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Ask children to
• Point to each letter pattern in the box on the back cover and say the sound
that it makes in words. Tell the child each sound if necessary.
• Look out for these letter patterns in the story and try to remember the
sounds they make.

C Read the story 1

Remember, children learn best when reading is relaxed and enjoyable, so give
lots of praise.
• Look at the cover and read the title. Ask: Where do you think this story is
set?
• Encourage the children to point to the words and try to read any they
don't recognise by saying the sounds of each letter pattern separately (e.g.
th- i- s), then running the sounds together quickly. If they find it difficult
to say the sounds, say them first and then see if they can hear the word.
• Explain that it is important when running the sounds in a word together
to check it sounds like a real word as some words are less regular. Read the
words too, my and come if they don't recognise them. Point out the letters
that make the usual sound in each word (e.g. the c in come). This will help
them to remember these words.

TEACHERS ^

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See inside back cover for other activities. support and free eBooks !
www.oxfordowlxo.uk
1
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna,
is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century.[73] Its
prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct
of the principal professors, who, when they were not satisfied with
their entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils
to other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in
Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths
that bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of
education in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not
difficult in an age when what we have to call an university, consisted
of masters and scholars, without college buildings, without libraries,
without endowments, and without scientific apparatus. The technical
name for such institutions seems to have been studium scholarium,
Italianised into studio or studio pubblico.[74] Among the more
permanent results of these secessions may be mentioned the
establishment of the high school at Vicenza by translation from
Bologna in 1204, and the opening of a school at Arezzo under similar
circumstances in 1215; the great University of Padua first saw the
light in consequence of political discords forcing the professors to
quit Bologna for a season.[75]
The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the foundation of
these studi in considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in
1228, the municipality providing two certified copyists for the
convenience of students who might wish to purchase text-books.[76]
In 1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy owed
a precocious eminence in literature, established the University of
Naples by an Imperial diploma.[77] With a view to rendering it the
chief seat of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of
the Regno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University
of Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the
Lombard League, defied the emperor, and refused to close the
schools, which numbered at that period about ten thousand students
of various nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and
Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and internal
vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities at this period,
interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples. In the middle of the
thirteenth century Salerno proved a dangerous rival; but when the
House of Anjou was established in the kingdom of the Sicilies,
special privileges were granted, restoring the high school of the
capital to the first rank. Charles I. created a separate court of
jurisdiction for its management. This consisted of a judge and three
assessors, one for the control of foreigners, another for the subjects
of the Regno, and the third for Italians from other states.
In 1264 we find a public school in operation at Ferrara. By its charter
the professors were exempt from military service. The University of
Piacenza came into existence a little earlier. Innocent IV. established
it in 1248, with privileges similar to those of Paris and Bologna. An
important group of studi pubblici owed their origin to Papal or
Imperial charters in the first half of the fourteenth century. That of
Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V. That of Rome
dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave it a constitution
by a special edict; but the translation of the Papal See to Avignon
caused it to fall into premature decadence. The University of Pisa
had already existed for some years, when it received a charter in
1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in 1321.
[78] In 1348 a place for its public buildings was assigned between
the Duomo and the Palazzo Pubblico, on the site of what was
afterwards known as the Collegium Eugenianum. A council of eight
burghers was appointed for its management, and a yearly sum was
set apart for its maintenance. In 1349 Clement VI. gave it the same
privileges as the University of Bologna, while in 1364 it received an
Imperial diploma from Charles IV. The same emperor granted
charters to Siena in 1357, to Arezzo in 1356, and to Lucca in 1369.
In 1362 Galeazzo Visconti obtained a charter for his University of
Pavia from Charles IV., with the privileges of Paris, Oxford, and
Bologna.
It will be observed that the majority of the studi pubblici obtained
charters either from the Pope or the emperor, or from both, less for
the sake of any immediate benefit to be derived from Papal or
Imperial patronage, than because supreme authority in Italy was still
referred to one or other of these heads. It was a great object with
each city to increase its wealth by attracting foreigners as residents,
and to retain the native youth within its precincts. The municipalities,
therefore, accorded immunities from taxation and military service to
bona fide students, prohibited their burghers from seeking rival
places of learning, and in some cases allowed the university
authorities to exercise a special jurisdiction over the motley
multitude of scholars from all countries. How miscellaneous the
concourse in some of the high schools used to be, may be gathered
from the reports extracted by Tiraboschi from their registers. At
Vicenza, for example, in 1209 we find the names of Bohemians,
Poles, Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as
of Italians of divers towns. The rectors of this studio in 1205
included an Englishman, a Provençal, a German, and a Cremonese.
The list of illustrious students at Bologna between 1265 and 1294
show men of all the European nationalities, proving that the
foreigners attracted by the university must have formed no
inconsiderable element in the whole population.[79] This will account
for the prominent part played by the students from time to time in
the political history of Bologna.[80]
The importance attached by great cities to their universities as a
source of strength, may be gathered from the chapter in Matteo
Villani's Chronicle describing the foundation of the studio pubblico in
Florence.[81] He expressly mentions that the Signory were induced
to take this step in consequence of the depopulation inflicted by the
Black Death of 1348. By drawing residents to Florence from other
States, they hoped to increase the number of the inhabitants, and to
restore the decayed fame and splendour of the commonwealth.[82]
At the same time they thought that serious studies might put an end
to the demoralisation produced in all classes by the plague. With this
object in view, they engaged the best teachers, and did not hesitate
to devote a yearly sum of 2,500 golden florins to the maintenance of
their high school. Bologna, which owed even more than Florence to
its university, is said to have lavished as much as half of its revenue,
about 20,000 ducats, on the pay of professors and other incidental
expenses. The actual cost incurred by cities through their schools
cannot, however, be accurately estimated, since it varied from year
to year according to the engagements made with special teachers.
At Pavia, for example, in 1400, the university supported in Canon
Law several eminent doctors, in Civil Law thirteen, in Medicine five,
in Philosophy three, in Astrology one, in Greek one, and in
Eloquence one.[83] Whether this staff was maintained after the lapse
of another twenty years we do not know for certain.
The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and Civil Law,
Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, important for the
professional education of the public, formed the staple of the
academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric, Philosophy, and
Astronomy were added according to occasion, the last sometimes
including the study of judicial astrology. If we inquire how the
humanists or professors of classic literature were related to the
universities, we find that, at first at any rate, they always occupied a
second rank. The permanent teaching remained in the hands of
jurists, who enjoyed life engagements at a high rate of pay, while
the Latinists and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary
occupation of the Chair of Rhetoric, with salaries considerably lower
than those of lawyers or physicians. The cause of this inferiority is
easily explained. It was natural that important and remunerative
branches of learning like law and medicine should attract a greater
number of students than pure literature, and that their professors
should be better paid than the teachers of eloquence. Padua,
Bologna, and Pavia in particular retained their legal speciality
throughout the period of the Renaissance, and remained but little
open to humanistic influences. At Padua we find from Sanudo's
Diary[84] that an eminent jurist received a stipend of 1,000 ducats. A
Doctor of Medicine at the same university, in 1491, received a similar
stipend, together with the right of private practice. At Bologna the
famous jurist Abbas Siculus (Niccolo de' Tudeschi) drew 800 scudi
yearly; at Padua Giovanni da Imola in 1406, and Paolo da Castro in
1430, drew a sum of 600 ducats.[85] About the same time (1453)
Lauro Quirino, who professed rhetoric at Padua, was paid at the rate
of only forty ducats yearly, while Lorenzo Valla, at Pavia, filled the
Chair of Eloquence with an annual stipend of fifty sequins. The
disparity between the remuneration of jurists and that of humanists
was not so great at all the universities. Florence in especial formed a
notable exception. From the date of its commencement the
Florentine studio was partial to literature; and it is worth remarking
that when Lorenzo de' Medici transferred the high school to Pisa, he
retained at Florence the professors of the liberal sciences and belles-
lettres. The great reputation of eminent rhetoricians, again, often
secured for them temporary engagements at a high rate. Thus we
gather from Rosmini's 'Life of Filelfo' that this humanist received
from Venice the offer of 500 sequins yearly as remuneration for his
professorial services. Bologna proposed an annual stipend of 450
sequins when he undertook to lecture upon eloquence and moral
philosophy. At Florence his income amounted to 350 golden florins,
secured for three years, and subsequently raised to 450. With Siena
he stipulated for 350 golden florins for two years. At Milan his Chair
of Eloquence was endowed with 500 golden florins, and this salary
was afterwards increased to 700. Nicholas V. offered him an annual
income of 600 ducats if he would devote himself to the translation of
Greek books into Latin, while Sixtus IV. tried to bring him to Rome
by proposing 600 Roman florins as the stipend of the Chair of
Rhetoric.
The fact, however, remains that while the special study of antiquity
preoccupied the minds of the Italians, and attracted all the finer
intellects among the youth ambitious of distinction, its professors
never succeeded in taking complete possession of the universities.
Their position there was always that of wandering stars and resident
aliens. This accounts in some measure for the bitter hostility and
scorn which they displayed against the teachers of theology and law
and medicine. The real home of the humanists was in the Courts of
princes, the palaces of the cultivated burghers, the Roman Curia,
and the chanceries of the republics. As secretaries, house tutors,
readers, Court poets, historiographers, public orators, and
companions they were indispensable. We shall therefore find that
the private academies formed by the literati and their patrons, the
schools of princes established at Mantua and Ferrara, and the
residences of great nobles play a more important part in the history
of humanism than do the universities. At the same time the spirit of
the new culture diffused by the humanists so thoroughly permeated
the whole intellectual activity of the Italians, that in course of time
the special studies of the high schools assumed a more literary and
liberal form. The classics then supplied the starting-point for juristic
and medical disquisitions. Poliziano was seen lecturing upon the
Pandects of Justinian, while Pomponazzi made the Chair of
Philosophy at Padua subservient to the exposition of materialism.
This triumph of humanism, like its triumph in the Church, was
effected less by immediate working on the universities than by a
gradual and indirect determination of the whole race towards the
study of antiquity.
In picturing to ourselves the method pursued by the humanists in
the instruction of their classes, we must divest our minds of all
associations with the practice of modern professors. Very few of the
students whom the master saw before him, possessed more than
meagre portions of the text of Virgil or of Cicero; they had no notes,
grammars, lexicons, or dictionaries of antiquities and mythology, to
help them. It was therefore necessary for the lecturer to dictate
quotations, to repeat parallel passages at full length, to explain
geographical and historical allusions, to analyse the structure of
sentences in detail, to provide copious illustrations of grammatical
usage, to trace the stages by which a word acquired its meaning in a
special context, to command a full vocabulary of synonyms, to give
rules for orthography, and to have the whole Pantheon at his fingers'
ends. In addition to this he was expected to comment upon the
meaning of his author, to interpret his philosophy, to point out the
beauties of his style, to introduce appropriate moral disquisition on
his doctrine, to sketch his biography, and to give some account of his
relation to the history of his country and to his predecessors in the
field of letters. In short, the professor of rhetoric had to be a
grammarian, a philologer, an historian, a stylist, and a sage in one.
He was obliged to pretend at least to an encyclopædic knowledge of
the classics, and to retain whole volumes in his memory. All these
requirements, which seem to have been satisfied by such men as
Filelfo and Poliziano, made the profession of eloquence—for so the
varied subject matter of humanism was often called—a very different
business from that which occupies a lecturer of the present century.
Scores of students, old and young, with nothing but pen and paper
on the desks before them, sat patiently recording what the lecturer
said. At the end of his discourses on the 'Georgics' or the 'Verrines,'
each of them carried away a compendious volume, containing a
transcript of the author's text, together with a miscellaneous mass of
notes, critical, explanatory, ethical, æsthetical, historical, and
biographical. In other words, a book had been dictated, and as many
scores of copies as there were attentive pupils had been made.[86]
The language used was Latin. No dialect of Italian could have been
intelligible to the students of different nationalities who crowded the
lecture-rooms. The elementary education in grammar requisite for
following a professorial course of lectures had been previously
provided by the teachers of the Latin schools, which depended for
maintenance partly on the State[87] and partly on private enterprise.
The Church does not seem to have undertaken the management of
these primary boys' schools.
Since this was the nature of academical instruction in the humanities
before the age of printing, it followed that the professor had a direct
interest in frequently shifting his scene of operations. More than a
certain number of such books as I have just attempted to describe
could not be carried in his head. After he had dictated his work on
the 'Georgics' at Florence, he was naturally anxious to move to Milan
and to do the same. A new audience gave new value to his lectures,
and another edition, as it were, of his book was put in circulation. In
the correspondence which passed between professors and the
rectors of the high schools previously to an engagement, we
sometimes find that the former undertake to explain particular
authors during their proposed residence. On these authors they had
no doubt bestowed the best years of their lives, making them the
vehicle for all the miscellaneous learning they possessed, and
grounding their fame upon the beauty, clearness, and copiousness of
their exposition.[88]
Having described the conditions under which professorial teaching
was conducted in the fifteenth century, it is now of some importance
to form a notion of the state of the book market and the diffusion of
MSS. before the invention of printing. Difficult as it is to speak with
accuracy on these topics some facts must be collected, seeing that
the high price and comparative rarity of books contributed in a very
important degree to determine the character of the instruction
provided by the humanists.
Scarcity of books was at first a chief impediment to the study of
antiquity. Popes and princes and even great religious institutions
possessed far fewer books than many farmers of the present age.
The library belonging to the Cathedral Church of S. Martino at Lucca
in the ninth century contained only nineteen volumes of abridgments
from ecclesiastical commentaries. The Cathedral of Novara in 1212
could boast copies of Boethius, Priscian, the 'Code of Justinian,' the
'Decretals,' and the 'Etymology' of Isidorus, besides a Bible and
some devotional treatises.[89] This slender stock passed for great
riches. Each of the precious volumes in such a collection was an
epitome of mediæval art. Its pages were composed of fine vellum
adorned with pictures.[90] The initial letters displayed elaborate
flourishes and exquisitely illuminated groups of figures. The scribe
took pains to render his caligraphy perfect, and to ornament the
margins with crimson, gold, and blue. Then he handed the
parchment sheets to the binder, who encased them in rich settings
of velvet or carved ivory and wood, embossed with gold and
precious stones. The edges were gilt and stamped with patterns.
The clasps were of wrought silver, chased with niello. The price of
such masterpieces was enormous. Borso d'Este, in 1464, gave eight
gold ducats to Gherardo Ghislieri of Bologna for an illuminated
Lancellotto, and in 1469 he bought a Josephus and Quintus Curtius
for forty ducats.[91] His great Bible in two volumes is said to have
cost 1,375 sequins. Rinaldo degli Albizzi notes in his Memoirs that he
paid eleven golden florins for a Bible at Arezzo in 1406. Of these
MSS. the greater part were manufactured in the cloisters, and it was
here too that the martyrdom of ancient authors took place. Lucretius
and Livy gave place to chronicles, antiphonaries, and homilies.
Parchment was extremely dear, and the scrolls which nobody could
read might be scraped and washed. Accordingly, the copyist erased
the learning of the ancients, and filled the fair blank space he gained
with litanies. At the same time it is but just to the monks to add that
palimpsests have occasionally been found in which ecclesiastical
works have yielded place to copies of the Latin poets used in
elementary education.[92]
Another obstacle to the diffusion of learning was the incompetence
of the copyists. It is true that at the great universities stationarii,
who supplied the text-books in use to students, were certified and
subjected to the control of special censors called peciarii. Yet their
number was not large, and when they quitted the routine to which
they were accustomed their incapacity betrayed itself by numerous
errors.[93] Petrarch's invective against the professional copyists
shows the depth to which the art had sunk. 'Who,' he exclaims, 'will
discover a cure for the ignorance and vile sloth of these copyists,
who spoil everything and turn it to nonsense? If Cicero, Livy, and
other illustrious ancients were to return to life, do you think they
would understand their own works? There is no check upon these
copyists, selected without examination or test of their capacity.
Workmen, husbandmen, weavers, artisans, are not indulged in the
same liberty.'[94] Coluccio Salutato repeats the same complaint,
averring that the copies of Dante and Petrarch no more correspond
to the originals than bad statues to the men they pretend to
represent. At the same time the copyists formed a necessary and
flourishing class of craftsmen. They were well paid. Ambrogio
Traversari told his friend Giustiniani in 1430 that he could
recommend him a good scribe at the pay of thirty golden florins a
year and his keep. Under these circumstances it was usual for even
the most eminent scholars, like Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Poggio, to
make their own copies of MSS. Niccolo de' Niccoli transcribed nearly
the whole of the codices that formed the nucleus of the Library of
the Mark. Sometimes they sold them or made advantageous
changes. Poggio, for example, sold two volumes of S. Jerome's
'Letters' to Lionello d'Este for 100 golden florins. Beccadelli bought a
Livy from him for 120 golden florins, having parted with a farm to
defray the expense. It is clear that the first step toward the revival of
learning implied three things: first, the collection of MSS. wherever
they could be saved from the indolence of the monks; secondly, the
formation of libraries for their preservation; and, thirdly, the
invention of an art whereby they might be multiplied cheaply,
conveniently, and accurately.
The labour involved in the collection of classical manuscripts had to
be performed by a few enthusiastic scholars, who received no help
from the universities and their academical scribes, and who met with
no sympathy in the monasteries they were bent on ransacking. The
new culture demanded wholly new machinery; and new runners in
the torch-race of civilisation sprang into existence. The high schools
were contented with their summaries and glosses. The monks
performed at best the work of earthworms, who unwittingly preserve
fragments of Greek architecture from corrosion by heaping mounds
of mould and rubbish round them. Meanwhile the humanists went
forth with the instinct of explorers to release the captives and awake
the dead. From the convent libraries of Italy, from the museums of
Constantinople, from the abbeys of Germany and Switzerland and
France, the slumbering spirits of the ancients had to be evoked. The
chivalry of learning, banded together for this service, might be
likened to Crusaders. As the Franks deemed themselves thrice blest
if they returned with relics from Jerusalem, so these new Knights of
the Holy Ghost, seeking not the sepulchre of a risen God, but the
tombs wherein the genius of the ancient world awaited resurrection,
felt holy transports when a brown, begrimed, and crabbed copy of
some Greek or Latin author rewarded their patient quest. Days and
nights they spent in carefully transcribing it, comparing their own
MS. with the original, multiplying facsimiles, and sending them
abroad with free hands to students who in their turn took copies, till
the treasure-trove became the common property of all who could
appreciate its value. This work of discovery began with Petrarch. I
have already alluded to the journeys he undertook in the hope of
collecting the lost MSS. of Cicero. It was carried on by Boccaccio.
The account given by Benvenuto da Imola of Boccaccio's visit to
Monte Cassino brings vividly before us both the ardour of these first
explorers and the apathy of the Benedictines (who have sometimes
been called the saviours of learning) with regard to the treasures of
their own libraries:[95]—'With a view to the clearer understanding of
this text ('Paradiso,' xxii. 74), I will relate what my revered teacher,
Boccaccio of Certaldo, humorously told me. He said that when he
was in Apulia, attracted by the celebrity of the convent, he paid a
visit to Monte Cassino, whereof Dante speaks. Desirous of seeing the
collection of books, which he understood to be a very choice one, he
modestly asked a monk—for he was always most courteous in
manners—to open the library, as a favour, for him. The monk
answered stiffly, pointing to a steep staircase, "Go up; it is open."
Boccaccio went up gladly; but he found that the place which held so
great a treasure, was without or door or key. He entered, and saw
grass sprouting on the windows, and all the books and benches thick
with dust. In his astonishment he began to open and turn the leaves
of first one tome and then another, and found many and divers
volumes of ancient and foreign works. Some of them had lost
several sheets; others were snipped and pared all round the text,
and mutilated in various ways. At length, lamenting that the toil and
study of so many illustrious men should have passed into the hands
of most abandoned wretches, he departed with tears and sighs.
Coming to the cloister, he asked a monk whom he met, why those
valuable books had been so disgracefully mangled. He answered
that the monks, seeking to gain a few soldi, were in the habit of
cutting off sheets and making psalters, which they sold to boys. The
margins too they manufactured into charms, and sold to women. So
then, O man of study, go to and rack your brains; make books that
you may come to this!'
What Italy contained of ancient codices soon saw the light. The visit
of Poggio Bracciolini to Constance (1414) opened up for Italian
scholars the stores that lay neglected in transalpine monasteries.
Poggio's office of Apostolic Secretary obliged him to attend the
Council of Constance for the purpose of framing reports and
composing diplomatic documents. At the same time he had ample
leisure on his hands, and this he spent in exploring the libraries of
Swiss and Suabian convents. The treasures he unearthed at
Reichenau, Weingarten, and above all S. Gallen, restored to Italy
many lost masterpieces of Latin literature, and supplied students
with full texts of authors who had hitherto been known in mutilated
copies. The account he gave of his visit to S. Gallen in a Latin letter
to a friend is justly celebrated.[96] After describing the wretched
state in which the 'Institutions' of Quintilian had previously existed,
[97] he proceeds as follows:—'I verily believe that, if we had not
come to the rescue, he [Quintilian] must speedily have perished; for
it cannot be imagined that a man magnificent, polished, elegant,
urbane, and witty could much longer have endured the squalor of
the prison-house in which I found him, the savagery of his jailers,
the forlorn filth of the place. He was indeed right sad to look upon,
and ragged, like a condemned criminal, with rough beard and
matted hair, protesting by his countenance and garb against the
injustice of his sentence. He seemed to be stretching out his hands,
calling upon the Romans, demanding to be saved from so unmerited
a doom. Hard indeed it was for him to bear, that he who had
preserved the lives of many by his eloquence and aid, should now
find no redresser of his wrongs, no saviour from the unjust
punishment awaiting him. But as it often happens, to quote Terence,
that what you dare not wish for comes to you by chance, so a good
fortune for him, but far more for ourselves, led us, while wasting our
time in idleness at Constance, to take a fancy for visiting the place
where he was held in prison. The monastery of S. Gallen lies at the
distance of some twenty miles from that city. Thither, then, partly for
the sake of amusement and partly of finding books, whereof we
heard there was a large collection in the convent, we directed our
steps. In the middle of a well-stocked library, too large to catalogue
at present, we discovered Quintilian, safe as yet and sound, though
covered with dust and filthy with neglect and age. The books, you
must know, were not housed according to their worth, but were
lying in a most foul and obscure dungeon at the very bottom of a
tower, a place into which condemned criminals would hardly have
been thrust; and I am firmly persuaded that if anyone would but
explore those ergastula of the barbarians wherein they incarcerate
such men, we should meet with like good fortune in the case of
many whose funeral orations have long ago been pronounced.
Besides Quintilian, we exhumed the three first books and a half of
the fourth book of the "Argonautica" of Flaccus, and the
"Commentaries" of Asconius Pedianus upon eight orations of Cicero.'
Poggio, immediately after this discovery, set himself to work at
transcribing the Quintilian, a labour accomplished in the brief space
of thirty-two days. The MS. was then despatched to Lionardo Bruni,
who received it with ecstatic welcome, as appears from this
congratulatory epistle addressed to Poggio:—
'The republic of letters has reason to rejoice not only in the works
you have discovered, but also in those you have still to find. What a
glory for you it is to have brought to light by your exertions the
writings of the most distinguished authors! Posterity will not forget
that MSS. which were bewailed as lost beyond the possibility of
restoration, have been recovered, thanks to you. As Camillus was
called the second founder of Rome, so may you receive the title of
the second author of the works you have restored to the world.
Through you we now possess Quintilian entire; before we only
boasted of the half of him, and that defective and corrupt in text. O
precious acquisition! O unexpected joy! And shall I, then, in truth be
able to read the whole of that Quintilian which, mutilated and
deformed as it has hitherto appeared, has formed my solace? I
conjure you send it me at once, that at least I may set eyes on it
before I die.'
In addition to the authors named above, Poggio discovered and
copied with his own hand MSS. of Lucretius and Columella. Silius
Italicus, Manillas, and Vitruvius owed their resurrection to his
industry. At Langres he found a copy of Cicero's oration for Cæcina;
at Monte Cassino a MS. of Frontinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonius
Marcellus, Probus, Flavius Caper, and Eutyches are also to be ranked
among the captives freed by him from slavery. In exploring foreign
convents where he suspected that ancient authors might lie buried,
he spared neither trouble nor expense. 'No severity of winter cold,
no snow, no length of journey, no roughness of roads, prevented
him from bringing the monuments of literature to light,' wrote
Francesco Barbaro.[98] Nor did he recoil from theft, if theft seemed
necessary to secure a precious codex. In a letter to Ambrogio
Traversari he relates his negotiations with a monk for the fraudulent
abduction of an Ammianus and a Livy from a convent library in
Hersfeld.[99] Not unfrequently his most golden anticipations with
regard to literary treasures were deceived, as when a Dane
appeared at the Court of Martin V. bragging of a complete Livy to be
found in a Cistercian convent near Röskilde. This man protested he
had seen the MS., and described the characters in which it was
written with some minuteness. At Poggio's instance the Cardinal
Orsini sent off a special messenger to seek for this, which would
have been the very phœnix of MSS. to the Latinists of that period,
while Cosimo de' Medici put his agents at Lübeck to work for the
same purpose. All their efforts were in vain, however. The Livy could
not be discovered, and the Dane passed for a liar, in spite of the
corroboration his story received from another traveller.[100] Poggio
himself, who would willingly have ransacked Europe for a MS., was
jealous of money spent on any other object. In his treatise 'De
Infelicitate Principum' he complains that 'these exalted personages
[popes and princes] spend their days and their wealth in pleasure, in
unworthy pursuits, in pestiferous and destructive wars. So great is
their mental torpor that nothing can rouse them to search after the
works of excellent writers, by whose wisdom and learning mankind
are taught the way to true happiness.' This lamentation, written
probably under the unfavourable impression produced upon his mind
by the Papal Court, where as yet the spirit of humanism had hardly
penetrated, must not be taken in any strict sense. Never was there a
time in the world's history when money was spent more freely upon
the collection and preservation of MSS., and when a more complete
machinery was put in motion for the sake of securing literary
treasures. Prince vied with prince, and eminent burgher with
burgher, in buying books. The commercial correspondents of the
Medici and other great Florentine houses, whose banks and discount
offices extended over Europe and the Levant, were instructed to
purchase relics of antiquity without regard for cost, and to forward
them to Florence. The most acceptable present that could be sent to
a king was a copy of a Roman historian. The best credentials which
a young Greek arriving from Byzantium could use to gain the
patronage of men like Palla degli Strozzi was a fragment of some
ancient; the merchandise ensuring the largest profit to a speculator
who had special knowledge in such matters was old parchment
covered with crabbed characters.
The history of the foundation of libraries will form part of the next
chapter. For the present it is requisite to mention some of Poggio's
fellow-workmen in the labour of collection. Among these a certain
Nicholas of Treves, employed to receive monies due to the Papal
Curia in Germany, deserves a place, seeing that in 1429 he sent the
most complete extant copy of Plautus to Rome. Bartolommeo da
Montepulciano, following the lead of Poggio, pursued investigations
while at Constance, and discovered the lost writings of Vegetius and
Pompeius Festus. In 1409 Lionardo Bruni chanced upon a good MS.
of Cicero's letters at Pistoja, and about the year 1425 a magnificent
capture of Cicero's rhetorical treatises was made at Lodi in the
Duomo by Gherardo Landriani. The extant works of Tacitus, so
ardently desired, were not collected earlier than the reign of Leo.
While Poggio was releasing the Latin authors from their northern
prisons, and sending them to walk like princes through the Courts
and capitals of Italy, three other scholars devoted no less energy to
the collection of Greek MSS. Giovanni Aurispa, on his return from
Byzantium in 1423, brought with him 238 codices, while Guarino of
Verona and Francesco Filelfo both arrived in Italy heavily laden.
There is an old story that Guarino lost a part of his cargo at sea, and
landed with hair whitened by the grief this misfortune cost him.
Considering the special advantages enjoyed by these three scholars,
who were pupils of the learned Manuel Chrysoloras, and before
whose eager curiosity the libraries of Byzantium remained open
through nearly half a century previous to the fall of the Greek
Empire, we have good reason to believe that the greater part of Attic
and Alexandrian literature known to the later Greeks was transferred
to Italy. The avidity shown by the Florentines for codices and copies,
the opportunities afforded by their mercantile connection with
Constantinople, and the obvious interest which the Court of
Byzantium at that crisis had in gratifying their taste for such
acquisitions, contribute to render it unlikely that any of the more
important and illustrious authors were destroyed in the taking of the
city by the Turk.[101] It is probable that causes similar to those
which slowly wrought the ruin of Latin literature in the West—the
apathy of an uncultured public, the rancorous animosity of a
superstitious clergy, and the decay of students as a class—had long
before the age of the Renaissance ruined beyond the possibility of
recovery those masterpieces whereof we still deplore the loss.[102]
The preservation of Neoplatonic and Patristic literature in
comparative completeness, while so much that was more valuable
perished, may be ascribed to the theological content of these
writings.
Not to render some account of the effect produced upon the minds
of scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the sight of
Roman ruins in decay, would be to omit an important branch of the
subject I have undertaken. Yet this part of the inquiry leads us into a
region somewhat different from that hitherto traversed in the
present chapter, since it properly belongs to the history of
enthusiasm. No small portion of the motive impulse that determined
the Revival was derived from the admiration, curiosity, and awe
excited by the very stones of ancient Rome. During the Middle Ages
the right point of view for studying the architectural works of the
Romans had been lost. History yielded ever more and more to
legend, until at last it was believed that demons and magicians had
suspended those gigantic vaults in air. Telesmatic virtues were
attributed to figures carved on temple-fronts and friezes, while the
great name of Virgil attached itself to what remained unhurt of Latin
art in Rome and Naples.[103] The Rome of the Mirabilia was
supposed to be the handiwork of fiends constrained by poets of the
bygone age with spells of power to move hell from its centre. This
transference of interest from the real to the fanciful, from the
substantial to the visionary, was characteristic of the whole attitude
assumed by the mind in the Middle Ages. History, literature, and art
alike submitted to the alchemy of the imagination.[104] At the same
time the very grossness of these fables testified to the profound
impression produced by the ruins of the Eternal City, and to the
haunting magic of a memory surviving degradation and decay. When
the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims returned from Rome in the eighth century,
the fascination of the great works they had seen expressed itself in a
memorable prophecy.[105] 'As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome
shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls,
the world will fall.'
About the year 1300 a new historic sense appears to have arisen in
Italy. Instead of dreams and legends, the positive facts of the past
began to have once more their value. This change might be
compared to the discovery we make upon the borderland of sleep
and waking, when what we fancied was a figure draped in white by
our bedside turns out to be the wall with moonlight shining on it.
Giovanni Villani, when he gazed upon the baths and amphitheatres
of Rome, was not moved to think of the fiends who raised them, but
of the buried grandeur of the Roman commonwealth.[106] What
Rome once was, Florence may one day become, was the reflection
that impelled him to write the chronicle of his native town. Dante,
who with Villani witnessed the Jubilee of 1300, cried that the very
stones of Rome were sacred. 'Whoso robs her, or despoils her, with
blasphemy of act offendeth God, who only for His own use made her
holy.'[107] The city was to him the outward symbol and terrestrial
station of that God-appointed Monarchy for ruling all the peoples of
the earth in peace. His most enthusiastic speculations, as well as the
practical policy set forth in his epistles, attached themselves to Rome
as a reality; nor did he ever tire of bidding German emperors return
and fix their throne upon the bank of Tiber. We know now that this
idealism was a delusion, no less incapable of realisation than it was
pernicious to the liberties of the Italians. It haunted the imagination
of the race, however, until at last, as I have said above, the proper
vent was found in humanism.
The same passion for Rome took different form in the mind of
another and less noble patriot. It impelled Rienzi to conceive the
plan of rehabilitating the Republic. The Popes were far away at
Avignon. The emperors seemed to have forgotten Italy. Yet Rome
remained, and the mere name of Rome was Empire. Why should not
the Senatus Populusque Romanus, whose initials still survived in
uncial letters upon blocks of travertine and marble, be restored to
place and power? Wandering among those spacious vaults, and
lingering beneath the triumphal arches, where the marks of chariot-
wheels were traced upon the massive paved work of the Roman
ways, the young enthusiast conceived that even he might live to be
the Tribune of that people, born invincible, and called by destiny to
rule the world. With what energy he devoted himself to studying the
histories of Livy, Sallust, and Valerius Maximus; how he strove to
master the meaning of inscriptions found among the wrecks of
Rome; with what eloquence he moved his fellow-citizens to
sympathy—are familiar matters not only to scholars, but to readers
of romance. His vision of the restored Republic seemed for a
moment destined to become reality. The Romans placed the power
of life and death, of revenues and armies, in the hands of the seer,
who had stirred them by his rhetoric. Rienzi took rank among the
potentates of Italy. Even the Papal Court acknowledged him.
What followed proved the political incapacity of the new dictator, his
want of critical insight into the ideal he had set before himself. There
is something both pathetic and ridiculous in the vanity displayed by
this barber's son exalted to a place among the princes. Not satisfied
with calling himself Tribune and Knight, the style he affected in his
correspondence with Clement VI. ran as follows:—'Candidatus,
Spiritus Sancti Miles, Nicolaus Severus et Clemens, Liberator Urbis,
Zelator Italiæ, Amator Orbis, et Tribunus Augustus.' Like Icarus, he
spread these waxen wings to the sun's noontide blaze. The same
extravagant confusion of things sacred and profane, classical and
mediæval, marked the pageantry of his State ceremonials in Rome.
On August 15, 1347, in celebration of his election to the Tribunate,
he assumed six crowns—of ivy, myrtle, laurel, oak, olive, and gilt
silver. His arms were blazoned with the keys of Peter and the letters
S.P.Q.R. His senatorial sceptre was surmounted, not with the eagle
or the wolf of Romulus, but with a golden ball and cross enclosing
the relic of a saint. The poetic fancy could not have suggested a
more striking allegory to illustrate an undiscriminating reverence for
the Imperial and Pontifical prestige of Rome, than was presented in
this tragic farce of actual history. Not in this way, by a mixture of
Christian and Pagan titles, by emblematic pomp, by heraldry and
declamation, could the old Republic be brought to life again. The
very attempt to do so proved how far the mind of man, awaking
from the long sleep of the Middle Ages, was removed from the
severe simplicity that gave its strength to ancient Rome. Along those
giddy parapets of fame we watch Rienzi walking through his months
of glory like a somnambule sustained by an internal dream. That he
should fall was inevitable. With him expired the Utopia of a Roman
commonwealth, to be from time to time revived as an ineffectual
fancy in the brains of a few visionaries.[108]
The relations of Petrarch to Rienzi offer matter for curious reflection,
while they illustrate the part played by the enthusiasm for ancient
Rome in the early history of humanism. Petrarch and Rienzi had
been friends and correspondents before the emergence of the latter
into public notice; and when the Tribune seemed about to satisfy the
dearest desire of the poet's heart by re-establishing the Roman
commonwealth, Petrarch addressed him with an animated letter of
congratulation and encouragement.[109] In his charmed eyes he
seemed a hero, vir magnanimus, worthy of the ancient world, a new
Romulus, a third Brutus, a Camillus. The Roman burghers, that scum
and sediment of countless races, barbarised by the lingering miseries
of the Middle Ages, needed nothing, it appeared, but words and
wishes to make them once again cives Romani, no longer clamorous
for bread and games, but ready to reconquer all their ancestors had
lost.[110] 'Where,' cried Petrarch, 'can the empire of the world be
found, except in Rome? Who can dispute the Roman right? What
force can stand against the name of Romans?' Neither the patriot
nor the scholar discerned that the revival they were destined to
inaugurate was intellectual. Though the spirit of the times refused a
political Renaissance, refused to Italy the maintenance of even such
freedom as she then possessed, far more refused a resuscitation of
ancient Rome's imperial sway, yet both Rienzi and Petrarch persisted
in believing that, because they glowed with fervour for the past,
because they could read inscriptions, because they expressed their
desires eloquently, the world's great age was certain to begin anew.
It was a capital fault of the Renaissance to imagine that words could
work wonders, that a rhetorician's stylus might become the wand of
Prospero. Seeming passed for being in morals, politics, and all affairs
of life. I have already touched on this as a capital defect in
Petrarch's character; but it was a weakness inherent not only in him
and in the age he inaugurated, but one, moreover, that has
influenced the whole history of the Italians for evil. Sounding
phrases like the barbaros expellere of Julius II., like the va fuori
d'Italia of Garibaldian hymns, from time to time have roused the
nation to feverish enthusiasm, too soon succeeded by dejected
apathy. When the inefficiency of Rienzi was proved, all that remained
for Petrarch was to warn and scold.
The interest excited in Petrarch by the sight of Rome's ruins was
important for his humanistic ideal. They stirred him as a moralist, an
antiquarian, and a man who owed his mental vigour to the past. He
tells how often he used to climb above the huge vaults of the Baths
of Diocletian in company with his friend Giovanni Colonna.[111]
Seated there among the flowering shrubs and scented herbs that
clothed decay with loveliness, they held discourse concerning the
great men of old, and deplored the mutability of all things human.
Whatever the poet had read of Roman grandeur was brought back
to his mind with vivid meaning during his long solitary walks. He
never doubted that he knew for certain where Evander's palace
stood, and where the cave of Cacus opened on the Tiber. The
difficulties of modern antiquarian research had not been yet
suggested, and his fancy was free to map out the topography of the
seven hills as pleased him best. Yet he complained that nowhere
was less known about Rome than in Rome itself.[112] This ignorance
he judged the most fatal obstacle to the resurrection of the city.[113]
The palaces where dwelt those heroes of the past, had fallen into
ruins; the temples of the gods were desecrated; the triumphal
arches were crumbling; the very walls had yielded to decay. None of
the Romans cared to arrest destruction; they even robbed the
marble columns and entablatures in order to deck Naples with the
spoils.[114] The last remnants of the city would soon, he exclaimed,
be levelled with the ground. Time has been unable to destroy them;
but man was ruining what Time had spared.[115]
There is no doubt that, shortly before the date of Petrarch's visits to
Rome, the city had suffered grievously in its monuments. We know,
for instance, that the best preserved of the theatres, baths, and
tombs formed the residences and fortresses of nobles in the Middle
Ages; and when we read that in 1258 the senator Brancaleone found
it necessary to destroy one hundred and forty of these fortified
dwellings, we obtain a standard for measuring the injury that must
have ensued to precious works of classic architecture. The ruins,
moreover, as Petrarch hinted, had been used as quarries. What was
worse, the burghers burned the marbles, rich, perhaps, with
inscriptions and carved bas-reliefs, for lime. We shall shortly see
what Poggio relates upon this topic. For the present it will suffice to
quote an epigram of Pius II., written some time after the revival of
enthusiasm for antiquity:—

Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas,

Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.
 Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis
Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit.
Impia ter centum si sic gens egerit annos,
Nullum hic indicium nobilitatis erit.[116]

Poggio Bracciolini opens a new epoch in Roman topography. The

ruins that had moved the superstitious wonder of the Middle Ages,
that had excited Rienzi to patriotic enthusiasm, and Petrarch to
reflections on the instability of human things, were now for the first
time studied in a truly antiquarian spirit. Poggio read them like a
book, comparing the testimony they rendered with that of Livy,
Vitruvius, and Frontinus, and seeking to compile a catalogue of the
existing fragments of old Rome. The first section of his treatise 'De
Varietate Fortunæ,' forms by far the most important source of
information we possess relating to the state of Rome in the fifteenth
century.[117] It appears that the Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian
could still boast of columns and marble incrustations, but that within
Poggio's own recollection the marbles had been stripped from
Cæcilia Metella's tomb, and the so-called Temple of Concord had
been pillaged.[118] Among the ruins ascribed to the period of the
Republic are mentioned a bridge, an arch, a tomb, a temple, a
building on the Capitol, and the pyramid of Cestius.[119] Besides
these, Poggio enumerates, as referable chiefly to the Imperial age,
eleven temples, seven thermæ, the Arches of Titus, Severus, and
Constantine, parts of the Arches of Trajan, Faustina, and Gallienus,
the Coliseum, the Theatres of Pompey and Marcellus, the Circus
Agonalis and Circus Maximus, the Columns of Trajan and Antonine,
the two horses ascribed to Pheidias and Praxiteles, together with
other marble statues, one bronze equestrian statue, and the
mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian.
We have to regret that Poggio's description was subservient and
introductory to a rhetorical dissertation. Had he applied himself to
the task of tabulating more minutely what he had observed, his work
would have been infinitely precious to the archæologist. No one
knew more about the Roman buildings than he did. No one felt the
impression of their majesty in desolation more profoundly. The
mighty city appeared to him, he said, like the corpse of a giant, like
a queen in slavery. The sight of her magnificence, despoiled and
shorn of ornaments as she had been, moved him daily to deeper
admiration. It was his custom to lead strangers from point to point
among the ruins, in order to enjoy the effect produced upon fresh
minds by their stupendous evidence of strength and greatness in
decay.
The pathos of this former empress of the world exposed to insult
and indignity had not been first felt by Poggio. Petrarch described
her as an aged matron with grey hair and pale cheeks, whose torn
and sordid raiment ill accorded with the nobleness of her
demeanour.[120] Fazio degli Uberti personified her as a majestic
woman, wrapped around with rags, who pointed out to him the ruins
of her city, 'to the end that he might understand how fair she was in
years of old.'[121]
In this way a sentimental feeling for the relics of the past grew up
and flourished side by side with the archæological interest they
excited. The literature of the Renaissance abounds in matter that
might be used in illustration of this remark,[122] while nothing was
commoner in art than to paint for backgrounds broken arches and
decayed buildings, 'whose ruins are even pitied.' The double impulse
of romantic sentiment and antiquarian curiosity, set going in this age
of the Revival, contributed no little to the development of
architecture, sculpture, and painting. In the section of my work
which deals with the fine arts in Italy will be found the proper sequel
to this subject. Meanwhile the history of antiquarian research in
Rome itself will be resumed in another chapter of this volume.
Among the representative men of the first period of the Revival must
be mentioned an enthusiast who devoted his whole life to
topographical studies and to the copying of classical inscriptions.
Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli was born about 1404 at Ancona, and from this
town he took the name he bears among the learned. Like many
other pioneers of erudition, he was educated for commerce, and had
slender opportunities for acquiring the dead languages in his youth.
His manhood was spent in restless journeying, at first undertaken for
the purposes of trade, but afterwards for the sole object of
discovery. Smitten with the zeal for classical antiquity, he made
himself a tolerable Latin scholar, and gained a fair knowledge of
Greek. In the course of his long wanderings he ransacked every part
of Italy, Greece, and the Greek islands, collecting medals, gems, and
fragments of sculpture, buying manuscripts, transcribing records,
and amassing a miscellaneous store of archæological information.
The enthusiasm that possessed him was so untempered by sobriety
that it excited the suspicion of contemporaries. Some regarded him
as a man of genuine learning; others spoke of him as a flighty,
boastful, and untrustworthy fanatic.[123] The mistakes he made in
copying inscriptions depreciated the general value of his labours,
while he was even accused of having passed off fabrications on the
credulity of the public. The question of his alleged forgeries has been
discussed at length by Tiraboschi.[124] To settle it at this distance of
time is both unimportant and impossible. While we may well believe
that Ciriac was a conceited enthusiast, accepting as genuine what he
ought to have rejected, and interpreting according to his fancy
rather than the letter of his text, his life retains real value for the
student of the Revival. In him the curiosity of the new age reached
its acme of expansiveness. The passion for discovery pursued him
from shore to shore, and the vision of the past, to be reconquered
by the energy of the present, haunted his imagination till the
moment of his death. When asked what object he had set his heart
upon in those perpetual journeyings, he answered, 'I go to awake
the dead.' That word, the motto for the first age of the Revival,
explains the fanaticism of Ciriac, and is a sufficient title to fame.
 CHAPTER IV
SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Intricacy of the Subject—Division into Four Periods—

Place of Florence—Social Conditions favourable to
Culture—Palla degli Strozzi—His Encouragement of
Greek Studies—Plan of a Public Library—His Exile—
Cosimo de' Medici—His Patronage of Learning—Political
Character—Love of Building—Generosity to Students—
Foundation of Libraries—Vespasiano and Thomas of
Sarzana—Niccolo de' Niccoli—His Collection of Codices
—Description of his Mode of Life—His Fame as a
Latinist—Lionardo Bruni—His Biography—Translations
from the Greek—Latin Treatises and Histories—His
Burial in Santa Croce—Carlo Aretino—Fame as a
Lecturer—The Florentine Chancery—Matteo Palmieri—
Giannozzo Manetti—His Hebrew Studies—His Public
Career—His Eloquence—Manetti ruined by the Medici—
His Life in Exile at Naples—Estimate of his Talents—
Ambrogio Traversari—Study of Greek Fathers—General
of the Camaldolese Order—Humanism and
Monasticism—The Council of Florence—Florentine
Opinion about the Greeks—Gemistus Pletho—His Life—
His Philosophy—His Influence at Florence—Cosimo de'
Medici and the Florentine Academy—Study of Plato—
Pletho's Writings—Platonists and Aristotelians in Italy
and Greece—Bessarion—His Patronage of Greek
Refugees in Rome—Humanism in the Smaller
Republics—In Venice.
The great difficulty with which a critic desirous of rendering a
succinct account of this phase of Italian culture has to deal, is the
variety and complexity of the subject. It is easy to perceive the unity
of the humanistic movement, and to regard the scholars of the
fifteenth century as a literary community with well-defined relations
to each other. Yet when we attempt to trace the growth of
scholarship in all its branches, the peculiar conditions of political and
social life in Italy present almost insuperable obstacles to any
continuity of treatment. The republics, the principalities, and the
Church have each their separate existence. Venice, Florence, Naples,
Milan, Rome, Ferrara, form distinct and independent centres,
imposing their own specialities upon the intellectual activity of
citizens and aliens. The humanists, meanwhile, to some extent
efface these local differences, spreading a network of common
culture over cities and societies divided by all else but interest in
learning. To these combinations and permutations, arising from the
contact of the scholars with their patrons in the several States of
Italy, is due the intricacy of the history of the Revival. The same men
of eminence appear by turns in each of the chief Courts and
commonwealths, passing with bewildering rapidity from north to
south and back again, in one place demanding attention under one
head of the subject, in another presenting new yet not less
important topics for investigation. What Filippo Maria Visconti, for
instance, required from Filelfo had but little in common with the
claims made on him by Nicholas V., while his activity as a satirist and
partisan at Florence differed from his labour as a lecturer at Siena.
Again, the biography of each humanist to some extent involves that
of all his contemporaries. The coteries of Rome are influenced by the
cliques of Naples; the quarrels of Lorenzo Valla ramify into the
squabbles of Guarino; political animosity combines with literary
jealousy in the disputes of Poggio with Filelfo. While some of the
most eminent professors remain stationary in their native or adopted
towns, others move to and fro with the speed of comets. From time
to time, at Rome or elsewhere, a patron rises, who assembles all the
wandering stars around himself. His death disperses the group; or
accidents rouse jealousy among them, and cause secessions from
the circle. Then fresh combinations have to be considered. In no one
city can we trace firm chronological progression, or discover the
fixed local character which justifies our dividing the history of Italian
painting by its schools. To avoid repetition, and to preserve an even
current of narration amid so much that is shifting, is almost
impossible.
Some method may be introduced by sketching briefly at the outset
the principal periods through which the humanistic movement
passed. Though to a certain extent arbitrary, these periods mark
distinct moments in an evolution uniform in spite of its complexity.
The first, starting with Petrarch, and including the lives and labours
of those men he personally influenced, has been traced in a
preceding chapter. This was the age of inspiration and discovery,
when the enthusiasm for antiquity was generated and the remnants
of the classics were accumulated. The second may be described as
the age of arrangement and translation. The first great libraries were
founded in this period; the study of Greek was pursued in earnest,
and the Greek authors were rendered into Latin. Round Cosimo de'
Medici at Florence, Alfonso the Magnanimous at Naples, and
Nicholas V. in Rome the leaders of the Renaissance at this time
converge. The third is the age of academies. The literary republic,
formed during the first and second periods, now gathers into
coteries, whereof the Platonic Academy at Florence, that of Pontanus
at Naples, that of Pomponius Lætus in Rome, and that of Aldus
Manutius at Venice are the most important. Scholarship begins to
exhibit a marked improvement in all that concerns style and taste. At
the same time Italian erudition reaches its maximum in Poliziano.
Externally this third period is distinguished by the rapid spread of
printing and the consequent downfall of the humanists as a class. In
the fourth period we notice a gradual decline of learning; æsthetic
and stylistic scholarship begins to claim exclusive attention. This is
the age of the purists, over whom Bembo exercises the sway of a
dictator, while the Court of Leo X. furnishes the most brilliant
assemblage of literati in Europe. Erudition, properly so called, is now
upon the point of being transplanted beyond the Alps, and the
Revival of Learning closes for the historian of Italy.
Although the essential feature of this subject is variety, and though
each city of Italy contributed its quota to the sum of culture,
attention has now to be directed in a special sense on Florence.
Nothing is more obvious to the student who has mastered the first
difficulties caused by the intricacy of Italian history, than the fact
that all the mental force of the nation was generated in Tuscany, and
radiated thence, as from a centre of vital heat and light, over the
rest of the peninsula. This is true of the fine arts no less than of
Italian poetry, of the revival of learning as well as of the origin of
science. From the republics of Tuscany, and from Florence in
particular, proceeded the impulse and the energy which led to fruitful
results in all of these departments. In proportion as Florence
continued to absorb the neighbouring free States into herself, her
intellectual pre-eminence became the more unquestionable. Arezzo,
Volterra, Cortona, Montepulciano, Prato, and Pistoja were but
rivulets feeding the stream of Florentine industry.
What caused this superiority of the Tuscans is a problem as difficult
to solve as the similar problem with respect to Athens among the
states of Greece. Something may no doubt be attributed to
ethnology, and something to climate. Much, again, was due to the
purity of a dialect which retained more of native energy and literary
capacity, and which had suffered less from barbarian admixtures
than the dialects of northern or of southern Italy. The conquest of
the Lombards passed the Tuscans by, nor did feudal institutions take
the same root in the valley of the Arno which they struck in the
kingdom of Naples. The cities of Tuscany were therefore less
exposed to foreign influences than the rest of Italy. While they
pursued their course of internal growth in comparative tranquillity,
they were better fitted for reviving the past glories of Latin
civilisation upon its native soil. The free institutions of the Florentine
commonwealth must also be taken into account.
In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the conditions under which
a republic of letters and of culture could be formed. The aristocracy
of Naples indulged the semi-savage tastes of territorial seigneurs;
the nobles of Rome delighted in feats of arms and shared their
wealth with retinues of bravi; the great families of Umbria,
Romagna, and the March followed the profession of condottieri; the
Lombards were downtrodden by their Despots and deprived of
individual freedom; the Genoese developed into little better than
traders and sea-robbers; the Sienese, divided by the factions of their
Monti, had small leisure or common public feeling left for study.
Florence meanwhile could boast a population of burghers noble by
taste and culture, owing less to ancestry than to personal eminence,
devoting their energies to civic ambition worthy of the Romans, and
to mental activity which reminds us of the ancient Greeks. Between
the people and this aristocracy of wealth and intellect there was at
Florence no division like that which separated the Venetian
gentiluomini from the cittadini. The so-called nobili and popolani did
not, as in Venice, form a caste apart, bound to the service of a
tyrannous state-system. The very mobility which proved the ultimate
source of disruption and of ruin to the commonwealth, aided the
intellectual development of Florence. Stagnation and oppression
were alike unknown. Here, therefore, and here alone, was created a
public capable instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art
and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars who
knew that their labours could not fail to be appreciated, and a class
of patrons who sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on
those arts and sciences which dignify the life of man. The
Florentines, moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest
sense of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. Like the
Athenians of old, they had no warmer passion than their love for
their city. However much we may deplore the rancorous dissensions
which from time to time split up the commonwealth into parties, the
remorseless foreign policy which destroyed Pisa, the political
meanness of the Medici, and the base egotism of the ottimati, the
fact remains that, æsthetically and intellectually, Florence was 'a city
glorious,' a realised ideal of culture and humanity for all the rest of
Italy, and, through Italian influence in general, for modern Europe
and for us.
What makes the part played by Florence in the history of learning
the more remarkable is, that the chiefs of the political factions were
at the same time the leaders of intellectual progress. Rinaldo degli
Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici, while opposed as antagonists in a
duel to the death upon the stage of the republic, vied with each
other in the patronage they extended to men of letters. Rinaldo was
himself no mean scholar; and he chose one of the greatest men of
the age, Tommaso da Sarzana, to be tutor to his children. Of Palla
degli Strozzi's services in the cause of Greek learning I have already
spoken in the second chapter of this volume. Beside the invitation
which he caused to be sent to Manuel Chrysoloras, he employed his
wealth and influence in providing books necessary for the
prosecution of Hellenic studies. 'Messer Palla,' says Vespasiano, 'sent
to Greece for countless volumes, all at his own cost. The
"Cosmography" of Ptolemy, together with the picture made to
illustrate it, the "Lives" of Plutarch, the works of Plato, and very
many other writings of philosophers, he got from Constantinople.
The "Politics" of Aristotle were not in Italy until Messer Palla sent for
them; and when Messer Lionardo of Arezzo translated them, he had
the copy from his hands.'[125] In the same spirit of practical
generosity Palla degli Strozzi devoted his leisure and his energies to
the improvement of the studio pubblico at Florence, giving it that
character of humane culture which it retained throughout the age of
the Renaissance.[126] To him, again, belongs the glory of having first
collected books for the express purpose of founding a public library.
This project had occupied the mind of Petrarch, and its utility had
been recognised by Coluccio de' Salutati,[127] but no one had as yet
arisen to accomplish it. 'Being passionately fond of literature, Messer
Palla always kept copyists in his own house and outside it, of the
best who were in Florence, both for Greek and Latin books; and all
the books he could find he purchased, on all subjects, being minded
to found a most noble library in Santa Trinità, and to erect there a
most beautiful building for the purpose. He wished that it should be
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