Chapter XIV Conclusion
The main Events of European History—Italy in the Renaissance—Germany and Reformation—Catholic Reaction—Its Antagonism to Renaissance and Reformation—Profound Identity of Renaissance and Reformation—Place of Italy in European Civilization—Want of Sympathy between Latin and Teutonic Races—Relation of Rome to Italy—Macaulay on the Roman Church—On Protestantism—Early Decline of Renaissance Enthusiasms—Italy’s Present and Future.
I
The four main events of European history since the death of Christ are the decline of Graeco-Roman civilization, the triumph of Christianity as a new humanizing agency, the intrusion of Teutonic and Slavonic tribes into the comity of nations, and the construction of the modern world of thought by Renaissance and Reformation.
As seems to be inevitable in the progress of our species, each of these changes involved losses, compensated by final gains; for humanity moves like a glacier, plastically, but with alternating phases of advance and retreat, obeying laws of fracture and regelation.
It would thus be easy to deplore the collapse of that mighty and beneficent organism which we call the Roman Empire. Yet without this collapse how could the Catholic Church have supplied inspiration to peoples gifted with fresh faculties, endowed with insight differing from that of Greeks and Romans?
It is tempting to lament the extinction of arts letters, and elaborated habits of civility, which followed the barbarian invasions. Yet without such extinction, how can we imagine to ourselves the growth of those new arts, original literatures, and varied modes of social culture, to which we give the names of mediaeval, chivalrous, or feudal?
It is obvious that we can quarrel with the Renaissance for having put an end to purely Christian arts and letters by imposing a kind of pagan mannerism on the spontaneous products of the later mediaeval genius. But without this reversion to the remaining models of antique culture, how could the European races have become conscious of historical continuity; how could the corrupt system of Papal domination have been broken by Reform; how, finally, could Science, the vital principle of our present civilization, have been evolved?
In all these instances it appears that the old order must yield place to the new, not only because the new is destined to incorporate and supersede it, but also because the old has become unfruitful. Thus, the Roman Empire, having discharged its organizing function, was decrepit, and classical civilization, after exhibiting its strength in season, was decaying when the Latin priesthood and the bar barians entered that closed garden of antiquity, and trampled it beneath their feet. Mediaeval religion and modes of thought, in like manner, were at the point of ossifying, when Humanism intervened to twine the threads of past and present into strands that should be strong as cables for the furtherance of future energy.
It is incontestable that the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, each of them on different grounds antagonistic to the Renaissance, appear to have retarded that emancipation of the reason, begun by Humanism, which is still in progress. Nevertheless, the strife of Protestantism and Catholicism was needed for preserving moral and religious elements which might have been too lightly dropped, and for working these into the staple of the modern consciousness. The process of the last three centuries, attended as it has been by serious drawbacks to the Spanish and Italian peoples, and by a lamentable waste of vigor to the Teutonic nations, has yet resulted in a permeation of the modern compost with the leaven of Christianity. Unchecked, it is probable that the Renaissance would have swept away much that was valuable and deserved to be permanent. Nor, without the flux and reflux of contending principles by which Europe was agitated in the Counter-Reformation period, could the equipoise of reciprocally attracting and repelling States, which constitutes the modern as different from the ancient or the mediaeval groundwork of political existence, have been so efficiently established.
II
Permanence and homogeneity are not to be predicated of ‘anything that’s merely ours and mortal.’ We have missed the whole teaching of history if we wail aloud because Greek and Roman culture succumbed to barbarism, out of which mediaeval Christianity emerged; because the revival of learning diverted arts and letters in each Occidental nation from their home-plowed channels; because Protestant theologians and Spanish Jesuits impeded that self-evolution of the reason which Italian humanists inaugurated. No less futile were it to waste declamatory tears upon the strife of absolutism with new-fledged democracy, or to vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. We have to recognize that man cannot be other than what he makes himself; and he makes himself in obedience to immutable although unwritten laws, whereof he only of late years became dimly conscious. It is well, then, while reflecting on the lessons of some deeply studied epoch in world-history, to regard the developments with which we have been specially occupied, no less than the ephemeral activity of each particular individual, as factors in a universal process, whereof none sees the issue, but which, willing or unwilling, each man helps to further. We shall then acknowledge that a contest between Conservatism and Liberalism, between established order and the order that is destined to replace it, between custom and innovation, constitutes the essence of vitality in human affairs. The nations by turns are protagonists in the drama of progress; by turns are doomed to play the part of obstructive agents. Intermingled in conflict which is active life, they contribute by their phases of declension and resistance, no less than by their forward movements, to the growth of an organism which shall probably in the far future be coextensive with the whole human race.
III
These considerations are suggested to us by the subject I have handled in this work. The first five volumes were devoted to showing how Italy, in the Renaissance, elaborated a new way of regarding man and the world, a new system of education, new social manners, and a new type of culture for herself and Europe. This was her pioneer’s work in the period of transition from the middle ages; and while she was engaged in it, all classes, from popes and princes down to poetlings and pedants, seemed for a while to have lost sight of Catholic Christianity. They were equally indifferent to that corresponding and contemporary movement across the Alps, which is known as Reformation. They could not discern the close link of connection which binds Renaissance to Reformation. Though at root identical in tendency towards freedom, these stirrings of the modern spirit assumed externally such diverse forms as made them reciprocally repellent. Only one European nation received both impulses simultaneously. That was England, which adopted Protestantism and produced the literature of Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare at the same epoch. France, earlier than England, felt Renaissance influences, and for some while seemed upon the point of joining the Reformation. But while the French were hesitating, Spain proclaimed herself the uncompromising enemy of Protestantism, and Rome, supported by this powerful ally, dragged Italy into the Catholic reaction. That effort aimed at galvanizing a decrepit Church into the semblance of vital energy, and, while professing the reformation of its corrupt system, stereotyped all that was antagonistic in its creed and customs to the spirit of the modern world. The Catholic Revival necessitated vigorous reaction, not only against Protestantism, but also against the Liberalism of the Renaissance and the political liberties of peoples. It triumphed throughout Southern Europe chiefly because France chose at length the Catholic side. But the triumph was only partial, condemning Spain and Italy indeed to intellectual barrenness for a season, but not sufficing to dominate and suppress the development of rationalism. The pioneer’s work of Italy was over. She joined the ranks of obscurantists and obstructives. Germany, having failed to accomplish the Reformation in time, was distracted by the Catholic reaction, which plunged her into a series of disastrous wars. It remained for England and Holland, not, however, without similar perturbations in both countries, to lead the van of progress through two centuries; after which this foremost post was assigned to France and the United States.
IV
The views which I have maintained throughout my work upon the Renaissance will be found, I think, to be coherent. They have received such varied illustrations that it is difficult to recapitulate the principles on which they rest, without repetition. The main outline of the argument, however, is as follows. During the middle ages, Western Christendom recognized, in theory at least, the ideal of European unity under the dual headship of the Papacy and Empire. There was one civil order and one Church. Emperor and Pope, though frequently at strife, were supposed to support each other for the common welfare of Christendom. That mediaeval conception has now, in the centuries which we call modern, passed into oblivion; and the period in which it ceased to have effective value we denote as the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation. So long as the ideal held good, it was possible for the Papacy to stamp out heresies and to stifle the earlier stirrings of antagonistic culture. Thus the precursory movements to which I alluded in the first chapter of my ‘Age of the Despots,’ seemed to be abortive; and no less apparently abortive were the reformatory efforts of Wyclif and Huss. Yet Europe was slowly undergoing mental and moral changes, which announced the advent of a new era. These changes were more apparent in Italy than elsewhere, through the revival of arts and letters early in the fourteenth century. Cimabue, Giotto, and the Pisani, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, set culture forward on fresh paths divergent from previous mediaeval tradition. The gradual enfeeblement of the Empire and the distraction of the Church during the Great Schism prepared the means whereby both Renaissance and Reformation were eventually realized. The Council of Constance brought the Western nations into active diplomatical relations, and sowed seeds of thought which afterwards sprang up in Luther.
Meanwhile a special nidus had been created in the South. The Italian communes freed themselves from all but titular subjection to the Empire, and were practically independent of the Papacy during its exile in Avignon. They succumbed to despots, and from Italian despotism emerged the Machiavellian conception of the State. This conception, modified in various ways, by Sarpi’s theory of Church and State, by the Jesuit theory of Papal Supremacy, by the counter-theory of the Divine Right of Kings, by theories of Social Contract and the Divine Right of Nations, superseded the elder ideal of Universal Monarchy. It grew originally out of the specific conditions of Italy in the fifteenth century, and acquired force from that habit of mind, fostered by the Classical Revival, which we call humanism. Humanism had flourished in Italy since the days of Petrarch, and had been communicated by Italian teachers to the rest of Europe. As in the South it generated the new learning and the new culture which I have described in the first five volumes of my work, and acted as a solvent on the mediaeval idea of the Empire, so in the North it generated a new religious enthusiasm and acted as a solvent on the mediaeval idea of the Church. All through the middle ages, nothing seemed more formidable to the European mind than heresy. Any sacrifices were willingly made in order to secure the unity of the Catholic Communion. But now, by the Protestant rebellion, that spell was broken, and the right of peoples to choose their faith, in dissent from a Church declared corrupt, was loudly proclaimed.
So long as we keep this line of reasoning in view, we shall recognize why it is not only uncritical, but also impossible, to separate the two movements severally called Renaissance and Reformation. Both had a common root in humanism, and humanism owed its existence on the one hand to the recovery of antique literature, on the other to the fact that the Papacy, instead of striving to stamp it out as it had stamped out Provençal civilization, viewed it at first with approval. The new learning, as our an cestors were wont to call it, involved, in Michelet’s pregnant formula, the discovery of the world and man, and developed a spirit of revolt against mediaevalism in all its manifestations. Its fruits were speedily discerned in bold exploratory studies, sound methods of criticism, audacious speculation, and the free play of the intellect over every field of knowledge. This new learning had time and opportunity for full development in Italy, and for adequate extension to the Northern races, before its real tendencies were suspected. When that happened, the transition from the mediaeval to the modern age had been secured. The Empire was obsolete. The Church was forced into reaction. Europe became the battle-field of progressive and retrogressive forces, the scene of a struggle between two parties which can best be termed Liberalism and Conservatism.
Stripping the subject of those artistic and literary associations which we are accustomed to connect with the word Renaissance, these seem to me the most essential points to bear in mind about this movement. Then, when we have studied the diverse antecedent circumstances of the German and Italian races, when we take into account their national qualities, and estimate the different aims and divergent enthusiasms evoked in each by humanistic ardor, we shall perceive how it came to pass that Renaissance and Reformation clashed together in discordant opposition to the Catholic Revival.
V
Italy, through the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, and the Roman Church, gave discipline, culture, and religion to the Western world. But, during the course of this civilizing process, a force arose in Northern Europe which was destined to transfer the center of gravity from the Mediterranean basin northwards. The Teutonic tribes effaced the Western Empire, adopted Christianity, and profoundly modified what still survived of Latin civility among the Occidental races. A new factor was thus introduced into the European community, which had to be assimilated to the old; and the genius of the Italian people never displayed itself more luminously than in the ability with which the Bishops of Rome availed themselves of this occasion. They separated the Latin from the Greek Church, and, by the figment of the Holy Roman Empire, cemented Southern and Northern Europe into an apparently cohesive whole. After the year A.D. 800, Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, acknowledged a dual headship; Papacy and Empire ranking as ideals under which the unity of Christendom subsisted in a multiplicity of separate and self-evolving nations.
The concordat between Latin Church and German Empire, the one representing traditions of antique intelligence and southern habits of State organization, the other introducing the young energies of half-cultivated peoples and the chivalry of the North, was never perfect. Yet, incomplete as the fusion between Roman and Teuton actually was, it had a common basis in religion, and it enabled the federated peoples to maintain recognized international relations. What we now call Renaissance and Reformation revealed still unreconciled antagonisms between Southern and Northern, Latin and German, factors in this mediaeval Europe. Italy, freed for a while from both Papacy and Empire, expressed her intellectual energy in the Revival of Learning, developing that bold investigating spirit to which the names of Humanism or of Rationalism may be given. The new learning, the new enthusiasm for inquiry, the new study of the world and man, as subjects of vital interest irrespective of our dreamed-of life beyond the grave, stimulated in Italy what we know as Renaissance; while in Germany it led to what we know as Reformation. The Reformation must be regarded as the Teutonic counterpart to the Italian Renaissance. It was what emerged from the core of that huge barbarian factor, which had sapped the Roman Empire, and accepted Catholicism; which lent its vigor to the mediaeval Empire, and which now participated in the culture of the classical Revival. As Italy restored freedom to human intelligence and the senses by arts and letters and amenities of refined existence, so Germany restored freedom to the soul and conscience by strenuous efforts after religious sincerity and political independence. The one people aim ing at a restoration of pagan civility beneath the shadow of Catholicism, the other seeking after a purer Christianity in antagonism to the Papal hierarchy, initiated from opposite points of view that complete emancipation of the modern mind which has not yet been fully realized.
If we inquire why the final end to which both Renaissance and Reformation tended—namely, the liberation of the spirit from mediaeval prepossessions and impediments—has not been more perfectly attained, we find the cause of this partial failure in the contradictory conceptions formed by South and North of a problem which was at root one. Both Renaissance and Reformation had their origin in the revival of learning, or rather in that humanistic enthusiasm which was its vital essence. But the race-differences involved in these two movements were so irreconcilable, the objects pursued were so divergent, that Renaissance and Reformation came into the conflict of chemical combination, producing a ferment out of which the intellectual unity of Europe has not as yet clearly emerged. The Latin race, having created a new learning and a new culture, found itself at strife with the Teutonic race, which at the same period developed new religious conceptions and new political energies.
The Church supplied a battle-field for these hostilities. The Renaissance was by no means favorable to the principles of Catholic orthodoxy; and the Italians showed themselves to be Christians by convention and tradition rather than by conviction in the fifteenth century. Yet Italy was well content to let the corrupt hierarchy of Papal Rome subsist, provided Rome maintained the attitude which Leo X. had adopted toward the liberal spirit of the Classical Revival. The Reformation, on the other hand, was openly antagonistic to the Catholic Church. Protestantism repudiated the toleration professed by skeptical philosophers and indulgent free-thinkers in the South, while it repelled those refined persons by theological fervor and moral indignation which they could not comprehend. Thus the Italian and the German children of humanism failed to make common cause against Catholicism, with which the former felt no sympathy and which the latter vehemently attacked. Meanwhile the Church awoke to a sense of her peril. The Papacy was still a force of the first magnitude; and it only required a vigorous effort to place it once more in an attitude of domination and resistance. This effort it made by reforming the ecclesiastical hierarchy, defining Catholic dogma, and carrying on a war of extermination against the twofold Liberalism of Renaissance and Reformation.
That reactionary movement against the progress of free thought which extinguished the Italian Renaissance and repelled the Reformation, has formed the subject of the two preceding volumes of my work. It could not have been conducted by the Court of Rome without the help of Spain. The Spanish nation, at this epoch paramount in Europe, declared itself fanatically and unanimously for the Catholic Revival. In Italy it lent the weight of arms and overlordship to the Church for the suppression of popular liberties. It provided the Papacy with a spiritual militia specially disciplined to meet the exigencies of the moment. Yet the center of the reaction was still Rome; and the Spanish hegemony enabled the Roman hierarchy to consolidate an organism which has long survived its own influence in European affairs.
VI
After the close of the Great Schism Rome began to obey the national impulses of the Italians, entered into their confederation as one of the five leading powers, and assumed externally the humanistic culture then in vogue. But the Church was a cosmopolitan institution. Its interests extended beyond the Alps, beyond the Pyrenees, beyond the oceans traversed by Portuguese and Spanish navigators. The Renaissance so far modified its structure that the Papacy continued politically to rank as an Italian power. Its headquarters could not be removed from the Tiber, and by the tacit consent of Latin Catholicism the Supreme Pontiff was selected from Italian prelates. Yet now, in 1530, it began to play a new part more consonant with its mediaeval functions and pretensions. Rome indeed had ceased to be the imperial capital of Europe, where the secular head of Christendom assumed the crown of Empire from his peer the spiritual chieftain. The Eternal City in this new phase of modern history, which lasted until Vittorio Emmanuele’s entrance into the Quirinal in 1870, gave the Pope a place among Catholic sovereigns. From his throne upon the seven hills he conducted with their approval and assistance the campaign of the Counter-Reformation. Instead of encouraging and developing what yet remained of Renaissance in Italy, instead of directing that movement of the self-emancipating mind beyond the stage of art and humanism into the stage of rationalism and science, the Church used its authority to bring back the middle ages and to repress national impulses. It made common cause with Spain for a common object—the maintenance of Italy in a state of political and intellectual bondage, and the subjugation of such provinces in Europe as had not been irretrievably lost to the Catholic cause. The Italians, as a nation, remained passive, but not altogether unwilling or unapproving spectators of the drama which was being enacted under Papal leadership beyond their boundaries. Once again their activity was merged in that of Rome—in the action of that State which had first secured for them the Empire of the habitable globe, and next the spiritual hegemony of the Western races, and from the predominance of which they had partially disengaged themselves during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was the Papacy’s sense of its own danger as a cosmopolitan institution, combined with the crushing superiority of Spain in the peninsula, which determined this phase of Italian history.
The Catholic Revival, like the Renaissance, may in a certain sense be viewed as a product of Italian genius. This is sufficiently proved by the diplomatic history of the Tridentine Council, and by the dedication of the Jesuits to Papal service. It must, however, be remembered that while the Renaissance emanated from the race at large, from its confederation of independent republics and tyrannies, the Catholic Revival emanated from that portion of the race which is called Rome, from the ecclesiastical hierarchy imbued with world-wide ambitions in which national interests were drowned. There is nothing more interesting to the biographer of the Italians than the complicated correlation in which they have always stood to the cosmopolitan organism of Rome, itself Italian. In their antique days of greatness Rome subdued them, and by their native legions won the overlordship of the world. After the downfall of the Empire the Church continued Roman traditions in an altered form, but it found itself unable to dispense with the foreign assistance of Franks and Germans. The price now paid by Italy for spiritual headship in Europe was subjection to Teutonic suzerains and perpetual intriguing interference in her affairs. During the Avignonian captivity and the Great Schism, Italy developed intellectual and confederative unity, imposing her laws of culture and of state-craft even on the Papacy when it returned to Rome. But again at the close of the Renaissance, when Italian independence had collapsed, the Church aspired to spiritual supremacy; and at this epoch she recompensed her Spanish ally by aiding and abetting in the enslavement of the peninsula. Still the Roman Pontiff, who acted as generalissimo of the Catholic armies throughout Europe, was now more than ever recognized as an Italian power.
VII
In his review of Ranke’s History of the Popes Lord Macaulay insists with brilliant eloquence upon the marvelous vitality and longevity of the Roman Catholic Church. He describes the insurrection of the intellect against her rule in Provence, and her triumph in the Crusade which sacrificed a nation to the conception of mediaeval religious unity. He dwells on her humiliation in exile at Avignon, her enfeeblement during the Great Schism, and her restoration to splendor and power at the close of the Councils. Then he devotes his vast accumulated stores of learning and his force of rhetoric to explain the Reformation, the Catholic Revival, and the Counter-Reformation. He proves abundantly what there was in the organism of the Catholic Church and in the temper of Papal Rome, which made these now reactionary powers more than a match for Protestantism. ‘In fifty years from the day on which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Papacy, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendency, an ascendency which it soon lost, and which it never regained.’ This sentence forms the theme for Lord Macaulay’s survey of the Catholic Revival. Dazzling and fascinating as that survey is, it fails through misconception of one all-important point. Lord Macaulay takes for granted that conflict in Europe, since the publication of Luther’s manifesto against Rome, has been between Catholicism and Protestantism. Even after describing the cataclysm of the French Revolution, he winds up his argument with these words: ‘We think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation, which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time, become infidel and Catholic again; but none has become Protestant.’ This is tantamount to regarding Protestantism as something fixed and final in itself, as a permanent and necessary form of Christianity. Here lies the fallacy which makes his reasoning, in spite of all its eloquence, but superficial. Protestantism, in truth, has never been more than a half-way house or halting-place between Catholicism and what may variously be described as free thought or science or rationalism. Being in its origin critical—being, as its name implies, a protest and an opposition—Protestantism was doomed to sterility, whenever it hardened into one or other of its dogmatic forms. As critics and insurgents, Luther and Calvin rank among the liberators of the modern intellect. As founders of intolerant and mutually hostile Christian sects, Luther and Calvin rank among the retarders of modern civilization. In subsequent thinkers of whom both sects have disapproved, we may recognize the veritable continuators of their work in its best aspect. The Lutheran and Calvinist Churches are but backwaters and stagnant pools, left behind by the subsidence of rivers in flood, separated from the tidal stress of cosmic forces. Macaulay’s misconception of the true character of Protestantism, which is to Catholicism what the several dissenting bodies are to the English Establishment, has diverted his attention from the deeper issues involved in the Counter-Reformation. He hardly touches upon Rome’s persecution of free thought, upon her obstinate opposition to science. Consequently, he is not sufficiently aware that Copernicus and Bruno were, even in the sixteenth century, far more dangerous foes to Catholicism than were the leaders of the Reformed Churches. Copernicus and Bruno, the lineal ancestors of Helmholtz and Darwin, headed that opposition to Catholicism which has been continuous and potent to the present day, which has never retreated into backwaters or stagnated in slumbrous pools. From this opposition the essence of Christianity, the spirit which Christ bequeathed to his disciples, has nothing to fear. But Catholicism and Protestantism alike, in so far as both are dogmatic and reactionary, clinging to creeds which will not bear the test of scientific investigation, to myths which have lost their significance in the light of advancing knowledge, and to methods of interpreting the Scriptures at variance with the canons of historical criticism, have very much to fear from this opposition. Lord Macaulay thinks it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation has adopted the principles of the Reformation since the end of the sixteenth century. He does not perceive that, in every race of Europe, all enlightened thinkers, whether we name Bacon or Descartes, Spinoza or Leibnitz, Goethe or Mazzini, have adopted and carried forward those principles in their essence. That they have not proclaimed themselves Protestants unless they happened to be born Protestants, ought not to arouse his wonder, any more than that Washington and Heine did not proclaim themselves Whigs. For Protestantism, when it became dogmatic and stereotyped itself in sects, ceased to hold any vital relation to the forward movement of modern thought. The Reformation, in its origin, was, as I have tried to show, the Northern and Teutonic manifestation of that struggle after intellectual freedom, which in Italy and France had taken shape as Renaissance. But Calvinism, Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and Anglicanism renounced that struggle only less decidedly than Catholicism; and in some of their specific phases, in Puritanism for example, they showed themselves even more antagonistic to liberal culture and progressive thought than did the Roman Church.
Whatever may be thought about the future of Catholicism (and no prudent man will utter prophecies upon such matters), there can be no doubt that the universal mind of the Christian races, whether Catholic or Protestant, has been profoundly penetrated and permeated with rationalism, which, springing simultaneously in Reformation and Renaissance out of humanism, has supplied the spiritual life of the last four centuries. This has created science in all its branches. This has stimulated critical and historical curiosity. This has substituted sound for false methods of inquiry, the love of truth for attachment to venerable delusion. This has sustained the unconquerable soul of man in its persistent effort after liberty and its revolt against the tyranny of priests and princes. At present, civilization seems threatened by more potent foes than the Roman Church, nor is it likely that these foes will seek a coalition with Catholicism.
As a final remark upon this topic, it should be pointed out that Protestantism, in spite of the shortcomings I have indicated, has, on the whole, been more favorable to intellectual progress than Catholicism. For Protestantism was never altogether oblivious of its origin in revolt against unjust spiritual domination, while Catholicism has steadily maintained its conservative attitude of self-defense by repression. This suffices to explain another point insisted on by Lord Macaulay—namely, that those nations in which Protestantism took root have steadily advanced, while the decay of Southern Europe can be mainly ascribed to the Catholic Revival. The one group of nations have made progress, not indeed because they were Protestants, but because they were more obedient to the Divine Mind, more in sympathy with the vital principle of movement, more open to rationalism. The other group of nations have declined, because Catholicism after the year 1530, wilfully separated itself from truth and liberty and living force, and obstinately persisted in serving the false deities of an antiquated religion.
VIII
Few periods in history illustrate the law of reaction and retrogression, to which all processes of civil progress are subject, more plainly and more sadly than the one with which I have been dealing in these volumes. The Renaissance in Italy started with the fascination of a golden dream; and like the music of a dream, it floated over Europe. But the force which had stimulated humanity to this delightful reawakening of senses and intelligence, stirred also the slumbering religious conscience, and a yearning after personal emancipation. Protestantism arose like a stern reality, plunging the nations into confused and deadly conflict, arousing antagonisms in established orders, unleashing cupidities and passions which had lurked within the breasts of manifold adventurers. The fifteenth century closed to a solemn symphony. After the middle of the sixteenth, discord sounded from every quarter of the Occidental world. Italy lay trampled on and dying. Spain reared her dragon’s crest of menacing ambition and remorseless fanaticism. France was torn by factions and devoured by vicious favorites of corrupt kings. Germany heaved like a huge ocean in the grip of a tumultuous gyrating cyclone. England passed through a complex revolution, the issue of which, under the sway of three Tudor monarchs, appeared undecided, until the fourth by happy fate secured the future of her people. It is not to be wondered that, in these circumstances, a mournful discouragement should have descended on the age; that men should have become more dubitative; that arts and letters should have seemed to pine upon unfertile ground. The nutriment they needed was absorbed by plants of fiercer and ranker growth, religious hatreds, political greeds, relentless passions burning in the hearts of princes and of populations.
IX
Italy had already given so much of mental and social civilization to Europe, that her quiescence at this epoch can scarcely supply a substantial theme for rhetorical lamentations. Marino and Guido Reni prove that the richer veins of Renaissance art and poetry had been worked out. The lives of Aldus the younger and Muretus show that humanism was well-nigh exhausted on its native soil. This will not, however, prevent us from deploring the untimely frost cast by persecution on Italy’s budding boughs of knowledge. While we rejoice in Galileo, we must needs shed tears of fiery wrath over the passion of Campanella and the stake of Bruno. Meanwhile the tree of genius was ever green and vital in that Saturnian land of culture. Poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, having borne their flowers and fruits, retired to rest. Scholarship faded; science was nipped in its unfolding season by unkindly influences. But music put forth lusty shoots and flourished, yielding a new paradise of harmless joy, which even priests could grudge not to the world, and which lulled tyranny to sleep with silvery numbers.
Thanks be to God that I who pen these pages, and that you who read them, have before us in this year of grace the spectacle of a resuscitated Italy! In this last quarter of the nineteenth century, the work of her heroes, Vittorio Emmanuele, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour, stands firmly founded. The creation of united Italy, that latest birth of the Italian genius, that most impossible of dreamed-of triumphs through long ages of her glory and greatness, compensates for all that she has borne in these three hundred years. Now that Rome is no longer the seat of a cosmopolitan theocracy, but the capital of a regenerated people; now that Venice joins hands with Genoa, forgetful of Curzola and Chioggia; now that Florence and Pisa and Siena stand like sisters on the sacred Tuscan soil, while Milan has no strife with Naples, and the Alps and sea-waves gird one harmony of cities who have drowned their ancient spites in amity,—the student of the splendid and the bitter past may pause and bow his head in gratitude to Heaven and swear that, after all, all things are well.
X
There is no finality in human history. It is folly to believe that any religions, any social orders, any scientific hypotheses, are more than provisional, and partially possessed of truth. Let us assume that the whole curve of human existence on this planet describes a parabola of some twenty millions of years in duration.239 Of this we have already exhausted unreckoned centuries in the evolution of pre-historic man, and perhaps five thousand years in the ages of historic records. How much of time remains in front? Through that past period of five thousand years preserved for purblind retrospect in records, what changes of opinion, what peripeties of empire, may we not observe and ponder! How many theologies, cosmological conceptions, polities, moralities, dominions, ways of living and of looking upon life, have followed one upon another! The space itself is brief; compared with the incalculable longevity of the globe, it is but a bare ‘scape in oblivion.’ And, however ephemeral the persistence of humanity may be in this its earthly dwelling-place, the conscious past sinks into insignificance before those aeons of the conscious future, those on-coming and out-rolling waves of further evolution which bear posterity forward. Has any solid gain of man been lost on the stream of time to us-ward? We doubt that. Has anything final and conclusive been arrived at? We doubt that also. The river broadens, as it bears us on. But the rills from which it gathered, and the ocean whereto it tends, are now, as ever in the past, inscrutable. It is therefore futile to suppose, at this short stage upon our journey, while the infant founts of knowledge are still murmuring to our ears, that any form of faith or science has been attained as permanent; that any Pillars of Hercules have been set up against the Atlantic Ocean of experience and exploration. Think of that curve of possibly twenty million years, and of the five thousand years remembered by humanity! How much, how incalculably much longer is the space to be traversed than that which we have left behind! It seems, therefore, our truest, as it is our humblest, wisdom to live by faith and love. ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’ Love is the greatest; and against love man has sinned most in the short but blood-bedabbled annals of his past. Hope is the virtue from which a faithful human being can best afford to abstain, unless hope wait as patient handmaid upon faith. Faith is the steadying and sustaining force, holding fast by which each one of us dares defy change, and gaze with eyes of curious contemplation on the tide which brought us, and is carrying, and will bear us where we see not. ‘I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you; but I know I came well and I shall go well.’ Man can do no better than live in Eternity’s Sunrise, as Blake put it. To live in the eternal sunrise of God’s presence, ever rising, not yet risen, which will never reach its meridian on this globe, seems to be the destiny, as it should also be the blessing, of mankind.
Footnotes
1 This is doubtful. Serrassi believed that Bernardo’s mother was also a Tasso.
2 He speaks in his letters of the difficulty ‘di sottrarre il collo all difficile noioso arduo giogo della servitù dei Principi.’ Lettere Ined. Bologna, Romagnoli, p. 34.
3 Lett. Ined. p. 100
4 Letter di Torquato Tasso, February 15, 1556, vol. II. p. 157.
5 ‘Sentendo in me non so qual nuova insolita contentezza,’ ‘non so qual segreta divozione.’ Lettere, vol. ii. p. 90.
6 Bernardo’s Letter to Cav. Giangiacopo Tasso, December 6, 1554.
7 Dated February 13, 1556.
8 See Opere, vol. iv. p. 100, for Tasso’s description of the farewell to his mother, which he remembered deeply, even in later life.
9 Lettere, vol. i. p. 6.
10 Cardinal Ferdinando de’Medici succeeded in a like position to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. But Luigi d’Este did not survive his brother.
11 See Lettere, vol. ii. p. 80: to Giacomo Buoncompagno.
12 ‘Egli mi disse, allor che suo mi fece: Tu canta, or che se’ ’n ozio.’
13 This is how he wrote in his Diary about Lucrezia. ‘Finally the Duke decided upon his marriage with Donna Lucrezia d’Este, which took place, though little to his taste, for she was old enough to have been his mother.’ ‘The Duchess wished to return to Ferrara, where she subsequently chose to remain, a resolution which gave no annoyance to her husband; for, as she was unlikely to bring him a family, her absence mattered little.’ ‘February 15, 1598. Heard that Madame Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of Urbino, my wife, died at Ferrara during the night of the 11th.’ (Dennistoun’s Dukes of Urbino, vol. iii. pp. 127, 146, 156.) Francesco Maria had been attached in Spain to a lady of unsuitable condition, and his marriage with Lucrezia was arranged to keep him out of a mésalliance.
14 Lettere, vol. i, p. 47. The sonnet begins, ‘Sdegno, debil guerrier.’
15 Tasso consulted almost every scholar he could press into his service. But the official tribunal of correction was limited to the above named four acting in concert with Scipione Gonzaga.
16 Lettere, vol. i. p. 114.
17 Ib. vol. i. p. 192.
18 Vol. i. pp. 55-215.
19 Lettere, vol. iii. p. 41, iv. p. 332.
20 Lettere, vol. iii. p. 164, v. p. 6.
21 Ib. vol. iii. pp. 85, 86, 88, 163, iv. pp. 8, 166, v. p. 87.
22 Letter to Fabio Gonzaga in 1590 (vol. iv. p. 296).
23 Lettere, vol. iii. p. viii.
24 Lettere, vol. iii. p. xxx. note 34.
25 Guarino, in a sonnet, hinted at the second supposition. See Rosini’s Saggio sugli Amori, &c. vol. xxxiii. of his edition of Tasso, p. 51.
26 Lettere, vol. iii. p. xxxi.
27 Lettere, vol. i. p. 139.
28 Lettere, vol. i. p. 228.
29 This is Rosini’s hypothesis in the Essay cited above. The whole of his elaborate and ingenious theory rests upon the supposition that Alfonso at Belriguardo extorted from Tasso an acknowledgment of his liaison Leonora, and spared his life on the condition of his playing a fool’s part before the world. But we have no evidence whatever adequate to support the supposition.
30 Lettere, vol. i. 257-262.
31 Those who adhere to the belief that all Tasso’s troubles came upon him through his liaison with Leonora, are here of course justified in arguing that on this point he could not write openly to the Duke. Or they may question the integrity of the document.
32 Rosini’s edition of Tasso, vol. xxx. p. 144.
33 Manso, ib. p. 46.
34 Manso, ib. p. 147.
35 Lettere, vol. i. p. 275.
36 Lettere, vol. i. p. 278, ii. p. 26.
37 Manso, p. 147. Here again the believers in the Leonora liaison may argue that by prison he meant love-bondage, hopeless servitude to the lady from whom he could expect nothing now that her brother was acquainted with the truth.
38 Lettere, vol. i. p. 233.
39 Lettere, i. pp. 271-290.
40 Lettere, ibid. p. 289.
41 Lettere, ibid. p. 233.
42 Tasso declares his inability to live outside the Court. ‘Se fra i mali de l’animo, uno de’più gravi è l’ambizione, egli ammalò di questo male già molti anni sono, nè mai è risanato in modo ch’io abbia potuto sprezzare affatto i favori e gli onori del mondo, e chi può dargli’ (Lettere, vol. iii. p. 56). ‘Io non posso acquetarmi in altra fortuna di quella ne la quale già nacqui’ (Ibid. p. 243).
43 It is addressed to the Metaurus, and begins: ‘O del grand, Apennino.’
44 Op. cit. p. 143.
45 Lettere, vol. i. p. 268.
46 From the sonnet, Sposa regal (Opere vol. iii. p. 218).
47 Lettere, vol. ii. p. 67.
48 Lettere, vol. ii. 34.
49 Ibid. pp. 7-62, 80-93.
50 We are met here as elsewhere in the perplexing problem of Tasso’s misfortunes with the difficulty of having to deal with mutilated documents. Still the mere fact that Tasso was allowed to correspond freely with friends and patrons, shows that Alfonso dreaded no disclosures, and confirms the theory that he only kept Tasso locked up out of harm’s way.
51 A letter written by Guarini, the old friend, rival and constant Court-companion of Tasso at Ferrara, upon the news of his death in 1595, shows how a man of cold intellect judged his case. ‘The death by which Tasso has now paid his debt to nature, seems to me like the termination of that death of his in this world which only bore the outer semblance of life.’ See Casella’s Pastor Fido, p. xxxii. Guarini means that when Tasso’s mind gave way, he had really died in his own higher self, and that his actual death was a release.
52 Tasso’s own letters after the beginning of 1579, and Manso’s Life (op. cit. pp. 156-176), are the authorities for the symptoms detailed above. Tasso so often alludes to his infirmities that it is not needful to accumulate citations. I will, however, quote two striking examples. ‘Sono infermo come soleva, e stanco della infermita, la quale è non sol malattia del corpo ma de la mente’ (Lettere, vol. iii. p. 160). ‘Io sono poco sano e tanto maninconico che sono riputato matto da gli altri e da me stesso’ (Ib. p. 262).
53 Op. cit. p. 155.
54 Lacrime di diversi poeti volgari, &c. (Vicenza, 1585).
55 Lettere, vol. ii. p. 103. The significance of this message to Panigarola is doubtful. Did Tasso mean that the contrast between past and present was too bitter? ‘Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.’
56 All the letters written from Mantua abound in references to this neglect of duty.
57 Lettere, vol. iv. p. 147.
58 Ibid. p. 229.
59 Lettere, vol. iv. p. 315.
60 Yet he now felt that his genius had expired. ‘Non posso più fare un verso: la vena è secca, e l’ingegno è stanco’ (Lettere, vol. v. p. 90).
61 During the whole period of his Roman residence, Tasso, like his father in similar circumstances, hankered after ecclesiastical honors. His letters refer frequently to this ambition. He felt the parallel between himself and Bernardo Tasso: ‘La mia depressa condizione, e la mia infelicità, quasi ereditaria’ (vol. iv. p. 288).
62 Manso op. cit. p. 215.
63 This letter proves conclusively that, whatever was the nature of Tasso’s malady, and however it had enfeebled his faculties as poet, he was in no vulgar sense a lunatic.
64 Canto i. 17.
65 Canto vi. 64-9.
66 Canto iii. 40, 45.
67 Canto ii. 22, iv. 28, 33.
68 Rinaldo, cantos x. vii.
69 Canto i. 25, 31, 41, 64.
70 Rinaldo, Canto ii. 28, 44.
71 Canto ii. 3-11.
72 Canto vii. 16-51.
73 Canto vii. 3-11.
74 Canto iv. 47.
75 Canto v. 12-57.
76 I may incidentally point out how often this motive has supplied the plot to modern ballets.
77 Giov. Imperiale in the Museum Historicum describes him thus: ‘Perpetuo moerentis et altius cogitantis gessit aspectum, gracili mento, facie decolori, conniventibus cavisque oculis.’
78 ‘La mia fiera malinconia’ is a phrase which often recurs in his letters.
79 ‘Questo segno mi ho proposto: piacere ed onore’ (Lettere, vol. v. p. 87).
80 It should be said that as a man of letters he bore with fools gladly, and showed a noble patience. Of this there is a fine example in his controversy with Della Cruscans. He was not so patient with the publishers and pirates of his works. No wonder, when they robbed him so!
81 Tasso’s diffuse paraphrase of the Stabat Mater might be selected to illustrate the sentimental tenderness rather than strength of his religious feeling.
82 The numerous plaintive requests for a silver cup, a ring, a silk cloak and such trifles in his later letters indicate something quite childish in his pre-occupations.
83 Carducci, in his essay Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale, and Quinet, in his Révolutions d’ltalie.
84 The final case drawn up against Bruno as heresiarch makes it appear that his record included even these boyish errors. See the letter of Gaspar Schopp in Berti.
85 See ‘Vita di Don Pietro di Toledo’ (Arch. Stov. vol. ix. p. 23)
86 See the passage on polygamy in the Spaccio della Bestia. I may here remark that Campanella, though more orthodox than Bruno, published opinions upon the relations of the sexes analogous to those of Plato’s Republic in his Citta del Sole. He even recommended the institution of brothels as annexes to schools for boys, in order to avoid the worse evil of unnatural vice in youth.
87 On the city, university and Inquisition of Toulouse in the sixteenth century see Christie’s Etiennne Dolet—a work of sterling merit and sound scholarship.
88 The ‘Cena delle Ceneri,’ Op. It. vol. i. pp. 137-151
89 Signor Berti conjectures that Bruno may have met Sidney first at Milan. But Bruno informs us that he did not become acquainted with him till he came to London: ‘Tra’ quali è tanto conosciuto, per fama prima quanbo eravamo in Milano et in Francia, e poi per experienza or che siamo ne la sua patria’ (Op. It. vol. i. p. 145).
90 Preface to ‘Lo Spaccio della Bestia’ (Op. It. vol. ii. p. 108).
91 Op. It. vol. i. p. 150.
92 Op. It. vol. i. p. 123.
93 See Wood, Ath. Oxon. p. 300.
94 Op. It. vol. i. p. 179.
95 Printed in the Explicatio triginta Sigillarum.
96 Op. It. vol. i. p. 267.
97 Loc. cit. p. 267.
98 It is a curious fact that the single copy of Campanella’s poems on which Orelli based his edition of 1834, came from Wolfenbüttel.
99 They were published at Frankfort, and dedicated to the friendly Prince of Wolfenbüttel.
100 Britanno’s Deposition, Berti’s Vita di G.B. p. 337.
101 Sarpi mentions the return of Ciotto from the fair (Lettere, vol. i. p. 527).
102 Ciotto, before the Inquisition, called the book De Minimo Magno et Mensura. It may therefore have been the De Triplici Minimo et Mensura, and not the De Monade (Vita di G.B. p. 334).
103 Mocenigo told Ciotto: I wish first to see what I can get from him of those things which he promised me, so as not wholly to lose what I have given him, and afterwards I mean to surrender him to the censure of the Holy Office’ (Berti, p. 335).
104 Mere correspondence with heretics exposed an Italian to the Inquisition. Residence in heretical lands, except with episcopal license, was forbidden. The rules of the Index proscribed books in which the name of a heretic was cited with approval.
105 Bruno speaks himself of ‘arte della memoria et inventiva’ (op. cit. p. 339). Ciotto mentions ‘la memoria et altre scientie’ (ib. p. 334).
106 Op. cit. p. 335.
107 They remind us of the blasphemies imputed to Christopher Marlowe.
108 Op. cit. p. 352.
109 Ibid. p. 355.
110 Ibid. p. 362.
111 Op. cit. p. 349
112 Ibid. p. 384
113 Ibid. p. 364
114 Ibid. p. 363
115 Op. cit. p. 378.
116 These years were not all spent at Rome. From the Records of the Inquisition, it appears that he arrived in Rome on February 27, 1598, and that his trial in form began in February 1599. The Pope ratified his sentence of death on January 20, 1600; this was publicly promulgated on February 8, and carried into effect on the subsequent 17th. Where Bruno was imprisoned between January 1593, and February 1598 is not known.
117 Doubts have recently been raised as to whether Bruno was really burned. But these are finally disposed of by a succinct and convincing exposition of the evidence by Mr. R.C. Christie, in Macmillan’s Magazine, October 1885. In addition to Schoppe and Kepler, we have the reference to Bruno’s burning published by Mersenne in 1624; but what is far more important, the Avviso di Roma for February 19,1600, records this event as having occurred upon the preceding Thursday. To Signor Berti’s two works, Documenti intorno a G. Bruno (Roma, 1880), and Copernico e le vicende, etc. (Roma, 1876), we owe most of the material which has been lucidly sifted by Mr. R.C. Christie.
118 ‘Londinam perfectus, libellum istic edit de Bestia triumphante, h.e. de Papa. quem vestri honoris causa bestiam appellare solent.’
119 We may remember that while a novice at Naples, he first got into trouble by keeping the crucifix as the only religious symbol which he respected, when he parted with images of saints.
120 These pregnant words are in Berti’s Vita di G.B. p. 299.
121 He well deserves this name, in spite of his recantation at Venice; for it seems incredible that he could not by concessions have purchased his life. As Breugger wrote with brutal crudity to Kepler: ‘What profit did he gain by enduring such torments? If there were no God to punish crimes, as he believed, could he not have pretended any thing to save his life?’ We may add that the alternative to death for a relapsed apostate was perpetual incarceration; and seven years of prison may well have made Bruno prefer death with honor.
122 op. cit. p. 70.
123 Both Berti and Quinet have made similar remarks, which, indeed, force themselves upon a student of the sixteenth century.
124 This theological conception of history inspired the sacred drama of the Middle Ages, known to us as Cyclical Miracle Plays.
125 It was my intention to support the statements in this paragraph by translating the passages which seem to me to justify them; and I had gone so far as to make English versions of some twenty pages in length, when I found that this material would overweight my book. A study of Bruno as the great precursor of modern thought in its more poetical and widely synthetic speculation must be left for a separate essay. Here I may remark that the most faithful and pithily condensed abstract of Bruno’s philosophy is contained in Goethe’s poem Proemium zu Gott und Welt. Yet this poem expresses Goethe’s thought, and it is doubtful whether Goethe had studied Bruno except in the work of his disciple Spinoza.
126 Spaventa in his Saggi di Critica.
127 We may remind our readers of Henri IV.’s parting words to Joseph Scaliger: ‘Est-il vrai que vous avez été de Paris à Dijon sans aller à la selle?’
128 Lettere, vol. i. p. 239.
129 It was under the supervision of the Servites that Sarpi gained the first rudiments of education. Thirst for knowledge may explain his early entrance into their brotherhood. Like Virgil and like Milton, he received among the companions of his youthful studies the honorable nickname of ‘The Maiden.’ Gross conversation, such as lads use, even in convents, ceased at his approach. And yet he does not seem to have lost influence among his comrades by the purity which marked him out as exceptional.
130 Lettere, vol. i. p. 237.
131 Lettere, vol. ii, p. 80.
132 Sarpi’s Life by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 64.
133 Fra Fulgenzio’s Vita di F. Paolo, p. 42. Venetian Dispatches in Mutinelli’s Storia Arcana, vol. iii. p. 67.
134 The treatise which Sarpi translated was Gerson’s Considerations upon Papal Excommunications. Gerson’s part in the Council of Constance will be remembered. See Creighton’s History of the Papacy, vol. i. p. 211.
135 Sarpi’s correspondence abundantly proves how very grave was the peril of Papal Absolutism in his days. The tide had not begun to turn with force against the Jesuit doctrines of Papal Supremacy. See Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 4-12, on these doctrines and the counter-theories to which they gave rise. We must remember that the Papal power was now at the height of its ascension; and Sarpi can be excused for not having reckoned on the inevitable decline it suffered during the next century.
136 Lettere, vol. i. p. 312.
137 Sarpi’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 179, 284.
138 Ibid. pp. 100-102.
139 Bianchi Giovini, Vita di Fra P. Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 49.
140 A.G. Campbell’s Life of Sarpi, p. 174.
141 Sarpi’s Letters, vol. i. pp. 231, 239.
142 Ibid. pp. 220, 222, 225.
143 Vita del Padre F. Paolo Sarpi, Helmstat, per Jacopo Mulleri, MDCCXXXXX.
144 Dispatch to Fr. Contarini under date September 25, 1607, quoted in Campbell’s Life of Sarpi, p. 145.
145 Fulgenzio’s Life, p. 61. A.G. Campbell asserts that this celebrated mot of Sarpi’s is not to be found in Fulgenzio’s MS. It occurs, however, quite naturally in the published work. The first edition of the Life appeared in 1646, eight years before Fulgenzio’s death. The discrepancies between it and the MS. may therefore have been intended by the author.
146 A full account of them is given by Bianchi Giovini in his Biografia, chap. xvii.
147 Vita di F. Paolo, pp. 67-70.
148 Vita di F. Paolo, p. 68: ‘Le cose che vennero a pubblica notizia e certe sono: che molte persone nominate in quella cifra, di Padre, fratelli, e cugini, per le contracifre constò, dal Generale de’ Servi in fuori, niuna esser di dignità inferiore alia Cardinalizia.’
149 Sarpi says that no crime happened in Venice without a friar or priest being mixed in it (Lettere, vol. i. 351).
150 Lettere, vol. ii. p. 169.
151 Opere di Paolo Sarpi, Helmstädt, 1761, vol. i. pp. 200, 233, 311; vol. ii. pp. 89, 187.
152 This contradicts the opinion of Hallam and Macaulay, both of whom were convinced that Sarpi was a Protestant at heart. Macaulay wishes that he had thrown off the friar’s frock. In a certain sense Sarpi can be classified with the larger minds among the Reformed Churches of his age. But to call him a Protestant who concealed his real faith, argues coarseness of perception, incapacity for comprehending any attitude above and beyond belligerent Catholicism and Protestantism, or of sympathizing with the deeply-religious feelings of one who, after calculating all chances and surveying all dogmatic differences, thought that he could serve God as well and his country better in that communion which was his by birthright. To an illuminated intellect there was not in the seventeenth century much reason to prefer one of the Reformed Churches to Catholicism, except for the sake of political freedom. It being impossible to change the State-religion in Venice, Sarpi had no inducement to leave his country and to pass his life in exile among prejudiced sectarians.
153 Lettere, vol. ii. pp. 3, 18, 96, 109, and elsewhere.
154 Ib. vol. ii. p. 6.
155 Lettere, vol. i. p. 237.
156 Ib. p. 268.
157 Ib. vol. ii. pp. 29, 48, 59, 60, 125.
158 Ib. p. 120, 124.
159 Ib. p. 226.
160 Ib. p. 217.
161 Ib. p. 427.
162 Lettere, vol. ii. p. 283.
163 Ib. p. 110, 311.
164 Ib. vol. i. pp. 220, 222, 225, 231, 239.
165 Campbell’s Life, p. 132.
166 Ib. p. 133, 135.
167 Lettere, vol. ii. p. 86.
168 Ib. vol. i. p. 283.
169 It is worthy of notice, as a stern Venetian joke, that when the Jesuits eventually returned to Rialto, they were bade walk in processions upon ceremonial occasions between the Fraternities of S. Marco and S. Teodoro—saints amid whose columns on the Molo criminals were executed.
170 Lettere, vol. i. p. 126; Opere, vol. vi. p. 40.
171 Opere, vol. vi. p. 145.
172 Fulgenzio’s Life, p. 98.
173 Ibid. p. 105.
174 Ibid.
175 Letter of the Superior to the Venetian Senate, printed in the Lettere, vol. ii. pp. 450-453. It is worth meditating on the contrast between Sarpi’s and Bruno’s deaths. Sarpi died with the consolations of religion on his bed in the convent which had been his life-long home. Bruno was burned alive, with eyes averted from the crucifix in bitter scorn, after seven and a half years spent in the prisons of the Inquisition. Sarpi exhaled his last breath amid sympathizing friends, in the service of a grateful country. Bruno panted his death-pangs of suffocation and combustion out, surrounded by menacing Dominicans, in the midst of hostile Rome celebrating her triumphant jubilee. Sarpi’s last thoughts were given to the God of Christendom and the Republic. Bruno had no country; the God in whom he trusted at that grim hour, was the God within his soul, unrealized, detached by his own reason from every Church and every creed.
176 See Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.
177 Lettere del Guarini, Venezia, 1596, p. 2.
178 Alberi, Relazioni, series 2, vol. ii. pp. 423-425.
179 Lettere, p. 195.
180 In this year it was published with the author’s revision by Ciotto at Venice. It had been represented at Turin in 1585, and first printed at Venice in 1590.
181 Guarini may be compared with Trissino in these points of his private life. See Renaissance in Italy, vol. v. 303-305.
182 Lettere, p. 196.
183 Il Pastor Fido, per cura di G. Casella (Firenze, Barbéra, 1866), p. liv.
184 I might have further illustrated this point by quoting the thirty-five lines in which Titiro compares a maiden to the rose which fades upon the spray after the fervors of the noon have robbed its freshness (act i. sc. 4). To contest the beauty of the comparison would be impossible. Yet when we turn to the two passages in Ariosto (Orl. Fur. i. 42, 43, and xxiv. 80) on which it has been modeled, we shall perceive how much Guarini lost in force by not writing with his eye upon the object or with the authenticity of inward vision, but with a self-conscious effort to improve by artifices and refinements upon something he has read. See my essay on ‘The Pathos of the Rose in Time,’ April, 1886.
185 Even Silvio, the most masculine of the young men, whose heart is closed to love, appears before us thus:
Oh Silvio, Silvio! a che ti die Natura
Ne’ più begli anni tuoi
Fior di beltà si delicato e vago,
Se tu se’ tanto a calpestarlo intento?
Che s’avess’io cotesta tua sì bella
E sì fiorita guancia,
Addio selve, direi:
E seguendo altre fere,
E la vita passando in festa e’n gioco,
Farei la state all’ombra, e ‘l verno al foco.
186 Telesio, Bruno, Campanella, Salvator Rosa, Vico, were, like Marino, natives of the Regno.
187 It is worth noting that Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis was first printed in 1593, thirty years previously.
188 Ferrari, in his Rivolnzioni d’Italia, vol. iii. p. 563, observes: ‘Una Venere sospetta versa lagrime forse maschili sul bellissimo Adonide,’ etc. Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, in like manner, is so written as to force the reader to feel with Venus the seduction of Adonis.
189 With the stanza quoted above Marino closes the cycle which Boccaccio in the Amoroso Visione (canto xlix.) had opened.
190 On this point I may call attention to the elaborate portraits drawn by Marino (canto xvi.) of the seven young men who contend with Adonis for the prize of beauty and the crown of Cyprus. Quite as many words are bestowed upon their costumes, jewelry and hair-dressing as upon their personal charms.
191 I have pleasure in inviting my readers to study the true doctrine regarding the place of touch among the senses as laid down by Ruskin in Modern Painters, part iii. sec. 1, chap. ii.
192 The hypocrisy of the allegory is highly significant for this phase of Italian culture. We have seen how even Tasso condescended to apply it to his noble epic, which needed no such miserable pretense. Exquisitely grotesque was the attempt made by Centorio degli Ortensi to sanctify Bandello’s Novelle by supplying each one of them with a moral interpretation (ed. Milano: Gio. Antonio degli Antoni, 1560, See Passano’s Novellieri in Prosa, p. 28).
193 What I have elsewhere, called ‘the tyranny of the kiss’ in Italian poetry, begins in Tasso’s Rinaldo, acquires vast proportions in Guarino’s Pastor Fido, and becomes intolerable in Marino’s Adone.
194 See the climax to the episode of Filauro and Filora.
195 In support of this opinion upon Marino’s merit as a poet, I will cite the episode of Clizio (canto i. p. 17); the tale of Psyche (iv. 65); the tale of the nightingale and the boy—which occurs both in Ford and Crashaw, by the way (vii. 112); the hymn to pleasure (vii. 116); the passage of Venus and Adonis to the bath (viii. 133); the picture of the nymph and satyr (viii. 135); the personification of the Court (x. 167); the Cave of Jealousy (xii. 204-206); the jewel-garden of Falserina (xii. 218); Falserina watching Adonis asleep (xii. 225); Falserina’s incantations (xiii. 233); Mars in the lap of Venus surrounded by the loves (xiii. 245); Venus disguised as a gypsy (xv. 290); the game of chess (xv. 297); the leave-taking of Venus and Adonis (xvii. 332); the phantom of dead Adonis (xviii. 357); the grief of Venus (xviii. 358-362); the tales of Hyacinth and Pampinus (xix. 372-378). The references are to ed. Napoli, Boutteaux, 1861.
196 There are passages of pure cantilena in this poem, where sense is absolutely swallowed up in sound, and words become the mere vehicle for rhythmic melody. Of this verbal music the dirge of the nymphs for Adonis and the threnos of Venus afford excellent examples (xix. pp. 358-361). Note especially the stanza beginning:
Adone, Adone, o bell’Adon, tu giaci,
Nè senti i miei sospir, nè miri il pianto!
O bell’Adone, o caro Adon, tu taci,
Nè rispondi a colei che amasti tanto!
There is nothing more similar to this in literature than Fra Jacopone’s delirium of mystic love:
Amor amor Jesu, son giunto a porto;
Amor amor Jesu, tu m’hai menato;
Amor amor Jesu, dammi conforto;
Amor amor Jesu, si m’hai enfiamato.
Only the one is written in a Mixo-Lydian, the other in a Hyper-Phrygian mood.
197 There is a streamlet called Reno near Bologna.
198 See Scherillo’s two books on the Commedia dell’Arte and the Opera Buffa.
199 For the date 1615 see Carducci’s learned essay prefixed to his edition of the Secchia Rapita (Barbera, 1861).
200 Canto i. 2.
201 Canto xii. 77.
202 So Heine wrote of Aristophanes. See my essay in Studies of the Greek Poets.
203 Canto viii. 33, 34.
204 See Baini, Life of Palestrina, vol. ii. p. 20.
205 While the choir was singing, the orchestra was playing concerted pieces called ricercari, in which the vocal parts were reproduced.
206 See the original passages from contemporary writers quoted by Baini, vol. i. pp. 102-104. Savonarola went so far as to affirm: ‘Che questo canto figurato l’ha trovato Satanasso,’ a phrase quite in the style of a Puritan abusing choirs and organs.
207 See Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. xi. pp. 76, 101, vol. xii. p. 383 (Paris: Lacroix, 1877).
208 Baini, i. p. 196.
209 It will be remembered that this Silvio Antoniano was one of the revisers of Tasso’s poem, and the one who gave him most trouble.
210 In the Dedication of the Mass of Pope Marcello to Philip II. in 1567 Palestrina only says that he had been constrained by the order of men of the highest gravity and most approved piety to apply himself ad sanctissimum Missae sacrificium novo modorum genere decorandum, and that he had performed his task with indefatigable pains and industry (Baini, op. cit. vol. i. p. 280). But it is noteworthy that of the three Masses furnished for the approval of the congregation, the first was entitled Illumina oculos meos, and that an anecdote referring to this title relates Palestrina’s earnest prayers for grace and inspiration during the execution of the work (ibid. p. 223, note.)
211 See Renaissance in Italy, vol. iv. pp. 263, 305.
212 Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, by Vernon Lee.
213 The three founders of the school were thus born precisely during the most critical years of the Council. They felt the Catholic reaction least. That expressed itself most markedly in Domenichino, born seventeen years after its close.
214 Nich. Poussin, b. 1594; Claude, 1600; Gaspar Poussin, 1613; Salvator Rosa, 1615; Luca Giordano, 1632; Canaletto, 1697.
215 I of course except Venice, for reasons which I have sufficiently set forth in Renaissance in Italy, vol. iii. p. 347. Long after other schools of Italy the Venetian was still only adolescent.
216 I have not thought it worth while to write down more than a very few names of the Mannerists. Notice how often they worked in whole families and indistinguishable coteries.
217 Everyone familiar with European picture-galleries will remember cabinet pieces by the Caracci, especially Ecce Homos, Pietàs, Agonies in the Garden, which look like copies from Correggio with a dash of added sentimentalism.
218 I have mainly used the encyclopedic work entitled Felsina Pittrice (Bologna, 1841, 2 vols.) for my study of the Eclectics. This is based upon the voluminous writings of the Count C.C. Malvasia, who, having been born in 1616, and having enjoyed personal intercourse with the later survivors of the Bolognese Academy, was able to bequeath a vast mass of anecdotical and other material to posterity. The collection contains critical annotations and additions by the hand of Zanotti and later art students, together with many illustrative documents of the highest value. Reading this miscellaneous repertory, we are forced to regret that the same amount of characteristic and authentic information has not been preserved about one of the greater schools of Italy—the Venetian, for example.
219 He acquired a somewhat infamous celebrity by his obscene engravings in the style of Giulio Romano.
220 Malvasia has preserved, in his Life of Primaticcio, a sonnet written by Agostino Caracci, in which the aims of the Eclectics are clearly indicated. The good painter must have at his command Roman or classic design, Venetian movement and shadow, Lombard coloring, the sublimity of Michelangelo, the truth to nature of Titian, the pure and sovereign style of Correggio, Raphael’s symmetry, Tibaldi’s fitness and solidity, Primaticcio’s erudite invention, with something of Parmigianino’s grace (Fels. Pittr. vol. i. p. 129). Zanotti adds: ‘This sonnet is assuredly one which every painter ought to learn by heart and observe in practice.’
221 See Malvasia, op. cit. vol. i. p. 277; vol. ii. p. 57. The odd thing is that Malvasia tells these stories of the Lodovico-Aphrodite and the color-grinder-Magdalen with applause, as though they proved the mastery of Annibale Caracci and Guido.
222 The later Eclectics—Spada, Domenichino, Guercino—were to some extent saved by the influences they derived from Caravaggio and the Naturalisti. But they had not the tact to see where the finer point of naturalistic art lies for a delicately minded painter. They added its brutality, as employed by Caravaggio, to the insipidities of the Caracci, and produced such horrors as Domenichino’s Martyrdom of S. Agnes.
223 This tradition of Guido’s childhood I give for what it is worth, from Malvasia, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 53. In after life, beside being piously addicted to Madonna-worship, he had a great dread of women in general and witches in particular. What some will call spiritual, others effeminate, in his mature work, may be due to the temperament thus indicated.
224 Malvasia, op. cit. p. 53, p. 178. The latter passage is preceded by a discussion of the nude in art which shows how Malvasia had imbibed Tridentine morality in the middle of Italy glowing with Renaissance masterpieces.
225 Lo Spada and Guercino, afterwards to be mentioned, were certainly colorists.
226 Modern Painters, vol. i. p. 87.
227 I allude to the Tintoretto in S. Maria dell’Orto at Venice, and to the Luini in the Monastero Maggiore at Milan. Yet the model of Luini’s S. Catherine was the infamous Contessa di Cellant, who murdered her husband and some lovers, and was beheaded for her crimes in Milan. This fact demonstrates the value of the model in the hands of an artist capable of using it.
228 When I assert that the age was losing the sense of artistic reserve, I wish to refer back to what I have written about Marino, the dictator of the age in matters of taste. See above, pp. 273, 274.
229 Go to S. Andrea nella Valle in Rome, to study the best of them.
230 Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio (1569-1609).
231 For the historian of manners in seventeenth-century Italy those pictures have a truly precious value, as they are executed with such passion as to raise them above the more careful but more lymphatic transcripts from beer-cellars in Dutch painting.
232 See above, part I. p. 47.
233 But the men who used the word failed to perceive that what justified these qualities in Michelangelo’s work was piercing, poignant, spiritual passion, of which their age had nothing.
234 ‘Strange that such difference should be
‘Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.’
235 The great picture by Dosso Dossi, to which I have alluded, is in the Modenese gallery.
236 The passage from Lodovico Caracci through Poussin to Reynolds is direct and unbroken. ‘Poussin,’ says Lanzi, ‘ranked Domenichino directly next to Raffaello.’ History of Painting in Italy, Engl. Tr. vol. iii. p. 84.
237 Perhaps a generation will yet arise which shall take the Caracci and their scholars into favor, even as people of refinement in our own days find a charm in patches, powder, perukes, sedan-chairs, patchouli, and other lumber from the age despised by Keats. I remember visiting a noble English lady at her country seat. We drank tea in her room, decorated by a fashionable ‘Queen Anne’ artist. She told us that the quaintly pretty furniture of the last century which adorned it had recently been brought down from the attic, whither her fore bears had consigned it as tasteless—Gillow in their minds superseding Chippendale.
238 It is only because I am an Englishman, writing a popular book for English folk, that I thus spend time in noticing the opinions of Joshua Reynolds. Addressing a European audience in this year grace, I should not have thought of eddying about his obsolete doctrine.
239 Twenty millions of years is of course a mere symbol, x or y.