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

Ariosto himself had through most of his life taken religion lightly;

but, like nearly all the intellects of the Renaissance, he made his

peace with it in the end. Even from youth he had suffered from a

bronchial catarrh, which was probably aggravated by his travels as

courier for the Cardinal. In 1532 the trouble sank deeper, and

became tuberculosis. He struggled against it as if not satisfied

with a mere immortality of fame. He was only fifty-eight when he

died (1533).

He had become a classic long before his death. Twenty-three years

earlier Raphael had painted him, in the Parnassus fresco of the

Vatican, with Homer and Virgil, Horace and Ovid, Dante and Petrarch,

among the unforgettable voices of mankind. Italy calls him her

Homer, and the Furioso her Iliad; but even to an idolater of Italy

this appears more generous than just. The world of Ariosto seems light

and fantastic beside the ruthless siege of Troy; his knights- some

as indistinguishable in their character as in their armor- hardly rise

to the majesty of Agamemnon, the passion of Achilles, the wisdom of

Nestor, the nobility of Hector, the tragedy of Priam; and who will

equate the fair and flighty Angelica with the dia gynaikon, the

goddess among women, Helen conqueror in defeat? And yet the last

word must be as the first: only those can judge Ariosto who know his

language thoroughly, who can catch the nuances of his gaiety and his

sentiment, and can respond to all the music of his melodious dream.

V. AFTERMATH

-

It was the Italians themselves, with their lusty sense of humor, who

provided an antidote to the romanticism of the two Orlandos. Six

years before Ariosto's death Girolamo Folengo published an Orlandino

in which the absurdities of the epics were caricatured with

hilarious exaggerations. Girolamo heard the skeptical lectures of

Pomponazzi at Bologna, adopted a curriculum of amours, intrigues,

fisticuffs, and duels, and was expelled from the University. His

father disowned him, and he became a Benedictine monk (1507),

perhaps as a means of subsistence. Six years later he fell in love

with Girolama Dieda, and eloped with her. In 1519 he published a

volume of burlesques under the title of Maccaronea, which

thenceforth gave its name to a swelling literature of rough and ribald

satire in mingled Latin and Italian verse. The Orlandino was a

riotous mock epic, in coarse and popular vernacular, pursuing a

serious vein for a stanza or two, then startling the reader with a

thought and phrase worthy of the most scatophilic privy councilor. The

knights, armed with kitchen utensils, rush into the lists on limping

mules. The leading churchman of the tale is the monk Griffarosto-

Abbot Grab-the-Roast- whose library consists of cook books

interspersed with victuals and wine, and "all the tongues he knew were

those of oxen and swine"; `051016 through him Folengo satirizes the

clergy of Italy to any Lutheran's content. The work was received

with guffaws of applause, but the author continued to starve.

Finally he retired again to a monastery, wrote pious poetry, and

died in the odor of sanctity at fifty-three (1544). Rabelais

relished him, `051017 and perhaps Ariosto, in his final years,

joined in the merriment.

Alfonso I kept his little state secure against all the assaults of

the papacy, and at last took a reckless revenge by encouraging and

abetting the German-Spanish army that besieged, captured, and

plundered Rome (1527). `051018 Charles V expressed appreciation by

restoring to him Ferrara's ancient fiefs, Modena and Reggio, so that

Alfonso transmitted his duchy undiminished to his heirs. In 1528 he

sent his son Ercole to France to bring home a diplomatic bride from

the royal family- Renee or Renata- tiny, somber, deformed, and

secretly won by the heresy of Calvin. Alfonso, after Lucrezia's

passing, consoled himself with a mistress, Laura Dianti, and perhaps

married her before his death (1534). He had outwitted every enemy

but time.

CHAPTER XI: Venice and Her Realm: 1378-1534

I. PADUA

-

UNDER the dictatorship of the Carraresi Padua was a major Italian

power, rivaling and threatening Venice. In 1378 Padua joined Genoa

in attempting to subjugate the island republic. In 1380 Venice,

exhausted by her war with Genoa, ceded to the duke of Austria the city

of Treviso, strategically situated on her north. In 1383 Francesco I

da Carrara bought Treviso from Austria; soon afterward he tried to

take Vicenza, Udine, and Friuli; had he succeeded he would have

commanded the roads from Venice to her iron mines at Agordo, and the

routes of Venetian trade with Germany; i.e., Padua would have

controlled vital sources of Venetian industry and commerce. Venice was

saved by the skill of her diplomats. They persuaded Giangaleazzo

Visconti to join Venice in war against Padua; Gian, while doubtless

distrusting Venice, seized the opportunity to extend his frontier

eastward with Venetian connivance. Francesco I da Carrara was defeated

and abdicated (1389); and his son, namesake, and successor renewed

(1399) a treaty of 1338 that had acknowledged Padua to be a dependency

of Venice. When Francesco II da Carrara resumed the struggle and

attacked Verona and Vicenza, Venice declared war to the death,

captured and executed him and his sons, and brought Padua under direct

rule by the Venetian Senate (1405). The weary city abandoned the

luxury of a native exploiter, prospered under an alien but competent

administration, and became the educational center of the Venetian

domain. From all quarters of Latin Christendom students came to its

renowned university- Pico della Mirandola, Ariosto, Bembo,

Guicciardini, Tasso, Galileo, Gustavus Vasa who would be King of

Sweden, John Sobieski who would be King of Poland.... The chair of

Greek was founded in 1463 and occupied by Demetrius Chalcondyles

sixteen years before he went to Florence. A century later

Shakespeare could still speak of "Fair Padua, nursery of arts."

One Paduan was himself a famous educational institution. Trained

as a tailor, Francesco Squarcione developed a passion for classic art,

traveled widely in Italy and Greece, copied or sketched Greek and

Roman sculpture and architecture, collected ancient medals, coins, and

statuary, and returned to Padua with one of the best classical

collections of his time. He opened a school of art, installed his

collection there, and gave his pupils two main directives: to study

ancient art and the new science of perspective. Few of the 137 artists

whom he formed remained in Padua, since most of them came from

outside. But in return Giotto came from Florence to paint the Arena

frescoes; Altichiero came from Verona (c. 1376) to adorn a chapel in

St. Anthony's; and Donatello left memorials of his genius in the

cathedral and its square. Bartolommeo Bellano, a pupil of Donatello,

set up two lovely female statues for Gattamelata's chapel in the

same church; Pietro Lombardo of Venice added a fine figure of the

condottiere's son, and a splendid tomb for Antonio Roselli. Andrea

Briosco- "Riccio"- and Antonio and Tullio Lombardo carved for the

Gattamelata chapel some superb marble reliefs; and Riccio set up in

the choir of the church one of the most imposing candelabra in

Italy. He shared with Alessandro Leopardi of Venice and Andrea

Morone of Bergamo in designing the unfinished church of Santa Giustina

(1502f), a chaste example of the Renaissance architectural style.

It was from Padua and Verona that Iacopo Bellini and Antonio

Pisanello brought to Venice the seeds of that Venetian school of

painting through which the splendor of Venice was blazoned to the

world.

II. VENETIAN ECONOMY AND POLICY

-

In 1378 Venice was at nadir: her Adriatic trade was bottled up by

a victorious Genoese fleet, her communications with the mainland

were blocked by Genoese and Paduan troops, her people were starving,

her government contemplated surrender. Half a century later she

ruled Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Treviso, Belluno,

Feltre, Friuli, Istria, the Dalmatian coast, Lepanto, Patras, and

Corinth. Secure in her many-moated citadel, she seemed immune to the

political vicissitudes of the Italian mainland; her wealth and power

mounted until she sat like a throned queen at the head of Italy.

Philippe de Comines, arriving as French ambassador in 1495, pictured

her as "the most triumphant city that I have ever seen." `05111 Pietro

Casola, coming from hostile Milan about the same time, found it

"impossible to describe the beauty, magnificence, and wealth" `05112

of this unique assemblage of 117 islands, 150 canals, 400 bridges, all

dominated by the flowing promenade of the Grand Canal, which the

traveled Comines pronounced "the most beautiful street in the world."

Whence came the wealth that supported this magnificence? Partly from

a hundred industries- shipbuilding, iron manufactures, glass

blowing, leather dressing and tooling, gem cutting and setting,

textiles... all organized in proud guilds ( scuole ) that united

master and man in patriotic fellowship. But perhaps more of Venetian

opulence came from the mercantile marine whose sails flapped on the

lagoons, whose galleys took the products of Venice and her mainland

dependencies, and the German and other wares that scaled the Alps, and

carried them to Egypt, Greece, Byzantium, and Asia, and returned

from the East with silks, spices, rugs, drugs, and slaves. The exports

of an average year were valued at 10,000,000 ducats

($250,000,000?); `05113 no other city in Europe could equal this

trade. The Venetian vessels could be seen in a hundred ports, from

Trebizond in the Black Sea to Cadiz, Lisbon, London, Bruges, even in

Iceland. `05114 On the Rialto, the commercial center of Venice,

merchants could be seen from half the globe. Marine insurance

covered this traffic, and a tax on imports and exports was the

mainstay of the state. The annual income of the Venetian government in

1455 was 800,000 ducats ($20,000,000?); in the same year the revenue

of Florence was some 200,000 ducats, of Naples 310,000, of the Papal

States 400,000, of Milan 500,000, of all Christian Spain,

800,000. `05115

This commerce dictated the policies, as it so largely financed the

operations, of the Venetian Republic. It raised to power a

mercantile aristocracy that made itself hereditary and controlled

all the organs of the state. It kept a population of 190,000 (in 1422)

profitably employed, but it left them dependent upon foreign

markets, materials, and food. Imprisoned in her labyrinth, Venice

could feed her people only by importing food; she could supply her

industries only by importing lumber, metals, minerals, leather, cloth;

and she could pay for these imports only by finding markets for her

products and her trade. Dependent on the mainland for food, outlets,

and raw materials, she fought a succession of wars to establish her

control over northeastern Italy; dependent likewise on non-Italian

areas, she was anxious to dominate the regions that supplied her

wants, the markets that took her goods, the routes by which her

vital commerce passed. She became by "manifest destiny" an

imperialistic power.

So the political history of Venice turned on her economic needs.

When the Scafigeri at Verona, or the Carraresi at Padua, or the

Visconti at Milan attempted to spread their sway over northeastern

Italy, Venice felt endangered and took to arms. Fearful that Ferrara

might control the mouths of the Po, she tried to determine the

choice or policy of the ruling marquis there, and resented the

claims of the papacy to Ferrara as its fief. Her own westward

expansion angered Milan, which had expansive ideas of its own. When

Filippo Maria Visconti attacked Florence (1423), the Tuscan Republic

appealed to Venice for aid, and pointed out that a Milan master over

Tuscany would soon absorb all Italy north of the Papal States. In a

debate often repeated in history, Doge Tommaso Mocenigo, dying, pled

in the Venetian Senate the cause of peace; Francesco Foscari argued

for an offensive war of defense; Foscari won, and Venice began with

Milan a series of wars that lasted, with some lucid intervals, from

1425 to 1454. The death of Filippo Maria (1447), the chaos of the

Ambrosian Republic in Milan, and the capture of Constantinople by

the Turks inclined the rival states to sign at Lodi a treaty that left

the island Republic exhausted but victorious.

Her expansion in the Adriatic began with a legitimate excuse. Her

geographical position as the northernmost port of the Mediterranean

was the fortune of Venice, but it was of no worth without control of

the Adriatic. The eastern coast offered in its isles and bays

convenient lairs for pirate vessels, whose raids were a frequent

loss and constant peril to Venetian shipping. When Venice bribed the

Crusaders to help her take Zara in 1202, she acquired a post from

which year by year to clear out these pirate nests, until all the

Dalmatian coast accepted her sovereignty. When those same Crusaders

raped Constantinople (1204), Venice received, as her share of the

spoils, Crete, Salonika, the Cyclades, and the Sporades, precious

links in a golden chain of trade. With leisurely pertinacity she

took Durazzo, the Albanian coast, the Ionian Islands (1386-92), Friuli

and Istria (1418-20), Ravenna (1441); she was now indisputably Queen

of the Adriatic, and charged tolls to all non-Venetian vessels

plying that sea. `05116 As the advance of the Ottoman Turks toward

Constantinople made it difficult for that capital to defend the

outlying possessions of Byzantium, many Greek islands and cities

submitted themselves to Venice as the only power ready to protect

them. In Cyprus a stately queen, Caterina Cornaro, last of the

Lusignan line, was persuaded that she could not hold her island

against the Turks; she abdicated in favor of a Venetian governor

(1489) and a Venetian pension of 8000 ducats a year; she retired to an

estate at Asolo, near Treviso, set up an unofficial court,

patronized literature and art, and became the subject or dedicatee

of poems and operas, and paintings by Gentile Bellini, Titian, and

Veronese.

All these laborious conquests of diplomacy or arms, these outlets,

guardians, and tributaries of Venetian trade faced in their turn the

rising tide of the Ottomans. At Gallipoli (1416) a Turkish garrison

attacked a Venetian fleet; the Venetians fought with their usual

courage and won a decisive victory; for a generation the rival

powers lived in a truce and commercial amity that shocked a Europe

anxious to have Venice fight Europe's battle against the Turks. Even

the fall of Constantinople did not disrupt this entente; Venice

arranged a tolerable commercial treaty with the victorious Turks,

and exchanged courtesies with the conqueror. But now Venetian access

to the lucrative trade of the Black Sea ports was dependent on Turkish

permission, and soon met with irritating limitations. When Pius II,

voicing the sentiments of a Christian and the commercial interests

of Europe, proclaimed a crusade against the Turks, and received

pledges of arms and men from the European powers, Venice responded

to the call, hoping to repeat the strategy of 1204. But the powers

welched on their promises, and Venice found herself alone at war

with the Turks (1463). For sixteen years she carried on this struggle.

She was defeated and despoiled; by the peace that she signed in 1479

she ceded Negroponte (Euboea), Scutari, and Morea to the Turks, paid

100,000 ducats as a war indemnity, and pledged 10,000 ducats a year

for the privilege of trading in Turkish ports. Europe denounced her as

a traitor to Christendom. When another pope proposed another crusade

against the Turks Venice turned a deaf ear. She agreed with Europe

that trade was more important than Christianity.

III. VENETIAN GOVERNMENT

-

Even her enemies admired her government, and sent agents to study

its structure and functioning. Its military organs were the most

efficient navy and army in Italy. Besides her merchant fleet, which in

need could be converted to men-of-war, Venice had in 1423 a navy of

forty-three galleys and 300 auxiliary vessels. `05117 These were

used even in wars with land powers in Italy; in 1439 they were dragged

overland on rollers across mountains and valleys to be launched on the

Lago di Garda, where they bombarded the possessions of Milan. `05118

While other Italian states still waged their wars with mercenaries,

Venice built her army around a militia of her own loyal population,

well seasoned and trained, and armed with the latest muskets and

artillery. For generals, however, she relied on condottieri schooled

in the Renaissance style of campaign by strategy. In her wars with

Milan Venice developed the talents of three famous condottieri:

Francesco Carmagnola, Erasmo da Narni "Gattamelata," and Bartolommeo

Colleoni; the last two distinguished by historic statues, the other by

having his head cut off, in the Venetian Piazzetta, on a charge of

privately negotiating with the enemy.

This government, which even Florentines sought to emulate, was a

closed oligarchy of old families so long enriched by commerce that

only the initiate could smell the money in their nobility. These

families had managed to restrict membership in the Maggior Consiglio

to male descendants of persons who had sat in this Great Council

before 1297. In 1315 the names of all eligibles were inscribed in a

Libro d'oro, or Book of Gold. Out of its 480 members the Council

named sixty- later 120- Pregadi ("invited men") to serve in yearly

terms as a legislative Senate; it appointed the heads of the

numerous governmental departments, who together constituted an

administrative Collegio; and it selected as chief executive-

always subject to the Council- a doge or leader who presided over it

and the Senate, and held office for life unless the Council cared to

depose him. The doge was aided by six privy councilors, who with him

composed the Signoria. This Signory and the Senate were in

practice the real government of Venice; the Great Council proved too

large for effective action, and became a body of electors exercising

appointive and supervisory powers. It was an efficient constitution,

which normally maintained the people in a reasonable degree of

prosperity; and it was capable of long-term and well calculated

policies that might have been impossible in a government subject to

the fluctuations of public emotion or sentiment. The great majority of

the population, though excluded from office, showed no active

resentment against the ruling minority. In 1310 a group of excluded

nobles under Bajamante Tiepolo rose in revolt; and in 1355 Doge Marino

Faliero conspired to make himself dictator. Both attempts were

easily suppressed.

To guard against internal or external conspiracies, the Maggior

Consiglio yearly chose from its membership a Council of Ten as a

committee of public safety. Through its secret sessions and trials,

its spies and swift procedure, this Consiglio di Dieci became for

a time the most powerful body in the government. Ambassadors often

reported to it secretly, and held its instructions more binding than

those of the Senate; and any edict of the Ten had the full force of

law. Two or three of its members were delegated, each month, as

Inquisitori di stato, to search among the people and the officials

for any suspicion of malfeasance or treason. Many legends arose around

this Council of Ten, usually exaggerating its secrecy and severity. It

published its decisions and sentences to the Great Council; though

it allowed secret denunciations to be placed in the mouths of lions'

heads scattered about the city, it refused to consider any unsigned

charges, or any that did not offer two witnesses; `05119 and even then

a four-fifths vote was required before the accusation could be put

on the agenda. `051110 Any person arrested had the right to choose two

counsel for his defense before the Ten. `051111 A condemnatory

sentence had to receive a majority vote on five successive ballots.

The number of persons imprisoned by the Ten was "very

small." `051112 However, it was not above arranging the

assassination of spies, and of enemies of Venice in foreign

states. `051113 In 1582 the Senate, feeling that the Council had

served its purpose and had often exceeded its authority, reduced its

powers; and from that date the Council of Ten existed only in name.

The forty judges appointed by the Great Council provided an

efficient and severe judiciary. The laws were clearly formulated,

and were strictly enforced against nobles and commoners alike.

Penalties reflected the cruelty of the times. Imprisonment was often

in narrow cells admitting a minimum of light and air. Flogging,

branding, mutilation, blinding, cutting out the tongue, breaking limbs

on the wheel, and other delicacies were included among legal

punishments. Persons condemned to death could be strangled in jail, or

secretly drowned, or hanged from a window of the Doges' Palace, or

burned at the stake. Persons guilty of atrocious crimes or

sacrilegious theft were tortured with red-hot pincers, dragged along

the streets by a horse, and then beheaded and quartered. `051114 As if

to compensate for this ferocity, Venice opened her doors to

political and intellectual refugees, and dared to shelter Elisabetta

Gonzaga and her Guidobaldo against the terrible Borgia, when her

sister-in-law Isabella had been frightened into letting her depart

from her native Mantua.

The administrative organization was probably the best in Europe in

the fifteenth century, though corruption found openings here as in

every government. A bureau of public sanitation was established in

1385; measures were taken to provide clean drinking water and to

prevent the formation of swamps. Another bureau fixed the maximum

prices that might be charged for food. A postal and courier service

was set up not only for the government but also for private

correspondence and parcel transportation. `051115 Retired public

servants were pensioned, and provision was made for their widows and

orphans. `051116 The administration of dependent territories on the

Italian mainland was relatively so just and competent that these

districts prospered better under Venetian rule than ever before, and

readily returned to Venetian allegiance after being detached from it

by the chances of War. `051117 Venetian administration of overseas

dependencies was not so laudable; they were used chiefly as prizes

of war, much of their soil was awarded to Venetian noblemen and

generals, and the native population, while retaining their local

institutions of government, seldom reached the higher offices. In

her relations with other states Venice was especially well served by

her diplomats. Few governments possessed such acute observers and

intelligent negotiators as Bernardo Giustiniani. Guided by the

informed reports of her ambassadors, the careful statistical records

of her bureaucracy, and the astute statesmanship of her senators,

Venice repeatedly won in diplomacy what she had lost in war. `051118

Morally this government was no better than the others of the time,

in penal legislation worse. It made and broke alliances according to

fluctuations of advantage, allowing no scruple, no sentiment of

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

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