any literature escaped the Papal censure, and Aretino, notorious for ribaldry, aspired not wholly without reason to the scarlet of a cardinal. But even in the fifteenth century the taint of heresy was dangerous, and this peril was magnified when the Lutheran schism had roused the Papacy to a sense of its position. Under the patronage, therefore, of ecclesiastics, in the depraved atmosphere of Rome, the free thought of the Italians turned to licentiousness; this suited the temper of the people, fascinated by Paganism and little inclined to raise debate upon matters of no practical utility. Those who reflected on religious topics kept their own counsel. How purely political were the views of profound thinkers in Italy upon all Church questions may be gathered from the observations of Guicciardini and Machiavelli; how little the most earnest antagonist of ungodly ecclesiastics dreamed of disturbing the Catholic Church system is clear in the biography of Savonarola.[3] The first satire of Ariosto may be indicated as an epitome of the opinions entertained by sound and liberal intellects in Italy upon the relation of Papal Rome to the nation. There is not a trace in it of Teutonic revolt against authority, of pious yearning for a purer faith. The standpoint of the critic, though solid and sincere, is worldly.
True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that should embrace the systems of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous, in the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism. They lack the vigorous simplicity that gave its force to Luther's intuition, the sublime unity of Spinoza's deductions. The dross of erudition mingles with the pure gold of personal conviction; while Pagan phrases, ill suited to express Christian notions, lend an air of unreality to the sincerest efforts after rational theology. The Platonic Academy of Florence was the centre of this search after the faith of culture, whereof the real merit was originality, and the true force lay in the conviction that humanity is one and indivisible. Its apostles were Pico della Mirandola and Ficino. It found lyrical expression in verses like the following, translated by me from the Greek hexameters of Poliziano:—
| O Father, Lord enthroned on gold, that dwellest in high heaven, O King of all things, deathless God, Thou Pan supreme, celestial! That seest all, and movest all, and all with might sustainest, Older than oldest time, of all first, last, and without ending! The firmament of blessed souls, of stars the heavenly splendour, The giant sun himself, the moon that in her circle shineth, And streams and fountains, earth and sea, are things of Thy creating, Thou givest life to all; all these Thou with Thy Spirit fillest. The powers of earth, and powers of heaven, and they in pain infernal Who pine below the roots of earth, all these obey Thy bidding. Behold, I call upon Thee now, Thy creature on earth dwelling, Poor, short of life, O God, of clay a mean unworthy mortal, Repenting sorely of my sins, and tears of sorrow shedding. O God, immortal Father, hear! I cry to Thee; be gracious, And from my breast of this vain world the soul-enslaving passion, The demon's wiles, the wilful lust, that damns the impious, banish! Wash throughly all my heart with Thy pure Spirit's rain abundant, That I may love Thee, Lord, alone, Thee, King of kings, for ever. |
This is but a poor substitute for the Lord's Prayer. Hell and purgatory are out of place in its theism. Χρυσόθρονος and αἴθερι ναίων are tawdry epithets for 'Our Father which art in heaven.' Yet it is precisely in these contradictions and confusions that we trace the sincerity of the Renaissance spirit, seeking to fuse together the vitality of the old faith and the forms of novel culture, worshipping a Deity created in the image of its own mind, composite and incoherent.
Physically, the Italians of the Renaissance were equal to any task they chose to set themselves. No mistake is greater than to suppose that, because the summer climate of Italy is hotter than our own, therefore her children must be languid, pleasure-loving, and relaxed. Twelve months spent in Tuscany would suffice to dissipate illusions about the enervating Italian air, even if the history of ancient Rome were not a proof that the hardiest race of combatants and conquerors the world has ever seen were nurtured between Soracte and the sea. After the downfall of the Empire, what remained of native vigour in the Latin cities found a refuge in the lagoons of Venice and other natural strongholds. Walled towns in general retained a Roman population. The primitive Italic races still existed in the valleys of the Apennines, while the Ligurians held the Genoese Riviera; nor were the Etruscans extinct in Tuscany. It is true that Rome had fused these races into a people using the same language. Yet the ethnologist will hardly allow that the differences noticeable between the several districts of Italy were not connected with original varieties of stock. To the people, as Rome had made it, fresh blood was added by the Goths, Lombards, and Germans descending from the North. Greeks, Arabs, Normans, and, in course of time, Franks influenced the South. During the Middle Ages a new and mighty breed of men sprang into being by the combination of these diverse elements, each district deriving specific quality from the varying proportions in which the chief constituents were mingled. It is noticeable that where the Roman-Etruscan blood was purest probably from mixture, in the valley of the Arno, the modern Italian genius found its home. Florence and her sister cities formed the language and the arts of Italy. To this race, in conjunction with the natives of Lombardy and Central Italy, was committed the civilisation of Europe in the fifteenth century. It was only south of Rome, where the brutalising traditions of the Roman latifundia had never yielded to the burgh-creating impulse of the Middle Ages, that the Italians were unfit for their great duty. On these southern states the Empire of the East, Saracen marauders and Norman conquerors, the French and the Spanish dynasties, had successively exercised a pernicious influence; nor did the imperial policy of Frederick II. remain long enough in operation to effect a radical improvement in the people. Even at Naples culture was always an exotic. Elsewhere throughout the peninsula the Italians of the new age were a noble nation, gifted with physical, emotional, and mental faculties in splendid harmony. In some districts, notably in Florence, circumstance and climate had been singularly favourable to the production of such glorious human beings as the world has rarely seen. Beauty of person, strength of body, and civility of manners were combined in the men of that favoured region with intellectual endowments of the highest order: nor were these gifts of nature confined to a caste apart; the whole population formed an aristocracy of genius.
In order to comprehend the greatness of this Italian type in the Renaissance, it is only needful to study the picture galleries of Florence or of Venice with special attention to the portraits they contain. When we compare those senators and sages with the subjects of Dürer's and of Cranach's art, we feel the physical superiority of the Italians. In like manner a comparison of the men of the fifteenth century with those of the sixteenth shows how much of that physical grandeur had been lost. It is easy to wander astray while weaving subtle theories on this path of criticism. Yet it cannot be a mere accident that Vandyck's portrait of the Cardinal de' Bentivogli in the Pitti Palace differs as it does from that of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici by Pontormo or by Titian. The Medici is an Italian of the Renaissance, with his imperious originality and defiance of convention. He has refused to be portrayed as an ecclesiastic. Titian has painted him in Hungarian costume of dark red velvet, moustached, and sworded like a soldier; in Pontormo's picture he wears a suit of mail, and rests his left hand on a large white hound. The Bentivoglio is an Italian of the type produced by the Counter-Reformation. His delicate lace ruffs, the coquetry of his scarlet robes, and the fine keen cut of his diplomatic features betray a new spirit.[4] Surely the physical qualities of a race change with the changes in their thought and feeling. The beauty of Tasso is more feminine and melancholy than that of Ariosto, in whom the liberal genius of the Renaissance was yet alive. Among the scowling swordsmen of the seventeenth century you cannot find a face like Giorgione's Gattamelata;[5] the nobles who bear themselves so proudly on the canvases of Vandyck at Genoa lack the urbanity of Raphael's Castiglione; Moroni's black-robed students are more pinched and withered than the Pico of the Uffizzi. It will not do to strain such points. It is enough to suggest them. What remains, however, for certain is that the Italians of the fifteenth century—and among these must be included those who lived through the first half of the sixteenth—had physical force and character corresponding to their robust individuality. Until quite late in the Renaissance so much survived of feudal customs even in Italy that riding, the handling of the lance and sword, and all athletic exercises formed a part of education