id="n282">
282
See his letter to the Pope, dated Carpentras, Sept. 1, 1527, in the Anecdota litt. iv. p. 335.
283
Lettere dei Principi, i. 72. Castiglione to the Pope, Burgos, Dec. 10, 1527.
284
Tommaso Gar, Relaz. della Corte di Roma, i. 299.
285
The Farnese succeeded in something of the kind, the Caraffa were ruined.
286
Petrarca, Epist. Fam. i. 3. p. 574, when he thanks God that he was born an Italian. And again in the Apologia contra cujusdam anonymi Galli Calumnias of the year 1367 (Opp. ed. Bas. 1581) p. 1068 sqq. See L. Geiger, Petrarca, 129-145.
287
Particularly those in vol. i. of Schardius, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Basel, 1574. For an earlier period, Felix Faber, Historia Suevorum, libri duo (in Goldast, Script. rer. Suev. 1605); for a later, Irenicus, Exegesis Germaniæ, Hagenau, 1518. On the latter work and the patriotic histories of that time, see various studies of A. Horawitz, Hist. Zeitschrift, bd. xxxiii. 118, anm. 1.
288
One instance out of many: The Answers of the Doge of Venice to a Florentine Agent respecting Pisa, 1496, in Malipiero, Ann. Veneti. Arch. Stor. vii. i. p. 427.
289
Observe the expressions ‘uomo singolare’ and ‘uomo unico’ for the higher and highest stages of individual development.
290
By the year 1390 there was no longer any prevailing fashion of dress for men at Florence, each preferring to clothe himself in his own way. See the Canzone of Franco Sacchetti: ‘Contro alle nuove foggie’ in the Rime, publ. dal Poggiali, p. 52.
291
At the close of the sixteenth century Montaigne draws the following parallel (Essais, l. iii. chap. 5, vol. iii. p. 367 of the Paris ed. 1816): ‘Ils (les Italiens) ont plus communement des belles femmes et moins de laides que nous; mais des rares et excellentes beautés j’estime que nous allons à pair. Et j’en juge autant des esprits; de ceux de la commune façon, ils en ont beaucoup plus et evidemment; la brutalité y est sans comparaison plus rare; d’ames singulières et du plus hault estage, nous ne leur en debvons rien.’
292
And also of their wives, as is seen in the family of Sforza and among other North Italian rulers. Comp. in the work of Jacobus Phil. Bergomensis, De Plurimis Claris Selectisque Mulieribus, Ferrara, 1497, the lives of Battista Malatesta, Paola Gonzaga, Bona Lombarda, Riccarda of Este, and the chief women of the House of Sforza, Beatrice and others. Among them are more than one genuine virago, and in several cases natural gifts are supplemented by great humanistic culture. (See below, chap. 3 and part v.)
293
Franco Sacchetti, in his ‘Capitolo’ (Rime, publ. dal Poggiali, p. 56), enumerates about 1390 the names of over a hundred distinguished people in the ruling parties who had died within his memory. However many mediocrities there may have been among them, the list is still remarkable as evidence of the awakening of individuality. On the ‘Vite’ of Filippo Villani, see below.
294
Trattato del Governo della Famiglia forms a part of the work: La Cura della Famiglia (Opere Volg. di Leon Batt. Alberti, publ. da Anicio Bonucci, Flor. 1844, vol. ii.). See there vol. i. pp. xxx.-xl., vol. ii. pp. xxxv. sqq. and vol. v. pp. 1-127. Formerly the work was generally, as in the text, attributed to Agnolo Pandolfini (d. 1446; see on him Vesp. Fiorent., pp. 291 and 379); the recent investigations of Fr. Palermo (Florence 1871), have shown Alberti to be the author. The work is quoted from the ed. Torino, Pomba, 1828.
296
Jov. Pontanus, De Fortitudine, l. ii. cap. 4, ‘De tolerando Exilio,’ Seventy years later, Cardanus (De Vitâ Propriâ, cap. 32) could ask bitterly: ‘Quid est patria nisi consensus tyrannorum minutorum ad opprimendos imbelles timidos et qui plerumque sunt innoxii?’
297
De Vulgari Eloquio, lib. i. cap. 6. On the ideal Italian language, cap. 17. The spiritual unity of cultivated men, cap. 18. On home-sickness, comp. the famous passages, Purg. viii. 1 sqq., and Parad. xxv. 1 sqq.
298
Dantis Alligherii Epistolae, ed. Carolus Witte, p. 65.
299
Ghiberti, Secondo Commentario, cap. xv. (Vasari ed Lemonnier, i. p. xxix.).
300
Codri Urcei Vita, at the end of his works, first pub. Bologna 1502. This certainly comes near the old saying: ‘ubi bene, ibi patria.’ C. U. was not called after the place of his birth, but after Forli, where he lived long; see Malagola, Codro Urceo, Bologna, 1877, cap. v. and app. xi. The abundance of neutral intellectual pleasure, which is independent of local circumstances, and of which the educated Italians became more and more capable, rendered exile more tolerable to them. Cosmopolitanism is further a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered, and men feel no longer at home in the old. We see it among the Greeks after the Peloponnesian war; Plato, as Niebuhr says, was not a good citizen, and Xenophon was a bad one; Diogenes went so far as to proclaim homelessness a pleasure, and calls himself, Laertius tells us, ἁπολις. Here another remarkable work may be mentioned. Petrus Alcyonius in his book: Medices Legatus de Exilio lib. duo, Ven. 1522 (printed in Mencken, Analecta de Calam. Literatorum, Leipzig, 1707, pp. 1-250) devotes to the subject of exile a long and prolix discussion. He tries logically and historically to refute the three reasons for which banishment is held to be an evil, viz. 1. Because the exile must live away from his fatherland. 2. Because he loses the honours given him at home. 3. Because he must do without his friends and relatives; and comes finally to the conclusion that banishment is not an evil. His dissertation culminates in the words, ‘Sapientissimus quisque omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducit. Atque etiam illam veram sibi esse patriam arbitratur quæ se perigrinantem exciperit, quæ pudorem, probitatem, virtutem colit, quæ optima studia, liberales disciplinas amplectitur, quæ etiam facit ut peregrini omnes honesto otio teneant statum et famam dignitatis suæ.’
301
This awakening of personality is also shown in the great stress laid on the independent growth of character, in the claim to shape the spiritual life for oneself, apart from parents and ancestors. Boccaccio (De Cas. Vir. Ill. Paris, s. a. fol. xxix. b) points out that Socrates came of uneducated, Euripides and Demosthenes of unknown, parents, and exclaims: ‘Quasi animos a gignentibus habeamus!’
302
Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 16.
303
The angels which he drew on tablets at the anniversary of the death of Beatrice (Vita Nuova, p. 61) may have been more than the work of a dilettante. Lion. Aretino says he drew ‘egregiamente,’ and was a great lover of music.
304
For this and what follows, see esp. Vespasiano Fiorentino, an authority of the first order for Florentine culture in the fifteenth century Comp. pp. 359, 379, 401, etc. See, also, the charming and instructive Vita Jannoctii Manetti (b. 1396), by Naldus Naldius, in Murat. xx. pp. 529-608.
305
What follows is taken, e.g., from Perticari’s account of Pandolfo Collenuccio, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi iii. pp. 197 sqq., and from the Opere del Conte Perticari, Mil. 1823, vol. ii.
306
For what follows compare Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, Stuttg. 1868, esp. p. 41 sqq., and A. Springer, Abhandlungen zur neueren Kunstgeschichte, Bonn, 1867, pp. 69-102. A new biography of Alberti is in course of
