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

it was set to music, some stanzas a dozen times or more; Petrarch is

the most completely musicked poet in world literature. Or there were

little lyrics of unknown authorship but simple and viable sentiment,

that touched the chords of every heart, and invited the strings of

every instrument. E.g.:

-

One from the other borrowing leaves and flowers,

I saw fair maidens beneath summer trees,

Weaving bright garlands with low love ditties.

Mid that sweet sisterhood the loveliest

Turned her soft eyes to me and whispered, "Take!"

Love-lost I stood, and not a word I spake.

My heart she read, and her fair garland gave;

Therefore I am her servant to the grave. `0520108

-

To such verses the composers applied the full and complex music of

the motet: polyphony in which all four parts- sung by four or eight

voices- were of equal value, instead of three parts subserving one;

and all the complex subtlety of counterpoint *05054 and fugue wove the

four independent rivulets of sound into a stream of harmony. So rose

the Italian madrigal of the sixteenth century- one of the fairest

flowers of Italian art. Whereas in Dante's time music had been a

handmaid to poetry, now it became a full-fledged partner, not

obscuring the words, not slurring the sentiment, but uniting them with

a music that made them doubly stir the soul, while delighting with its

technical skill the educated mind.

Almost all the great composers of sixteenth-century Italy, even

Palestrina, turned their art now and then to the madrigal. Philippe

Verdelot, a Frenchman living in Italy, and Costanza Festa, an Italian,

contest the honor of having first developed the new form, between 1520

and 1530; soon after them came the Arcadelt- a Fleming in Rome-

mentioned by Rabelais. `0520109 In Venice Adrian Willaert relaxed from

his duties as choirmaster at San Marco to compose the finest madrigals

of his time.

Usually the madrigal was sung without instrumental accompaniment.

Musical instruments were innumerable, but only the organ dared compete

with the human voice. Instrumental music slowly developed in the early

sixteenth century out of music forms originally intended for dances or

choruses; so the pavane, the saltarello, and the saraband

graduated from dance accompaniments to instrumental pieces, alone or

in suite; and the music for a madrigal, played without song, became

the instrumental canzone, the distant progenitor of the

sonata, `0520109a and therefore of the symphony.

The organ was already in the fourteenth century almost as highly

developed as today. The pedal board appeared in Germany and the Low

Countries in that age, and was soon adopted in France and Spain; Italy

delayed acceptance of it till the sixteenth century. By that time most

large organs had two or three keyboards, with a variety of stops and

couplers. Great church organs were themselves works of art,

designed, carved, and painted by masters. The same love of form went

into the making of other musical instruments. The lute- the favorite

instrument of the home- was built of wood and ivory, shaped like a

pear, pierced with sound holes in a graceful pattern, with a finger

board divided by frets of silver or brass, and ending in a pegbox

turned at a right angle to the neck. A pretty woman plucking the

strings of a lute held in her lap made a picture that went to the head

of many a sensitive Italian. Harps, citherns, psalters, dulcimers, and

guitars were also favorites with musical fingers.

For those who preferred fiddling to plucking there were viols of

diverse sizes, including the tenor viola da braccio, held on the

arm, and the bass viola da gamba, resting against the leg. The

latter became the later violoncello, and the viol, about 1540,

became the violin. Wind instruments were less popular than the

stringed; the Renaissance had the same objection that Alcibiades had

raised to making music by puffing out the cheeks; nevertheless there

were flutes and fifes ("pipes"), bagpipes, trumpets, horns,

flageolets, and the shawm or oboe. Percussion instruments- drums,

tabors, cymbals, tambourines, castanets- added their fury to the

ensemble. All Renaissance musical instruments were of Oriental

origin except for the keyboard that was added to other instruments

besides the organ to indirectly strike or pluck the strings. The

oldest of these keyboard instruments was the clavichord ( clavis

meaning key), which appeared in the twelfth century and had a

sentimental resurrection in the days of Bach; here the strings were

struck with little brass tangents operated by the keys. In the

sixteenth century it was displaced by the clavicembalo or

harpsichord, whose strings were plucked by points of quill or

leather attached to wooden "jacks" that rose when the keys were

depressed. The virginal was an English, the spinet an Italian,

variant, of the harpsichord.

All these instruments were as yet subordinate to the voice; and

the great virtuosos of the Renaissance were singers. But at the

baptism of Alfonso of Ferrara in 1476 we hear of a feast in the

Schifanoia Palace, at which a concert was given by a hundred

trumpeters, pipers, and tambourine players. In the sixteenth century

the Signory of Florence employed a regular band of musicians, of which

Cellini was one. Performances by several instruments in concert were

given in this period, but they were still for the aristocratic few. On

the other hand solo instrumental performances were almost

fanatically popular. Men went to church not always to pray but to hear

a great organist like Squarcialupi or Orcagna. When Pietro Bono played

the lute at the court of Borso in Ferrara the souls of the

listeners, we are told, flew out of this world into

another. `0520110 The great executants were the happy favorites of a

day, who asked no fame of posterity but received all their renown

before their deaths.

Musical theory lagged a generation behind practice: performers

innovated, professors denounced, then debated, then approved.

Meanwhile the principles of polyphony, counterpoint, and fugue were

formulated for easier instruction and transmission. The great

musical feature of the Renaissance was not theory, nor even

technical advances; it was the increasing secularization of music.

In the sixteenth century it was no longer religious music that made

the advances and experiments; it was the music of the madrigal and the

courts. Side by side with philosophy and literature, and reflecting

the pagan aspect of Renaissance art and the relaxation of morals,

the music of sixteenth-century Italy escaped from ecclesiastical

control, and sought inspiration in the poetry of love; the old

conflict between religion and sex was resolved for a time in the

triumph of Eros. The reign of the Virgin ended, the ascendancy of

woman began. But under either rule music was the handmaid of the

queen.

XI. PERSPECTIVE

-

Were the morals of Renaissance Italy really worse than those of

other lands or times? It is difficult to make comparisons, since all

evidence is a selection. The age of Alcibiades in Athens displayed

much of the immorality of the Renaissance in sexual relations and

political chicanery; it too practised abortion on a large scale, and

cultivated erudite courtesans; it too liberated simultaneously the

intellect and the instincts; and, anticipating Machiavelli, Sophists

like Thrasybulus in Plato's Republic attacked morality as

weakness. Perhaps (for in these matters we are limited to vague

impressions) there was less private violence in classic Greece than in

Renaissance Italy, and a bit less of corruption in religion and

politics. During an entire century of Roman history- from Caesar to

Nero- we find greater corruption in government, and a worse

breakdown of marriage, than in the Renaissance; but even in that epoch

there remained many Stoic virtues in the Roman character; Caesar, with

all his ambivalent capacity in bribery and love, was still the

greatest general in a nation of generals.

The individualism of the Renaissance was another side of its

intellectual vivacity, but compares unfavorably, in morals and

politics, with the communal spirit of the Middle Ages. Political

deceit, treachery, and crime were probably as rife in France, Germany,

and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as in Italy, but

those countries had the wisdom not to produce a Machiavelli to expound

and expose the principles of their statecraft. Manners, not morals,

were coarser north of the Alps than below them, except for a small

class in France- exemplified by the Chevalier Bayard and Gaston de

Foix- which still retained the better side of chivalry. Given equal

opportunity, the French were as adept at adultery as the Italians;

observe how readily they adopted syphilis; note the sexual melee in

the fabliaux; count the twenty-four mistresses of Duke Philip of

Burgundy, and the Agnes Sorels and Dianes de Poitiers of the French

kings; read Brantome.

Germany and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were

too poor to rival Italy in immorality. Travelers from these

countries were therefore astounded by the laxity of Italian life.

Luther, visiting Italy in 1511, concluded that "if there is a hell,

then Rome is built upon it; and this I have heard in Rome

itself." `0520111 Everyone knows the shocked judgment of Roger Ascham,

the English scholar who visited Italy about 1550:

-

I was once in Italy myself; but I thank God my abode there was but

nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more

liberty to sin than ever I heard tell in our noble city of London in

nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all

punishment but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the

city of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to

wear shoe or pantocle. `0520112

-

And he quotes as an established proverb the saying, Inglese

Italianato e un diavolo incarnato: "An Englishman Italianate is a

devil incarnate."

We know the corruption of Italy better than that of transalpine

Europe because we know more about Italy, and because the Italian laity

made little effort to conceal its immorality, and sometimes wrote

books defending it. However, Machiavelli, who wrote such a book,

reckoned Italy as more corrupt than all other countries; next come the

French and the Spaniards"; `0520113 he admired the Germans and the

Swiss as still possessing many of the virile virtues of ancient

Rome. We may diffidently conclude that Italy was more immoral

because she was richer, weaker in government and the reign of law, and

further advanced in that intellectual development which usually

makes for a moral release.

The Italians made some laudable efforts to check license. The

vainest of these efforts were the sumptuary regulations that in nearly

every state forbade extravagance of immodesty of dress; the vanity

of men and women overrode with sly persistence the occasional

assiduity of the law. The popes inveighed against immorality, but were

in some cases swept along with the stream; their attempts at reforming

abuses in the Church were nullified by the inertia or vested interests

of the clergy; they themselves were rarely as wicked as passionate

history once painted them, but they were more concerned to

re-establish the political power of the papacy than to restore the

moral integrity of the Church. "In our corrupt times," said

Guicciardini, "the goodness of a pontiff is commended when it does not

surpass the wickedness of other men." `0520114 Valiant attempts at

reform were made by the great preachers of the time, men like St.

Bernardino of Siena, Roberto da Lecce, San Giovanni da Capistrano, and

Savonarola. Their sermons and their audiences were part of the color

and character of the age. They denounced vice with a vivid detail that

contributed to their popularity; they persuaded feudists to forswear

revenge and live in peace; they induced governments to release

insolvent debtors and let exiles return home; they brought hardened

sinners back to long neglected sacraments.

Even these powerful preachers failed. The instincts formed through a

hundred thousand years of hunting and savagery had re-emerged

through the cracked shell of a morality that had lost the support of

religious belief, of respected authority, and established law. The

great Church that had once ruled kings could no longer govern or

cleanse itself. The destruction of political liberty in state after

state had dulled the civic sense that had enfranchised and ennobled

the medieval communes; where there had been citizens there were now

only individuals. Excluded from government and flush with wealth,

men turned to the pursuit of pleasure, and foreign invasion

surprised them in siren arms. The city-states had for two centuries

directed their forces, their subtlety, and their treachery against one

another; it was now impossible for them to unite against a common foe.

Preachers like Savonarola, rebuffed in all pleas for reform, called

down the judgment of heaven upon Italy, and predicted the

destruction of Rome and the break-up of the Church. `0520115 France,

Spain, and Germany, weary of sending tribute to finance the wars of

the Papal States and the luxuries of Italian life, looked with

amazement and envy at a peninsula so shorn of will and power, so

inviting in beauty and wealth. The birds of prey gathered to feast

on Italy.

CHAPTER XXI: The Political Collapse: 1494-1534

I. FRANCE DISCOVERS ITALY: 1494-5 `05211

-

RECALL the situation of Italy in 1494. The city-states had grown

through the rise of a middle class enriched by the development and

management of commerce and industry. They had lost their communal

freedom through the inability of semidemocratic governments to

maintain order amid the feuds of families and the conflicts of

classes. Their economy remained local in structure even while their

fleets and products reached out to distant ports. They competed with

one another more bitterly than with foreign states; they offered no

concerted resistance to the expansion of French, German, and Spanish

commerce into regions once dominated by Italy. Though Italy gave birth

to the man who rediscovered America, it was Spain that financed him;

trade followed in his wake, gold accompanied his return; the

Atlantic nations flourished, and the Mediterranean ceased to be the

favored home of the white man's economic life. Portugal was sending

ships around Africa to India and China, avoiding Moslem hindrances

in the Near and Middle East; even the Germans were shipping through

the mouths of the Rhine rather than over the Alps to Italy.

Countries that had for a century bought Italian woolen products were

now making their own; nations that had paid interest to Italian

bankers were nursing their own financiers. Tithes, annates, Peter's

Pence, indulgence payments, and pilgrims' coins were now the chief

economic contribution of transalpine Europe to Italy; and soon a third

of Europe would divert that flow. In this generation when the

stored-up wealth of Italy raised her cities to their supreme

brilliance and art, Italy was economically doomed.

She was also politically doomed. While she remained divided into

warring economies and states, the development of a national economy

was compelling and financing, in other European societies, the

transition from feudal principalities to the monarchical state. France

unified herself under Louis XI, reducing her barons to courtiers and

her burghers to patriots; Spain unified herself by wedding Ferdinand

of Aragon to Isabella of Castile, and conquering Granada, and

cementing religious unity with blood; England unified herself under

Henry VII; and though Germany was almost as fragmentary as Italy, it

acknowledged one king and emperor, and occasionally gave him money and

soldiers to make war upon one or another of the Italian states.

England, France, Spain, and Germany raised national armies out of

their own people, and their aristocracies provided cavalry and

leadership; the Italian cities had small forces of mercenaries

inspired only by plunder, led by purchasable condottieri, and

prejudiced against sustaining mortal injuries. It needed only one

engagement to reveal to Europe the defenselessness of Italy.

Half the courts of Europe now seethed with diplomatic intrigue as to

which should seize the plum. France claimed the first right, and

with many reasons. Giangaleazzo Visconti had given his daughter

Valentina in marriage (1387) to Louis, first Duke of Orleans, and,

as the price of this comforting connection with a royal family, had

recognized her right, and the right of her male issue, to succeed to

the duchy of Milan in case his own direct male line should fail; which

it did when Filippo Maria Visconti died (1447). His son-in-law,

Francesco Sforza, then took Milan by right of his wife Bianca, Filippo

Maria's daughter; but Charles, Duke of Orleans, claimed Milan as

Valentina's son, denounced the Sforzas as usurpers, and proclaimed his

resolve, when opportunity should offer, to appropriate the Italian

principality.

Moreover, said the French, Charles, Duke of Anjou, had received

the Kingdom of Naples from Pope Urban IV (1266) as reward for

defending the papacy against the Hohenstaufen kings; Joanna II had

bequeathed the Kingdom to Rene of Anjou (1435); Alfonso I of Aragon

had claimed it through her temporary adoption of him as her son, and

had by force established the house of Aragon on the Neapolitan throne.

Rene tried and failed to recapture the kingdom; his legal right to

it passed at his death to Louis XI, King of France; and in 1482 Sixtus

IV, at odds with Naples, invited Louis to come and conquer Naples,

"which," said the Pope, "belongs to him." About this time Venice, hard

pressed in war by a league of Italian states, called in desperation to

Louis to attack either Naples or Milan, preferably both. Louis was

busy unifying France; but his son Charles VIII inherited his claim

to Naples, listened to the Angevin- Neapolitan exiles at his court,

noted that the crown of Naples was joined to that of Sicily, which

carried with it the crown of Jerusalem; he conceived, or was sold, the

grandiose idea of capturing Naples and Sicily, getting himself crowned

King of Jerusalem, and then leading a crusade against the Turks. In

1489 Innocent VIII, quarreling with Naples, offered the Kingdom to

Charles if he would come and take it. Alexander VI (1494) forbade

Charles, on pain of excommunication, to cross the Alps; but

Alexander's enemy, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere- who later, as

Julius II, would war to drive the French from Italy- came to Charles

at Lyons, and urged him to invade Italy and depose Alexander.

Savonarola added another invitation, hoping that Charles would

depose Piero de' Medici in Florence and Alexander in Rome; and many

Florentines accepted the friar's lead. Finally, Lodovico of Milan,

fearing attack from Naples, offered Charles unimpeded passage

through the territory of Milan whenever Charles should undertake a

campaign against Naples.

So encouraged by half of Italy, Charles prepared to invade. To

protect his flanks he ceded Artois and Franche-Comte to Maximilian

of Austria, and Roussillon and Cerdagne to Ferdinand of Spain, and

paid a large sum to Henry VII for renouncing English claims on

Brittany. In March, 1494, he assembled his army at Lyons: 18,000

cavalry, 22,000 infantry. A fleet was sent to keep Genoa safe for

France; on September 8 it recaptured Rapallo from a Neapolitan force

that had landed there; and the unrestrained bloodiness of this first

encounter shocked an Italy accustomed to reasonable slaughter. In that

month Charles and his army crossed the Alps, and paused at Asti.

Lodovico of Milan and Ercole of Ferrara went there to meet him, and

Lodovico lent him funds. Charles disrupted the schedule by getting

smallpox. Recovering, he led his troops through the Milanese into

Tuscany. The Florentine frontier fortresses at Sarzana and Pietrasanta

might have resisted him, but Piero de' Medici came in person to

surrender them, along with Pisa and Livorno. On November 17 Charles

and half his army paraded through Florence; the populace admired the

unprecedented cavalcade, grumbled at petty thefts by the soldiery, but

noted with relief that they refrained from rape. In December Charles

moved on toward Rome.

We have already looked at the meeting of King and Pope from

Alexander's point of view. Charles behaved with moderation: he asked

only a free passage through Latium for his army, the custody of the

papal prisoner Djem (who might be used as a pretender and ally in a

campaign against the Turks), and Caesar Borgia's company as a hostage.

Alexander agreed; the army marched south (January 25, 1495), Borgia

soon escaped, and Alexander was free to reform the lines of his

diplomacy.

On February 22 Charles entered Naples in unresisted triumph, beneath

a canopy of cloth of gold borne by four Neapolitan nobles, and

acclaimed by the cheers of the populace. He showed his appreciation by

reducing taxes and pardoning those who had opposed his coming; and

at the request of the barons who ruled the hinterland he recognized

the institution of slavery. Thinking himself secure, he relaxed to

enjoy the climate and scenery; he wrote enthusiastically to the duke

of Bourbon describing the gardens amid which he now lived, lacking

only an Eve to be paradise; he marveled at the architecture,

sculpture, and painting in the city, and planned to take a selection

of Italian artists with him to France; meanwhile he dispatched to

France a shipment of stolen art. Naples so charmed him that he

forgot about Jerusalem and his crusade.

While he dallied in Naples, and his army enjoyed the women of the

streets and the stews and caught or spread the "French disease,"

trouble was organizing behind him. The Neapolitan nobles, instead of

being rewarded for helping depose their king, were in many cases

deprived of their estates for the benefit of former Angevin

possessors, or to pay Charles's debts to his servitors; all state

offices were given to Frenchmen, and nothing could be obtained from

them except by bribes offensively exceeding Neapolitan custom; the

occupying army added insult to injury by their open contempt of the

Italian people; in a few months the French had worn out their welcome,

and earned a hatred that waited in fierce patience for a chance to

expel the invaders.

On March 31, 1495, the resilient Alexander, the repentant

Lodovico, the angry Ferdinand, the jealous Maximilian, the cautious

Senate of Venice joined in a league for the united defense of Italy.

King Charles, parading through Naples with a scepter in one hand and a

ball- presumably the globe- in the other, took a month to realize that

the new alliance was raising an army against him. On May 21 he left

Naples in charge of his cousin the Count of Montpensier, and led

half his army northward. At Fornovo, on the River Taro in the

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

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