Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

best be understood as the embodied synthesis of his time. Leon

Battista Alberti lived every phase of his century except the

political. He was born in Venice of a Florentine exile, returned to

Florence when Cosimo was recalled, and fell in love with its art,

its music, its literary and philosophical coteries. Florence responded

by hailing him as almost a monstrously perfect man. He was both

handsome and strong; excelled in all bodily exercises; could, with

feet tied, leap over a standing man; could, in the great cathedral,

throw a coin far up to ring against the vault; amused himself by

taming wild horses and climbing mountains. He was a good singer, an

eminent organist, a charming conversationalist, an eloquent orator,

a man of alert but sober intelligence, a gentleman of refinement and

courtesy, generous to all but women, whom he satirized with unpleasant

persistence and possibly artificial indignation. Caring little about

money, he committed the care of his property to his friends, and

shared its income with them. "Men can do all things if they will,"

he said; and indeed there were few major artists in the Italian

Renaissance who did not excel in several arts. Like Leonardo half a

century later, Alberti was a master, or at least a skilled

practitioner, in a dozen fields- mathematics, mechanics, architecture,

sculpture, painting, music, poetry, drama, philosophy, civil and canon

law. He wrote on nearly all these subjects, including a treatise on

painting that influenced Piero della Francesca and perhaps Leonardo;

he added two dialogues on women and the art of love, and a famous

essay on "The Care of the Family." After painting a picture he would

call in children and ask them what it meant; if it puzzled them he

considered it a failure. `050351 He was among the first to discover

the possibilities of the camera obscura. Predominantly an architect,

he passed from city to city raising facades or chapels in the Roman

style. In Rome he shared in planning the buildings with which, as

Vasari put it, Nicholas V was "turning the capital upside down." In

Rimini he transformed the old church of San Francesco into almost a

pagan temple. In Florence he raised a marble front for the church of

Santa Maria Novella, and built for the Rucellai family a chapel in the

church of San Pancrazio, and two palaces of simple and stately design.

In Mantua he adorned the cathedral with a chapel of the Incoronata,

and faced the church of Sant' Andrea with a facade in the form of a

Roman triumphal arch.

He composed a comedy, Philodoxus, in such idiomatic Latin that

no one doubted him when, as a hoax on his time, he passed it off as

the newly discovered work of an ancient author; and Aldus Manutius,

himself a scholar, printed it as a Roman classic. He wrote his

treatises in chatty dialogue form, and in "bare and simple" Italian so

that even a busy businessman might read him. His religion was rather

Roman than Christian, but he was always a Christian when he heard

the cathedral choir. Looking far ahead, he expressed the fear that the

decline of Christian belief would plunge the world into a chaos of

conduct and ideas. He loved the countryside around Florence, retired

to it whenever he could, and made the title character of his

dialogue Teogenio say:

-

The society of the illustrious dead can be enjoyed by me at

leisure here; and when I choose to converse with sages, statesmen,

or great poets, I have but to turn to my bookshelves, and my company

is better than any that your palaces can afford with all their crowd

of clients and flatterers.

-

Cosimo agreed with him, and found no greater solace in his old age

than his villas, his intimates, his art collection, and his books.

He suffered severely from gout, and in his final years left the

internal affairs of the state to Luca Pitti, who abused the

opportunity to add to his wealth. Cosimo's own fortune had not been

diminished by his numerous charities; he whimsically complained that

God kept always a step ahead of him in returning his benefactions with

interest. `050352 In his country seats he applied himself to the study

of Plato, under the tutelage of his protege Ficino. When Cosimo lay

dying it was on the authority of Plato's Socrates, not on that of

Christ, that Ficino promised him a life beyond the grave. Friends

and enemies alike grieved over his death (1464), fearing chaos in

the government; and almost the entire city followed his corpse to

the tomb that he had commissioned Desiderio da Settignano to prepare

for him in the church of San Lorenzo.

Patriots like Guicciardini, angered by the conduct of the later

Medici, thought of him as Brutus thought of Caesar; `050353

Machiavelli honored him as he honored Caesar. `050354 Cosimo had

overthrown the Republic, but the freedom he had checked was the

liberty of the rich to rule the state with factious violence. Though

he sullied his record with occasional cruelty, his reign was by and

large one of the most genial, peaceful, and orderly periods in the

history of Florence; and the other was that of the grandson who had

been trained by his precedents. Rarely had any prince been so wisely

generous, or so genuinely interested in the advancement of mankind. "I

owe much to Plato," said Ficino, "but to Cosimo no less; he realized

for me the virtues of which Plato gave me the conception." `050355

Under him the humanist movement flowered; under him the diverse genius

of Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Lippo Lippi received bountiful

encouragement; under him Plato, so long overshadowed by Aristotle,

returned into the mindstream of humanity. When a year had passed after

Cosimo's death, and time had had a chance to dull his glory and reveal

his faults, the Florentine Signory voted to inscribe upon his tomb the

noblest title it could confer: Pater Patriae, Father of His Country.

And it was deserved. With him the Renaissance lifted its head; under

his grandson it reached its purest excellence; under his

great-grandson it conquered Rome. Many sins may be forgiven to such

a dynasty.

CHAPTER IV: The Golden Age: 1464-92

I. PIERO "IL GOTTOSO"

-

COSIMO'S son Piero, aged fifty, succeeded to his wealth, his

authority, and his gout. Even from boyhood this disease of the

prosperous had afflicted Piero, so that his contemporaries, to

distinguish him from other Peters, called him Il Gottoso. He was a

man of fair ability and good morals; he had performed reasonably

well some diplomatic missions entrusted to him by his father; he was

generous to his friends, to literature, religion, and art; but he

lacked Cosimo's intelligence, geniality, and tact. To cement political

support Cosimo had lent large sums to influential citizens; Piero

now suddenly called in these loans. Several debtors, fearing

bankruptcy, proclaimed a revolution under "the name of liberty,

which," says Machiavelli, "they adopted as their ensign to give

their purpose a graceful covering." `05041 For a brief interval they

controlled the government; but the Medicean party soon recaptured

it; and Piero continued a troubled reign until his death (1469).

He left two sons, Lorenzo aged twenty, Giuliano sixteen. Florence

could not believe that such youths could successfully direct the

business of their family, much less the affairs of the state. Some

citizens demanded the restoration of the Republic in fact as well as

form; and many feared a generation of chaos and civil war. Lorenzo

surprised them.

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LORENZO

-

Noting Piero's ill health, Cosimo had done his best to prepare

Lorenzo for the tasks of power. The boy had learned Greek from Joannes

Argyropoulos, philosophy from Ficino, and he had absorbed education

unconsciously by hearing the conversation of statesmen, poets,

artists, and humanists. He learned also the arts of war, and at

nineteen, in a tournament displaying the sons of Florence's leading

families, he won the first prize "not by favor, but by his own

valor." `05042 On his armor, in that contest, was a French motto,

Le temps revient, which might have been the theme of the

Renaissance- "The [Golden] Age returns." Meanwhile he had taken to

writing sonnets in the style of Dante and Petrarch; and bound by

fashion to write of love, he sought among the aristocracy some lady

whom he might poetically desire. He chose Lucrezia Donati, and

celebrated all her virtues except her regrettable chastity; for she

seems never to have allowed more than the passions of the pen.

Piero, thinking marriage a sure cure for romance, persuaded the

youth to wed Clarice Orsini (1469), thus allying the Medici with one

of the two most powerful families in Rome. On that occasion the entire

city was feasted by the Medici for three successive days, and five

thousand pounds of sweetmeats were consumed.

Cosimo had given the lad some practice in public affairs, and Piero,

in power, widened the range of his responsibilities in finance and

government. When Piero died Lorenzo found himself the richest man in

Florence, perhaps in Italy. The management of his fortune and his

business might have been a sufficient burden for his young

shoulders, and the Republic had now a chance to reassert its

authority. But the clients, debtors, friends, and appointees of the

Medici were so numerous, and so anxious for the continuance of

Medicean rule, that, two days after Piero's death, a deputation of

leading citizens waited upon Lorenzo at his home, and asked him to

assume the guidance of the state. He was not hard to convince. The

finances of the Medici firm were so entangled with those of the city

that he feared ruin if the enemies or rivals of his house should

capture political power. To quiet criticism of his youth, he appointed

a council of experienced citizens to advise him on all matters of

major concern. He consulted this council throughout his career, but he

soon showed such good judgment that it rarely questioned his

leadership. He offered his younger brother a generous share of

power; but Giuliano loved music and poetry, jousts and love; he

admired Lorenzo, and gladly resigned to him the cares and honors of

government. Lorenzo ruled as Cosimo and Piero had ruled, remaining

(till 1490) a private citizen, but recommending policies to a

balia in which the supporters of his house had a secure majority.

The balia, under the constitution, had absolute but only temporary

power; under the Medici it became a permanent Council of Seventy.

The citizens acquiesced because prosperity continued. When

Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, visited Florence in 1471, he was

amazed at the signs of wealth in the city, and still more at the art

that Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo had gathered in the Medici palace

and gardens. Here already was a museum of statuary, vases, gems,

paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and architectural remains.

Galeazzo averred that he had seen a greater number of fine paintings

in this one collection than in all the rest of Italy; so far had

Florence forged ahead in this characteristic art of the Renaissance.

The Medici fortunes were further enhanced when (1471) Lorenzo led a

delegation of Florentines to Rome to congratulate Sixtus IV on his

elevation to the papacy; Sixtus responded by renewing the Medici

management of the papal finances. Five years earlier Piero had

obtained for his house the lucrative right to develop the papal

mines near Civitavecchia, which produced the precious alum used in

dyeing and finishing cloth.

Soon after his return from Rome Lorenzo met, not too successfully,

his first major crisis. An alum mine in the district of Volterra- a

part of the Florentine dominion- had been leased to private

contractors probably connected with the Medici. When it proved

extremely lucrative the citizens of Volterra claimed a share of the

profits for their municipal revenue. The contractors protested, and

appealed to the Florentine Signory; the Signory doubled the problem by

decreeing that the profits should go to the general treasury of the

whole Florentine state. Volterra denounced the decree, declared its

independence, and put to death several citizens who opposed the

secession. In the Council of Florence Tommaso Soderini recommended

conciliatory measures; Lorenzo rejected them on the ground that they

would encourage insurrection and secession elsewhere. His advice was

taken, the revolt was suppressed by force, and the Florentine

mercenaries, getting out of hand, sacked the rebellious city.

Lorenzo hurried down to Volterra and labored to restore order and make

amends, but the affair remained a blot on his record.

The Florentines readily forgave his severity to Volterra, and they

applauded the energy with which, in 1472, he averted famine in the

city by quickly securing heavy imports of grain. They were happy, too,

when Lorenzo arranged a triple alliance with Venice and Milan to

preserve the peace of northern Italy. Pope Sixtus was not so well

pleased; the papacy could never be comfortable in its weak temporal

power if a strong and united northern Italy bounded the Papal States

on one side, and an extensive Kingdom of Naples hedged it in on the

other. When Sixtus learned that Florence was trying to purchase the

town and territory of Imola (between Bologna and Ravenna), he

suspected Lorenzo of planning to extend Florentine territory to the

Adriatic. Sixtus himself soon bought Imola as a necessary link in

the chain of cities legally- seldom actually- subject to the popes. In

this transaction he used the services and funds of the Pazzi banking

firm, now the strongest rival of the Medici; he transferred from

Lorenzo to the Pazzi the lucrative privilege of managing the papal

revenues; and he appointed two enemies of the Medici- Girolamo

Riario and Francesco Salviati- to be respectively governor of Imola

and archbishop of Pisa, then a Florentine possession. Lorenzo

reacted with an angry haste that Cosimo would have deplored: he took

measures to ruin the Pazzi firm, and he ordered Pisa to exclude

Salviati from its episcopal see. The Pope was so enraged that he

gave his consent to a plot of the Pazzi, Riario, and Salviati to

overthrow Lorenzo; he refused to sanction the assassination of the

youth, but the conspirators did not consider such squeamishness an

impediment. With remarkable indifference to religious propriety,

they planned to kill Lorenzo and Giuliano at Mass in the cathedral

on Easter Sunday (April 26, 1478), at the moment when the priest

should elevate the Host. At the same time Salviati and others were

to seize the Palazzo Vecchio and eject the Signory.

On the appointed day Lorenzo entered the cathedral unarmed and

unguarded, as was his wont. Giuliano was delayed, but Francesco de'

Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini, who had undertaken to murder him, went

to his house, amused him with jests, and persuaded him to come to

the church. There, as the priest raised the Host, Bandini stabbed

Giuliano in the breast. Giuliano fell to the ground, and Francesco de'

Pazzi, leaping upon him, stabbed him repeatedly and with such fury

that he severely cut his own leg. Meanwhile Antonio da Volterra and

Stefano, a priest, attacked Lorenzo with their daggers. He protected

himself with his arms, and received but a slight cut; friends

surrounded him and led him into a sacristy, while his assailants

fled from the hostile crowd. Giuliano was carried dead to the Medici

palace.

While these ceremonies were taking place in the cathedral,

Archbishop Salviati, Iacopo de' Pazzi, and a hundred armed followers

proceeded against the Palazzo Vecchio. They tried to rouse the

populace to their aid by shouting Popolo! Liberta! But the people,

in this crisis, rallied to the Medici with the cry, Vivano le

palle! - "Long live the balls!"- the emblem of the Medici family. When

Salviati entered the palace he was struck down by the gonfalonier

Cesare Petrucci; Iacopo di Poggio, son of the humanist, was hanged

from a palace window; and several other conspirators, who had

climbed the stairs, were seized by the resolute priors and were thrown

out of the windows to be finished by the stone pavement or the

crowd. When Lorenzo appeared, now with a numerous escort, the joy of

the people at his safety expressed itself in violent rage against

all who were suspected of sharing in the conspiracy. Francesco de'

Pazzi, weak from loss of blood, was snatched from his bed and hanged

beside the Archbishop, who gnawed at Francesco's shoulder in his dying

agony. The body of Iacopo de' Pazzi, the old honored head of his

family, was drawn naked through the streets and flung into the Arno.

Lorenzo did what he could to mitigate the bloodthirst of the mob,

and saved several men unjustly accused; but instincts stealthily

latent even in civilized men could not forego this opportunity of safe

expression in the anonymity of the crowd.

Sixtus IV, shocked by the hanging of an archbishop, excommunicated

Lorenzo, the gonfalonier, and the magistrates of Florence, and

suspended all religious services throughout the Florentine

dominions. Some of the clergy protested against this interdict, and

issued a document condemning the Pope in terms of unmeasured

vituperation. `05043 At Sixtus' suggestion Ferrante- King Ferdinand I-

of Naples sent an envoy to Florence, urging the Signory and the

citizens to deliver up Lorenzo to the Pope, or at least to banish him.

Lorenzo advised the Signory to comply; instead it answered Ferdinand

that Florence would suffer every extremity rather than betray its

leader to his enemies. Sixtus and Ferrante now declared war upon

Florence (1479). The King's son Alfonso defeated the Florentine army

near Poggibonsi, and ravaged the countryside.

Soon the people of Florence began to complain of the taxes levied to

finance the campaign, and Lorenzo realized that no community will long

sacrifice itself for an individual. He made a characteristic and

unprecedented decision in this turning point of his career.

Embarking at Pisa, he sailed to Naples, and asked to be taken to the

King. Ferrante admired his courage; the two men were at war; Lorenzo

had no safe-conduct, no weapons, no guard; only recently the

condottiere Francesco Piccinino, invited to Naples as guest of the

King, had been treacherously murdered at the royal command. Lorenzo

frankly admitted the difficulties that Florence faced; but he

pointed out how dangerous it would be to Naples that the papacy should

be so strengthened by the dismemberment of the Florentine dominions as

then to be able to press its old claim upon Naples as a papal and

tributary fief. The Turks were advancing westward by land and sea;

they might at any moment invade Italy, and attack Ferrante's

Adriatic provinces; it would not do, in that crisis, for Italy to be

divided with internal hate and war. Ferrante did not commit himself,

but he gave orders that Lorenzo should be detained as both a

prisoner and an honored guest.

Lorenzo's mission was made more difficult by the continued victories

of Alfonso against the Florentine troops, and by the repeated

request of Sixtus that Lorenzo should be sent to Rome as a papal

prisoner. For three months the Florentine was kept in suspense,

knowing that failure probably meant his death and an end to the

independence of Florence. Meanwhile he made friends by his hospitality

and generosity, his good manners and good cheer. Count Caraffa,

minister of state, was won over, and supported his cause. Ferrante

appreciated the culture and character of his prisoner; here,

apparently, was a man of refinement and integrity; peace made with

such a man would assure the friendship of Florence for Naples

through at least Lorenzo's life. He signed a treaty with him, gave him

a splendid horse, and allowed him to take ship from Naples. When

Florence learned that Lorenzo brought peace it gave him a grateful and

tumultuous welcome. Sixtus raged, and wished to continue the war

alone; but when Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, landed

an army at Otranto (1480), and threatened to overrun Italy and capture

the very citadel of Latin Christianity, Sixtus invited the Florentines

to discuss terms. Their envoys made the due obeisances to the Pope; he

scolded them properly, forgave them, persuaded them to equip fifteen

galleys against the Turks, and made peace. From that time forward

Lorenzo was the unchallenged lord of Tuscany.

III. LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT

-

He ruled now with a milder hand than in his youth. He had just

entered the thirties, but men matured quickly in the hothouse of the

Renaissance. He was not handsome: his large flat nose overhung his

upper lip and then turned outward curiously; his complexion was

dark; and his stern brow and heavy jaw belied the geniality of his

spirit, the charm of his courtesy, the vivacity of his wit, the poetic

sensitivity of his mind. Tall, broad-shouldered, and robust, he looked

more like an athlete than a statesman; and indeed he was seldom

surpassed in physical games. He carried himself with the moderate

dignity indispensable to his station, but in private he made his

many friends immediately forget his power and his wealth. Like his son

Leo X he enjoyed the subtlest art and the simplest buffoons. He was

a humorist with Pulci, a poet with Politian, a scholar with Landino, a

philosopher with Ficino, a mystic with Pico, an esthete with

Botticelli, a musician with Squarcialupi, a reveler with the gayest in

festival time. "When my mind is disturbed with the tumults of public

business," he wrote to Ficino, "and my ears are stunned with the

clamors of turbulent citizens, how could I support such contention

unless I found relaxation in science?"- by which he meant the

pursuit of knowledge in all its forms. `05044

His morals were not as exemplary as his mind. Like many of his

contemporaries he did not allow his religious faith to hamper his

enjoyment of life. He wrote devout hymns with apparent sincerity,

but turned from them, without evident qualm, to poems celebrating

licentious love. He seems rarely to have known remorse except for

pleasures missed. Having reluctantly accepted, for political

reasons, a wife whom he respected rather than loved, he amused himself

with adultery after the fashion of the time. But it was accounted

one of his distinctions that he had no illegitimate children. Debate

is still warm as to his commercial morality. No one questions his

liberality; it was as lavish as Cosimo's. He never rested till he

had repaid every gift with a greater gift; he financed a dozen

religious undertakings, supported countless artists, scholars, and

poets, and lent great sums to the state. After the Pazzi conspiracy he

found that his public and private disbursements had left his firm

unable to meet its obligations; whereupon a complaisant Council

voted to pay his debts out of the state treasury (1480). It is not

clear whether this was a fair return for services rendered and private

funds spent for public purposes, `05045 or a plain

embezzlement; `05046 the fact that the measure, though openly known,

did no harm to Lorenzo's popularity, suggests the more lenient

interpretation. It was his liberality, as well as his wealth and his

luxurious menage, that men had in mind when they called him Il

Magnifico.

His cultural activities involved some neglect of the far-flung

business of his firm. His agents took advantage of his

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.