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

on condition that the proposal of union should be laid before a new

council to be called by him at Ferrara. John decided for Eugenius. The

Pope summoned to Ferrara such of the hierarchy as were still loyal

to him; many leading prelates, including Cesarini and Nicholas of

Cusa, abandoned Basel for Ferrara, feeling that the matter of prime

importance was the negotiation with the Greeks. The Council at Basel

lingered on, but with mounting exasperation and declining prestige.

The news that Christendom, divided between the Greek and the Roman

Churches since 1054, was now to be united stirred all Europe. On

February 8, 1438, the Byzantine Emperor, the Patriarch Joseph of

Constantinople, seventeen Greek metropolitans, and a large number of

Greek bishops, monks, and scholars, arrived at Venice, still partly

a Byzantine city. At Ferrara Eugenius received them with a pomp that

must have meant little to the ceremonious Greeks. After the opening of

the Council various commissions were appointed to reconcile the

divergences of the two Churches on the primacy of the pope, the use of

unleavened bread, the nature of the pains of purgatory, and the

procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and/or the Son. For eight

months the pundits argued these points, but could come to no

agreement. Meanwhile plague broke out in Ferrara; Cosimo de' Medici

invited the Council to move to Florence and be housed at the expense

of himself and his friends; it was so ordered; and some would date the

Italian Renaissance from that influx of learned Greeks into Florence

(1439). There it was agreed that the formula acceptable to the Greeks-

that "the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son" ( ex

Patre per Filium procedit )- meant the same as the Roman formula,

"proceeds from the Father and the Son" ( ex Patre Filioque procedit );

and by June 1439 an accord was reached on purgatorial pains. The

primacy of the pope led to hot debates, and the Greek Emperor

threatened to break up the Council. The conciliatory Archbishop

Bessarion of Nicaea contrived a compromise that recognized the

universal authority of the pope, but reserved all the existing

rights and privileges of the Eastern churches. The formula was

accepted; and on July 6, 1439, in the great cathedral that only

three years before had received from Brunellesco its majestic dome,

the decree uniting the two Churches was read in Greek by Bessarion and

in Latin by Cesarini; the two prelates kissed; and all the members

of the Council, with the Greek Emperor at their head, bent the knee

before that same Eugenius who had seemed, so recently, the despised

and rejected of men.

The joy of Christendom was brief. When the Greek Emperor and his

suite returned to Constantinople they were met with insults and

ribaldry; the clergy and population of the city repudiated the

submission to Rome. Eugenius kept his part of the bargain; Cardinal

Cesarini was sent to Hungary at the head of an army to join the forces

of Ladislas and Hunyadi; they were victorious at Nish, entered Sofia

in triumph on Christmas Eve of 1443, and were routed at Varna by Murad

II (1444). The antiunion party in Constantinople won the upper hand,

and the Patriarch Gregory, who had supported union, fled to Italy.

Gregory fought his way back to St. Sophia, and read the decree of

union there in 1452; but from that time the great church was shunned

by the people. The antiunion clergy anathematized all adherents of

union, refused absolution to those who had attended the reading of the

decree, and exhorted the sick to die without the sacraments rather

than receive them from a "Uniate" priest. `051424 The patriarchs of

Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem repudiated the "robber synod" of

Florence. `051425 Mohammed II simplified the situation by making

Constantinople a Turkish capital (1453). He gave the Christians full

freedom of worship, and appointed as patriarch Gennadius, a devoted

foe of unity.

Eugenius returned to Rome in 1443, after his legate general,

Cardinal Vitelleschi, had suppressed the chaotic republic and the

turbulent Colonna with a ferocity unequaled by the Vandals or the

Goths. The Pope's stay at Florence had acquainted him with the

development of humanism and art under Cosimo de' Medici, and the Greek

scholars who had attended the Council of Ferrara and Florence had

aroused in him an interest in the preservation of the classic

manuscripts that the imminent fall of Constantinople might forfeit

or destroy. He added to his secretariat Poggio, Flavio Biondo,

Leonardo Bruni, and other humanists who could negotiate with the

Greeks in Greek. He brought Fra Angelico to Rome, and had him paint

frescoes in the Chapel of the Sacrament at the Vatican. Having admired

the bronze gates that Ghiberti had cast for the Florentine Baptistery,

Eugenius commissioned Filarete to make similar doors for the old

church of St. Peter (1433). It was significant- though already it

aroused hardly any comment- that the sculptor placed upon the

portals of the chief church in Latin Christendom not only Christ and

Mary and the Apostles, but Mars and Roma, Hero and Leander, Jupiter

and Ganymede, even Leda and the swan. In the hour of his victory

over the Council of Basel Eugenius brought the pagan Renaissance to

Rome.

CHAPTER XV: The Renaissance Captures Rome: 1447-92

I. THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

-

WHEN Pope Nicholas V mounted the oldest throne in the

world, *05034 Rome was hardly a tenth of the Rome that had been

enclosed by the walls of Aurelian (A.D. 270-5), and was smaller in

area and population (80,000) `05151 than Venice, Florence, or Milan.

Since the ruin of the major aqueducts by the barbarian invasions,

the seven hills had been without a reliable water supply; some minor

aqueducts remained, some springs, many cisterns and wells; but a large

proportion of the inhabitants drank the water of the Tiber. `05152

Most of the people lived in the unhealthy plains, subject to

inundation from the river and to malarial infection from the

neighboring swamps. The Capitoline hill was now called Monte

Caprino, from the goats ( capri ) that nibbled its slopes. The

Palatine hill was a rural retreat, almost uninhabited; the ancient

palaces from which it derived its name were dusty quarries. The

Borgo Vaticano, or Vatican Town, was a small suburb across the river

from the central city, and huddled about the decaying shrine of St.

Peter. Some churches, like Santa Maria Maggiore or Santa Cecilia, were

beautiful within but plain without; and no church in Rome could

compare with the duomo of Florence or Milan, no monastery could

rival the Certosa di Pavia, no town hall rose to the dignity of the

Palazzo Vecchio, or the Castello Sforzesco, or the Palace of the

Doges, or even the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. Nearly all the streets

were muddy or dusty alleys; some were paved with cobblestones; only

a few were lit at night; they were swept only on extraordinary

occasions like a jubilee, or the formal entry of some very important

person.

The economic support of the city came partly from pasturage and

the production of wool, and the cattle that grazed in the environing

fields, but chiefly from the revenues of the Church. There was

little agriculture, and only petty trade; industry and commerce had

well-nigh disappeared through lack of protection from brigand raids.

There was almost no middle class- only nobles, ecclesiastics, and

commoners. The nobles, who owned nearly all the land that had not

fallen to the Church, exploited their peasantry without Christian

compunction or hindrance. They suppressed revolt, and waged their

feuds, with bravi - strong-arm ruffians kept in their employ and

trained to beat or kill. The great families- above all the Colonna and

the Orsini- seized tombs, baths, theaters, and other structures in

or near Rome and turned them into private fortresses; and their

rural castles were designed for war. The nobles were usually hostile

to the popes, or strove to name and govern them. Time and again they

created such disorder that the popes fled; Pius II prayed that any

other city might be his capital. `05153 When Sixtus IV and Alexander

VI warred against such men it was in a forgivable effort to win some

security for the Papal See.

Normally the ecclesiastics ruled Rome, for they had the Church's

varied revenue to spend. The inhabitants were dependent upon that

influx of gold from a dozen countries, upon the employment it

enabled churchmen to provide, and upon the charity that it allowed the

popes to dispense. The people of Rome could not be enthusiastic

about any reform of the Church that would lessen that golden flow.

Precluded from rebellion, they substituted for it a sharpness of

satire unequaled elsewhere in Europe. A statue in the Piazza Navona,

probably a Hellenistic Hercules, was renamed Pasquino - perhaps

from a nearby tailor- and became the bulletin board of the latest

squibs, usually in the form of Latin or Italian epigrams, and often

against the reigning pope. The Romans were religious, at least on

occasion; they crowded to receive the papal blessing, and were proud

to imitate ambassadors by kissing the papal feet; but when Sixtus

IV, suffering from gout, failed to appear for a scheduled

benediction they cursed him with Roman virulence. Moreover, since

Eugenius IV had abrogated the Roman Republic, the popes were the

secular rulers of Rome, and received the contumely usually awarded

to governments. It was the misfortune of the papacy to be seated

amid the most lawless population in Italy.

The popes felt themselves thoroughly justified in claiming a

degree and area of temporal power. As the heads of an international

organization they could not afford to be the captives of any one

state, as they had been in effect in Avignon; so trammeled, they could

hardly serve all peoples impartially, much less realize their majestic

dream of being the spiritual governors of every government. Though the

"Donation of Constantine" was a palpable forgery (as Nicholas admitted

by hiring Valla), the donation of central Italy to the papacy by Pepin

(755), confirmed by Charlemagne (773), was an historical fact. The

popes had coined their own money at least as far back as 782, `05154

and for centuries no one had questioned their right. The unification

of local powers, feudal or martial, in a central government was taking

place in the Papal States as in the other nations of Europe. If the

popes from Nicholas V to Clement VII ruled their states as absolute

monarchs they were following the fashion of the times; and they

could with reason complain when reformers like Chancellor Gerson of

the University of Paris proposed democracy in the Church but

deprecated it in the state. Neither state nor Church was ready for

democracy at a time when printing had not yet begun or spread.

Nicholas V became pope seven years before Gutenberg printed his Bible,

thirty years before printing reached Rome, forty-eight years before

the first publication of Aldus Manutius. Democracy is a luxury of

disseminated intelligence, security, and peace.

The secular rule of the popes directly applied to what antiquity had

called Latium (now Lazio), a small province lying between Tuscany,

Umbria, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Beyond this

they claimed also Umbria, the Marches, and the Romagna (the ancient

Romania). These four regions together made a broad belt across central

Italy from sea to sea; they contained some twenty-six cities, which

the popes, when they could, ruled by vicars, or divided among

provincial governors. Furthermore, Sicily and the whole Kingdom of

Naples were claimed as papal fiefs on the basis of an agreement

between Pope Innocent III and Frederick II; and the payment of an

annual feudal fee by these states to the papacy became a major

source of quarrels between the Regno and the popes. Finally the

Countess Matilda had bequeathed to the popes (1107), as her feudal

domain, practically all of Tuscany, including Florence, Lucca,

Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, and Arezzo; over all these the popes claimed the

rights of a feudal sovereign, but were rarely able to give effect to

their claim.

Harassed by internal corruption, military and fiscal incompetence,

and the confusion of European with Italian politics, and of

ecclesiastical with secular affairs, the papacy struggled through

centuries to preserve its traditional territories from internal

usurpation by condottieri, and from external encroachment by other

Italian states; so Milan repeatedly tried to appropriate Bologna,

Venice seized Ravenna and sought to absorb Ferrara, and Naples

stretched tentative tentacles into Latium. To meet these attacks the

popes seldom depended on their little army of mercenaries, but

played the covetous states one against another in a balance-of-power

policy, striving to keep any one of them from growing strong enough to

swallow papal terrain. Machiavelli and Guicciardini rightly traced the

disunion of Italy in part to this policy of the popes; and the popes

rightly pursued it as their only means of sustaining their political

and spiritual independence through their temporal power.

As political rulers the popes felt compelled to adopt the same

methods as their secular compeers. They distributed- sometimes they

sold- offices or benefices to influential persons, even to minors,

to pay political debts, or to advance political purposes, or to reward

or support men of letters or artists. They arranged marriages for

their relatives into politically powerful families. They used armies

like Julius II, or the diplomacy of deceit like Leo X. `05155 They put

up with- sometimes profited from- a degree of bureaucratic venality

probably no greater than that which prevailed in most governments of

the time. The laws of the Papal States were as severe as those of

others; thieves and counterfeiters were hanged by papal vicars as a

more or less bitter necessity of government. Most of the popes lived

as simply as the supposedly requisite display of official ceremony

would permit; the worst tales we read of them were legends set

afloat by irresponsible satirists like Berni, or disappointed place

hunters like Aretino, or the Roman agents- e.g., Infessura- of

powers in violent or diplomatic conflict with the papacy. As for the

cardinals who administered the ecclesiastical and political affairs of

the Church, they thought of themselves as senators of a wealthy state,

and lived accordingly; many of them built palaces, many patronized

letters or arts, some indulged themselves with mistresses; they

genially accepted the easy moral code of their reckless time.

As a spiritual power the Renaissance popes faced the problem of

reconciling humanism with Christianity. Humanism was half pagan, and

the Church had once set herself to destroy paganism root and branch,

creed and art. She had encouraged or countenanced the demolition of

pagan temples and statuary; the cathedral of Orvieto, for example, had

only recently been built with marbles taken partly from Carrara,

partly from Roman ruins; a papal legate had sold marble blocks from

the Colosseum to be burned for lime; `05156 as late as 1461 the

Palazzo Venezia had been begun with further spoliation of that Flavian

Amphitheater; Nicholas himself, in his architectural enthusiasm,

used twenty-five hundred cartloads of marble and travertine from the

Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, and other ancient structures to rebuild

the churches and palaces of Rome. `05157 To reverse that attitude,

to preserve and collect and cherish the remaining art and classics

of Rome and Greece, required a revolution in ecclesiastical thought.

The prestige of humanism was already so high, the impetus of the

neopagan movement was so strong, her own leaders were so deeply tinged

with it, that the Church had to find place for these developments in

the Christian life, or risk losing the intellectual classes of

Italy, perhaps later of Europe. Under Nicholas V she opened her arms

to humanism, placed herself bravely and generously on the side, at the

head, of the new literature and art. And for an exhilarating century

(1447-1534) she gave to the mind of Italy such ample freedom-

incredibilis libertas, said Filelfo- `05158 and to the art of

Italy such discriminating patronage, opportunity, and stimulus that

Rome became the center of the Renaissance, and enjoyed one of the most

brilliant epochs in the history of mankind.

II. NICHOLAS V: 1447-55

-

Raised in poverty at Sarzana, Tommaso Parentucelli somehow found

means to attend the University of Bologna for six years. When his

funds ran out he went to Florence and served as tutor in the homes

of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Palla de' Strozzi. His purse replenished,

he returned to Bologna, continued his studies, and received at

twenty-two the doctorate in theology. Niccolo degli Albergati,

Archbishop of Bologna, made him controller of the archiepiscopal

household, and took him to Florence to attend Eugenius IV in the

Pope's long exile there. In these Florentine years the priest became a

humanist without ceasing to be a Christian. He developed a warm

friendship with Bruni, Marsuppini, Manetti, Aurispa, and Poggio, and

joined their literary gatherings; soon Thomas of Sarzana, as the

humanists called him, was aflame with their passion for classical

antiquity. He spent almost all his income on books, borrowed money

to buy costly manuscripts, and expressed the hope that some day his

funds would suffice to gather into one library all the great books

in the world; in that ambition the Vatican Library had its

origin. `05159 Cosimo engaged him to catalogue the Marcian Library,

and Tommaso was happy among the manuscripts. He could hardly know that

he was preparing himself to be the first Renaissance pope.

For twenty years he served Albergati in Florence and Bologna. When

the Archbishop died (1443) Eugenius appointed Parentucelli to

succeed him; and three years later the Pope, impressed by his

learning, his piety, and his administrative ability, made him a

cardinal. Another year passed; Eugenius passed away; and the

cardinals, deadlocked between the Orsini and Colonna factions,

raised Parentucelli to the papacy. "Who would have thought," he

exclaimed to Vespasiano da Bisticci, "that a poor bell ringer of a

priest would be made pope, to the confusion of the proud?" `051510 The

humanists of Italy rejoiced, and one of them, Francesco Barbaro,

proclaimed that Plato's vision had come true: a philosopher had become

king.

Nicholas V, as he now called himself, had three aims: to be a good

pope, to rebuild Rome, and to restore classical literature,

learning, and art. He conducted his high office with modesty and

competence, gave audience at almost any hour of the day, and managed

to get along amicably with both Germany and France. The Antipope Felix

V, realizing that Nicholas would soon win all Latin Christendom to his

allegiance, resigned his pretensions and was gracefully forgiven;

the rebellious but disintegrating Council of Basel moved to Lausanne

and dissolved (1449); the conciliar movement was ended, the Papal

Schism was healed. Demands for reform of the Church still came from

beyond the Alps; Nicholas felt incapable of achieving that reform in

the face of all the office-holders who would lose by it; instead he

hoped that the Church would regain, as the leader in the revival of

learning, the prestige that she had lost at Avignon and in the Schism.

Not that his support of scholarship was motivated by political ends;

it was a sincere, almost an amorous passion. He had made arduous trips

over the Alps in search of manuscripts; it was he who had unearthed at

Basel the works of Tertullian.

Now, dowered with the revenues of the papacy, he sent agents to

Athens, Constantinople, and divers cities in Germany and England to

seek and buy or copy Greek or Latin manuscripts, pagan or Christian;

he installed a large corps of copyists and editors in the Vatican;

he called almost every prominent humanist in Italy to Rome. "All the

scholars in the world," wrote Vespasiano in fond exaggeration, "came

to Rome in the time of Pope Nicholas, partly of their own accord,

partly at his request." `051511 He rewarded their work with the

liberality of a caliph thrilled by music or poetry. The subdued

Lorenzo Valla received 500 ducats ($12,500?) for putting Thucydides

into Latin dress; Guarino da Verona received 1500 ducats for

translating Strabo; Niccolo Perotti 500 for Polybius; Poggio was put

to translating Diodorus Siculus; Theodorus Gaza was lured from Ferrara

to make a new translation of Aristotle; Filelfo was offered a house in

Rome, an estate in the country, and 10,000 ducats to render into Latin

the Iliad and the Odyssey; the Pope's death, however, prevented

the execution of this Homeric enterprise. These rewards were so

great that some scholars- mirabile dictu - hesitated to accept

them; the Pope overcame their scruples by playfully warning them:

"Don't refuse; you may not find another Nicholas." `051512 When an

epidemic drove him from Rome to Fabriano he took his translators and

copyists with him, lest any of them should succumb to the

plague. `051513 Meanwhile he did not neglect what might be called

the Christian classics. He offered five thousand ducats to anyone

who would bring him the Gospel of St. Matthew in the original

tongue. He engaged Gianozzo Manetti and George of Trebizond to

translate Cyril, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, and other

patrological literature; he commissioned Manetti and aides to make a

new version of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek; this,

too, was frustrated by his death. These Latin translations were

hurried and imperfect, but they for the first time opened Herodotus,

Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus, Appian, Philo, and

Theophrastus to students who could not read Greek. Referring to

these translations, Filelfo wrote: "Greece has not perished, but has

migrated to Italy- which in former days was called Greater

Greece." `051514 Manetti, with greater gratitude than accuracy,

calculated that more Greek authors were translated during the eight

years of Nicholas' pontificate than in all the preceding five

centuries. `051515

Nicholas loved the appearance and form as well as the contents of

books; himself a calligraphist, he had his translations written

carefully upon parchment by expert scribes; the leaves were bound in

crimson velvet, secured by silver clasps. As the number of his books

mounted- finally to 824 Latin and 352 Greek manuscripts- and these

were added to previous papal collections, the problem arose of housing

the five thousand volumes-the largest store of books in Christendom-

in such a way that their complete transmission to posterity might be

assured. The construction of a Vatican Library was one of Nicholas'

dearest dreams.

He was a builder as well as a scholar, and from the outset of his

pontificate he had resolved to make Rome worthy of leading the

world. A jubilee year was at hand in 1450; a hundred thousand visitors

were expected; they must not find Rome a shabby ruin; the prestige

of the Church and the papacy required that the citadel of Christianity

should confront pilgrims with "noble edifices combining taste and

beauty with noble proportions," which "would immensely conduce to

the exaltation of the chair of St. Peter"; so Nicholas, on his

deathbed, apologetically explained his aim. He restored the walls

and gates of the city, repaired the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, and had an

artist construct an ornamental fountain at its mouth. He engaged

Leon Battista Alberti to design palaces, public squares, and

spacious avenues shielded from sun and rain by arcaded porticoes. He

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

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