Читать книгу Italian Renaissance - John Addington Symonds - Страница 48

Table of Contents

Condition of the Universities in Italy—Bologna—High Schools founded from it—Naples under Frederick II.—Under the House of Anjou—Ferrara—Piacenza—Perugia—Rome—Pisa—Florence—Imperial and Papal Charters—Foreign Students—Professorial Staff—Subjects taught in the High Schools—Place assigned to Humanism—Pay of the Professors of Eloquence—Francesco Filelfo—The Humanists less powerful at the Universities—Method of Humanistic Teaching—The Book Market before Printing—Mediæval Libraries—Cost of Manuscripts—Stationarii and Peciarii—Negligence of Copyists—Discovery of Classical Codices—Boccaccio at Monte Cassino—Poggio at Constance—Convent of S. Gallen—Bruni's Letter to Poggio—Manuscripts discovered by Poggio—Nicholas of Treves—Collection of Greek Manuscripts—Aurispa, Filelfo, and Guarino—The Ruins of Rome—Their Influence on Humanism—Dante and Villani—Rienzi—His Idealistic Patriotism—Vanity—Political Incompetence—Petrarch's Relations with Rienzi—Injury to Monuments in Rome—Poggio's Roman Topography—Sentimental Feeling for the Ruins of Antiquity—Ciriac of Ancona.

Having so far traced the quickening of a new sense for antiquity among the Italians, it will be well at this point to consider the external resources of Humanism before continuing the history of the Revival in the fifteenth century. The condition of the universities, the state of the book trade before the invention of printing, and the discovery of manuscripts claim separate attention; nor may it be out of place to inquire what stimulus the enthusiasm for classical studies received from the ruins of Rome. A review of these topics will help to explain the circumstances under which the pioneers of culture had to labour, and the nature of the crusade they instituted against ignorance in every part of Europe.

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.