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

preoccupation, and indulged in extravagance and chicanery. He

rescued the family fortune by gradually withdrawing it from commerce

and investing it in city realty and large-scale agriculture; he took

pleasure in personally supervising his farms and orchards, and was

as familiar with fertilizer as with philosophy. Scientifically

irrigated and manured, the lands near his villas at Careggi and Poggio

a Caiano became models of agricultural economy.

The economic life of Florence prospered under his government. `05047

The rate of interest fell as low as five per cent, and commercial

enterprise, readily financed, flourished until, toward the close of

Lorenzo's career, England became a troublesome competitor in the

textile export trade. Even more conducive to prosperity was his policy

of peace, and the balance of power that he maintained in Italy

during the second decade of his rule. Florence joined with other

Italian states in ejecting the Turks from Italy; this accomplished,

Lorenzo induced Ferrante of Naples and Galeazzo Sforza of Milan to

sign with Florence an alliance for mutual defense; when Pope

Innocent VIII joined this league most of the minor states adhered to

it too; Venice held aloof, but was persuaded to good behavior by

fear of the allies; in this way, with some minor interruptions, the

peace of Italy was maintained until Lorenzo's death. Meanwhile he

exerted all his tact and influence to protect weak states against

the strong, to adjudicate and reconcile interstate interests and

disputes, and to nip every casus belli in the bud. `05048 In that

happy decade (1480-90) Florence reached the apogee of her glory in

politics, literature, and art.

Domestically Lorenzo ruled through the Consiglio di Settanta. By

the constitution of 1480 this Council of Seventy was composed of

thirty members chosen by the Signory of that year, and forty others

chosen by these thirty. Membership was for life, and vacancies were

filled by co-optation. Under this arrangement the Signory and the

gonfalonier had authority only as executive agents of the Council.

Popular parlamenti and elections were dispensed with. Opposition was

difficult, for Lorenzo employed spies to detect it, and had means of

troubling his opponents financially. The old factions slept; crime hid

its head; order prospered while liberty declined. "We have here,"

wrote a contemporary, "no robberies, no nocturnal commotions, no

assassinations. By night or by day every person may transact his

affairs in perfect safety." `05049 "If Florence was to have a tyrant,"

said Guicciardini, "she could never have found a better or more

delightful one." `050410 The merchants preferred economic prosperity

to political freedom; the proletariat was kept busy with extensive

public works, and forgave dictatorship so long as Lorenzo supplied

it with bread and games. Tournaments allured the rich, horse races

thrilled the bourgeoisie, and pageants amused the populace.

It was the custom of the Florentines, in carnival days, to promenade

the streets in gay or frightful masks, singing satiric or erotic

songs, and to organize trionfi - parades of painted and garlanded

floats representing mythological or historical characters or events.

Lorenzo relished the custom, but distrusted its tendency to

disorder; he resolved to bring it under control by lending it the

approval and order of government; under his rule the pageants became

the most popular feature of Florentine life. He engaged leading

artists to design and paint the chariots, banners, and costumes; he

and his friends composed lyrics to be sung from the carri; and these

songs reflected the moral relaxation of carnival. The most famous of

Lorenzo's pageants was the "Triumph of Bacchus," wherein a

procession of floats carrying lovely maidens, and a cavalcade of

richly garbed youths on prancing steeds, came over the Ponte Vecchio

to the spacious square before the cathedral, while voices in

polyphonic harmony, to the accompaniment of cymbals and lutes, sang

a poem composed by Lorenzo himself, and hardly becoming a cathedral:

-

1. Quanto e bella giovinezza,

Che si fuge tutta via!

Chi vuol esser lieto sia!

Di doman non c'e certezza.

-

1. Fair is youth and void of sorrow,

But it hourly flies away.

Youths and maids, enjoy today;

Nought ye know about tomorrow.

-

2. This is Bacchus and the bright

Ariadne, lovers true!

They, in flying time's despite,

Each with each finds pleasures new;

-

3. These, their nymphs, and all their crew

Keep perpetual holiday.

Youths and maids, enjoy today;

Nought ye know about tomorrow......

-

14. Ladies and gay lovers young!

Long live Bacchus, live Desire!

Dance and play, let songs be sung;

Let sweet love your bosoms fire.

-

15. In the future come what may

Youths and maids enjoy today;

Nought ye know about tomorrow. `050411

-

Such poems and pageants lend some pale color to the charge that

Lorenzo corrupted Florentine youth. Probably it would have been

"corrupt" without him; morals in Venice, Ferrara, and Milan were no

better than in Florence; they were better in Florence under the Medici

bankers than later in Rome under the Medici popes.

Lorenzo's esthetic sensibilities were too keen for his morals.

Poetry was one of his prime devotions, and his compositions rivaled

the best of his time. While his only superior, Politian, still

hesitated between Latin and Italian, Lorenzo's verses restored to

the vernacular the literary primacy that Dante had established and the

humanists had overthrown. He preferred Petrarch's sonnets to the

love poetry of the Latin classics, though he could read these easily

in the original; and more than once he himself composed a sonnet

that might have graced Petrarch's Canzoniere. But he did not take

poetic love too seriously. He wrote with finer sincerity about the

rural scenes that gave exercise to his limbs and peace to his mind;

his best poems celebrate the woods and streams, trees and flowers,

flocks and shepherds, of the countryside. Sometimes he wrote

humorous pieces in terza rima that lifted the simple language of the

peasantry into sprightly verse; sometimes he composed satirical farces

Rabelaisianly free; then, again, a religious play for his children,

and some hymns that catch here and there a note of honest piety. But

his most characteristic poems were the Canti carnascialeschi -

Carnival Songs- written to be sung in festival time and mood, and

expressing the legitimacy of pleasure and the discourtesy of

maidenly prudence. Nothing could better illustrate the morals and

manners, the complexity and diversity of the Italian Renaissance

than the picture of its most central character ruling a state,

managing a fortune, jousting in tournament, writing excellent

poetry, supporting artists and authors with discriminating

patronage, mingling at ease with scholars and philosophers, peasants

and buffoons, marching in pageants, singing bawdy songs, composing

tender hymns, playing with mistresses, begetting a pope, and honored

throughout Europe as the greatest and noblest Italian of his time.

IV. LITERATURE: THE AGE OF POLITIAN

-

Encouraged by his aid and example, Florentine men of letters now

wrote more and more of their works in Italian. Slowly they formed that

literary Tuscan which became the model and standard of the whole

peninsula- "the sweetest, richest, and most cultured, not only of

all the languages of Italy," said the patriotic Varchi, "but of all

the tongues that are known today." `050412

But while reviving Italian literature, Lorenzo carried on

zealously his grandfather's enterprise of gathering for the use of

scholars in Florence all the classics of Greece and Rome. He sent

Politian and John Lascaris to various cities in Italy and abroad to

buy manuscripts; from one monastery at Mt. Athos Lascaris brought

two hundred, of which eighty were as yet unknown to Western Europe.

According to Politian, Lorenzo wished that he might be allowed to

spend his entire fortune, even to pledge his furniture, in the

purchase of books. He paid scribes to make copies for him of

manuscripts that could not be purchased, and in return he allowed

other collectors, like King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and Duke

Federigo of Urbino, to send their copyists to transcribe manuscripts

in the Medicean Library. After Lorenzo's death this collection was

united with that which Cosimo had placed in the convent of San

Marco; together, in 1495, they included 1039 volumes, of which 460

were Greek. Michelangelo later designed a lordly home for these books,

and posterity gave it Lorenzo's name- Bibliotheca Laurentiana, the

Laurentian Library. When Bernardo Cennini set up a printing press in

Florence (1471) Lorenzo did not, like his friend Politian or

Federigo of Urbino, turn up his nose at the new art; he seems to

have recognized at once the revolutionary possibilities of movable

type; and he engaged scholars to collate diverse texts in order that

the classics might be printed with the greatest accuracy possible at

that time. So encouraged, Bartolommeo di Libri printed the editio

princeps of Homer (1488) under the careful scholarship of Demetrius

Chalcondyles; John Lascaris issued the editiones principes of

Euripides (1494), the Greek Anthology (1494), and Lucian (1496); and

Cristoforo Landino edited Horace (1482), Virgil, Pliny the Elder,

and Dante, whose language and allusions already required

elucidation. We catch the spirit of the time when we learn that

Florence rewarded Cristoforo, for these labors of scholarship, with

the gift of a splendid home.

Lured by the reputation of the Medici and other Florentines for

generous patronage, scholars flocked to Florence and made it the

capital of literary learning. Vespasiano da Bisticci, after serving as

bookseller and librarian at Florence, Urbino, and Rome, composed an

eloquent but judicious series of Lives of Illustrious Men,

commemorating the writers and patrons of the age. To develop and

transmit the intellectual legacy of the race Lorenzo restored and

enlarged the old University of Pisa, and the Platonic Academy at

Florence. The latter was no formal college but an association of men

interested in Plato, meeting at irregular intervals in Lorenzo's

city palace or in Ficino's villa at Careggi, dining together,

reading aloud part or all of a Platonic dialogue, and discussing its

philosophy. November 7, the supposed anniversary of Plato's birth

and death, was celebrated by the Academy with almost religious

solemnity; a bust believed to be of Plato was crowned with flowers,

and a lamp was burned before it as before the image of a deity.

Cristoforo Landino used these meetings as the basis for the

imaginary conversations that he wrote as Disputationes Camaldulenses

(1468). He told how he and his brother, visiting the monastery of

the Camaldulese monks, met the young Lorenzo and Giuliano de'

Medici, Leon Battista Alberti, and six other Florentine gentlemen; how

they reclined on the grass near a flowing fountain, compared the

worried hurry of the city with the healing quiet of the countryside,

and debated the active versus the contemplative career, and how

Alberti praised a life of rural meditation, while Lorenzo urged that

the mature mind finds its fullest functioning and satisfaction in

the service of the state and the commerce of the world. `050413

Among those who attended the discussions of the Platonic Academy

were Politian, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and Marsilio

Ficino. Marsilio had been so faithful to Cosimo's commission as to

devote almost all his life to translating Plato into Latin and to

studying, teaching, and writing about Platonism. In youth he was so

handsome that the maidens of Florence eyed him possessively, but he

cared less for them than for his books. For a time he lost his

religious faith; Platonism seemed superior; he addressed his

students as "beloved in Plato" rather than "beloved in

Christ"; `050414 he burned candles before a bust of Plato, and

adored him as a saint. `050415 Christianity appeared to him, in this

mood, as but one of the many religions that hid elements of truth

behind their allegorical dogmas and symbolic rites. St. Augustine's

writings, and gratitude for recovery from a critical illness, won

him back to the Christian faith. At forty he became a priest, but he

remained an enthusiastic Platonist. Socrates and Plato, he argued, had

expounded a monotheism as noble as that of the Prophets; they, too, in

their minor way, had received a divine revelation; so, indeed, had all

men in whom reason ruled. Following his lead, Lorenzo and most of

the humanists sought not to replace Christianity with another faith,

but to reinterpret it in terms that a philosopher could accept. For

a generation or two (1447-1534) the Church smiled tolerantly on the

enterprise. Savonarola denounced it as humbug.

Next to Lorenzo himself, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was the

most fascinating personality in the Platonic Academy. Born in the town

(near Modena) made famous by his name, he studied at Bologna and

Paris, and was received with honor at almost every court in Europe;

finally Lorenzo persuaded him to make Florence his home. His eager

mind took up one study after another- poetry, philosophy,

architecture, music- and achieved in each some outstanding excellence.

Politian described him as a paragon in whom Nature had united all

her gifts: "tall and finely molded, with something of divinity shining

in his face"; a man of penetrating glance, indefatigable study,

miraculous memory, and ecumenical erudition, eloquent in several

languages, a favorite with women and philosophers, and as lovable in

character as he was handsome in person and eminent in all qualities of

intellect. His mind was open to every philosophy and every faith; he

could not find it in him to reject any system, any man; and though

in his final years he spurned astrology, he welcomed mysticism and

magic as readily as he accepted Plato and Christ. He had a good word

to say for the Scholastic philosophers, whom most other humanists

repudiated as having barbarously expressed absurdities. He found

much to admire in Arabic and Jewish thought, and numbered several Jews

among his teachers and honored friends. `050416 He studied the

Hebrew Cabala, innocently accepted its alleged antiquity, and

announced that he had found in it full proofs for the divinity of

Christ. As one of his feudal titles was Count of Concordia, he assumed

the high duty of reconciling all the great religions of the West-

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam- and these with Plato, and Plato with

Aristotle. Though flattered by all, he retained to the end of his

brief life a charming modesty that was impaired only by his

ingenuous trust in the accuracy of his learning and the power of human

reason.

Going to Rome at the age of twenty-four (1486), he startled

priests and pundits by publishing a list of nine hundred propositions,

covering logic, metaphysics, theology, ethics, mathematics, physics,

magic, and the Cabala, and including the generous heresy that even the

greatest mortal sin, being finite, could not merit eternal punishment.

Pico proclaimed his readiness to defend any or all of these

propositions in public debate against any person, and offered to pay

the traveling expenses of any challenger from whatever land he might

come. As a preface to this proposed tournament of philosophy he

prepared a famous oration, later entitled De hominis dignitate

( On the Dignity of Man ), which expressed with youthful ardor the

high opinion that the humanists- contradicting most medieval views-

held of the human species. "It is a commonplace of the schools," wrote

Pico, "that man is a little world, in which we may discern a body

mingled of earthly elements, and a heavenly spirit, and the

vegetable soul of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and

reason, and the mind of angels, and the likeness of God." `050417

And then Pico put into the mouth of God Himself, as words spoken to

Adam, a divine testimony to the limitless potentialities of man: "I

created thee as being neither heavenly nor earthly... that thou

mightest be free to shape and to overcome thyself. Thou mayest sink

into a beast, or be born anew to the divine likeness." To which Pico

added, in the high spirit of the young Renaissance:

-

This is the culminating gift of God, this is the supreme and

marvelous felicity of man... that he can be that which he wills to be.

Animals, from the moment of their birth, carry with them, from their

mothers' bodies, all that they are destined to have or be; the highest

spirits [angels] are from the beginning... what they will be

forever. But God the Father endowed man, from birth, with the seeds of

every possibility and every life. `050418

-

No one cared to accept Pico's multifarious challenge, but Pope

Innocent VIII condemned three of the propositions as heretical.

Since these formed so tiny a proportion of the whole, Pico might

have expected mercy, and indeed, Innocent did not press the matter.

But Pico issued a cautious retraction, and departed for Paris, where

the University offered him protection. In 1493 Alexander VI, with

his wonted geniality, notified Pico that all was forgiven. Back in

Florence Pico became a devout follower of Savonarola, abandoned his

pursuit of omniscience, burned his five volumes of love poetry, gave

his fortune to provide marriage dowries for poor girls, and himself

adopted a semimonastic life. He thought of joining the Dominican

order, but died before he could make up his mind- still a youth of

thirty-one. His influence survived his brief career, and inspired

Reuchlin to continue, in Germany, those Hebrew studies which had

been among the passions of Pico's life.

Politian, who admired Pico generously, and corrected his poetry with

the most gracious apologies, was a man of less meteoric lure, but of

deeper penetration and more substantial accomplishment. Angelus

Bassus, as he originally called himself- Angelo Ambrogini, as some

called him- took his more famous name from Monte Poliziano, in the

Florentine hinterland. Coming to Florence he studied Latin under

Cristoforo Landino, Greek under Andronicus of Salonica, Platonism

under Ficino, and the Aristotelian philosophy under Argyropoulos. At

sixteen he began to translate Homer into a Latin so idiomatic and

vigorous that it seemed the product of at least the Silver Age of

Roman poetry. Having finished the first two books, he sent them to

Lorenzo. That prince of patrons, alert to every excellence, encouraged

him to continue, took him into his home as tutor of his son Piero, and

provided for all his needs. So freed from want, Politian edited

ancient texts- among them the Pandects of Justinian- with a learning

and judgment that won universal praise. When Landino published an

edition of Horace, Politian prefaced it with an ode comparable in

Latinity, phrasing, and complex versification with the poems of Horace

himself. His lectures on classic literature were attended by the

Medici, Pico della Mirandola, and foreign students- Reuchlin,

Grocyn, Linacre, and others- who had heard, beyond the Alps, the

echo of his fame as scholar, poet, and orator in three tongues. It was

not unusual for him to prelude a lecture with an extensive Latin

poem composed for the occasion; one such piece, in sonorous

hexameters, was nothing less than a history of poetry from Homer to

Boccaccio. This and other poems, published by Politian under the title

of Sylvae, revealed a Latin style so facile and fluent, so vivid

in imagery, that the humanists acclaimed him as their master despite

his youth, and rejoiced that the noble language which they aspired

to restore had been taught to live again.

While making himself almost a Latin classic, Politian issued with

fertile ease a succession of Italian poems that stand unrivaled

between Petrarch and Ariosto. When Lorenzo's brother Giuliano won a

joust in 1475, Politian described La giostra in ottava rima of

melodious elegance; and in La bella Simonetta he celebrated the

aristocratic beauty of Giuliano's beloved with such eloquence and

finesse that Italian love poetry took on thereafter a new delicacy

of diction and feeling. Giuliano tells how, going out to hunt, he came

upon Simonetta and other lasses dancing in a field.

-

The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire

I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood,

In graceful attitude,

Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign.

So sweet, so tender was her face divine,

So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes

Shone perfect paradise,

Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave....

Down from her royal head and lustrous brow

The golden curls fell joyously unpent,

While through the choir she went

With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.

Her eyes, though scarcely raised above the ground,

Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair;

But still her jealous hair

Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze.

She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise,

No sooner saw this wrong than back she drew-

With hand of purest hue-

Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien;

Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen,

So sweet a soul of love, she cast on mine

That scarce can I divine

How then I 'scaped from burning utterly. `050419

-

For his own mistress, Ippolita Leoncina, Politian composed love

songs of exquisite grace and tenderness; and, overflowing with rhymes,

he fashioned similar lyrics to be used by his friends as charms to

exorcise modesty. He learned the ballads of the peasantry, and

reshaped them into finished literary form; so rephrased they passed

back into popularity, and have left echoes in Tuscany to this day.

In La brunettina mia he described a village beauty bathing her

face and bosom at a fountain, and crowning her hair with flowers; "her

breasts were as May roses, her lips were as strawberries"; it is a

hackneyed theme that never palls. Trying to recapture that union of

drama, poetry, music, and song which had been accomplished in the

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

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