Italian Renaissance. John Addington Symonds

were at least 30,000 men fit to bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, and among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds of Romans, swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, with beards upon their breasts. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get 500 together in one band for the defense of one of the three bridges.' What immediately follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a translation of it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 'The soldiers slew at pleasure; pillaged the houses of the middle classes and small folk, the palaces of the nobles, the convents of both sexes, and the churches. They made prisoners of men, women, and even of little children, without regard to age, or vows, or any other claim on pity. The slaughter was not great, for men rarely kill those who offer no resistance: but the booty was incalculable, in coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, clothes, tapestries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum that, if set down, would win no credence. Let any one consider through how many years the money of all Christendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there in a great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bishops, Prelates, and public officers, the wealthy merchants, both Roman and foreign, selling at high prices, letting their houses at dear rents, and paying nothing in the way of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the poorer folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a city sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater store of treasure could be drawn. Though Rome has at other times been taken and pillaged, yet never before was it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted so long that what might not perhaps have been discovered on the first day sooner or later came to light. This disaster was an example to the world that men proud, avaricious, envious, murderous, lustful, hypocritical, cannot long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied that the inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained with all these vices, and with many greater.'

[1] Pp. 372–82.

      Volume 2

       Table of Contents

Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       CHAPTER I THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE

       CHAPTER II FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER III FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER IV SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER V SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER VI THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER VII FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM

       CHAPTER VIII LATIN POETRY

       CHAPTER IX CONCLUSION

       FOOTNOTES

      PREFACE[1]

       Table of Contents

      This volume on the 'Revival of Learning' follows that on the 'Age of the Despots,' published in 1875, and precedes that on the 'Fine Arts,' which is now also offered to the public. In dealing with the 'Revival of Learning' and the 'Fine Arts,' I have tried to remember that I had not so much to write again the history of these subjects, as to treat their relation to the 'Renaissance in Italy.' In other words, I have regarded each section of my theme as subordinate to the general culture of a great historical period. The volume on 'Italian Literature,' still in contemplation, is intended to complete the work.

      While handling the theme of the Italian Renaissance, I have selected such points, and emphasised such details, as I felt to be important for the biography of a nation at the most brilliant epoch of its intellectual activity. The historian of culture sacrifices much that the historian of politics will judge essential, and calls attention to matters that the general reader may sometimes find superfluous. He must submit to bear the reproach of having done at once too little and too much. He must be content to traverse at one time well-worn ground, and at another to engage in dry or abstruse inquiries. He must not shrink from seeming to affect the fame of a compiler; nor, unless his powers be of the highest, can he hope altogether to avoid repetitions wearisome alike to reader and to writer. His main object is to paint the portrait of national genius identical through all varieties of manifestation; and in proportion as he has preserved this point of view with firmness, he may hope to have succeeded.

      For the History of the Revival of Learning I have had continual recourse to Tiraboschi's 'Storia della Letteratura Italiana.' That work is still the basis of all researches bearing on the subject. I owe besides particular obligations to Vespasiano's 'Vite di Uomini Illustri,' to Comparetti's 'Virgilio nel Medio Evo,' to Rosmini's 'Vita di Filelfo,' 'Vita di Vittorino da Feltre,' and 'Vita di Guarino da Verona,' to Shepherd's 'Life of Poggio Bracciolini,' to Dennistoun's 'Dukes of Urbino,' to Schultze's 'Gemistos Plethon,' to Didot's 'Alde Manuce,' to Von Reumont's 'Lorenzo de' Medici,' to Burckhardt's 'Cultur der Renaissance in Italien,' to Voigt's 'Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums,' and to Gregorovius's 'Geschichte der Stadt Rom.' To Voigt and Burckhardt, having perforce traversed the same ground that they have done, I feel that I have been in a special sense indebted. At the same time I have made it my invariable practice, as the notes to this volume will show, to found my own opinions on the study of original sources. To mention in detail all the editions of the works of humanists and scholars I have consulted, would be superfluous.

      To me it has been a labour of love to record even the bare names of those Italian worthies who recovered for us in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 'the everlasting consolations' of the Greek and Latin classics. The thought that I was tracing the history of an achievement fruitful of the weightiest results for modern civilisation has sustained me in a task that has been sometimes tedious. The collective greatness of the Revival has reconciled my mind to many trivialities of detail. The prosaic minutiæ of obscure biographies and long-forgotten literary labours have been glorified by what appears to me the poetry and the romance of the whole theme. It lies not in my province or my power to offer my readers any adequate apology for such defects as my own want of skill in exposition, or the difficulty of transfiguring with vital light and heat a subject so remote from present interests, may have occasioned. I must leave this volume in their hands, hoping that some at least may be animated by the same feeling of gratitude toward those past workers in the field of learning which has supported me.

      Clifton:

       March 1877.

      CHAPTER I

       THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE

       Table of Contents

      Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy—Aristocracy of Intellect—Self-culture as an Aim—Want of National Architecture—Want of National Drama—Eminence of Sculpture and Painting—Peculiar Capacity for Literature—Scholarship—Men of Many-sided Genius—Their