​The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, by Jacob Burckhardt This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy Author: Jacob Burckhardt Translator: S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd Middlemore) Release Date: October 20, 2014 [EBook #2074] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CIVILISATION OF THE RENAISSANCE *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. Contents Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z. Footnotes (etext transcriber's note) THE CIVILISATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY By JACOB BURCKHARDT AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY S. G. C. MIDDLEMORE LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PREFACE. DR. Burckhardt’s work on the Renaissance in Italy is too well known, not only to students of the period, but now to a wider circle of readers, for any introduction to be necessary. The increased interest which has of late years, in England, been taken in this and kindred subjects, and the welcome which has been given to the works of other writers upon them, encourage me to hope that in publishing this translation I am meeting a want felt by some who are either unable to read German at all, or to whom an English version will save a good deal of time and trouble. The translation is made from the third edition of the original, recently published in Germany, with slight additions to the text, and large additions to the notes, by Dr. Ludwig Geiger, of Berlin. It also contains some fresh matter communicated by Dr. Burckhardt to Professor Diego Valbusa of Mantua, the Italian translator of the book. To all three gentlemen my thanks are due for courtesy shown, or help given to me in the course of my work. In a few cases, where Dr. Geiger’s view differs from that taken by Dr. Burckhardt, I have called attention to the fact by bracketing Dr. Geiger’s opinion and adding his initials. THE TRANSLATOR. {i} {ii} {iii} {iv} {v} CONTENTS. PART I. THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Political condition of Italy in the thirteenth century 4 The Norman State under Frederick II. 5 Ezzelino da Romano 7 CHAPTER II. THE TYRANNY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. Finance and its relation to culture 8 The ideal of the absolute ruler 9 Inward and outward dangers 10 Florentine estimate of the tyrants 11 The Visconti 12 CHAPTER III. THE TYRANNY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Intervention and visits of the emperors 18 Want of a fixed law of succession. Illegitimacy 20 Founding of States by Condottieri 22 Relations of Condottieri to their employers 23 The family of Sforza 24 Giacomo Piccinino 25 Later attempts of the Condottieri 26 CHAPTER IV. THE PETTY TYRANNIES. The Baglioni of Perugia 28 Massacre in the year 1500 31 Malatesta, Pico, and Petrucci 33 CHAPTER V. THE GREATER DYNASTIES. The Aragonese at Naples 35 The last Visconti at Milan 38 Francesco Sforza and his luck 39 Galeazzo Maria and Ludovic Moro 40 The Gonzaga at Mantua 43 Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino 44 The Este at Ferrara 46 CHAPTER VI. THE OPPONENTS OF TYRANNY. The later Guelphs and Ghibellines 55 The conspirators 56 Murders in church 57 Influence of ancient tyrannicide 57 Catiline as an ideal 59 Florentine view of tyrannicide 59 The people and tyrannicide 60 CHAPTER VII. THE REPUBLICS: VENICE AND FLORENCE. Venice in the fifteenth century 62 The inhabitants 63 Dangers from the poor nobility 64 Causes of the stability of Venice 65 The Council of Ten and political trials 66 Relations with the Condottieri 67 Optimism of Venetian foreign policy 68 {v} {vi} Venice as the home of statistics 69 Retardation of the Renaissance 71 Mediæval devotion to reliques 72 Florence from the fourteenth century 73 Objectivity of political intelligence 74 Dante as a politician 75 Florence as the home of statistics: the two Villanis 76 Higher form of statistics 77 Florentine constitutions and the historians 82 Fundamental vice of the State 82 Political theorists 83 Macchiavelli and his views 84 Siena and Genoa 86 CHAPTER VIII. FOREIGN POLICY OF THE ITALIAN STATES. Envy felt towards Venice 88 Relations to other countries: sympathy with France 89 Plan for a balance of power 90 Foreign intervention and conquests 91 Alliances with the Turks 92 Counter-influence of Spain 94 Objective treatment of politics 95 Art of diplomacy 96 CHAPTER IX. WAR AS A WORK OF ART. Firearms 98 Professional warriors and dilettanti 99 Horrors of war 101 CHAPTER X. THE PAPACY AND ITS DANGERS. Relation of the Papacy to Italy and foreign countries 103 Disturbances in Rome from the time of Nicholas V. 104 Sixtus IV. master of Rome 105 States of the Nipoti in Romagna 107 Cardinals belonging to princely houses 107 Innocent VIII. and his son 108 Alexander VI. as a Spaniard 109 Relations with foreign countries 110 Simony 111 Cæsar Borgia and his relations to his father 111 Cæsar’s plans and acts 112 Julius II. as Saviour of the Papacy 117 Leo X. His relations with other States 120 Adrian VI. 121 Clement VII. and the sack of Rome 122 Reaction consequent on the latter 123 The Papacy of the Counter-Reformation 124 Conclusion. The Italian patriots 125 PART II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL. CHAPTER I. THE ITALIAN STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL. The mediæval man 129 The awakening of personality 129 The despot and his subjects 130 Individualism in the Republics 131 Exile and cosmopolitanism 132 CHAPTER II. THE PERFECTING OF THE INDIVIDUAL. {vii} {viii} The many-sided men 134 The universal men 136 CHAPTER III. THE MODERN IDEA OF FAME. Dante’s feeling about fame 139 The celebrity of the Humanists: Petrarch 141 Cultus of birthplace and graves 142 Cultus of the famous men of antiquity 143 Literature of local fame: Padua 143 Literature of universal fame 146 Fame given or refused by the writers 150 Morbid passion for fame 152 CHAPTER IV. MODERN WIT AND SATIRE. Its connection with individualism 154 Florentine wit: the novel 155 Jesters and buffoons 156 Leo X. and his witticisms 157 Poetical parodies 158 Theory of wit 159 Railing and reviling 161 Adrian VI. as scapegoat 162 Pietro Aretino 164 PART III. THE REVIVAL OF ANTIQUITY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Widened application of the word ‘Renaissance’ 171 Antiquity in the Middle Ages 172 Latin poetry of the twelfth century in Italy 173 The spirit of the fourteenth century 175 CHAPTER II. ROME, THE CITY OF RUINS. Dante, Petrarch, Uberti 177 Rome at the time of Poggio 179 Nicholas V., and Pius II. as an antiquarian 180 Antiquity outside Rome 181 Affiliation of families and cities on Rome 182 The Roman corpse 183 Excavations and architectural plans 184 Rome under Leo X. 184 Sentimental effect of ruins 185 CHAPTER III. THE OLD AUTHORS. Their diffusion in the fourteenth century 187 Discoveries in the fifteenth century 188 The libraries 189 Copyists and ‘Scrittori’ 192 Printing 194 Greek scholarship 195 Oriental scholarship 197 Pico’s view of antiquity 202 CHAPTER IV. HUMANISM IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. Its inevitable victory 203 Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio 205 Coronation of the poets 207 {ix} CHAPTER V. THE UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS. Position of the Humanists at the Universities 211 Latin schools 213 Freer education: Vittorino da Feltre 213 Guarino of Verona 215 The education of princes 216 CHAPTER VI. THE FURTHERERS OF HUMANISM. Florentine citizens: Niccoli and Manetti 217 The earlier Medici 220 Humanism at the Courts 222 The Popes from Nicholas V. onwards 223 Alfonso of Naples 225 Frederick of Urbino 227 The Houses of Sforza and Este 227 Sigismodo Malatesta 228 CHAPTER VII. THE REPRODUCTION OF ANTIQUITY. LATIN CORRESPONDENCE AND ORATIONS. The Papal Chancery 230 Letter-writing 232 The orators 233 Political, diplomatic, and funeral orations 236 Academic and military speeches 237 Latin sermons 238 Form and matter of the speeches 239 Passion for quotation 240 Imaginary speeches 241 Decline of eloquence 242 CHAPTER VIII. LATIN TREATISES AND HISTORY. Value of Latin 243 Researches on the Middle Ages: Blondus 245 Histories in Italian; their antique spirit 246 CHAPTER IX. GENERAL LATINISATION OF CULTURE. Ancient names 250 Latinised social relations 251 Claims of Latin to supremacy 252 Cicero and the Ciceronians 253 Latin conversation 254 CHAPTER X. MODERN LATIN POETRY. Epic poems on ancient history: The ‘Africa’ 258 Mythic poetry 259 Christian epics: Sannazaro 260 Poetry on contemporary subjects 261 Introduction of mythology 262 Didactic poetry: Palingenius 263 Lyric poetry and its limits 264 Odes on the saints 265 Elegies and the like 266 The epigram 267 CHAPTER XI. FALL OF THE HUMANISTS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. The accusations and the amount of truth they contained 272 Misery of the scholars 277 Type of the happy scholar 278 Pomponius Laetus 279 {x} The Academies 280 PART IV. THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN. CHAPTER I. JOURNEYS OF THE ITALIANS. Columbus 286 Cosmographical purpose in travel 287 CHAPTER II. NATURAL SCIENCE IN ITALY. Empirical tendency of the nation 289 Dante and astronomy 290 Attitude of the Church towards natural science 290 Influence of Humanism 291 Botany and gardens 292 Zoology and collections of foreign animals 293 Human menagerie of Ippolito Medici 296 CHAPTER III. THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL BEAUTY. Landscapes in the Middle Ages 299 Petrarch and his ascents of mountains 301 Uberti’s ‘Dittamondo’ 302 The Flemish school of painting 302 Æneas Sylvius and his descriptions 303 Nature in the poets and novelists 305 CHAPTER IV. THE DISCOVERY OF MAN.—SPIRITUAL DESCRIPTION IN POETRY. Popular psychological ground-work. The temperaments 309 Value of unrhymed poetry 310 Value of the Sonnet 310 Dante and the ‘Vita Nuova’ 312 The ‘Divine Comedy’ 312 Petrarch as a painter of the soul 314 Boccaccio and the Fiammetta 315 Feeble development of tragedy 315 Scenic splendour, the enemy of the drama 316 The intermezzo and the ballet 317 Comedies and masques 320 Compensation afforded by music 321 Epic romances 321 Necessary subordination of the descriptions of character 323 Pulci and Bojardo 323 Inner law of their compositions 324 Ariosto and his style 325 Folengo and parody 326 Contrast offered by Tasso 327 CHAPTER V. BIOGRAPHY. Advance of Italy on the Middle Ages 328 Tuscan biographers 330 Biography in other parts of Italy 332 Autobiography; Æneas Sylvius 333 Benvenuto Cellini 333 Girolamo Cardano 334 Luigi Cornaro 335 CHAPTER VI. THE DESCRIPTION OF NATIONS AND CITIES. The ‘Dittamondo’ 339 Descriptions in the sixteenth century 339 {xi} {xii} CHAPTER VII. DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTWARD MAN. Boccaccio on Beauty 344 Ideal of Firenzuola 345 His general definitions 345 CHAPTER VIII. DESCRIPTIONS OF LIFE IN MOVEMENT. Æneas Sylvius and others 349 Conventional bucolic poetry from the time of Petrarch 350 Genuine poetic treatment of country life 351 Battista Mantovano, Lorenzo Magnifico, Pulci 352 Angelo Poliziano 353 Man, and the conception of humanity 354 Pico della Mirandola on the dignity of man 354 PART V. SOCIETY AND FESTIVALS. CHAPTER I. THE EQUALISATION OF CLASSES. Contrast to the Middle Ages 359 Common life of nobles and burghers in the cities 359 Theoretical criticism of noble birth 360 The nobles in different parts of Italy 362 The nobility and culture 363 Bad influence of Spain 363 Knighthood since the Middle Ages 364 The tournaments and the caricature of them 365 Noble birth as a requisite of the courtier 367 CHAPTER II. OUTWARD REFINEMENT OF LIFE. Costume and fashions 369 The toilette of women 371 Cleanliness 374 The ‘Galateo’ and good manners 375 Comfort and elegance 376 CHAPTER III. LANGUAGE AS THE BASIS OF SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. Development of an ideal language 378 Its wide diffusion 379 The Purists 379 Their want of success 382 Conversation 383 CHAPTER IV. THE HIGHER FORMS OF SOCIETY. Rules and statutes 384 The novelists and their society 384 The great lady and the drawing-room 385 Florentine society 386 Lorenzo’s descriptions of his own circle 387 CHAPTER V. THE PERFECT MAN OF SOCIETY. His love-making 388 His outward and spiritual accomplishments 389 Bodily exercises 389 Music 390 The instruments and the Virtuosi 392 Musical dilettantism in society 393 {xiii} CHAPTER VI. THE POSITION OF WOMEN. Their masculine education and poetry 396 Completion of their personality 397 The Virago 398 Women in society 399 The culture of the prostitutes 399 CHAPTER VII. DOMESTIC ECONOMY. Contrast to the Middle Ages 402 Agnolo Pandolfini (L. B. Alberti) 402 The villa and country life 404 CHAPTER VIII. THE FESTIVALS. Their origin in the mystery and the procession 406 Advantages over foreign countries 408 Historical representatives of abstractions 409 The Mysteries 411 Corpus Christi at Viterbo 414 Secular representations 415 Pantomimes and princely receptions 417 Processions and religious Trionfi 419 Secular Trionfi 420 Regattas and processions on water 424 The Carnival at Rome and Florence 426 PART VI. MORALITY AND RELIGION. CHAPTER I. MORALITY. Limits of criticism 431 Italian consciousness of demoralization 432 The modern sense of honour 433 Power of the imagination 435 The passion for gambling and for vengeance 436 Breach of the marriage tie 441 Position of the married woman 442 Spiritualization of love 445 General emancipation from moral restraints 446 Brigandage 448 Paid assassination: poisoning 450 Absolute wickedness 453 Morality and individualism 454 CHAPTER II. RELIGION IN DAILY LIFE. Lack of a reformation 457 Relations of the Italian to the Church 457 Hatred of the hierarchy and the monks 458 The mendicant orders 462 The Dominican Inquisition 462 The higher monastic orders 463 Sense of dependence on the Church 465 The preachers of repentance 466 Girolamo Savonarola 473 Pagan elements in popular belief 479 Faith in reliques 481 Mariolatry 483 Oscillations in public opinion 485 Epidemic religious revivals 485 Their regulation by the police at Ferrara 487 {xiv} {xv} CHAPTER III. RELIGION AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. Inevitable subjectivity 490 Worldliness 492 Tolerance of Mohammedanism 492 Equivalence of all religions 494 Influence of antiquity 495 The so-called Epicureans 496 The doctrine of free will 497 The pious Humanists 499 The less pronounced Humanists 499 Codrus Urceus 500 The beginnings of religious criticism 501 Fatalism of the Humanists 503 Their pagan exterior 504 CHAPTER IV. MIXTURE OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SUPERSTITIONS. Astrology 507 Its extension and influence 508 Its opponents in Italy 515 Pico’s opposition and influence 516 Various superstitions 518 Superstition of the Humanists 519 Ghosts of the departed 522 Belief in dæmons 523 The Italian witch 524 Witches’ nest at Norcia 526 Influence and limits of Northern witchcraft 528 Witchcraft of the prostitutes 529 The magicians and enchanters 530 The dæmons on the way to Rome 531 Special forms of magic: the Telesmata 533 Magic at the laying of foundation-stones 534 The necromancer in poetry 535 Benvenuto Cellini’s tale 536 Decline of magic 537 Special branches of the superstition 538 CHAPTER V. GENERAL DISINTEGRATION OF BELIEF. Last confession of Boscoli 543 Religious disorder and general scepticism 543 Controversy as to immortality 545 The pagan heaven 545 The Homeric life to come 546 Evaporation of Christian doctrine 547 Italian Thei 548 PART I. THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THIS work bears the title of an essay in the strictest sense of the word. No one is more conscious than the writer with what limited means and strength he has addressed himself to a task so arduous. And even if he could look with greater confidence upon his own researches, he would hardly thereby feel more assured of the approval of competent judges. To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of a given civilisation present a different picture; and in treating of a civilisation which is the mother of our own, and whose influence is still at work among us, it is unavoidable that individual judgment and feeling should tell every moment both on the writer and on the reader. In {xvi} {1} {2} {3} the wide ocean upon which we venture, the possible ways and directions are many; and the same studies which have served for this work might easily, in other hands, not only receive a wholly different treatment and application, but lead also to essentially different conclusions. Such indeed is the importance of the subject, that it still calls for fresh investigation, and may be studied with advantage from the most varied points of view. Meanwhile we are content if a patient hearing be granted us, and if this book be taken and judged as a whole. It is the most serious difficulty of the history of civilisation that a great intellectual process must be broken up into single, and often into what seem arbitrary categories, in order to be in any way intelligible. It was formerly our intention to fill up the gaps in this book by a special work on the ‘Art of the Renaissance,’—an intention, however, which we have been able only to fulfil[1] in part. The struggle between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen left Italy in a political condition which differed essentially from that of other countries of the West. While in France, Spain and England the feudal system was so organised that, at the close of its existence, it was naturally transformed into a unified monarchy, and while in Germany it helped to maintain, at least outwardly, the unity of the empire, Italy had shaken it off almost entirely. The Emperors of the fourteenth century, even in the most favourable case, were no longer received and respected as feudal lords, but as possible leaders and supporters of powers already in existence; while the Papacy,[2] with its creatures and allies, was strong enough to hinder national unity in the future, not strong enough itself to bring about that unity. Between the two lay a multitude of political units—republics and despots—in part of long standing, in part of recent origin, whose existence was founded simply on their power to maintain it.[3] In them for the first time we detect the modern political spirit of Europe, surrendered freely to its own instincts, often displaying the worst features of an unbridled egoism, outraging every right, and killing every germ of a healthier culture. But, wherever this vicious tendency is overcome or in any way compensated, a new fact appears in history—the state as the outcome of reflection and calculation, the state as a work of art. This new life displays itself in a hundred forms, both in the republican and in the despotic states, and determines their inward constitution, no less than their foreign policy. We shall limit ourselves to the consideration of the completer and more clearly defined type, which is offered by the despotic states. The internal condition of the despotically governed states had a memorable counterpart in the Norman Empire of Lower Italy and Sicily, after its transformation by the Emperor Frederick II.[4] Bred amid treason and peril in the neighbourhood of the Saracens, Frederick, the first ruler of the modern type who sat upon a throne, had early accustomed himself, both in criticism and action, to a thoroughly objective treatment of affairs. His acquaintance with the internal condition and administration of the Saracenic states was close and intimate; and the mortal struggle in which he was engaged with the Papacy compelled him, no less than his adversaries, to bring into the field all the resources at his command. Frederick’s measures (especially after the year 1231) are aimed at the complete destruction of the feudal state, at the transformation of the people into a multitude destitute of will and of the means of resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer. He centralised, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole judicial and political administration by establishing the right of appeal from the feudal courts, which he did not, however, abolish, to the imperial judges. No office was henceforth to be filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of the offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. Excise duties were introduced; the taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible to obtain any money from Orientals. Here, in short, we find, not a people, but simply a disciplined multitude of subjects; who were forbidden, for example, to marry out of the country without special permission, and under no circumstances were allowed to study abroad. The University of Naples was the first we know of to restrict the freedom of study, while the East, in these respects at all events, left its youth unfettered. It was after the example of Mohammedan rulers that Frederick traded on his own account in all parts of the Mediterranean, reserving to himself the monopoly of many commodities, and restricting in various ways the commerce of his subjects. The Fatimite Caliphs, with all their esoteric unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of the differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick, on the other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the representatives of a free municipal life. Lastly, the internal police, and the kernel of the army for foreign service, was composed of Saracens who had been brought over from Sicily to Nocera and Luceria—men who were deaf to the cry of misery and careless of the ban of the Church. At a later period the subjects, by whom the use of weapons had long been forgotten, were passive witnesses of the fall of Manfred and of the seizure of the government by Charles of Anjou; the latter continued to use the system which he found already at work. At the side of the centralising Emperor appeared an usurper of the most peculiar kind: his vicar and son-in-law, Ezzelino da Romano. He stands as the representative of no system of government or administration, for all his activity was wasted in struggles for supremacy in the eastern part of Upper Italy; but as a political type he was a figure of no less importance for the future than his imperial protector Frederick. The conquests and usurpations which had hitherto taken place in the Middle Ages rested on real or pretended inheritance and other such claims, or else were effected against unbelievers and excommunicated persons. Here for the first time the attempt was openly made to found a throne by wholesale murder and endless barbarities, by the adoption, in short, of any means with a view to nothing but the end pursued. None of his successors, not even Cæsar Borgia, rivalled the colossal guilt of Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten, and his fall led to no return of justice among the nations, and served as no warning to future transgressors. It was in vain at such a time that St. Thomas Aquinas, a born subject of Frederick, set up the theory of a constitutional monarchy, in which the prince was to be supported by an upper house named by himself, and a representative body elected by the people; in vain did he concede to the people the right of revolution.[5] Such theories found no echo outside the lecture-room, and Frederick and Ezzelino were and remain for Italy the great political phenomena of the thirteenth century. Their personality, already half legendary, forms the most important subject of ‘The Hundred Old Tales,’ whose original composition falls certainly within this century.[6] In them Frederick is already represented as possessing the right to do as he pleased with the property of his subjects, and exercises on all, even on criminals, a profound influence by the force of his personality; Ezzelino is spoken of with the awe which all mighty impressions leave behind them. His person became the centre of a whole literature from the chronicle of eyewitnesses to the half-mythical tragedy[7] of later poets. Immediately after the fall of Frederick and Ezzelino, a crowd of tyrants appeared upon the scene. The struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline was their opportunity. They came forward in general as Ghibelline leaders, but at times and under conditions so various {4} {5} {6} {7} that it is impossible not to recognise in the fact a law of supreme and universal necessity. The means which they used were those already familiar in the party struggles of the past—the banishment or destruction of their adversaries and of their adversaries’ households. CHAPTER II. THE TYRANNY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE tyrannies, great and small, of the fourteenth century afford constant proof that examples such as these were not thrown away. Their misdeeds cried forth loudly and have been circumstantially told by historians. As states depending for existence on themselves alone, and scientifically organised with a view to this object, they present to us a higher interest than that of mere narrative. The deliberate adaptation of means to ends, of which no prince out of Italy had at that time a conception, joined to almost absolute power within the limits of the state, produced among the despots both men and modes of life of a peculiar character.[8] The chief secret of government in the hands of the prudent ruler lay in leaving the incidence of taxation so far as possible where he found it, or as he had first arranged it. The chief sources of income were: a land tax, based on a valuation; definite taxes on articles of consumption and duties on exported and imported goods; together with the private fortune of the ruling house. The only possible increase was derived from the growth of business and of general prosperity. Loans, such as we find in the free cities, were here unknown; a well-planned confiscation was held a preferable means of raising money, provided only that it left public credit unshaken— an end attained, for example, by the truly Oriental practice of deposing and plundering the director of the finances.[9] Out of this income the expenses of the little court, of the body-guard, of the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings were met, as well as of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged to the personal attendants of the prince. The illegitimacy of his rule isolated the tyrant and surrounded him with constant danger; the most honourable alliance which he could form was with intellectual merit, without regard to its origin. The liberality of the northern princes of the thirteenth century was confined to the knights, to the nobility which served and sang. It was otherwise with the Italian despot. With his thirst of fame and his passion for monumental works, it was talent, not birth, which he needed. In the company of the poet and the scholar he felt himself in a new position, almost, indeed, in possession of a new legitimacy. No prince was more famous in this respect than the ruler of Verona, Can Grande della Scala, who numbered among the illustrious exiles whom he entertained at his court representatives of the whole of Italy.[10] The men of letters were not ungrateful. Petrarch, whose visits at the courts of such men have been so severely censured, sketched an ideal picture of a prince of the fourteenth century.[11] He demands great things from his patron, the lord of Padua, but in a manner which shows that he holds him capable of them. ‘Thou must not be the master but the father of thy subjects, and must love them as thy children; yea, as members of thy body.[12] Weapons, guards, and soldiers thou mayest employ against the enemy—with thy subjects goodwill is sufficient. By citizens, of course, I mean those who love the existing order; for those who daily desire change are rebels and traitors, and against such a stern justice may take its course.’ Here follows, worked out in detail, the purely modern fiction of the omnipotence of the state. The prince is to be independent of his courtiers, but at the same time to govern with simplicity and modesty; he is to take everything into his charge, to maintain and restore churches and public buildings, to keep up the municipal police,[13] to drain the marshes, to look after the supply of wine and corn; he is to exercise a strict justice, so to distribute the taxes that the people can recognise their necessity and the regret of the ruler to be compelled to put his hands in the pockets of others; he is to support the sick and the helpless, and to give his protection and society to distinguished scholars, on whom his fame in after ages will depend. But whatever might be the brighter sides of the system, and the merits of individual rulers, yet the men of the fourteenth century were not without a more or less distinct consciousness of the brief and uncertain tenure of most of these despotisms. Inasmuch as political institutions like these are naturally secure in proportion to the size of the territory in which they exist, the larger principalities were constantly tempted to swallow up the smaller. Whole hecatombs of petty rulers were sacrificed at this time to the Visconti alone. As a result of this outward danger an inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and the effect of the situation on the character of the ruler was generally of the most sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a tyrant in the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could trust his nearest relations! But where all was illegitimate, there could be no regular law of inheritance, either with regard to the succession or to the division of the ruler’s property; and consequently the heir, if incompetent or a minor, was liable in the interest of the family itself to be supplanted by an uncle or cousin of more resolute character. The acknowledgment or exclusion of the bastards was a fruitful source of contest; and most of these families in consequence were plagued with a crowd of discontented and vindictive kinsmen. This circumstance gave rise to continual outbreaks of treason and to frightful scenes of domestic bloodshed. Sometimes the pretenders lived abroad in exile, and like the Visconti, who practised the fisherman’s craft on the Lake of Garda,[14] viewed the situation with patient indifference. When asked by a messenger of his rival when and how he thought of returning to Milan, he gave the reply, ‘By the same means as those by which I was expelled, but not till his crimes have outweighed my own.’ Sometimes, too, the despot was sacrificed by his relations, with the view of saving the family, to the public conscience which he had too grossly outraged.[15] In a few cases the government was in the hands of the whole family, or at least the ruler was bound to take their advice; and here, too, the distribution of property and influence often led to bitter disputes. The whole of this system excited the deep and persistent hatred of the Florentine writers of that epoch. Even the pomp and display with which the despot was perhaps less anxious to gratify his own vanity than to impress the popular imagination, awakened their keenest sarcasm. Woe to an adventurer if he fell into their hands, like the upstart Doge Aguello of Pisa (1364), who used to ride out with a golden sceptre, and show himself at the window of his house, ‘as relics are shown.’ reclining on embroidered drapery and cushions, served like a pope or emperor, by kneeling attendants.[16] More often, however, the old Florentines speak on this subject in {8} {9} {10} {11} a tone of lofty seriousness. Dante saw and characterised well the vulgarity and commonplace which mark the ambition of the new princes.[17] ‘What mean their trumpets and their bells, their horns and their flutes; but come, hangman—come, vultures?’ The castle of the tyrant, as pictured by the popular mind, is a lofty and solitary building, full of dungeons and listening-tubes,[18] the home of cruelty and misery. Misfortune is foretold to all who enter the service of the despot,[19] who even becomes at last himself an object of pity: he must needs be the enemy of all good and honest men; he can trust no one, and can read in the faces of his subjects the expectation of his fall. ‘As despotisms rise, grow, and are consolidated, so grows in their midst the hidden element which must produce their dissolution and ruin.’[20] But the deepest ground of dislike has not been stated; Florence was then the scene of the richest development of human individuality, while for the despots no other individuality could be suffered to live and thrive but their own and that of their nearest dependents. The control of the individual was rigorously carried out, even down to the establishment of a system of passports.[21] The astrological superstitions and the religious unbelief of many of the tyrants gave, in the minds of their contemporaries, a peculiar colour to this awful and God-forsaken existence. When the last Carrara could no longer defend the walls and gates of the plague-stricken Padua, hemmed in on all sides by the Venetians (1405), the soldiers of the guard heard him cry to the devil ‘to come and kill him.’ The most complete and instructive type of the tyranny of the fourteenth century is to be found unquestionably among the Visconti of Milan, from the death of the Archbishop Giovanni onwards (1354). The family likeness which shows itself between Bernabò and the worst of the Roman Emperors is unmistakable;[22] the most important public object was the prince’s boar-hunting; whoever interfered with it was put to death with torture; the terrified people were forced to maintain 5,000 boar-hounds, with strict responsibility for their health and safety. The taxes were extorted by every conceivable sort of compulsion; seven daughters of the prince received a dowry of 100,000 gold florins apiece; and an enormous treasure was collected. On the death of his wife (1384) an order was issued ‘to the subjects’ to share his grief, as once they had shared his joy, and to wear mourning for a year. The coup de main (1385) by which his nephew Giangaleazzo got him into his power—one of those brilliant plots which make the heart of even late historians beat more quickly[23]—was strikingly characteristic of the man. Giangaleazzo, despised by his relations on account of his religion and his love of science, resolved on vengeance, and, leaving the city under pretext of a pilgrimage, fell upon his unsuspecting uncle, took him prisoner, forced his way back into the city at the head of an armed band, seized on the government, and gave up the palace of Bernabò to general plunder. In Giangaleazzo that passion for the colossal which was common to most of the despots shows itself on the largest scale. He undertook, at the cost of 300,000 golden florins, the construction of gigantic dykes, to divert in case of need the Mincio from Mantua and the Brenta from Padua, and thus to render these cities defenceless.[24] It is not impossible, indeed, that he thought of draining away the lagoons of Venice. He founded that most wonderful of all convents, the Certosa of Pavia,[25] and the cathedral of Milan, ‘which exceeds in size and splendour all the churches of Christendom.’ The Palace in Pavia, which his father Galeazzo began and which he himself finished, was probably by far the most magnificent of the princely dwellings of Europe. There he transferred his famous library, and the great collection of relics of the saints, in which he placed a peculiar faith. King Winceslaus made him Duke (1395); he was hoping for nothing less than the Kingdom of Italy[26] or the Imperial crown, when (1402) he fell ill and died. His whole territories are said to have paid him in a single year, besides the regular contribution of 1,200,000 gold florins, no less than 800,000 more in extraordinary subsidies. After his death the dominions which he had brought together by every sort of violence fell to pieces; and for a time even the original nucleus could with difficulty be maintained by his successors. What might have become of his sons Giovanni Maria (died 1412) and Filippo Maria (died 1417), had they lived in a different country and among other traditions, cannot be said. But, as heirs of their house, they inherited that monstrous capital of cruelty and cowardice which had been accumulated from generation to generation. Giovanni Maria, too, is famed for his dogs, which were no longer, however, used for hunting, but for tearing human bodies. Tradition has preserved their names, like those of the bears of the Emperor Valentinian I.[27] In May, 1409, when war was going on, and the starving populace cried to him in the streets, Pace! Pace! he let loose his mercenaries upon them, and 200 lives were sacrificed; under penalty of the gallows it was forbidden to utter the words pace and guerra, and the priests were ordered, instead of dona nobis pacem, to say tranquillitatem! At last a band of conspirators took advantage of the moment when Facino Cane, the chief Condottiere of the insane ruler, lay ill at Pavia, and cut down Giovan Maria in the church of San Gottardo at Milan; the dying Facino on the same day made his officers swear to stand by the heir Filippo Maria, whom he himself urged his wife[28] to take for a second husband. His wife, Beatrice di Tenda, followed his advice. We shall have occasion to speak of Filippo Maria later on. And in times like these Cola di Rienzi was dreaming of founding on the rickety enthusiasm of the corrupt population of Rome a new state which was to comprise all Italy. By the side of rulers such as those whom we have described, he seems no better than a poor deluded fool. CHAPTER III. THE TYRANNY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. THE despotisms of the fifteenth century show an altered character. Many of the less important tyrants, and some of the greater, like the Scala and the Carrara, had disappeared, while the more powerful ones, aggrandized by conquest, had given to their systems each its characteristic development. Naples for example received a fresh and stronger impulse from the new Arragonese dynasty. A striking feature of this epoch is the attempt of the Condottieri to found independent dynasties of their own. Facts and the actual relations of things, apart from traditional estimates, are alone regarded; talent and audacity win the great prizes. The petty despots, to secure a trustworthy support, begin to enter the service of the larger states, and become themselves Condottieri, receiving in return for their services money and impunity for their misdeeds, if not an increase of territory. All, whether small or great, must exert themselves more, {12} {13} {14} {15} {16} must act with greater caution and calculation, and must learn to refrain from too wholesale barbarities; only so much wrong is permitted by public opinion as is necessary for the end in view, and this the impartial bystander certainly finds no fault with. No trace is here visible of that half-religious loyalty by which the legitimate princes of the West were supported; personal popularity is the nearest approach we can find to it. Talent and calculation are the only means of advancement. A character like that of Charles the Bold, which wore itself out in the passionate pursuit of impracticable ends, was a riddle to the Italian. ‘The Swiss were only peasants, and if they were all killed, that would be no satisfaction for the Burgundian nobles who might fall in the war. If the Duke got possession of all Switzerland without a struggle, his income would not be 5,000 ducats the greater.’[29] The mediæval features in the character of Charles, his chivalrous aspirations and ideals, had long become unintelligible to the Italian. The diplomatists of the South, when they saw him strike his officers and yet keep them in his service, when he maltreated his troops to punish them for a defeat, and then threw the blame on his counsellors in the presence of the same troops, gave him up for lost.[30] Louis XI., on the other hand, whose policy surpasses that of the Italian princes in their own style, and who was an avowed admirer of Francesco Sforza, must be placed in all that regards culture and refinement far below these rulers. Good and evil lie strangely mixed together in the Italian States of the fifteenth century. The personality of the ruler is so highly developed, often of such deep significance, and so characteristic of the conditions and needs of the time, that to form an adequate moral judgment on it is no easy task.[31] The foundation of the system was and remained illegitimate, and nothing could remove the curse which rested upon it. The imperial approval or investiture made no change in the matter, since the people attached little weight to the fact, that the despot had bought a piece of parchment somewhere in foreign countries, or from some stranger passing through his territory.[32] If the Emperor had been good for anything—so ran the logic of uncritical common sense—he would never have let the tyrant rise at all. Since the Roman expedition of Charles IV., the emperors had done nothing more in Italy than sanction a tyranny which had arisen without their help; they could give it no other practical authority than what might flow from an imperial charter. The whole conduct of Charles in Italy was a scandalous political comedy. Matteo Villani[33] relates how the Visconti escorted him round their territory, and at last out of it; how he went about like a hawker selling his wares (privileges, etc.) for money; what a mean appearance he made in Rome, and how at the end, without even drawing the sword, he returned with replenished coffers across the Alps. Nevertheless, patriotic enthusiasts and poets, full of the greatness of the past, conceived high hopes at his coming, which were afterwards dissipated by his pitiful conduct. Petrarch, who had written frequent letters exhorting the Emperor to cross the Alps, to give back to Rome its departed greatness, and to set up a new universal empire, now, when the Emperor, careless of these high-flying projects, had come at last, still hoped to see his dreams realized, strove unweariedly, by speech and writing, to impress the Emperor with them, but was at length driven away from him with disgust when he saw the imperial authority dishonoured by the submission of Charles to the Pope.[34] Sigismund came, on the first occasion at least (1414), with the good intention of persuading John XXIII. to take part in his council; it was on that journey, when Pope and Emperor were gazing from the lofty tower of Cremona on the panorama of Lombardy, that their host, the tyrant Gabino Fondolo, was seized with the desire to throw them both over. On his second visit Sigismund came as a mere adventurer, giving no proof whatever of his imperial prerogative, except by crowning Beccadelli as a poet; for more than half a year he remained shut up in Siena, like a debtor in gaol, and only with difficulty, and at a later period, succeeded in being crowned in Rome. And what can be thought of Frederick III.? His journeys to Italy have the air of holiday-trips or pleasure-tours made at the expense of those who wanted him to confirm their prerogatives, or whose vanity it flattered to entertain an emperor. The latter was the case with Alfonso of Naples, who paid 150,000 florins for the honour of an imperial visit.[35] At Ferrara,[36] on his second return from Rome (1469), Frederick spent a whole day without leaving his chamber, distributing no less than eighty titles; he created knights, counts, doctors, notaries—counts, indeed, of different degrees, as, for instance, counts palatine, counts with the right to create doctors up to the number of five, counts with the right to legitimatise bastards, to appoint notaries, and so forth. The Chancellor, however, expected in return for the patents in question a gratuity which was thought excessive at Ferrara.[37] The opinion of Borso, himself created Duke of Modena and Reggio in return for an annual payment of 4,000 gold florins, when his imperial patron was distributing titles and diplomas to all the little court, is not mentioned. The humanists, then the chief spokesmen of the age, were divided in opinion according to their personal interests, while the Emperor was greeted by some[38] of them with the conventional acclamations of the poets of imperial Rome. Poggio[39] confessed that he no longer knew what the coronation meant; in the old times only the victorious Inperator was crowned, and then he was crowned with laurel.[40] With Maximilian I. begins not only the general intervention of foreign nations, but a new imperial policy with regard to Italy. The first step—the investiture of Ludovico Moro with the duchy of Milan and the exclusion of his unhappy nephew—was not of a kind to bear good fruits. According to the modern theory of intervention, when two parties are tearing a country to pieces, a third may step in and take its share, and on this principle the empire acted. But right and justice were appealed to no longer. When Louis XII. was expected in Genoa (1502), and the imperial eagle was removed from the hall of the ducal palace and replaced by painted lilies, the historian, Senarega[41] asked what after all, was the meaning of the eagle which so many revolutions had spared, and what claims the empire had upon Genoa. No one knew more about the matter than the old phrase that Genoa was a camera imperii. In fact, nobody in Italy could give a clear answer to any such questions. At length, when Charles V. held Spain and the empire together, he was able by means of Spanish forces to make good imperial claims; but it is notorious that what he thereby gained turned to the profit, not of the empire, but of the Spanish monarchy. Closely connected with the political illegitimacy of the dynasties of the fifteenth century, was the public indifference to legitimate birth, which to foreigners—for example, to Comines—appeared so remarkable. The two things went naturally together. In northern countries, as in Burgundy, the illegitimate offspring were provided for by a distinct class of appanages, such as bishoprics and the like; in Portugal an illegitimate line maintained itself on the throne only by constant effort; in Italy, on the contrary, there no longer existed a princely house where, even in the direct line of descent, bastards were not patiently tolerated. The Aragonese monarchs of Naples belonged to the illegitimate line, Aragon itself falling to the lot of the brother of Alfonso I. The great Frederick of Urbino was, perhaps, no Montefeltro at all. When Pius II. was on his way to the Congress of Mantua (1459), eight bastards of the house of Este rode to meet him at Ferrara, among them the reigning duke Borso himself and two illegitimate sons of his illegitimate brother and predecessor {17} {18} {19} {20} {21} Leonello.[42] The latter had also had a lawful wife, herself an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso I. of Naples by an African woman.[43] The bastards were often admitted to the succession where the lawful children were minors and the dangers of the situation were pressing; and a rule of seniority became recognised, which took no account of pure or impure birth. The fitness of the individual, his worth and his capacity, were of more weight than all the laws and usages which prevailed elsewhere in the West. It was the age, indeed, in which the sons of the Popes were founding dynasties. In the sixteenth century, through the influence of foreign ideas and of the counter-reformation which then began, the whole question was judged more strictly: Varchi discovers that the succession of the legitimate children ‘is ordered by reason, and is the will of heaven from eternity.’[44] Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici founded his claim to the lordship of Florence on the fact that he was perhaps the fruit of a lawful marriage, and at all events son of a gentlewoman, and not, like Duke Alessandro, of a servant girl.[45] At this time began those morganatic marriages of affection which in the fifteenth century, on grounds either of policy or morality, would have had no meaning at all. But the highest and the most admired form of illegitimacy in the fifteenth century was presented by the Condottiere, who, whatever may have been his origin, raised himself to the position of an independent ruler. At bottom, the occupation of Lower Italy by the Normans in the eleventh century was of this character. Such attempts now began to keep the peninsula in a constant ferment. It was possible for a Condottiere to obtain the lordship of a district even without usurpation, in the case when his employer, through want of money or troops, provided for him in this way;[46] under...