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

everything that he could to make the combined colleges the most

scholarly and flourishing university in Italy.

It was one of his credits that he established the study of Semitic

languages. A chair in the University of Rome was devoted to the

teaching of Hebrew, and Teseo Ambrogio was appointed to teach Syriac

and Chaldaic in the University of Bologna. Leo welcomed the dedication

of a Hebrew grammar composed by Agacio Guidacerio. Learning that Sante

Pagnini was translating the Old Testament from the original Hebrew

into Latin, he asked to see a specimen, liked it, and undertook at

once the expense of the laborious enterprise.

It was Leo, too, who restored Greek studies, which had begun to

decline. He invited to Rome the old scholar John Lascaris, who had

been teaching Greek in Florence, France, and Venice; and with him he

organized a Greek Academy in Rome, distinct from the University. To

Lascaris' pupil Marcus Musurus, chief aide to Manutius, Benibo wrote

for Leo (August 7, 1513) a letter inviting the scholar to secure

from Greece "ten young men, or as many more as you may think proper,

of good education and virtuous disposition, who may compose a seminary

of liberal studies, and from whom the Italians may derive the proper

use and knowledge of the Greek tongue." `051837 A month later Manutius

published the edition of Plato that Musurus had completed, and the

great printer dedicated the work to the Pope. Leo responded by

granting to Aldus, for fifteen years, the exclusive privilege of

reprinting the Greek or Latin books that Aldus had already issued,

or would in that period publish; all who should encroach upon this

privilege were by that deed excommunicated and subject to penalties;

this privilegium ad imprimendum solum was the Renaissance way of

giving to a printer a copyright on the editions that he had paid to

prepare. Leo added to the privilege an earnest recommendation that the

Aldine publications should be moderately priced; they were. The

Greek college was established in the house of the Colocci on the

Quirinal, and a press was set up there to print textbooks and

scholia for the students. A similar "Medicean Academy" for Greek

studies was about the same time founded in Florence. Under Leo's

encouragement Varino Camerti, who Latinized his name as Favorinus,

compiled the best Greek-Latin dictionary yet published in the

Renaissance world.

The Pope's enthusiasm for the classics was almost a religion. He

accepted from the Venetians "a shoulder bone of Livy" with the same

piety as though it had been a relic of some major saint. `051838

Soon after his accession he announced that he would amply reward any

person who should procure for him unpublished manuscripts of ancient

literature. Like his father, he directed his emissaries and appointees

in foreign lands to seek and buy for him any manuscripts of ancient

pagan or Christian authorship and value; and sometimes he dispatched

envoys for that sole and special purpose, and gave them letters to

kings and princes soliciting co-operation in the search. His agents

seem on occasion to have stolen manuscripts when these could not be

bought; this was apparently the case with the first six books of

Tacitus' Annals, found in the monastery of Corvey in Westphalia, for

we have a charming letter to the papal agent Heitmers, written by or

for Leo after the Annals had been edited and published:

-

We have sent a copy of the revised and printed books in a

beautiful binding to the abbot and his monks, that they may place it

in their library as a substitute for the one taken from it. But in

order that they may understand that this purloining has done them

far more good than harm, we have granted them for their church a

plenary indulgence. `051839

-

Leo gave the purloined manuscript to Filippo Beroaldo, with

instructions to correct and edit the text, and print it in an

elegant but convenient form. Said Leo in this letter of instruction:

-

We have been accustomed, even in our early years, to think that

nothing more excellent or useful has been given by the Creator to

mankind- if we except only the knowledge and true worship of

Himself- than these studies, which not only lead to the ornament and

guidance of human life, but are applicable and useful to every

particular situation, consoling in adversity, pleasing and honorable

in prosperity; insomuch that without them we should be deprived of all

the grace of life and all the polish of society. The security and

extension of these studies seem chiefly to depend on two

circumstances: the number of learned men, and the ample supply of

excellent texts. As to the first of these we hope, with the divine

blessing, to show still more evidently our earnest desire and

disposition to reward and honor their merits, this having been for a

long time past our chief delight.... With respect to the acquisition

of books, we return thanks to God that in this also an opportunity

is now afforded us of promoting the advantage of mankind. `051840

-

Leo thought that the judgment of the Church should determine what

literature would advantage mankind, for he renewed Alexander's edict

for the episcopal censorship of books.

In the sack of the Medici Palace (1494) some of the books

collected by Leo's ancestors had been dispersed. Most of them,

however, had been bought by the monks of San Marco; and these salvaged

volumes Leo, while still a cardinal, had repurchased for 2652 ducats

($33,150?), and had transferred to his palace in Rome. This Laurentian

Library was returned to Florence after Leo's death; we shall see its

further fortune later.

The Vatican Library had now swollen to such proportions as to need a

corps of scholars for its care. When Leo acceded to the papacy the

head librarian was Tommaso Inghirami- a nobleman and poet, a

conversationalist noted for wit and brilliance in a society of

brilliant wits, and an actor whose success in the part of Phaedra in

Seneca's Hippolytus earned him the nickname of Fedra. When he died

in a street accident in 1516 he was replaced as bibliotecario by

Filippo Beroaldo, who divided his affections between Tacitus and the

learned courtesan Imperia, and wrote such excellent Latin poetry as to

receive six independent translations into French, one by Clement

Marot. Girolamo Aleandro or Aleander, who became librarian in 1519,

was a man of temper, learning, and ability. He spoke Latin and

Greek, and Hebrew so fluently that Luther mistakenly pronounced him

a Jew. At the Diet of Augsburg (1520) he strove with more passion than

wisdom to halt the Protestant tide. Paul III made him a cardinal

(1538), but four years later Aleander died through too assiduous

care of his health and too frequent use of medicine. `051841 He was

highly indignant at being taken off at sixty-two, and scandalized

his friends with his exasperation at the ways of Providence. `051842

Private libraries were now numerous in Rome. Aleander himself had

a considerable collection, which he bequeathed to Venice. Cardinal

Grimani, envied by Erasmus, had eight thousand volumes, in a variety

of languages; he willed these books to the church of San Salvador in

Venice, where they were destroyed by fire. Cardinal Sadoleto had a

precious library, which he put on a ship to send to France; it was

lost at sea. Bembo's library was rich in Provencal poets and

original manuscripts- e.g., of Petrarch; this collection passed to

Urbino, thence to the Vatican. Rich laymen like Agostino Chigi and

Bindo Altoviti imitated the popes and the cardinals in collecting

books, engaging artists, and supporting poets and scholars.

These abounded in Leo's Rome beyond any precedent or later parallel.

Many cardinals were themselves scholars; some, like Egidio Canisio,

Sadoleto, and Bibbiena, had been made cardinals because they were

scholars of long service to the Church. Most of the cardinals in

Rome acted as patrons, usually by rewarding dedications; and the homes

of Cardinals Riario, Grimani, Bibbiena, Alidosi, Petrucci, Farnese,

Soderini, Sanseverino, Gonzaga, Canisio, and Giulio de' Medici were

surpassed only by the papal court as meeting places for the

intellectual and artistic talent of the city. Castiglione, whose

genial nature made friends with both the amiable Raphael and the

dour and unapproachable Michelangelo, maintained a modest salon of his

own.

Leo, of course, was the patron par excellence. No one who could turn

a good Latin epigram went away from him giftless. As in the days of

Nicholas V, scholarship- but now also poetry- constituted a claim to

some place in the vast officialdom of the Church. Lesser lights became

apostolic scribes, abbreviatores, brief-writers; brighter luminaries

rose to be canons, bishops, protonotaries; stars like Sadoleto and

Bembo became secretaries to the Pope; some, like Sadoleto and

Bibbiena, were made cardinals. Ciceronian oratory again resounded in

Rome; epistles rose and fell in cadenced periods; Virgilian and

Horatian verse flowed in a thousand rivulets into the Tiber as their

final destination. Bembo set the stylistic standard pontifically; "far

better to speak like Cicero," he wrote to Isabella d'Este, "than to be

pope." `051843 His friend and colleague, Iacopo Sadoleto, shamed

most of the humanists by combining an impeccable Latin style with

impeccable morals. There were many men of high integrity among the

cardinals of this age, and Leo's humanists were, by and large, of

finer temper and life than those of the preceding

generation. `051844 Some, however, remained pagan in everything but

their professed creed. It was an unwritten law that whatever one

believed or doubted, no gentleman would utter anything critical of a

Church that was morally so tolerant, and so munificent a patron.

Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena was a composite of all these

qualities- scholar, poet, dramatist, diplomat, connoisseur,

conversationalist, pagan, priest, and cardinal. Raphael's portrait

catches only a part of him- his sly eyes and sharp nose; it covers his

baldness with a red hat, and his gaiety with an unwonted gravity. He

was light of foot and word and spirit, escaping from every vicissitude

with a smile. Employed by Lorenzo the Magnificent as secretary and

tutor, he shared with Lorenzo's sons the flight of 1494; but he showed

his cleverness by going to Urbino, charming that urbane circle with

his epigrams, and using some of his leisure to write and stage a

risque play- Calandra (c. 1508), the oldest of Italian prose

comedies. Julius II brought him to Rome. Bernardo managed Leo's

election with so little fuss and friction that Leo at once made him

apostolic protonotary, and the next day treasurer of the papal

household, and six months later cardinal. His dignities did not

prevent him from serving Leo as connoisseur of arts and organizer of

festival pageantry. His play was performed before the Pope, who

enjoyed it with a good stomach. Sent as papal nuncio to France, he

fell in love with Francis I, and had to be recalled as too sensitive

for a diplomat. When Raphael decorated his bathroom, it was, by the

Cardinal's choice, with the History of Venus and Cupid, a series

of pictures recounting the triumphs of love; nearly all done in true

antique Pompeian style, and overleaping Christianity into a world that

had never heard of Christ. Leo, pretending not to notice the Venus

in Bibbiena, was faithful to him to the end.

Leo relished drama in all its comic forms and degrees, from the

simplest farce to the subtlest double-entendres of Bibbiena and

Machiavelli. In the first year of his pontificate he opened a

theater on the Capitol. There, in 1518, he witnessed a performance

of Ariosto's I Suppositi, and laughed heartily at the equivocal

jests that stemmed from the plot- the effort of a youth to seduce a

maiden. `051845 Such gala performances were more than mere comedy;

they included artistic stage settings (in this case the scenery was

painted by Raphael), a ballet, and entr'acte music by a chorus and

an orchestra of lutes, violas, cornets, bagpipes, fifes, and a small

organ.

To Leo's pontificate belongs one of the major historical works of

the Renaissance. Paolo Giovio was a native of Como. There, and in

Milan and Rome, he practised medicine; but, inspired by the literary

excitement that greeted Leo's accession, he gave his leisure hours

to writing a Latin history of his own times- i.e., from the invasion

of Italy by Charles VIII to Leo's pontificate. He was allowed to

read the first sections to Leo, who, with his customary lavishness,

pronounced it the most eloquent and elegant historical writing since

Livy, and rewarded him at once with a pension. After Leo's death

Giovio used what he called his "pen of gold" to write a eulogistic

life of his dead patron, and his "pen of iron" to indict Pope Adrian

VI, who ignored him. Meanwhile he continued to labor at his immense

Historiae sui temporis, finally carrying it to 1547. When Rome was

sacked in 1527 he hid his manuscript in a church; it was found by a

soldier, who then asked the author to buy his own book; Paolo was

saved from this indignity by Clement VII, who persuaded the thief to

accept, in lieu of more immediate payment, a benefice in Spain; Giovio

himself was made bishop of Nocera. His History, and the

biographies that he added to it, were acclaimed for their fluent and

vivid style, but were denounced for their careless inaccuracies and

their flagrant prejudice. Giovio blithely confessed that he praised or

condemned the persons of his story according as they or their

relatives had or had not lubricated his palm. `051846

IV. POETS

-

The chief glory of this age was its poetry. As in samurai Japan

everyone from peasant to emperor, so in Leo's Rome everyone from the

pontiff to his clowns wrote verse; and nearly everybody insisted on

reading his latest lines to the tolerant Pope. He loved clever

improvisation, and was himself an expert in that game. Poets pursued

him everywhere with outstretched rhymes; usually he rewarded them

somehow; on occasion he would content himself by replying with an

extempore Latin epigram. A thousand books were dedicated to him. For

one he gave Angelo Colocci 400 ducats ($5,000?); but to Giovanni

Augurelli, who presented him with a poetical treatise-

Chrysopoeia, or the art of making gold by alchemy- he sent an

empty purse. He did not have time to read all the books whose

dedications he accepted; one such was an edition of the

fifth-century Roman poet Rutilius Namatianus, who advocated the

suppression of Christianity as an enervating poison, and demanded a

return to the worship of the virile pagan gods. `051847 To Ariosto-

who may have seemed to Leo sufficiently cared for in Ferrara- he

gave merely a bull forbidding the pirating of his verses. Ariosto

was peeved, having hoped for a gift commensurate with the length of

his epic.

Having lost Ariosto, Leo contented himself too readily with poets of

duller radiance and shorter breath. His generosity often misled him

into rewarding superficial talents as liberally as genius. Guido

Postumo Silvestri, a noble of Pesaro, had fought vigorously, and

written violently, against Alexander and Julius for seizing Pesaro and

Bologna; now he addressed to Leo an elegant elegiac poem comparing the

happiness of Italy under the new Pope with its turmoil and misery in

the preceding reigns; the appreciative pontiff restored to him his

confiscated estates, and made him a companion in the papal hunts;

but Guido soon died (said some contemporaries) of eating too

lavishly at Leo's table. `051848 Antonio Tebaldeo, who had already

made a name for himself as a poet in Naples, rushed to Rome on Leo's

election, and (says an uncertain tradition) received five hundred

ducats from Leo for an appetizing epigram; `051849 in any case the

Pope gave him the superintendence and tolls of the bridge of Sorga, so

that "it may enable Tebaldeo to support himself in affluence." `051850

But money, though it may finance the talent of scholars, seems

rarely to feed the genius of poets. Tebaldeo wrote more epigrams,

became dependent upon Bembo's charity after Leo's death, and took

permanently to his bed, "having no other complaint," said a friend,

"than the loss of his relish for wine." He lived a long time at ease

on his back, and died at seventy-four.

Francesco Maria Molza of Modena acquired some proficiency in verse

before Leo's elevation; but hearing of the Pope's poetic philanthropy,

he left his parents, wife, and children, and migrated to Rome, where

he forgot them in an infatuation for a Roman lady. He composed an

eloquent pastoral poemetto entitled La ninfa Tiberina in praise of

Faustina Mancini, and was severely wounded by an unknown assassin.

He left Rome after Leo's death, and at Bologna joined the retinue of

Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, who was said to maintain three hundred

poets, musicians, and wits at his court. Molza's Italian poems were

the most elegant of the time, not excepting Ariosto's. His Canzoni

equaled those of Petrarch in style, and surpassed them in fire; for

Molza repeatedly fell out of one amorous conflagration into another,

and perpetually burned. He died of syphilis in 1544.

Two major minor poets honored Leo's reign. The career of Marcantonio

Flaminio shows the period in pleasant lights- the unfailing kindness

of the Pope to men of letters, the unenvious friendship of Flaminio,

Navagero, Fracastoro, and Castiglione, though all four were poets, and

the clean lives led by these men in an age when sexual license was

widely condoned. Flaminio was born at Serravalle in the Veneto, son of

Gianantonio Flaminio, himself a poet. Violating a thousand precedents,

the father trained and encouraged the boy to poetry, and sent him at

sixteen to present to Leo a poem written by the youth urging a crusade

against the Turks. Leo had no taste for crusades, but he liked the

verses, and provided for the boy's further education in Rome.

Castiglione took him in hand, and brought him to Urbino (1515);

later the father sent his son to study philosophy at Bologna;

finally the poet settled down at Viterbo under the patronage of the

English Cardinal Reginald Pole. He had the distinction of declining

two high appointments- as cosecretary, with Sadoleto, to Leo, and as

secretary to the Council of Trent. Despite suspicion of sympathizing

with the Protestant Reformation, he was handsomely supported by

several cardinals. Through all his peregrinations he longed for the

peaceful life and clean air of his father's villa near Imola. His

poems- nearly all in Latin, and nearly all in the brief form of

odes, eclogues, elegies, hymns, and Horatian epistles to friends-

return again and again to his love of old rural haunts:

-

Iam vos revisam, iam iuvabit arbores

manu paterna consitas

videre, iam libebit in cubiculo

molles inire somnulos- `051851

-

"Now I shall see you again; now it will delight me to behold the

trees planted by my father's hand; and I shall rejoice to woo a little

quiet sleep in my little room." He complained of being a prisoner in

the tumult of Rome, and envied a friend whom he pictured as hiding

in a village retreat, reading "Socratic books," and "giving no thought

to the shallow honors conferred by the vulgar crowd." `051852 He

dreamt of strolling in green valleys with the Georgics of Virgil and

the idyls of Theocritus as his companions. His most touching lines

were written to his dying father:

-

Vixisti, genitor, bene ac beate,

nec pauper, neque dives, eruditus

satis, et satis eloquens, valente

semper corpore, mente sana, amicis

iucundus, pietate singulari.

Nunc lustris bene sexdecism peractis

ad divum proficisceris beatas

oras; i, genitor, tuumque natum

olympi cito siste tecum in arce. `051853

-

"You have lived, father, well and happily, neither poor nor rich,

learned enough, eloquent enough, always of strong body and healthy

mind; genial, and of unrivaled piety. Now, having completed eighty

years, you move on to the blessed shores of the gods. Go, father,

and soon take your son with you to the high seat of heaven."

Marco Girolamo Vida proved a more pliable poet for Leo's purposes.

Born in Cremona, well schooled in Latin, he became so skilled in

that language that he could write it gracefully even in didactic poems

De arte poetica, or on the growth of silkworms, or on the game of

chess. Leo was so pleased with this Sacchiae ludus that he sent

for Vida, loaded him with emoluments, and begged him to crown the

literature of the age with a Latin epic on the life of Christ. So Vida

began his Christiad, which happy Leo died too soon to see. Clement

VII continued Leo's patronage of Vida, giving him a bishopric to

feed on, but Clement too died before the publication of the epic

(1535). Though a monk when he began it, and a bishop when he

finished it, Vida could not refrain from those classical

mythological allusions that were in the very air of Leo's time, but

may appear incongruous to those who are forgetting the mythology of

Greece and Rome and are making Christianity a literary mythology in

its turn. Vida speaks of God the Father as Superum Pater

nimbipotens - "the cloud-compelling Father of the gods"- and as

Regnator Olympi - "Ruler of Olympus"; he regularly describes Jesus as

heros; he brings in gorgons, harpies, centaurs, and hydras to demand

the death of Christ. So noble a theme deserved its own congenial

poetic form rather than an adaptation of the Aeneid. The finest

lines in Vida are addressed not to Christ in the Christiad but to

Virgil in the De arte poetica:

-

O decus Italiae! lux o clarissima vatum!

te colimus, tibi serta damus, tibi thura, tibi aras;

et tibi rite sacrum semper dicemus honorem

carminibus memores. Salve, sanctissime vates!

Laudibus augeri tua gloria nil potis ultra,

et nostrae nil vocis eget; nos aspice praesens,

pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores

adveniens, pater, atque animis tete insere nostris. `051854

-

Which may be hastily rendered:

-

O glory of Italy! O brightest light

Among the bards! We worship thee with wreaths,

And give thee frankincense and shrines. To thee

Of right we chant forever sacred paeans,

Recalling you with hymns. Hail, holiest bard!

Thy glory gains no increase from our praise,

Nor needs our voice. Come, look upon thy sons,

Pour thy warm spirit into our chaste hearts;

Come, father, place thine own self in our souls.

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

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