denied to some; the philosophic faculty, which starts +with curiosity, to others; and some again have shown but little capacity +for amassing wealth by industry or calculation. It is rare to find a +whole nation possessed of all in an equal measure of perfection. Such, +however, were the Florentines.[1] The mere sight of the city and her +monuments would suffice to prove this. But we are not reduced to the +necessity of divining what Florence was by the inspection of her +churches, palaces, and pictures. That marvelous intelligence which was +her pride, burned brightly in a long series of historians and annalists, +who have handed down to us the biography of the city in volumes as +remarkable for penetrative acumen as for definite delineation and +dramatic interest. We possess picture-galleries of pages in which the +great men of Florence live again and seem to breathe and move, epics of +the commonwealth's vicissitudes from her earliest commencement, detailed +tragedies and highly finished episodes, studies of separate characters, +and idylls detached from the main current of her story. The whole mass +of this historical literature is instinct with the spirit of criticism +and vital with experience. The writers have been either actors or +spectators of the drama. Trained in the study of antiquity, as well as +in the council-chambers of the republic and in the courts of foreign +princes, they survey the matter of their histories from a lofty vantage +ground, fortifying their speculative conclusions by practical knowledge +and purifying their judgment of contemporary events with the philosophy +of the past. Owing to this rare mixture of qualities, the Florentines +deserve to be styled the discoverers of the historic method for the +modern world. They first perceived that it is unprofitable to study the +history of a state in isolation, that not wars and treaties only, but +the internal vicissitudes of the commonwealth, form the real subject +matter of inquiry,[2] and that the smallest details, biographical, +economical, or topographical, may have the greatest value. While the +rest of Europe was ignorant of statistics, and little apt to pierce +below the surface of events to the secret springs of conduct, in +Florence a body of scientific historians had gradually been formed, who +recognized the necessity of basing their investigations upon a diligent +study of public records, state-papers, and notes of contemporary +observers.[3] The same men prepared themselves for the task of criticism +by a profound study of ethical and political philosophy in the works of +Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Tacitus.[4] They examined the methods of +classical historians, and compared the annals of Greece, Rome, and +Palestine with the chronicles of their own country. They attempted to +divine the genius and to characterize the special qualities of the +nations, cities, and individuals of whom they had to treat.[5] At the +same time they spared no pains in seeking out persons possessed of +accurate knowledge in every branch of inquiry that came beneath their +notice, so that their treatises have the freshness of original documents +and the charm of personal memoirs. Much, as I have elsewhere noted, was +due to the peculiarly restless temper of the Florentines, speculative, +variable, unquiet in their politics. The very qualities which exposed +the commonwealth to revolutions, developed the intelligence of her +historians; her want of stability was the price she paid for +intellectual versatility and acuteness unrivaled in modern times. '"_O +ingenia magis acria quam matura_," said Petrarch, and with truth, about +the wits of the Florentines; for it is their property by nature to have +more of liveliness and acumen than of maturity or gravity.'[6] + + [1] Since the Greeks, no people have combined curiosity and the love + of beauty, the scientific and the artistic sense, in the same + proportions as the Florentines. + + [2] See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer + Poggio, in the Proemio to his _Florentine History_. His own + conception of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit + of a nation, is highly philosophical. + + [3] The high sense of the requirements of scientific history + attained by the Italians is shown by what Giovio relates of Gian + Galeazzo's archives (_Vita di Gio. Galeazzo_, p. 107). After + describing these, he adds: 'talche, chi volesse scrivere un' + historia giusta non potrebbe desiderare altronde ne piu abbondante + ne piu certa materia; perciocche da questi libri facilissimamente si + traggono le cagioni delle guerre, i consigli, e i successi dell' + imprese.' The Proemio to Varchi's _Storie Fiorentine_ (vol. i. pp. + 42-44), which gives an account of his preparatory labors, is an + unconscious treatise on the model historian. Accuracy, patience, + love of truth, sincerity in criticism, and laborious research, have + all their proper place assigned to them. Compare Guicciardini, + _Ricordi_, No. cxliii., for sound remarks upon the historian's duty + of collecting the statistics of his own age and country. + + [4] The prefaces to Giannotti's critiques of Florence and of Venice + show how thoroughly his mind had been imbued with the _Politics_ of + Aristotle. Varchi acknowledges the direct influence of Polybius and + Tacitus. Livy is Machiavelli's favorite. + + [5] On this point the Relazioni of Italian ambassadors are + invaluable. What dryly philosophical compendia are the notes of + Machiavelli upon the French Court and Cesare Borgia! How astute are + the Venetian letters on the opinions and qualities of the Roman + Prelates! + + [6] Guicc. _Ricordi_, cciii. _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 229. + +The year 1300 marks the first development of historical research in +Florence. Two great writers, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at +this epoch pursued different lines of study, which determined the future +of this branch of literature for the Italians. It is not +uncharacteristic of Florentine genius that while the chief city of +Tuscany was deficient in historians of her achievements before the date +which I have mentioned, her first essays in historiography should have +been monumental and standard-making for the rest of Italy. Just as the +great burghs of Lombardy attained municipal independence somewhat +earlier than those of Tuscany, so the historic sense developed itself in +the valley of the Po at a period when the valley of the Arno had no +chronicler. Sire Raul and Ottone Morena, the annalists of Milan, Fra +Salimbene, the sagacious and comprehensive historian of Parma, +Rolandino, to whom we owe the chronicle of Ezzelino and the tragedy of +the Trevisan Marches, have no rivals south of the Apennines in the +thirteenth century. Even the Chronicle of the Malespini family, written +in the vulgar tongue from the beginning of the world to the year 1281, +which occupies 146 volumes of Muratori's Collection, and which used to +be the pride of Tuscan antiquarians, has recently been shown to be in +all probability a compilation based upon the Annals of Villani.[1] This +makes the clear emergence of a scientific sense for history in the year +1300 at Florence all the more remarkable. In order to estimate the high +quality of the work achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn +the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities which still breathe +the spirit of unintelligent mediaeval industry, before the method of +history had been critically apprehended. The naivete of these records +may be appreciated by the following extracts. A Roman writes[2]: 'I +Lodovico Bonconte Monaldeschi was born in Orvieto, and was brought up in +the city of Rome, where I have resided. I was born in the year 1327, in +the month of June, at the time when the Emperor Lodovico came. Now I +wish to relate the whole history of my age, seeing that I lived one +hundred and fifteen years without illness, except that when I was born I +fainted, and I died of old age, and remained in bed twelve months on +end.' Burigozzo's Chronicle of Milan, again, concludes with these +words:[3] 'As you will see in the Annals of my son, inasmuch as the +death which has overtaken me prevents my writing more.' Chronicles +conceived and written in this spirit are diaries of events, repertories +of strange stories, and old wives' tales, without a deep sense of +personal responsibility, devoid alike of criticism and artistic unity. +Very different is the character of the historical literature which +starts into being in Florence at the opening of the fourteenth century. + + [1] See Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, _Florentiner Studien_, + Leipzig, 1874, Carl Hegel, in his defense of Compagni, _Die + Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung_, Leipzig, + 1875, admits the proof of spuriousness. See the preface, p. v. + The point, however, is still disputed by Florentine scholars of + high authority. Gino Capponi, in his _Storia della Repubblica + di Firenze_ (vol. i. Appendix, final note), observes that while + the Villani are popular in tone the Malespini Chronicle is + feudal. Adolfo Bartoli (_Storia della Lett. It._ vol. iii. p. + 155) treats the question as still open. The custom of + preserving brief _fasti_ in the archives of great houses + rendered such compilations as the Malespini Chronicle is now + supposed to have been both easy and attractive. The Christian + name _Ricordano_ given to the first Malespini annalist does not + exist. It has been suggested that it is due to a misreading of + an initial sentence, _Ricordano i Malespini_. + + [2] Muratori, vol. xii. p. 529. + + [3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 552. Both Monaldeschi and Burigozzo + appear to mention their own death. The probability is that their + annals, as we have them, have been freely dealt with by transcribers + or continuators adopting the historic 'I' after the decease of the + titular authors. + +Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occasion of the +Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the streets of the Eternal City, +he was moved in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of +the discrowned mistress of the world.[1] 'When I saw the great and +ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories and the great deeds of +the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and by +Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other masters of history, who +related small as well as great things of the acts and doings of the +Romans, I took style and manner from them, though, as a learner, I was +not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the +steps of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of +the monks at prayer, he felt the _genius loci_ stir him with a mixture +of astonishment and pathos. Then 'reflecting that our city of Florence, +the daughter and the creature of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great +achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I thought it seemly to relate +in this new Chronicle all the doings and the origins of the town of +Florence, as far as I could collect and discover them, and to continue +the acts of the Florentines and the other notable things of the world in +brief onwards so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in whom by +His grace I have done the work rather than by my poor knowledge; and +therefore in the year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to +compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint John and the praise +of this our city Florence.' The key-note is struck in these passages. +Admiration for the past mingles with prescience of the future. The +artist and the patriot awake together in Villani at the sight of Rome +and the thought of Florence. + + [1] Lib. viii. cap. 36. + +The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the Chronicle which +Giovanni Villani carried in twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348 +he died of the plague, and his work was continued on the same plan by +his brother Matteo. Matteo in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left +the Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year 1365. +Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest, both as a master of +style and as an historical artist. Matteo is valuable for the general +reflections which form exordia to the eleven books that bear his name. +Filippo was more of a rhetorician. He is known as the public lecturer +upon the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some interesting but meager +lives of eminent Florentines, his predecessors or contemporaries. + +The Chronicle of the Villani is a treasure-house of clear and accurate +delineations rather than of profound analysis. Not only does it embrace +the whole affairs of Europe in annals which leave little to be desired +in precision of detail and brevity of statement; but, what is more to +our present purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal +condition of the Florentines and the statistics of the city in the +fourteenth century. We learn, for example, that the ordinary revenues of +Florence amounted to about 300,000 golden florins,[1] levied chiefly by +way of taxes--90,200 proceeding from the octroi, 58,300 from the retail +wine trade, 14,450 from the salt duties, and so on through the various +imposts, each of which is carefully calculated. Then we are informed +concerning the ordinary expenditure of the Commune--15,240 lire for the +podesta and his establishment, 5,880 lire for the Captain of the people +and his train, 3,600 for the maintenance of the Signory in the Palazzo, +and so on down to a sum of 2,400 for the food of the lions, for candles, +torches, and bonfires. The amount spent publicly in almsgiving; the +salaries of ambassadors and governors; the cost of maintaining the +state armory; the pay of the night-watch; the money spent upon the +yearly games when the palio was run; the wages of the city trumpeters; +and so forth, are all accurately reckoned. In fact the ordinary Budget +of the Commune is set forth. The rate of extraordinary expenses during +war-time is estimated on the scale of sums voted by the Florentines to +carry on the war with Martino della Scala in 1338. At that time they +contributed 25,000 florins monthly to Venice, maintained full garrisons +in the fortresses of the republic, and paid as well for upwards of 1,000 +men at arms. In order that a correct notion of these balance-sheets may +be obtained, Villani is careful to give particulars about the value of +the florin and the lira, and the number of florins coined yearly. In +describing the condition of Florence at this period, he computes the +number of citizens capable of bearing arms, between the ages fifteen and +seventy, at 25,000; the population of the city at 90,000, not counting +the monastic communities, nor including the strangers, who are estimated +at about 15,000. The country districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 +to this calculation. It is further noticed that the excess of male +births over female was between 300 and 500 yearly in Florence, that from +8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls learned to read; that there were six +schools, in which from 10,000 to 12,000 children learned arithmetic; and +four high schools, in which from 550 to 600 learned grammar and logic. +Then follows a list of the religious houses and churches: among the +charitable institutions are reckoned 30 hospitals capable of receiving +more than 1,000 sick people. Here too it may be mentioned that Villani +reckons the beggars of Florence at 17,000, with the addition of 4,000 +paupers and sick persons and religious mendicants.[2] These mendicants +were not all Florentines, but received relief from the city charities. +The big wool factories are numbered at upwards of two hundred; and it is +calculated that from sixty to eighty thousand pieces of cloth were +turned out yearly, to the value in all of about 1,200,000 florins. More +than 30,000 persons lived by this industry. The _calimala_ factories, +where foreign cloths were manufactured into fine materials, numbered +about twenty. These imported some 10,000 pieces of cloth yearly, to the +value of 300,000 florins. The exchange offices are estimated at about +eighty in number. The fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking +were colossal for those days. Villani tells us that the great houses of +the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our King Edward III. more than 1,365,000 +golden florins.[3] 'And mark this,' he continues, 'that these moneys +were chiefly the property of persons who had given it to them on +deposit.' This debt was to have been recovered out of the wool revenues +and other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi had +negotiated a national loan, by which they hoped to gain a superb +percentage on their capital. The speculation, however, proved +unfortunate; and the two houses would have failed, but for their +enormous possessions in Tuscany. We hear, for example, of the Bardi +buying the villages of Vernia and Mangona in 1337.[4] As it was, their +credit received a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered; and a +little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars with the La Scala +family and Pisa, and after the loss of Lucca, they finally stopped +payment and declared themselves bankrupt.[5] The shock communicated by +this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is well described by +Villani.[6] The enormous wealth amassed by Florentine citizens in +commerce may be still better imagined when we remember that the Medici, +between the years 1434 and 1471, spent some 663,755 golden florins upon +alms and public works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo alone. +But to return to Villani; not content with the statistics which I have +already extracted, he proceeds to calculate how many bushels of wheat, +hogsheads of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Florence by the +year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, +40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in +the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines +neglected: the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old +times (about 1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions +introduced by the French in 1342.[8] In addition to all this +miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo +Villani concerning the foundation of the Monte or Public Funds of +Florence in the year 1345,[9] as well as the remarkable essay upon the +economical and other consequences of the plague of 1348, which forms the +prelude to his continuation of his brother's Chronicle.[10] + + [1] xi. 62. + + [2] x. 162. + + [3] xi. 88. + + [4] xi. 74. On this occasion a law was passed forbidding citizens to + become lords of districts within the territory of Florence. + + [5] xi. 38. + + [6] xi. 88. + + [7] xi, 94. + + [8] vi. 69; xii. 4. + + [9] iii. 106. + + [10] i. 1-8. + +In his survey of the results of the Black Death, Matteo notices not only +the diminution of the population, but the alteration in public morality, +the displacement of property, the increase in prices, the diminution of +labor, and the multiplication of lawsuits, which were the consequences +direct or indirect of the frightful mortality. Among the details which +he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the +enormous bequests to public charities in Florence--350,000 florins to +the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, +and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The poorer population +had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds +were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by +mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is +also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this +calamity. + + [1] Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, + which seems to have been well managed. + +The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediaeval +literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how +far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this +period.[1] Dante's aim is wholly different. Of statistics and of +historical detail we gain but little from his prose works. His mind was +that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient +characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity +in his account of facts. I need not do more than mention here the +concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, +of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise 'De Monarchia' we +possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in +constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave +birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the +cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner +the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized +and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations. In the 'De +Monarchia' Dante bases a theory of universal government upon a definite +conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity. Amid the anarchy +and discord of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and +where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were but cloaks for party +strife, Dante endeavors to bring his countrymen back to a sublime ideal +of a single monarchy, a true _imperium_, distinct from the priestly +authority of the Church, but not hostile to it,--nay, rather seeking +sanction from Christ's Vicar upon earth and affording protection to the +Holy See, as deriving its own right from the same Divine source. +Political science in this essay takes rank as an independent branch of +philosophy, and the points which Dante seeks to establish are supported +by arguments implying much historical knowledge, though quaintly +scholastic in their application. The Epistles contain the same thoughts: +peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common head, the duty of the +chief to his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, are urged +with no less force, but in a more familiar style and with direct +allusion to the events which called each letter forth. They are in fact +political brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude to the +chief actors in the drama of history around him. Nor would it here be +right to omit some notice of the essay 'De Vulgari Eloquio,' which, +considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and +indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise 'De +Monarchia.' It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member +of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several +dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation of a +common literary tongue for Italy. Though Dante was of course devoid of +what we now call comparative philology, and had but little knowledge of +the first beginnings of the languages which he discusses, yet it is not +more than the truth to say that this essay applies the true method of +critical analysis for the first time to the subject, and is the first +attempt to reason scientifically upon the origin and nature of a modern +language. + + [1] We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and Stow, + were later by two centuries than the Villani. + +While discussing the historical work of Dante and the Villani, it is +impossible that another famous Florentine should not occur to our +recollection, whose name has long been connected with the civic contests +that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his native +city. Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to deal with the question +of Dino Compagni's Chronicle--a question which for years has divided +Italian students into two camps, which has produced a voluminous +literature of its own, and which still remains undecided. The point at +issue is by no means insignificant. While one party contends that we +have in this Chronicle the veracious record of an eye-witness, the other +asserts that it is the impudent fabrication of a later century, composed +on hints furnished by Dante, and obscure documents of the Compagni +family, and expressed in language that has little of the fourteenth +century. The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient only in +minor details of accuracy. The other stigmatizes it as a wholly +untrustworthy forgery, and calls attention to numberless mistakes, +confusions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which +place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility. After a careful +consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro del +Lungo's arguments, it seems to me clearly established that the Chronicle +of Dino Compagni can no longer be regarded as a perfectly genuine +document of fourteenth-century literature. In the form in which we now +possess it, we are rather obliged to regard it as a _rifacimento_ of +some authentic history, compiled during the course of the fifteenth +century in a prose which bears traces of the post-Boccaccian style of +composition.[1] Yet the authority of Dino Compagni has long been such, +and such is still the literary value of the monograph which bears his +name, that it would be impertinent to dismiss the 'Chronicle' +unceremoniously as a mere fiction. I propose, therefore, first to give +an account of the book on its professed merits, and then to discuss, as +briefly as I can, the question of its authenticity. + + [1] The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in question was + Pietro Fanfani, in an article of _Il Pievano Arlotto_, 1858. The + cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German + authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied on + this subject are, 1. _Florentiner Studien_, von P. + Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2. _Dino Compagni + vendicato dalla Calunnia di Scrittore della Cronica_, di Pietro + Fanfani, Milano, Carrara, 1875. 3. _Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, + Versuch einer Rettung_, von Dr. Carl Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. + 4. _Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift_, + von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 5. The note + appended to Gino Capponi's _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_. 6. + _Dino Compagni e la sua Chronica_, per Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, + Le Mornier. Unluckily, the last-named work, though it consists + already of two bulky volumes in large 8vo, is not yet complete; and + the part which will treat of the question of authorship and MS. + authority has not appeared. + +The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of his descent with Virgil +to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani's +'Chronicle,' is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of +the preface to his work. 'The recollections of ancient histories,' he +says, 'have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and +ill-fated events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered +many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.' +Dino Compagni, whose 'Chronicle' embraces the period between 1280 and +1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in +1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was +therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times. He +died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante's death, +and was buried in the church of Santa Trinita. He was a man of the same +stamp as Dante;[1] burning with love for his country, but still more a +lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere +partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, +profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and +justice. As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one +small but highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate the civic +quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was +brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his +'Chronicle,' although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical +accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its +delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of +its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays bare the +political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable +period which embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the +struggles of the Neri and Bianchi. The comparison of Dino Compagni with +any contemporary annalist in Italy shows that here again, in these +pages, a new spirit has arisen. Muratori, proud to print them for the +first time in 1726, put them on a level with the 'Commentaries of +Caesar'; Giordani welcomed their author as a second Sallust. The +political sagacity and scientific penetration, possessed in so high a +degree by the Florentines, appear in full maturity. Compagni's +'Chronicle' heads a long list of similar monographs, unique in the +literature of a single city.[2] + + [1] The apostrophes to the citizens of Florence at large, and the + imprecations on some of the worst offenders among the party-leaders + (especially in book ii. on the occasion of the calamities of 1301) + are conceived and uttered in the style of Dante. + + [2] Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of the + Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period + between 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's + attempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's 'Biographies,' + and Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy.' Gino Capponi, born + about 1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 + and 1418; he died in 1421. Giovanni Cavalcanti was a zealous admirer + of Cosimo de' Medici; he composed his 'Chronicle' in the prison of + the Stinche, where he was unjustly incarcerated for a debt to the + Commune of Florence. Vespasiano da Bisticci contributed a series of + most valuable portraits to the literature of Italy: all the great + men of his time are there delineated with a simplicity that is the + sign of absolute sincerity, Poliziano was present at the murder of + Giuliano de' Medici in the Florentine Duomo. The historians of the + sixteenth century will be noticed together further on. + +The arguments against the authenticity of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle' +may be arranged in three groups. The _first_ concerns the man himself. +It is urged that, with the exception of his offices as Prior and +Gonfalonier, we have no evidence of his political activity, beyond what +is furnished by the disputed 'Chronicle.' According to his own account, +Dino played a part of the first importance in the complicated events of +1280-1312. Yet he is not mentioned by Giovanni Villani, by Filippo +Vallani, or by Dante. There is no record of his death, except a MS. note +in the Magliabecchian Codex of his 'Chronicle' of the date 1514.[1] He +is known in literature as the author of a few lyrics and an oration to +Pope John XXII., the style of which is so rough and mediaeval as to make +it incredible that the same writer should have composed the masterly +paragraphs of the 'Chronicle.'[2] The _second_ group of arguments +affects the substance of the 'Chronicle' itself. Though Dino was Prior +when Charles of Valois entered Florence, he records that event under the +date of Sunday the fourth of November, whereas Charles arrived on the +first of November, and the first Sunday of the month was the fifth. He +differs from the concurrent testimony of other historians in making the +affianced bride of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti a Giantruffetti instead +of an Amidei, and the Bishop of Arezzo a Pazzi instead of an Ubertini. +He reckons the Arti at twenty-four, whereas they numbered twenty-one. He +places the Coronation of Henry VII. in August, instead of in June, 1312. +He seems to refer to the Palace of the Signory, which could not have +been built at the date in question. He asserts that a member of the +Benivieni family was killed by one of the Galligai, whereas the murderer +was of the blood of the Galli. He represents himself as having been the +first Gonfalonier of Justice who destroyed the houses of rebellious +nobles, while Baldo de' Ruffoli, who held the office before him, had +previously carried out the Ordinances. Speaking of Guido Cavalcanti +about the year 1300, he calls him 'uno giovane gentile'; and yet Guido +had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti in 1266, and certainly +did not survive 1300 more than a few months. The peace with Pisa, which +was concluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalonierate, is not +mentioned, though this must have been one of the most important public +events with which he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and +inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and difficulties of the kind +described abound on every page of the 'Chronicle,' rendering the labor +of its last commentator and defender one of no small difficulty. The +_third_ group of arguments assails the language of the 'Chronicle' and +its MS. authority. Fanfani, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his +destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's style in general +is not distinguished for the 'purity, simplicity, and propriety' of the +trecento[3]; that it abounds in expressions of a later period, such as +_armata_ for _oste_, _marciare_ for _andare_, _accio_ for _acciocche_, +_onde_ for _affinche_; that numerous imitations of Dante can be traced +in it; and that to an acute student of early Italian prose its palpable +_quattrocentismo_ is only slightly veiled by a persistent affectation of +fourteenth-century archaism. This argument from style seems the +strongest that can be brought against the genuineness of the +'Chronicle'; for while it is possible that Dino may have made +innumerable blunders about the events in which he took a part, it is +incredible that he should have anticipated the growth of Italian by at +least a century. Yet judges no less competent than Fanfani in this +matter of style, and far more trustworthy as witnesses, Vincenzo +Nannucci, Gino Capponi, Isidoro del Lungo, are of opinion that Dino's +'Chronicle' is a masterpiece of Italian fourteenth-century prose; and +till Italian experts are agreed, foreign critics must suspend their +judgment. The analysis of style receives a different development from +Scheffer-Boichorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that many +passages of the 'Chronicle,' especially the important one which refers +to the _Ordinamenti della Giustizia_, have been borrowed from +Villani.[4] This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost +always cuts both ways. Yet the German historian has made out an +undoubtedly good case by proving Villani's language closer to the +original _Ordinamenti_ than Compagni's. With regard to MS. authority, +the codices of Dino's 'Chronicle' extant in Italy are all of them +derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to +Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the +Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears +the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the +questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable +suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that the 'Chronicle' must have been +fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly +appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not +uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed +himself to the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nicknamed +_Cronaca Scorretta_ by his Florentine cronies, or one of his +contemporaries, was the forger.[5] An Italian impugner of the +'Chronicle,' Giusto Grion of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as +the fabricator.[6] These hypotheses, however, are, to say the least, +unlucky for their suggestors, and really serve to weaken rather than to +strengthen the destructive line of argument. There exists an elder codex +of which Fanfani and his followers were ignorant. It is a MS. of perhaps +the middle of the fifteenth century, which was purchased for the +Ashburnham Library in 1846. This MS. has been minutely described by +Professor Paul Meyer; and Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile +specimen of one of its pages.[7] By some unaccountable negligence this +latest and most determined defender of Compagni has failed to examine +the MS. with his own eyes. + + [1] This is Isidoro del Lungo's Codex A. The note occurs also in the + Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century. + + [2] On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics + refer the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in + 1251. See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship + of the _Intelligenza_, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer + of the 'Chronicle,' in Borgognini's Essays (_Scritti Vari_, Bologna, + Romagnoli, 1877, vol. i.). With regard to the oration to Pope John + XXII. date 1326, it must be noted that this performance was first + printed by Anton Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness + may be disputed. See Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. 18-22. + + [3] The most important of Fanfani's numerous essays on the Compagni + controversy, together with minor notes by his supporters, are + collected in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds + all bounds of decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant + claims to be considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style. + These claims he bases in some measure upon the fact that he deceived + the Della Crusca by a forgery of his own making, which was actually + accepted for the _Archivio Storico_. See op. cit. p. 181. + + [4] _Die Chronik_, etc., pp. 53-57. + + [5] _Die Chronik_, etc., p. 39. + + [6] See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6. + + [7] See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to + face p. 1. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in + 1840, and sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a + MS. which Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth century spoke of as + 'la copia piu antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfini.' + +Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle.' The defenders +of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, +fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author, +from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with +the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's +errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at a later +date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from +general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism. +One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that +the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated. +Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication. +Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' +could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth +century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded +in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery. There is the +further question of _cui bono?_ which in all problems of literary +forgery must first receive some probable solution. What proof is there +that the vanity or the cupidity of any parties was satisfied by its +production? A book exists in a MS. of about 1450, acquires some notice +in a MS. of 1514, but is not published to the world until 1726. +Supposing it to have been a forgery, the labor of concocting it must +have been enormous. With all its defects, the 'Chronicle' would still +remain a masterpiece of historical research, imagination, sympathy with +bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigor, and antiquarian command of +language. But who profited by that labor? Not the author of the forgery, +since he was dead or buried more than two centuries before his +fabrication became famous. Not the Compagni family; for there is no +evidence to show that they had piqued themselves upon being the +depositaries of their ancestors masterpiece, nor did they make any +effort, at a period when the printing-press was very active, to give +this jewel of their archives to the public. If it be objected that, on +the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS. of the 'Chronicle' must have been +divulged before the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce +two plausible answers. In the first place, Dino was the partisan of a +conquered cause; and his family had nothing to gain by publishing an +acrimonious political pamphlet during the triumph of his antagonists. In +the second place, MSS. of even greater literary importance disappeared +in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their +subjects again excited interest in the literary world. The history of +Dante's treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_ is a case in point. With regard to +style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge. Reading the +celebrated description of Florence at the opening of Dino's 'Chronicle,' +I seem indeed, for my own part, to discern a post-Boccaccian +artificiality of phrase. Still there is nothing to render it impossible +that the 'Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of 1450(?) and +1514, may be a _rifacimento_ of an elder and simpler work. In that +section of my history which deals with Italian literature of the +fifteenth century, I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling of +ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was by no means +unfrequent. The curious discrepancies between the _Trattato della +Famiglia_ as written by Alberti and as ascribed to _Pandolfini_ can only +be explained upon the hypothesis of such _rifacimento_. If the +historical inaccuracies in which the 'Chronicle' abounds are adduced as +convincing proof of its fabrication, it may be replied that the author +of so masterly a romance would naturally have been anxious to preserve a +strict accordance with documents of acknowledged validity. Consequently, +these very blunders might not unreasonably be used to combat the +hypothesis of deliberate forgery. It is remarkable, in this connection, +that only one meager reference is made to Dante by the Chronicler, who, +had he been a literary forger, would scarcely have omitted to enlarge +upon this theme. Without, therefore, venturing to express a decided +opinion on a question which still divides the most competent +Italian judges, I see no reason to despair of the problem being +ultimately solved in a way less unfavorable to Dino Compagni than +Scheffer-Boichorst and Fanfani would approve of. Considered as the +fifteenth century _rifacimento_ of an elder document, the 'Chronicle' +would lose its historical authority, but would still remain an +interesting monument of Florentine literature, and would certainly not +deserve the unqualified names of 'forgery' and 'fabrication' that have +been unhesitatingly showered upon it.[1] + + [1] It is to be hoped that the completion of Del Lungo's work may + put an end to the Compagni controversy, either by a solid + vindication of the 'Chronicle,' or by so weak a defense as to render + further partisanship impossible. So far as his book has hitherto + appeared, it contains no signs of an ultimate triumph. The + weightiest point contained in it is the discovery of the Ashburnham + MS. If Del Lungo fails to prove his position, we shall be left to + choose between Scheffer-Boichorst's absolute skepticism or the + modified view adopted by me in the text. + +The two chief Florentine historians of the fifteenth century are +Lionardo Bruni of Arezzo, and Poggio Bracciolini, each of whom, in his +capacity of Chancellor to the Republic, undertook to write the annals of +the people of Florence from the earliest date to his own time. Lionardo +Aretino wrote down to the year 1404, and Poggio Bracciolini to the year +1455. Their histories are composed in Latin, and savor much of the +pedantic spirit of the age in which they were projected.[1] Both of them +deserve the criticism of Machiavelli, that they filled their pages too +exclusively with the wars and foreign affairs in which Florence was +engaged, failing to perceive that the true object of the historian is to +set forth the life of a commonwealth as a continuous whole, to draw the +portrait of a state with due regard to its especial physiognomy.[2] To +this critique we may add that both Lionardo and Poggio were led astray +by the false taste of the earlier Renaissance. Their admiration for Livy +and the pedantic proprieties of a labored Latinism made them pay more +attention to rhetoric than to the substance of their work.[3] We meet +with frigid imitations and bombastic generalities, where concise +details and graphic touches would have been acceptable. In short, these +works are rather studies of style in an age when the greatest stylists +were but bunglers and beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians +of the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and Livy, succeeded +only in becoming lifeless shadows of the past. History dictated under +the inspiration of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of +reproducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had played no +prominent part in the Commonwealth,[4] cannot pretend to the vigor and +the freshness that we admire so much in the writings of men like the +Villani, Gino Capponi, Giovanni Cavalcanti, and many others. Yet even +after making these deductions, it may be asserted with truth that no +city of Italy at this period of the Renaissance, except Florence, could +boast historiographers so competent. Vespasiano at the close of his +biography of Poggio estimates their labor in sentences which deserve to +be remembered: 'Among the other singular obligations which the city of +Florence owes to Messer Lionardo and to Messer Poggio, is this, that +except the Roman Commonwealth no republic or free state in Italy has +been so distinguished as the town of Florence, in having had two such +notable writers to record its doings as Messer Lionardo and Messer +Poggio; for up to the time of their histories everything was in the +greatest obscurity. If the republic of Venice, which can show so many +wise citizens, had the deeds which they have done by sea and land +committed to writing, it would be far more illustrious even than it is +now. And Galeazzo Maria, and Filippo Maria, and all the Visconti--their +actions would also be more famous than they are. Nay, there is not any +republic that ought not to give every reward to writers who should +commemorate its doings. We see at Florence that from the foundation of +the city to the days of Messer Lionardo and Messer Poggio there was no +record of anything that the Florentines had done, in Latin, or history +devoted to themselves. Messer Poggio follows after Messer Lionardo, and +writes like him in Latin. Giovanni Villani, too, wrote an universal +history in the vulgar tongue of whatsoever happened in every place, and +introduces the affairs of Florence as they happened. The same did Messer +Filippo Villani, following after Giovanni Villani. These are they alone +who have distinguished Florence by the histories that they have +written.'[5] The pride of the citizen and a just sense of the value of +history, together with sound remarks upon Venice and Milan, mingle +curiously in this passage with the pedantry of a fifteenth-century +scholar. + + [1] Poggio's _Historia Populi Florentini_ is given in the XXth + volume of Muratori's collection. Lionardo's _Istoria Fiorentina_, + translated into Italian by Donato Acciajuoli, has been published by + Le Monnier (Firenze, 1861). The high praise which Ugo Foscolo + bestowed upon the latter seems due to a want of familiarity. + + [2] See the preface to the _History of Florence_, by Machiavelli. + + [3] Lionardo Bruni, for example, complains in the preface to his + history that it is impossible to accommodate the rude names of his + personages to a polished style. + + [4] Both Poggio and Lionardo began life as Papal secretaries; the + latter was not made a citizen of Florence till late in his career. + + [5] _Vite di Uomini Illustri_. Barbera, 1859; p. 425. + +The historians of the first half of the sixteenth century are a race +apart. Three generations of pedantic erudition and of courtly or +scholastic trifling had separated the men of letters from the men of +action, and had made literature a thing of curiosity. Three generations +of the masked Medicean despotism had destroyed the reality of freedom in +Florence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. Yet, strange to +say, it was at the end of the fifteenth century that the genius of the +thirteenth revived. Italian literature was cultivated for its own sake +under the auspices of Lorenzo de' Medici. The year 1494 marks the +resurrection of the spirit of old liberty beneath the trumpet-blast of +Savonarola's oratory. Amid the universal corruption of public morals, +from the depth of sloth and servitude, when the reality of liberty was +lost, when fate and fortune had combined to render constitutional +reconstruction impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the +intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more than its old +vigor in a series of the most brilliant political writers who have ever +illustrated one short but eventful period in the life of a single +nation. That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. It embraces +the two final efforts of the Florentines to shake off the Medicean yoke, +the disastrous siege at the end of which they fell a prey to the +selfishness of their own party-leaders, the persecution of Savonarola by +Pope Alexander, the Church-rule of Popes Leo and Clement, the extinction +of the elder branch of the Medici in its two bastards (Ippolito, +poisoned by his brother Alessandro, and Alessandro poignarded by his +cousin Lorenzino), and the final eclipse of liberty beneath the +Spain-appointed dynasty of the younger Medicean line in Duke Cosimo. The +names of the historians of this period are Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo +Nardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Giannotti, +Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pitti.[1] In these men the +mental qualities which we admire in the Villani, Dante, and Compagni +reappear, combined, indeed, in different proportions, tempered with the +new philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, and permeated with +quite another morality. In the interval of two centuries freedom has +been lost. It is only the desire for freedom that survives. But that, +after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still a passion. The +rectitude of instinct and the intense convictions of the earlier age +have been exchanged for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean +acceptance' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which in men like +Guicciardini and Machiavelli is absolutely appalling. Nearly all the +authors of this period bear a double face. They write one set of memoirs +for the public, and another set for their own delectation. In their +inmost souls they burn with the zeal for liberty: yet they sell their +abilities to the highest bidder--to Popes whom they despise, and to +Dukes whom they revile in private. What makes the literary labors of +these historians doubly interesting is that they were carried on for the +most part independently; for though they lived at the same time, and in +some cases held familiar conversation with each other, they gave +expression to different shades of political opinion, and their histories +remained in manuscript till some time after their death.[2] The student +of the Renaissance has, therefore the advantage of comparing and +confronting a whole band of independent witnesses to the same events. +Beside their own deliberate criticism of the drama in which all played +some part as actors or spectators, we can use the not less important +testimony they afford unconsciously, according to the bias of private or +political interest by which they are severally swayed. + + [1] The dates of these historians are as follows:-- + + BORN. DIED. + Machiavelli 1469 1527 + Nardi 1476 1556 + Guicciardini 1482 1540 + Nerli 1485 1536 + Giannotti 1492 1572 + Varchi 1502 1565 + Segni 1504 1558 + Pitti 1519 1589 + + [2] Varchi, it is true, had Nardi's _History of Florence_ and + Guicciardini's _History of Italy_ before him while he was compiling + his _History of Florence_. But Segni and Nerli were given for the + first time to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and + Guicciardini's _History of Florence_ in 1859. + +The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year +1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; +that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that +of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509. The prefatory chapters, which in most +cases introduce the special subject of each history, contain a series of +retrospective surveys over the whole history of Florence extremely +valuable for the detailed information they contain, as well as for the +critical judgments of men whose acumen had been sharpened to the utmost +by their practical participation in politics. It will not, perhaps, be +superfluous to indicate the different parts played by these historians +in the events of their own time. Guicciardini, it is well known, had +governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean Popes. He too was +instrumental in placing Duke Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536. +At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the +exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and +advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was +composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni was nephew of the +Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals +during the siege of Florence. Pitti was a member of the great house who +contested the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the +fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the +Palleschi may still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity. +Giannotti, in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace a +spirit no less democratic than Pitti's, was also an actor in the events +of the siege, and afterwards appeared among the exiles. In the attempt +made by the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosimo and the +adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti was chosen as the spokesman for +the latter. He wrote and died in exile at Venice. Nerli again took part +in the events of those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing +himself up with the exiles and acting as a spy upon their projects. All +the authors I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some of +them were members of her most illustrious families. Varchi, in whom the +flame of Florentine patriotism burns brightest, and who is by far the +most copious annalist of the period, was a native of Montevarchi. Yet, +as often happens, he was more Florentine than the Florentines; and of +the events which he describes, he had for the most part been witness. +Duke Cosimo employed him to write the history; it is a credit both to +the prince and to the author that its chapters should be full of +criticisms so outspoken, and of aspirations after liberty so vehement. +On the very first page of his preface Varchi dares to write these words +respecting Florence--'divenne, dico, di stato piuttosto corrotto e +licenzioso, tirannide, che di sana e moderata repubblica, +principato';[1] in which he deals blame with impartial justice all +round. It must, however, be remembered that at the time when Varchi +wrote, the younger branch of the Medici were firmly established on the +throne of Florence. Between this branch and the elder line there had +always been a coldness. Moreover, all parties had agreed to accept the +duchy as a divinely appointed instrument for rescuing the city from her +factions and reducing her to tranquillity.[2] + + [1] 'It passed, I say, from the condition of a corrupt and + ill-conducted commonwealth to tyranny, rather than from a healthy + and well-tempered republic to principality.' + + [2] See _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. xxxv. + +It would be beyond the purpose of this chapter to enter into the +details of the history of Florence between 1527 and 1531--those years of +her last struggle for freedom, which have been so admirably depicted by +her great political annalists. It is rather my object to illustrate the +intellectual qualities of philosophical analysis and acute observation +for which her citizens were eminent. Yet a sketch of the situation is +necessary in order to bring into relief the different points of view +maintained by Segni, Nardi, Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively. + +At the period in question Florence was, according to the universal +testimony of these authors, too corrupt for real liberty and too +turbulent for the tranquil acceptance of a despotism. The yoke of the +Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the pride of the old noble +families; while the policy pursued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created +a class of greedy professional politicians. The city was not content +with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for wealth or ability, were +egotistical, vain, and mutually jealous. Each man sought advantage for +himself. Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean party, or +Palleschi, were either extreme in their devotion to the ruling house, +and desirous of establishing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and +anxious to retain the Medici as the chiefs of a dominant oligarchy. The +point of union between these two divisions of the party was a prejudice +in favor of class rule, a hope to get power and wealth for themselves +through the elevation of the princely family The popular faction on the +other hand agreed in wishing to place the government of the city upon a +broad republican basis. But the leaders of this section of the citizens +favored the plebeian cause from different motives. Some sought only a +way to riches and authority, which they could never have opened for them +under the oligarchy contemplated by the Palleschi. Others, styled +Frateschi or Piagnoni, clung to the ideas of liberty which were +associated with the high morality and impassioned creed of Savonarola. +These were really the backbone of the nation, the class which might have +saved the state if salvation had been possible. Another section, steeped +in the study of ancient authors and imbued with memories of Roman +patriotism, thought it still possible to secure the freedom of the state +by liberal institutions. These men we may call the Doctrinaires. Their +panacea was the establishment of a mixed form of government, such as +that which Giannotti so learnedly illustrated. To these parties must be +added the red republicans, or Arrabbiati--a name originally reserved for +the worst adherents of the Medici, but now applied to fanatics of +Jacobin complexion--and the Libertines, who only cared for such a form +of government as should permit them to indulge their passions. + +Amid this medley of interests there resulted, as a matter of fact, two +policies at the moment when the affairs of Florence, threatened by Pope +and Emperor in combination, and deserted by France and the rest of +Italy, grew desperate. One was that of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who +advocated moderate counsels and an accommodation with Clement VII. The +other was that of the Gonfalonier Carducci, who pushed things to +extremities and used the enthusiasm of the Frateschi for sustaining the +spirit of the people in the siege.[1] The latter policy triumphed over +the former. Its principles were an obstinate belief in Francis, though +he had clearly turned a deaf ear to Florence; confidence in the +generals, Baglioni and Colonna, who were privately traitors to the cause +they professed to defend; and reliance on the prophecies of Savonarola, +supported by the preaching of the Friars Foiano, Bartolommeo, and +Zaccaria. Ill-founded as it was in fact, the policy of Carducci had on +its side all that was left of nobility, patriotism, and the fire of +liberty among the Florentines. In spite of the hopelessness of the +attempt, we cannot now read without emotion how bravely and desperately +those last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the independence of +their city at any cost, and in the teeth of overwhelming opposition. The +memory of Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Ferrucci was +its hero. It failed. It was in vain that the Florentines had laid waste +Valdarno, destroyed their beautiful suburbs, and leveled their crown of +towers. It was in vain that they had poured forth their treasures to the +uttermost farthing, had borne plague and famine without a murmur, and +had turned themselves at the call of their country into a nation of +soldiers, Charles, Clement, the Palleschi, and Malatesta +Baglioni--enemies without the city walls and traitors within its +gates--were too powerful for the resistance of burghers who had learned +but yesterday to handle arms and to conduct a war on their own +account.[2] Florence had to capitulate. The venomous Palleschi, +Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio Valori, by proscription, exile, and +taxation, drained the strength and broke the spirit of the state. Caesar +and Christ's Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, embraced and made +friends over the prostrate corpse of sold and slaughtered liberty. +Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff +in the sack of Rome. + + [1] Guicciardini, writing his _Ricordi_ during the first months of + the siege, remarks upon the power of faith (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. + 83. Compare p. 134): 'Esemplo a' di nostri ne e grandissimo questa + ostinazione de' Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del + mondo messi a aspettare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza + speranza di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille + difficulta, hanno sostenuto in quelle mura gia sette mesi gli e + serciti, e quali non si sarebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette + di; e condotto le cose in luogo che se vincessino, nessuno piu se ne + maraviglierebbe, dove prima da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e + questa ostinazione ha causata in gran parte la fede di non potere + perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronimo da Ferrara.' + + [2] See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic + Ferrucci. + +The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties +of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time +historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of +the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the +Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished +narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this +most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance. +Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of +handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's +princely relatives by his wealth. Yet though he made a profession of +patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great influence consistently as a +counterpoise to the Medicean authority. It was he, for instance, who +advised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke of Florence. +Distinguished, as he was, above all men of his time for wit, urbanity, +accomplishments, and splendid living, his want of character neutralized +these radiant gifts of nature. His private morals were infamous. He +encouraged by precept and example the worst vices of his age and nation, +consorting with young men whom he instructed in the arts of dissolute +living, and to whom he communicated his own selfish Epicureanism. To him +in a great measure may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine +aristocracy in the sixteenth century. In his public action he was no +less vacillating than unprincipled in private life. After prevailing +upon Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici to leave Florence in 1527, he +failed to execute his trust of getting Pisa from their grasp (moved, it +is said, by a guilty fondness for the young and handsome Ippolito), nor +did he afterwards share any of the hardships and responsibilities of +the siege. Indeed, he then found it necessary to retire into exile in +France, on the excuse of superintending his vast commercial affairs at +Lyons. After the restoration of the Medici he returned to Florence as +the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and abetted in his +juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with Alessandro on the occasion of an +insult offered to his daughter Luisa, and the accusation of murder +brought against his son Piero, he went into opposition and exile, less +for political than for private reasons. After the murder of Alessandro, +he received Lorenzo de' Medici, the fratricide, with the title of +'Second Brutus' at Venice. Meanwhile it was he who paid the dowry of +Catherine de' Medici to the Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen +the house of princes against whom he was plotting, by that splendid +foreign alliance which placed a descendant of the Florentine +bill-brokers on the throne of France. After all these vicissitudes +Filippo Strozzi headed an armed attack upon the dominions of Duke +Cosimo, was taken in the battle of Montemurlo, and finally was murdered +in that very fortress, outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had +counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the +Florentines.[1] The historians with the exception of Nerli agree in +describing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking man, whose many +changes of policy were due, not to conviction, but to the desire of +gaining the utmost license of disorderly living. At the same time we +cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely +bearing, and great courage. + + [1] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this + castle. It should be said that accounts disagree about Filippo's + death. Nerli very distinctly asserts that he committed suicide. + Segni inclines to the belief that he was murdered by the creatures + of Duke Cosimo. + +The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the +ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of +the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the +keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the +failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular +party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and +egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored +now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati--as he calls +them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology--whether they +professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on +self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.[1] +The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy +during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the +same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these +men, called from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the +administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero +Soderini--that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls +him--was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the +other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares +his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more +moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that +section of the Medicean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He had +strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a government of nobles to +the popular democracy which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While +he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that the republic could +not hold its own against both Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the +King of France, who ought to have rendered assistance in the hour of +need, was bound by the treaty of Cambray, and by the pledges he had +given to Charles in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which +Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his +fall--a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the +Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been +restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns. +Varchi, while no less alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was +animated with a more democratic spirit. He had none of Segni's Whig +leanings, but shared the patriotic enthusiasm which at that supreme +moment made the whole state splendidly audacious in the face of +insurmountable difficulties. Both Segni and Varchi discerned the +exaggerated and therefore baneful influence of Savonarola's prophecies +over the populace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the people +kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, after her chastisement, +Florence would bloom forth with double luster, and that angels in the +last resort would man her walls and repel the invaders. There is +something pathetic in this delusion of a great city, trusting with +infantine pertinacity to the promises of the man whom they had seen +burned as an impostor, when all the while their statesmen and their +generals were striking bargains with the foe. Nardi is more sincerely +Piagnone than either Segni or Varchi. Yet, writing after the events of +the siege, his faith is shaken; and while he records his conviction that +Savonarola was an excellent Nomothetes, he questions his prophetic +mission, and deplores the effect produced by his vain promises. Nerli, +as might have been expected from a noble married to Caterina Salviati, +the niece of Leo and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been courtier +to Clement and privy councilor to Alessandro, sustains the Medicean note +throughout his commentaries. + + [1] He goes so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished + to give a liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans + were frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be + oligarchs. See _Arch. Stor_. vol. i. pp. 121,131. The passages + quoted from his 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' relative to Machiavelli, + Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco Guicciardini (_Arch. Stor_. vol. i. + pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very instructive; with such greedy + self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible for the Medicean Popes to + establish any government but a tyranny in Florence. + +Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we +gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a +period when her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all +faculty for centralized or concerted action. In sagacity, in the power +of analysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to +causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper +subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common. He +who has seen Rembrandt's painting of the dissecting-room might construct +for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these +patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of +their native city. Life is extinct. Nothing is left for science but, +scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution. Each +anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady. +Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own +impressions. + +The literary qualities of these historians are very different, and seem +to be derived from essential differences in their characters. Pitti is +by far the most brilliant in style, concentrated in expression to the +point of epigram, and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though deficient in +some of the most attractive characteristics of the historian, is +invaluable for sincerity of intention and painstaking accuracy. The +philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add so much +splendor to the works of Guicciardini are absent from the pages of +Nardi. He is anxious to present a clear picture of what happened; but he +cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at length upon the +matter of his history. At the same time he lacks the _naiivete_ which +makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He gossips +as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want +of piquancy. The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which +concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and +dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathizes with +Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his +inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the +Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cautious, +preferring always to give an external relation of events, instead of +analyzing motives or criticising character.[2] He is in especial silent +about bad men and criminal actions. Therefore, when he passes an adverse +judgment (as, for instance, upon Cesare Borgia), or notes a dark act (as +the _stuprum_ committed upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of +historians more addicted to scandal is important. Segni is far more +lively than Nardi, while he is not less painstaking to be accurate. He +shows a partisan feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo +Capponi and his prejudice against Francesco Carducci, which gives the +relish of personality that Nardi's cautiously dry chronicle lacks. +Rarely have the entangled events of a specially dramatic period been set +forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance of style. +Segni is deficient, when compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, +minuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, enthusiasm, and zeal +for truth which makes Varchi incomparable. His sketches of men, +critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious +than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. +Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language +is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, +and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable +repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the +republic, and the charm of detail compensates for the lack of style. +Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those that have been +mentioned; yet some of the particulars which he relates, about +Savonarola's reform of manners, for example, and the literary gatherings +in the Rucellai gardens, are such as we find nowhere else. + + [1] Book ii. cap. 16. + + [2] See lib. ii. cap. 34: 'Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo + far giudizio delle cose incerte, e massimamente della + intenzione e animo segreto degli uomini, che non apparisce + chiara se non per congettura e riscontro delle cose esteriori. + E pero stando termo il primo proposito, vogliamo raccontare + quanto piu possibile ci sia, la verita delle cose fatte, piu + tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.' This is dignified and + noble language in an age which admired the brilliant falsehoods + of Giovio. + +Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too much time has been spent +in the discussion of these annalists of the siege of Florence. Yet for +the student of history they have a value almost unique. They suggest the +possibilities of a true science of comparative history, and reveal a +vivacity of the historic consciousness which can be paralleled by no +other nation. How different might be our conception of the vicissitudes +of Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a similar Pleiad of +contemporary Greek authors! + +Having traced the development of historical research and political +philosophy in Florence from the year 1300 to the fall of the Republic, +it remains to speak of the two greatest masters of practical and +theoretical statecraft--Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli. +These two writers combine all the distinctive qualities of the +Florentine historiographers in the most eminent perfection. At the same +time they are, not merely as authors but also as men, mirrors of the +times in which they both played prominent parts. In their biographies +and in their works we trace the spirit of an age devoid of moral +sensibility, penetrative in analysis, but deficient in faith, hope, +enthusiasm, and stability of character. The dry light of the intellect +determined their judgment of men, as well as their theories of +government. On the other hand, the sordid conditions of existence to +which they were subjected as the servants of corrupt states, or the +instruments of wily princes--as diplomatists intent upon the plans of +kings like Ferdinand or adventurers like Cesare Borgia, privy councilors +of such Popes as Clement VII. and such tyrants as Duke Alessandro de' +Medici--distorted their philosophy and blunted their instincts. For the +student of the sixteenth century they remain riddles, the solution of +which is difficult, because by no strain of the imagination is it easy +to place ourselves in their position. One half of their written +utterances seem to be at variance with the other half. Their actions +often contradict their most brilliant and emphatic precepts; while +contemporaries disagree about their private character and public +conduct. All this confusion, through which it is now perhaps impossible +to discern what either Guicciardini or Machiavelli really was, and what +they really felt and thought, is due to the anomaly of consummate +ability and unrivaled knowledge of the world existing without religious +or political faith, in an age of the utmost depravity of public and +private morals. No criticism could be more stringent upon the +contemporary disorganization of society in Italy than is the silent +witness of these men, sublimely great in all mental qualities, but +helplessly adrift upon a sea of contradictions and of doubts, ignorant +of the real nature of mankind in spite of all their science, because +they leave both goodness and beauty out of their calculations. + +Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1482. In 1505, at the age of +twenty-three, he had already so distinguished himself as a student of +law that he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the +Institutes in public. However, as he preferred active to professorial +work, he began at this time to practice at the bar, where he soon ranked +as an able advocate and eloquent speaker. This reputation, together +with his character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria to +send him on an embassy to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512. Thus +Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and +statesman. We may also conclude with safety that it was at the court of +that crowned hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he +learned his first lessons in political cynicism. The court of Spain +under Ferdinand the Catholic was a perfect school of perfidy, where even +an Italian might discern deeper reaches of human depravity and formulate +for his own guidance a philosophy of despair. It was whispered by his +enemies that here, upon the threshold of his public life, Guicciardini +sold his honor by accepting a bribe from Ferdinand.[1] Certain it is +that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time +forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy +of supporting force by clever dissimulation.[2] Returning to Florence, +Guicciardini was, in 1515, deputed to meet Leo X. on the part of the +Republic at Cortona. Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able men and +making use of them, took him into favor, and three years later appointed +him Governor of Reggio and Modena. In 1521 Parma was added to his rule. +Clement VII. made him Viceroy of Romagna in 1523, and in 1526 elevated +him to the rank of Lieutenant-General of the Papal army. In consequence +of this high commission, Guicciardini shared in the humiliation +attaching to all the officers of the League who, with the Duke of Urbino +at their head suffered Rome to be sacked and the Pope to be imprisoned +in 1527. The blame of this contemptible display of cowardice or private +spite cannot, however, be ascribed to him: for he attended the armies of +the League not as general, but as counselor and chief reporter. It was +his business not to control the movements of the army so much as to act +as referee in the Pope's interest, and to keep the Vatican informed of +what was stirring in the camp. In 1531 Guicciardini was advanced to the +governorship of Bologna, the most important of all the Papal +lord-lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534 on the election of +Paul III., preferring to follow the fortunes of the Medicean princes at +Florence. In this sketch of his career I must not omit to mention that +Guicciardini was declared a rebel in 1527 by the popular government on +account of his well-known Medicean prejudices, and that in 1530 he had +been appointed by Clement VII. to punish the rebellious citizens. On the +latter occasion he revenged himself for the insults offered him in 1527 +by the cruelty with which he pushed proscription to the utmost limits, +relegating his enemies to unhealthy places of exile, burdening them with +intolerable fines, and using all the indirect means which his ingenuity +could devise for forcing them into outlawry and contumacy.[3] Therefore +when he returned to inhabit Florence, he did so as the creature of the +Medici, sworn to maintain the bastard Alessandro in his power. He was +elected a member of the Senate of eighty; and so thoroughly did he +espouse the cause of his new master, that he had the face to undertake +the Duke's defense before Charles V. at Naples in 1535. On this occasion +Alessandro, who had rendered himself unbearable by his despotic habits, +and in particular by the insults which he offered to women of all ranks +and conditions in Florence, was arraigned by the exiles before the bar +of Caesar. Guicciardini won the cause of his client, and restored +Alessandro with an Imperial confirmation of his despotism to Florence. +This period of his political career deserves particular attention, since +it displays a glaring contradiction between some of his unpublished +compositions and his actions, and confirms the accusations of his +enemies.[4] That he should have preferred a government of Ottimati, or +wealthy nobles, to a more popular constitution, and that he should have +adhered with fidelity to the Medicean faction in Florence, is no ground +for censure.[5] But when we find him in private unmasking the artifices +of the despots by the most relentless use of frigid criticism, and +advocating a mixed government upon the type of the Venetian +Constitution, we are constrained to admit with Varchi and Pitti that his +support of Alessandro was prompted less by loyalty than by a desire to +gratify his own ambition and avarice under the protective shadow of the +Medicean tyranny.[6] He belonged in fact to those selfish citizens whom +Pitti denounces, diplomatists and men of the world, whose thirst for +power induced them to play into the hands of the Medici, wishing to suck +the state[7] themselves, and to hold the prince in the leading-strings +of vice and pleasure for their own advantage.[8] After the murder of +Alessandro, it was principally through Guicciardini's influence that +Cosimo was placed at the head of the Florentine Republic with the title +of Duke. Cosimo was but a boy, and much addicted to field sports. +Guicciardini therefore reckoned that, with an assured income of 12,000 +ducats, the youth would be contented to amuse himself, while he left the +government of Florence in the hands of his Vizier.[9] But here the wily +politician overreached himself. Cosimo wore an old head on his young +shoulders. With decent modesty and a becoming show of deference, he used +Guicciardini as his ladder to mount the throne by, and then kicked the +ladder away. The first days of his administration showed that he +intended to be sole master in Florence. Guicciardini, perceiving that +his game was spoiled, retired to his villa in 1537 and spent the last +years of his life in composing his histories. The famous Istoria d' +Italia was the work of one year of this enforced retirement. The +question irresistibly rises to our mind, whether some of the severe +criticisms passed upon the Medici in his unpublished compositions were +the fruit of these same bitter leisure hours.[10] Guicciardini died in +1540 at the age of fifty-eight, without male heirs. + + [1] See the 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. + part 2, p. 318. + + [2] For the avarice of Guicciardini, see Varchi, vol. i. p. + 318. His _Ricordi Politici_ amply justify the second, though + not the first, clause of this sentence. + + [3] See Varchi, book xii. (and especially cap. xxv.), for these + arts; he says, 'Nel che messer Francesco Guicciardini si + scoperse piu crudele e piu appassionato degli altri.' + + [4] Knowing what sort of tyrant Alessandro was, and remembering + 'hat Guicciardini had written (_Ricordi_, No. ccxlii.): 'La + calcina con che si murano gli stati de' tiranni e il sangue de' + cittadini: pero doverebbe sforzarsi ognuno che nella citta sua + non s'avessino a murare tali palazzi,' it is very difficult to + approve of his advocacy of the Duke. + + [5] Though even here the selfish ambition of the man was + apparent to contemporaries: 'egli arebbe voluto uno stato col + nome d' Ottimati, ma in fatti de' Pochi, nel quale larghissima + parte, per le sue molte e rarissime qualita, meritissimamente + gli si venia.'--Varchi, vol. i. p. 318. + + [6] Guicciardini's _Storia Fiorentina_ and _Reggimento di + Firenze_ (_Op. Ined._ vols. i, and iii.) may be consulted for + his private critique of the Medici. What was the judgment + passed upon him by contemporaries may be gathered from Varchi, + vols. i. pp. 238, 318; ii. 410; iii. 204. Segni, pp. 219, 332. + Nardi, vol. ii. p. 287. Pitti, quoted in _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. + p. xxxviii., and the 'Apologia de' Cappucci' (_Arch. Stor._ + vol. iv. pt. 2). It is, however, only fair to Guicciardini to + record here his opinion, expressed in _Ricordi_, Nos. ccxx. and + cccxxx., that it was the duty of good citizens to seek to guide + the tyrant: 'Credo sia uficio di buoni cittadini, quando la + patria viene in mano di tiranni, cercare d'avere luogo con loro + per potere persuadere il bene, e detestare il male; e certo e + interesse della citta che in qualunque tempo gli uomini da bene + abbino autorita; e ancora che gli ignoranti e passionati di + Firenze l' abbino sempre intesa altrimenti, si accorgerebbono + quanta pestifero sarebbe il governo de' Medici, se non avessi + intorno altri che pazzi e cattivi.' + + [7] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 204. 'Che Cosimo ... _succiarsi lo + stato_.' + + [8] Pitti dips his pen in gall when he describes these + citizens: 'Cotesti vogliosi Ottimati; i quali non hanno saputo + mai ritrovare luogo che piaccia loro, sottomendosi ora al + Medici per l'ingorda avarizia; ora gittandosi al popolo, per + non potere a modo loro tiraneggiare; ora rivendendolo a' + Medici, vedutisi scoperti e raffrenati da lui; e sempre mai con + danno della Repubblica, e di ciascuna parte, inquieti, + insaziabili e fraudolenti.'--'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. + Stor._ xv. pt. ii. p. 215. + + [9] Here is a graphic touch in Varchi's _History_, vol. iii. p. + 202. Guicciardini is discussing the appointment of Cosimo de' + Medici: 'Gli dovessero esser pagati per suo piatto ogn' anno + 12,000 fiorini d' oro, e non piu, avendo il Guicciardino, + _abbassando il viso e alzando gli occhi_, detto: "Un 12,000 + fiorini d' oro e--un bello spendere."' + + [10] Pitti seems to have taken this view: see 'Apologia de' + Cappucci' (_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. part ii. p. 329): 'Tosto che + 'l duca Cosimo lo pose a sedere insieme con certi altri suoi + colleghi, si adiro malamente; e se la disputa della provvisione + non l' avesse ritenuto, sarebbe ito a servire papa Pagolo + terzo. Onde, restato confuso e disperato, si tratteneva alla + sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove transportato dalla + stizza ritocco in molte parti la sua Istoria, per mostrare di + non essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, accatto + l' occasione di parere istrumento della Repubblica.' + Guicciardini's own apology for his treatment of the Medici, in + the proemio to the treatise _Del Reggimento di Firenze_, + deserves also to be read. + +Turning now from the statesman to the man of letters, we find in +Guicciardini one of the most consummate historians of any nation or of +any age. The work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is +one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a very +intricate period, for subordination of the parts to the whole, for +calmness of judgment and for philosophic depth of thought. Considering +that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the annals of his own +times, and that he had to disentangle the raveled skein of Italian +politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarkable. +The whole movement of the history recalls the pomp and dignity of Livy, +while a series of portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand of +an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid force of Tacitus. Yet +Guicciardini in this work deserves less commendation as a writer than as +a thinker. There is a manifest straining to secure style, by +manipulation and rehandling, which contrasts unfavorably with the +unaffected ease, the pregnant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. +His periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is prolix and +monotonous. We can trace the effort to emulate the authors of antiquity +without the ease which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes +with nature. + +The transcendent merit of the history is this--that it presents us with +a scientific picture of politics and of society during the first half of +the sixteenth century. The picture is set forth with a clairvoyance and +a candor that are almost terrible. The author never feels enthusiasm for +a moment: no character, however great for good or evil, rouses him from +the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criticism. He utters but few +exclamations of horror or of applause. Faith, religion, conscience, +self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of +human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces +which, according to his experience, move the world. That the +strong should trample on the weak, that the wily should circumvent the +innocent, that hypocrisy and fraud and dissimulation should triumph, +seems to him but natural. His whole theory of humanity is tinged with +the sad gray colors of a stolid, cold-eyed, ill-contented, egotistical +indifference. He is not angry, desperate, indignant, but phlegmatically +prudent, face to face with the ruin of his country. For him the world +was a game of intrigue, in which his friends, his enemies, and himself +played parts, equally sordid, with grave faces and hearts bent only on +the gratification of mean desires. Accordingly, though his mastery of +detail, his comprehension of personal motives, and his analysis of craft +are alike incomparable, we find him incapable of forming general views +with the breadth of philosophic insight or the sagacity of a frank and +independent nature. The movements of the eagle and the lion must be +unintelligible to the spider or the fox. It was impossible for +Guicciardini to feel the real greatness of the century, or to foresee +the new forces to which it was giving birth. He could not divine the +momentous issues of the Lutheran schism; and though he perceived the +immediate effect upon Italian politics of the invasion of the French, he +failed to comprehend the revolution marked out for the future in the +shock of the modern nations. While criticising the papacy, he discerned +the pernicious results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he had no +instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and religious regeneration. +His judgment of the political situation led him to believe that the +several units of the Italian system might be turned to profit and +account by the application of superficial remedies,--by the development +of despotism, for example, or of oligarchy, when in reality the decay of +the nation was already past all cure. + +Two other masterpieces from Guicciardini's pen, the _Dialogo del +Reggimento di Firenze_ and the _Storia Fiorentina_, have been given to +the world during the last twenty years. To have published them +immediately after their author's death would have been inexpedient, +since they are far too candid and outspoken to have been acceptable to +the Medicean dynasty. Yet in these writings we find Guicciardini at his +best. Here he has not yet assumed the mantle of the rhetorician, which +in the _Istoria d' Italia_ sits upon him somewhat cumbrously. His style +is more spontaneous; his utterances are less guarded. Writing for +himself alone, he dares to say more plainly what he thinks and feels. At +the same time the political sagacity of the statesman is revealed in all +its vigor. I have so frequently used both of these treatises that I need +not enter into a minute analysis of their contents. It will be enough to +indicate some of the passages which display the literary style and the +scientific acumen of Guicciardini at their best. The _Reggimento di +Firenze_ is an essay upon the form of government for which Florence was +best suited. Starting with a discussion of Savonarola's constitution, in +which ample justice is done to the sagacity and promptitude by means of +which he saved the commonwealth at a critical juncture (pp. 27-30), the +interlocutors pass to an examination of the Medicean tyranny (pp. +34-49). This is one of the masterpieces of Guicciardini's analysis. He +shows how the administration of justice, the distribution of public +honors, and the foreign policy of the republic were perverted by this +family. He condemns Cosimo's tyrannical application of fines and imposts +(p. 68), Piero the younger's insolence (p. 46), and Lorenzo's +appropriation of the public moneys to his private use (p. 43). Yet while +setting forth the vices of this tyranny in language which even Sismondi +would have been contented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no +passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted princes eager for +power, although they crushed the spirit of the people, discouraged +political ardor, extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them +lay to enervate the nation they governed. The scientific statist +acknowledges no reciprocal rights and duties between the governor and +the governed. It is a trial of strength. If the tyrant gets the upper +hand, the people must expect to be oppressed. If, on the other side, the +people triumph, they must take good care to exterminate the despotic +brood: 'The one true remedy would be to destroy and extinguish them so +utterly that not a vestige should remain, and to employ for this purpose +the poignard or poison, as may be most convenient; otherwise the least +surviving spark is certain to cause trouble and annoyance for the +future'(p. 215). The same precise criticism lays bare the weakness of +democracy. Men, says Guicciardini, always really desire their own power +more than the freedom of the state (p. 50), and the motives even of +tyrannicides are very rarely pure (pp. 53-54). The governments +established by the liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande, +for example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its choice of +magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of taxes, scarcely less +prejudiced against individuals than a tyrant would be, and incapable of +diplomatic foreign policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the +relative merits of the three chief forms of government--the Governo +dell' Uno, the Governo degli Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p. +129). Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the third.[1] He +now expresses a strong opinion that the second is the worst which could +be applied to the actual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130). +His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139-41) illustrates his +plan for combining the advantages of the three species and obviating +their respective evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the +sixteenth century--the Governo Misto--a political invention which +fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as +the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last +century.[2] What follows is an elaborate scheme for applying the +principles of the Governo Misto to the existing state of things in +Florence. This lucid and learned disquisition is wound up (p. 188) with +a mournful expression of the doubt which hung like a thick cloud over +all the political speculations of both Guicciardini and Machiavelli: 'I +hold it very doubtful, and I think it much depends on chance whether +this disorganized constitution will ever take new shape or not ... and +as I said yesterday, I should have more hope if the city were but young; +seeing that not only does a state at the commencement take form with +greater facility than one that has grown old under evil governments, but +things always turn out more prosperously and more easily while fortune +is yet fresh and has not run its course,' etc.[3] In reading the +Dialogue on the Constitution of Florence it must finally be remembered +that Guicciardini has thrown it back into the year 1494, and that he +speaks through the mouths of four interlocutors. Therefore we may +presume that he intended his readers to regard it as a work of +speculative science rather than of practical political philosophy. Yet +it is not difficult to gather the drift of his own meaning. + + [1] Cf. _Ricordi_, cxl.: 'Chi disse uno popolo, disse veramente + uno animale pazzo, pieno ni mille errori, di mille confusioni, + sanza gusto, sanza diletto, sanza stabilita.' It should be + noted that Guicciardini here and elsewhere uses the term Popolo + in its fuller democratic sense. The successive enlargements of + the burgher class in Florence, together with the study of Greek + and Latin political philosophy, had introduced the modern + connotation of the term. + + [2] A lucid criticism of the three forms of government is + contained in Guicciardini's Comment on the second chapter of + the first book of Machiavelli's _Discorsi_ (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. + p. 6): 'E non e dubio che il governo misto delle tre spezie, + principi, ottimati e popolo, e migliore e piu stabile che uno + governo semplice di qualunque delle tre spezie, e massime + quando e misto in modo che di qualunque spezie e tolto il buono + e lasciato indietro il cattivo.' Machiavelli had himself, in + the passage criticised, examined the three simple governments + and declared in favor of the mixed as that which gave stability + to Sparta, Rome, and Venice. The same line of thought may be + traced in the political speculations of both Plato and + Aristotle. The Athenians and Florentines felt the superior + stability of the Spartan and Venetian forms of government, just + as a French theorist might idealize the English constitution. + The essential element of the Governo Misto, which Florence had + lost beyond the possibility of regaining it, was a body of + hereditary and patriotic patricians. This gave its strength to + Venice; and this is that which hitherto has distinguished the + English nation. + + [3] Compare _Ricordi Politici e Civili_, No. clxxxix., for a + lament of this kind over the decrepitude of kingdoms, almost + sublime in its stoicism. + +The _Istoria Fiorentina_ is a succinct narrative of the events of +Italian History, especially as they concerned Florence, between the +years 1378 and 1509. In other words it relates the vicissitudes of the +Republic under the Medici, and the administration of the Gonfalonier +Soderini. This masterpiece of historical narration sets forth with +brevity and frankness the whole series of events which are rhetorically +and cautiously unfolded in the Istoria d' Italia. Most noticeable are +the characters of Lorenzo de' Medici (cap. ix.), of Savonarola (cap. +xvii.), and of Alexander VI. (cap. xxvii.). The immediate consequences +of the French invasion have never been more ably treated than in Chapter +xi., while the whole progress of Cesare Borgia in his career of villany +is analyzed with exquisite distinctness in Chapter xxvi. The wisdom of +Guicciardini nowhere appears more ripe, or his intellect more elastic, +than in the _Istoria Fiorentina_. Students who desire to gain a still +closer insight into the working of Guicciardini's mind should consult +the 403 _Ricordi Politici e Civili_ collected in the first volume of his +_Opere Inedite_. These have all the charm which belongs to occasional +utterances, and are fit, like proverbs, to be worn for jewels on the +finger of time. + +The biography of Niccolo Machiavelli consists for the most part of a +record of his public services to the State of Florence. He was born on +May 3, 1469, of parents who belonged to the prosperous middle class of +Florentine citizens. His ancestry was noble; for the old tradition which +connected his descent with the feudal house of Montespertoli has been +confirmed by documentary evidence.[1] His forefathers held offices of +high distinction in the Commonwealth; and though their wealth and +station had decreased, Machiavelli inherited a small landed estate. His +family, who were originally settled in the Val di Pesa, owned farms at +San Casciano and in other villages of the Florentine dominion, a list of +which may be seen in the return presented by his father Bernardo to the +revenue office in 1498.[2] Their wealth was no doubt trivial in +comparison with that which citizens amassed by trade in Florence; for it +was not the usage of those times to draw more than the necessaries of +life from the Villa: all superfluities were provided by the Bottega in +the town.[3] Yet there can be no question, after a comparison of +Bernardo Machiavelli's return of his landed property with Niccolo +Machiavelli's will,[4] that the illustrious war secretary at all periods +of his life owned just sufficient property to maintain his family in a +decent, if not a dignified, style. About his education we know next to +nothing. Giovio[5] asserts that he possessed but little Latin, and that +he owed the show of learning in his works to quotations furnished by +Marcellus Virgilius. This accusation, which, whether it be true or not, +was intended to be injurious, has lost its force in an age that, like +ours, values erudition less than native genius. It is certain that +Machiavelli knew quite enough of Latin and Greek literature to serve his +turn; and his familiarity with some of the classical historians and +philosophers is intimate. There is even too much parade in his works of +illustrations borrowed from Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch: the only +question is whether Machiavelli relied upon translations rather than +originals. On this point, it is also worthy of remark that his culture +was rather Roman than Hellenic. Had he at any period of his life made as +profound a study of Plato's political dialogues as he made of Livy's +histories, we cannot but feel that his theories both of government and +statecraft might have been more concordant with a sane and normal +humanity. + + [1] See Villani's _Machiavelli_, vol. i. p. 303. Ed. Le + Monnier. + + [2] See vol. i. of the edition of Machiavelli, by Mess. Fanfani + and Passerini, Florence, 1873; p. lv. Villani's Machiavelli, + ib. p. 306. The income is estimated at about 180_l._ + + [3] See Pandolfini, _Trattato del Governo della Famiglia_. + + [4] Fanfani and Passerini's edition, vol. i. p. xcii. + + [5] Elogia, cap. 87. + +In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici, Machiavelli was +admitted to the Chancery of the Commune as a clerk; and in 1498 he was +appointed to the post of chancellor and secretary to the _Dieci di +liberta e pace_. This place he held for the better half of fifteen +years, that is to say, during the whole period of Florentine freedom. +His diplomatic missions undertaken at the instance of the Republic were +very numerous. Omitting those of less importance, we find him at the +camp of Cesare Borgia in 1502, in France in 1504, with Julius II. in +1506, with the Emperor Maximilian in 1507, and again at the French Court +in 1510.[1] To this department of his public life belong the dispatches +and Relazioni which he sent home to the Signory of Florence, his +Monograph upon the Massacre of Sinigaglia, his treatises upon the method +of dealing with Pisa, Pistoja, and Valdichiana, and those two remarkable +studies of foreign nations which are entitled _Ritratti delle Cose dell' +Alemagna_ and _Ritratti delle Cose di Francia_. It was also in the year +1500 that he laid the first foundations of his improved military system. +The political sagacity and the patriotism for which Machiavelli has been +admired are nowhere more conspicuous than in the discernment which +suggested this measure, and in the indefatigable zeal with which he +strove to carry it into effect. Pondering upon the causes of Italian +weakness when confronted with nations like the French, and comparing +contemporary with ancient history, Machiavelli came to the conclusion +that the universal employment of mercenary troops was the chief secret +of the insecurity of Italy. He therefore conceived a plan for +establishing a national militia, and for placing the whole male +population at the service of the state in times of war. He had to begin +cautiously in bringing this scheme before the public; for the stronghold +of the mercenary system was the sloth and luxury of the burghers. At +first he induced the _Dieci di liberta e pace_, or war office, to +require the service of one man per house throughout the Florentine +dominion; but at the same time he caused a census to be taken of all men +capable of bearing arms. His next step was to carry a law by which the +permanent militia of the state was fixed at 10,000. Then in 1503, having +prepared the way by these preliminary measures, he addressed the Council +of the Burghers in a set oration, unfolding the principles of his +proposed reform, and appealing not only to their patriotism but also to +their sense of self-preservation. It was his aim to prove that mercenary +arms must be exchanged for a national militia, if freedom and +independence were to be maintained. The Florentines allowed themselves +to be convinced, and, on the recommendation of Machiavelli, they voted +in 1506 a new magistracy, called the _Nove dell' Ordinanza e Milizia_, +for the formation of companies, the discipline of soldiers, and the +maintenance of the militia in a state of readiness for active +service.[2] Machiavelli became the secretary of this board; and much of +his time was spent thenceforth in the levying of troops and the +practical development of his system. It requires an intimate familiarity +with the Italian military system of the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries to understand the importance of this reform. We are so +accustomed to the systems of Militia, Conscription, and Landwehr, by +means of which military service has been nationalized among the modern +races, that we need to tax our imagination before we can place ourselves +at the point of view of men to whom Machiavelli's measure was a novelty +of genius.[3] + + [1] Machiavelli never bore the title of Ambassador on these + missions. He went as Secretary. His pay was miserable. We find + him receiving one ducat a day for maintenance. + + [2] Documents relating to the institution of the _Nove dell' + Ordinanza e Milizia_, and to its operations between December 6, + 1506, and August 6, 1512, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be + found printed by Signor Canestrini in _Arch. Stor._ vol. xv. + pp. 377 to 453. Machiavelli's treatise _De re militari_, or _I + libri sull' arte della guerra_, was the work of his later life; + it was published in 1521 at Florence. + + [3] Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military + system, the part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into + effect must not be forgotten. Pitti, in his 'Life of Giacomini' + (_Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 241), says: 'Avendo per + dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle fazioni e nelle + battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva troppo + bene conosciuto con quanta piu sicurezza si potesse la + repubblica servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.' + Machiavelli had gone as Commissary to the camp of Giacomini + before Pisa in August 1505; there the man of action and the man + of theory came to an agreement: both found in the Gonfalonier + Soderini a chief of the republic capable of entering into their + views. + +It must be admitted that the new militia proved ineffectual in the hour +of need. To revive the martial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny +and given over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond the +force of even Machiavelli. When Prato had been sacked in 1512, the +Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed +by the excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open +to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his +nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's +marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at +their pleasure. Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean +government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. In +1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo +Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and +tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that he was +innocent. Leo X. released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the +event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to +his farm near San Casciano. + +Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's +biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters a picture of +the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was condemned in +the solitude of the country.[1] Writing on December 10 to his friend +Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am at my farm; and, since my last +misfortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days. I rise with the sun, +and go into a wood of mine that is being cut, where I remain two hours +inspecting the work of the previous day and conversing with the +woodcutters, who have always some trouble on hand among themselves or +with their neighbors. When I leave the wood, I proceed to a well, and +thence to the place which I use for snaring birds, with a book under my +arm--Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, like Tibullus or +Ovid. I read the story of their passions, and let their loves remind me +of my own, which is a pleasant pastime for a while. Next I take the +road, enter the inn door, talk with the passers-by, inquire the news of +the neighborhood, listen to a variety of matters, and make note of the +different tastes and humors of men. This brings me to dinner-time, when +I join my family and eat the poor produce of my farm. After dinner I go +back to the inn, where I generally find the host and a butcher, a +miller, and a pair of bakers. With these companions I play the fool all +day at cards or backgammon: a thousand squabbles, a thousand insults and +abusive dialogues take place, while we haggle over a farthing, and shout +loud enough to be heard from San Casciano. But when evening falls I go +home and enter my writing-room. On the threshold I put off my country +habit, filthy with mud and mire, and array myself in royal courtly +garments; thus worthily attired, I make my entrance into the ancient +courts of the men of old, where they receive me with love, and where I +feed upon that food which only is my own and for which I was born. I +feel no shame in conversing with them and asking them the reason of +their actions. They, moved by their humanity, make answer; for four +hours' space I feel no annoyance, forget all care; poverty cannot +frighten, nor death appall me. I am carried away to their society. And +since Dante says "that there is no science unless we retain what we have +learned," I have set down what I have gained from their discourse, and +composed a treatise, _De Principatibus_, in which I enter as deeply as I +can into the science of the subject, with reasonings on the nature of +principality, its several species, and how they are acquired, how +maintained, how lost. If you ever liked any of my scribblings, this +ought to suit your taste. To a prince, and especially to a new prince, +it ought to prove acceptable. Therefore I am dedicating it to the +Magnificence of Giuliano.' + + [1] This letter may be compared with others of about the same + date. In one (Aug. 3, 1514) he says: 'Ho lasciato dunque i + pensieri delle cose grandi e gravi, non mi diletta piu leggere + le cose antiche, ne ragionare delle moderne; tutte si son + converse in ragionamenti dolci,' etc. Again he writes (Dec. 4, + 1514): 'Quod autem ad me pertinet, si quid agam scire cupis, + omnem meae vitae rationem ab eodem Tafano intelliges, quam + sordidam ingloriamque, non sine indignatione, si me ut soles + amas, cognosces.' Later on, we may notice the same language. + Thus (Feb. 5, 1515), 'Sono diventato inutile a me, a' parenti + ed agli amici,' and (June 8, 1517) 'Essendomi io ridotto a + stare in villa per le avversita che io ho avuto ed ho, sto + qualche volta un mese che non mi ricordo di me.' + +Further on in the same letter he writes: 'I have talked with Filippo +Casavecchia about this little work of mine, whether I ought to present +it or not; and if so, whether I ought to send or take it myself to him. +I was induced to doubt about presenting it at all by the fear lest +Giuliano should not even read it, and that this Ardinghelli should +profit by my latest labors. On the other hand, I am prompted to present +it by the necessity which pursues me, seeing that I am consuming myself +in idleness, and I cannot continue long in this way without becoming +contemptible through poverty. I wish these Signori Medici would begin to +make some use of me, if it were only to set me to the work of rolling a +stone.[1] If I did not win them over to me afterwards, I should only +complain of myself. As for my book, if they read it, they would perceive +that the fifteen years I have spent in studying statecraft have not been +wasted in sleep or play; and everybody ought to be glad to make use of a +man who has so filled himself with experience at the expense of others. +About my fidelity they ought not to doubt. Having always kept faith, I +am not going to learn to break it now. A man who has been loyal and good +for forty-three years, like me, is not likely to change his nature; and +of my loyalty and goodness my poverty is sufficient witness to them.' + + [1] Compare the letter, dated June 10, 1514, to Fr. Vettori: + 'Starommi dunque cosi tra i miei cenci, senza trovare uomo che + della mia servitu si ricordi, o che creda che io possa esser + buono a nulla. Ma egli e impossibile che io possa star molto + cosi, perche io mi logoro,' etc. Again, Dec. 20, 1514: 'E se la + fortuna avesse voluto che i Medici, o in cosa di Firenze o di + fuora, o in cose loro particolari o in pubbliche, mi avessino + una volta comandato, io sarei contento.' + +This letter, invaluable to the student of Machiavelli's works, is +prejudicial to his reputation. It was written only ten months after he +had been imprisoned and tortured by the Medici, just thirteen months +after the republic he had served so long had been enslaved by the +princes before whom he was now cringing. It is true that Machiavelli was +not wealthy; his habits of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for +his needs.[1] It is true that he could ill bear the enforced idleness of +country life, after being engaged for fifteen years in the most +important concerns of the Florentine Republic. But neither his poverty, +which, after all, was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he +found relief in study, justifies the tone of the conclusion to this +letter. When we read it, we cannot help remembering the language of +another exile, who while he tells us-- + + Come sa di sale + Lo pane altrui, e com' e duro calle + Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale + +--can yet refuse the advances of his factious city thus: 'If Florence +cannot be entered honorably, I will never set foot within her walls. And +what? Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the earth to gaze +upon the sun and stars? shall I not beneath whatever region of the +heavens have power to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself +ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence and her people? +Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' If Machiavelli, who in this very +letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought +to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the +debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his +shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.' + + [1] See familiar letter, June 10, 1514. + +In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo Buonarroti may +be said to have been the three greatest intellects produced by Florence. +Dante in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with her +citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at the Medici tombs +for Pope Clement, as a makepeace offering for the fortification of +Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put _to roll a stone by +these Signori Medici_, if only he may so escape from poverty and +dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as +an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo. +Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night +justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him +for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had +disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public +action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came +before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A +treatise _De Principatibus_; in other words, the celebrated _Principe_; +which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or +explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom +in its pages. Remembering the circumstances under which it was composed, +we are in a condition to estimate the proud humility and prostrate pride +of the dedication. 'Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo, son +of Piero de' Medici:' so runs the title. 'Desiring to present myself to +your Magnificence with some proof of my devotion, I have not found +among my various furniture aught that I prize more than the knowledge of +the actions of great men acquired by me through a long experience of +modern affairs and a continual study of ancient. These I have long and +diligently revolved and examined in my mind, and have now compressed +into a little book which I send to your Magnificence. And though I judge +this work unworthy of your presence, yet I am confident that your +humanity will cause you to value it when you consider that I could not +make you a greater gift than this of enabling you in a few hours to +understand what I have learned through perils and discomforts in a +lengthy course of years.' 'If your Magnificence will deign, from the +summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to my low place, you +will know how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and continued +malice of fortune.' The work so dedicated was sent in MS. for the +Magnificent's private perusal. It was not published until 1532, by order +of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli. + +I intend to reserve the _Principe_, considered as the supreme expression +of Italian political science, for a separate study; and after the +introduction to Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter in +detail into a discussion of the various theories respecting the +intention of this treatise.[1] Yet this is the proper place for +explaining my view about Machiavelli's writings in relation to his +biography, and for attempting to connect them into such unity as a mind +so strictly logical as his may have designed. + + [1] Macaulay's essay is, of course, brilliant and + comprehensive. I do not agree with his theory of the Italian + despot, as I have explained on p. 127 of this volume. + Sometimes, too, he indulges in rhetoric that is merely + sentimental, as when he says about the dedication of the + Florentine History to Clement: 'The miseries and humiliations + of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other + food, the stairs which are more painful than every other + ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. _The most + corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not depraved the + generous heart of Clement._' The sentence I have printed in + italics may perhaps tell the truth about the Church and Popes + in general; but the panegyric of Clement is preposterous. + Macaulay must have been laughing in his sleeve. + +With regard to the circumstances under which the Prince was composed, +enough has been already said. Machiavelli's selfish purpose in putting +it forth seems to my mind apparent. He wanted employment: he despaired +of the republic: he strove to furnish the princes in power with a +convincing proof of his capacity for great affairs. Yet it must not on +this account be concluded that the _Principe_ was merely a cheap bid for +office. On the contrary, it contained the most mature and the most +splendid of Machiavelli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years +of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it embodied the dream of +a philosophical patriot for the restitution of liberty to Italy. +Florence, indeed, was lost. 'These Signori Medici' were in power. But +could not even they be employed to purge the sacred soil of Italy from +the Barbarians? + +If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machiavelli's mind at this +distance of time, we may conjecture that he had come to believe the +free cities too corrupt for independence. The only chance Italy had of +holding her own against the great powers of Europe was by union under a +prince. At the same time the Utopia of this union, with which he closes +the _Principe_, could only be realized by such a combination as would +either neutralize the power of the Church, or else gain the Pope for an +ally by motives of interest. Now at the period of the dedication of the +_Principe_ to Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo X. was striving to found a +principality in the states of the Church.[1] In 1516 he created his +nephew Duke of Urbino, and it was thought that this was but a prelude to +still further greatness. Florence in combination with Rome might do much +for Italy. Leo meanwhile was still young, and his participation in the +most ambitious schemes was to be expected. Thus the moment was +propitious for suggesting to Lorenzo that he should put himself at the +head of an Italian kingdom, which, by its union beneath the strong will +of a single prince, might suffice to cope with nations more potent in +numbers and in arms.[2] The _Principe_ was therefore dedicated in good +faith to the Medici, and the note on which it closes was not false. +Machiavelli hoped that what Cesare Borgia had but just failed in +accomplishing, Lorenzo de' Medici, with the assistance of a younger Pope +than Alexander, a firmer basis to his princedom in Florence, and a grasp +upon the states of the Church made sure by the policy of Julius II., +might effect. Whether so good a judge of character as Machiavelli +expected really much from Lorenzo may be doubted. + + [1] We are, however, bound to remember that Leo was only made + Pope in March 1513, and that the _Principe_ was nearly finished + in the following December. Machiavelli cannot therefore be + credited with knowing as well as we do now to what length the + ambition of the Medici was about to run when he composed his + work. He wrote in the hope that it might induce them to employ + him. + + [2] The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to + Piero Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with + the _Principe_ for the light they throw on Machiavelli's + opinions there expressed. + +These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable. +To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a +worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and +to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled +to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two +realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he +ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the +logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his +adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that +the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy +was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a +political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low +level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of +statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the +clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of +intrigue in which he had been working all his life. Even his keen +insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare +Borgia. + +To have formulated the ethics of the _Principe_ is not diabolical. There +is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply +a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, +where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms +of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought +of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not +regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say, +to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as +horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that +they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate +end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre +at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in +condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni +because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to +crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue +had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one +quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be +combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was +simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram-- + + La notte che mori Pier Soderini + L' alma n' ando dell' inferno alla bocca; + E Pluto le grido: Anima sciocca, + Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini. + + The night that Peter Soderini died, + His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell: + 'What? Hell for you? You silly spirit!' cried + The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell.' + +As of old in Corcyra, so now in Italy, 'guilelessness, which is the +principal ingredient of genuine nobleness, was laughed down, and +disappeared.'[1] What men feared was not the moral verdict of society, +pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent acts, but the +intellectual estimate of incapacity and the stigma of dullness. They +were afraid of being reckoned among feebler personalities; and to escape +from this contempt, by the commission even of atrocities, had come to be +accounted manly. The truth, missed almost universally, was that the +supreme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abiding honesty, the +doing of right because right is right, in scorn of consequence. Nothing +appears more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this point, while +the Italian novels are full of matter bearing on the same topic. It is +therefore ridiculous to assume that an Italian judged of men or conduct +in any sense according to our standards. Pinturicchio and Perugino +thought it no shame to work for princes like the Baglioni and for Popes +like Alexander VI. Lionardo da Vinci placed his talents as an engineer +at the service of Cesare Borgia, and employed his genius as a musician +and a painter for the amusement of the Milanese Court, which must have +been, according to Corio's account, flagrantly and shamelessly corrupt. +Leo Battista Alberti, one of the most charming and the gentlest spirits +of the earlier Renaissance, in like manner lent his architectural +ability to the vanity of the iniquitous Sigismondo Malatesta. No: the +_Principe_ was not inconsistent with the general tone of Italian +morality; and Machiavelli cannot be fairly taxed with the discovery of a +new infernal method. The conception of politics as a bare art of means +to ends had grown up in his mind by the study of Italian history and +social customs. His idealization of Cesare Borgia and his romance of +Castruccio were the first products of the theory he had formed by +observation of the world he lived in. The _Principe_ revealed it fully +organized. But to have presented such an essay in good faith to the +despots of his native city, at that particular moment in his own career, +and under the pressure of trivial distress, is a real blot upon his +memory. + + [1] Thuc. iii. 83. The whole of the passage about Corcyra in + the third book of Thucydides (chs. 82 and 83) applies literally + to the moral condition of Italy at this period. + +We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for his +_Principe_, the poor thinking it would teach the Medici to take away +their honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, and +both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom.[1] Machiavelli can +scarcely have calculated upon this evil opinion, which followed him to +the grave: for though he showed some hesitation in his letter to Vettori +about the propriety of presenting the essay to the Medici, this was only +grounded on the fear lest a rival should get the credit of his labors. +Again, he uttered no syllable about its being intended for a trap to +catch the Medici, and commit them to unpardonable crimes. We may +therefore conclude that this explanation of the purpose of the +_Principe_ (which, strange to say, has approved itself to even recent +critics) was promulgated either by himself or by his friends, as an +after-thought, when he saw that the work had missed its mark, and at the +time when he was trying to suppress the MS.[2] Bernardo Giunti in the +dedication of the edition of 1532, and Reginald Pole in 1535, were, I +believe, the first to put forth this fanciful theory in print. +Machiavelli could not before 1520 have boasted of the patriotic +treachery with which he was afterwards accredited, so far, at any rate, +as to lose the confidence of the Medicean family; for in that year the +Cardinal Giulio de' Medici commissioned him to write the history of +Florence. + + [1] _Storia Fior._ lib. iv. cap. 15. + + [2] See Varchi, loc. cit. The letter written by Machiavelli to + Fr. Guicciardini from Carpi, May 17, 1521, should be studied in + this connection. It is unfortunately too mutilated to be wholly + intelligible. After explaining his desire to be of use to + Florence, but not after the manner most approved of by the + Florentines themselves, he says: 'io credo che questo sarebbe + il vero modo di andare in Paradiso, imparare la via dell' + Inferno per fuggirla.' + +The _Principe_, after its dedication to Lorenzo, remained in MS., and +Machiavelli was not employed in spite of the continual solicitations of +his friend Vettori.[1] Nothing remained for him but to seek other +patrons, and to employ his leisure in new literary work. Between 1516 +and 1519, therefore, we find him taking part in the literary and +philosophical discussions of the Florentine Academy, which assembled at +that period in the Rucellai Gardens.[2] It was here that he read his +Discourses on the First Decade of Livy--a series of profound essays upon +the administration of the state, to which the sentences of the Roman +historian serve as texts. Having set forth in the _Principe_ the method +of gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in the _Discorsi_ +what institutions are necessary to preserve the body politic in a +condition of vigorous activity. We may therefore regard the _Discorsi_ +as in some sense a continuation of the _Principe_. But the wisdom of the +scientific politician is no longer placed at the disposal of a +sovereign. He addresses himself to all the members of a state who are +concerned in its prosperity. Machiavelli's enemies have therefore been +able to insinuate that, after teaching tyranny in one pamphlet, he +expounded the principles of opposition to a tyrant in the other, +shifting his sails as the wind veered.[3] The truth here also lies in +the critical and scientific quality of Machiavelli's method. He was +content to lecture either to princes or to burghers upon politics, as an +art which he had taken great pains to study, while his interest in the +demonstration of principles rendered him in a measure indifferent to +their application.[4] In fact, to use the pithy words of Macaulay, 'the +Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, the Discourses the +progress of an ambitious people. The same principles on which, in the +former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in +the latter to the longer duration and more complex interest of a +society.' + + [1] The political letters addressed to Francesco Vettori, at + Rome, and intended probably for the eye of Leo X., were written + in 1514. The discourse addressed to Leo, _sulla riforma dello + stato di Firenze_, may be referred perhaps to 1519. + + [2] Of these meetings Filippo de' Nerli writes in the Seventh + Book of his Commentaries, p. 138: 'Avendo convenuto assai tempo + nell' orto de' Rucellai una certa scuola di giovani letterati e + d' elevato ingegno, infra quali praticava continuamente Niccolo + Machiavelli (ed io ero di Niccolo e di tutti loro amicissimo, e + molto spesso con loro convirsavo), s' esercitavano costoro + assai, mediante le lettere, nelle lezioni dell' istorie, e + sopra di esse, ed a loro istanza compose il Machiavello quel + suo libro de' discorsi sopra Tito Livio, e anco il libro di + que' trattati e ragionamenti sopra la milizia.' + + [3] See Pitti, 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' _Arch. Stor._ vol. iv. + pt. ii. p. 294. + + [4] The dedication of the _Discorsi_ contains a phrase which + recalls Machiavelli's words about the _Principe_: 'Perche in + quello io ho espresso quanto io so, e quanto io ho imparato per + una lunga pratica e continua lezione delle cose del mondo.' + +The Seven Books on the Art of War may be referred with certainty to the +same period of Machiavelli's life. They were probably composed in 1520. +If we may venture to connect the works of the historian's leisure, +according to the plan above suggested, this treatise forms a supplement +to the _Principe_ and the _Discorsi_. Both in his analysis of the +successful tyrant and in his description of the powerful commonwealth he +had insisted on the prime necessity of warfare, conducted by the people +and their rulers in person. The military organization of a great kingdom +is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme +for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. +Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice +maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit of his +theory. + +By this time the Medici had determined to take Machiavelli into favor; +and since he had expressed a wish to be set at least to rolling stones, +they found for him a trivial piece of work. The Franciscans at Carpi had +to be requested to organize a separate Province of their Order in the +Florentine dominion; and the conduct of this weighty matter was +intrusted to the former secretary at the Courts of Maximilian and Louis. +Several other missions during the last years of his life devolved upon +Machiavelli; but none of them were of much importance: nor, when the +popular government was instituted in 1527, had he so far regained the +confidence of the Florentines as to resume his old office of war +secretary. This post, considering his recent alliance with the Medicean +party, he could hardly have expected to receive; and therefore it is +improbable that the news of Gianotti's election at all contributed to +cause his death.[1] Disappointment he may indeed have felt: for his +moral force had been squandered during fifteen years in the attempt to +gain the favor of princes who were now once more regarded as the enemies +of their country. When the republic was at last restored, he found +himself in neither camp. The overtures which he had made to the Medici +had been but coldly received; yet they were sufficiently notorious to +bring upon him the suspicion of the patriots. He had not sincerely acted +up to the precept of Polonius: 'This above all,--to thine own self be +true.' His intellectual ability, untempered by sufficient political +consistency or moral elevation, had placed him among the outcasts:-- + + che non furon ribelli, + Ne fur fedeli a Dio, ma per se foro. + +The great achievement of these years was the composition of the _Istorie +Fiorentine_. The commission for this work he received from Giulio de' +Medici through the Officiali dello Studio in 1520, with an annual +allowance of 100 florins. In 1527, the year of his death, he dedicated +the finished History to Pope Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary +art, though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy and +superficiality,[2] marks an epoch in the development of modern +historiography. It must be remembered that it preceded the great work of +Guicciardini by some years, and that before the date of its appearance +the annalists of Italy had been content with records of events, personal +impressions, and critiques of particular periods. Machiavelli was the +first to contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to trace +the operation of political forces through successive generations, to +contrast the action of individuals with the evolution of causes over +which they had but little control, and to bring the salient features of +the national biography into relief by the suppression of comparatively +unimportant details. By thus applying the philosophical method to +history, Machiavelli enriched the science of humanity with a new +department. There is something in his view of national existence beyond +the reach of even the profoundest of the classical historians. His style +is adequate to the matter of his work. Never were clear and definite +thoughts expressed with greater precision in language of more masculine +vigor. We are irresistibly compelled, while characterizing this style, +to think of the spare sinews of a trained gladiator. Though Machiavelli +was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments of rhetoric.[3] His images, rare +and carefully chosen, seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate. +Though a philosopher, he never wanders into speculation. Facts and +experience are so thoroughly compacted with reflection in his mind, that +his widest generalizations have the substance of realities. The element +of unreality, if such there be, is due to a misconception of human +nature. Machiavelli seems to have only studied men in masses, or as +political instruments, never as feeling and thinking personalities. + + [1] See Varchi, loc. cit. + + [2] See the criticisms of Ammirato and Romagnosi, quoted by + Cantu, _Letteratura Italiana_, p. 187. + + [3] I shall have to speak elsewhere of Machiavelli's comedies, + occasional poems, novel of 'Belphegor,' etc. + +Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his son Pietro to +Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of medicine taken at the wrong time. He +was attended on his deathbed by a friar, who received his confession. +His private morality was but indifferent. His contempt for weakness and +simplicity was undisguised. His knowledge of the world and men had +turned to cynicism. The frigid philosophy expressed in his political +Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured +humors, made him unpopular. It was supposed that he had died with +blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human +nature into ridicule. Through these myths, as through a mist, we may +discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. +The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too +arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar +conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation +Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of +virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature +either less genius or a better mind.' + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +'THE PRINCE' OF MACHIAVELLI. + + +The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay--Machiavellism--His +deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory--Analysis of the +Prince--Nine Conditions of Principalities--The Interest of the Conqueror +acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy--Critique of Louis +XII.--Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism--Three Ways of subduing a +free City--Example of Pisa--Principalities founded by +Adventurers--Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus--Savonarola--Francesco +Sforza--Cesare Borgia--Machiavelli's personal Relation to +him--Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius--A Sketch of Cesare's +Career--Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by +Crimes--Oliverotto da Fermo--The Uses of Cruelty--Messer Ramiro d' +Orco--The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli--On the Faith of +Princes--Alexander VI.--The Policy of seeming virtuous and +honest--Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy--The Military System of a +powerful Prince--Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries--Necessity of +National Militia--The Art of War--Patriotic Conclusion of the +Treatise--Machiavelli and Savonarola. + + +After what has been already said about the circumstances under which +Machiavelli composed the _Principe_, we are justified in regarding it as +a sincere expression of his political philosophy. The intellect of its +author was eminently analytical and positive; he knew well how to +confine himself within the strictest limits of the subject he had +chosen. In the _Principe_ it was not his purpose to write a treatise of +morality, but to set forth with scientific accuracy the arts which he +considered necessary to the success of an absolute ruler. We may +therefore accept this essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of +the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided in the sixteenth +century. That Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli has now become a +truism. Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand the +Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian Council had systematically +pursued the policy laid down in the chapters of the _Prince_. But it is +no less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate +a theory of government in which the interests of the ruler are alone +regarded, which assumes a separation between statecraft and morality, +which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining +high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct, and +which presupposes the corruption, venality, and baseness of mankind at +large. It was this which aroused the animosity of Europe against +Machiavelli, as soon as the Prince attained wide circulation. Nations +accustomed to the Monarchical rather than the Despotic form of +government resented the systematic exposition of an art of tyranny which +had long been practiced among the Italians. The people of the North, +whose moral fiber was still vigorous, and who retained their respect for +established religion, could not tolerate the cynicism with which +Machiavelli analyzed his subject from the merely intellectual point of +view. His name became a byword. 'Am I Machiavel?' says the host in the +_Merry Wives of Windsor_. Marlowe makes the ghost of the great +Florentine speak prologue to the _Jew of Malta_ thus-- + + I count religion but a childish toy, + And hold there is no sin but ignorance. + +When the Counter-reformation had begun in Italy, and desperate efforts +were being made to check the speculative freedom of the Renaissance, the +_Principe_ was condemned by the Inquisition. Meanwhile it was whispered +that the Spanish princes, and the sons of Catherine de' Medici upon the +throne of France, conned its pages just as a manual of toxicology might +be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers. Machiavelli became the +scapegoat of great political crimes; and during the religious wars of +the sixteenth century there were not wanting fanatics who ascribed such +acts of atrocity as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew to his venomous +influence. Yet this book was really nothing more or less than a critical +compendium of facts respecting Italy, a highly condensed abstract of +political experience. In it as in a mirror we may study the lineaments +of the Italian despot who by adventure or by heritage succeeded to the +conduct of a kingdom. At the same time the political principles here +established are those which guided the deliberations of the Venetian +Council and the Papal Court, no less than the actions of a Sforza or a +Borgia upon the path to power. It is therefore a document of the very +highest value for the illustration of the Italian conscience in relation +to political morality. + +The _Principe_ opens with the statement that all forms of government may +be classified as republics or as principalities. Of the latter some are +hereditary, others acquired. Of the principalities acquired in the +lifetime of the ruler some are wholly new, like Milan under Francesco +Sforza; others are added of hereditary kingdoms, like Naples to Spain. +Again, such acquired states have been previously accustomed either to +the rule of a single man or to self-government. Finally they are won +either with the conqueror's own or with borrowed armies, either by +fortune or by ability.[1] Thus nine conditions under which +principalities may be considered are established at the outset. + + [1] The word Virtu, which I have translated ability, is almost + equivalent to the Greek [Greek: _arete_], before it had + received a moral definition, or to the Roman Virtus. It is very + far, as will be gathered from the sequel of the _Principe_, + from denoting what we mean by Virtue. + +The short chapter devoted by Machiavelli to hereditary principalities +may be passed over as comparatively unimportant. It is characteristic of +Italian politics that the only instance he adduces of this form of +government in Italy is the Duchy of Ferrara. States and cities were so +frequently shifting owners in the sixteenth century that the scientific +politician was justified in confining his attention to the method of +establishing and preserving principalities acquired by force. When he +passes to the consideration of this class, Machiavelli enters upon the +real subject of his essay. The first instance he discusses is that of a +prince who has conquered a dominion which he wishes to unite as firmly +as possible to his hereditary states. The new territory may either +belong to the same nationality and language as the old possession, or +may not. In the former case it will be enough to extinguish the whole +line of the ancient rulers, and to take care that neither the laws nor +the imposts of the province be materially altered. It will then in +course of time become by natural coalition part of the old kingdom. But +if the acquired dominion be separate in language, customs, and +traditions from the old, then arises a real difficulty for the +conqueror. In order to consolidate his empire and to accustom his new +subjects to his rule, Machiavelli recommends that he should either take +up his residence in the subjugated province, or else plant colonies +throughout it, but that he should by no means trust merely to garrisons. +'Colonies,' he remarks, 'are not costly to the prince, are more +faithful, and cause less offense to the subject states; those whom they +may injure, being poor and scattered, are prevented from doing mischief. +For it should be observed that men ought either to be caressed or +trampled out, seeing that small injuries may be avenged, whereas great +ones destroy the possibility of retaliation; and so the damage that has +to be inflicted ought to be such that it need involve no fear of +vengeance.' I quote this passage as a specimen of Machiavelli's direct +and scientific handling of the most inhuman necessities of statecraft, +as conceived by him.[1] He uses no hypocritical palliation to disguise +the egotism of the conqueror. He does not even pretend to take into +consideration any interests but those of the ambitious prince. He treats +humanity as though it were the marble out of which the political artist +should hew the form that pleased his fancy best. He calculates the exact +amount of oppression which will render a nation incapable of resistance, +and relieve the conqueror of trouble in his work of building up a +puissant kingdom for his own aggrandizement. + + [1] It is fair to call attention to the strong expressions used + by Machiavelli in the _Discorsi_, lib. i. cap. 18 and cap. 26, + on the infamies and inhumanities to which the aspirant after + tyranny is condemned. + +What Machiavelli says about mixed principalities is pointed by a +searching critique of the Italian policy of Louis XII. The French king +had well-known claims upon the Duchy of Milan, which the Venetians urged +him to make good. They proposed to unite forces and to divide the +conquered province of Lombardy. Machiavelli does not blame Louis for +accepting this offer and acting in concert with the Republic. His +mistakes began the moment after he had gained possession of Milan, +Genoa, and the majority of the North Italian cities. It was then his +true policy to balance Venice against Rome, to assume the protectorate +of the minor states, and to keep all dangerous rivals out of Italy. +Instead of acting thus, he put Romagna into the hands of the Pope and +divided Naples with the King of Spain. 'Louis indeed,' concludes +Machiavelli, 'was guilty of five capital errors: he destroyed the hopes +of his numerous and weak allies; he increased the power, already too +great, of the Papacy; he introduced a foreign potentate; he neglected to +reside in Italy; he founded no colonies for the maintenance of his +authority. If I am told that Louis acted thus imprudently toward +Alexander and Ferdinand in order to avoid a war, I answer that in each +case the mistake was as bad as any war could be in its results. If I am +reminded of his promise to the Pope, I reply that princes ought to know +how and when to break their faith, as I intend to prove. When I was at +Nantes, the Cardinal of Rouen told me that the Italians did not know how +to conduct a war: I retorted that the French did not understand +statecraft, or they would not have allowed the Church to gain so much +power in Italy. Experience showed that I was right; for the French +wrought their own ruin by aggrandizing the Papacy and introducing Spain +into the realm of Naples.' + +This criticism contains the very essence of political sagacity. It lays +bare the secret of the failure of the French under Charles, under Louis, +and under Francis, to establish themselves in Italy. Expeditions of +parade, however brilliant, temporary conquests, cross alliances, and +bloody victories do not consolidate a kingdom. They upset states and +cause misery to nations: but their effects pass and leave the so-called +conquerors worse off than they were before. It was the doom of Italy to +be ravaged by these inconsequent marauders, who never attempted by +internal organization to found a substantial empire, until the mortmain +of the Spanish rule was laid upon the peninsula, and Austria gained by +marriages what France had failed to win by force of arms. + +The fourth chapter of the _Principe_ is devoted to a parallel between +Monarchies and Despotisms which is chiefly interesting as showing that +Machiavelli appreciated the stability of kingdoms based upon feudal +foundations. France is chosen as the best example of the one and Turkey +of the other. 'The whole empire of the Turk is governed by one Lord; the +others are his servants; he divides his kingdom into satrapies, to which +he appoints different administrators, whom he changes about at pleasure. +But the King of France is placed in the center of a time-honored company +of lords, acknowledged as such by their subjects and loved by them; they +have their own prerogatives, nor can the king deprive them of these +without peril.' Hence it follows that the prince who has once +dispossessed a despot finds ready to his hand a machinery of government +and a band of subservient ministers; while he who may dethrone a monarch +has immediately to cope with a multitude of independent rulers, too +numerous to extinguish and too proud to conciliate. + +Machiavelli now proceeds to discuss the best method of subjugating free +cities which have been acquired by a prince. There are three ways of +doing it, he says. 'The first is to destroy them utterly; the second, to +rule them in your own person; the third, to leave them their +constitution under the conduct of an oligarchy chosen by yourself, and +to be content with tribute. But, to speak the truth, the only safe way +is to ruin them.' This sounds very much like the advice which an old +spider might give to a young one: When you have caught a big fly, suck +him at once; suck out at any rate so much of his blood as may make him +powerless to break your web, and feed on him afterwards at leisure. Then +he goes on to give his reasons. 'He who becomes the master of a city +used to liberty, and does not destroy it, should be prepared to be +undone by it himself, because that name of Liberty, those ancient usages +of Freedom, which no length of years and no benefits can extinguish in +the nation's mind, which cannot be uprooted by any forethought or by any +pains, unless the citizens themselves be broken or dispersed, will +always be a rallying-point for revolution when an opportunity occurs.' +This terrific moral--through which, let it be said in justice to +Machiavelli, the enthusiasm of a patriot transpires--is pointed by the +example of Pisa. Pisa, held for a century beneath the heel of +Florence--her ports shut up, her fields abandoned to marsh fever, her +civic life extinguished, her arts and sciences crushed out--had yet not +been utterly ruined in the true sense of depopulation or dismemberment. +Therefore when Charles VIII. in 1494 entered Pisa, and Orlandi, the +orator, caught him by the royal mantle, and besought him to restore her +liberty, that word, the only word the crowd could catch in his petition, +inflamed a nation: the lions and lilies of Florence were erased from the +public buildings; the Marzocco was dashed from its column on the quay +into the Arno; and in a moment the dead republic awoke to life. +Therefore, argues Machiavelli, so tenacious is the vitality of a free +state that a prudent conqueror will extinguish it entirely or will rule +it in person with a rod of iron. This, be it remembered, is the advice +of Machiavelli, the the Florentine patriot, to Lorenzo de' Medici, the +Florentine tyrant, who has recently resumed his seat upon the neck of +that irrepressible republic. + +Hitherto we have been considering how the state acquired by a conqueror +should be incorporated with his previous dominions. The next section of +Machiavelli's discourse is by far the most interesting. It treats of +principalities created by the arms, personal qualities, and good fortune +of adventurers. Italy alone in the sixteenth century furnished examples +of these tyrannies: consequently that portion of the _Principe_ which is +concerned with them has a special interest for students of the +Renaissance. Machiavelli begins with the founders of kingdoms who have +owed but little to fortune and have depended on their own forces. The +list he furnishes, when tested by modern notions of history, is to say +the least a curious one. It contains Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. +Having mentioned Moses first, Machiavelli proceeds to explain that, +though we have to regard him as the mere instrument of God's purpose, +yet the principles on which the other founders acted were 'not different +from those which Moses derived from so supreme a teacher.' What these +men severally owed to fortune was but the occasion for the display of +the greatness that was in them. Moses found the people of Israel +enslaved in Egypt. Romulus was an exile from Alba. Cyrus had to deal +with the Persian people tired of the empire of effeminate Medes. Theseus +undertook to unite the scattered elements of the Athenian nation. Thus +each of these founders had an opening provided for him, by making use of +which he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into play. The +achievement in each case was afterwards due solely to his own ability, +and the conquest which he made with difficulty was preserved with ease. +This exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when +we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at +the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator +has to overcome, meanwhile, are enormous. 'He has for passionate foes +all such as flourish under the old order, for friends those who might +flourish under the new; but these are lukewarm, partly from fear of +their opponents, on whose side are established law and right, partly +from the incredulity which prevents men from putting faith in what is +novel and untried.' It therefore becomes a matter of necessity that the +innovator should be backed up with force, that he should be in a +position to command and not obliged to sue for aid. This is the reason +why all the prophets who have used arms to enforce their revelations +have succeeded, and why those who have only trusted to their personal +ascendency have failed. Moses, of course, is an illustrious example of +the successful prophet. Savonarola is adduced as a notable instance of a +reformer 'who was ruined in his work of innovation as soon as the +multitude lost their faith in him, since he had no means of keeping +those who had believed firm, or of compelling faith from disbelievers.' +In this critique Machiavelli remains true to his positive and scientific +philosophy of human nature. He will not allow that there are other +permanent agencies in the world than the calculating ability of resolute +men and the might derived from physical forces. + +Among the eminent examples of Italian founders who rose to princely +power by their own ability or by availing themselves of the advantages +which fortune put within their reach, Machiavelli selects Francesco +Sforza and Cesare Borgia. The former is a notable instance of success +achieved by pure _virtu_: 'Francesco, by using the right means, and by +his own singular ability, raised himself from the rank of a private man +to the Duchy of Milan, and maintained with ease the mastery he had +acquired with infinite pains.' Cesare, on the other hand, illustrates +both the strength and the weakness of _fortuna_: 'he acquired his +dominion by the aid derived from his father's position, and when he lost +that he also lost his power, notwithstanding that he used every endeavor +and did all that a prudent and able man ought to do in order to plant +himself firmly in those states which the arms and fortune of others had +placed at his disposal.' It is not necessary to dwell upon the career of +Francesco Sforza. Not he but Cesare Borgia is Machiavelli's hero in this +treatise, the example from which he deduces lessons both of imitation +and avoidance for the benefit of Lorenzo de' Medici. Lorenzo, it must be +remembered, like Cesare, would have the fortunes of the Church to start +with in that career of ambition to which Machiavelli incites him. Unlike +Francesco Sforza, he was no mere soldier of adventure, but a prince, +born in the purple, and bound to make use of those undefined advantages +which he derived from his position in Florence and from the countenance +of his uncle, the Pope. The Duke Valentino, therefore, who is at one and +the same time Machiavelli's ideal of prudence and courage in the conduct +of affairs, and also his chief instance of the instability of fortune, +supplies the philosopher with all he needed for the guidance of his +princely pupil. With the Duke Valentino Machiavelli had conversed on +terms of private intimacy, and there is no doubt that his imagination +had been dazzled by the brilliant intellectual abilities of this +consummate rogue. Dispatched in 1502 by the Florentine Republic to watch +the operations of Cesare at Imola, with secret instructions to offer the +Duke false promises in the hope of eliciting information that could be +relied upon, Machiavelli had enjoyed the rare pleasure of a game at +political ecarte with the subtlest and most unscrupulous diplomatist of +his age. He had witnessed his terrible yet beneficial administration of +Romagna. He had been present at his murder of the chiefs of the Orsini +faction at Sinigaglia. Cesare had confided to him, or had pretended to +confide, his schemes of personal ambition, as well as the motives and +the measures of his secret policy. On the day of the election of Pope +Julius II. he had laid bare the whole of his past history before the +Florentine secretary, and had pointed out the single weakness of which +he felt himself to have been guilty. In these trials of skill and this +exchange of confidence it is impossible to say which of the two +gamesters may have been the more deceived. But Machiavelli felt that the +Borgia supplied him with a perfect specimen for the study of the arts of +statecraft; and so deep was the impression produced upon his mind, that +even after the utter failure of Cesare's designs he made him the hero of +the political romance before us. His artistic perception of the perfect +and the beautiful, both in unscrupulous conduct and in frigid +calculation of conflicting interests, was satisfied by the steady +selfishness, the persistent perfidy, the profound mistrust of men, the +self-command in the execution of perilous designs, the moderate and +deliberate employment of cruelty for definite ends, which he observed in +the young Duke, and which he has idealized in his own _Principe_. That +nature, as of a salamander adapted to its element of fire, as of 'a +resolute angel that delights in flame,' to which nothing was sacred, +which nothing could daunt, which never for a moment sacrificed reason to +passion, which was incapable of weakness or fatigue, had fascinated +Machiavelli's fancy. The moral qualities of the man, the base +foundations upon which he raised his power, the unutterable scandals of +his private life, and the hatred of all Christendom were as nothing in +the balance. Such considerations had, according to the conditions of his +subject, to be eliminated before he weighed the intellectual qualities +of the adventurer. 'If all the achievements of the Duke are +considered'--it is Machiavelli speaking--'it will be found that he built +up a great substructure for his future power; nor do I know what +precepts I could furnish to a prince in his commencement better than +such as are to be derived from his example.' It is thus that +Machiavelli, the citizen, addresses Lorenzo, the tyrant of Florence. He +says to him: Go thou and do likewise. And what, then, is this likewise? + +Cesare, being a Pope's son, had nothing to look to but the influence of +his father. At first he designed to use this influence in the Church; +but after murdering his elder brother, he threw aside the Cardinal's +scarlet and proclaimed himself a political aspirant. His father could +not make him lord of any state, unless it were a portion of the +territory of the Church: and though, by creating, as he did, twelve +Cardinals in one day, he got the Sacred College to sanction his +investiture of the Duchy of Romagna, yet both Venice and Milan were +opposed to this scheme. Again there was a difficulty to be encountered +in the great baronial houses of Orsini and Colonna, who at that time +headed all the mercenary troops of Italy, and who, as Roman nobles, had +a natural hatred for the Pope. It was necessary to use their aid in the +acquisition of Cesare's principality. It was no less needful to humor +their animosity. Under these circumstances Alexander thought it best to +invite the French king into Italy, bargaining with Louis that he would +dissolve his marriage in return for protection awarded to Cesare. The +Colonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the Orsini to be +flattered. Cesare, by the help of his French allies and the Orsini +captains, took possession of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to +overrun Romagna. In this enterprise he succeeded to the full. Romagna +had been, from the earliest period of Italian history, a nest of petty +tyrants who governed badly and who kept no peace in their dominions. +Therefore the towns were but languid in their opposition to Cesare, and +were soon more than contented with a conqueror who introduced a good +system for the administration of justice. But now two difficulties +arose. The subjugation of Romagna had been effected by the help of the +French and the Orsini. Cesare as yet had formed no militia of his own, +and his allies were becoming suspicious. The Orsini had shown some +slackness at Faenza; and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master of +Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the capture of Piombino--which +conquests he completed during 1500 and 1501--Louis began to be jealous +of him. The problem for the Duke was how to disembarrass himself of the +two forces by which he had acquired a solid basis for his future +principality. His first move was to buy over the Cardinal d'Amboise, +whose influence in the French Court was supreme and thus to keep his +credit for awhile afloat with Louis. His second was to neutralize the +power of the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colonnesi, and +partly by superseding them in their command as captains. For the latter +purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the +lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he +collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of +mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him +established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their +own strength was on the decline, determined if possible to check the +career of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The conspiracy known +as the 'Diet of La Magione' was the consequence. In this conjuration the +Cardinal Orsini, Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, +together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Castello, the +Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from +Siena, and Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part. The result of their +machinations against the common foe was that Cesare for a moment lost +Urbino, and was nearly unseated in Romagna. But the French helped him, +and he stood firm. Still it was impossible to believe that Louis XII. +would suffer him to advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as +long as he continued between the French and the Orsini his position was +of necessity insecure. The former had to be cast off; the latter to be +extirpated; and yet he had not force enough to play an open game. 'He +therefore,' says Machiavelli, 'turned to craft, and displayed such skill +in dissimulation that the Orsini through the mediation of Paolo became +his friends again.' The cruelty of Cesare Borgia was only equalled by +his craft; and it was by a supreme exercise of his power of +fascination that he lured the foes who had plotted against him at La +Magione into his snare at Sinigaglia. Paolo Orsini, Francesco Orsini, +duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo were all +men of arms, accustomed to intrigue and to bloodshed, and more than one +of them were stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery. Yet +such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in 1502 he managed to assemble +them, apart from their troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had +them strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the opposition and +enlisted their forces in his own service, Cesare, to use the phrase of +Machiavelli, 'had laid good foundations for his future power.' He +commanded a sufficient territory; he wielded the temporal and spiritual +power of his father; he was feared by the princes and respected by the +people throughout Italy; his cruelty and perfidy and subtlety and +boldness caused him to be universally admired. But as yet he had only +laid foundations. The empire of Italy was still to win; for he aspired +to nothing else, and it is even probable that he entertained a notion of +secularizing the Papacy. France was the chief obstacle to his ambition. +The alarm of Louis had at last been roused. But Louis' own mistake in +bringing the Spaniards into Naples afforded Cesare the means of shaking +off the French control. He espoused the cause of Spain, and by +intriguing now with the one power and now with the other made himself +both formidable and desirable to each. His geographical position between +Milan and Naples enforced this policy. Another difficulty against which +he had to provide was in the future rather than the present. Should his +father die, and a new Pope adverse to his interests be elected, he might +lose not only the support of the Holy See, but also his fiefs of Romagna +and Urbino. To meet this contingency he took four precautions, mentioned +with great admiration by Machiavelli. In the first place he +systematically murdered the heirs of the ruling families of all the +cities he acquired--as for example three Varani at Camerino, two +Manfredi at Faenza, the Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigaglia, and others +whom it would be tedious to mention. By this process he left no scion of +the ancient houses for a future Pope to restore. In the second place he +attached to his person by pensions, offices, and emoluments, all the +Roman gentry, so that he might be able to keep the new Pope a prisoner +and unarmed in Rome. Thirdly, he reduced the College of Cardinals, by +bribery, terrorism, poisoning, and packed elections, to such a state +that he could count on the creation of a Pope, if not his nominee, at +least not hostile to his interests. Fourthly, he lost no time, but +pushed his plans of conquest on with utmost speed, so as, if possible, +to command a large territory at the time of Alexander's death. +Machiavelli, who records these four points with approbation, adds: 'He +therefore, who finds it needful in his new authority to secure himself +against foes, to acquire allies, to gain a point by force or fraud, +etc., etc., could not discover an ensample more vigorous and blooming +than that of Cesare.' Such is the panegyric which Machiavelli, writing, +as it seems to me, in all good faith and innocence, records of a man +who, taken altogether, is perhaps the most selfish, perfidious, and +murderous of adventurers on record. The only fault for which he blames +him is that he did not prevent the election of Pope Julius II, by +concentrating his influence on either the Cardinal d'Amboise or a +Spaniard. + +It is curious to read the title of the chapter following that which +criticises the action of Cesare Borgia: it runs thus, 'Concerning those +who have attained to sovereignty by crimes.' Cesare was clearly not one +of these men in the eyes of Machiavelli, who confines his attention to +Agathocles of Syracuse, and to Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand who +acquired the lordship of Fermo by murdering his uncle and benefactor, +Giovanni Fogliani, and all the chief men of the city at a banquet to +which he had invited them. This atrocity, according to Machiavelli's +creed, would have been justified, if Oliverotto had combined cruelty and +subtlety in proper proportions. But his savagery was not sufficiently +veiled; a prince should never incur odium by crimes of violence, but +only use them as the means of inspiring terror. Besides, Oliverotto was +so simple as to fall at last into the snare of Cesare Borgia at +Sinigaglia. Cesare himself supplies Machiavelli with a notable example +of the way in which cruelty can be well used. Having found the cities of +Romagna in great disorder, Cesare determined to quell them by the +ferocity of a terrible governor. For this purpose he chose Messer Ramiro +d' Orco, 'a man cruel and quick of action, to whom he gave the fullest +power.' A story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his temper in +a very bizarre fashion: he one day kicked a clumsy page on to the fire, +and held him there with a poker till he was burned up. Acting after this +fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole +province into comparative tranquillity. But it did not suit Cesare to +incur the odium which the man's cruelty brought on his administration. +Accordingly he had him decapitated one night and exposed to public view, +together with the block and bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena. Of +the art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to order by the cruelty +of his agent, and then avoided the odium of this cruelty by using the +wretched creature as an appalling example of his justice and his power, +Machiavelli wholly approves. His theory is that cruelty should be +employed for certain definite purposes, but that the Prince should +endeavor to shun as far as possible the hatred it inspires. In justice +both to Machiavelli and to Cesare, it should be said that the +administration of Romagna was far better under the Borgia rule than it +had ever been before. The exhibition of savage violence of which +Machiavelli approves was perhaps needed to cow so brutalized a +population. + +In those chapters which Machiavelli has devoted to the exposition of the +qualities that befit a Prince, it is clear that Cesare Borgia was not +unfrequentlv before his eyes.[1] The worst thing that can be said about +Italy of the sixteenth century is that such an analyst as Machiavelli +should have been able to idealize an adventurer whose egotistic +immorality was so undisguised. The ethics of this profound anatomist of +human motives were based upon a conviction that men are altogether bad. +When discussing the question whether it be better to be loved or feared, +Machiavelli decides that 'it is far safer to be feared than loved, if +you must choose; seeing that you may say of men generally that they are +ungrateful and changeable, dissemblers, apt to shun danger, eager for +gain; as long as you serve them, they offer you everything, down to +their very children, if you have no need; but when you want help, they +fail you. Therefore it is best to put no faith in their pretended love.' +This is language which could only be used in a country where loyalty was +unknown and where all political and social combinations were founded +upon force or convenience. Princes must, however, be cautious not to +injure their subjects in their honor or their property--especially the +latter, since men 'forget the murder of their fathers quicker than the +loss of their money.' Under another heading Machiavelli returns to the +same topic, and lays it down as an axiom that, since the large majority +of men are bad, a prince must learn in self-defense how to be bad, and +must use this science when and where he deems appropriate, endeavoring, +however, under all circumstances to pass for good. + + [1] In a letter to Fr. Vettori (Jan. 31, 1514) he says: 'Il + duca Valentino, l' opere del quale io imiterei sempre quando + fossi principe nuove. + +He brings the same desperate philosophy of life, the same bitter +experience of mankind, to bear upon his discussion of the faith of +princes. The chapter which is entitled 'How princes ought to keep their +word' is one of the most brilliantly composed and thoroughly +Machiavellian of the whole treatise. He starts with the assertion that +to fight the battles of life in accordance with law is human, to depend +on force is brutal; yet when the former method is insufficient, the +latter must be adopted. A prince should know how to combine the natures +of the man and of the beast; and this is the meaning of the mythus of +Cheiron, who was made the tutor of Achilles. He should strive to acquire +the qualities of the fox and of the lion, in order that he may both +avoid snares and guard himself from wolves. A prudent prince cannot and +must not keep faith, when it is harmful to do so, or when the occasion +under which he promised has passed by. He will always find colorable +pretexts for breaking his word; and if he learns well how to feign, he +will have but little difficulty in deceiving people. Among the +innumerable instances of successful hypocrites Machiavelli can think of +none more excellent than Alexander VI. 'He never did anything else but +deceive men, nor ever thought of anything but this, and always found apt +matter for his practice. Never was there a man who had greater force in +swearing and tying himself down to his engagements, or who observed them +less. Nevertheless his wiles were always successful in the way he +wished, because he well knew that side of the world.' It is curious that +Machiavelli should have forgotten that the whole elaborate life's policy +of Alexander and his son was ruined precisely by their falling into one +of their own traps, and that the mistake or treason of a servant upset +the calculations of the two most masterly deceivers of their age.[1] +Following out the same line of thought, which implies that in a bad +world a prince cannot afford to be good, Machiavelli asserts: 'It is not +necessary that a prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, +just: nay, I will venture to say, that if he had all these qualities and +always used them, they would harm him. But he must _seem_ to have them, +especially if he be new in his principality, where he will find it quite +impossible to exercise these virtues, since in order to maintain his +power he will be often obliged to act contrary to humanity, charity, +religion.' Machiavelli does not advise him to become bad for the sake of +badness, but to know when to quit the path of virtue for the +preservation of his kingdom. 'He must take care to say nothing that is +not full of these five qualities, and must always appear all mercy, all +loyalty, all humanity, all justice, all religion, especially the last.' +On the advantage of a reputation for piety Machiavelli insists most +strongly. He points out how Ferdinand the Catholic used the pretext of +religious zeal in order to achieve the conquest of Granada, to invade +Africa, to expel the Moors, and how his perfidies in Italy, his +perjuries to France, were colored with a sanctimonious decency. + + [1] Perhaps this is an indirect argument against the legend of + their death. + +After reading these passages we feel that though it may be true that +Machiavelli only spoke with scientific candor of the vices which were +common to all statesmen in his age--though the Italians were so corrupt +that it seemed hopeless to deal fairly with them--yet there was a +radical taint in the soul of the man who could have the heart to cull +these poisonous herbs of policy and distill their juices to a +quintessence for the use of the prince to whom he was confiding the +destinies of Italy.[1] Almost involuntarily we remember the oath which +Arthur administered to his knights, when he bade them 'never to do +outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no means to be +cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of +forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore.' +In a land where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either as an +ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Machiavelli could scarcely +have been published. The Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It +was possible among them for the philosophers to teach the princes that +success purchased at the expense of honor, loyalty, humanity, and truth +might be illustrious. + +It is refreshing to turn from those chapters in which Machiavelli +teaches the Prince how to cope with the world by using the vices of the +wicked, to his exposition of the military organization suited to the +maintenance of a great kingdom. Machiavelli has no mean or humble +ambition for his Prince: 'double will his glory be, who has founded a +new realm, and fortified and adorned it with good laws, good arms, good +friends, and good ensamples.' What the enterprise to which he fain would +rouse Lorenzo really is, will appear in the conclusion. Meanwhile he +encourages him by the example of Ferdinand the Catholic to gird his +loins up for great enterprises. He bids him be circumspect in his choice +of secretaries, seeing that 'the first opinion formed of a prince and of +his capacity is derived from the men whom he has gathered round him.' He +points out how he should shun flattery and seek respectful but sincere +advice. Finally he reminds him that a prince is impotent unless he can +command obedience by his arms. Fortresses are a doubtful source of +strength; against foreign foes they are worse than useless; against +subjects they are worthless in comparison with the goodwill of the +people: 'the best fortress possible is to escape the hatred of your +subjects.' Everything therefore depends upon the well-ordering of a +national militia. The neglect of that ruined the princes of Italy and +enabled Charles VIII. to conquer the fairest of European kingdoms with +wooden spurs and a piece of chalk.[2] + + [1] In the _Discorsi_, lib. i. cap. 55, he calls Italy 'la + coruttela del mondo,' and judges that her case is desperate; + 'non si puo sperare nelle provincie che in questi tempi si + veggono corrotte, come e l' Italia sopra tutte le altre.' + + [2] The references in this paragraph are made to chapters + xx.-xxiv. and chapter xii. of the _Principe_. + +In his discourse on armies Machiavelli lays it down that the troops with +which a prince defends his state are either his own, or mercenaries, or +auxiliaries, or mixed. 'Mercenary and auxiliary forces are both useless +and perilous, and he who founds the security of his dominion on the +former will never be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, +ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, truculent to their +friends, cowardly among foes; they have no fear of God, no faith with +men; you are only safe with them before they are attacked; in peace they +plunder you; in war you are the prey of your enemies. The cause of this +is that they have no other love nor other reason to keep the field, +beyond a little pay, which is far from sufficient to make them wish to +die for you. They are willing enough to be your soldiers so long as you +are at peace, but when war comes their impulse is to fly or sneak away. +It ought to be easy to establish the truth of this assertion, since the +ruin of Italy is due to nothing else except this, that we have now for +many years depended upon mercenary arms.'[1] Here he touches the real +weakness of the Italian states. Then he proceeds to explain further the +rottenness of the Condottiere system. Captains of adventure are either +men of ability or not. If they are, you have to fear lest their ambition +prompt them to turn their arms against yourself or your allies. This +happened to Queen Joan of Naples, who was deserted by Sforza Attendolo +in her sorest need; to the Milanese, when Francesco Sforza made himself +their despot; to the Venetians, who were driven to decapitate +Carmagnuola because they feared him. The only reason why the Florentines +were not enslaved by Sir John Hawkwood was that, though an able general, +he achieved no great successes in the field. In the same way they +escaped by luck from Sforza, who turned his attention to Milan, and from +Braccio, who formed designs against the Church and Naples. If Paolo +Vitelli had been victorious against Pisa (1498), he would have held them +at discretion. In each of these cases it was only the good fortune of +the republic which saved it from a military despotism. If, on the other +hand, the mercenary captains are men of no capacity, you are defeated in +the field. + + [1] See chapter xii. of the _Principe._ + +Proceeding to the historical development of this bad system, Machiavelli +points out how after the decline of the Imperial authority in Italy, the +Papacy and the republics got the upper hand. Priests and merchants were +alike unwilling to engage in war. Therefore they took mercenary troops +into their pay. The companies of the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi were +formed; and 'after these came all those others who have ruled this sort +of warfare down to our own days. The consequence of their valor is that +Italy has been harried by Charles, plundered by Louis, forced by +Ferdinand, insulted by the Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the +reputation of their cavalry by depressing the infantry. Being without +dominion of their own, and making war their commerce, a few foot +soldiers brought them no repute, while they were unable to support many. +Therefore they confined themselves to cavalry, until in a force of +20,000 men you could not number 2,000 infantry. Besides this they +employed all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their soldiers of +fatigue and peril, by refraining from slaughter and from taking +prisoners without ransom. Night attacks and sorties were abandoned; +stockades and trenches in the camp were given up; no one thought of a +winter campaign. All these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in +order to avoid, as I have said, fatigue and peril. Whereby they have +reduced Italy to slavery and insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French +troops borrowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged by Julius +II., are even worse. 'He who wants to be unable to win the game should +make use of these forces; for they are far more dangerous than +mercenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is ready made--they +are united together, and inclined to obey their own masters. Machiavelli +enforces this moral by one of those rare but energetic figures which add +virile dignity to his discourse. He compares auxiliary troops to the +armor of Saul, which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his +stone and sling. 'In one word, arms borrowed from another either fall +from your back, or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It remains +for a prince to form his own troops and to take the field in person, +like Cesare Borgia, when he discarded his French allies and the +mercenary aid of the Orsini captains. Republics should follow the same +course, dispatching, as the Romans did, their own citizens to the war, +and controlling by law the personal ambition of victorious generals. It +was thus that the Venetians prospered in their conquests, before they +acquired their provinces in Italy and adopted the Condottiere system +from their neighbors. 'A prince, therefore, should have but one object, +one thought, one art--the art of war.' Those who have followed this rule +have attained to sovereignty, like Francesco Sforza, who became Duke of +Milan; those who have neglected it have lost even hereditary kingdoms, +like the last Sforzas, who sank from dukedom into private life. Even +amid the pleasures of the chase a prince should always be studying the +geographical conformation of his country with a view to its defense, and +should acquire a minute knowledge of such strategical laws as are +everywhere applicable. He should read history with the same object, and +should keep before his eyes the example of those great men of the past +from whom he can learn lessons for his guidance in the present. + +This brings us to the peroration of the _Principe_, which contains the +practical issue toward which the whole treatise has been tending, the +patriotic thought that reflects a kind of luster even on the darkest +pages that have gone before. Like Thetis, Machiavelli has dipped his +Achilles in the Styx of infernal counsels; like Cheiron, he has shown +him how the human and the bestial natures should be combined in one who +has to break the teeth of wolves and keep his feet from snares; like +Hephaistos, he has forged for him invulnerable armor. The object toward +which this preparation has been leading is the liberation of Italy from +the barbarians. The slavery of Israel in Egypt, the oppression of the +Persians by the Medes, the dispersion of the Athenians into villages, +were the occasions which enabled Moses and Cyrus and Theseus to display +their greatness. The new Prince, who would fain win honor in Italy and +confer upon his country untold benefits, finds her at the present moment +'more enslaved than the Hebrews, more downtrodden than the Persians, +more disunited than the Athenians, without a chief, without order, +beaten, despoiled, mangled, overrun, subject to every sort of +desolation.' Fortune could not have offered him a nobler opportunity. +'See how she prays God to send her some one who should save her from +these barbarous cruelties ind insults! See her all ready and alert to +follow any standard, if only there be a man to raise it!' Then +Machiavelli addresses himself to the chief of the Medici in person. 'Nor +is there at the present moment any place more full of hope for her than +your illustrious House, which by its valor and its fortune, favored by +God and by the Church, whereof it is now the head, might take the lead +in this delivery.' This is followed by one of the rare passages of +courtly rhetoric which, when Machiavelli condescends to indulge in them, +add peculiar splendor to his style. Then he turns again to speak of the +means which should immediately be used. He urges Lorenzo above all +things to put no faith in mercenaries or auxiliaries, but to raise his +own forces, and to rely on the Italian infantry. If Italian armies have +always been defeated in the field during the past twenty years, it is +not due so much to their defective courage as to the weakness of their +commanders. Lorenzo will have to raise a force capable of coping with +the Swiss, the Spanish, and the French. The respect with which +Machiavelli speaks at this supreme moment of these foreign troops, +proves how great was their prestige in Italy; yet he ventures to point +out that there are faults peculiar to each of them: the Spanish infantry +cannot stand a cavalry charge, and the Switzers are liable to be +disconcerted by the rapid attack of the wiry infantry of Spain. It is +therefore necessary to train troops capable of resisting cavalry, and +not afraid of facing any foot soldiers in the world. 'This opportunity, +therefore, must not be suffered to slip by; in order that Italy may +after so long a time at last behold her saviour. Nor can I find words to +describe the love with which he would be hailed in all the provinces +that have suffered through these foreign deluges, the thirst for +vengeance, the stubborn fidelity, the piety, the tears, that he would +meet What gates would be closed against him? What people would refuse +him allegiance? What jealousy would thwart him? What Italian would be +found to refuse him homage? This rule of the barbarians stinks in the +nostrils of us all. Then let your illustrious House assume this +enterprise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just enterprises +are begun, that so, under your flag, this land of ours may be ennobled, +and under your auspices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch:-- + + 'Lo, valor against rage + Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long; + For that old heritage + Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong. + +With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the +_Principe_ closes. + +Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has recorded a judgment of +Machiavelli's treatise in relation to the political conditions of Italy +at the end of the mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most +complete apology for the author it is possible to make. 'This book,' he +says, 'has often been cast aside with horror as containing maxims of the +most revolting tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the +necessity of constituting a state which caused him to lay down the +principles on which alone states could be formed under the +circumstances. The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely +suppressed; and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with the +means which he proposes both as the only available and also as wholly +justifiable--including, as these do, the most reckless violence, all +kinds of deception, murder, and the like--yet we must confess that the +despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch +as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly +engrained in them.' + +Yet after the book has been shut and the apology has been weighed, we +cannot but pause and ask ourselves this question, Which was the truer +patriot--Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and corruptions +of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom +it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and +enforcing repentance--Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom +those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of +Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without +a moral reformation no liberty was possible? We shall have to consider +the action of Savonarola in another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much +to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes +like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free. Hypocrisy, +treachery, dissimulation, cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the +enslaved. Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and by his +experience of the present to defend these vices, as the necessary +qualities of the prince whom he would fain have chosen for the saviour +of his country. It is legitimate to excuse him on the ground that the +Italians of his age had not conceived a philosophy of right which should +include duties as well as privileges, and which should guard the +interests of the governed no less than those of the governor. It is true +that the feudal conception of Monarchy, so well apprehended by him in +the fourth chapter of the _Principe,_ had nowhere been realized in +Italy, and that therefore the right solution of the political problem +seemed to lie in setting force against force, and fraud against fraud, +for a sublime purpose. It may also be urged with justice that the +historians and speculators of antiquity, esteemed beyond their value by +the students of the sixteenth century, confirmed him in his application +of a positive philosophy to statecraft. The success which attended the +violence and dissimulation of the Romans, as described by Livy, induced +him to inculcate the principles on which they acted. The scientific +method followed by Aristotle in the Politics encouraged him in the +adoption of a similar analysis; while the close parallel between ancient +Greece and mediaeval Italy was sufficient to create a conviction that +the wisdom of the old world would be precisely applicable to the +conditions of the new. These, however, are exculpations of the man +rather than justifications of his theory. The theory was false and +vicious. And the fact remains that the man, impregnated by the bad +morality of the period in which he lived, was incapable of ascending +above it to the truth, was impotent with all his acumen to read the +deepest lessons of past and present history, and in spite of his +acknowledged patriotism succeeded only in adding his conscious and +unconscious testimony to the corruption of the country that he loved. +The broad common-sense, the mental soundness, the humane instinct and +the sympathy with nature, which give fertility and wholeness to the +political philosophy of men like Burke, are absent in Machiavelli. In +spite of its vigor, his system implies an inversion of the ruling laws +of health in the body politic. In spite of its logical cogency, it is +inconclusive by reason of defective premises. Incomparable as an essay +in pathological anatomy, it throws no light upon the working of a normal +social organism, and has at no time been used with profit even by the +ambitious and unscrupulous. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. + + +The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance +Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the +States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas +V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The +Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the +Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia +Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in +Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander +VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and +Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the-- +Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of Gandia +Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius II.--His +violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo X.--His +Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian VI.--His +Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his +Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence. + + +In the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries the +authority of the Popes, both as Heads of the Church and as temporal +rulers, had been impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A +new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 1447, and ended during +the pontificate of Clement VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through +the whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs than as +pontiffs, and the secularization of the See of Rome was earned to its +utmost limits. The contrast between the sacerdotal pretensions and the +personal immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor had the chiefs of the +Church yet learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with +suspicion. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal States +had become a recognized kingdom; while the Popes of this later epoch +were endeavoring by means of the inquisition and the educational orders +to check the free spirit of Italy. + +The history of Italy has at all times been closely bound up with that of +the Papacy; but at no period has this been more the case than during +these eighty years of Papal worldliness, ambition, depotism, and +profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption of the European +nations into Italy and by the secession of the Teutonic races from the +Latin Church. In this short space of time a succession of Popes filled +the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety--displaying a pride so +regal, a cynicism so unblushing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so +suicidal as to favor the belief that they had been placed there in the +providence of God to warn the world against Babylon. At the same time +the history of the Papal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the +contradictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We find in the Popes +of this period what has been already noticed in the despots--learning, +the patronage of of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the +refinements of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently combined +with barbarous ferocity of temper and with savage and coarse tastes. On +the one side we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have +scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the other, a seeming +zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time +worshiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins or liberation +from burdensome engagements; at another he is trampled under foot, in +his capacity of sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised +sensuality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy marching to its end by +murders, treasons, interdicts, and imprisonments; the open sale of +spiritual privileges; commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments; +hypocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and perjury reduced to +system--these are the ordinary scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the +Pope is still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. His curse +and blessing carry death and life. He rises from the bed of harlots to +unlock or bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of crime +he believes himself to be the representative of Christ on earth. These +anomalies, glaring as they seem to us, and obvious as they might be to +deeper thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock the mass +of men who witnessed them. The Renaissance was so dazzling by its +brilliancy, so confusing by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions +were obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of new life, a +carnival of liberated energies. The corruption of Italy was only equaled +by its culture. Its immorality was matched by its enthusiasm. It was +not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the fermentation of a new +age coming into life, that bred the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth +and the sixteenth centuries. The contrast between mediaeval Christianity +and renascent Paganism--the sharp conflict of two adverse principles, +destined to fuse their forces and to recompose the modern world--made +the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is the first effervescence +of these elements so well displayed as in the history of those Pontiffs +who, after striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity beneath a +cowl, are now the chief actors in the comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus +raising their foreheads once more to the light of day. + +The struggle carried on between the Popes of the thirteenth century and +the House of Hohenstauffen ended in the elevation of the Princes of +Anjou to the throne of Naples--the most pernicious of all the evils +inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed the French tyranny, +under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni. Benedict XI. was poisoned +at the instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was transferred +to Avignon. The Popes lost their hold upon the city of Rome and upon +those territories of Romagna, the March, and S. Peter's Patrimony which +had been confirmed to them by the grant of Rodolph of Hapsburg (1273). +They had to govern their Italian dependencies by means of Legates, +while, one by one, the cities which had recognized their sway passed +beneath the yoke of independent princes. The Malatesti established +themselves in Rimini, Pesaro, and Fano; the house of Montefeltro +confirmed its occupation of Urbino; Camerino, Faenza, Ravenna, Forli, +and Imola became the appanages of the Varani, the Manfredi, the +Polentani, the Ordelaffi, and the Alidosi.[1] The traditional supremacy +of the Popes was acknowledged in these tyrannies; but the nobles I have +named acquired a real authority, against which Egidio Albornoz and +Robert of Geneva struggled to a great extent in vain, and to break which +at a future period taxed the whole energies of Sixtus and of Alexander. + + [1] See Mach. _Ist. Fior_. lib. i. + +While the influence of the Popes was thus weakened in their states +beyond the Apennines, three great families, the Orsini, the Savelli, and +the Colonnesi, grew to princely eminence in Rome and its immediate +neighborhood. They had been severally raised to power during the second +half of the thirteenth century by the nepotism of Nicholas III., +Honorius IV., and Nicholas IV. This nepotism bore baneful fruits in the +future; for during the exile at Avignon the houses of Colonna and Orsini +became so overbearing as to threaten the freedom and safety of the +Popes. It was again reserved for Sixtus and Alexander to undo the work +of their predecessors and to secure the independence of the Holy See by +the coercion of these towering nobles. + +In the States of the Church the temporal power of the Popes, founded +upon false donations, confirmed by tradition, and contested by rival +despots, was an anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though +different, was no less peculiar. While the factions of Orsini and +Colonna divided the Campagna and wrangled in the streets of the city, +Rome continued to preserve, in form at least, the old constitution of +Caporioni and Senator. The Senator, elected by the people, swore, not to +obey the Pope, but to defend his person. The government was ostensibly +republican. The Pope had no sovereign rights, but only the ascendency +inseparable from his wealth and from his position as Primate of +Christendom. At the same time the spirit of Arnold of Brescia, of +Brancaleone, and of Rienzi revived from time to time in patriots like +Porcari and Baroncelli, who resented the encroachments of the Church +upon the privileges of the city. Rome afforded no real security to the +members of the Holy College. They commanded no fortress like the +Castello of Milan, and had no army at their disposition. When the people +or the nobles rose against them, the best they could do was to retire to +Orvieto or Viterbo, and to wait the passing of the storm. + +Such was the position of the Pope, considered as one of the ruling +princes of Italy, before the election of Nicholas V. His authority was +wide but undefined, confirmed by prescription, but based on neither +force nor legal right. Italy, however, regarded the Papacy as +indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome was proud to be called the +metropolis of Christendom, and ready to sacrifice the shadow of +republican liberty for the material advantages which might accrue from +the sovereignty of her bishop. How the Roman burghers may have felt upon +this point we gather from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the +administration of Nicholas: 'The city had become a city of gold through +the jubilee; the dignity of the citizens was respected; all reasonable +petitions were granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, no new +taxes. Justice was fairly administered. It was the whole care of the +Pontiff to adorn the city.'[1] The prosperity which the Papal court +brought to Rome was the main support of the Popes as princes, at a time +when many thinkers looked with Dante's jealousy upon the union of +temporal and spiritual functions in the Papacy.[2] Moreover, the whole +of Italy, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was undergoing a +gradual and instinctive change in politics; commonwealths were being +superseded by tyrannies, and the sentiments of the race at large were by +no means unfavorable to this revolution. Now was the proper moment, +therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill-defined authority into a +settled despotism, to secure themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to +subdue the States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction. + + [1] See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.). + + [2] Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation of + Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas, + contained these reminiscences of the 'De Monarchia': 'Ut Papa + tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Caesaris ... tune Papa et + erit et dicetur pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesae.' + +The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who ascended the Chair of S. +Peter, as Nicholas V., in 1447. One part of his biography belongs to the +history of scholarship, and need not here be touched upon. Educated at +Florence, under the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed those +principles of deference to princely authority which were supplanting the +old republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the +Catholic Church were healed; and finding no opposition to his spiritual +power, he determined to consolidate the temporalities of his See. In +this purpose he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a +Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republican enthusiasm in the +city at the moment of the Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted +against his liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates were +put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope proclaimed himself a +monarch. The vast wealth which the jubilee of 1450 had poured into the +Papal coffers[1] he employed in beautifying the city of Rome and in +creating a stronghold for the Sovereign Pontiff. The mausoleum of +Hadrian, used long before as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now +strengthened, while the bridge of S. Angelo and the Leonine city were so +connected and defended by a system of walls and outworks as to give the +key of Rome into the hands of the Pope. A new Vatican began to rise, and +the foundations of a nobler S. Peter's Church were laid within the +circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, conceived the great +idea of restoring the supremacy of Rome, not after the fashion of a +Hildebrand, by enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but by +establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the architectural +magnificence of the Eternal City, and by rendering his court the center +of European culture. In the will which he recited on his death-bed to +the princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done for the +secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome, explaining his deep +sense of the necessity of securing the Popes from internal revolution +and external force, together with his desire to exalt the Church by +rendering her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. This +testament of Nicholas remains a memorable document. Nothing illustrates +more forcibly the transition from the Middle Ages to the worldliness of +the Renaissance than the conviction of the Pontiff that the destinies of +Christianity depended on the state and glory of the town of Rome. What +he began was carried on amid crime, anarchy, and bloodshed by successive +Popes of the Renaissance, until at last the troops of Frundsberg paved +the way, in 1527, for the Jesuits of Loyola, and Rome, still the Eternal +City, cloaked her splendor and her scandals beneath the black pall of +Spanish inquisitors. The political changes in the Papacy initiated by +Nicholas had been, however, by that date fully accomplished, and for +more than three centuries the Popes have since held rank among the kings +of the earth. + + [1] The bank of the Medici alone held 100,000 florins for the + Pope. Vespasiano, _Vit, Nic. V._ + +Of Alfonso Borgia, who reigned for three years as Calixtus III., little +need be said, except that his pontificate prepared for the greatness of +his nephew, Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment to his +uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been imbittered by the fall of +Constantinople and the imminent peril which threatened Europe from the +Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were directed towards the one end +of uniting the European nations against the infidel. AEneas Sylvius +Piccolomini, as an author, an orator, a diplomatist, a traveller, and a +courtier, bears a name illustrious in the annals of the Renaissance. As +a Pope, he claims attention for the single-hearted zeal which he +displayed in the vain attempt to rouse the piety of Christendom against +the foes of civilization and the faith. Rarely has a greater contrast +been displayed between the man and the pontiff than in the case of Pius. +The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking man of letters and the world +has become a Holy Father, jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on +stirring Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their force three +centuries before. Frederick II. and S. Louis closed the age of the +Crusades, the one by striking a bargain with the infidel, the other by +snatching at a martyr's crown. AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini was the mirror +of his times--a humanist and stylist, imbued with the rhetorical and +pseudo-classic taste of the earlier Renaissance. Pius II. is almost an +anachronism. The disappointment which the learned world experienced when +they discovered that the new Pope, from whom so much had been expected, +declined to play the part of their Maecenas, may be gathered from the +epigrams of Filelfo upon his death[1]:-- + + Gaudeat orator, Musae gaudete Latinae; + Sustulit e medio quod Deus ipse Pium. + Ut bene consuluit doctis Deus omnibus aeque, + Quos Pius in cunctos se tulit usque gravem. + Nunc sperare licet. Nobis Deus optime Quintum + Reddito Nicoleon Eugeniumve patrem. + +and again:-- + + Hac sibi quam vivus construxit clauditur arca + Corpore; nam Stygios mens habet atra lacus. + +Pius himself was not unconscious of the discrepancy between his old and +his new self. _AEneam rejicite, Pium recipite_, he exclaims in a +celebrated passage of his Retractation, where he declares his heartfelt +sorrow for the irrevocable words of light and vain romance that he had +scattered in his careless youth. Yet though Pius II. proved a virtual +failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either backwards to the +ideal of earlier Christianity or forwards on the path of modern culture, +he is the last Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard with +real respect. Those who follow, and with whose personal characters, +rather than their action as Pontiffs, we shall now be principally +occupied, sacrificed the interests of Christendom to family ambition, +secured their sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted +with the infidel, and played the part of Antichrist upon the theater of +Europe. + + [1] Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 321. + +It would be possible to write the history of these priest-kings without +dwelling more than lightly on scandalous circumstances, to merge the +court-chronicle of the Vatican in a recital of European politics, or to +hide the true features of high Papal dignitaries beneath the masks +constructed for them by ecclesiastical apologists. That cannot, however, +be the line adopted by a writer treating of civilization in Italy during +the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He must paint the Popes of the +Renaissance as they appeared in the midst of society, when Lorenzo de' +Medici called Rome 'a sink of all the vices,' and observers so competent +as Machiavelli and Guicciardini ascribed the moral depravity and +political decay of Italy to their influence. It might be objected that +there is now no need to portray the profligacy of that court, which, by +arousing the conscience of Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable +shame, proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. But without +reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding of Italian morality, +and a true insight into Italian social feeling as expressed in +literature, are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this epoch +shrink from his task, even though the transactions he has to record seem +to savor of legend rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains +matter more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted to express a +truth in figures of the fancy, than the authentic well-attested annals +of this period of seventy years, from 1464 to 1534. + +Paul the Second was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who began life as a +merchant. He had already shipped his worldly goods on board a trading +vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that his uncle had been +made Pope under the name of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry +consisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune in the +Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high seas by his wits. +So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the +age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain +to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals +dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as +Paul in 1464. A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic. He +spent enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his tiara alone was +valued at 200,000 golden florins. In all public ceremonies, whether +ecclesiastical or secular, he was splendid, delighting equally to sun +himself before the eyes of the Romans as the chief actor in an Easter +benediction or a Carnival procession. The poorer Cardinals received +subsidies from his purse in order that they might add luster to his +pageants by their retinues. The arts found in him munificent patron. For +the building of the palace of S. Marco, which marks an abrupt departure +from the previous Gothic style in vogue, he brought architects of +eminence to Rome, and gave employment to Mino da Fiesole, the sculptor, +and to Giuliano da San Gallo, the wood-carver. The arches of Titus and +Septimius Severus were restored at his expense, together with the statue +of Marcus Aurelius and the horses of Monte Cavallo. But Paul showed his +connoisseurship more especially in the collection of gems, medals, +precious stones, and cameos, accumulating rare treasures of antiquity +and costly masterpieces of Italian and Flemish gold-work in his +cabinets. This patronage of contemporary art, no less than the +appreciation of classical monuments, marked him as a Maecenas of the true +Renaissance type.[1] But the qualities of a dilettante were not +calculated to shed luster on a Pontiff who spent the substance of the +Church in heaping up immensely valuable curiosities. His thirst for gold +and his love of hoarding were so extreme that, when bishoprics fell +vacant, he often refused to fill them up, drawing their revenues for his +own use. His court was luxurious, and in private he was addicted to +sensual lust.[2] This would not, however, have brought his name into bad +odor in Rome, where the Holy Father was already regarded as an Italian +despot with certain sacerdotal additions. It was his prosecution of the +Platonists which made him unpopular in an age when men had the right to +expect that, whatever happened, learning at least would be respected. +The example of the Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged +the Romans to found a society for the discussion of philosophical +questions. The Pope conceived that a political intrigue was the real +object of this club. Nor was the suspicion wholly destitute of color. +The conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas, and the Catilinarian riots +of Tiburzio which had troubled the pontificate of Pius, were still fresh +in people's memories; nor was the position of the Pope in Rome as yet by +any means secure. What increased Paul's anxiety was the fact that some +scholars, appointed secretaries of the briefs (Abbreviatori) by Pius and +deprived of office by himself, were members of the Platonic Society. +Their animosity against him was both natural and ill-concealed. At the +same time the bitter hatred avowed by Laurentius Valla against the +temporal power might in an age of conjurations have meant active malice. +Leo Alberti hints that Porcari had been supported by strong backers +outside Rome; and one of the accusations against the Platonists was that +Pomponius Laetus had addressed Platina as Holy Father. Now both Pomponius +Laetus and Valla had influence in Naples, while Paul was on the verge of +open rupture with King Ferdinand. He therefore had sufficient grounds +for suspecting a Neapolitan intrigue, in which the humanists were +playing the parts of Brutus and Cassius. Yet though we take this trouble +to construct some show of reason for the panic of the Pope, the fact +remains that he was really mistaken at the outset; and of the stupidity, +cruelty, and injustice of his subsequent conduct there can be no doubt. +He seized the chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned them, put +them to the torture, and killed some of them upon the rack. 'You would +have taken Castle S. Angelo for Phalaris' bull,' writes Platina; 'the +hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent young men.' No +evidence of a conspiracy could be extorted. Then Paul tried the +survivors for unorthodoxy. They proved the soundness of their faith to +the satisfaction of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing remained but to +release them, or to shut them up in dungeons, in order that the people +might not say the Holy Father had arrested them without due cause. The +latter course was chosen. Platina, the historian of the Popes, was one +of the _abbreviatori_ whom Paul had cashiered, and one of the Platonists +whom he had tortured. The tale of Papal persecution loses, therefore, +nothing in the telling; for if the humanists of the fifteenth century +were powerful in anything it was in writing innuendoes and invectives. +Among other anecdotes, he relates how, while he was being dislocated on +the rack, the inquisitors Vianesi and Sanga held a sprightly colloquy +about a ring which the one said jestingly the other had received as a +love-token from a girl. The whole situation is characteristic of Papal +Rome in the Renaissance. + + [1] See _Les Arts a la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le XVI. + Siecles_, E. Muentz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie. M. Muentz has + done good service to aesthetic archaeology by vindicating the + fame of Paul II. as an employer of artists from the wholesale + abuse heaped on him by Platina. It may here be conveniently + noticed that even the fierce Sixtus IV. showed intelligence as + a patron of arts and letters. He built the Sistine Chapel, and + brought the greatest painters of the day to Rome--Signorelli, + Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and Ghirlandajo. + Melozzo da Forli worked for him. One of that painter's few + remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican, + which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries--a + magnificent piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw the + Vatican library open to the public, and In his days the + Confraternity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of + design. Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe + building, by Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. Maria del + Popolo and S. Maria della Pace. Innocent VIII. added the + Belvedere to the Vatican after Antonio del Pollajuolo's plan, + and commenced the Villa Magliana. Alexander VI. enriched the + Vatican with the famous Borgia apartments, decorated by + Pinturhicchio. He also began the Palace of the University, and + converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the Castle of S. + Angelo. These brief allusions must suffice. It is not the + object of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons; + but it should not be forgotten that, having accepted a place + among the despots of Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to + art and learning in the spirit of contemporary potentates. + + [2] Corio sums up his character thus: 'Fu costui uomo alla + libidine molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie + appresso di lui. Del giorno faceva notte, e la notte ispediva + quanto gli occorreva.' Marcus Attilius Alexius says: 'Paulus + II. ex concubina domum replevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta + est sedes Barionis.' See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. vii. p. + 215, for the latter quotation. + +Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth led people to +anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after +supping on two huge watermelons, _duos praegrandes pepones_. His +successor was a man of base extraction, named Francesco della Rovere, +born near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to +be thought noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house of +Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals' hats, and proclaimed +himself their kinsman. Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an azure ground +which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in +compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Having bribed the most venal +members of the Sacred College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, +and assumed the name of Sixtus IV. He began his career with a lie; for +though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul who had spent his time in +amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found +5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by +the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his +nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which +were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope's nephews and upon the +nature of his weakness for them. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered +the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of +these men recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus.[1] We +may, however, dwell upon the principal features of his nepotism; for +Sixtus was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system for +pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to principalities. The +weakness of this policy has already been exposed[2]: its justification, +if there is any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no +legitimate or hereditary succession. The names of the Pope's nephews +were Lionardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of +his brother Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his +sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister married to +Giovanni Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere,[3] +these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a +certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical +dignities thrust upon some of them. Lionardo was made prefect of Rome +and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano +received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous warfare with the +intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso +was created Cardinal of San Crisogono in 1477, and died in 1507. +Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza. +For him the Pope in 1473 bought the town of Imola with money of the +Church, and, after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a Duke. He was +murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 1488, not, however, +before he had founded a line of princes. Pietro, another nephew of the +Riario blood, or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since +believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at the age of +twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, Patriarch of Constantinople, +and Archbishop of Florence. He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but +his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant +profligacy of his own life to recommend him to the notice of posterity. +All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. His +official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden florins; but in his +short career of profligate magnificence he managed to squander a sum +reckoned at not less than 200,000. When Leonora of Aragon passed through +Rome on her way to wed the Marquis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch +erected a pavilion in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli for her +entertainment.[4] The square was partitioned into chambers communicating +with the palace of the Cardinal. The ordinary hangings were of velvet +and of white and crimson silk, while one of the apartments was draped +with the famous tapestries of Nicholas V., which represented the +Creation of the World. All the utensils in this magic dwelling were of +silver--even to the very vilest. The air of the banquet-hall was cooled +with punkahs; _ire mantici coperti, che facevano continoamemte vento_, +are the words of Corio; and on a column in the center stood a living +naked gilded boy, who poured forth water from an urn. The description of +the feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a +minute list of the dishes--wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted +whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for +washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought +in pastry--_tutte in vivande_. We are also told how masques of Hercules, +Jason, and Phaedra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders, +played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of _San Giovan +Battista decapitato_ and _quel Giudeo che rosfi il corpo di Cristo_. The +servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of +richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet. +Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wine from golden +goblets. The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, meanwhile, +moved among his guests 'like some great Caesar's son.' The whole +entertainment lasted from Saturday till Thursday, during which time +Ercole of Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in S. +Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the intervals of games, +dances, and banquets of the kind described. We need scarcely add that, +in spite of his enormous wealth, the young Cardinal died 60,000 florins +in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in +January 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and +Venice as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never well +authenticated, that the Venetians helped his death by poison.[5] The +sensual indulgences of every sort in which this child of the +proletariat, suddenly raised to princely splendor, wallowed for +twenty-five continuous months, are enough to account for his immature +death without the hypothesis of poisoning. With him expired a plan which +might have ended in making the Papacy a secular, hereditary kingdom. +During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with the Duke, by the +terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza was to be crowned king of Lombardy, +while the Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the Papal +throne.[6] Sixtus, it is said, was willing to abdicate in his nephew's +favor, with a view to the firmer establishment of his family in the +tyranny of Rome. The scheme was a wild one, yet, considering the power +and wealth of the Sforza family, not so wholly impracticable as might +appear. The same dream floated, a few years later, before the +imagination of the two Borgias; and Machiavelli wrote in his calm style +that to make the Papal power hereditary was all that remained for +nepotism in his days to do.[7] The opinion which had been conceived of +the Cardinal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence may be +gathered from the following couplets of an epigram placed, as Corio +informs us, on his tomb:-- + + Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynaedus, + Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italia: + Namque illa Ausonii pestis scelerata senatus, + Petrus, ad infernas est modo raptus aquas. + +After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last nephew, Giovanni della +Rovere, into like favor. He was married to Giovanna, daughter of +Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of Sinigaglia. +Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, upon the death of his brother +Lionardo. This man founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Urbino. +The plebeian violence of the della Rovere temper reached a climax in +Giovanni's son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's +lover with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed the Papal +Legate to death in the streets of Bologna at the age of twenty, and +knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during +a council of war in 1526. + + [1] The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part + be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to + epigrams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura, + Burchard, and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two + Popes such traits of character and such abominable actions as + render the worst calumnies probable. Infessura, though he + expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry + chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his + own eyes, Burchurd was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies, + who reported the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander + with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of + whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more valuable + than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman + emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors, again, + are trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political + intention and not for the sake of gossip. + + [2] See ch. iii. p. 113. + + [3] As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet + even Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power. + Jacobus Volaterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: 'Vir est + naturae duriusculae, ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturae.' + + [4] For what follows read Corio, _Storia di Milano_, pp. + 417-20. + + [5] Mach. _1st. Fior_. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420. + + [6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned + the Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out. + + [7] _1st. Fior_, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38. + +Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy +life without some youthful protege about his person. Accordingly in 1463 +he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and +Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a +young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless +though stupid character. + +With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally +short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his +coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each +of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with +rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be +considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege +within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise +money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our +heaven, our very God, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time; +while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen +and ink to get what sum he wants.'[2] The second great financial +expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. +Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine +prices; good grain was sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in +exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores, +and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces. +Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south. +It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men +condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have +spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume +it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the +State.'[3] + + [1] The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this + market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia + Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183. + + [2] Baptista Mantuanus, _de Calamitatibus Temporum_, lib. iii. + + Venalia nobis + Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronae, + Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque. + + Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, + writes: 'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., + che al papa bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro, + per avere quella somma che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. _Ep_. + i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam + et ipsae manus impositiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur, + nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.' + + [3] Infessura, _Eccardus_, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex + dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e + ex necessitate comedebatur, ex quo saepenumero in civitate + morbus viguit.' + +But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who +trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of God, to +squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy +was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same +worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of +Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly +planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all +the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils +was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,[1] rushed with wild +delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole +Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all +the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called +the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting +for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he +died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury +because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the +sake of a favorite nephew. + + [1] This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) + relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat + 'a steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be + fought by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose + the Piazza of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared + at a window, blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a + signal for the battle to begin. We who think the ring, the + cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's + engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato + chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura + writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, + puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii + and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, + quae circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It + was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused + Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of + abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year. + +The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the +Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the +Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year +1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi +family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had +driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his +banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with +Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political +reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy +the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in +Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their +views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a +plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private +foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well +affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was +to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the +young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then +proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed +in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of +blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate +Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1] +The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place +selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was +to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced +Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat +of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen, +arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before +the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the _religio loci_ +dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such +silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was +found, who, _being a priest_, was more accustomed to the place and +therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.' This, however, spoiled +all. The priests, though more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less +used to the trade of assassination. They failed to strike home. +Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo Bandini and +Francesco de' Pazzi at the very moment of the elevation of Christ's +body. But Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole +conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people of +Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with +Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others among the principal +conspirators, were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For +this act of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest, +Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime of mingled treason, +sacrilege, and murder, ex-communicated Florence, and carried on for +years a savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when the +descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him tremble for his own safety, +that he chose to make peace with these enemies whom he had himself +provoked and plotted against. + + [1] His 'Confession,' printed by Fabroni, _Lorenzi Medicis + Vita_, vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the + hatching of the plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that + Montesecco exculpates him of the design to murder the Medici. + He only wanted to ruin them. + + [2] It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian + tyrannicides took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano + were murdered during a solemn service in 1435; the sentence of + the creed 'Et incarnatus est' was chosen for the signal. Gian + Maria Visconti was killed in San Gottardo (1412), Galeazzo + Maria Sforza in San Stefano (1484). Lodovico Moro only just + escaped assassination in Sant' Ambrogio (1484). Machiavelli + says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was attempted by Batista + Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see _1st. Fior._ book viii. near + the end). The Bagliani of Perugia were to have been massacred + during the marriage festival of Astorre with Lavinia + Colonna(1500). Stefano Porcari intended to capture Nicholas V. + at the great gate of S. Peter's (1453). The only chance of + catching cautious princes off their guard was when they were + engaged in high solemnities. See above, p. 168. + +Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus deserves special +mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition +was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and +Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000 +victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of +ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning--a new Aceldama--was +set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were +committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual +imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In +Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their +inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the +Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were +bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold +or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables +was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was +given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the +persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the +payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand +and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ +for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for +the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left +Spain[1]--some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their +bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and +deflowered their women--some for Portugal, where they bought the right +to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and +daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as +slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the +bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and +sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with +famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the +Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died +by hundreds in the harbor.[2] Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence +along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000 +persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn specters, the +victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere +rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox +rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato +with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of +the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so +extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words +we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first +sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; +yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as +beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God.' A critic of this century can +only exclaim with stupefaction: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!_ +Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell +upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The +very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free +thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily +throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was +destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her +manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color +of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom. + + [1] This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his + _History of the Inquisition_ (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and + 400,000; he also speaks of 170,000 _families_ as one + calculation. + + [2] Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is + truly awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The + passage may be read in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, + chapter 17. + +Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus--indulging his lust and pride +in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with +masterpieces,[1] rending Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of +favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting +money from starved provinces, plotting murder against his enemies, +hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences, +refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Christendom against the +Turk--yet meanwhile thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by +myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious +Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the +blood of others, to burn his own vices in the _autos da fe_ of Seville, +and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to +secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.[2] This is not the +language of a Protestant denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the +Roman Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, that august and +venerable monument of immemorial antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to +the contradictions between practice and pretension upon which the +History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so lurid. + + [1] Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of + Michael Angelo, it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the + arraignment of the Popes who built and beautified that chapel, + when the Christ, whose blood they sold, should appear with His + menacing right arm uplifted, and the prophets should thunder + their denunciations: 'Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow + yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock, for the + days of your slaughter and your dispersions are accomplished.' + + [2] The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose + bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution + directed against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in + the _Malleus Maleficarum_, mentions that in the first year + after its publication forty-one witches were burned in the + district of Como, while crowds of suspected women took refuge + in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. Cantu's _Storia + della Diocesi di Como_ (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be consulted + for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica. + Cp. Folengo's _Maccaronea_ for the prevalence of witchcraft in + those districts. + +After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular name was Giambattista +Cibo. The sacred College, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into +thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his creation of scandalous +Cardinals, might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn obligations on +the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, to every +member of the conclave, that he would maintain a certain order of +appointment and a purity of election in the Church. No Cardinal under +the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's own blood, none +without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, and +so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them +all as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair. +Engagements made by the man might always be broken by the Pope. Of +Innocent's Pontificate little need be said. He was the first Pope +publicly to acknowledge his seven children, and to call them sons and +daughters.[1] Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base +favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the +scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced a step +even beyond Sixtus, by establishing a Bank at Rome for the sale of +pardons.[2] Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the +convenience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were poured into the +Papal coffers; the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This +insignificant princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was +purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and +spending money. He was small of stature and tame-spirited: yet the +destinies of an important house of Europe depended on him; for his +father married him to Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in +1487. This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal's hat at the +age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in +the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and +by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence +fast.[3] The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in +theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands and assassins.[4] +Travelers and pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped and murdered on +their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people +were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the +Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and +Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy +Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to +reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid +veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were +sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He +adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judaeus quidem +aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope +reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem in +Innocentia mea ingressus sum.' + + [1] 'Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit, + primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenaeos + celebravit.' Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, + vol. vii. p. 274, note. + + [2] Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why + criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, + answer: 'God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that + he should pay and live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, + forged bulls by which the Pope granted indulgences for the + commission of the worst scandals. His father tried to buy him + off for 5,000 ducats. Innocent replied that, as his honor was + concerned, he must have 6,000. The poor father could not scrape + so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and + Dominico was executed. A Roman who had killed two of his own + daughters bought his pardon for 800 ducats. + + [3] Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the + Pope for his ally, was able to create that balance of power in + Italy which it was his chief political merit to have maintained + until his death. + + [4] It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary + (Eccardus vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed + debauchery and violence of Rome at this time can be formed. + +Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The tedious leisure of +Innocent's long lethargy was employed by them in active simony. Simony, +it may be said in passing, gave the great Italian families a direct +interest in the election of the richest and most paying candidate. It +served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose +that laid such eggs, before he killed it--in other words, to take the +bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while deferring for a future time his +own election. All the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo +Borgia,[1] were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. Having bought +their hats with gold, they were now disposed to sell their votes to the +highest bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, wisest, and most +worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what the price of each +suffrage would be, and laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio +Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of +Vice-Chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia +Palaces at Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal +Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The +Cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto with +its palace stocked with choice wines. The Cardinal of Parma would take +Nepi. The Cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in +Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave sold themselves for +gold; to meet their demands the Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules +laden with coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in proper +portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained +implacable and obdurate. In the Borgia his vehement temperament +perceived a fit antagonist. The armor which he donned in their first +encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce war with the whole brood of +Borgias at Ostia, at the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and whenever +he found opportunity.[2] He and five other Cardinals--among them his +cousin Raphael Riario--refused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia, +having corrupted the rest of the college, assumed the mantle of S. Peter +in 1492, with the ever-memorable title of Alexander VI. + + [1] Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope + Calixtus III., by her marriage with Joffre Lenzuoli. He took + the name of Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal, + and to share in his uncle's greatness. + + [2] The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura, + the daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long + after the Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a + curious and unexplained incident. + +Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself in festival array, +exhibiting on every flag and balcony the Bull of the house of Borgia, +and crying like the Egyptians when they found Apis:-- + + Vive diu Bos! Vive diu Bos! Borgia vive! + Vivit Alexander: Roma beata manet. + +In truth there was nothing to convince the Romans of the coming woe, or +to raise suspicion that a Pope had been elected who would deserve the +execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only +saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal +carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, +a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and ecclesiastic +parade--qualities which, though they do not suit our notions of a +churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in +triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits +upon a snow-white horse,' writes one of the humanists of the century,[1] +'with serene forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distributes his +blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon him, and all hearts +rejoice. How admirable is the mild composure of his mien! how noble his +countenance! his glance how free! His stature and carriage, his beauty +and the full health of his body, how they enhance the reverence which he +inspires!' Another panegyrist[2] describes his 'broad forehead, kingly +brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 'the heroic beauty +of his whole body' was given him by nature in order that he might 'adorn +the seat of the Apostles with his divine form in the place of God.' How +little in the early days of his Pontificate the Borgia resembled that +Alexander with whom the legend of his subsequent life has familiarized +our fancy, may be gathered from the following account:[3] 'He is +handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with +honeyed and choice eloquence; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are +cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more +powerfully than the magnet influences iron.' These, we must remember, +are the testimonies of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan sentiments +of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in the advent of a Pope who +would, they hoped, make Rome the capital of luxury and license. +Therefore they require to be received with caution. Yet there is no +reason to suppose that the majority of the Italians regarded the +elevation of the Borgia with peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given +proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud. +Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues. If he was the +father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had +been Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little in an age when +the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular +potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was +not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the +thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church. A few men of +discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered. 'The king of +Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the +queen, his wife, with tears--tears which he was wont to check even at +the death of his own sons--that a Pope had been made who would prove +most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal +Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by +whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's +jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides, +there was in Italy a widely spread repugnance to the Spanish +intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who +crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption +like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of +all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in +1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for +during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were +created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias. + + [1] See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. _Lucrezia Borgia_, p. + 45. + + [2] Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, _Stadt Rom._ p. 314, note. + + [3] Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom._ p. 208, note. + +It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of +Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at +the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was +afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his +Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son +Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life, +which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century. +This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date +of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern +nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the +glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his +conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like +all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects. + +Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and +to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the +Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two +conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The +Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual +insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and +terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of +the Middle Ages--Hildebrand and Boniface--had displayed the extreme of +spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous +and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they +had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable. +To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as +unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame +and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is +justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of +which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and +imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was +rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected on it from the +unquenched furnace of a godless life. The universal conscience of +Christianity is revolted by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood +and festivals of lust, which were enjoyed in the plenitude of his green +and vigorous old age by this versatile diplomatist and subtle priest, +who controlled the councils of kings, and who chanted the sacramental +service for a listening world on Easter Day in Rome. Rome has never been +small or weak or mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 'that +memorable scene' presented to the nations of the modern world a pageant +of Antichrist and Antiphysis--the negation of the Gospel and of nature; +a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity as it aspires to be at +its best, and humanity as it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by +some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of servants, the +anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant upon earth of Christ, played the +chief part. It may be objected that this is the language not of history +but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions when the legend has +caught the spirit of the truth. + +Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate +predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular +sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and +to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond +belief.'[1] His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old +factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had +raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed +in his Pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed,[2] he laid the +real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a +sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the +throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of +the large European monarchies. The faithlessness and perjuries of the +Pope, 'who never did aught else but deceive, nor ever thought of +anything but this, and always found occasion for his frauds,'[3] when +combined with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, made him a +redoubtable antagonist. All considerations of religion and morality were +subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy +he restrained to two objects--the advancement of his family, and the +consolidation of the temporal power. These were narrow aims for the +ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to +confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his whole strength, +and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes. + + [1] It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in + a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; + private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of + truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment; + insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the + cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons + by any means: of these there were many, and among them--in + order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting + his vicious schemes--one not less detestable in any way than + his father.' _St. d'It._ vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate and + put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander + from the _Storia di Firenze_. + + [2] In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the + _Prince_. + + [3] Mach. _Prince_, ch. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire + i. 208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken + passage on the nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results + for Italy. + +Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and +indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practiced--to such an +extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency: 'Alexander sells the +keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to +sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having +sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with +rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him, +laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. Paolo Capello, the +Venetian Ambassador, wrote in the year 1500: 'Every night they find in +Rome four or five murdered men, Bishops and Prelates and so forth.' +Panvinius mentions three Cardinals who were known to have been poisoned +by the Pope; and to their names may be added those of the Cardinals of +Capua and of Verona.[1] To be a prince of the Church was dangerous in +those days; and if the Borgia had not at last poisoned himself by +mistake, he must in the long-run have had to pay people to accept so +perilous a privilege. His traffic in Church dignities was carried on +upon a grand scale: twelve Cardinals' hats, for example, were put to +auction in a single day in 1500.[2] This was when he wished to pack the +Conclave with votes in favor of the cession of Romagna to Cesare Borgia, +as well as to replenish his exhausted coffers. Forty-three Cardinals +were created by him in eleven promotions: each of these was worth on an +average 10,000 florins; while the price paid by Francesco Soderini +amounted to 20,000 and that paid by Domenico Grimani reached the sum of +30,000. + + [1] See the authorities in Burckhardt, pp. 93, 94. + + [2] Guicc. _St. d'It._ vol. iii. p. 15. + +Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or +energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened. +Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of +the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favor of his children. The +fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to +some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet +and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection +to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving +40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. Innocent VIII. had +been the first to snare this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of +Longinus was sent him as a token of the Sultan's gratitude, and +Innocent, who built an altar for the relique, caused his own tomb to be +raised close by. His effigy in bronze by Pollajuolo still carries in its +hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest of Christendom. + +Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, and held his Moslem Court side by side +with the Pontiff in the Vatican. Dispatches are extant in which +Alexander and Bajazet exchange terms of the warmest friendship, the Turk +imploring his Greatness--so he addressed the Pope--to put an end to the +unlucky Djem, and promising as the price of this assassination a sum of +300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ, presumably that very +seamless coat over which the soldiers of Calvary had cast their +dice.[1] The money and the relique arrived in Italy and were intercepted +by the partisans of Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before the bargain +with the Sultan had been concluded by the murder of Djem, was forced to +hand him over to the French king. But the unlucky Turk carried in his +constitution the slow poison of the Borgias, and died in Charles's camp +between Rome and Naples. Whatever crimes may be condoned in Alexander, +it is difficult to extenuate this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal +from the powers of Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the peril to the +Western world was still most serious, he stands attained for high +treason against Christendom, of which he professed to be the chief; +against civilization, which the Church pretended to protect; against +Christ, whose vicar he presumed to style himself. + + [1] See the letters in the 'Preuves et Observations,' printed + at the end of the _Memoires de Comines_. + +Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the spirit and the +interests of Christianity with zeal for dogma. He never flinched in +formal orthodoxy, and the measures which he took for riveting the chains +of superstition on the people were calculated with the military firmness +of a Napoleon. It was he who established the censure of the press, by +which printers were obliged, under pain of excommunication, to submit +the books they issued to the control of the Archbishops and their +delegates. The Brief of June 1, 1501, which contains this order, may be +reasonably said to have retarded civilization, at least in Italy and +Spain. + +Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his +life.[1] This, together with his almost insane weakness for his +children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all +the crimes which he committed. At the same time, though sensual, +Alexander was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, +remarks: 'The Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disagreeable +to have to dine with him.' In this respect he may be favorably +contrasted with the Roman prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to +Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce, and then +of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia Farnese,[2] surnamed La Bella, the +titular wife of Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowledged. These two +sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving +meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental fashion, he +maintained in the Vatican. An incident which happened during the French +invasion of 1494 brings the domestic circumstances of a Pope of the +Renaissance vividly before us. Monseigneur d'Allegre caught the ladies +Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady Adriana de Mila, who +was employed as their duenna, near Capodimonte, on November 29, and +carried them to Montefiascone. The sum fixed for their ransom was 3,000 +ducats. This the Pope paid, and on December 1 they were released. +Alexander met them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black jerkin +trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round his waist by a Spanish +girdle, from which hung his dagger. Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what +had happened, remarked that it was weak to release these ladies, who +were 'the very eyes and heart' of his Holiness, for so small a +ransom--if 50,000 ducats had been demanded, they would have been paid. +This and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope's expense, make us +understand to what extent the Italians were accustomed to regard their +high priest as a secular prince. Even the pageant of Alexander seated in +S. Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia on one side of his throne and his +daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other, moved no moral indignation; nor +were the Romans astonished when Lucrezia was appointed Governor of +Spoleto, and plenipotentiary Regent of the Vatican in her father's +absence. These scandals, however, created a very different impression in +the north, and prepared the way for the Reformation. + + [1] Guicciardini (_St. Fior._ cap. 27) writes: 'Fu + lussoriosissimo nell' uno e nell' altro sesso, tenendo + publicamente femine e garzoni, ma piu ancora nelle femine.' A + notion of the public disorders connected with his dissolute + life may be gained from this passage in Sanuto's Diary + (Gregorovius, _Lucrezia Borgia_, p. 88): 'Da Roma per le + lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone + cossa assai abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra + nato un fiolo di una dona romana maritata, ch' el padre l' + havea rufianata, e di questa il marito invito il suocero a la + vigna e lo uccise tagliandoli el capo, ponendo quello sopra uno + legno con letere che diceva questo e il capo de mio suocero che + a rufianato sua fiola al papa, et che inteso questo il papa + fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma con taglia. Questa nova + venne per letere particular; etiam si godea con la sua spagnola + menatali per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li venuto.' + + [2] Her brother Alexander, afterwards Paul III., owed his + promotion to the purple to this liaison, which was, therefore, + the origin of the greatness of the Farnesi. The tomb of Paul + III. in the Tribune of S. Peter's has three notable family + portraits--the Pope himself in bronze; his sister Giulia, naked + in marble, as Justice; and their old mother, Giovanna Gaetani, + the bawd, as Prudence. + +The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong wine of Alexander's +paternal ambition. The passion of paternity, exaggerated beyond the +bounds of natural affection, and scandalous in a Roman Pontiff, was the +main motive of the Borgia's action. Of his children by Vannozza, he +caused the eldest son to be created Duke of Gandia; the youngest he +married to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of Aragon, by whom the +boy was honored with the Dukedom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of +this family, was appointed Bishop of Valentia, and Cardinal. The +Dukedoms of Camerino and Nepi were given to another John, whom Alexander +first declared to be his grandson through Cesare, and afterwards +acknowledged as his son. This John may possibly have been Lucrezia's +child. The Dukedom of Sermoneta, wrenched for a moment from the hands of +the Gaetani family, who still own it, was conferred upon Lucrezia's son, +Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took +three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to +two Spanish nobles, Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles, and Don Gasparo da +Procida, son of the Count of Aversa. These contracts, made before her +father became Pope, were annulled as not magnificent enough for the +Pontiff's daughter. In 1492 she was married to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of +Pesaro. But in 1497 the pretensions of the Borgias had outgrown this +alliance, and their public policy was inclining to relations with the +Southern Courts of Italy. Accordingly she was divorced and given to +Alfonso, Prince of Biseglia, a natural son of the King of Naples. When +this man's father lost his crown, the Borgias, not caring to be +connected with an ex-royal family, caused Alfonso to be stabbed on the +steps of S. Peter's in 1501; and while he lingered between life and +death, they had him strangled in his sick-bed, by Michellozzo, Cesare's +assassin in chief. Finally Lucrezia was wedded to Alfonso, crown-prince +of Ferrara, in 1502.[1] The proud heir of the Este dynasty was forced by +policy, against his inclination, to take to his board and bed a Pope's +bastard, twice divorced, once severed from her husband by murder, and +soiled, whether justly or not, by atrocious rumors, to which her +father's and her brother's conduct gave but too much color. She proved a +model princess after all, and died at last in childbirth, after having +been praised by Ariosto as a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues +than the star of regal Rome. + + [1] Her dowry was 300,000 ducats, besides wedding presents, and + certain important immunities and privileges granted to Ferrara + by the Pope. + +History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long +yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colorless. The +legend which made her a poison-brewing Maenad has been proved a lie--but +only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple +northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and +Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a +woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals +perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not hers, +but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her +married life in Rome a byword. She sat and smiled through all the +tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair +port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in the corruption of Papal Rome, +which Lorenzo de' Medici described to his son Giovanni as 'a sink of all +the vices,' consorting habitually with her father's concubines, and +conscious that her own mother had been married for show to two +successive husbands, it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct +at any time with propriety. It is even probable that the darkest tales +about her are true. The Lord of Pesaro, we must remember, told his +kinsman, the Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his divorce +were false, and that the fact was what can scarcely be recorded.[1] +Still, there is no ground for supposing that, in the matter of her +first husband's divorce and the second's murder, she was more than a +passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Cesare. The pleasure-loving, +careless woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of +Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern +conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of +debauchery devised for her amusement.[2] Instead of viewing her with +dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with +contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the +cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the +esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached the whole +state to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the panegyrics of +the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of +note. Foreigners who saw her surrounded by her brilliant Court +exclaimed, like the French biographer of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que, +de son temps, ni beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouve de plus +triomphante princesse; car elle etait belle, bonne douce, et courtoise a +toutes gens.' + + [1] The whole question of Lucrezia's guilt has been ably + investigated by Gregorovius (_Lucrezia Borgia_, pp. 101, + 159-64). Charity suggests that the dreadful tradition of her + relation to her father and brothers is founded less upon fact + than upon the scandals current after her divorce. What Giovanni + Sforza said was this: '_anzi haverla conosciuta infinite volte, + ma chel Papa non gelha tolta per altro se non per usare con + lei_.' This confession of the injured husband went the round of + all the Courts of Italy, was repeated by Malipiero and Paolo + Capello, formed the substance of the satires of Sannazaro and + Pontano, crept into the chronicle of Matarazzo, and survived in + the histories of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. There was + nothing in his words to astonish men who were cognizant of the + acts of Gianpaolo Baglioni and Sigismondo Malatesta; while the + frantic passion of Alexander for his children, closely allied + as this feeling was in him to excessive sensuality, gave them + confirmation. Were they, however, true; or were they a + malevolent lie? That is the real point at issue. Psychological + speculation will help but little here. It is true that Lucrezia + in after-life showed all the signs of a clear conscience. But + so also did Alexander, whose buoyancy of spirits lasted till + the very day of his death. Yet he was stained with crimes foul + enough to darken the conscience of any man, at any period of + life, and in any position. + + [2] See Burchard, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 77 and 78. + +Yet even at Ferrara tragedies which might remind her of the Vatican +continued to surround her path. Alfonso, rude in manners and devoted to +gun-foundry, interfered but little with the life she led among the wits +and scholars who surrounded her. One day, however, in 1508, the poet +Ercole Strozzi, who had sung her praises, was found dead, wrapped in his +mantle, and pierced with two-and-twenty wounds. No judicial inquiry into +this murder was made. Rumor credited both Alfonso and Lucrezia with the +deed--Alfonso, because he might be jealous of his wife--Lucrezia, +because her poet had recently married Barbara Torelli. Two years earlier +another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name of Borgia before the +public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both +Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of +Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to +mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the +loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the +Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and +Alfonso. His plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand of Este on +the throne. The treason was discovered; the conspirators appeared before +Alfonso: he rushed upon Ferdinand, and with his dagger stabbed him in +the face. Both Giulio and Ferdinand were thrown into the dungeons of the +palace at Ferrara, where they languished for years, while the Duke and +Lucrezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and su ny loggie +among their courtiers. Ferdinand died in prison, aged sixty-three, in +1540. Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561. +These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia's married +life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries +of Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the +most part, in the record of the birth of children. Like her mother +Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity +and mercy. After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the +Renaissance saved their souls. + +But to return to the domestic history of Alexander. The murder of the +Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is +related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by +Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies. The Duke with his brother +Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their +mother Vannozza. On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a +lady of their acquaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never seen +again alive. When the news of his disappearance spread abroad, a +boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown +into the river on the night of the Duke's death, the 14th of June; he +had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen 'a +hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no +questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope had the Tiber dragged +for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true +successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of the +Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, one in the throat, the others +in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the +evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that +Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy +of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, +because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do +not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild +beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, +and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets +beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to +have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before +them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission +for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the +storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit from Vannozza, the +mother of his children, wrought a sudden change from fury to +reconcilement. What passed between them is not known for certain; +Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was +indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of +the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of +Gandia. The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took +food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for +Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church. + +Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy to building up the +fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical +obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious +power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this +young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites. +At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own +hand, when the youth had taken refuge in Alexander's arms: the blood +spirted out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.[1] +At another time he employed the same diabolical temper for the +delectation of his father. He turned out some prisoners sentenced to +death in a court-yard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic +clothes, and amused the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals. +They ran round and round the court crouching and doubling to avoid his +arrows. He showed his skill by hitting each where he thought fit. The +Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of +bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, devised for the entertainment of +his father and his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, +can scarcely be transferred to these pages. + + [1] The account is given by Capello, the Venetian envoy. + +The history of Cesare's attempt to found a principality belongs properly +to another chapter.[1] But the assistance rendered by his father is +essential to the biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian +sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and Galeazzo +Maria Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the +imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a prince, +Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of France, promising to annul +his first marriage and to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if +he would undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe induced Louis +to create Cesare Duke of Valence and to confer on him the hand of +Charlotte of Navarre. He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled +Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander and his son in +their conquests was a simple one. They took the capitals and murdered +the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at Camerino in 1502, and +the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year: by his means the +Marcscotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, Rimini, and +Forli had been treated in like manner; and after the capture of Faenpza +in 1501, the two young Manfredi had been sent to Rome; where they were +exposed to the worst insults, drowned or strangled.[2] A system of equal +simplicity kept their policy alive in foreign Courts. The Bishop of +Cette in France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's (1498); +the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain the credit of the Borgias +with Louis XII.; the offer of a red hat to Briconnet saved Alexander +from a general council in 1494. The historical interest of Alexander's +method consists of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his +power to one end--the elevation of his family. His spiritual authority, +the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an +assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and +openly to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by +foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for +his poisonous son, he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous +alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of +Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction. The two kings +quarreled over their prey: then Alexander fomented their discord in +order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his +operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his breast, whether the +patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate, +was as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by +fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal +policy. + + [1] See Chapter VI. + + [2] Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 + by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death + Guicciardini writes: 'Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni + e di forma eccellente ... condotto a Roma, saziata prima + (secondo che si disse) la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente + insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato della vita.' Nardi + (_Storie Florentine_, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare with the + violation and murder of the boy. How far, we may ask, were + these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological + superstition? This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363) + apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta's assault upon his son, and + Pier Luigi Farnese's violation of the Bishop of Fano. To a + temperament like Alexander's, however, mere lust enhanced by + cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a + sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime. + +It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings. +We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives. The two Borgias, +so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with +the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging +to their host. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they +previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the +contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent, +they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all +contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, +and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became +the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet +Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and +son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his +masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to +apoplexy.[2] The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever +had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written +probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly +mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, _ex hoc +seculo horrenda febrium incensione absorptum_.[3] Machiavelli, again, +who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career, +gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being +simultaneously prostrated by disease. + + [1] The story is related by Cinthio in his _Ecatommithi_, + December 9, November 10. + + [2] The various accounts of Alexander's death have been + epitomized by Gregorovius (_Stadt Rom_, vol. vii.), and have + been discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani + Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks + the question still open. Villari decides in favor of fever + against poison. + + [3] Reprinted by R. Garnett in _Athenaeum_, Jan. 16, 1875. + +At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we +are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether +the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the +poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the +hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not, +however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the +Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice, +was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side, +we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and, +it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio +goes even so far as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had +narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme +terror to counteract the possibility of poison. + +Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his sickness, Alexander +died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp +struggle with the venom he had absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says +Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men +could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent +who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every +demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of +avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had +filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick +bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he +recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in irretrievable +confusion. 'The state of the Duke of Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,[2] +'vanished even as smoke in air, or foam upon the water.' + + [1] 'Morto chel fu, il corpo comincio a bollire, e la bocca a + spumare come faria uno caldaro al focho, assi persevero mentre + che fu sopra terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto + che in lui non apparea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza + ala lunghezza del corpo suo era differenzia alcuna' (letter of + Marquis of Mantua). + + [2] _Commentari_, lib, v. + +The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself after Alexander's death +in the legend of a devil, who had carried off his soul. Burchard, +Giustiniani, Sanudo, and others mention this incident with apparent +belief. But a letter from the Marquis of Mantua to his wife, dated +September 22, 1503, gives the fullest particulars: 'In his sickness the +Pope talked in such a way that those who did not know what was in his +mind thought him wandering, though he spoke with great feeling, and his +words were: _I will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while_. +Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained that, after the +death of Innocent, while the Conclave was sitting, he bargained with the +devil for the Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the agreements +was this, that he should hold the See twelve years, which he did, with +the addition of four days; and some attest they saw seven devils in the +room at the moment that he breathed his last.' Mere old wives' tales; +yet they mark the point to which the credit of the Borgia had fallen, +even in Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised his godlike +carriage and heroic mien upon the day of his election. + +Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains--the most +notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the +great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was +reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the +nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been +extirpated.[1] Alexander had proved the old order of Catholicity to be +untenable. The Reformation was imperiously demanded. His very vices +spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the +new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia +to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the +souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the +spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they +illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation +between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that +Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of +the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus +and bastards. + + [1] Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the + cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of + the Church. + +Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account +need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever +opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the +Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the +greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that +of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of +arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful +personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's +and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that +materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the +Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal +Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no +flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His +one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the +Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, +who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the +Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the +heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted +to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But +restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the +peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to +time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, +however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San +Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he +who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the +Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the +Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. Julius, +again, has been variously represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and +as the curse of Italy.[1] He was emphatically both. In those days of +national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify the +Church except at the expense of the nation, and to achieve the purpose +of his life without inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his +countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline. +Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of Louis, +Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of Italy, +a Pope could only play off one against another. + + [1] 'Fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali + d'Italia,' says Guicciardini, _Storia d'Italia_, vol. i. p. 84. + 'Der Retter des Papstthums,' says Burckhardt, p. 95. + +Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, +wearied with the continual warfare of the old _Pontifice terribile_. In +the gorgeous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the +streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these +may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi +before his palace: + + Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors + Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet. + +'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on +her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco +answered with one pithy line: + + Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero: + +'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.' + +This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his +father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in +his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of +Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the +neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of his +period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of +moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding +and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true +doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the +immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time +he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his +zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in +the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable +incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and +his easy epicurean philosophy. + +Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier. +His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the +corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the +praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy, +left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of +Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in +1521. During the heyday of his splendor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly +on presents to his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which +was open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, +cost half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded the +knightly Order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the +conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life to such good +account--extorting from the Cardinal Riario a fine of 5,000 ducats, and +from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000--that Von +Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that dark business +as a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals +in 1517 brought him in above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these +expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined when +he died. The Bini had lent him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the +Ricasoli, 10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; the +Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 150,000.[1] These figures +are only interesting when we remember that the mountains of gold which +they denote were squandered in aesthetic sensuality. + +When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano (Duke of Nemours): 'Let us +enjoy the Papacy since God has given it us--_godiamoci il Papato, poiche +Dio ce l' ha dato_.[2]' It was in this spirit that Leo administered the +Holy See. The keynote which he struck dominated the whole society of +Rome. At Agostine Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apostolic +secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Imperias and smooth-cheeked +singing-boys; fishes from Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were +served on golden platters, which the guests threw from the open windows +into the Tiber. Masques and balls, comedies and carnival processions +filled the streets and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a +mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in hand with luxury. It +seemed as though Bacchus and Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in +their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. +The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of +pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations +of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, +amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, +and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with +wide, astonished, woeful eyes--disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in +a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth +and smite. + + [1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, book xiv. ch. 3. + + [2] 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi, + series ii. vol. iii. p. 51. + +A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with +Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establishing +the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the +previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was +at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother +Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the +latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice +of its rightful owners.[1] With Florence in their hands and the Papacy +under their control, the Medici might have swayed all Italy. Such plans, +however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become +impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake +more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in +temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He +lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him +imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in +war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at +Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he +would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and +comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets, +artists and historians who added luster to his Court; but he brought no +new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, +both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, +bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic +temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half +burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, +dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber +of a sensualist. + + [1] He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an + honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere + family. See the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (_Rel. Ven._ ser. + ii. vol. iii. p. 51). + +It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the +sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus +aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation. +In that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work +of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of +the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious +of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of +the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of +reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome +and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole +attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did. + +The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To +choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was +impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I. +After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of +their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the +Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy, +due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the +electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen +this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the +Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake +to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and +chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed +and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of +the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing +the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's +fury.'[1] Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.[2] He knew +no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent unfamiliar to southern ears. +His studies had been confined to scholastic philosophy and theology. +With courts he had no commerce; and he was so ignorant of the state a +Pope should keep in Rome, that he wrote beforehand requesting that a +modest house and garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw the +Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of +Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for the service of +his stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish valets sufficed for +his personal attendance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for +the expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving woman cooked +his food, made his bed and washed his linen. Rome, with its splendid +immorality, its classic art and pagan culture, made the same impression +on him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers pointed to the Laocoon +as the most illustrious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away +with horror, murmuring: 'Idols of the Pagans!' The Belvedere, which was +fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he walled up and never +entered. At the same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far as +his tied hands and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent +abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three million ducats by the +sale of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 ducats to the +purchasers, and provided places for 2,550 persons. By a stroke of his +pen Adrian canceled these contracts and threw upon the world a crowd of +angry and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to remind them +that their bargain with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts, +however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual +as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which demands blood-letting. The +real corruption of Rome, deeply seated in high places, remained +untouched. Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the North, and +accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful catastrophe for the +guilty city. 'This state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; God grant +we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the ends of the ocean. +I see the downfall of this spiritual monarchy at hand. Unless God help, +it is all over with us.'[3] Adrian met the emergency, and took up arms +against the sea of troubles by expressing his horror of simony, +sensuality, thievery and so forth. The result was that he was simply +laughed at. Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he +would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa +wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on +croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the +dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's +door was ornamented with this inscription: _Liberatori patriae Senatus +Populusque Romanus_. + + [1] See Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details + about Adriano are chiefly taken from the _Relazioni_ of the + Venetian embassadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120. + + [2] His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, of the Flemish + family, it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a + carpet-maker. Other accounts represent him as a ship's + carpenter. The Pope's baptismal name was Adrian. + + [3] See the passage quoted from the _Lettere de Principi_, + Rome, March 17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note. + +Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was made Pope in 1523. +People hoped that the merry days of Leo would return. But things had +gone too far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give +satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin had delighted: +even the scholars and the poets grumbled.[1] His rule was weak and +vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised its head again and drove +him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political horizon of Italy grew +darker and more sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm. Over Rome +itself impended ruin-- + + as when God + Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison + In the sick air.[2] + +At last the crash came. Clement by a series of treaties, treacheries, +and tergiversations had deprived himself of every friend and exasperated +every foe. Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the +anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of +stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop, +levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with +Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her +apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg--a horde of robbers held +together by the hope of plunder--marched without difficulty to the gates +of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of +Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force +withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apennines to these +marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, +who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. Then Rome for nine +months was abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000 +brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of +insult, violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the +avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the +Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated +palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the +groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and +the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from +its windows he exclaimed with Job:[3] '_Quare de vulva eduxisti me? qui +utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret_.' What the Romans, +emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates, +lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long +agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the +barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold, +and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow. +From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never +became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the +glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on +her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded +between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name +this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together +with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy +to the respect of Europe. + + [1] See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni + very powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of + Clement's state-policy. + + [2] See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, _St. Fior._ ii. + + [3] So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome + relates. + +It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of +putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to +restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again +the seat of Empire.[1] But to have done this would have been impossible +under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face +of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome +the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the +determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial +authority in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the +contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he +used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of +his mother-city. + + [1] See the authorities in Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. + 569, 575. + +Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity +of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year +to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the +wrath of God, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of +manners and laws.[1] No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from +returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood +was not a mere mockery and sham.[2] In truth the Counter-Reformation may +be said to date historically from 1527. + + [1] It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of + Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless + city. Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the + Bishop of Fossombrone, one of whose letters gives a really + awful picture of Roman profligacy (_Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni_, + Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abundant testimony to this + persuasion regarding the intolerible vice of Rome, even in men + devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (_La Cortegiana_, end of + Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il castigo, che + l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta + migliore, et e piu scellerata che mai.' Bandello (_Novelle_, + Parte ii. xxxvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a + parenthesis, 'benche i peccati di quella citta meritassero + esser castigati.' After adducing two such witnesses, it would + weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both of whom + expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal + Rome. + + [2] Compare _Lettere de' Princ._ ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus, + and other testimonies quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. + pp. 568, 578. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE CHURCH AND MORALITY. + + +Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of +Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of +the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of +the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and +the Convents--Superstitious Respect for Relics--Separation between +Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the +Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the +Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct +Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the +Church--Opinions pronounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad +Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The +Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic +Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General +Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism. + + +The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral +weakness throughout Italy. This makes the history of the Popes of the +Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the +subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and religion suffered an +almost complete separation in the fifteenth century. The chiefs of the +Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and +the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the +justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness +to the whole nation. + +The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and +their actual worldliness was not so glaring to the men of the +Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, +as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian +in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours. AEsthetic +propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even +of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity +the worst sinners believed they might make peace in time of need with +heaven. Yet there were not wanting profound thinkers who traced the +national decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church. Among +these Machiavelli stands foremost. In a celebrated passage of the +_Discorsi_,[1] after treating the whole subject of the connection +between good government and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery +criticism of the Papacy: 'Had the religion of Christianity been +preserved according to the ordinances of its founder, the states and +commonwealths of Christendom would have been far more united and far +happier than they are. Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of +its decay than by observing that, in proportion as we approach nearer to +the Roman Church, the head of this religion, we find less piety prevail +among the nations. Considering the primitive constitution of that +Church, and noting how diverse are its present customs, we are forced to +judge that without doubt either ruin or a scourge is now impending over +it. And since some men are of opinion that the welfare of Italy depends +upon the Church, I wish to put forth such arguments as occur to my mind +to the contrary; and of these I will adduce two, which, as I think, are +irrefutable. The first is this: that owing to the evil ensample of the +Papal Court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow +infinite troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so +its absence implies the contrary. Consequently, to the Church and +priests of Rome we Italians owe this obligation first--that we have +become void of religion and corrupt. But we also owe them another, even +greater, which is the cause of our ruin. I mean that the Church has +maintained and still maintains Italy divided. Of a truth no province +ever was united and prosperous, unless it were reduced beneath the sway +of one republic or one monarch, as is the case with France and Spain. +And the reason why Italy is not in this condition, but has neither +commonwealth nor monarch for her head, is none other than the Church: +for the Church, established in our midst and exercising a temporal +authority, has never had the force or vigor to extend its sway over the +whole country and to become the ruling power in Italy. Nor on the other +hand has it been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of losing its +temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as a counterpoise in its +defense against those powers which threatened to become supreme. Of the +truth of this, past history furnishes many instances; as when, by the +help of Charlemagne, the Popes expelled the Lombards; and when in our +own days they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and afterwards drove +out the French by calling in the Swiss. So then the Church, being on the +one hand too weak to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too +jealous to allow another power to do so, has prevented our union beneath +one head, and has kept us under scattered lords and princes. These have +caused so much discord and debility that Italy has become the prey not +only of powerful barbarians, but also of every assailant. And this we +owe solely and entirely to the Church. In order to learn by experience +the truth of what I say, one ought to be able to send the Roman Court, +armed with like authority to that it wields in Italy, to take up its +abode among the Swiss, who at the present moment are the only nation +living, as regards religion and military discipline, according to the +antique fashion; he would then see that the evil habits of that Court +would in no long space of time create more disorders than any other +misfortune that could arise there in any period whatever.' In this +scientific and deliberate opinion pronounced by the profoundest thinker +of the sixteenth century, the Papacy is accused of having caused both +the moral depravation and the political disunion of Italy. The second of +these points, which belongs to the general history of the Italian +nation, might be illustrated abundantly: but one other sentence from the +pen of Machiavelli exposes the ruinous and selfish policy of the Church +more forcibly than could be done by copious examples:[2] 'In this way +the Pontiffs at one time by love of their religion, at other times for +the furtherance of their ambitious schemes, have never ceased to sow the +seeds of disturbance and to call foreigners into Italy, spreading wars, +making and unmaking princes, and preventing stronger potentates from +holding the province they were too feeble to rule.' + + [1] Lib. i. cap. 12. + + [2] _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. + +Guicciardini, commenting upon the _Discorsi_ of Machiavelli, begins his +gloss upon the passage I have just translated, with these emphatic +words:[1] 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman Court but +that more abuse would not be merited, seeing it is an infamy, an example +of all the shames and scandals of the world.' He then proceeds to argue, +like Machiavelli, that the greatness of the Church prevented Italy from +becoming a nation under one head, showing, however, at the same time +that the Italians had derived much benefit from their division into +separate states.[2] To the concurrent testimony of these great +philosophic writers may be added the evidence of a practical statesman, +Ferdinand, king of Naples, who in 1493 wrote as follows:[3] 'From year +to year up to this time we have seen the Popes seeking to hurt and +hurting their neighbors, without having to act on the defensive or +receiving any injury. Of this we are ourselves the witness, by reason of +things they have done and attempted against us through their inborn +ambition; and of the many misfortunes which have happened of late in +Italy it is clear that the Popes are authors.' It is not so much however +with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at +present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be +confronted with his illustrious contemporary. In his aphorisms he +says:[4] 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the +priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most +unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on +the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be +combined except in a very extraordinary subject. My position under +several Popes has compelled me to desire their aggrandizement for the +sake of my own profit.[5] Otherwise, I should have loved Martin Luther +like myself--not that I might break loose from the laws which +Christianity, as it is usually interpreted and comprehended, imposes on +us, but that I might see that horde of villains reduced within due +limits, and forced to live either without vices or without power.' + + [1] Guicc. _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 27. + + [2] In another place (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini + describes the rule of priests as founded on violence of two + sorts; 'perche ci sforzano con le armi temporali e con le + spirituali.' It may be well to collect the chief passages in + Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides those already quoted, + which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian politics. The + most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the _Istoria d' + Italia_ (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be placed + the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's _Istorie + Fiorentine_ (lib. i. cap. 9-25). The eleventh chapter of the + _Principe_ gives a short sketch of the growth of the temporal + power, so framed as to be acceptable to the Medici, but steeped + in the most acid irony. See, in particular, the sentence + 'Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, hanno sudditi e + non li governano,' etc. + + [3] See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. + vii. p. 7, note. + + [4] _Op. Ined. Ricordi_ No. 28. Compare Ariosto, Satire i. + 208-27. + + [5] Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the + Medicean Popes. See back, p. 206. + +These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed +from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like +Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of +Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion. In +one passage of the _Discorsi_ he even pronounces his opinion that the +Christian faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had enfeebled +national spirit.[1] Privately, moreover, he was himself stained with the +moral corruption which he publicly condemned. Guicciardini, again, in +the passage before us, openly avows his egotism. Keen-sighted as they +were in theory, these politicians suffered in their own lives from that +gangrene which had penetrated the upper classes of Italy to the marrow. +Their patriotism and their desire for righteousness were not strong +enough to make them relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived +from the existing state of things. Nor had they the energy or the +opportunity to institute a thorough revolution. Italy, as Machiavelli +pointed out in another passage of the _Discorsi_, had become too +prematurely decrepit for reinvigorating changes;[2] and the splendid +appeal with which the _Principe_ is closed must even to its author have +sounded like a flourish of rhetorical trumpets. + + [1] _Discorsi_, ii. 2, iii. 1. These chapters breathe the + bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised + hatred for its historical development, the intensest rancor + against Catholic ecclesiastics. + + [2] _Discorsi_, i. 55. + +Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to rise above the +conception of a merely formal reformation, or to reach that higher +principle of life which consists in the enunciation of a new religious +truth. The whole argument in the _Discorsi_ which precedes the chapter I +have quoted, treats religion not in its essence as pure Christianity, +but as a state engine for the maintenance of public order and national +well-being.[1] That Milton and Cromwell may have so regarded religion is +true: but they had, besides, a personal sense of the necessity of +righteousness, the fear of God, at the root of their political +convictions. While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished to deprive the +Popes of temporal sovereignty, in order that the worst scandals of their +Court might be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be secured, +Savonarola desired to purge the Church of sin, but to retain its +hierarchy and its dogmas inviolate. Neither the politicians nor the +prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw +clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for +the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government +presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an +engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.[2] + + [1] Mach. _Disc._ i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as + he believed, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts + that, however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness + of religions, it is their duty to maintain them: 'e debbono ... + come che le giudicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.' + + [2] Yet read the curious passage (_Disc_. iii. 1) in which + Machiavelli discusses the regeneration of religion by a return + to its vital principle, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic + had done this in the thirteenth century. It was precisely what + Luther was designing while Machiavelli was writing. + +The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect proceeded from an +intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the +stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of +secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by +the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence +of tyrannies. However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term +_paterino_, originally applied to religious innovators, had become +synonymous in common phraseology with rogue. It was a point of good +society and refined taste to support the Church. Again, the mental +faculties of Italy had for three centuries been taxed to the utmost in +studies wide apart from the field of religious faith. Art, scholarship, +philosophy, and meditation upon politics had given a definite direction +to the minds of thinking men, so that little energy was left for those +instinctive movements of the spirit which produced the German +Reformation. The great work of Italy had been the genesis of the +Renaissance, the development of modern culture. And the tendencies of +the Renaissance were worldly: its ideal of human life left no room for a +pure, and ardent intuition into spiritual truth. Scholars occupied with +the interpretation of classic authors, artists bent upon investing +current notions with the form of beauty, could hardly be expected to +exclaim: 'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, +that is understanding.'[1] Materialism ruled the speculations no less +than the conduct of the age. Pamponazzo preached an atheistic doctrine, +with the plausible reservation of _Salva Fide_, which then covered all. +The more delicate thinkers, Pico and Ficino, sought to reconcile +irreconcilables by fusing philosophy and theology, while they +distinguished truths of science from truths of revelation. It seems +meanwhile to have occurred to no one in Italy that the liberation of the +reason necessitated an abrupt departure from Catholicism. They did not +perceive that a power antagonistic to mediaeval orthodoxy had been +generated. This was in great measure due to indifference; for the Church +herself had taught her children by example to regard her dogmas and her +discipline as a convenient convention. It required all the scourges of +the Inquisition to flog the nation back, not to lively faith, but to +hypocrisy. Furthermore, the political conditions of Italy were highly +unfavorable to a profound religious revolution. The thirst for national +liberty which inspired England in the sixteenth century, impelling the +despotic Tudors to cast off the yoke of Rome, arming Howard the Catholic +against the holy fleet of Philip, and joining prince and people in one +aspiration after freedom, was impossible in Italy. The tone of +Machiavelli's _Principe_, the whole tenor of Castiglione's _Cortigiano_, +prove this without the need of further demonstration. + + [1] It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical + culture was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is + very remarkable to note the feeling on this point of some of + the greatest northern scholars. Erasmus, for example, writes: + 'unus adhuc scrupulus habet animum meum, ne sub obtentu priscae + literaturae renascentis caput erigere conetur Paganismus, ut + sunt inter Christianos qui titulo paene duntaxat Christum + agnoscunt, ceterum intus Gentilitatem spirant'--Letter 207 + (quoted by Milman in his Quarterly article on Erasmus). Ascham + and Melanchthon passed similar judgments upon the Italian + scholars. The nations of the north had the Italians at a + disadvantage, for they entered into their labors, and all the + dangerous work of sympathy with the ancient world, upon which + modern scholarship was based, had been done in Italy before + Germany and England came into the field. + +Few things are more difficult than to estimate the exact condition of a +people at any given period with regard to morality and religion. And +this difficulty is increased tenfold when the age presents such rapid +transitions and such bewildering complexities as mark the Renaissance. +Yet we cannot omit to notice the attitude of the Italians at large in +relation to the Church, and to determine in some degree the character of +their national morality. Against the corruption of Rome one cry of +hatred and contempt arises from a crowd of witnesses. Dante's fiery +denunciations, Jacopone's threats, the fierce invectives of Petrarch, +and the thundering prophecies of Joachim lead the chorus. Boccaccio +follows with his scathing irony. 'Send the most obstinate Jew to Rome,' +he says, 'and the profligacy of the Papal Court will not fail to convert +him to the faith that can resist such obloquy.'[1] Another glaring +scandal was the condition of the convents. All novelists combine in +painting the depravity of the religious houses as a patent fact in +social life. Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Bandello, and Masuccio may be +mentioned in particular for their familiar delineation of a profligacy +which was interwoven with the national existence.[2] The comic poets +take the same course, and delight in ridiculing the gross manners of the +clergy. Nor do the ecclesiasties spare themselves. Poggio, the author +of the _Facetiae_, held benefices and places at the Papal Court. Bandello +was a Dominican and nephew of the General of his order. Folengo was a +Benedictine. Bibbiena became a cardinal. Berni received a Canonry in the +Cathedral of Florence. Such was the open and acknowledged immorality of +the priests in Rome that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding +them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as panders.[3] Among the +aphorisms of Pius II. is recorded the saying that if there were good +reasons for enjoining celibacy on the clergy, there were far better and +stronger arguments for insisting on their marriage.[4] + + [1] We may compare this Umbrian Rispetto for the opposite view. + + A Roma Santa ce so gito anch'io, + E ho visto co'miei occhi il fatto mio: + E quando a Roma ce s'e posto il piede, + Resta la rabbia e se ne va la fede. + + [2] It may not be out of place to collect some passages from + Masuccio's Novelle on the Clergy, premising that what he writes + with the fierceness of indignation is repeated with the + cynicism of indulgence by contemporary novelists. Speaking of + the Popes, he says (ed, Napoli, Morano, 1874): 'me tacero non + solo de loro scelesti ed enormissimi vizi e pubblici e occulti + adoperati, e de li officii, de beneficil, prelature, i vermigli + cappelli, che all' incanto per loro morte vendono, ma del + camauro del principe San Pietro che ne e gia stato latto + partuito baratto non faro alcuna mentione.' Descending to + prelates, he uses similar language (p. 64): 'non possa mai + pervenire ad alcun grado di prelatura se non col favore del + maestro della zecca, e quelle conviensela comprare all' incanto + come si fa dei cavalli in fiera.' A priest is (p. 31) 'il + venerabile lupo.' The members of religious orders are (p. 534) + 'ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo: (p. 25) + 'piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta + buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza + bruttissima macchia.' It is perilous to hold any communication + with them (p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, + e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against + nature (p. 65), the secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), + the 'fetide cioache oi monache,' choked with the fruits of + infanticide (p. 81), not to mention their avarice (p. 55) and + gross impiety (p. 52), are described with a naked sincerity + that bears upon its face the stamp of truth. + + [3] A famous passage from Agrippa (De Vanitate Scientiarum) + deserves a place here. After alluding to Sixtus IV, he says + that many state officers 'in civitatibus suis lupanaria + construunt foventque, non nihil ex meretricio questu etiam + aerario suo accumulantes emolumenti; quod quidem in Italia non + rarum est, ubi etiam Romana scorta in singulas hebdomadas + Julium pendent Pontifici, qui census annuus nonnunquam viginti + millia ducatos excedit, adeoque Ecclesiae procerum id munus est, + ut una cum Ecclesiarum proventibus etiam lenociniorum numerent + mercedem. Sic enim ego illos supputantes aliquando audivi: + Habet, inquientes, ille duo beneficia, unum curaturn aureorum + viginti, alterum prioratum ducatorum quadraginta, el tres + putanas in burdello, quae reddunt singulis hebdomadibus Julios + Viginti.' + + [4] Very few ecclesiastics of high rank escaped the contagion + of Roman society. It was fashionable for men like Bembo and La + Casa to form connections with women of the _demi-monde_ and to + recognize their children, whose legitimation they frequently + procured. The Capitoli of the burlesque poets show that this + laxity of conduct was pardonable, when compared with other + laughingly avowed and all but universal indulgences. Once more, + compare Guidiccioni's letter to M. Giamb. Bernardi Opp. vol. i. + p. 102. + +Some of the contempt and hatred expressed by the Italian satirists for +the two great orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic may perhaps be due to +an ancient grudge against them as a Papal police founded in the +interests of orthodoxy. But the chief point aimed at is the mixture of +hypocrisy with immorality, which rendered them odious to all classes of +society. At the same time the Franciscans embraced among their lay +brethren nearly all the population of Italy, and to die in the habit of +the order was thought the safest way of cheating the devil of his due. +Corruption had gone so far and deep that it was universally recognized +and treated with the sarcasm of levity. It roused no sincere reaction, +and stimulated no persistent indignation. Every one acknowledged it; yet +every one continued to live indolently according to the fashion of his +forefathers, acting up to Ovid's maxim-- + + Pro magna parte vetustas + Creditur; acceptam parce movere fidem. + +It is only this incurable indifference that renders Machiavelli's comic +portraits of Fra Alberigo and Fra Timoteo at all intelligible. They are +neither satires nor caricatures, but simple pictures drawn for the +amusement of contemporaries and the stupefaction of posterity. + +The criticism of the Italian writers, so far as we have yet followed it, +was directed against two separate evils--the vicious worldliness of +Rome, and the demoralization of the clergy both in their dealings with +the people and in their conventual life. Contempt for false miracles and +spurious reliques, and the horror of the traffic in indulgences, +swelled the storm of discontent among the more enlightened. But the +people continued to make saints, to adore wonder-working shrines, and to +profit by the spiritual advantages which could be bought. Pius II., +mindful of the honor of his native city, canonized S. Bernardine and S. +Catherine of Siena. Innocent VIII consecrated a chapel for the Lance of +Longinus, which he had received from the Turk as part-payment for the +guardianship of Djem. The Venetian Senate offered 10,000 ducats for the +seamless coat of Christ (1455). The whole of Italy was agitated by the +news that S. Andrew's head had arrived from Patras (1462). The Pope and +his Cardinals went forth to meet it near the Milvian bridge. There Pius +II. pronounced a Latin speech of welcome, while Bessarion delivered an +oration when the precious member was deposited in S. Peter's. In this +passion for reliques two different sentiments seem to have been +combined--the merely superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms, +which caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark so jealously, +and the Neapolitans to watch the liqifaction of the blood of S. +Januarius with a frenzy of excitement--and that nobler respect for the +persons of the mighty dead which induced Sigismondo Malatesta to +transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to Rimini, and which rendered the +supposed coffin of Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to +Mussulman and Christian alike. The bones of Virgil, it will be +remembered, had been built into the walls of Naples, while those of Livy +were honored with splendid sepulture at Padua. + +Owing to the separation between religion and morality which existed in +Italy under the influence of Papal and monastic profligacy, the Italians +saw no reason why spiritual benefits should not be purchased from a +notoriously rapacious Pontiff, or why the penalty of hell should not +depend upon the mere word of a consecrated monster. The Pope as +successor of S. Peter, and the Pope as Roman sovereign, were two +separate beings. Many curious indications of the mixed feeling of the +people upon this point, and of the advantage which the Pope derived from +his anomalous position, may be gathered from the historians of the +period. Machiavelli, in his narrative of the massacre at Sinigaglia, +relates that Vitellozzo Vitelli, while being strangled by Cesare +Borgia's assassin, begged hard that the father of his murderer, the +horrible Alexander, might be entreated to pronounce his absolution. The +same Alexander was nearly suffocated in the Vatican by the French +soldiers who crowded round to kiss his mantle, and who had made him +tremble for his life a few days previously. Cellini on his knees +implored Pope Clement to absolve him from the guilt of homicide and +theft, yet spoke of him as 'transformed to a savage beast' by a sudden +access of fury. At one time he trembled before the awful Majesty of +Christ's Vicar, revealed in Paul III.; at another he reviled him as a +man 'who neither believed in God nor in any other article of religion. +A mysterious sanctity environed the person of the Pontiff. When +Gianpaolo Baglioni held Julius II. in his power in Perugia, he respected +the Pope's freedom, though he knew that Julius would overthrow his +tyranny. Machiavelli condemns this as cowardice, but it was wholly +consistent with the sentiment of the age. 'It cannot have been goodness +or conscience which restrained him,' writes the philosopher of Florence, +'for the heart of a man who cohabited with his sister, and had massacred +his cousins and his nephews, could not have harbored any piety. We must +conclude that men know not how to be either guilty in a noble manner, or +entirely good. Although crime may have a certain grandeur of its own, or +at least a mixture of more generous motives, they do not attain to this. +Gianpaolo, careless though he was about incest and parricide, could not, +or dared not, on a just occasion, achieve an exploit for which the whole +world would have admired his spirit, and by which he would have won +immortal glory: for he would have been the first to show how little +prelates, living and ruling as they do, deserve to be esteemed, and +would have done a deed superior in its greatness to all the infamy, to +all the peril, that it might have brought with it.'[1] It is difficult +to know which to admire most, the superstition of Gianpaolo, or the +cynicism of the commentary, the spurious piety which made the tyrant +miss his opportunity, or the false standard of moral sublimity by which +the half-ironical critic measures his mistake. In combination they +produce a lively impression of the truth of what I have attempted to +establish--that in Italy at this period religion survived as +superstition even among the most depraved, and that the crimes of the +Church had produced a schism between this superstition and morality. + + [1] _Discorsi_, i. 27. This episode in Gianpaolo Baglioni's + life may be illustrated by the curious story told about Gabrino + Fondulo, the tyrant of Cremona. The Emperor Sigismund and Pope + John XXIII. were his guests together in the year 1414. Part of + their entertainment consisted in visiting the sights of Cremona + with their host, who took them up the great Tower (396 feet + high) without any escort. They all three returned safely, but + when Gabrino was executed at Milan in 1425, he remarked that he + only regretted one thing in the course of his life--namely, + that he had not pitched Pope and Emperor together from the + Torazzo. What a golden opportunity to have let slip! The story + is told by Antonio Campo, _Historia di Cremona_ (Milan, 1645), + p. 114. + +While the Church was thus gradually deviating more and more directly +from the Christian ideal, and was exhibiting to Italy an ensample of +worldliness and evil living, the Italians, earlier than any other +European nation, had become imbued with the spirit of the ancient world. +Instead of the Gospel and the Lives of the Saints, men studied Plutarch +and Livy with avidity. The tyrannicides of Greece and the suicides of +the Roman Empire, patriots like Harmodius and Brutus, philosophers like +Seneca and Paetus Thrasea, seemed to the humanists of the fifteenth +century more admirable than the martyrs and confessors of the faith. +Pagan virtues were strangely mingled with confused and ill-assimilated +precepts of the Christian Church, while pagan vices wore a halo borrowed +from the luster of the newly found and passionately welcomed poets of +antiquity. Blending the visionary intuitions of the Middle Ages with the +positive and mundane ethics of the ancients, the Italians of the +Renaissance strove to adopt the sentiments and customs of an age long +dead and not to be resuscitated. At the same time the rhetorical taste +of the nation inclined the more adventurous and passionate natures to +seek glory by dramatic exhibitions of personal heroism. The Greek ideal +of [Greek: _to ealon_], the Roman conception of _Virtus_, agitated the +imagination of a people who had been powerfully influenced by professors +of eloquence, by public orators, by men of letters, masters in the arts +of style and of parade. Painting and sculpture, and that magnificence of +public life which characterized the fifteenth century, contributed to +the substitution of aesthetic for moral or religious standards. Actions +were estimated by the effect which they produced; and to sin against the +laws of culture was of more moment than to transgress the code of +Christianity. Still, the men of the Renaissance could not forget the +creed which they had drawn in with their mothers' milk, but which the +Church had not adjusted to the new conditions of the growing age. The +result was a wild phantasmagoric chaos of confused and clashing +influences. + +Of this peculiar moral condition the records of the numerous +tyrannicides supply many interesting examples.[1] Girolamo Olgiati +offered prayers to S. Ambrose for protection before he stabbed the Duke +of Milan in S. Stephen's Church.[2] The Pazzi conspirators, intimidated +by the sanctity of the Florentine Duomo, had to employ a priest to wield +the sacrilegious dagger.[3] Pietro Paolo Boscoli's last confession, +after the failure of his attempt to assassinate the Medici in 1513, adds +further details in illustration of the mixture of religious feeling with +patriotic paganism. Luca della Robbia, the nephew of the great sculptor +of that name, and himself no mean artist, visited his friend Boscoli on +the night of his execution, and wrote a minute account of their +interview. Both of these men were members of the Confraternita de' Neri, +who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual +counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the +choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of +soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of +Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period +which we possess.[4] What is most striking is the combination of deeply +rooted and almost infantine piety with antique heroism in the young +patriot. He is greatly concerned because, ignorant of his approaching +end, he had eaten a hearty supper: 'Son troppo carico di cibo, et ho +mangiatccose insalate; in modo che non mi pare poter unir Io spirito a +Dio ... Iddio abbi di me misericordia, che costoro m' hanno carico di +cibo. Oh indiscrezione!'[5] Then he expresses a vehement desire for the +services of a learned confessor, to resolve his intellectual doubts, +pleading with all the earnestness of desperate conviction that the +salvation of his soul must depend upon his orthodoxy at the last. He +complains that he ought to have been allowed at least a month's +seclusion with good friars before he was brought face to face with +death. At another time he is chiefly anxious to free himself from +classic memories: 'Deh! Luca, cavatemi della testa quel Bruto, accio ch' +io faccia questo passo interamente da Cristiano'.[6] Then again it +grieves him that the tears of compunction, which he has been taught to +regard as the true sign of a soul at one with God, will not flow. About +the mere fact of dying he has no anxiety. The philosophers have +strengthened him upon that point. He is only eager to die piously. When +he tries to pray, he can barely remember the Paternoster and the Ave +Maria. That reminds him how easy it would have been to have spent his +time better, and he bids Luca remember that the mind a man makes for +himself in life, will be with him in death. When they bring him a +picture of Christ, he asks whether he needs _that_ to fix his soul upon +his Saviour. Throughout this long contention of so many varying +thoughts, he never questions the morality of the act for which he is +condemned to die. Luca, however, has his doubts, and privately asks the +confessor whether S. Thomas Aquinas had not discountenanced tyrannicide. +'Yes,' answers the monk, 'in case the people have elected their own +tyrant, but not when he has imposed himself on them by force.' This +casuistical answer satisfies Luca that his friend may reasonably be held +blameless. After confessing, Boscoli received the sacrament with great +piety, and died bravely. The confessor told Luca, weeping, that he was +sure the young man's soul had gone straight to Paradise, and that he +might be reckoned a real martyr. His head after death was like that of +an angel; and Luca was, we know, a connoisseur in angels' heads. Boscoli +was only thirty-two years of age; he had light hair, and was +short-sighted. + + [1] For the Italian ethics of tyrannicide, see back, pp. 169, + 170. + + [2] See p. 166. + + [3] See p. 398. + + [4] It is printed in _Arch. Stor_, vol. i. + + [5] 'I am over-burdened with food, and I have eaten salt meats; + so that I do not seem able to join my spirit to God.... God + have pity on me, for they have burdened me with food. Oh, how + thoughtless of them!' His words cannot be translated. Naif in + the extreme, they become ludicrous in English. + + [6] 'Ah, Luca, turn that Brutus out of my head, in order that I + may take this last step wholly as a Christian man!' + +To this narrative might be added the apology written by Lorenzino de' +Medici, after the murder of his cousin Alessandro in 1536.[1] He relies +for his defense entirely upon arguments borrowed from Pagan ethics, and +by his treatment of the subject vindicates for himself that name of +Brutus with which Filippo Strozzi in person at Venice, and Varchi and +Molsa in Latin epigrams, saluted him. There is no trace of Christian +feeling in this strong and splendid display of rhetorical ability; nor +does any document of the age more forcibly exhibit the extent to which +classical studies had influenced the morality of the Renaissance. +Lorenzino, however, when he wrote it, was not, like Boscoli, upon the +point of dying. + + [1] It is printed at the end of the third volume of Varchi, pp. + 283-95; compare p. 210. A medal in honor of Lorenzino's + tyrannicide was struck with a profile copied from Michael + Angelo's bust of Brutus. + +The last thing to perish in a nation is its faith. The whole history of +the world proves that no anomalies are so glaring, no inconsistencies so +paradoxical, as to sap the credit of a religious system which has once +been firmly rooted in the habits, instincts, and traditions of a race: +and what remains longest is often the least rational portion. Religions +from the first are not the product of logical reflection or experiment, +but of sentiment and aspiration. They come into being as simple +intuitions, and afterwards invade the province of the reason and +assimilate the thought of centuries to their own conceptions. This is +the secret of their strength as well as the source of their weakness. It +is only a stronger enthusiasm, a new intuition, a fresh outburst of +emotional vitality, that can supplant the old:-- + + 'Cotal rimedio ha questo aspro furore, + Tale acqua suole spegner questo fuoco, + Come d'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo.' + +Criticism from without, internal corruption, patent absurdity, are +comparatively powerless to destroy those habits of belief which once +have taken hold upon the fancy and the feeling of a nation. The work of +dissolution proceeds in silence and in secret. But the established +order subsists until the moment comes for a new synthesis. And in the +sixteenth century the necessary impulse of regeneration was to come, not +from Italy, satisfied with the serenity of her art, preoccupied with her +culture, and hardened to the infamy of her corruption, but from the +Germany of the barbarians she despised. + +These considerations will help to explain how it was that the Church, in +spite of its corruption, stood its ground and retained the respect of +the people in Italy. We must moreover bear in mind that, bad as it was, +it still to some extent maintained the Christian verity. Apart from the +Roman Curia and the Convents, there existed a hierarchy of able and +God-fearing men, who by the sanctity of their lives, by the gravity of +their doctrine, by the eloquence of their preaching, by their +ministration to the sick, by the relief of the poor, by the maintenance +of hospitals, Monti di Pieta, schools and orphanages, kept alive in the +people of Italy the ideal at least of a religion pure and undefiled +before God.[1] In the tottering statue of the Church some true metal +might be found between the pinchbeck at the summit and the clay of the +foundation. + + [1] See the life of S. Antonino, the good Archbishop of + Florence. + +It must also be remembered how far the worldly interests and domestic +sympathies of the Italians were engaged in the maintenance of their +Church system. The fibers of the Church were intertwined with the very +heartstrings of the people. Few families could not show one or more +members who had chosen the clerical career, and who looked to Rome for +patronage, employment, and perhaps advancement to the highest honors. +The whole nation felt a pride in the Eternal City: patriotic vanity and +personal interest were alike involved in the maintenance of the +metropolis of Christendom, which drew the suites of ambassadors, +multitudes of pilgrims, and the religious traffic of the whole of Europe +to the shores of Italy. It was easy for Germans and Englishmen to reason +calmly about dethroning the Papal hierarchy. Italians, however they +might loathe the temporal power, could not willingly forego the +spiritual primacy of the civilized world. + +Moreover, the sacraments of the Church, the absolutions, consecrations, +and benedictions which priests dispensed or withheld at pleasure, had by +no means lost their power. To what extent even the nations of the north +still clung to them is proved by our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult +of war with Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resemblance to +the old ritual consistent with the spirit of the Reformation. Far more +imposing were they in their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who +had never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the fountain of +Apostolical privileges in the person of the Pope, and whose southern +temperament inclined them to a more sensuous and less metaphysical +conception of Christianity than the Germans or the English. The dread of +the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, +roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such +words as _leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius_, yet +the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the +baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last +sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed +against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean +Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly +issued and however manfully resisted. + + [1] Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361. + +The history of the despots and the Popes, together with the analysis of +Machiavelli's political ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in +which crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and cynicism so +deliberate could be accepted as a system. Yet it remains in estimating +the general character of Italian morality to record the judgment passed +upon it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The morality of +races, as of individuals, is rarely otherwise than mixed--virtue +balancing vice and evil vitiating goodness. Still the impression +produced by Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North was almost +wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned from their Italian travels either +horrified with what they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham +writes:[1] 'I was once in Italy myself; but I thank God my abode there +was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more +liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of London in +nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all +punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the +City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear +shoe or pantocle.' Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the +novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels +in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to +declare.'[2] The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these +witnesses, while the proverb, _Inglese Italianato e un diavolo +incarnato_, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how +pernicious to the coarser natures of the north were the refined vices of +the south. What principally struck our ancestors in the morality of the +Italians was the license allowed in sensual indulgences, and the bad +faith which tainted all public and private dealings. In respect to the +latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is +enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: +engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was +aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison +being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or +for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial +integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries of Europe they +carried on the banking business of monarchs, cities, and private +persons. + + [1] _The Schoolmaster;_ edn. 1863, p. 87. The whole discourse + on Italian traveling and Italian influence is very curious, + when we reflect that at this time contact with Italy was + forming the chief culture of the English in literature and + social manners. The ninth satire in Marston's _Scourge of + Villanie_ contains much interesting matter on the same point. + Howell's _Instructions for forreine Travell_ furnishes the + following illustration: 'And being in Italy, that great + limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his + carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and + deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himself, and + become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonnesse.' + + [2] _The Repentance of Robert Greene_, quoted in the memoir to + Dyce's edition of his Dramatic Works. + + [3] See chapter v. + +With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied that the corruption +of Italy was shameful. Putting aside the profligacy of the convents, the +City of Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as many as 6,800 public +prostitutes, besides those who practiced their trade under the cloak of +concubinage.[1] These women were accompanied by confederate ruffians, +ready to stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went +hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be +ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent +VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De +Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could +afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the +eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and +refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston +describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine +played professor.[3] Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola's +sermons give the best picture. + + [1] Infessura, p. 1997. He adds: 'Consideratur modo qualiter + vivatur Romae ubi caput fidei est.' From what Parent Duchatelet + _(Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris,_ p. 27) has noted + concerning the tendency to exaggerate the numbers of + prostitutes in any given town, we have every reason to regard + the estimate of Infessura as excessive. In Paris, in 1854, + there were only 4,206 registered 'filles publiques,' when the + population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; while those + who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously + computed at 20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000. Accurate + statistics relating to the population of any Italian city in + the fifteenth century do not, unfortunately, exist. + + [2] _Memoirs,_ lib. vii. 'C'est la plus triomphante cite que + j'ai jamais vue, et qui plus fait d'honneur a ambassadeurs et + etrangers, et qui plus sagement se gouverne, _et ou le service + de Dieu est le plus solemnellement faict.'_ The prostitutes of + Venice were computed to number 11,654 so far back as the end of + the 14th century. See Filiasi, quoted by Mutinelli in his + _Annali urbani di Venezia._ + + [3] Satires, ii. + +But the characteristic vice of the Italian was not coarse sensuality. He +required the fascination of the fancy to be added to the allurement of +the senses.[1] It is this which makes the Capitoli of the burlesque +poets, of men of note like Berni, La Casa, Varchi, Mauro, Molsa, Dolce, +Bembo, Firenzuola, Bronzino, Aretino, and de' Medici, so amazing. The +crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished +treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their +cynicism. A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the _Canti +Carnascialeschi_ of Florence, proving that however profligate the people +might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned +with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the +lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness +of personal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of ingenuity or +the avoidance of peril an enhancement of pleasure to the Italians. This +is perhaps one of the reasons why all the imaginative compositions of +the Renaissance, especially the _Novelle,_ turn upon adultery. Judging +by the majority of these romances, by the comedies of the time, and by +the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to believe that such illicit +love was merely sensual, and owed its principal attractions to the scope +it afforded for whimsical adventures. Yet Bembo's _Asolani,_ +Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, and much of the lyrical poetry +in vogue warn us to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment expressed by +the Florentines of the thirteenth century still survived to some extent, +adding a sort of dignity in form at least to these affections. + + [1] Much might be written about the play of the imagination + which gave a peculiar complexion to the profligacy, the + jealousy, and the vengeance of the Italians. I shall have + occasion elsewhere to maintain that in their literature at + least the Italians were not a highly imaginative race; nor were + they subject to those highly wrought conditions of the brooding + fancy, termed by the northern nations Melancholy, which Duerer + has personified in his celebrated etching, and Burton has + described in his _Anatomy._ But in their love and hatred, their + lust and their cruelty, the Italians required an intellectual + element which brought the imaginative faculty into play. + +It was due again in a great measure to their demand for imaginative +excitement in all matters of the sense, to their desire for the +extravagant and extraordinary as a seasoning of pleasure, that the +Italians came to deserve so terrible a name among the nations for +unnatural passions.[1] This is a subject which can hardly be touched in +passing: yet the opinion may be recorded that it belongs rather to the +science of psychopathy than to the chronicle of vulgar lusts. English +poets have given us the right key to the Italian temperament, on this as +on so many other points. Shelley in his portrait of Francesco Cenci has +drawn a man in whom cruelty and incest have become appetites of the +distempered soul; the love of Giovanni and Annabella in Ford's tragedy +is rightly depicted as more imaginative than sensual. It is no excuse +for the Italians to say that they had spiritualized abominable vices. +What this really means is that their immorality was nearer that of +devils than of beasts. But in seeking to distinguish its true character, +we must take notice of the highly wrought fantasy which seasoned both +their luxury and their jealousy, their vengeance and their lust. + + [1] Italian literature is loud-voiced on this topic. The + concluding stanzas of Poliziano's _Orfeo_, recited before the + Cardinal of Mantua, the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, + and some of the _Canti Carnasialeschi_, might be cited. We + might add Varchi's express testimony as to the morals of + Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, Pier Luigi Farnese, and + Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells us about the + brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the Life of + San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano (_Vite di Illustri Uomini_, + p. 186) writes: 'L'Italia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e + aveva lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era piu chi + conoscesse Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti + e abbominevoli vizi nefandi! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, + che non temevano ne Iddio ne l'onore del mondo. Maladetta + cecita! In tanto eccesso era venuto ogni cosa, che gli + scellerati ed enormi vizi non era piu chi gli stimasse, per lo + maladetto uso che n'avevano fatto ... massime il maladetto e + abominando e detestando peccato della sodomia. Erano in modo + stracorsi in questa cecita, che bisognava che l'onnipotente + Iddio facesse un' altra volta piovere dal cielo zolfo e fuoco + come egli fece a Sodoma e Gomorra.' Compare Savonarola passim, + the inductions to the Sacre Rappresentazioni, the familiar + letters of Machiavelli, and the statute of Cosimo against this + vice (year 1542, Sabellii Summa. Venice, 1715; vol. v. p. 287). + +The same is to some extent true of their cruelty. The really cruel +nation of the Renaissance was Spain, not Italy.[1] The Italians, as a +rule, were gentle and humane, especially in warfare.[2] No Italian army +would systematically have tortured the whole population of a captured +city day after day for months, as the Spaniards did in Rome and Milan, +to satisfy their avarice and glut their stolid appetite for blood. Their +respect for human life again was higher than that of the French or +Swiss. They gave quarter to their foes upon the battle-field, and were +horrified with the massacres in cold blood perpetrated at Fivizzano and +Rapallo by the army of Charles VIII. But when the demon of cruelty +possessed the imagination of an Italian, when, like Gian Maria Visconti, +he came to relish the sight of torment for its own sake, or when he +sought to inspire fear by the spectacle of pain, then no Spaniard +surpassed him in the ingenuity of his devices. In gratifying his thirst +for vengeance he was never contented with mere murder. To obtain a +personal triumph at the expense of his enemy by the display of superior +cunning, by rendering him ridiculous, by exposing him to mental as well +as physical anguish, by wounding him through his affections or his sense +of honor, was the end which he pursued. This is why so many acts of +violence in Italy assumed fantastic forms. Even the country folk showed +an infernal art in the execution of their _vendette_. To serve the flesh +of children up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is mentioned, for +example, as one mode of wreaking vengeance in country villages. Thus the +high culture and aesthetic temperament of the Italians gave an +intellectual quality to their vices. Crude lust and bloodshed were +insipid to their palates: they required the pungent sauce of a +melodramatic catastrophe. + + [1] Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty + in Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma + by Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di + Prato in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. i., and + Cagnola's account of the Spanish occupation of Milan, ib. vol. + iii. + + [2] De Comines more than once notices the humanity shown by the + Italian peasants to the French army. + +The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations for a like reason found +no favor in Italy. It disgusted the Romans beyond measure to witness the +swinish excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality prompted them to a +refined Epicureanism in food and drink; on this point, however, it must +be admitted that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profligacy, +disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy of Vitellius.[1] We trace +the same play of the fancy, the same promptitude to quicken and +intensify the immediate sense of personality at any cost of +after-suffering, in another characteristic vice of the Italians. +Gambling among them was carried further and produced more harm than it +did in the transalpine cities. This we gather from Savonarola's +denunciations, from the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his +_Trattato della Famiglia_ and _Cena della Famiglia_ and also from the +inductions to many of the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_.[2] + + [1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. p. 225: 'E li + cardinali comenzarono a vomitar e cussi li altri,' quoted from + Sanudo. + + [2] One of the excellent characteristics of Alfonso the Great + (_Vespasiano_, p. 49) was his abhorrence of gambling. + +Another point which struck a northern visitor in Italy was the frequency +of private and domestic murders.[1] The Italians had and deserved a bad +reputation for poisoning and assassination. To refer to the deeds of +violence in the history of a single family, the Baglioni of Perugia, as +recorded by their chronicler Matarazzo; to cite the passages in which +Varchi relates the deaths by poison of Luisa Strozzi, Cardinal Ippolito +de' Medici, and Sanga; or to translate the pages of annalists, who +describe the palaces of nobles swarming with _bravi_, would be a very +easy task.[2] But the sketch of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, which +will form part of my third volume, gives so lively a picture of this +aspect of Italian life, that there is no reason to enlarge upon the +topic now. It is enough to observe that, in their employment of poison +and of paid assassins, the Italians were guided by those habits of +calculation which distinguished their character.[3] They thought nothing +of removing an enemy by craft or violence: but they took no pleasure in +murder for its own sake.[4] The object which they had in view prompted +them to take a man's life; the mere delight in brawls and bloodshed of +Switzers, Germans, and Spaniards offended their taste. + + [1] See Guicc. _St. Il._ vol. i. p. 101, for the impression + produced upon the army of Charles by the murder by poison of + Gian Galeazzo Sforza. + + [2] A vivid illustration of the method adopted by hired + assassins in tracking and hunting down their victims is + presented by Francesco Bibboni's narrative of his murder of + Lorenzino de' Medici at Venice. It casts much curious light, + moreover, on the relations between paid _bravi_ and their + employers, the esteem in which professional cutthroats were + held, and their connection with the police of the Italian + towns. It is published in a tract concerning Lorenzino, Milano, + Daelli, 1862. + + [3] See the instructions given by the Venetian government to + their agents for the purchase of poison and the hiring of + secret murderers. See also the Maxims laid down by Sarpi. + + [4] This at least was accounted eccentric and barbarous in the + extreme. See Pontano, _de Immanitate_, vol. i. p. 326, + concerning Niccolo Fortibraccio, Antonio, Pontadera, and the + Riccio Montechiaro, who stabbed and strangled for the pleasure + of seeing men die. I have already discussed the blood-madness + of some of the despots. + +While the imagination played so important a part in the morality of the +Italians, it must be remembered that they were deficient in that which +is the highest imaginative safeguard against vice, a scrupulous sense of +honor. It is true that the Italian authors talk much about _Onore_. +Pandolfini tells his sons that _Onore_ is one of the qualities which +require the greatest thrift in keeping, and Machiavelli asserts that it +is almost as dangerous to attack men in their _Onore_ as in their +property. But when we come to analyze the word, we find that it means +something different from that mixture of conscience, pride, and +self-respect which makes a man true to a high ideal in all the possible +circumstances of life. The Italian _Onore_ consisted partly of the +credit attaching to public distinction, and partly of a reputation for +_Virtu_, understanding that word in its Machiavellian usage, as force, +courage, ability, virility. It was not incompatible with craft and +dissimulation, or with the indulgence of sensual vices. Statesmen like +Guicciardini, who, by the way, has written a fine paragraph upon the +very word in question,[1] did not think it unworthy of their honor to +traffic in affairs of state for private profit. Machiavelli not only +recommended breaches of political faith, but sacrificed his principles +to his pecuniary interests with the Medici. It would be curious to +inquire how far the obtuse sensibility of the Italians on this point was +due to their freedom from vanity.[2] No nation is perhaps less +influenced by mere opinion, less inclined to value men by their +adventitious advantages: the Italian has the courage and the +independence of his personality. It is, however, more important to take +notice that Chivalry never took a firm root in Italy; and honor, as +distinguished from vanity, _amour propre_, and credit, draws its life +from that ideal of the knightly character which Chivalry established. +The true knight was equally sensitive upon the point of honor, in all +that concerned the maintenance of an unsullied self, whether he found +himself in a king's court or a robber's den. Chivalry, as epitomized in +the celebrated oath imposed by Arthur on his peers of the Round Table, +was a northern, a Teutonic, institution. The sense of honor which formed +its very essence was further developed by the social atmosphere of a +monarch's court. It became the virtue of the nobly born and chivalrously +nurtured, as appears very remarkably in this passage from Rabelais[3]: +'En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce que vouldras. Parce +que gens liberes, bien nayz, bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies +honnesties, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui toujours les +poulse a faitctz vertueux, et retire de vice: lequel ils nommoyent +honneur.' Now in Italy not only was Chivalry as an institution weak; but +the feudal courts in which it produced its fairest flower, the knightly +sense of honor, did not exist.[4] Instead of a circle of peers gathered +from all quarters of the kingdom round the font of honor in the person +of the sovereign, commercial republics, forceful tyrannies, and the +Papal Curia gave the tone to society. In every part of the peninsula +rich bankers who bought and sold cities, adventurers who grasped at +principalities by violence or intrigue, and priests who sought the +aggrandizement of a sacerdotal corporation, were brought together in the +meshes of diplomacy. The few noble families which claimed a feudal +origin carried on wars for pay by contract in the interest of burghers, +popes, or despots. Of these conditions not one was conducive to the +sense of honor as conceived in France or England. Taken altogether and +in combination, they could not fail to be eminently unfavorable to its +development. In such a society Bayard and Sir Walter Manny would have +been out of place: the motto _noblesse oblige_ would have had but little +meaning.[5] Instead of Honor, Virtu ruled the world in Italy. The moral +atmosphere again was critical and highly intellectualized. Mental +ability combined with personal daring gave rank. But the very subtlety +and force of mind which formed the strength of the Italians proved +hostile to any delicate sentiment of honor. Analysis enfeebles the tact +and spontaneity of feeling which constitute its strongest safeguard. All +this is obvious in the ethics of the _Principe_. What most astounds us +in that treatise is the assumption that no men will be bound by laws of +honor when utility or the object in view require their sacrifice. In +conclusion; although the Italians were not lacking in integrity, +honesty, probity, or pride, their positive and highly analytical genius +was but little influenced by that chivalrous honor which was an +enthusiasm and a religion to the feudal nations, surviving the decay of +chivalry as a preservative instinct more undefinable than absolute +morality. Honor with the northern gentry was subjective; with the +Italians _Onore_ was objective--an addition conferred from without, in +the shape of reputation, glory, titles of distinction, or offices of +trust.[6] + + [1] Ricordi politici e civili, No. 118, _Op. Ined._ vol. i. + + [2] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la peinture en Italie_, pp. + 285-91, for a curious catalogue of examples. The modern sense + of honor is based, no doubt, to some extent on a delicate + _amour propre_, which makes a man desirous of winning the + esteem of his neighbors for its own sake. Granting that + conscience, pride, vanity, and self-respect are all + constituents of honor, we may, perhaps, find more pride in the + Spanish, more _amour propre_ in the French, and more conscience + in the English. + + [3] Gargantua, lib. 1. ch. 57. + + [4] See, however, what I have already said about Castiglione + and his ideal of the courtier in Chapter III. We must remember + that he represents a late period of the Renaissance. + + [5] It is curious to compare, for example, the part played by + Italians, especially by Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, as + contractors and merchants in the Crusades, with the enthusiasm + of the northern nations. + + [6] In confirmation of this view I may call attention to + Giannotti's critique of the Florentine constitution (Florence, + 1850, vol. i. pp. 15 and 156), and to what Machiavelli says + about Gianpaolo Baglioni (_Disc_. i. 27), 'Gli uomini non sanno + essere _onorevolmente_ tristi'; men know not how to be bad with + credit to themselves. The context proves that Gianpaolo failed + to win the honor of a signal crime. Compare the use of the word + _onore_ in Lorinzino de' Medici's 'Apologia.' + +With the Italian conception of _Onore_ we may compare their view of +_Onesta_ in the female sex. This is set forth plainly by Piccolomini in +_La Bella Creanza delle Donne_.[1] As in the case of _Onore_, we have +here to deal, not with an exquisite personal ideal, but with something +far more material and external. The _onesta_ of a married woman is +compatible with secret infidelity, provided she does not expose herself +to ridicule and censure by letting her amour be known. Here again, +therefore, the proper translation of the word seems to be credit. +Finally, we may allude to the invective against honor which Tasso puts +into the mouths of his shepherds in _Aminta_[2] Though at this period +the influence of France and Spain had communicated to aristocratic +society in Italy an exotic sense of honor, yet a court poet dared to +condemn it as unworthy of the _Bell' eta dell' oro_, because it +interfered with pleasure and introduced disagreeable duties into life. +Such a tirade would not have been endured in the London of Elizabeth or +in the Paris of Louis XIV. Tasso himself, it may be said in passing, was +almost feverishly punctilious in matters that touched his reputation. + + [1] _La Raffaella, ovvero Delia bella Creanza delle Donne_ + (Milano, Daelli). Compare the statement of the author in his + preface, p. 4, where he speaks in his own person, with the + definition of _Onore_ given by Raffaella, pp. 50 and 51 of the + Dialogue: 'l'onore non e riposto in altro, se non nella + stimazione appresso agli uomini ... l'onor della donna non + consiste, come t'ho detto, nel fare o non fare, che questo + importa poco, ma nel credersi o non credersi.' + + [2] This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio's + Novelle (ed. Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost + cynically exposes the inconvenience of self-respect and + delicacy. The situation of two friends, who agree that honor is + a nuisance and share their wives in common, is a favorite of + the Novelists. + +An important consideration, affecting the whole question of Italian +immorality, is this. Whereas the northern races had hitherto remained in +a state of comparative poverty and barbarism, distributed through +villages and country districts, the people of Italy had enjoyed +centuries of wealth and civilization in great cities. Their towns were +the centers of luxurious life. The superfluous income of the rich was +spent in pleasure, nor had modern decorum taught them to conceal the +vices of advanced culture beneath the cloak of propriety. They were at +the same time both indifferent to opinion and self-conscious in a high +degree. The very worst of them was seen at a glance and recorded with +minute particularity. The depravity of less cultivated races remained +unnoticed because no one took the trouble to describe mere barbarism.[1] +Vices of the same sort, but less widely dispersed, perhaps, throughout +the people, were notorious in Italy, because they were combined with so +much that was beautiful and splendid. In a word, the faults of the +Italians were such as belong to a highly intellectualized society, as +yet but imperfectly penetrated with culture, raised above the +brutishness of barbarians, but not advanced to the self-control of +civilization, hampered by the corruption of a Church that trafficked in +crime, tainted by uncritical contact with pagan art and literature, and +emasculated by political despotism. Their vices, bad as they were in +reality, seemed still worse because they attacked the imagination +instead of merely exercising the senses. As a correlative to their +depravity, we find a sobriety of appetite, a courtesy of behavior, a +mildness and cheerfulness of disposition, a widely diffused refinement +of sentiment and manners, a liberal spirit of toleration, which can +nowhere else be paralleled in, Europe at that period. It was no small +mark of superiority to be less ignorant and gross than England, less +brutal and stolid than Germany, less rapacious than Switzerland, less +cruel than Spain, less vain and inconsequent than France. + + [1] Read, however, the Saxon Chronicles or the annals of + Ireland in Froude. + +Italy again was the land of emancipated individuality. What Mill in his +Essay on Liberty desired, what seems every day more unattainable in +modern life, was enjoyed by the Italians. There was no check to the +growth of personality, no grinding of men down to match the average. If +great vices emerged more openly than they did elsewhere in Europe, great +qualities also had the opportunity of free development in heroes like +Ferrucci, in saints like Savonarola, in artists like Michael Angelo. +While the social atmosphere of the Papal and despotic courts was +unfavorable to the highest type of character, we find at least no +external engine of repression, no omnipotent inquisition, no +overpowering aristocracy.[1] False political systems and a corrupt +Church created a malaria, which poisoned the noble spirits of +Machiavelli, Ariosto, Guicciardini, Giuliano della Rovere. It does not, +however, follow therefore that the humanities of the race at large, in +spite of superstition and bad government, were vitiated. + + [1] I am of course speaking of the Renaissance as distinguished + from that new phase of Italian history which followed the + Council of Trent and the Spanish despotism. + +We have positive proofs to the contrary in the art of the Italians. The +April freshness of Giotto, the piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal +purity of the young Raphael, the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the +philosophic depth of Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of Michael Angelo, +the suavity of Fra Bartolommeo, the delicacy of the Della Robbia, the +restrained fervor of Rosellini, the rapture of the Sienese and the +reverence of the Umbrian masters, Francia's pathos, Mantegna's dignity, +and Luini's divine simplicity, were qualities which belonged not only to +these artists but also to the people of Italy from whom they sprang. If +men not few of whom were born in cottages and educated in workshops +could feel and think and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that their +mothers and their friends were pure and pious, and that the race which +gave them to the world was not depraved. Painting in Italy, it must be +remembered, was nearer to the people than literature: it was less a +matter of education than instinct, a product of temperament rather than +of culture. + +Italian art alone suffices to prove to my mind that the immorality of +the age descended from the upper stratum of society downwards. Selfish +despots and luxurious priests were the ruin of Italy; and the bad +qualities of the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, found expression +in the literature of poets and humanists, their parasites. But in what +other nation of the fifteenth century can we show the same of social +urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all classes from the +highest to the lowest? It is true that the sixteenth century cast a +blight upon their luster. But it was not until Italian taste had been +impaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact with the Spaniards +that the arts became either coarse or sensual. Giulio Romano (1492-1546) +and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-70) mark the beginning of the change. In +Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and in the whole school of Bologna, +it was accomplished. Yet never at any period did the native Italian +masters learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals innate +grossness. It remained for Duerer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth to elevate the +grotesque into the region of high art, for Rubens to achieve the +apotheosis of pure animalism, for Teniers to devote distinguished genius +to the service of the commonplace. + +In any review of Italian religion and morality, however fragmentary it +may be, as this indeed is, one feature which distinguishes the acute +sensibility of the race ought not to be omitted. Deficient in profound +intellectual convictions, incapable of a fixed and radical determination +towards national holiness, devoid of those passionate and imaginative +intuitions into the mysteries of the world which generate religions and +philosophies, the Italians were at the same time keenly susceptible to +the beauty of the Christian faith revealed to them by inspired orators. +What we call Revivalism was an institution in Italy, which the Church +was too wise to discountenance or to suppress, although the preachers of +repentance were often insubordinate and sometimes even hostile to the +Papal system. The names of Arnold of Brescia, San Bernardino of Siena, +John of Vicenza, Jacopo Bussolari, Alberto da Lecce, Giovanni +Capistrano, Jacopo della Marca, Girolamo Savonarola, bring before the +memory of those who are acquainted with Italian history innumerable +pictures of multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and +constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and +vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in +sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks +of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with +sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.[1] In the +midst of these melodramatic scenes towers the single form of a Dominican +or Franciscan friar: while one voice thundering woe or pleading peace +dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these +preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in +states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than +merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not +only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of +importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the +sixteenth century in Italy--Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a real +religious vigor in the people corresponding to the preacher's zeal. But +the action of this earnest mood was intermittent and spasmodic. It +coexisted with too much superstition and with passions too vehemently +restless to form a settled tone of character. In this respect the +Italian nation stands not extravagantly pictured in the life of Cellini, +whose violence, self-indulgence, keen sense of pleasure, and pagan +delight in physical beauty were interrupted at intervals by inexplicable +interludes of repentance, Bible-reading, psalm-singing, and visions. To +delineate Cellini will be the business of a distant chapter. The form of +the greatest of Italian preachers must occupy the foreground of the +next. + + [1] I have thrown into an appendix some of the principal + passages from the chronicles about revivals in mediaeval Italy. + +Before closing the imperfect and scattered notices collected in this +chapter, it will be well to attempt some recapitulation of the points +already suggested. Without committing ourselves to the dogmatism of a +theory, we are led to certain general conclusions on the subject of +Italian society in the sixteenth century. The fierce party quarrels +which closed the Middle Ages had accustomed the population to violence, +and this violence survived in the too frequent occurrence of brutal +crimes. The artificial sovereignty of the despots being grounded upon +perfidy, it followed that guile and fraud came to be recognized in +private no less than public life. With the emergence of the bourgeois +classes a self-satisfied positivism, vividly portrayed in the person of +Cosimo de' Medici, superseded the passions and enthusiasms of a previous +age. Thus force, craft, and practical materialism formed the basis of +Italian immorality. Vehement contention in the sphere of politics, +restless speculation, together with the loosening of every tie that +bound society together in the Middle Ages, emancipated personality and +substituted the freedom of self-centered vigor and virility (Virtu) for +the prescriptions of civil or religions order. In the nation that had +shaken off both Papal and Imperial authority no conception of law +remained to control caprice. Instead of law men obeyed the instincts of +their several characters, swayed by artistic taste or tyrannous +appetite, or by the splendid heroism of extinct antiquity. The Church +had alienated the people from true piety. Yet no new form of religious +belief arose; and partly through respect for the past, partly through +the convenience of clinging to existing institutions, Catholicism was +indulgently tolerated. At the same time the humanists introduced an +ideal antagonistic to Christianity of the monastic type. Without +abruptly severing themselves from the communion of the Church, and while +in form at least observing all its ordinances, they thought, wrote, +spoke, felt, and acted like Pagans. To the hypocrisies of obsolete +asceticism were added the affectations of anachronistic license. +Meanwhile, the national genius for art attained its fullest development, +simultaneously with the decay of faith, the extinction of political +liberty, and the anarchy of ethics. So strong was the aesthetic impulse +that it seemed for a while capable of drawing all the forces of the +nation to itself. A society that rested upon force and fraud, corroded +with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy recognizing no standard apart +from success in action and beauty in form, so conscious of its own +corruption that it produced no satirist among the many who laughed +lightly at its vices, wore the external aspect of exquisite refinement, +and was delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who understood the +contradictions of the age most deeply were the least capable of rising +above them Consequently we obtain in Machiavelli's works the ideal +picture of personal character, moving to calculated ends by +scientifically selected means, none of which are sanctioned by the +unwritten code of law that governs human progress. Cosimo's positivism +is reduced to theory. Fraud becomes a rule of conduct. Force is +advocated, when the dagger or the poisoned draught or the extermination +of a city may lead the individual straight forward to his object. +Religion is shown to be a political engine. Hypocrisy is a mask that +must be worn. The sanctities of ancient use and custom controlling +appetite have no place assigned them in the system. Action is analyzed +as a branch of the fine arts; and the spirit of the age, of which the +philosopher makes himself the hierophant, compels him to portray it as a +sinister and evil art. + +In the civilization of Italy, carried prematurely beyond the conditions +of the Middle Ages, before the institutions of mediaevalism had been +destroyed or its prejudices had been overcome, we everywhere discern +the want of a co-ordinating principle. The old religion has died; but +there is no new faith. The Communes have been proved inadequate; but +there is no nationality. Practical positivism has obliterated the +virtues of a chivalrous and feudal past; but science has not yet been +born. Scholarship floods the world with the learning of antiquity; but +this knowledge is still undigested. Art triumphs; but the aesthetic +instinct has invaded the regions of politics and ethics, owing to +defective analysis in theory, and in practice to over-confident reliance +on personal ability. The individual has attained to freedom; but he has +not learned the necessity of submitting his volition to law. At all +points the development of the Italians strikes us as precocious, with +the weakness of precocity scarcely distinguishable from the decay of old +age. A transition from the point attained in the Renaissance to some +firmer and more solid ground was imperatively demanded. But the fatality +of events precluded the Italians from making it. Their evolution, +checked in mid career by the brilliant ambition of France and the +cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students +are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an +inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof +the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be +an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign +interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional +stage of the Renaissance to a sounder and more substantial phase of +national vitality; or whether, as their inner conscience seems to have +assured them, their disengagement from moral obligation and their mental +ferment foreboded an inevitable catastrophe. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +SAVONAROLA. + + +The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, +and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the +Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the +Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San +Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style +of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His +Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere +Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della +Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's +Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 +and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, +Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The +Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to +call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial +and Execution of Savonarola. + + +Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts of the Italian +Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also +from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope +Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been +claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired +exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither +shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to +the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free +movement of the modern mind which found its first expression in the arts +and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy. Both toward Renaissance and +Reform he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an +austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other no desire to alter +either the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church. Yet the +history of Savonarola is not to be dissociated from that of the Italian +Renaissance. He more clearly than any other man discerned the moral and +political situation of his country. When all the states of Italy seemed +sunk in peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war, and felt the +imminence of overwhelming calamity. The purification of customs which he +preached was demanded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by the +wickedness of the tyrants. The scourge which he prophesied did in fact +descend upon Italy. In addition to this clairvoyance by right of which +we call him prophet, the hold he took on Florence at a critical moment +of Italian history is alone enough to entitle him to more than merely +passing notice. + +Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.[1] His grandfather +Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had removed to the capital of the +Este princes at the beginning of the fifteenth century. There he held +the office of court physician; and Girolamo was intended for the same +profession. But early in his boyhood the future prophet showed signs of +disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible dislike of the +court. Under the House of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for +its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more +frequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy maintain so much of +feudal magnificence and chivalrous enjoyment. The square castle of red +brick, which still stands in the middle of the town, was thronged with +poets, players, fools who enjoyed an almost European reputation, court +flatterers, knights, pages, scholars and fair ladies. But beneath its +cube of solid masonry, on a level with the moat, shut out from daylight +by a sevenfold series of iron bars, lay dungeons in which the objects of +the Duke's displeasure clanked chains and sighed their lives away.[2] +Within the precincts of this palace the young Savonarola learned to hate +alike the worldly vices and the despotic cruelty against which in +after-life he prophesied and fought unto the death. + + [1] In this chapter on Savonarola I have made use of Villari's + _Life_ (translated by Leonard Horner, Longmans, 1863, 2 vols.), + Michelet's _Histoire de France_, vol. vii., Milman's article on + Savonarola (John Murray, 1870), Nardi's _Istoria Fiorentina_, + book ii., and the _Memoirs_ of De Comines. + + [2] See p. 424. + +Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers only tell us that he +was grave and solitary, frequenting churches, praying with passionate +persistence, obstinately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join his +father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas seem +to have been the favorite masters of his study. In fact he refused the +new lights of the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical training +of the schoolmen. Already at the age of twenty we find him composing a +poem in Italian on the Ruin of the World, in which he cries: 'The whole +world is in confusion: all virtue is extinguished, and all good manners; +I find no living light abroad, nor one who blushes for his vices.' His +point of departure had been taken, and the keynote of his life had been +struck. The sense of intolerable sin that came upon him in Ferrara +haunted him through manhood, set his hand against the Popes and despots +of Italy, and gave peculiar tone to his prophetic utterances. + +The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the storms of the +world, and as a rest from the torments of the sins of others, now began +to sway his mind.[1] But he communicated his desire to no one. It would +have grieved his father and his mother to find that their son, who was, +they hoped, to be a shining light at the court of Ferrara, had +determined to assume the cowl. At length, however, came the time at +which he felt that leave the world he must. 'It was on the 23d of April +1475,' says Villari; 'he was sitting with his lute and playing a sad +melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of divination, turned +suddenly round to him, and exclaimed mournfully, My son, that is a sign +we are soon to part. He roused himself, and continued, but with a +trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute, without raising his +eyes from the ground.' This would make a picture: spring twilight in +the quaint Italian room, with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay +across the open window; the mother looking up with anxious face from her +needlework; the youth, with those terrible eyes and tense lips and +dilated nostrils of the future prophet, not yet worn by years of care, +but strongly marked and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy chords +of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in secular attire. + + [1] Often in later life Savonarola cried that he had sought the + cloister to find rest, but that God had chosen, instead of + bringing him into calm waters, to cast him on a tempest-swollen + sea. See the Sermon quoted by Villari, vol. i. p. 298. + +On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in secret and journeyed to +Bologna. There he entered the order of S. Dominic, the order of the +Preachers, the order of his master S. Thomas, the order too, let us +remember, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to his father +after taking this step is memorable. In it he says: 'The motives by +which I have been led to enter into a religious life are these: the +great misery of the world; the iniquities of men, their rapes, +adulteries, robberies, their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphemies: +so that things have come to such a pass that no one can be found acting +righteously. Many times a day have I repeated with tears the verse: + + Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum! + +I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the blinded people of +Italy; and the more so because I saw everywhere virtue despised and vice +honored.' We see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its origin in a +deep sense of the wickedness of the world. It was the same spirit as +that which drove the early Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid. +Austere and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he had moved +long enough among the Ferrarese holiday-makers. Those elegant young men +in tight hose and particolored jackets, with oaths upon their lips and +deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, were no associates for +him. It is touching, however, to note that no text of Ezekiel or +Jeremiah, but Virgil's musical hexameter, sounded through his soul the +warning to depart. + +In this year Savonarola composed another poem, this time on the Ruin of +the Church. In his boyhood he had witnessed the pompous shows which +greeted AEneas Sylvius, more like a Roman general than a new-made Pope, +on his entrance into Ferrara. Since then he had seen the monster Sixtus +mount the Papal throne. No wonder if he, who had fled from the world to +the Church for purity and peace, should need to vent his passion in a +song. 'Where,' he cries, 'are the doctors of old times, the saints, the +learning, charity, chastity of the past?' The Church answers by +displaying her rent raiment and wounded body, and by pointing to the +cavern in which she has to make her home. 'Who,' exclaims the poet, 'has +wrought this wrong?' _Una fallace, superba meretrice_--Rome! Then indeed +the passion of the novice breaks in fire:-- + + Deh! per Dio, donna, + Se romper si potria quelle grandi ale! + +The Church replies:-- + + Tu piangi e taci: e questo meglio parmi. + +No other answer could be given to Savonarola's impatient yearnings even +by his own hot heart, while he yet remained a young and unknown monk in +Bologna. Nor, strive as he might strive through all his life, was it +granted to him to break those outspread wings of arrogant Rome. + +The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 1482, when he was sent +first to Ferrara and then to Florence on missions by his superiors. But +at neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet has no honor in his +own country; and for pagan-hearted Florence, though destined to be the +theater of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no thundrous burden of +invective to utter. Besides, his voice was sharp and thin; his face and +person were not prepossessing. The style of his discourse was adapted to +cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic distinctions. +The great orator had not yet arisen in him. The friar, with all his +dryness and severity, was but too apparent. With what strange feelings +must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence! In after-days he +used to say that he foreknew those streets and squares were destined to +be the scene of his labors. But then, voiceless, powerless, without +control of his own genius, without the consciousness of his prophetic +mission, he brooded alone and out of harmony with the beautiful and +mundane city. The charm of the hills and gardens of Valdarno, the +loveliness of Giotto's tower, the amplitude of Brunelleschi's +dome--these may have sunk deep into his soul. And the subtle temper of +the Florentine intellect must have attracted his own keen spirit by a +secret sympathy. For Florence erelong became the city of his love, the +first-born of his yearnings. + +In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid libraries by the +liberality of the Medicean princes, he was at peace. The walls of that +convent had recently been decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico, even +as a man might crowd the leaves of a missal with illuminations. Among +these Savonarola meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit and in +contact with the holiday folk of Florence he was ill at ease. Lorenzo +de' Medici overshadowed the whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan +spirit of the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a proper +incarnation, was the very opposite of Savonarola, who had already judged +the classical revival by its fruits, and had conceived a spiritual +resurrection for his country. At Florence a passionate love of art and +learning--the enthusiasm which prompted men to spend their fortunes upon +MSS. and statues, the sensibility to beauty which produced the +masterworks of Donatello and Ghiberti, the thirst for knowledge which +burned in Pico and Poliziano and Ficino--existed side by side with +impudent immorality, religious deadness, cold contempt for truth, and +cynical admiration of successful villainy. Both the good and the evil +which flourished on this fertile soil so luxuriantly were combined in +the versatile genius of the merchant prince, whose policy it was to +stifle freedom by caressing the follies, vices, and intellectual tastes +of his people. + +The young Savonarola was as yet no match for Lorenzo. And whither could +he look for help? The reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to +be expected from the Church. Florence well knew that Sixtus had plotted +to murder the Medici before the altar at the moment of the elevation of +the Host. Excommunicated for a deed of justice after the failure of this +Popish plot, the city had long been at war with the pontiff. If anywhere +it was in the cells of the philosophers, in that retreat where Ficino +burned his lamp to Plato, in that hall where the Academy crowned their +master's bust with laurels, that the more sober-minded citizens found +ghostly comfort and advice. But from this philosophy the fervent soul of +Savonarola turned with no less loathing, and with more contempt, than +from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, +which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens +during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated +theism developed by Platonic students. While the humanists were exalting +pagan license, and while the Church was teaching the worst kinds of +immorality, the philosophers kept alive in cultivated minds a sense of +God. + +But the monk, nourished on the Bible and S. Thomas, valued this +confusion of spirits and creeds in a chaos of indiscriminate erudition, +at a small price. He had the courage in the fifteenth century at +Florence to proclaim that the philosophers were in hell, and that an old +woman knew more of saving faith than Plato. Savonarola and Lorenzo were +opposed as champions of two hostile principles alike emergent from the +very life of the Renaissance: paganism reborn in the one, the spirit of +the gospel in the other. Both were essentially modern; for it was the +function of the Renaissance to restore to the soul of man its double +heritage of the classic past and Christian liberty, freeing it from the +fetters which the Middle Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were Lorenzo +and Savonarola destined to clash. The obscure friar at this time was +preaching to an audience of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while +Poliziano and all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons of Fra +Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This man flattered the taste of +the moment by composing orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to +the Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon its similarity to +Platonism. Who could then have guessed that beneath the cowl of the +harsh-voiced Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years +would inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful enough to destroy +the fabric of the Medicean despotism? + +From Florence, where he had met with no success, Savonarola was sent to +San Gemignano, a little town on the top of a high hill between Florence +and Siena. We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading +frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange +feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone, crowded together within the +narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from +these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and +the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the +slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles +all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked +here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the +grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first +flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola's soul. Here for the +first time he prophesied: 'The church will be scourged, then +regenerated, and this quickly.' These are the celebrated three +conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic +utterances adhered. + +But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak; +his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe, still wavering between +strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward +rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him. +Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had +learned by heart each verse of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering on +their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every +suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the +prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in +wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame +which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze +at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. 'Midway upon +the path of life' he opened the Book of Revelation: he figured to the +people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins +of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to +them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the +interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing +shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they +believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of +Gaston de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia, +her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk. + +As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the +right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of +preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were, +and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration.[1] Fra +Bartolommeo, one of his followers, painted a profile of him in the +character of S. Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of +expression which his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of +the sweet and gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his +nation at the bar of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, +keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait +is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in +the Uffizzi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple +of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore +justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented +faithfully the outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his +peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders. +Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, +rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply +sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye +that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, +with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of +vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is +large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with +massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and +utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent: +between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation +of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the +throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; +and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine +sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit +machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, +beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in +the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary +and a monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The +wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed +over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color +of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive +yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily +overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than +by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were +succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization. +From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up +the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power, +filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his +discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips +of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments +and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of +continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings +severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience tears, at another +freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with prayers +and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very +spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they +advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the +sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,[2] met +and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no +longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece +of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery +crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of +vision, he ascended the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like +Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of +the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The +walls of the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings dominated by one +ringing voice. The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons, +at times breaks off with these words: 'Here I was so overcome with +weeping that I could not go on.' Pico della Mirandola tells us that the +mere sound of Savonarola's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, +thronged through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom: a +cold shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head +stood on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: 'These sermons +caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed +through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.' + + [1] Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in + Harford's _Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti_ (Longmans, 1857 + vol. i.), and also in Villari. + + [2] Nardi, in his _Istorie di Firenze_ (lib. ii. cap. 16), + describes the crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola + preach: 'Per la moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi + bastante la chiesa cattedrale di santa Maria del Fiore, ancora + che molto grande e capace sia, fu necessario edificar dentro + lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto al pergamo, certi gradi di + legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a guisa di teatro, e + cosi dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e dalla parte + di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.' + +Such was the preacher: and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme +on which he loved to dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is at +hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her +iniquity--for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the +world--for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon +souls--for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young +men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy! Nor did Savonarola +deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid +bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his +hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly +portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity +into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the +bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the +passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on +Italy.[1] You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid +narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the +storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre +of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The +hell within them was revealed. The coming doom above them was made +manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a +generation of vipers, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' +was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration. + + [1] Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils + of Italy was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other + people what was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar + believed implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower + sense, that is, in his power to predict events, such as the + deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, the punishment of + Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc. Pico says: + 'Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the + whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as + time went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he + possessed this faculty. After his trial and execution a very + uncomfortable sense of doubt remained upon the minds of those + who had been witnesses of his life-drama. Upon this topic + Guicciardini, _Stor. Fior., Op. Ined._ vol. iii. p. 179; Nardi, + _Stor. Fior._ lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, may be read with + advantage. + +'I began'--Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of +sermons delivered in 1491--'I began publicly to expound the Revelation +in our Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to +develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church +would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would +strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would +happen shortly.' It is by right of the foresight of a new age contained +in these three famous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves to +be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform: it +did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the +discipline, or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no +founder of a new order: unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he +never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his +successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no +militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for +education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, +he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible +studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became +convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From +that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new +age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that +while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone +felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its +tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very +nostrils of the God of Hosts. + +To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his +prophecies began to fulfill themselves. Within three years after his +first sermon in S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de' +Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new +chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history. The Reform +of the Church was also destined to follow. What Savonarola had foreseen, +here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the +means he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense +of discerning the catastrophe to which circumstances must inevitably +lead, another thing to trace beforehand the path which will be taken by +the hurricanes that change the face of the world. Remaining in his soul +a monk, attached by education and by natural sympathy to the past rather +than the future, he felt in spite of himself the spirit of the coming +age. Had he lived but one century earlier, we should not have called him +prophet. It was the Renaissance which set the seal of truth upon his +utterances. Yet in his vision of the world to be, he was like Balaam +prophesying blindly of a star. + +Sixtus IV. had died and been succeeded by Innocent VIII. Innocent had +given place to Alexander. The very nadir of the abyss had been reached. +Then Savonarola saw a vision and heard a voice: _Ecce gladius Domini +super terram cito et velociter._ The sword turned earthward; the air was +darkened with fiery sleet and arrows; thunders rolled; the world was +filled with pestilences, wars, famines. At another time he dreamed and +looked toward Rome. From the Eternal City there rose a black cross, +reaching to heaven, and on it was inscribed _Crux irae Dei._ Then too the +skies were troubled; clouds rushed through the air discharging darts and +fire and swords, and multitudes below were dying. These visions he +published in sermons and in print. Pictures were made from them. They +and the three conclusions went abroad through Italy. Again, Charles was +preparing for his expedition. Savonarola took the Ark of Noah for his +theme. The deluge was at hand; he bade his hearers enter the ship of +refuge before the terrible and mighty nation came: 'O Italy! O Rome! I +give you over to the hands of a people who will wipe you out from among +the nations! I see them descending like lions. Pestilence comes marching +hand in hand with war. The deaths will be so many that the buriers shall +go through the streets crying out: Who hath dead, who hath dead? and one +will bring his father, and another his son. O Rome! I cry again to you +to repent, Repent, Venice! Milan, repent!' 'The prophets a hundred years +ago proclaimed to you the flagellation of the Church. For five years I +have been announcing it: and now again I cry to you. The Lord is full of +wrath. The angels on their knees cry to Him: Strike, strike! The good +sob and groan: We can no more. The orphans, the widows say: We are +devoured, we cannot go on living. All the Church triumphant hath cried +to Christ: Thou diedst in vain. It is heaven which is in combat. The +saints of Italy, the angels, are leagued with the barbarians. Those who +called them in have put the saddles to the horses. Italy is in +confusion, saith the Lord; this time she shall be yours. And the Lord +cometh above his saints, above the blessed ones who march in +battle-array, who are drawn up in squadrons. Whither are they bound? S. +Peter is for Rome, crying: To Rome, to Rome! and S. Paul and S. Gregory +march, crying: To Rome! And behind them go the sword, the pestilence, +the famine. S. John cries: Up, up, to Florence! And the plague follows +him. S. Anthony cries: Ho for Lombardy! S. Mark cries: Haste we to the +city that is throned upon the waters! And all the angels of heaven, +sword in hand, and all the celestial consistory, march on unto this +war.' + +Then he speaks of his own fate: 'What shall be the end of our war, you +ask? If this be a general question, I shall answer Victory! If you ask +it of myself in particular, I answer, Death, or to be hewn in pieces. +This is our faith, this is our guerdon, this is our reward! We ask for +no more than this. But when you see me dead, be not then troubled. All +those who have prophesied have suffered and been slain. To make my word +prevail, there is needed the blood of many.' + +These are the prophecies with which Savonarola anticipated the coming of +a foreign conqueror. It is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the +double feeling of the prophet. Desire for the advent of Charles as a +Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the Church, contends with an +instinctive horror of the barbarian. Savonarola, like Dante, like all +Italian patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had been +lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could +not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from +beyond the Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the +violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's +chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened +the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.[1] Had he +taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within, +instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a +far more lasting meed of fame. As it was, together with the passion for +liberty which became a religion with his followers, he strove to revive +the obsolete tactics of an earlier age, and bequeathed to Florence the +weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy bore bitter fruits in +the next century. If it was the memory of the Friar which nerved the +citizens of Florence to sustain the siege of 1528, the same memory bound +them to seek aid from inconsequent Francis, and to hope that at the last +moment a cohort of seraphim would defend their walls.[2] + + [1] Segni, _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of + Savonarola's, _Gigli con gigli dover fiorire_, as one of the + causes of the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in + 1529. + + [2] See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points. + +That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt. They +were in fact, as I have already tried to show, a view of the political +and moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of profound +religious conviction and based upon a theory of the divine government of +the world. But now far he allowed himself to be guided by visions and by +words uttered to his soul in trance, is a somewhat different question. +It is just at this point that a man possessed of acute insight and +trusting to the truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong +devotional excitement to pass the border land which separates healthy +intuition from hallucination. If Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew +prophets inclined him to believe in dreams and revelations, yet on the +other hand the strong logic of his intellect, trained in scholastic +distinctions, taught him to mistrust the promptings of a power that +spoke to him when he was somewhat more or less than his prosaic self. +How could he be sure that the spirit came from God? We know for certain +that he struggled against the impulse of divination and refused at times +to obey it. But it overcame him. Like the Cassandra of AEschylus, he +panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he +cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I +have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into +a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I +wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished +to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be +silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the Lord is in my heart; +and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones. +Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters, +Thy will, be done.' + +At another time he says: 'I remember well that upon one occasion, in +the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my +sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all +allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution. God is my +witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night +I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine. At +daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake, +while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me: "Fool that thou +art, dost thou not see that it is God's will that thou shouldst keep to +the same path?" The consequence of which was that on the same day I +preached a tremendous sermon.' + +These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola's sincerity. +If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that +too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching +examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled +him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the +wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and +diffident, within the toils of ecstasy. + +Returning to the details of Savonarola's biography, we find him still in +Lombardy in 1486. After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he +made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They +continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his +nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote +the Life of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this +time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well +established. Now came the turning-point in his life. Fourteen hundred +and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of +power in Italy. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument +of his recall in this year to Florence. Lorenzo, who, if he could have +foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have +stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and +bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished +so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching +of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could +not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul. +Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as +incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the +monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon +on a passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this commencement he is +reported to have said: 'Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall +preach for eight years.' The Florentines were greatly moved. Savonarola +had to remove from the Church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began +the spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth without +intermission till his death. + +Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this uncompromising monk, +who, not content with moral exhortations, confidently predicted the +coming of a foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of +the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it was no longer easy +to suppress the preacher. Very early in his Florentine career Savonarola +had proved himself to be fully as great an administrator as an orator. +The Convent of San Marco dominated by his personal authority, had made +him Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thorough reform of +all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany. It was usual for the Priors +elect of S. Mark to pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their +patrons. Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom, +omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the discourtesy, is reported to +have said, with a smile: 'See now! here is a stranger who has come into +_my house_, and will not deign to visit me.' He forgot that Savonarola +looked upon his convent as a house of God. At the same time the prince +made overtures of goodwill to the Prior, frequently attended his +services, and dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savonarola +took no notice of him, and handed his florins over to the poor of the +city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola's old +rival, against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a match for +the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was forced to +leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With such unbending haughtiness +did Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be. He had +recognized the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the +opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him as a tyrant. He +would not give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of +civility. In the same spirit he afterwards denounced Alexander, scorned +his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of Christendom for the +convening of a Council. Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme insight +into character, and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore, when +the hour for dying came, and when, true child of the Renaissance that he +was, he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent for +Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest friar he knew. The +magnanimity of the Medici was only equaled by the firmness of the monk. +Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed his sins, +Savonarola said: 'Three things are required of you: to have a full and +lively faith in God's mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained; +to give back liberty to Florence.' Lorenzo assented readily to the two +first requisitions. At the third he turned his face in silence to the +wall. He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was +easier than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without +absolution. Lorenzo died.[1] + + [1] It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on + the facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Poliziano, + who was with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention + them in his letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv. Kal. Jun. 1492). + But Burlmacchi, Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the + Frate's party, agree in the story. What Poliziano wrote was + that Savonarola confessed Lorenzo and retired without + volunteering the blessing. Razzi says the interview between + Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; Pico and + Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the lips + of Savonarola. We have therefore to judge between the testimony + of Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and the + veracity of several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility + toward the Medici, but in direct intercourse with the only man + who could tell the exact truth of what passed--the confessor, + Savonarola, who had been alone with Lorenzo. Villari, after + sifting the evidence, arrives at the conclusion that we may + believe Burlamacchi. The Baron Reumont, in his recent _Life of + Lorenzo_, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some solid reasons for + accepting this conclusion with caution, and Gino Capponi + expresses a distinct disbelief in Burlamacchi's narration. + +The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore liberty to Florence, +not only broke the peace of the dying prince, but it also afterwards for +ever ruled the conduct of Savonarola. From this time his life is that of +a statesman no less than of a preacher. What Lorenzo refused, or was +indeed upon his deathbed quite unable to perform, the monk determined to +achieve. Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the +pulpit. Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration +for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength +and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This work he sealed with +martyrdom. The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans +in Florence was political no less than pious. Whether Savonarola was +right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be +questioned. What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the +maker and destroyer of kings and constitutions? When we call him by +their title, we mean to say that he, like them, controlled by spiritual +force the fortunes of his people. Whether he sought it or not, this +role of politician was thrust upon him by the course of events: nor was +the history of Italian cities deficient in precedents of similar +functions assumed by preaching friars.[1] + + [1] It is enough to allude to Arnold of Brescia in Rome, to Fra + Bussolari in Pavia, ami to John of Vicenza. Sec Appendix iv. + +To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de' Medici, who surrendered +the fortresses of Tuscany to the French army. While Savonarola was +prophesying a sword, a scourge, a deluge, Charles VIII. rode at the head +of his knighthood into Florence. The city was leaderless, unused to +liberty. Who but the monk who had predicted the invasion should now +attempt to control it? Who but he whose voice alone had power to +assemble and to sway the Florentines should now direct them? His +administrative faculty in a narrow sphere had been proved by his reform +of the Dominican Convents. His divine mission was authenticated by the +arrival of the French. The Lord had raised him up to act as well as to +utter. He felt this: the people felt it. He was not the man to refuse +responsibility. + +During the years of 1493 and 1494, when Florence together with Italy was +in imminent peril, the voice of Savonarola never ceased to ring. His +sermons on the psalm 'Quam bonus' and on the Ark of Noah are among the +most stupendous triumphs of his eloquence. From his pulpit beneath the +somber dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words of power to +resuscitate the free spirit of his Florentines. In 1495, when the +Medici had been expelled and the French army had gone upon its way to +Naples, Savonarola was called upon to reconstitute the state. He bade +the people abandon their old system of Parlamenti and Balia, and +establish a Grand Council after the Venetian type.[1] This institution, +which seemed to the Florentines the best they had ever adopted, might be +regarded by the historian as only one among their many experiments in +constitution-making, if Savonarola had not stamped it with his peculiar +genius by announcing that Christ was to be considered the Head of the +State.[2] This step at once gave a theocratic bias to the government, +which determined all the acts of the monk's administration. Not content +with political organization, too impatient to await the growth of good +manners from sound institutions, he set about a moral and religious +reformation. Pomps, vanities, and vices were to be abandoned. +Immediately the women and the young men threw aside their silks and fine +attire. The Carnival songs ceased. Hymns and processions took the place +of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs. The laws were remodeled in the +same severe and abrupt spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola +ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of his influence the city for +a moment assumed a new aspect. It seemed as though the old austerity +which Dante and Villani praised were about to return without the +factious hate and pride that ruined medaeival Tuscany. In everything done +by Savonarola at this epoch there was a strange combination of political +sagacity with monastic zeal. Neither Guicciardini nor Machiavelli, +writing years afterwards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was +again enslaved, could propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande. +Yet the fierce revivalism advocated by the friar--the bonfire of Lorenzo +di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and +classic poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to +have valued in one heap at 22,000 florins--the recitation of such +Bacchanalian songs as this-- + + Never was there so sweet a gladness, + Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, + As with zeal and love and passion + Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness! + Cry with me, cry as I now cry, + Madness, madness, holy madness! + +--the procession of boys and girls through the streets, shaming their +elders into hypocritical piety, and breeding in their own hearts the +intolerable priggishness of premature pietism--could not bring forth +excellent and solid fruits. The change was far too violent. The temper +of the race was not prepared for it. It clashed too rudely with +Renaissance culture. It outraged the sense of propriety in the more +moderate citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of +the self-indulgent and the worldly. A reaction was inevitable.[3] + + [1] This change was certainly wrought out by the influence of + the friar and approved by him. Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks + clearly on the point, and says that the friar for this service + to the city 'debbe esser messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e + debbe essere amato e onorato da' Fiorentini non altrimenti che + Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli Ateniesi e Licurgo da' + Lacedemoni.' The evil of the old system was that the + Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the + Piazza, was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper + initiative, while the Balia, or select body, to whom they then + intrusted plenipotentiary authority, was always the faction for + the moment uppermost. For the mode of working the Parlamento + and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi, + vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola inscribed this octave stanza on the + wall of the Consiglio Grande: + + 'Se questo popolar consiglio e certo + Governo, popol, de la tua cittate + Conservi, che da Dio t'e stato offerto, + In pace starai sempre e libertate: + Tien dunque l'occhio della mente aperto, + Che molte insidie ognor ti fien parate; + E sappi che chi vuol far parlamento + Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.' + + [2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169. Niccolo Capponi, in 1527, + returning to the policy of Savonarola, caused the Florentines + to elect Christ for their king, and inscribed upon the door of + the Palazzo Pubblico:-- + + Y.H.S. CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI + POPULI S.P. DECRETO ELECTUS. + + [3] The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat + similar to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war, + the majority of the nation with them. Besides, the English + temperament was more adapted to Puritanism than the Italian, + nor were the manifestations of piety prescribed by Parliament + so extravagant. And yet even in England a reaction took place + under the Restoration. + +Meanwhile the strong wine of prophecy intoxicated Savonarola. His fiery +temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine +affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision +succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were +suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining +enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the +discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a republic, he should +make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the +city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savonarola's +position would become untenable. Parties began to form and gather to a +head. The followers of the monk, by far the largest section of the +people, received the name of Piagnoni or Frateschi. The friends of the +Medici, few at first and cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of +Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but desired to +see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as the +Arrabbiati. + +The discontent which germinated in Florence displayed itself in Rome. +Alexander found it intolerable to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk +who had made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At first he +used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure +Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander +suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same +time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to +reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though +still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his +preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not +intimidate. To the suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered +him, Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of martyrdom. +Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he preached the most fiery of +all his Lenten courses. Of this series of orations Milman writes: 'His +triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 on Haggai and the Psalms. +But it is in the Careme of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher +girds himself to his full strength, when he had attained his full +authority, and could not but be conscious that there was a deep and +dangerous rebellion brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at +Florence, and when already ominous rumors began to be heard from Rome. +He that would know the power, the daring, the oratory of Savonarola, +must study this volume.'[1] + + [1] These sermons were printed from the notes taken by Lorenzo + Violi in one volume at Venice, 1534. + +Very terrific indeed are the denunciations contained in these +discourses--denunciations fulminated without disguise against the Pope +and priests of Rome, against the Medici, against the Florentines +themselves, in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear. +Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in Savonarola's most +impassioned style and heightened by his most impressive imagery, are +political harangues and polemical arguments against the Pope. The +position assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not a strong one, +and the reasoning by which he supported it was marked by curious +self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He +had not the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to the length +of braving Alexander by burning his bulls and by denying the authority +of popes in general. Not daring to break all connection with the Holy +See, he was driven to quibble about the distinction between the office +and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obedience to the Church +whose head and chief he daily outraged. At the same time he took no +pains to enlist the sympathies of the Italian princes, many of whom +might presumably have been hostile to the Pope, on his side of the +quarrel. All the tyrants came in for a share of his prophetic +indignation. Lodovico Sforza, the lord of Mirandola, and Piero de' +Medici felt themselves specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to +extinguish this source of scandal to established governments. Against so +great and powerful a host one man could not stand alone. Savonarola's +position became daily more dangerous in Florence. The merchants, +excommunicated by the Pope and thus exposed to pillage in foreign +markets, grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of +interdiction lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no longer be +administered or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians. +Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called +Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. At last in +March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, or supreme executive of +Florence, suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace +were weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See: nor could any +but his own fanatical adherents anticipate the wars which threatened the +state, with equanimity. + +Savonarola himself felt that the supreme hour was come. One more +resource was left; to that he would now betake himself: he could +afterwards but die. This last step was the convening of a general +council.[1] Accordingly he addressed letters to all the European +potentates. One of these, inscribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched, +intercepted, and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and +warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is +noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but +must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to +confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist +me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the +work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a +just punishment on those who persecute me and would impede its progress. +As for myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May +your Holiness no longer delay but look to your salvation.' + + [1] This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia + had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a + Cardinal's hat to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less + than feared through the length and breadth of Italy. But + Savonarola had allowed the favorable moment to pass by. + +But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the +Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which +Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more +confident in his visions and more willing to admit his supernatural +powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed +him. Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire. +Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.[1] A +Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether +he were of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took +up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. The furnace was +prepared: both monks stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assembled +in the Piazza to witness what should happen. Various obstacles, however, +arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people +had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain, +unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was +but a mere man. The Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's convent +was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day +of his execution by the rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those +last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell +the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the +latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in +1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture before stupid and +malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory +confessions. What he really said and chose to stand by, what he +retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what +was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.[2] Though the spirit +was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be +a martyr. At ten o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth +together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and +brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage +prepared in the Piazza.[3] These two men were hanged first. Savonarola +was left till the last. As the hangman tied the rope round his neck, a +voice from the crowd shouted: 'Prophet, now is the time to perform a +miracle!' The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped +his friar's frock from him, and said, 'I separate thee from the Church +militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and combative even at the +point of death, replied, 'Militant yes: triumphant, no: _that_ is not +yours.' The last words he uttered were, 'The Lord has suffered as much +for me.' Then the noose was tightened round his neck. The fire beneath +was lighted. The flames did not reach his body while life was in it; but +those who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the sign +of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his heart still whole +among the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this day flowers have +been placed every morning of the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza +where his body fell. + + [1] There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was + finally got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the + Signory, who were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of + Savonarola. The Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together + with Fra Domenico was a certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi + calls him Andrea Rondinelli. + + [2] Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of + Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He + says: 'Avendo domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava + delle sue esamine fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che cio ch' + egli aveva ne' tempi passati detto e predetto era la pura + verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e aveva ritratto, era + tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per la paura + che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e + ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato, + percio che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel + sopportare i supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the + childish, foul, malignant gossip current in Rome. This may be + read in the 'Preuves et Observations' appended to the _Memoirs_ + of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the Marchese Gino Capponi's + _Storia della Firenze_ (tom. ii. pp. 248-51) for a critical + analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola. + + [3] There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia + which represents the burning of the three friars. The whole + Piazza della Signoria is shown, with the houses of the + fifteenth century, and without the statues which afterwards + adorned it. The spectator fronts the Palazzo, and has to his + extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center of the square is + occupied by a great circular pile of billets and fagots, to + which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left angle + of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to + which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are + suspended. Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the + distant hills above Fiesole complete a scene which is no doubt + accurate in detail. + +Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons and +other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were +struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the +Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange +inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a +contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization +never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office +with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S. +Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even +the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the hearts +of the Florentines. For many years to come his name was the watchword of +their freedom; his prophecies sustained their spirit during the siege of +1528;[2] and it was only by returning to his policy that Niccolo Capponi +and Francesco Carducci ruled the people through those troublous times. +The political action of Savonarola forms but a short episode in the +history of Florence. His moral revival belongs to the history of popular +enthusiasm. His philosophical and theological writings are chiefly +interesting to the student of post-medaeival scholasticism. His attitude +as a monastic leader of the populace, attempting to play the old game +whereby the factious warfare of a previous age had been suspended by +appeals to piety, and politicians had looked for aid outside the nation, +was anachronistic. But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a +new era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact in the psychology +of the Renaissance. + + [1] _Officio del Savonarola_, with preface by Cesare Guasti. + Firenze, 1863. + + [2] Guicciardini, in his _Ricordt_, No. i., refers the + incredible obstinacy of the Florentines at this period in + hoping against all hope and reason to Savonarola: 'questa + ostinazione ha causata in gran parte a fede di non potere + perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronirno da Ferrara.' + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +CHARLES VIII. + + +The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe--Policy of Louis +XI. of France--Character of Charles VIII.--Preparations for the Invasion +of Italy--Position of Lodovico Sforza--Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy +after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici--Weakness of the Republics--II +Moro--The year 1494--Alfonso of Naples--Inefficiency of the Allies to +cope with France--Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of +Italy by Giuliano della Rovere--Charles at Asti and Pavia--Murder of +Gian Galeazzo Sforza--Mistrust in the French Army--Rapallo and +Fivizzano--The Entrance into Tuscany--Part played by Piero de' +Medici--Charles at Pisa--His Entrance into Florence--Piero Capponi--The +March on Rome--Entry into Rome--Panic of Alexander VI.--The March on +Naples--The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand--Alfonso II. escapes +to Sicily--Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia--Charles at Naples--The +League against the French--De Comines at Venice--Charles makes his +Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli--The Battle of +Fornovo--Charles reaches Asti and returns to France--Italy becomes the +Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance of the +Expedition of Charles VIII. + + +One of the chief features of the Renaissance was the appearance for the +first time on the stage of history of full-formed and colossal nations. +France, Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure their strength. +Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, even Rome, are destined in the period +that is opening for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, incapable +of coping with these great powers, will become the mere arena of their +contests, the object of their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves +were far from being conscious of this change. Accustomed through three +centuries to a system of diplomacy and intrigue among their own small +states, they still thought more of the balance of power within the +peninsula than of the means to be adopted for repelling foreign force. +Their petty jealousies kept them disunited at an epoch when the best +chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly linked together +in one league, or subject to a single prince, the Italians might not +only have met their foes on equal ground, but even have taken a foremost +place among the modern nations.[1] Instead of that, their princes were +foolish enough to think that they could set France, Germany, or Spain in +motion for the attainment of selfish objects within the narrow sphere of +Italian politics, forgetting the disproportion between these huge +monarchies and a single city like Florence, a mere province like the +Milanese. It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure the +tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of Sforza and of Aragon +with the Papal See in the chains of the same interested policy with the +Commonwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodovico Sforza to fancy +that he could bring the French into the game of peninsular intrigue +without irrevocably ruining its artificial equilibrium. The first +sign of the alteration about to take place in European history was the +invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a +hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. +The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of +Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from +north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within +the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which +it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of the politics of +Europe. + + [1] Read, however, Sismondi's able argument against the view + that Italy, united as a single nation under a sovereign, would + have been better off, vol. vii. p. 298 et seq. He is of opinion + that her only chance lay in a Confederation. See chapter ii. + above, for a discussion of this chance. + +The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the counsels of Louis +XI. After spending his lifetime in the consolidation of the French +monarchy, he constructed an inheritance of further empire for his +successors by dictating to the old King Rene of Anjou (1474) and to the +Count of Maine (1481) the two wills by which the pretensions of the +House of Anjou to the Crown of Naples were transmitted to the royal +family of France.[1] On the death of Louis, Charles VIII. became King in +1483. He was then aged only thirteen, and was still governed by his +elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu.[2] It was not until 1492 that he +actually took the reins of the kingdom into his own hands. This year, we +may remark, is one of the most memorable dates in history. In 1492 +Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Roderigo Borgia was made Pope: in +1492 Spain became a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each of these +events was no less fruitful of consequences to Italy than was the +accession of Charles VIII. The discovery of America, followed in another +six years by Vasco de' Gama's exploration of the Indian seas, diverted +the commerce of the world into new channels; Alexander VI. made the +Reformation and the Northern Schism certainties; the consolidation of +Spain prepared a way for the autocracy of Charles V. Thus the +commercial, the spiritual, and the political scepter fell in this one +year from the grasp of the Italians. + + [1] Sismondi, vol. vi. p. 285. The Appendix of Pieces + Justificatives to Philip de Comines' _Memoirs_ contains the + will of Rene King of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated July 22, + 1474, by which he constitutes his nephew, Charles of Anjou, + Duke of Calabria, Count of Maine, his heir-in-chief; as well as + the will of Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, Count of + Provence, dated December 10, 1481, by which he makes Louis XI. + his heir, naming Charles the Dauphin next in succession. + + [2] Her husband was a cadet of the House of Bourbon. + +Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have described the appearance +and the character of the prince who was destined to play a part so +prominent, so pregnant of results, and yet so trivial in the affairs of +Europe. Providence, it would seem, deigns frequently to use for the most +momentous purposes some pantaloon or puppet, environing with special +protection and with the prayers and aspirations of whole peoples a mere +manikin. Such a puppet was Charles. 'From infancy he had been weak in +constitution and subject to illness. His stature was short, and his face +very ugly, if you except the dignity and vigor of his glance. His limbs +were so disproportioned that he had less the appearance of a man than +of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of liberal arts, but he hardly +knew his letters. Though eager to rule, he was in truth made for +anything but that; for while surrounded by dependents, he exercised no +authority over them and preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business +and fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of +prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from +impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, +promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more +often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people +called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and +feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is +more brief: 'The king was young, a fledgling from the nest; provided +neither with money nor with good sense; weak, willful, and surrounded by +foolish counselors.' + +These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls them, 'men of low +estate, body-servants for the most part of the king,' were headed by +Stephen de Vesc, who had been raised from the post of the king's valet +de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by William Briconnet, +formerly a merchant, now Bishop of S. Malo. These men had everything to +gain by an undertaking which would flatter the vanity of their master, +and draw him into still closer relations with themselves. Consequently, +when the Count of Belgioioso arrived at the French Court from Milan, +urging the king to press his claims on Naples, and promising him a free +entrance into Italy through the province of Lombardy and the port of +Genoa, he found ready listeners. Anne de Beaujeu in vain opposed the +scheme. The splendor and novelty of the proposal to conquer such a realm +as Italy inflamed the imagination of Charles, the cupidity of his +courtiers, the ambition of de Vesc and Briconnet. In order to assure his +situation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the neighboring great +powers. He bought peace with Henry VII. of England by the payment of +large sums of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resentment he had +aroused by sending back his daughter Margaret after breaking his promise +to marry her, and by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already +engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the cession of provinces. +Ferdinand of Spain received as the price of his neutrality the strong +places of the Pyrenees which formed the key to France upon that side. +Having thus secured tranquillity at home by ruinous concessions, Charles +was free to turn his attention to Italy. He began by concentrating +stores and ships on the southern ports of Marseilles and Genoa; then he +moved downward with his army, to Lyons, in 1494. + +At this point we are called to consider the affairs of Italy, which led +the Sforza to invite his dangerous ally. Lorenzo de' Medici during his +lifetime had maintained a balance of power between the several states +by his treaties with the Courts of Milan, Naples, and Ferrara. When he +died, Piero at once showed signs of departure from his father's policy. +The son and husband of Orsini,[1] he embraced the feudal pride and +traditional partialities of the great Roman house who had always been +devoted to the cause of Naples. The suspicions of Lodovico Sforza were +not unreasonably aroused by noticing that the tyrant of Florence +inclined to the alliance of King Ferdinand rather than to his own +friendship. At this same time Alfonso, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the +throne of Naples, was pressing the rights of his son-in-law, Gian +Galeazzo Sforza, on the attention of Italy, complaining loudly that his +uncle Lodovico ought no longer to withhold from him the reins of +government.[2] Gian Galcazzo was in fact the legitimate successor of +Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who had been murdered in Santo Stefano in 1476. +After this assassination Madonna Bona of Savoy and Cecco Simonetta, who +had administered the Duchy as grand vizier during three reigns extending +over a period of half a century, governed Milan as regents for the young +Duke. But Lodovico, feeling himself powerful enough to assume the +tyranny, beheaded Simonetta at Pavia in 1480, and caused Madonna Bona, +the Duke's mother, on the pretext of her immorality, to quit the +regency. Thus he took the affairs of Milan into his own hands, confined +his nephew in an honorable prison, and acted in a way to make it clear +that he intended thenceforth to be Duke in fact.[3] It was the bad +conscience inseparable from this usurpation which made him mistrust the +princes of the house of Aragon, whose rights in Isabella, wife of the +young Duke, were set at nought by him. The same uneasy sense of wrong +inclined him to look with dread upon the friendship of the Medici for +the ruling family of Naples. + + [1] His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them + Orsini. Guicciardini, in his 'Dialogo del Reggimento di + Firenze' (_Op. Ined._ vol. ii. p. 46), says of him: 'sendo nato + di madre forestiera, era imbastardito in lui il sangue + Fiorentino, e degenerato in costumi esterni, e troppo insolenti + e altieri al nostro vivere.' Piero, nevertheless, refused to + accept estates from King Alfonso which would have made him a + Baron and feudatory of Naples. See _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. 347. + + [2] The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493. + + [3] Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation + with the show of legitimate right. He betrothed his niece + Bianca Maria, in 1494, to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower + of 400,000 ducats, receiving in return an investiture of the + Duchy, which, however, he kept secret. + +While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open disturbance in +Lorenzo's balance of power had taken place, Alexander VI. was elected to +the Papacy. It was usual for the princes and cities of Italy to +compliment the Pope with embassies on his assumption of the tiara; and +Lodovico suggested that the representatives of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, +and Naples should enter Rome together in a body. The foolish vanity of +Piero, who wanted to display the splendor of his own equipage without +rivals, induced him to refuse this proposal, and led to a similar +refusal on the part of Ferdinand. This trivial circumstance confirmed +the suspicions of Lodovico, who, naturally subtle and intriguing, +thought that he discerned a deep political design in what was really +little more than the personal conceit of a broad-shouldered +simpleton.[1] He already foresaw that the old system of alliances +established by Lorenzo must be abandoned. Another slight incident +contributed to throw the affairs of Italy into confusion by causing a +rupture between Rome and Naples. Lorenzo, by the marriage of his +daughter to Franceschetto Cibo, had contrived to engage Innocent VIII. +in the scheme of policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, and +Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, Franceschetto Cibo +determined to get rid of Anguillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he +had taken with his father's connivance from the Church. He found a +purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexander complained that the sale was an +infringement of his rights. Ferdinand supported the title of the Orsini +to his new acquisitions. This alienated the Pope from the King of +Naples, and made him willing to join with Milan and Venice in a new +league formed in 1493. + + [1] Piero de' Medici was what the French call a _bel homme_, + and little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best + player at _pallone_ in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and + agreeable in conversation, and excessively vain of these + advantages. + +Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh combinations between +the disunited powers of Italy took place. Lodovico, however, dared not +trust his new friends. Venice had too long hankered after Milan to be +depended upon for real support; and Alexander was known to be in treaty +for a matrimonial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna Sancia of +Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, without a firm ally in Italy, and +with a manifestly fraudulent title to maintain. At this juncture he +turned his eyes towards France; while his father-in-law, the Duke of +Ferrara, who secretly hated him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his +own advantage in the general confusion which he anticipated, urged him +to this fatal course. Alexander at the same time, wishing to frighten +the princes of Naples into a conclusion of the projected marriage, +followed the lead of Lodovico, and showed himself at this moment not +averse to a French invasion. + +It was in this way that the private cupidities and spites of princes +brought woe on Italy: Lodovico's determination to secure himself in the +usurped Duchy of Milan, Ercole d' Este's concealed hatred, and +Alexander's unholy eagerness to aggrandize his bastards, were the vile +and trivial causes of an event which, however inevitable, ought to have +been as long as possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But in +Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor among princes, no +virtue in the Church. Italy, which in the thirteenth century numbered +1,800,000 citizens--that is, members of free cities, exercising the +franchise in the government of their own states--could show in the +fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:[1] and these in Venice were +subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been +enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by party feuds and vulgar +despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived +literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this +indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his +prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them. +Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate +which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as +Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza +the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. Lodovico, +called II Moro, not, as the great historian asserts, because he was of +dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree for his +device,[2] was in himself an epitome of all the qualities which for the +last two centuries had contributed to the degradation of Italy in the +persons of the despots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had +so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of +taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself +the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that +ran: _God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure_, he never +acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable +tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking +ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that +they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of +him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and +the arts by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an +ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the +presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt +that, as Corio tells us,[3] fathers sold their daughters, brothers their +sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word Lodovico, in spite of +his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of Italy and himself by his +tortuous policy, and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute +style of living no little to the general depravity of his country.[4] + + [1] This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must + be taken as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the + facts presented in Ferrari's _Rivoluzioni d' Italia_ will not + think the estimate exaggerated. In the municipal and civil + wars, free burghs were extinguished by the score. + + [2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the _Elogia_ of Paulus + Jovius, who remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair. + His surname, however, provoked puns. Me had, for example, a + picture painted, in which Italy, dressed like a queen, is + having her robe brushed by a Moorish page. A motto ran beneath, + _Per Italia nettar d' ogni bruttura_. He adopted the mulberry + because Pliny called it the most prudent of all trees, inasmuch + as it waits till winter is well over to put forth its leaves, + and Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in choosing the + right moment for action. + + [3] _L' Historia di Milano_, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: 'A quella + (scola di Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi + giovani. I padri vi concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le + mogliere, i fratelli le sorelle; e per sifatto modo senz' alcun + riguardo molti concorreano all' amoroso ballo, che cosa + stupendissima era riputata per qualunque l' intendeva.' + + [4] Guicciardini, _Storia d' Italia_, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up + the character of Lodovico with masterly completeness. + +Amid this general perturbation of the old political order the year +1494, marked in its first month by the death of King Ferdinand, +began--'a year,' to quote from Guicciardini, 'the most unfortunate for +Italy, the very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it opened +the door to numberless and horrible calamities, in which it may be said +that a great portion of the world has subsequently shared.' The +expectation and uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned to the +magnitude of the coming change. On every side the invasion of the +French was regarded with that sort of fascination which a very new and +exciting event is wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians were +inclined to hail Charles as a general pacificator and restorer of old +liberties.[1] Savonarola had preached of him as the _flagellum Dei_, +the minister appointed to regenerate the Church and purify the font of +spiritual life in the peninsula. In another frame of mind they +shuddered to think what the advent of the barbarians--so the French +were called--might bring upon them. It was universally agreed that +Lodovico by his invitation had done no more than bring down, as it +were, by a breath the avalanche which had been long impending. 'Not +only the preparations made by land and sea, but also the consent of the +heavens and of men, announced the woes in store for Italy. Those who +pretend either by art or divine inspiration to the knowledge of the +future, proclaimed unanimously that greater and more frequent changes, +occurrences more strange and awful than had for many centuries been +seen in any part of the world, were at hand.' After enumerating divers +signs and portents, such as the passing day after day in the region +round Arezzo of innumerable armed men mounted on gigantic horses with a +hideous din of drums and trumpets, the great historian resumes: 'These +things filled the people with incredible fear; for, long before, they +had been terrified by the reputation of the power of the French and of +their fierceness, seeing that histories are full of their deeds--how +they had already overrun the whole of Italy, sacked the city of Rome +with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of Asia, and at one time or +another smitten with their arms all quarters of the world.' + + [1] This was the strictly popular as opposed to the + aristocratic feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and + smarting under the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese + princes, expected in Charles VIII. a Messiah, and cried + 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.' See passages quoted in + a note below. + +Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of Naples had the most to +dread; for against him the invasion was specially directed. No time was +to be lost. He assembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli in July and +explained to them his theory of resistance. The allies were Florence, +Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of Romagna.[1] For once the +southern and the middle states of Italy were united against a common +foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he +dreaded the assembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne +he had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that he had already +sent ambassadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most +Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of +undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition +to the French. But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand +was prudent. It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their +unassisted force. This might have been done if Alfonso's plan had been +adhered to. He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, +to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the passes of the Apennines to +the North, while Piero de' Medici undertook to guard the entrances to +Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to +raise Gian Galeazzo's standard in Lombardy. But that absolute agreement +which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and +comprehensive was impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention +should first be paid to the Colonnesi--Prospero and Fabrizio being +secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty. +Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman +territory on the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the +generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into +Lombardy. They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the +Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. The fleet +under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in +Genoa. The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of +Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral +fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the league were further enfeebled +and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the +Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly Piero de' Medici by +his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in +the sequel. This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of +forces--this total inability to strike a sudden blow--sealed beforehand +the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, +Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of +Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the +Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were +not the men to save a nation. Italy was conquered, not by the French +king, but by the vices of her own leaders. The whole history of +Charles's expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing +over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the +disorganization of peoples rendered harmless. The Ate of the gods had +descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief that the +expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.[2] + + [1] Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with + Charles, on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her + engaged. She declined to join the league of Alfonso by saying + it was mad to save others at the risk of drawing the war into + your own territory. Nothing is more striking than the want of + patriotic sentiment or generous concurrence to a common end in + Italy at this time. Florence, by temper and tradition favorable + to France, had been drawn into the league by Piero de' Medici, + whose sympathies were firm for the Aragonese princes. + + [2] This, of course, was Savonarola's prophecy. But both + Guicciardini and De Comities use invariably the same language. + The phrase _Dieu monstroit conduire l'entreprise_ frequently + recurs in the _Memoirs_ of De Comines. + +While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for their safety in the +South, Charles remained at Lyons, still uncertain whether he should +enter Italy by sea or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all. +Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt satisfied with his +achievement and indulged himself in a long bout of tournaments and +pastimes. Besides, the want of money, which was to be his chief +embarrassment throughout the expedition, had already made itself +felt.[1] It was an Italian who at length roused him to make good his +purpose against Italy--Giuliano della Rovere,[2] the haughty nephew of +Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined to succeed +in course of time upon the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, +or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with +taunts and menaces until Charles felt he could delay his march no +longer. When once the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly. +Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the +French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon +infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, +debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on September +19.[3] Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at +almost any point upon the route they might have been at least delayed by +hardy mountaineers until the commissariat of so large a force had proved +an insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback conqueror with +the big head and little legs, the valleys had been exalted and the rough +places had been made plain. The princes whose interest it might have +been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles were but children. The +Duke of Savoy was only twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat +fourteen; their mothers and guardians made terms with the French king, +and opened their territories to his armies. + + [1] 'La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis + d'advis qu'elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit + de rien, et y alla tout l'argent contant que le Roy peut finer + de ses finances: car comme j'ay dit, il n'estoit point pourveu + ne de sens, ne d'argent, oy d'autre chose necessaire a telle + entreprise, et si en vint bien a bout, moyennant la grace de + Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi a cognoistre.' De Comines, + lib. vii. + + [2] Guicciardini calls him on this occasion 'fatale instrumento + e allora e prima e poi de' mali d' Italia.' Lib. i. cap. 3. + + [3] I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. + 383), to which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all + attached to the artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, + carpenters, etc. See Dennistoun, _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. i. p. + 433, for a detailed list of Charles's armaments by land and + sea. + +At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole +d' Este. The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes[1] +followed in their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes to +entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken +meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, +what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The +French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by +promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the +small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded +to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement of interests arose. Charles was +bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife +Beatrice d' Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone +Alfonso and to assume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure +the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin[2] the young Giovanni +Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the +beautiful Isabella of Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable +of resisting a woman's tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess +in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend +Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought +him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself? The +situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the +feeble young king. For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to +his petitioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner +had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved to +remove the cause of further vacillation. Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had +his nephew poisoned.[3] When the news of Gian Galeazzo's death reached +the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was +already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible +Italians with whom they had to deal. + + [1] See above, p. 548. + + [2] The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were + sisters, princesses of Savoy. + + [3] Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he + inclines to believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet + raises a doubt about it, though the evidence is such as he + would have accepted without question in the case of a Borgia. + Guicciardini, who recounts the whole matter at length, says + that all Italy believed the Duke had been murdered, and quotes + Teodoro da Pavia, one of the royal physicians, who attested to + having seen clear signs of a slow poison in the young man. + Pontano, _de Prudentia_, lib. 4, repeats the accusation. + Guicciardini only doubts Lodovico's motives. He inclines to + think the murder had been planned long before, and that Charles + was invited into Italy in order that Lodovico might have a good + opportunity for effecting it, while at the same time he had + taken care to get the investiture of the Duchy from the Emperor + ready against the event. + +What was this beautiful land in the midst of which they found +themselves, a land whose marble palaces were thronged with cut-throats +in disguise, whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose luxuriant +meadows concealed fever, whose ladies carried disease upon their lips? +To the captains and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared a +splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with +illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to +brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered +men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and +gaze back with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found +themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through +the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with +drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques +with roses that they might not hear the siren's voice too clearly. It +was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance +for the people of the North. _The White Devil of Italy_ is the title of +one of Webster's best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of +sin and death, holding in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good +and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is how Italy struck the +fancy of the men of the sixteenth century. She was feminine, and they +were virile; but she could teach and they must learn. She gave them +pleasure; they brought force. The fruit of her embraces with the nations +was the spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in which we +live. + +Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with what new enemies they +had to deal. Twice at the commencement of the invasion did the French +use the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the sorceress. These +terror-striking examples were the massacres of the inhabitants of +Rapallo on the Genoese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers +and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in the hospitals, were +butchered, first by the Swiss and German guards, and afterwards by the +French, who would not be outdone by them in energy. It was thus that the +Italians, after a century of bloodless battles and parade campaigning, +learned a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of those +Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined to drown the peninsula with +French, Spanish, German, Swiss, and native blood. + +Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, traversing, all through the +golden autumn weather, those plains where mulberry and elm are married +by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of maize and corn. From +Parma, placed beneath the northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, +on the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of Carrara build their +barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, there leads a winding barren mountain +pass. Charles took this route with his army, and arrived in the +beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. Meanwhile we may well +ask what Piero de' Medici had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his +engagement with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be remembered, to +hold the passes of the Apennines upon this side. To have embarrassed the +French troops among those limestone mountains, thinly forested with pine +and chestnut-trees, and guarded here and there with ancient fortresses, +would have been a matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 +Swiss troops during their wars of independence would have laughed to +scorn the whole forces of Burgundy and Austria. But Piero, a feeble and +false tyrant, preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, and +disinclined to push forward into the territory of the Sforza, had as yet +done nothing when the news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of +capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as fast as horses could +carry him to the French camp, besought an interview with Charles, and +then and there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and its citadel, +together with those of Pietra Santa, Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any +one who has followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana can +appreciate the enormous value of these concessions to the invader. They +relieved him of the difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of +land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the +highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in +the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles +would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian +knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and +dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and +Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The +Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular policy, now +rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased +from their memory the name of Medici except for execration. The +unsuccessful tyrant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his +country, and to himself, saved his life by flying first to Bologna and +thence to Venice, where he remained in a sort of polite captivity--safe, +but a slave, until the Doge and his council saw which way affairs would +tend. + +On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny of fifty years, and Pisa +after the servitude of a century, recovered their liberties and were +able to reconstitute republican governments. But the situation of the +two states was very different. The Florentines had never lost the name +of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the freedom of the +inhabitants to exercise self-government than the independence of the +city in relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other hand had been +reduced to subjection by Florence: their civic life had been stifled, +their pride wounded in the tenderest point of honor, their population +decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence was the +enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment of anarchy burned to +obliterate her shame with bloodshed. The French, understanding none of +the niceties of Italian politics, and ignorant that in giving freedom to +Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked on with wonder at +the citizens who tossed the lion of the tyrant town into the Arno and +took up arms against its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm +of the long-suppressed passion for liberty in the Pisans, while we know +how soon they were reduced again to slavery by the selfish sister state, +herself too thoroughly corrupt for liberty. The part of Charles, who +espoused the cause of the Pisans with blundering carelessness, +pretended to protect the new republic, and then abandoned it a few +months later to its fate, provokes nothing but the languid contempt +which all his acts inspire. + +After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of Pisan liberty the King +of France was hailed as saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles +received a magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, +and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of +the Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar conveyed to the +French king a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to enter +their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero +de' Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the tilting yard, and +restoring the freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of +policy and indifferent to the part assigned him by the prophet as he was +before. He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 17, and +took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he informed the +elders of the city that he had come as conqueror and not as guest, and +that he intended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state. + +It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno flowing through her +midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even +more lovely than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls +remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make +resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's +tower and Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction +to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in +their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but +a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as +castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, +refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, +intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old +factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by +flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted +Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke +in a terrestrial paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty. Which of us +who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture +to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, +incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the +Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to +pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces +the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But +in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found +loveliness of which they had not dreamed before. + +Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid +hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with +her--reform the republic--legislate--impose a levy on the citizens, and +lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and +began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He +insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were +written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall +sound my trumpets.' Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.' +Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed +by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a +menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the +tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be +barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by +hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, +covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: _Ah, Ciappon, +Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon!_ The secretaries beat down his terms. +All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with +120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted +Florence. + +Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obstacle. His invasion had +fallen like the rain from heaven, and like rain, as far as he was +concerned, it ran away to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first +scenes in the pageant displayed by Italy before the French army, had +been left behind. Rome now lay before them, magnificent in desolation; +not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built up +from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, but the Rome of the +Middle Ages, the city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still +pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The progress of +the French was a continued triumph. They reached Siena on the second of +December. The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid +down their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their castles: +Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese army and grand constable +of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for himself favorable terms +from the French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to their own +rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. Italy seemed bent on +proving that cowardice and selfishness and incapacity had conquered her. +Viterbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were traversed: the Campagna, +bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud +upon the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty at +the invader's feet. Not a blow had been struck, when he reached the +Porta del Popolo upon the 31st of December 1494. At three o'clock in the +afternoon began the entry of the French army. It was nine at night +before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of torches and +flambeaux, defiled through the gates, and took their quarters in the +streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, +flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, +splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in +their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the +German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, +stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this +memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before +them specimens and vanguards of all those legioned races which were soon +to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling-place. Nothing was +wanting to complete the symbol of the coming doom but a representative +of the grim, black, wiry infantry of Spain. + + [1] The want of money determined all Charles's operations in + this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions + on Piero and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy + princesses, he passed from place to place, bargaining and + contracting debts instead of dictating laws and founding + constitutions. _La carestia dei danari_ is a phrase continually + recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the jewels lent to + Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat at Turin, + de Comines exclaims: 'Et pouvez voir quel commencement de + guerre c'estoit, si Dieu n'eut guide l'oeuvre.' + +The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Castle of S. Angelo. How would +the Conqueror, now styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of +desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom? At the side of +Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, +urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still closer to +his ear was Briconnet, the _ci-devant_ tradesman, who thought it would +become his dignity to wear a cardinal's hat. On this trifle turned the +destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate of the Church. +Charles determined to compromise matters. He demanded a few fortresses, +a red hat for Briconnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, and +Djem, the brother of the Sultan.[1] After these agreements had been made +and ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his castle and receive the +homage of the faithful. + +Charles staid* a month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. The fourth +and last scene in the Italian pageant was now to be displayed. After the +rich plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their rampart of +perpetual snow; after the olive gardens and fair towns of Tuscany; after +the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, +that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends +of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. +The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have +their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more +luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the +villagers are more classically graceful; the volcanic soil is more +fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in +the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist +the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks lost their native +energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies +the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was +tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at +Baiae, at Pompeii at Capreae, until the whole region became a byword for +voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and +became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were +softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments +of the southern sorceress. + + [1] See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate + prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive + for the Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was + under engagements with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem + died of slow poison soon after he became the guest of Charles. + The Borgia preferred to keep faith with the Turk. + +Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained +to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her +most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison--the virus of a +fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was +destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove +more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle +Ages.[1] + + [1] Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of + syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von + Hirsch, _Historisch-geographische Pathologie_ (Erlangen, 1860), + and in Rosenbaum _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthum_ + (Halle, 1845). Some curious contemporary observations + concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease in Italy, its + symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo's _Cronaca + di Perugia_ (_Arch. Stor. It._ vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36), + and in Portovenere (_Arch. St._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The + celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for + its fine Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest + works issued from the Aldine press in 1497 was the _Libellus de + Epidemia quam vulgo morbum Gallicum vocant_. It was written by + Nicolas Leoniceno, and dedicated to the Count Francesco de la + Mirandola. + +The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent uncertainty which attended +the succession to the throne, as well as the suzerainty assumed and +misused by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing cause of discord +in Italy. The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. +After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and +Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a +bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled +Count Rene of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which +he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the +Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of +the fifteenth century. Historians are never weary of relating his +victories over Caldora and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which +he expelled his rival Rene, and the fascination which he exercised in +Milan, while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria +Visconti.[1] Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of his +virtues, the justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture which +rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of that splendid period.[2] +His love of learning was a passion. Whether at home in the retirement of +his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always attended by +students, who read aloud and commented on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No +prince was more profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo +Fazio received 500 ducats a year for the composition of his histories, +and when, at their conclusion, the scholar asked for a further gift of +200 or 300 florins, the prince bestowed upon him 1,500. The year he +died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of letters alone. This +immoderate liberality is the only vice of which he is accused. It bore +its usual fruits in the disorganization of finance. + + [1] Mach. _Ist. Fior._ lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may + be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at + the commencement of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near + the Isle of Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he + succeeded in proving to Filippo Visconti that it was more to + his interest to have him king of Naples than to keep the French + there. Upon, this the Duke of Milan restored him with honor to + his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest which before he + had successfully opposed. It is a singular instance of the + extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and + reason. + + [2] Vespasiano's _Life of Alfonso_ (_Vite di Uomini Illustri_, + pp. 48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid + delineation. It is written of course from the scholar's more + than the politician's point of view. Compare with it Giovio, + _Elogia_, and Pontanus, _de Liberalitate_. + +The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the +Neapolitans. During the half-century in which so many Italian princes +succumbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, +according to Pontano, 'nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,' +walked up and down unarmed and unattended. 'Why should a father fear +among his children?' he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the +danger of this want of caution. The many splendid qualities by which he +was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of +his private life. Married to Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate +children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in +1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to +be his son by Margaret de Hijar. It was even whispered that this +Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso's brother +Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her +own. Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known +for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret +de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from +that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand's secretary, told a different tale. +He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano +of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by the brusque +contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand. + +It would be terrible to think that such a father could have been the +parent of such a son. In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture +degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place +to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered upon +madness. He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their +misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching +the antics of monkeys.[1] In his hunting establishment were repeated +the worst atrocities of Bernabo Visconti: wretches mutilated for neglect +of his hounds extended their handless stumps for charity to the +travelers through his villages.[2] Instead of the generosity for which +Alfonso had been famous, Ferdinand developed all the arts of avarice. +Like Sixtus IV. he made the sale of corn and oil a royal monopoly, +trafficking in the hunger of his subjects.[3] Like Alexander VI. he +fattened his viziers and secretaries upon the profits of extortion which +he shared with them, and when they were fully gorged he cut their +throats and proclaimed himself the heir through their attainder.[4] +Alfonso had been famous for his candor and sincerity. Ferdinand was a +demon of dissimulation and treachery. His murder of his guest Jacopo +Piccinino at the end of a festival, which extended over twenty-seven +days of varied entertainments, won him the applause of Machiavellian +spirits throughout Italy. It realized the ideal of treason conceived as +a fine art. Not less perfect as a specimen of diabolical cunning was the +vengeance which Ferdinand, counseled by his son Alfonso, inflicted on +the barons who conspired against him.[5] Alfonso was a son worthy of his +terrible father. The only difference between them was that Ferdinand +dissembled, while Alfonso, whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks +had surrounded him with military glory, abandoned himself with cynicism +to his passions. Sketching characters of both in the same paragraph, de +Comines writes: 'Never was man more cruel than Alfonso, nor more +vicious, nor more wicked, nor more poisonous, nor more gluttonous. His +father was more dangerous, because he could conceal his mind and even +his anger from sight; in the midst of festivity he would take and +slaughter his victims by treachery. Grace or mercy was never found in +him, nor yet compassion for his poor people. Both of them laid forcible +hands on women. In matters of the Church they observed nor reverence nor +obedience. They sold bishoprics, like that of Tarento, which Ferdinand +disposed of for 13,000 ducats to a Jew in favor of his son whom he +called a Christian.' + + [1] See Pontanus, _de Immanitate,_ Aldus, 1518, vol. 1. p. 318: + 'Ferdinandus Rex Neapolitanorum praeclaros etiam viros conclusos + carcere etiam bene atque abunde pascebat, eandem ex iis + voluptatem capiens quam pueri e conclusis in cavea aviculis: + qua de re saepenumero sibi ipsi inter intimos suos diu multumque + gratulatus subblanditusque in risum tandem ac cachinnos + profundebatur.' + + [2] See Pontanus, _de Immanitate_, Aldus; 1518, vol. i. p. 320: + 'Ferd. R.N. qui cervum aprumve occidissent furtimve palamve, + alios remo addixit, alios manibus mutilavit, alios suspendio + affecit: agros quoque serendos inderdixit dominis, legendasque + aut glandes aut poma, quae servari quidem volebat in escam + feris ad venationis suae usum.' + + [3] Caracciolo, _de Varietate Fortunae_, Muratori, vol. xxii. p. + 87, exposes this system in a passage which should be compared + with Infessura on the practices of Sixtus. De Comines, lib. + vii. cap. 11, may be read with profit on the same subject. + + [4] See Caracciolo, loc. cit. pp. 88, 89, concerning the + judicial murder of Francesco Coppola and Antonello Perucci, + both of whom had been raised to eminence by Ferdinand, used + through their lives as the instruments of his extortion, and + murdered by him in their rich old age. + + [5] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11; Sismondi, vol. vii. p. + 229. Read also the short account of the massacre of the Barons + given in the _Chronicon Venetum_, Muratori, xxiv. p. 15, where + the intense loathing felt throughout Italy for Ferdinand and + his son Alfonso is powerfully expressed. + +This kind of tyranny carried in itself its own death-warrant. It needed +not the voice of Savonarola to proclaim that God would revenge the +crimes of Ferdinand by placing a new sovereign on his throne. It was +commonly believed that the old king died in 1494 of remorse and +apprehension, when he knew that the French expedition could no longer be +delayed. Alfonso, for his part, bold general in the field and able man +of affairs as he might be, found no courage to resist the conqueror. It +is no fiction of a poet or a moralist, but plain fact of history, that +this King of Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso and father of the +Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of accusing dead that rose +to haunt his tortured fancy in the supreme hour of peril. The chambers +of his palace in Naples were thronged with ghosts by battalions, pale +specters of the thousands he had reduced to starvation, bloody phantoms +of the barons he had murdered after nameless tortures, thin wraiths of +those who had wasted away in dungeons under his remorseless rule. The +people around his gates muttered in rebellion. He abdicated in favor of +his son, took ship for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken in a +convent ere the year was out. + +Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation in spite of his father's +and grandfather's tyranny, reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the +situation was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors--by his +whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at Capua, by the German guide at +Naples. Without soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but +the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason to execrate his +race, and with the conquerors of Italy advancing daily through his +states, retreat alone was left to him. After abandoning his castles to +pillage, burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting Don +Federigo together with the Queen dowager and the princess Joanna upon a +quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians +relate that as the shore receded from his view he kept intoning in a +loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 'Except the Lord keep the +city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and +the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there is +only the distance of some seventeen miles. It was in February, a month +of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the +whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one +tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage. +Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley's stern the +king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for +Granada, cried: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but +in vain.' + +There was no want of courage in the youth. By his simple presence he had +intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage +he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of +the island. There he waited till the storm was overpast. Ten times more +a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples +leaving scarcely a rack behind--some troops decimated by disease and +unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor. +Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than +could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle +race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar +yoke.[1] + +Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495. +He was welcomed and feted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are +more childishly delighted with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual +sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence +and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by +dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his +retinue.[2] Without receiving so much as a provisional investiture from +the Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 12 as sovereign, +with a ball in one hand and a scepter in the other, through the city. +Then he was forced to return upon his path and to seek France with the +precipitancy he had shown in gaining Naples. Alexander, who was witty, +said the French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden +spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before +them to select their quarters. It remained to be seen that the +achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark +is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken. + + [1] The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince + inspire a deep feeling of interest. It is sad to read that + after recovering his kingdom in 1496, he died in his + twenty-eighth year, worn out with fatigue and with the + pleasures of his marriage to his aunt Joanna, whom he loved too + passionately. His uncle Frederick, the brother of Alfonso II., + succeeded to the throne. Thus in three years Naples had five + Sovereigns. + + [2] 'Tous estats et offices furent donnez aux Francois, a deux + ou trois,' says De Comines. + +While Charles was amusing himself at Naples, a storm was gathering in +his rear. A league against him had been formed in April by the great +powers of Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence of Italy, and +urged by the Sultan, who had reason to dread Charles VIII.,[1] headed +the league. Lodovico, now that he had attained his selfish object in the +quiet position of Milan, was anxious for his safety. The Pope still +feared a general council. Maximilian, who could not forget the slight +put upon him in the matter of his daughter and his bride, was willing to +co-operate against his rival. Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured +themselves in Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re-establish +Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. Each of the contracting +parties had his role assigned to him. Spain undertook to aid Ferdinand +of Aragon in Calabria. Venice was to attack the seaports of the +kingdom; Lodovico Sforza, to occupy Asti; the King of the Romans, to +make a diversion in the North. Florence alone, though deeply injured by +Charles in the matter of Pisa, kept faith with the French. + + [1] Charles, by an act dated A.D. 1494, September 6, had bought + the title of Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond from + Andrew Palaeologus (see Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 183, ed. Milman). + When he took Djem from Alexander in Rome, his object was to + make use of him in a war against Bajazet; and the Pope was + always impressing on the Turk the peril of a Frankish crusade. + +The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand the Catholic had disembarked +troops on the shore of Sicily, and was ready to throw an army into the +ports of Reggio and Tropea. Alexander had refused to carry out his +treaty by the surrender of Spoleto. Cesare Borgia had escaped from the +French camp. The Lombards were menacing Asti, which the Duke of Orleans +held, and without the possession of which there was no safe return to +France. Asti indeed at this juncture would have fallen, and Charles +would have been caught in a trap, if the Venetians had only been quick +or wary enough to engage German mercenaries.[1] The danger of the +situation may best be judged by reading the Memoirs of De Comines, who +was then ambassador at Venice. 'The league was concluded very late one +evening. The next morning the Signory sent for me earlier than usual. +They were assembled in great numbers, perhaps a hundred or more, and +held their heads high, made a good cheer, and had not the same +countenance as on the day when they told me of the capture of the +citadel of Naples.[2] My heart was heavy, and I had grave doubts about +the person of the king and about all his company; and I thought their +scheme more ripe than it really was, and feared they might have Germans +ready; and if it had been so, never could the king have got safe out of +Italy.' Nevertheless De Comines put a brave face on the matter, and told +the council that he had already received information of the league and +had sent dispatches to his master on the subject.[3] 'After dinner,' +continues De Comines, 'all the ambassadors of the league met for an +excursion on the water, which is the chief recreation at Venice, where +every one goes according to the retinue he keeps, or at the expense of +the Signory. There may have been as many as forty gondolas, all bearing +displayed the arms of their masters upon banners. I saw the whole of +this company pass before my windows, and there were many minstrels on +board. Those of Milan, one at least of them who had often kept my +company, put on a brave face not to know me; and for three days I +remained without going forth into the town, nor my people, nor was there +all that time a single courteous word said to me or to any of my +suite.' + + [1] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 15, pp. 78, 79. + + [2] De Comines' account of the alarm felt at Venice on that + occasion is very graphic: 'They sent for me one morning, and I + found them to the number of fifty or sixty in the Doge's + bedchamber, for he was ill of colic; and there he told me the + news with a good countenance. But none of the company knew so + well how to feign as he. Some were seated on a wooden bench, + leaning their heads on their hands, and others otherwise; and + all showed great heaviness at heart. I think that when the news + reached Rome of the battle of Cannae, the senators were not more + confounded or frightened.' + + [3] Bembo, in his _Venetian History_ (lib. ii. p. 32), tells a + different tale. He represents De Comines quite unnerved by the + news. + +Returning northward by the same route, Charles passed Rome and reached +Siena on June 13. The Pope had taken refuge, first at Orvieto, and +afterwards at Perugia, on his approach; but he made no concessions. +Charles could not obtain from him an investiture of the kingdom he +pretended to have conquered, while he had himself to surrender the +fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia alone remained in the +clutch of Alexander's implacable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In +Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. The French army desired to +see the liberties of Pisa established on a solid basis before they +quitted Italy. On their way to Naples the misfortunes of that ancient +city had touched them: now on their return they were clamorous that +Charles should guarantee its freedom. But to secure this object was an +affair of difficulty. The forces of the league had already taken the +field, and the Duke of Orleans was being besieged in Novara. The +Florentines, jealous of the favor shown, in manifest infringement of +their rights, to citizens whom they regarded as rebellious bondsmen, +assumed an attitude of menace. Charles could only reply with vague +promises to the solicitations of the Pisans, strengthen the French +garrisons in their fortresses, and march forward as quickly as possible +into the Apennines. The key of the pass by which he sought to regain +Lombardy is the town of Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes on June 29, +the French army, distressed for provisions and in peril among those +melancholy hills, pushed onward with all speed. They knew that the +allied forces, commanded by the Marquis of Mantua, were waiting for them +at the other side upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, if +anywhere, the French ought to have been crushed. They numbered about +9,000 men in all, while the allies were close upon 40,000. The French +were weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad lodgings. The +Italians were fresh and well cared for. Yet in spite of all this, in +spite of blind generalship and total blundering, Charles continued to +play his part of fortune's favorite to the end. A bloody battle, which +lasted for an hour, took place upon the banks of the Taro.[1] The +Italians suffered so severely that, though they still far outnumbered +the French, no persuasions could make them rally and renew the fight. +Charles in his own person ran great peril during this battle; and when +it was over, he had still to effect his retreat upon Asti in the teeth +of a formidable army. The good luck of the French and the dilatory +cowardice of their opponents saved them now again for the last time. + + [1] The action at Fornovo lasted a quarter of an hour, + according to De Comines. The pursuit of the Italians occupied + about three quarters of an hour more. Unaccustomed to the quick + tactics of the French, the Italians, when once broken, + persisted in retreating upon Reggio and Parma. The Gonzaghi + alone distinguished themselves for obstinate courage, and lost + four or five members of their princely house. The Stradiots, + whose scimitars ought to have dealt rudely with the heavy + French men-at-arms, employed their time in pillaging the Royal + pavilion, very wisely abandoned to their avarice by the French + captains. To such an extent were military affairs misconstrued + in Italy, that, on the strength of this brigandage, the + Venetians claimed Fornovo for a victory. See my essay + 'Fornovo,' in _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, for a + description of the ground on which the battle was fought. + +On July 15, Charles at the head of his little force marched into Asti +and was practically safe. Here the young king continued to give signal +proofs of his weakness. Though he knew that the Duke of Orleans was hard +pressed in Novara, he made no effort to relieve him; nor did he attempt +to use the 20,000 Switzers who descended from their Alps to aid him in +the struggle with the league. From Asti he removed to Turin, where he +spent his time in flirting with Anna Soleri, the daughter of his host. +This girl had been sent to harangue him with a set oration, and had +fulfilled her task, in the words of an old witness, 'without wavering, +coughing, spitting, or giving way at all.' Her charms delayed the king +in Italy until October 19, when he signed a treaty at Vercelli with the +Duke of Milan. At this moment Charles might have held Italy in his +grasp. His forces, strengthened by the unexpected arrival of so many +Switzers, and by a junction with the Duke of Orleans, would have been +sufficient to overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate the +faction of Ferdinand in Naples. Yet so light-minded was Charles, and so +impatient were his courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick return +to France. Reserving to himself the nominal right of using Genoa as a +naval station, he resigned that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed +him in the tranquil possession of his Duchy. On October 22 he left +Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps of Dauphine. +Already his famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of +the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become the shadow of a +name. He had obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, while he +imposed on France a perilous foreign policy, and on Italy the burden of +bloody warfare in the future. + +A little more than a year had elapsed between the first entry of Charles +into Lombardy and his return to France. Like many other brilliant +episodes of history, this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, was more +important as a sign than as an actual event. 'His passage,' says +Guicciardini, 'was the cause not only of change in states, downfalls of +kingdoms, desolations of whole districts, destructions of cities, +barbarous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes of conduct, new +and bloody habits of war, diseases hitherto unknown. The organization +upon which the peace and harmony of Italy depended was so upset that, +since that time, other foreign nations and barbarous armies have been +able to trample her under foot and to ravage her at pleasure.' The only +error of Guicciardini is the assumption that the holiday excursion of +Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the cause of these calamities.[1] +In truth the French invasion opened a new era for the Italians, but only +in the same sense as a pageant may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every +monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of Charles and +forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with greedy eyes +upon the wealth of the peninsula. The Swiss found in those rich +provinces an inexhaustible field for depredation. The Germans, under the +pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites +in the metropolis of Christendom. France and Spain engaged in a duel to +the death for the possession of so fair a prey. The French, maddened by +mere cupidity, threw away those chances which the goodwill of the race +at large afforded them.[2] Louis XII. lost himself in petty intrigues, +by which he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of the Borgias +and Austria. Francis I. foamed his force away like a spent wave at +Marignano and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in +the sixteenth century was destined to receive the impress of the Spanish +spirit, and to bear the yoke of Austrian dukes. Hand in hand with +political despotism marched religious tyranny. The Counter-Reformation +over which the Inquisition presided, was part and parcel of the Spanish +policy for the enslavement of the nation no less than for the +restoration of the Church. Meanwhile the weakness, discord, egotism, and +corruption which prevented the Italians from resisting the French +invasion in 1494, continued to increase. Instead of being lessoned by +experience, Popes, Princes, and Republics vied with each other in +calling in the strangers, pitting Spaniard against Frenchman, and paying +the Germans to expel the Swiss, oblivious that each new army of +foreigners they summoned was in reality a new swarm of devouring +locusts. In the midst of this anarchy it is laughable to hear the shrill +voice of priests, like Julius and Leo, proclaiming before God their vows +to rid Italy of the barbarians. The confusion was tenfold confounded +when the old factions of Guelf and Ghibelline put on a new garb of +French and Spanish partisanship. Town fought with town and family with +family, in the cause of strangers whom they ought to have resisted with +one will and steady hatred. The fascination of fear and the love of +novelty alike swayed the fickle population of Italian cities. The +foreign soldiers who inflicted on the nation such cruel injuries made a +grand show in their streets, and there will always be a mob so childish +as to covet pageants at the expense of freedom and even of safety. + + [1] Guicciardini's _Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze_ (_Op. + Ined._ vol. ii. p. 94) sets forth the state of internal anarchy + and external violence which followed the departure of Charles + VIII., with wonderful acuteness. 'Se per sorte l' uno + Oltramontano caccera l' altro, Italia restera in estrema + servitu,' is an exact prophecy of what happened before the end + of the sixteenth century, when Spain had beaten France in the + duel for Italy. + + [2] Matarazzo, in his _Cronaca della Citta di Perugia_ (_Arch. + St._, vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the + eagerness with which the French were greeted in 1495, and of + the wanton brutality by which they soon alienated the people. + In this he agrees almost textually with De Comines, who writes: + 'Le peuple nous advouoit comme Saincts, estimans en nous toute + foy et bonte; mais ce propos ne leur dura gueres, tant pour + nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi les ennemis + oppreschoient le peuple en tous quartiers,' etc., lib. vii. + cap. 6. In the first paragraph of the _Chronicon Venetum_ + (_Muratori_, vol. xxlv. p. 5), we read concerning the advent of + Charles: 'I popoli tutti dicevano _Benedictus qui venit in + nomine Domini_. Ne v'era alcuno che li potesse contrastare, ne + resistere, tanto era da tutti i popoli Italiani chiamato.' The + Florentines, as burghers of a Guelf city, were always loyal to + the French. Besides, their commerce with France (_e.g._ the + wealth of Filippo Strozzi) made it to their interest to favor + the cause of the French. See Guicc. i. 2, p. 62. This loyalty + rose to enthusiasm under the influence of Savonarola, survived + the stupidities of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and committed + the Florentines in 1328 to the perilous policy of expecting aid + from Francis I. + +In spite of its transitory character the invasion of Charles VIII., +therefore, was a great fact in the history of the Renaissance. It was, +to use the pregnant phrase of Michelet, no less than the revelation of +Italy to the nations of the North. Like a gale sweeping across a forest +of trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilizing pollen, after it has +broken and deflowered their branches, to far-distant trees that hitherto +have bloomed in barrenness, the storm of Charles's army carried far and +wide through Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich +the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How +terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of +Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But +France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable +and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the +Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe what we call the +movement of the Renaissance. There is some truth in this panegyric of +Michelet's. The passage of the army of Charles VIII. marks a +turning-point in modern history, and from this epoch dates the diffusion +of a spirit of culture over Europe. But Michelet forgets to notice that +the French never rightly understood their vocation with regard to Italy. +They had it in their power to foster that free spirit which might have +made her a nation capable, in concert with France, of resisting Charles +V. Instead of doing so, they pursued the pettiest policy of avarice and +egotism. Nor did they prevent that Spanish conquest the horrors of which +their historian has so eloquently described. Again, we must remember +that it was the Spaniards and not the French who saved Italy from being +barbarized by the Turk. + +For the historian of Italy it is sad and humiliating to have to +acknowledge that her fate depended wholly on the action of more powerful +nations, that she lay inert and helpless at the discretion of the +conqueror in the duels between Spain and France and Spain and Islam. Yet +this is the truth. It would seem that those peoples to whom we chiefly +owe advance in art and knowledge, are often thus the captives of their +intellectual inferiors. Their spiritual ascendency is purchased at the +expense of political solidity and national prosperity. This was the case +with Greece, with Judah, and with Italy. The civilization of the +Italians, far in advance of that of other European nations, unnerved +them in the conflict with robust barbarian races. Letters and the arts +and the civilities of life were their glory. 'Indolent princes and most +despicable arms' were their ruin. Whether the Renaissance of the modern +world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy had remained free, +who shall say? The very conditions which produced her culture seem to +have rendered that impossible. + + + + +APPENDICES + + + + +APPENDIX I. + +_Blood-madness_. See Chapter iii, p. 109. + + +One of the most striking instances afforded by history of Haematomania in +a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, prince of Africa and Sicily (A.D. 875). +This man, besides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of +enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execution of horrible +butcheries within the walls of his own palace. His astrologers having +once predicted that he should die by the hands of a 'small assassin,' he +killed off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their places +with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to treat after the same +fashion. On another occasion, when one of his three hundred eunuchs had +by chance been witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered +the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end to sixty youths, +originally selected for his pleasures, burning them by gangs of five or +six in the furnace, or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his +baths. Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; and when +one, who was so diseased that he could scarcely stir, implored to be +allowed to end his days in peace, Ibrahim answered: 'I make no +exceptions.' His own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders before +his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secretaries, ministers, and +courtiers was of common occurrence. But his fiercest fury was directed +against women. He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetuation +of the human race. Wives and concubines were strangled, sawn asunder, +and buried alive, if they showed signs of pregnancy. His female children +were murdered as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom his +mother managed to conceal and rear at her own peril, were massacred upon +the spot when Ibrahim discovered whom they claimed as father. +Contemporary Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy +passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he was the subject +of a strange disease, a portentous secretion of black bile producing the +melancholy which impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the +principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear +unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm +and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for +blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the +time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and +donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, preached a crusade, and led an +army into Italy, where he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. +The only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter is to +suppose that it was a dark monomania, a form of psychopathy analogous to +that which we find in the Marechal de Retz and the Marquise de +Brinvilliers. One of the most marked symptoms of this disease was the +curiosity which led him to explore the entrails of his victims, and to +feast his eyes upon their quivering hearts. After causing his first +minister Ibn-Semsama to be beaten to death, he cut his body open, and +with his own knife sliced the brave man's heart. On another occasion he +had 500 prisoners brought before him. Seizing a sharp lance he first +explored the region of the ribs, and then plunged the spear-point into +the heart of each victim in succession. A garland of these hearts was +made and hung up on the gate of Tunis. The Arabs regarded the heart as +the seat of thought in man, the throne of the will, the center of +intellectual existence. In this preoccupation with the hearts of his +victims we may therefore trace the jealousy of human life which Ibrahim +displayed in his murder of pregnant women, as well as a tyrant's fury +against the organ which had sustained his foes in their resistance. We +can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary lust with Ibrahim's +vigorous conduct of civil and military affairs, on the hypothesis that +this man-tiger, as Amari, to whom I owe these details, calls him, was +possessed with a specific madness. + + + + +APPENDIX II. + +_Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, lib. i. cap. 4._ See Chap. iv. p. 195. + + +After the freedom regained by the expulsion of the Duke of Athens and +the humbling of the nobles, regularity for the future in the government +might have been expected, since a very great equality among the burghers +had been established in consequence of those troubles. The city too had +been divided into quarters, and the supreme magistracy of the republic +assigned to the eight priors, called _Signori Priori di liberta_, +together with the Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, +two for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in no +respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dignity; and as the +fourth part of the honors pertained to the members of the lesser arts, +their turn kept coming round to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier +belonged. This magistracy remained for two whole months, always living +and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according to the notion of +our ancestors, they might be able to attend with greater diligence to +the affairs of the commonwealth, in concert with their colleagues, who +were the sixteen gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, and the +twelve _buoni uomini_, or special advisers of the Signory. These +magistrates collectively in one body were called the College, or else +the Signory and the Colleagues. After this magistracy came the Senate; +the number of which varied, and the name of which was altered several +times up to the year 1494, according to circumstances. The larger +councils, whose business it was to discuss and make the laws and all +provisions both general and particular, were until that date two; the +one called the Council of the people, formed only by the _cittadini +popolani_, and the other the Council of the Commune, because it embraced +both nobles and plebeians from the-date of the formation of these +councils.[1] The appointment of the magistrates, which of old times and +under the best and most equitable governments was made on the occasion +of each election, in this more modern period was consigned to a special +council called _Squittino_.[2] The mode and act of the election was +termed _Squittinare_, which is equivalent to Scrutinium in the Latin +tongue, because minute investigation was made into the qualities of the +eligible burghers. This method, however, tended greatly to corrupt the +good manners of the city, inasmuch as, the said scrutiny being made +every three or five years, and not on each occasion, as would have been +right, considering the present quality of the burghers and the badness +of the times, those who had once obtained their nomination and been put +into the purses thereto appointed, being certain to arrive some time at +the honors and offices for which they were designed, became careless and +negligent of good customs in their lives. The proper function of the +Gonfaloniers was, in concert with their Gonfalons and companies, to +defend with arms the city from perils foreign and civil, when occasion +rose, and to control the fire-guards specially deputed by that +magistracy in four convenient stations. All the laws and provisions, as +well private as public, proposed by the Signory, had to be approved and +carried by that College, then by the Senate, and lastly by the Councils +named above. Notwithstanding this rule, everything of high importance +pertaining to the state was discussed and carried into execution during +the whole time that the Medici administered the city by the Council +vulgarly called _Balia_, composed of men devoted to that government. +While the Medici held sway, the magistracy of the _Dieci della Guerra_ +or of Liberty and Peace were superseded by the _Otto della Pratica_ in +the conduct of all that concerned wars, truces, and treaties of peace, +in obedience to the will of the chief agents of that government. The +_Otto di guardia e balia_ were then as now delegated to criminal +business, but they were appointed by the fore-named Council of Balia, +or rather such authority and commission was assigned them by the +Signory, and this usage was afterwards continued on their entry into +office. Let this suffice upon these matters. Now the burghers who have +the right of discussing and determining the affairs of the republic were +and still are called privileged, _beneficiati_ or _statuali_, of that +quality and condition to which, according to the laws of our city, the +government belongs; in other words they are eligible for office, as +distinguished from those who have not this privilege. Consequently the +_benefiziati_ and _statuali_ of Florence correspond to the +_gentiluomini_ of Venice. Of these burghers there were about 400 +families or houses, but at different times the number was larger, and +before the plague of 1527 they made up a total of about 4,000 citizens +eligible for the Consiglio Grande. During the period of freedom between +1494 and 1512 the other or nonprivileged citizens could be elevated to +this rank of enfranchisement according as they were judged worthy by the +Council: at the present time they gain the same distinction by such +merits as may be pleasing to the ruler of the city for the time being: +our commonwealth from the year 1433 having been governed according to +the will of its own citizens, though one faction has from time to time +prevailed over another, and though before that date the republic was +distressed and shaken by the divisions which affected the whole of +Italy, and by many others which are rather to be reckoned as sedition +peculiar and natural to free cities. Seeing that men by good and evil +arts in combination are always striving to attain the summit of human +affairs, together also with the favor of fortune, who ever insists on +having her part in our actions. + + [1] Lorenzo de' Medici superseded these two councils by the + Council of the Seventy, without, however, suppressing them. + + [2] A corruption of Scrutinio. + + + + +_Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. iii. caps. 20, 21, 22._ + +The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, the first of +which takes in the whole of that part which is now called Beyond the +Arno, and the chief church of the district gives it the name of Santo +Spirito. The other three, which embrace all that is called This side the +Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, and are the +Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, and San Giovanni. Each of +these four quarters is divided into four gonfalons, named after the +different animals or other things they carry painted on their ensigns. +The quarter of Santo Spirito includes the gonfalons of the Ladder, the +Shell, the Whip, and the Dragon; that of Santa Croce, the Car, the Ox, +the Golden Lion, and the Wheels; that of Santa Maria Novella, the Viper, +the Unicorn, the Red Lion, and the White Lion; that of San Giovanni, the +Black Lion, the Dragon, the Keys, and the Vair. Now all the households +and families of Florence are included and classified under these four +quarters and sixteen gonfalons, so that there is no burgher of Florence +who does not rank in one of the four quarters and one of the sixteen +gonfalons. Each gonfalon had its standard-bearer, who carried the +standard like captains of bands; and their chief office was to run with +arms whenever they were called by the Gonfalonier of Justice, and to +defend, each under his own ensign, the palace of the Signory, and to +fight for the people's liberty; wherefore they were called Gonfaloniers +of the companies of the people, or, more briefly, from their number, the +Sixteen. Now since they never assembled by themselves alone, seeing that +they could not propose or carry any measure without the Signory, they +were also called the Colleagues, that is, the companions of the Signory, +and their title was venerable. This, after the Signory, was the first +and most honorable magistracy of Florence; and after them came the +Twelve Buonuomini, also called, for the like reason, Colleagues. So the +Signory with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the Sixteen, and the Twelve +were called the Three Greater. No man was said to have the franchise +(_aver lo stato_), and in consequence to frequent the council, or to +exercise any office, whose grandfather or father had not occupied or +been passed for (_seduto o veduto_) one of these three magistracies. To +be passed (_veduto_) Gonfalonier or Colleague meant this: when a man's +name was drawn from the purse of the Gonfaloniers or of the College to +exercise the office of Gonfalonier or Colleague, but by reason of being +below the legal age, or for some other cause, he never sat himself upon +the Board or was in fact Gonfalonier or Colleague, he was then said to +have been passed; and this held good of all the other magistracies of +the city. + +It should also be known that all the Florentine burghers were obliged to +rank in one of the twenty-one arts: that is, no one could be a burgher +of Florence unless he or his ancestors had been approved and +matriculated in one of these arts, whether they practiced it or no. +Without the proof of such matriculation he could not be drawn for any +office, or exercise any magistracy, or even have his name put into the +bags. The arts were these: i. Judges and Notaries (for the doctors of +the law were styled of old in Florence Judges); Merchants, or the Arts +of; ii. Calimala,[1] iii. Exchange, iv. Wool; Porta Santa Maria, or the +Arts of; v. Silk; vi. Physicians and Apothecaries; vii. Furriers. The +others were viii. Butchers, ix. Shoemakers, x. Blacksmiths, xi. +Linen-drapers and Clothesmen, xii. Masters, or Masons, and +Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. Oilsellers, +Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Hosiers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. +Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. The last +fourteen were called Lesser Arts; whoever was enrolled or matriculated +into one of these was said to rank with the lesser (_andare per la +minore_); and though there were in Florence many other trades than +these, yet having no guild of their own they were associated to one or +other of those that I have named. Each art had, as may still be seen, a +house or mansion, large and noble, where they assembled, appointed +officers, and gave account of debit and credit to all the members of the +guild.[2] In processions and other public assemblies the heads (for so +the chiefs of the several arts were called) had their place and +precedence in order. Moreover, these arts at first had each an ensign +for the defense, on occasion, of liberty with arms. Their origin was +when the people in 1282 overcame the nobles (_Grandi_), and passed the +Ordinances of Justice against them, whereby no nobleman could exercise +any magistracy; so that such of the patricians as desired to be able to +hold office had to enter the ranks of the people, as did many great +houses of quality, and matriculate into one of the arts. Which thing, +while it partly allayed the civil strife of Florence, almost wholly +extinguished all noble feeling in the souls of the Florentines; and the +power and haughtiness of the city were no less abated than the insolence +and pride of the nobles, who since then have never lifted up their heads +again. These arts, the greater as well as the lesser, have varied in +numbers at different times; and often have not only been rivals, but +even foes, among themselves; so much so that the lesser arts once got it +passed that the Gonfalonier should be appointed only from their body. +Yet after long dispute it was finally settled that the Gonfalonier could +not be chosen from the lesser, but that he should always rank with the +greater, and that in all other offices and magistracies, the lesser +should always have a fourth and no more. Consequently, of the eight +Priors, two were always of the lesser; of the Twelve, three; of the +Sixteen, four; and so on through all the magistracies. + + [1] The name Calimala was given to a trade in cloth carried on + at Florence by merchants who bought rough goods in France, + Flanders, and England, and manufactured them into more delicate + materials. + + [2] Marco Foscari, quoted lower down, estimates the property + the Arts at 200,000 ducats. + +As a consequence from what has been said, it is easy to perceive that +all the inhabitants of Florence (by inhabitants I mean those only who +are really settled there, for of strangers, who are passing or +sojourning a while, we need not here take any account) are of two sorts. +The one class are liable to taxation in Florence, that is, they pay +tithes of their goods and are inscribed upon the books of the Commune, +and these are called contributors. The others are not taxed nor +inscribed upon the registers of the Commune, inasmuch as they do not pay +the tithes or other ordinary imposts; and these are called +non-contributors: who, seeing that they live by their hands, and carry +on mechanical arts and the vilest trades, should be called plebeians; +and though they have ruled Florence more than once, ought not even to +entertain a thought about public affairs in a well-governed state. The +contributors are of two sorts: for some, while they pay the taxes, do +not enjoy the citizenship (_i.e._ cannot attend the council or take any +office); either because none of their ancestors, and in particular their +father or their grandfather, has sat or been passed for any of the three +greater magistracies; or else because they have not had themselves +submitted to the scrutiny,[1] or, if they have advanced so far, have not +been approved and nominated for office. These are indeed entitled +citizens: but he who knows what a citizen is really, knows also that, +being unable to share either the honors or the advantages of the city, +they are not truly citizens; therefore let us call them burghers, +without franchise. Those again who pay taxes and enjoy the citizenship +(whom we will therefore call enfranchised burghers) are in like manner +of two kinds. The one class, inscribed and matriculated into one of the +seven first arts, are said to rank with the greater; whence we may call +them Burghers of the Greater: the others, inscribed and matriculated +into the fourteen lesser arts, are said to rank with the lesser; whence +we may call them Burghers of the Lesser. This distinction had the +Romans, but not for the same reason. + + + + +_Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. ix. chs. 48, 49, 46._ + +As for natural abilities, I for my part cannot believe that any one +either could or ought to doubt that the Florentines, even if they do +not excel all other nations, are at least inferior to none in those +things to which they give their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth +their city is founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, +they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty and true than +great and prudent: but besides trade, it is clear that the three most +noble arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture have reached that +degree of supreme excellence in which we find them now, chiefly by the +toil and by the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified and +adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great +glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, +seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me +from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame +and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole +world, owes it solely to the judgment and the generosity of the Medici +that Greek letters were not extinguished to the great injury of the +human race, and that Latin literature was restored to the incalculable +profit of all men. + + [1] For an explanation of _Squittino_ and _Squittinare_, see + Nardi, p. 593 above. + +I am wholly of opinion opposed to that of some, who, because the +Florentines are merchants, hold them for neither noble nor +high-spirited, but for tame and low.[1] On the contrary, I have often +wondered with myself how it could be that men who have been used from +their childhood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool and +baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves all day and great +part of the night at the loom, could summon, when and where was need, +such greatness of soul, such high and haughty thoughts, that they have +wit and heart to say and do those many noble things we know of them. +Pondering on the causes of which, I find none truer than this, that the +Florentine climate, between the fine air of Arezzo and the thick air of +Pisa, infuses into their breasts the temperament of which I spoke. And +whoso shall well consider the nature and the ways of the Florentines, +will find them born more apt to rule than to obey. Nor would it be +easily believed how much was gained for the youth of Florence by the +institution of the militia; for whereas many of the young men, heedless +of the commonwealth and careless of themselves, used to spend all the +day in idleness, hanging about places of public resort, girding at one +another, or talking scandal of the passers by, they immediately, like +beasts by some benevolent Circe transformed again to men, gave all their +heart and soul, regardless of peril or loss, to gaining fame and honor +for themselves, and liberty and safety for their country. I do not by +what I have been saying mean to deny that among the Florentines may be +found men proud, ambitious, and greedy of gain; for vices will exist as +long as human nature lasts: nay, rather, the ungrateful, the envious, +the malicious, and the evil-minded among them are so in the highest +degree, just as the virtuous are supremely virtuous. It is indeed a +common proverb that Florentine brains have no mean either way; the fools +are exceeding simple, and the wise exceeding prudent. + + [1] Compare, however, Varchi, quoted above, p. 243. The Report + of Marco Foscari, _Relazioni Venete_, series ii, vol. i. p. 9 + et seq., contains a remarkable estimate of the Florentine + character. He attributes the timidity and weakness which he + observes in the Florentines to their mercantile habits, and + notices, precisely what Varchi here observes with admiration: + 'li primi che governano lo stato vanno alle loro botteghe di + seta, e gittati li lembi del mantello sopra le spalle, pongonsi + alia caviglia e lavorano pubblicamente che ognuno li vede; ed i + figliuoli loro stanno in bottega con li grembiuli dinanzi, e + portano il sacco e le sporte alle maestre con la seta e fanno + gli altri esercizi di bottega.' A strong aristocratic prejudice + transpires in every line. This report was written early in + 1527. The events of the Siege must have surprised Marco + Foscari. He notices among other things, as a source of + weakness, the country villas which were all within a few months + destroyed by their armies for the public good. + +Their mode of life is simple and frugal, but wonderfully and incredibly +clean and neat; and it may be said with truth that the artisans and +handicraftsmen live at Florence even better than the citizens +themselves: for whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, +according as they find good wine, and only think of joyous living; the +latter in their homes, with the frugality of merchants, who for the most +part make but do not spend money, or with the moderation of orderly +burghers, never exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wanting +families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, such as the +Antinori, the Bartolini, the Tornabuoni, the Pazzi, the Borgherini, the +Gaddi, the Rucellai, and among the Salviati, Piero d'Alamanno and +Alamanno d'Jacopo, and some others. At Florence every one is called by +his proper name or his surname; and the common usage, unless there be +some marked distinction of rank or age, is to say _thou_ and not _you_; +only to knights, doctors, and prebendaries is the title of _messere_ +allowed; to doctors that of _maestro_, to monks _don_, and to friars +_padre_. True, however, is it that since there was a Court at Florence, +first that of Giulio, the Cardinal de' Medici, then that of the Cardinal +of Cortona, which enjoyed more license than the former, the manners of +the city have become more refined--or shall I say more corrupt? + + + + +APPENDIX III. + +_The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's Story, +Fiorentina, cap. 27._ See Chap. vii. p. 412 above. + + +So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity; about +whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and of great +judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his +first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had +bought with gold so high a station, in like manner his government +disagreed not with this base foundation. There were in him, and in full +measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there be imagined +in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into +working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women +and boys, but more especially toward women; and so far did he exceed all +measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own +daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was +exceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in +getting new wealth: and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had +no respect whatever; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, +dispensations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court +dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to +his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. +He caused the death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even be +rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of +seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his +direction many were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less +with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose +favor he acquired the Papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping +of his troth: he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but +what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in his days Rome +was like a den of thieves and murderers: his ambition was boundless, and +such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased: +nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he +was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still +almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made Cardinal and +then Vice-Chancellor: in which high place he continued till his papacy, +with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become Pope, he made +Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the +ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a +bastard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought +proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made +him a layman and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and turned +his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared far better than he +purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, +Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former +Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope +before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, +and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the +Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the +King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he +showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant +general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that +point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In +one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages +peradventure had been any pope before. + + + + +APPENDIX IV. + +_Religious Revivals in Mediaeval Italy._ See Chap. viii. p. 491 above. + + +It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance +as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the +phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise +and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were +due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the +Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were +shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of +movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical +revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of +the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their +militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is +necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was +common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its +wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its +pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of mediaeval Europe, haunted +with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by +imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon +the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning +and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of +semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. +The celebrated shrines of Europe--Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, +Canterbury--acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion +of the mediaeval races, like setons to their over-charged imagination. In +all these universal movements the Italians had their share: being more +advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the +crusades to commercial count, and maintained some moderation in the +_fakir_ fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general +history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, +but rather with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which +were peculiar to the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the +political influence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the +preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics or superstitious +terror which seized upon wide districts, and the personal ascendency of +hermits unaccredited by the Church, but believed by the people to be +divinely inspired. + +One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth +century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had +recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. +France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes +were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble +task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that +period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private feuds +crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny +of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It +seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to +agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice +of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in +Bologna during the year 1233. The citizens and the country folk of the +surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial +wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his +eloquence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation +and forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had +prosecuted hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and +swore to live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him +to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations +by which the peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his +best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his +sanctity had been already spread abroad. The _carroccio_ of the city, on +which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to +many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he +entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace +produced the same results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were +clasped which had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. +Treviso, Feltre, Beliuno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the +grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas +were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves +at the disposition of the monk, and prayed him to reform their +constitution. But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate +community, to reconcile household with household, and to efface the +miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza aimed at consolidating the +Lombard cities in one common bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers +of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of +Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of August was the day fixed +for this great national assembly. More than four hundred thousand +persons, according to the computation of Parisio di Cereta, appeared +upon the scene. This multitude included the populations of Verona, +Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several +standards, together with contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, +Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly confined to the common +folk. The bishops of these flourishing cities, the haughty Marquis of +Este, the fierce lord of Romano, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, obeyed +the invitation of the friar. There, on the banks of the Adige, and +within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended a pulpit that had +been prepared for him, and preached a sermon on the text, _Pacem meam do +vobis, pacem relinquo vobis_. The horrors of war, and the Christian duty +of reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the end of which +he constrained the Lombards to ratify a solemn league of amity, vowing +to eternal perdition all who should venture to break the same, and +imprecating curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and +everything they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of Este to take +in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Romano. Up to this moment John of +Vicenza had made a noble use of the strange power which he possessed. +But his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of confining +himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now demanded to be +made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive +the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a +saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first things he +did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty +citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The +Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms, +he was beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at the +intercession of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige +annihilated.[1] + + [1] The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza + are to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of + Rolandini and Gerardus Maurisius. + +The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of +Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political +authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, +he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for +sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the +year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to +preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote +Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons +so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the +devotion they inspired increased marvelously. And he, seeing the +concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce +vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and +thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the +tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and +the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia +who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time +ruled Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed +against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay +him. But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so +powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria +and established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were +laying siege to Pavia: the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied +by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade. +Fra Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his +eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. They broke +through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the +freedom of Pavia. What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed +over to the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into +the scale of the Visconti: so that at the end of a three years' manful +conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359. Fra Jacopo +made the best terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to +secure his own safety. He was consigned by the conquerors to the +superiors of his order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at +Vercelli. In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the +eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had been strictly +subordinated to political aims in the interests of republican liberty. +Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with Savonarola: like Savonarola, he fell a +victim to the selfish and immoral oppressors of his country. As in the +case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which subsisted in Italy +between a high standard of morality and patriotic heroism.[1] + + [1] The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo + are Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his + Chronicle (Groevius, vol. ix.). + +San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preachers, who, without +taking a prominent part in contemporary politics, devoted all their +energies to the moral regeneration of the people. His life, written by +Vespasiano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents which we +possess for the religious history of Italy in the first half of the +fifteenth century. His parents, who were people of good condition, sent +him at an early age to study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him +for a lucrative and important office in the Church. But, while yet a +youth, he was seized with a profound conviction of the degradation of +his countrymen. The sense of sin so weighed upon him that he sold all +his substance, entered the order of S. Francis, and began to preach +against the vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. After +traveling through the length and breadth of the peninsula, and winning +all men by the magic of his eloquence, he came to Florence. 'There,' +says Vespasiano, 'the Florentines being by nature very well disposed +indeed to truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole State and gave +it, one may say, a second birth. And in order to abolish the false hair +which the women wore, and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused +a sort of large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and +bade every one who possessed any of these vanities to place them there; +and so they did; and he set fire thereto and burned the whole.' S. +Bernardino preached unremittingly for forty-two years in every quarter +of Italy, and died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness. 'Of many +enmities and deaths of men he wrought peace and removed deadly hatreds; +and numberless princes, who harbored feuds to the death, he reconciled, +and restored tranquillity to many cities and peoples.' A vivid picture +of the method adopted by S. Bernardino in his dealings with these cities +is presented to us by Graziani, the chronicler of Perugia: 'On September +23, 1425, a Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards of +3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from the Sacred +Scripture, reproving men of every vice and sin, and teaching Christian +living. Then he began to rebuke the women for their paints and +cosmetics, and false hair, and such like wanton customs; and in like +manner the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and amulets +and charms: insomuch that within a fortnight the women sent all their +false hair and gewgaws to the Convent of S. Francis, and the men their +dice, cards, and such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on October +29 Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things on the piazza, +where he erected a kind of wooden castle between the fountain and the +Bishop's palace; and in this he put all the said articles, and set fire +to them; and the fire was so great that none durst go near; and in the +fire were burned things of the greatest value, and so great was the +haste of men and women to escape that fire that many would have perished +but for the quick aid of the burghers.' Together with this onslaught +upon vanities, Fra Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and +amity. It is noticeable that while his sermon lasted and the great bell +of S. Lorenzo went on tolling, no man could be taken or imprisoned in +the city of Perugia.[1] + + [1] See Vespasiano, _Vite di Uomini Illustri,_ pp. 185-92. + Graziani, _Archivio Storico,_ vol. xvi. part i. pp. 313, 314. + +The same city was the scene of many similar displays. During the +fifteenth century it remained in a state of the most miserable internal +discord, owing to the feuds of its noble families. Graziani gives an +account of the preaching there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445: on +this occasion a temporary truce was patched up between old enemies, a +witch was burned for the edification of the burghers, the people were +reproved for their extravagance in dress, and two peacemakers +(_pacieri_) were appointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing +this discipline, the whole of Perugia seemed to have repented of its +sins; but the first entry for April 15 is the murder of one of the +Ranieri family by another of the same house. So transitory were the +effects of such revivals.[1] Another entry in Graziani's _Chronicle_ +deserves to be noticed. He describes how, in 1448, Fra Roberto da Lecce +(like S. Bernardino and Fra Jacopo della Marca, a Franciscan of the +Order of Observance) came to preach in January. He was only twenty-two +years of age; but his fame was so great that he drew about 15,000 +persons into the piazza to listen to him. The stone pulpit, we may say +in passing, is still shown, from which these sermons were delivered. It +is built into the wall of the Cathedral, and commands the whole square. +Roberto da Lecce began by exhibiting a crucifix, which moved the +audience to tears; 'and the weeping and crying, _Jesu misericordia!_ +lasted about half an hour. Then he made four citizens be chosen for each +gate as peacemakers.' What follows in Graziani is an account of a +theatrical show, exhibited upon the steps of the Cathedral. On Good +Friday the friar assembled all the citizens, and preached; and when the +moment came for the elevation of the crucifix, 'there issued forth from +San Lorenzo Eliseo di Christoforo, a barber of the quarter of Sant +Angelo, like a naked Christ with the cross on his shoulder, and the +crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh seemed to be bruised as +when Christ was scourged.' The people were immensely moved by this +sight. They groaned and cried out, _'Misericordia!'_ and many monks were +made upon the spot. At last, on April 7, Fra Roberto took his leave of +the Perugians, crying as he went, _'La pace sia con voi!'_[2] We have a +glimpse of the same Fra Roberto da Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The +feuds of the noble families della Croce and della Valle were then raging +in the streets of Rome. On the night of April 3 they fought a pitched +battle in the neighborhood of the Pantheon, the factions of Orsini and +Colonna joining in the fray. Many of the combatants were left dead +before the palaces of the Vallensi; the numbers of the wounded were +variously estimated; and all Rome seemed to be upon the verge of civil +war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing large congregations, not only of +the common folk, but also of the Roman prelates, to his sermons at Santa +Maria sopra Minerva, interrupted his discourse upon the following +Friday, and held before the people the image of their crucified Saviour, +entreating them to make peace. As he pleaded with them, he wept; and +they too fell to weeping--fierce satellites of the rival factions and +worldly prelates lifting up their voice in concert with the friar who +had touched their hearts.[3] Another member of the Franciscan Order of +Observance should be mentioned after Fra Roberto. This was Fra Giovanni +da Capistrano, of whose preaching at Brescia in 1451 we have received a +minute account. He brought with him a great reputation for sanctity and +eloquence, and for the miraculous cures which he had wrought. The +Rectors of the city, together with 300 of the most distinguished +burghers upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on foot, went +out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements were made for the +entertainment of himself and 100 followers, at public cost. Next +morning, three hours before dawn, there were already assembled upwards +of 10,000 people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. 'Think, +therefore,' says the _Chronicle,_ 'how many there must have been in the +daytime! and mark this, that they came less to hear his sermon than to +see him.' As he made his way through the throng, his frock was almost +torn to pieces on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.[4] + + [1] See Graziani, pp. 565-68. + + [2] Graziani, pp, 597-601. + + [3] See Jacobus Volaterranus. Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, 156, + 167. + + [4] See _Istoria Bresciana._ Muratori, xxi. 865. + +It did not always need the interposition of a friar to arouse a strong +religious panic in Italian cities. After an unusually fierce bout of +discord the burghers themselves would often attempt to give the sanction +of solemn rites and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. +Siena, which was always more disturbed by civil strife than any of her +neighbors, offered a notable example of this custom in the year 1494. +The factions of the Monti de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging; the +city was full of feud and suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by the +French invasion. It seemed good, therefore, to the heads of the chief +parties that an oath of peace should be taken by the whole body of the +burghers. Allegretti's account of the ceremony, which took place at dead +of night in the beautiful Cathedral of Siena, is worthy to be +translated. 'The conditions of the peace were then read, which took up +eight pages, together with an oath of the most horrible sort, full of +maledictions, imprecations, excommunications, invocations of evil, +renunciation of benefits temporal and spiritual, confiscation of goods, +vows, and so many other woes that to hear it was a terror; _et etiam_ +that _in articulo mortis_ no sacrament should accrue to the salvation, +but rather to the damnation of those who might break the said +conditions; insomuch that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, being +present, believe that never was made or heard a more awful and horrible +oath. Then the notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side of +the altar, wrote down the names of all the citizens, who swore upon the +crucifix, for on each side there was one, and every couple of the one +and the other faction kissed; and the bells clashed, and _Te Deum +laudamus_ was sung with the organs and the choir while the oath was +being taken. All this happened between one and two hours of the night, +with many torches lighted. Now may God will that this be peace indeed, +and tranquillity for all citizens, whereof I doubt.'[1] The doubt of +Allegretti was but too reasonable. Siena profited little by these +dreadful oaths and terrifying functions. Two years later on, the same +chronicler tells how it was believed that blood had rained outside the +Porta a Laterino, and that various visions of saints and specters had +appeared to holy persons, proclaiming changes in the state, and +commanding a public demonstration of repentance. Each parish organized a +procession, and all in turn marched, some by day and some by night, +singing Litanies, and beating and scourging themselves, to the +Cathedral, where they dedicated candles; and 'one ransomed prisoners, +for an offering, and another dowered a girl in marriage.' + +In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the occasion of an +outbreak of the plague. 'Flagellants went round the city, and when they +came to a cross, they all cried with a loud voice: _Misericordia! +misericordia!_ For eight days there was a strict fast; the butchers shut +their shops.' What follows in the Chronicle is comic: 'Meretrices ad +concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quadam quae cupiditate lucri +adolescentem admiserat, deprehensa, aliae meretrices ita illius nates +nudas corrigiis percusserunt, ut sanguinem emitteret.'[2] Ferrara +exhibited a like devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About this +time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the passage of +Charles VIII., and by the changes in states and kingdoms which +Savonarola had predicted. The Ferrarese, to quote the language of their +chronicler, expected that 'in this year, throughout Italy, would be the +greatest famine, war, and want that had ever been since the world +began.' Therefore they fasted, and 'the Duke of Ferrara fasted together +with the whole of his court. At the same time a proclamation was made +against swearing, games of hazard, and unlawful trades: and it was +enacted that the Jews should resume their obnoxious yellow gaberdine +with the O upon their breasts. In 1500 these edicts were repeated. The +condition of Italy had grown worse and worse: it was necessary to +besiege the saints with still more energetic demonstrations. Therefore +'the Duke Ercole d' Este, for good reasons to him known, _and because it +is always well to be on good terms with God,_ ordained that processions +should be made every third day in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and +about 4,000 children or more from twelve years of age upwards, dressed +in white, and each holding a banner with a painted Jesus. His lordship, +and his sons and brothers, followed this procession, namely the Duke on +horseback, because he could not then walk, and all the rest on foot, +behind the Bishop.'[3] A certain amount of irony transpires in this +quotation, which would make one fancy that the chronicler suspected the +Duke of ulterior, and perhaps political, motives. + + [1] See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839. + + [2] _Annales Bononienses._ Mur. xxiii. 890. + + [3] _Diario Ferrarese._ Mur. xxiv. pp. 17-386. + +It sometimes happened that the contagion of such devotion spread from +city to city; on one occasion, in 1399, it traveled from Piedmont +through the whole of Italy. The epidemic of flagellants, of which +Giovanni Villani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also in +Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The Florentine +authorities refused entrance to these fanatics into their territory. In +1334, Villani mentions another outburst of the same devotion (lib xi. +cap. 23), which was excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da +Bergamo. The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with the +olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves +before the altars of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred +at a time, in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the _Storia di +Milano_ (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 'white +penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 'Multitudes of men, +women, girls, boys, small and great, townspeople and countryfolk, nobles +and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white +sheets from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every +district in succession. 'On their journey, when they came to a +cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying +_Misericordia_ three times; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the +Ave Maria. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing _Stabat +Mater dolorosa_ and other litanies and prayers. The population of the +places to which they came were divided: for some went forth and told +those who staid that they should assume the same habit, so that at one +time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000 of +them.' After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many cases +penitence, amity, and alms-giving, Corio goes on to observe: 'However, +men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It is +noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague; and +it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents +together on the highways and in the cities led to this result. + +During the anarchy of Italy between 1494--the date of the invasion of +Charles VIII.--and 1527--the date of the sack of Rome--the voice of +preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always +to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the +center of the military operations of the French, the Swiss, the +Spaniards, and the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none +were fanatical prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516 +there appeared in Milan 'a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond +measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly +hair and beard, and so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit.' +He lived on water and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms +of all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the +opposition of the Archbishop and the Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his +theater; and there he denounced the vices of the priests and monks to +vast congregations of eager listeners. In a word, he engaged in open +warfare with the clergy on their own ground. But they of course proved +too strong for him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a native +of Siena, aged 30.[1] We may compare with this picturesque apparition of +Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome +like birds of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of Clement +VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went +about preaching and predicting the ruin of Italy and the end of the +world with wild cries and threats.'[2] In 1523 Milan beheld the +spectacle of a parody of the old preachers. There appeared a certain +Frate di S. Marco, whom the people held for a saint, and who 'encouraged +the Milanese against the French, saying it was a merit with Jesus Christ +to slay those Frenchmen, and that they were pigs.' He seems to have +been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head had been turned by the +examples of Bussolaro and Savonarola.[3] Again, in 1529, we find a +certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great +commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very +lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, +this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended +deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, +and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed +in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They +promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting _Misericordia!_ +and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, the Bishop and the +Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the devotion.[4] These +gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national importance. +Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought them +worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus we find Pitti, +in the _Storia Fiorentina (Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. 112), describing what +happened at Florence in 1514: 'There appeared in Santa Croce a Frate +Francesco da Montepulciano, very young, who rebuked vice with severity, +and affirmed that God had willed to scourge Italy, especially Florence +and Rome, in sermons so terrible that the audience kept crying with +floods of tears, _Misericordia!_ The whole people were struck dumb with +horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd, +listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached +a sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost +their senses; for he promised to reveal upon the third day how and from +what source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the +pulpit, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the +lungs, which soon put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the +frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused +all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for +the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici +endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and public +shows. + + [1] See Prato and Burigozzo, _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. pp. 357, + 431. It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil + discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. + Caterina, S. Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the + mind. + + [2] _Storia Fiorintina,_ vol. i. p. 87. + + [3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 443. + + [4] Burigozzo, pp. 485-89. + +Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate +the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the +Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been +said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto +da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was +by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining +the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the +sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a role, which had been often +played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar +genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander +VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet +which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions +which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects +of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while +they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic +scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of +these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. +The momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, +Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out of proportion to the +slight intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has +nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the +duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral +abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his +audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, +when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the +nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he +obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is +as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which +removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther. + + + + +APPENDIX V. + +_The 'Sommario della Storia d'Italia dal_ 1511 _al_ 1527,'_ by Francesco +Vettori._[1] + + +I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history +written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not +because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous +chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate +in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it +supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family +which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to +the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, +remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous +times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in +1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in +1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican policy, he continued in +secret stanch to the family by whom he hoped to obtain honors and +privileges in the state. Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by +Pitti, Francesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his +expectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their native city, +and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they were condemned to exile, +death, imprisonment, or frosty toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two +years after Cosimo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards of +sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the princes to whose +service he had consecrated his life and for whose sake he had helped to +enslave Florence. To respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any +pity for the men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish +expectations, is impossible. + + [1] Printed in _Arch. Stor. It._ Appendice No. 22, vol. vl. + +Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the +Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; +and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were +spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, +resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together +with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on +the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and +Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of +the men whose characters he weighed in his _Sommario_, and of obtaining +a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place +upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter +V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, +had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than +theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini +and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter +are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco +Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain +the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical +philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear +comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found +in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he +writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian +philosophy was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many +inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth +century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who +only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or +skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics. + +In the dedication of the _Sommario della Storia d' Italia_ to Francesco +Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he +retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical +narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to +transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but +rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of +Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the views of men and morals +adopted in my previous chapters. + +After touching on the sack of Prato and the consternation which ensued +in Florence, Vettori describes the return of the Medici in 1512. +Giuliano, the son of Lorenzo, was the first to appear: after him came +the Cardinal Giovanni, and Giuliano's son Giulio.[1] The elder among +their partisans persuaded them to call a Parlamento and assume the +government in earnest. On September 16, accordingly, the Cardinal took +possession of the palace, _fece pigliare il Palazzo_; the Signory +summoned the people into the piazza--a mere matter of form; a Balia of +forty men was appointed; the Gonfalonier Ridolfi resigned; and the city +was reduced to the will and pleasure of the Cardinal de' Medici. Then +reasons sons Vettori:[2] 'This was what is called an absolute tyranny; +yet, speaking of the things of this world without prejudice and +according to the truth, I say that if it were possible to institute +republics like that imagined by Plato, or feigned to exist in Utopia by +Thomas More, we might affirm they were not tyrannical governments: but +all the commonwealths or kingdoms I have seen or read of, have, it seems +to me, a savor of tyranny. Nor is it a matter for astonishment that +parties and factions have often prevailed in Florence, and that one man +has arisen to make himself the chief, when we reflect that the city is +very populous, that many of the burghers desire to share in its +advantages, and that there are few prizes to distribute: wherefore one +party always must have the upper hand and enjoy the honors and benefits +of the state, while the other stands by to watch the game.' He then +proceeds to criticise France, where the nobles alone bear arms and pay +no taxes, and where the administration of justice is slow and expensive; +and Venice, where three thousand gentlemen keep more than 100,000 of the +inhabitants below their feet, unhonored, powerless, unprivileged, +oppressed. Having demonstrated the elements of tyranny and injustice +both in a kingdom and a commonwealth reputed prosperous and free, he +shows that, according to his own philosophy, no blame attaches to a +burgher who succeeds in usurping the sole mastery of a free state, +provided he rule wisely; for all kingdoms were originally founded either +by force or by craft. 'We ought not therefore to call that private +citizen a tyrant who has usurped the government of his state, if he be a +good man; nor again to call a man the real lord of a city who, though he +has the investiture of the Emperor, is bad and malevolent.' This +critique of constitutions from the pen of a doctrinaire, who was also a +man of experience, is interesting, partly for its positive frankness, +and partly as showing what elementary notions still prevailed about the +purposes of government. Vettori's ultimate criterion is the personal +quality of the ambitious ruler. + + [1] Giovanni and Giulio were afterwards Leo X. and Clement VII. + + [2] P. 293. + +Passing to what he says about Leo X.,[1] it is worth while to note that +he attributes his election chiefly to the impression produced upon the +Cardinals by Alexander and Julius. 'During the reign of two fierce and +powerful Pontiffs, Cardinals had been put to death, imprisoned, deprived +of their property, exiled, and kept in continual alarm; and so great was +the dread among them now of electing another such Pope, that they +unanimously chose Giovanni de' Medici. Up to that time he had always +shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in squandering the +little that he owned; he had moreover managed so to dissemble as to +acquire a reputation for most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds +that his power in Florence helped him, and that he owed much to the +ability displayed by Bernardo da Bibbiena in winning votes. The joy of +the Florentines at his election is attributed to mean motives: 'being +all of them given over to commerce and gain, they thought they ought to +get some profit from this Papacy.'[2] + +The government which Lorenzo, afterwards Duke of Urbino, now established +in Florence is very favorably described by Vettori.[3] 'Lorenzo, though +still a young man, applied himself with great attention to the business +of the city, providing that equal justice should be administered to all, +that the public moneys should be levied and spent with frugality, and +that disputes should be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. His +rule was tolerated, because, while the revenues were large and the +expenses small, the citizens were not troubled with taxes; and this is +the chief way to please a people, seeing their affection for a prince is +measured by the good they get from him. Taking this opinion of Lorenzo, +it is possible for Vettori in another place to say of him that 'he +governed Florence like a citizen;'[4] and on the occasion of his death +in 1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his character. 'His +death was a misfortune for Florence, which it would be difficult to +describe. Though young, he had the qualities of virtuous maturity. He +bore a real affection toward the citizens, was parsimonious of the +moneys of the Commune, prodigal of his own; while a foe to vice, he was +not too severe on those who erred. Though he began his military life at +twenty-three, he always bore the cuirass of a man at arms upon his +shoulders day and night on active service. He slept very little, was +sober in his diet, temperate in love. The Florentines did not love him, +because it is not possible for men used to freedom to love a ruler; but +he, for his part, had not sought the office which was thrust upon him by +the will of others. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopularity +upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Florentines, who noticed every +detail, thought her grasping: and though he wanted to restrain her, he +found himself unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held +her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth +to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable +portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his _Principe_. The +somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, +his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, +combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, +are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare +Borgia was almost the exact opposite. The impression produced by +Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by what he says about +Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake the Duchy of Urbino.[5] + + [1] P. 297. + + [2] P. 300. + + [3] Ibid. + + [4] P. 306. + + [5] P. 321. See too p. 307. + +But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. Vettori marks his +interference in the affairs of Lucca as the first great mistake he +made.[1] His advisers in Florence had not reflected 'what infamy it +would bring upon the Pope in the opinion of all men, or what suspicion +it would rouse among the princes, if in the first months of his power he +were led to sanction an attack by the Florentines upon the Lucchese, +their neighbors and allies. How too could the burghers of Florence, who +had urged him to this step, remind the pontiff that he ought to moderate +his desire of gaining dominion for the Church and for his kin, by the +example of former Popes, all of whom, in the interest of their +dependents, had acquired to their own dishonor with peril and expense +what in a few days upon their death returned to the old and rightful +owners?' The conduct of Leo with regard to Lucca, his policy in +Florence, and the splendor maintained by his brother at Rome, did in +fact rouse the jealousy of the Italian powers both great and small.[2] +'King Ferdinand remarked: If Giuliano has left Florence, he must be +aiming at something better, which can be nothing but the realm of +Naples. The Dukes of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino said the same. The +Sienese thought: If the pope allows the Florentines to attack Lucca, +which is so strong, well furnished, and harmonious, far more will he +consent to their encroaching upon us, who are weak, ill-provided, and at +odds among ourselves. The Duke of Ferrara had further reasons for +discontent in respect to Modena and Reggio.' Altogether, Leo began to +lose credit. Secret alliances were formed against him by the della +Rovere, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci; and though he took care to +attend public services and to fast more than etiquette required, nobody +believed in him. Vettori's comment reads like an echo of Machiavelli and +Guicciardini.[3] 'Assuredly it is most difficult to combine temporal +lordship with a reputation for religion: for they are two things which +will not harmonize. He who well considers the law of the Gospel will +observe that the pontiffs, though called Christ's Vicars, have +originated a new religion unlike that of Christ except in name. His +enjoins poverty; they desire riches. He preached humility; they follow +after pride. He commanded obedience; they aim at universal sovereignty. +I could enlarge upon their other vices; but it is enough to allude to +these, without entering into inconvenient discourses.' While treating of +the affairs of Urbino,[4] however, Vettori remarks that Leo could not +have done otherwise than punish Francesco Maria della Rovere, if he +wished to maintain the Papacy at the height of reputation to which it +had been raised by his predecessors. + + [1] P. 301. + + [2] P. 303. + + [3] P. 304. + + [4] P. 319. + +In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all that we know about +this Pope from other sources. He insists more perhaps than other +historians upon the able diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of +Tricarico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,[1] and traces Leo's +fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the influence of Jeronimo +Adorno.[2] The secret springs of Leo's conduct, when he was vainly +endeavoring to steer to his own profit between the great rivals for +power in Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of these +points. Of the prodigality which helped to ruin this Pope, and which +made his two successors impotent, he speaks with sneering sarcasm. 'It +was as easy for him to keep 1,000 ducats together as for a stone to fly +into the air by its own weight.'[3] When the news of the capture of +Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo was at the Villa Magliana in +the neighborhood of Rome.[4] Whether he took cold at a window, or +whether his anxiety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori +remains uncertain. At any rate, he was attacked with fever, returned to +Rome, and died. 'It was said that his death was caused by poison; but +these stories are always circulated about men of high estate, especially +when they succumb to acute disease. Those, however, who knew the +constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and his habits of life, +will rather wonder that he lived so long.' After summing up the +vicissitudes of his career and passing a critique upon his vacillating +policy, Vettori resumes:[5] 'while on the one hand he would fain have +never had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desirous of fame +and sought to aggrandize his kindred. Fortune, to rid him of this +ambition, removed his brother and his nephew in his lifetime. Lastly, +when he had engaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if he +won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, fortune removed him +from the world so that he might not see his own mischance. In his +pontificate at Rome there was no plague, no poverty, no war. Letters and +the arts flourished, and the vices were also at their height. Alexander +and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance not only of the +prelates but of every little priest or clerk who died in Rome. Leo +abstained entirely from such practices. Therefore people came in crowds; +and it may be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, +the population of Rome increased by one third.' Vettori prudently +refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo's character in one decisive +sentence. He notes, however, that he was blamed for not keeping to his +word: 'it was a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give +such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; accordingly he +made so many promises; and fed people with such great expectations, that +it became impossible to please them.' + + [1] P. 313. + + [2] P. 334. + + [3] P. 322. + + [4] P. 338. + + [5] P. 339. + +The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to the mutual hatred and +jealousy of the Cardinals.[1] He ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the +Pope's want of interest in great affairs, adds his testimony to his +private excellence and public incapacity, and dismisses him without +further notice.[2] + + [1] P. 341. + + [2] Pp. 343, 347. + +What he tells us about Clement is more interesting. In the dedication to +the _Sommario_ he apologized in express terms for the high opinion +recorded of this Pope. Yet the impression which he leaves upon our mind +by what he writes is so unfavorable as to make it clear what Clement's +foes habitually said against him. He remarks, as one excuse for his +ill-success in office, that he succeeded to a Papacy ruined by the +prodigality in war and peace of Leo.[1] As knight of Rhodes, as governor +of Florence, and as Cardinal, Clement had shown himself an able man. +Fortune heaped her favors on him then. As soon as he was made Pope, she +veered round. 'From a puissant and respected Cardinal, he became a +feeble and discredited Pope.' His first care was to provide for the +government of Florence. In order to arrive at a decision, he asked +council of the Florentine orators and four other noble burghers then in +Rome, as to whether he could advantageously intrust the city to the +Cardinal of Cortona in guardianship over Ippolito and Alessandro, the +young bastards of the Medici.[2] 'All men nearly,' says Vettori, 'are +flatterers, and say what they believe will please great folk, although +they think the contrary. Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten +advised him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship of the +Cardinal of Cortona.' The remaining three, who were Ruberto Acciajuoli, +Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of +administering a free city through a priest who held his title from a +subject town. They recommended the appointment of a Gonfalonier for one +year, and so on, till a member of the Medicean family could take the +lead. Clement, however, decided on the other course; and to this cause +may be traced half the troubles of his reign. + + [1] P. 348. + + [2] P. 349. They were 14 and 13 years of age respectively. + +The greater part of what remains of the _Sommario_ is occupied with the +wars and intrigues of Francis, Charles, and Clement. Vettori, it may be +said in passing, records a very unfavorable opinion of the Marquis of +Pescara, who was, he hints, guilty of first turning a favorable ear to +Moroni's plot and then of discovering the whole to his master.[1] A few +days after his breach of faith with the Milanese, he fell ill and died. +'He was a man whose military excellence cannot be denied; but proud +beyond all measure, envious, ungrateful, avaricious, venomous, cruel, +without religion or humanity, he was born to be the ruin of Italy; and +it may be truly said that of the evil she has suffered and still +suffers, a large part was caused by him.' + + [1] Pp. 358, 359. + +Of the breach of faith of Francis, after he had left his Spanish prison, +Vettori speaks in terms of the very highest commendation.[1] His refusal +to cede Burgundy to Charles was just and patriotic. That he broke his +faith was no crime; for, though a man ought rather to die than forswear +himself, yet his first duty is to God, his second to his country, +Francis was clearly acting for the benefit of his kingdom; and had he +not left his two sons as hostages in Spain? The whole defense is a good +piece of specious pleading, and might be used to illustrate the chapter +on the Faith of Princes in the _Principe_. + + [1] P. 362. + +By far the most striking passage in Vettori's _Sommario_ is the +description of the march of Frundsberg's and De Bourbon's army upon +Rome.[1] He makes it clear to what extent the calamity of the sack was +due to the selfishness and cowardice of the Italian princes. First of +all the Venetians refused to offer any obstacles before the passage of +the Po, feeling that by doing so they might draw trouble on their own +provinces. Then the Duke of Ferrara supplied the Lutherans with +artillery, of which they hitherto had stood in need. The first use they +made of their fire-arms was to shoot the best captain in Italy, Giovanni +de' Medici of the Black Bands. The Duke of Urbino, the Marquis of +Saluzzo, and Guido Rangoni watched them cross the river and proceed by +easy stages through the district of Piacenza, 'following them like +lacqueys waiting on their lords.' The same thing happened at Parma and +Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying the foreigners with +food and money. Clement meanwhile was penniless in Rome. Rich as the +city was, he had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, +and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, moreover, who +had recently plundered the Vatican, kept him in a state of terror. As +the invaders, now commanded by the Constable de Bourbon, approached +Tuscany, the youth of Florence demanded to be armed in defense of their +hearths and homes. The Cardinal of Cortona, fearing a popular rising, +refused to grant their request. A riot broke out, and the Medici were +threatened with expulsion: but by the aid of influential citizens a +revolution was averted. The Constable, avoiding Florence and Siena, +marched straight on Rome, still watched but unmolested by the armies of +the League. He left his artillery on the road, and, as is well known, +carried the walls of Rome by assault on the morning of May 3, dying +himself at the moment of victory. From what has just been rapidly +narrated, it will be seen how utterly abject was the whole of Italy at +this moment, when a band of ruffians, headed by a rebel from his +sovereign, in disobedience to the viceroy of the king he pretended to +serve, was not only allowed but actually helped to traverse rivers, +plains, and mountains, on their way to Rome. What happened after the +capture of the Transteverine part of the city moves even deeper scorn. +'It still remained for the Imperial troops to enter the populous and +wealthy quarters; and these they had to reach by one of three bridges. +They numbered hardly more than 25,000 men, all told. In Rome were at +least 30,000 men fit to bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, +and among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds of Romans, +swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, with beards upon their +breasts. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get 500 together in +one band for the defense of one of the three bridges.' What immediately +follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a translation of +it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 'The soldiers slew at +pleasure; pillaged the houses of the middle classes and small folk, the +palaces of the nobles, the convents of both sexes, and the churches. +They made prisoners of men, women, and even of little children, without +regard to age, or vows, or any other claim on pity. The slaughter was +not great, for men rarely kill those who offer no resistance: but the +booty was incalculable, in coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, +clothes, tapestries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this +should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum that, if set down, +would win no credence. Let any one consider through how many years the +money of all Christendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there +in a great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bishops, Prelates, +and public officers, the wealthy merchants, both Roman and foreign, +selling at high prices, letting their houses at dear rents, and paying +nothing in the way of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the +poorer folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a city +sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater store of treasure +could be drawn. Though Rome has at other times been taken and pillaged, +yet never before was it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted +so long that what might not perhaps have been discovered on the first +day sooner or later came to light. This disaster was an example to the +world that men proud, avaricious, envious, murderous, lustful, +hypocritical, cannot long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied +that the inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained with +all these vices, and with many greater.' + +[1] Pp. 372-82. + + + + +INDEX + + +A + +Abelard, 9. +Adrian VI., 441. +Agrippa quoted, 459. +Ahmed, 589. +Albigenses, 9. +Aldi, the, 23. +Aleander, 27. +Alexander VI., 406, 407 _seq._., 603; + death, 430 (see Papacy). +Alfonso I. of Naples, 568. +Alfonso II., 119, 572. +Allegre, 418, +Allegretti, works, 292; + cited, 165; + quoted, 616 +America, effects of its discovery, 540. +Ammanati, works, 489. +Anjou, house of, transfers its claims to Sicily, 539. +Appiani, 148. +Ariosto, works, 119; + cited, 413; + quoted, 130 +Aristotle, influence of his writings, 197; + quoted, 234, 235. +Art in Middle Age, 17; + effect of religious conventionalism, 18; + revolution made by Renaissance, 18, 19. + Italian, inimical to ugliness, 490; + flourishes under despots, 79. +Ascham, R., quoted, 472. + + +B + +Bacon, Francis, 26; + Roger, 9, 10. +Baglioni, 122, 148. +Barbiano, 159. +Bartoli, A., cited, 252. +Beccadelli, 174. +Bellini, works, 488. +Bentivogli, 102, 115, 123. +Bergamo, V. da, 618. +Bernard, St., 13. +Berni cited, 443. +Bibbiena, 184; + quoted, 190. +Bible, discovery of the original, 20. +Blood-madness, 109, 589 _seq._ +Boccaccio, 11, 20. +Boiado, 171. +Bologna, 123, 617. +Boniface VIII., 76. +Borgia, Cesare, 117, 324, 345 _seq._, 426, 577; + murders, 352. +Borgia, Lucrezia, 419; + character cleared of calumny, 420. +Borgia, Roderigo (see Alexander VI). +Boscoli, P. P., 466. +Bracciolini, P., 274. +Brantome quoted, 117. +Brescia, 615; + Arnold of, 64. +Browning, R., quoted, 13. +Bruni, L., 274. +Buonarotti, 491; + works, 19. +Burchard cited, 430, 431. +Burckhardt cited, 428; + quoted, 434. +Burton, Robert, cited, 475. +Bussolaro, J. del, 610. +Byzantine empire, effect of its fall, 14 + + +C + +Capistrano, G. da, 615. +Capponi, P., 284, 563. +Carducci, 284, 289; + works, 293. +Carmagnuola, F., 161. +"Carmina Burana," 9. +Carrara, 149. +Carroccio, 58. +Castiglione, works, 183, 457. +Catholic Church (see Papacy). + Support of Church required by good society, 455; + philosophy and theology fused, 456; + religion divorced from morality, 462, 493; + influence of ancient literature, 464; + aestheticism, 465; + humanism antagonistic to Christianity, 493; + its corruption, 448 _seq._; + not universal, 470; + immorality of priests, 458, 459; + superstition, 466; + relics, 461; + sanctity of pope, 462; + power of forms, 471; + counter-reformation, 25; + power of ecclesiastical eloquence, 491; + revivals, 490, 606 _seq_.; + indestructable vigor of religious faith, 469. +Cellini, B., 104, 462, 492; memoirs, 325. +Charles VIII. (see Italy, history), 540 _seq_.; + escape, 580. +Charles of Anjou, 75. +Charles the Great, 50. +Chivalry, 483. +Christianity (see Catholic Church, Morals), + influence in forming modern society, 7; + how affected by Renaissance, 25. +Clement VII., 443, 633. +Colonnesi, 375. +Columbus, 15. +Comines cited, 416; + quoted, 214, 475, 541, 553, 572, 578. +Condottieri, 86, 113, 131, 156 _seq_.; 245, 361; + character of warfare, 102, 363. +Compagni, Dino, chronicle of, 262; + its authenticity, 266 _seq_. +Copernicus, 15. +Corio, works, 292; + quoted, 135, 143, 145, 152. 160, 385, 391, 392, 619. +Coryat, T., quoted, 475. +Croce, della, 614. +Cromwell, 454. +Cruelty (see Blood-madness), + instances of, 151, 478, 571; + of French, 557, 583; + its use, 354. +Crusades, 7. + + +D + +Dante, political views, 261; + works, 10, 11, 73, 260; + quoted, 73, 76, 77, 133. +Democratic idea, its gradual growth, 8. +Dennistoun cited, 160. +Descartes, 26. +Djem, 415, 566, 576. +Duerer, works, 490; + cited, 475. + + +E + +Erasmus, 24, 27. +Este, house of, 395, 420; + Nicolo, 168. + + +F + +Fanfoni, P., cited, 263, 268. +Feltre, V. da, 171, 176. +Ferdinand of Arragon, 296, 358; of + Naples, 570. +Ferrara, 499, 617; + court, 423. +Ficino, 175, 456. +Fiesole, G. da, Works, 488. +Filelfo, 171; + quoted, 381. +Flora, Joachim of, 9. +Florence, its constitution, 195, 201, 592, 596, 598; + number of citizens, 598; + parties, 211; + perpetual flux, 221; + government by merchants, 225; + the "parlamento," 230; + cause of failure of popular government, 231; + population, 256; + the "arti," 597; + militia, its value, 601; + Machiavelli's reforms, 312; + revenues, 255; + topography, 595; + history (see Italy), rule of the Medici, 277, 305, 629, + years 1527-31, 282; + recovers liberty through the French, 560; + occupation, 562; + commonwealth, 282; + divisions of popular party, 283; + siege, 285; + effect of Savonarola's prophecies, 290; + Pazzi conspiracy, 398; + final subjugation, 446; + character of its historians, 248 _seq_., 274. + + Society, character of people, 600; + their enlightenment and immorality, 504; + absence of religious faith, 295; + excess of intellectual mobility, 237; + commercial character, 238; + social life, 242. + A city of intelligence, 232, 246. +Fondulo, G., 463. +Ford, J., cited, 477. +Foscari, F., 215; quoted, 600. +Francia, works, 489. +Frattcelli, 9. +Frederick I., 63. +Frederick II., 10, 68, 105. +Froben, J., 23. + + +G + +Gambacorta, 147. +Gemistos Plethon, 173. +Genezzano, 506, 522. +Genoa, 79; history, 201. +Giacomini, 313. +Giannotti cited, 217; + quoted, 169, 196, 216, 238, 278, 280. +Giotto, works, 488. +Giovio, quoted, 249. +God, medieval idea of, 16. +Gonzaghi, 146. +Government, Guicciardini's theories, 305. [See Machiavelli.] +Graziani quoted, 614. +Greek, knowledge of, in Renaissance, 182. +Greene, R., quoted, 473. +Gregorovius cited, 421, 430, 479,. +Guarino, 171. +Guarnieri, 158. +Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 206. +Guicciardini, 278, 280, 285, 295, 482; + works, 291, 294, 301 _seq_.; + political theories analyzed, 304 _seq_.; + quoted, 44, 91, 92, 119, 169, 223, + 284, 404, 409, 412, 417, 431, 434, + 451, 536. 541. 547, 549, 582, 583, + 603. + + +H + +Hawkwood, J., 113. +Hegel quoted, 367. +Hegel, C, cited, 252. +Heribert, 58. +Hildebrand, 59. +Hirsch cited, 567. +Hogarth, works, 490. +Howell cited, 473. +Hussites, 9. +Hutten, 27. + + +I + +Infessura, works, 292; cited, 405; + quoted, 395, 404, 474, +Innocent VIII., 403. +Inquisition in Spain, 399. +Inventions of Renaissance, 29. +Italy, history (see Condottieri, Papacy), its character, 32; + papacy and empire, 33, 41, 43, 94, 97, 99; + variety of governments, 35, 43; + their influence on national development, 44; + politics, 36; + invasions, 39; + want of historical continuity, 41; + the despotisms, 42; + origin of modern history, 46; + the Lombards, 48; + Charles the Great, 51; + Berengar, 52; + Otho I., 52; + growth of power of Church, 53; + Frederick I., 63; + Charles of Anjou, 75; + convulsions of 14th century, 81; + states of 15th century, 88; + obstacles to unity, 89; + to monarchy, 92; + to federalism, 95; + in time of Machiavelli, 365; + policy of Lorenzo, 543; + equilibrium destroyed, 545; + French invasion, 549; + character of their army, 565; + league against them, 576; + cause of their failure, 340; + effect of their example, 583; + on other nations, 585; + Charles V., 98. + + Italians incapable of helping themselves, 586; + responsible for their despots, 115; + development precocious and unsound, 495; + fatal effects of want of union, 538, 552. + + _The Republics_, character of their history, 33, 193; + beginning of the power of the cities, 53; + their origin, 54; + count and bishop, 55; + "people," 55; + commune, 56; + consuls, 56; + effect of struggle of papacy and empire, 61; + influence of latter, 198; + Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 80, 206; + wars of cities, 62; + Frederic I., 64; + struggle with nobles, 66; + the podesta, 67; + "captain of the people," 71; + the "arti," 72; + distinction between parties, 74; + not representative governments, 196; + not democratic, 195; + factions, 195, 210; + small number of active citizens, 209; + temporal character of alliances, 212. + + _The Despotisms_, 42, 76; + their justification, 83; + idea of liberty, 78; + republican freedom unknown, 91; + policy commercial, 85; + taxation, 86; + diplomacy substituted for warfare, 87; + illegitimacy, 102; + good government, 103; + bad effect of their example, 104; + courts, 106, 186; + varieties of despotisms, 109; + claims of despots due to force, not rank, 116; + their democratic character, 117; + uncertainty of tenure of power, 117, 129; + domestic crime, 119; + murders, 120; + tastes and pursuits, 126; + degeneracy of their houses, 126, 151; + bad effects of rule, 130; + centralizing tendencies, 131; + cruelty, 151; + absence of all morality, 168. + + _Society_. Why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance, 5; + Italians gentle and humane, 478; + not gluttons, 479; + personal originality not discouraged, 488; + Italy originates type of gentleman, 192; + courtiers, idea of nobility, 186; + community of interest with that of Roman Church, 470; + immorality not great relatively, 487; + superiority to their contemporaries, 489; + purity of their art shows that heart of the people was not + vitiated, 488; + commercial integrity, 474; + demoralization of society, 472; + immorality came from above, 489; + commonness of crime, 170, 480; + exceptions to rule, 183; + murders, 480; + deficiency in sense of honor, 481; + chastity in women, 486; + unnatural passions, 477; + charms of illicit love, 476; + immoral literature, 475. + Literature, early, 53. + + +J + +Jews, expulsion from Spain, 400. +Julia, daughter of Claudius, 22, 23. +Julius II., 389, 406, 432 seq. + + +L + +Lecce, Roberto da, 614. +Leo X., 435, 630. +Libraries of Renaissance, 21. +Locke, J., 26. +Lombards, 48 seq. +London, mediaeval, 137. +Louis XII., 339. +Luini, works, 489. +Lungo, del, cited, 273. +Luther, 26, 442, 454, 530. + + +M + +Macaulay on the despots, 127, 320. +Machiavelli, 232, 278, 308 seq.; + property, 309; + education, 310; + political career, 311; + cringing character, 317; + intercourse with Cesare Borgia, 347; + compared with Savonarola, 368; + last years, 328; + death, 333. + Works, 76, 169, 203, 249, 332, 369, 457, 494; + military system, 312; + Art of War, 328; + History, 331; + The Prince, 319; + object in writing it, 321; + appeal to the Medici, 366; + apology for the author, 367; + morality of the work, 324-6; + author's sincerity, 333; + not the inventor of Machiavellianism, 335; + it assumes Reparation of statecraft and morality, 335; + an abstract of political expediency, 336; + how permanently to assimilate provinces, 338; + colonies, 338; + founders of monarchies, 343; + distinction between monarch and despot, 341; + use of cruelty, 354; + value of distrust, 358; + military precautions, 360; + the work condemned + by the Inquisition, 336; + opinion of it in France, 326; + quoted, 45, 82, 84, 96, 98, 115, 116, 146, 152, 187, 202, 214, + 215, 245, 325, 447, 450, 453, 460. +Madonna, conventional idea of, 18. +Malatesta, 172. +Malespini, chronicle, 251. +Mantegna, works, 489. +Mantuanus, B., quoted, 394. +Marlowe quoted, 336. +Marston, cited, 473, 475. +Massa, B. da, 611. +Masuccio quoted, 458, 486. +Matarazzo, works, 292; quoted, 583. +Medici, their policy, 87, 90, 128, 155, 228, 230; + expulsion, 222; + connection with papacy, 404; + services to literature, 600. + Alessandro, 298; + Cosimo, 300, 492; + Lorenzo, 504, 628; + death, 523; + Piero, 558. +Michelet quoted, 15, 585. +Middle Age: mental condition, 6, 13; + inaccessibility to mental ideas, 7; + political character, 8; + art, 17; + scholarship, 20. +Milan, 58; Visconti and Sforza, 154. +Milman quoted, 530. +Milton, 454. +Mirandola, 171, 456, 520; + quoted, 401, 511. +Monaldeschi, L. B., 252. +Montferrat, 146. +Montone, B. da, 123, 159. +Morals (see Italy, society; Papacy, court; Virtu;) in Cellini's memoirs, + 325; + sexual immorality,474; + tyrannicide defended, 468. +Muentz, E., cited, 384. +Muzio quoted, 174. + + +N + +Naples (see Italy), attraction for foreigners, 566; + claims of house + of Anjou, 539; + flight of king, 574. +Nardi, 278, 280, 290; + works, 291; + quoted, 292, 511, 534, 592. +Nerli, 278, 290; works, 293 seq.; + quoted, 328. +Nicholas V., 378. +Normans In Italy, 58. + + +O + +Olgiati, 166. +Orsini, 375. +Otho 1., 52. + + +P + +Pamponazzo, 456. +Pandolfini, 239; + works, 241. +Papacy (see Catholic Church), "the ghost of the Roman empire," 6; + church and state, 8; + Charles the Great, 51; + imperial nominees, 59; + change in mode of election, 60; + effect of crushing the Hohenstauffen, 101; + nepotism, 114; + authority in 14th century, 371, 375; + secularization, 371, 375; + temporal power, 376; its consolidation, 378; + its extent, 434; + persecution, 402; + of Platonists, 417; + its effect, 418; + plan to transform Papacy to kingdom, 392; + sale of pardons, 404, 439; + no horror felt at election of Alexander VI., 410; + Turks invited to Italy, 415, 551; + censure of press, 416: + alliance with France, 427, 566; + political crimes of Alexander VI., 428; + tide turns with Julius II., 433; + reforms of Adrian VI., 441; + moral advantage of sack of Rome, 445. + Court, 372; + its scandalous history, 390, 403, 411, 414, 420, 424, 439, 457; + extravagance, 390, 436, 437; + extortion, 437; + monopolies, 394; + nepotism, 419, 438; + simony, 394, 405, 414; + art patronage, 384, 401, 433, 436. +Paterini, 9. +Paul II., 383. +Pazzi conspiracy, 396. +Perrotti quoted, 179. +Perugia, 612. +Pescara, marquis of, 634. +Petrarch, 11, 20; quoted, 250. +Piccolomini (see Pius II.). +Pisa, 342, 560. +Pitti, 275, 280; works, 291, +Pius II., 380. +Poggio quoted, 187. +Poliziano, 171, +Poontano cited, 481. +Printers of Renaissance, 23, +Provence, civilization of, 9. +Puritanism, 25, 37. + + +R + +Raffaella quoted, 483. +Raphael, works, 488. +Reformation, 433; + how affected by Renaissance, 27. +Rembrandt, works, 490. +Renaissance (see Middle Age), not synonymous with "revival of + learning," 1; + not completed, 2; + extent of signification, 2-3; + origin, 4; + idea not separable from "Reformation," "Revolution," 5; + effect on old beliefs, 14, 16; + all its tendencies worldly, 455; + restores double past, Christian and pagan, 506; + obstacles in the way, 5; + preparation, 9; + opposition of the Church, 10; + character of the men, 12; + discoveries, 15; + scholarship, 20; + assimilation of paganism, 25; + reaction against enlightenment, 25; + inventions, 29. +Reuchlin, 27. +Reumont, A. von, cited, 212, 524. +Ripamonti quoted, 163, 167. +Robbia, works, 489. +Romagna, 349. +Romano, Ezzelino da, 69, 75, 106, 119; + Giulio, works, 490. +Rome (see Italy, Papacy), effect of its ruins, 253; + appearance at time of French occupation, 564; + early mediaeval history, 47; + opposition to Lombards, 49; + government semi-independent of pope, 376; + advantages derived from presence of papal court, 377; + improvements under Nicholas V., 378; + impunity of criminals, 405; + factions destroyed, 413; + rising of Colonnas, 443; + sack, 444, 636; + prostitutes, 474. +Romeo and Juliet, 74, +Rosellini, works, 489, +Rosenbaum cited, 567. +Royere, F. della (see Sixtus IV.); + Francesco Maria, 393; + Giuliano (see Julius II,); + Pietro, 390. +Rubens, works, 490. + + +S + +Sadoleto, quoted, 446. +Savelli, 375. +Savonarola, 202, 221, 230, 277, 283, 290, 345, 368, 453, 454, 456, 491, + 498 seq., 561, 622; + poems, 502; + settles in Florence, 504; + portraits, 508; + eloquence, 510; + creed, 513; + prophecies, 514; + political career, 526; + hatred of secular culture, 527; + dares not break with Rome, 531; + martyrdom, 533; + works, 536; + quoted, 128. +Savoy, 146. +Scala, della, family, 145, 258. +Scheffer-Bolchorst cited, 252, 269. +Segal, 278, 280, 289; + works 292, seq. +Sforza family, 131 seq.; + their magnificience, 164; + to be made kings of Lombardy, 392; + Francesco, 153, 159 seq., 345; + Galeazzo, 165; + Ludovico, 543 seq. +Shelley cited, 477. +Siena, 207, 616. +Sismondi quoted, 138, 144, 159, 226, 533. +Sixtus IV., 388 seq., 502. +Soderini, P., 289, 324. +Spaniards, cruelty of, 478. +Spinoza, 26. +Stendhal cited, 482. +Stephani, the, 23. +Strozzi, Ercole, 423; F., 285. +Swiss, 450. +Syphilis, history of, 567. + + +T + +Tasso, 486. +Temporal Power (see Papacy). +Tenda, Beatrice di, 152. +Theodoric, 47. +Theology, effect of Renaissance upon, 16. +Tiraboschi, quoted, 173. +Titian, works, 19 +Torre, della, 132. +Trinci, 122. + + +U + +Urbino, dukes of, 174 seq., 393, 438. + + +V + +Valois, Charles of, 76. +Varani, 121. +Varchi, 278, 290; + works, 279, 303 seq.; + quoted, 204, 244, 505. +Venice, 79, 88, 91; + an exception + among the republics, 195, 214; + constitution, 215; + the Ten, 218; + fascination exercised by government, 220; + military system, 220; + no initiative mining citizens, 233; + compared with Sparta, 234; + indifference to prosperity of Italy, 550. +Vespusiano quoted, 174, 477, 612. +Vettori, F., 624; works, 626. +Vicenza, John of, 607. +Villani, M., works, 251 seq., quoted, 128, 139. +Villari, quoted, 195, 500. +Vinci, da, 326, 548; + works, 489. +Virgil, 20. +Virtu, 171, 337, 345, 484, 493. +Visconti, family, 131 seq.; + their realm falls to pieces, 150; + Filippo, 152; + Gisa, 141; + Violante, 137. + + +W + +Webster, J., quoted, 119, 557. +Witchcraft persecutions, 402. + + +Y + +Yriarte, quoted, 210, 217. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 1 (OF +7)*** + + +******* This file should be named 15400.txt or 15400.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/4/0/15400 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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