Italian Renaissance. John Addington Symonds

the sacraments of the Church, the absolutions, consecrations, and benedictions which priests dispensed or withheld at pleasure, had by no means lost their power. To what extent even the nations of the north still clung to them is proved by our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult of war with Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resemblance to the old ritual consistent with the spirit of the Reformation. Far more imposing were they in their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who had never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the fountain of Apostolical privileges in the person of the Pope, and whose southern temperament inclined them to a more sensuous and less metaphysical conception of Christianity than the Germans or the English. The dread of the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such words as leno matris suæ, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius, yet the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly issued and however manfully resisted.

[1] Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361.

The history of the despots and the Popes, together with the analysis of Machiavelli's political ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in which crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and cynicism so deliberate could be accepted as a system. Yet it remains in estimating the general character of Italian morality to record the judgment passed upon it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The morality of races, as of individuals, is rarely otherwise than mixed—virtue balancing vice and evil vitiating goodness. Still the impression produced by Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North was almost wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned from their Italian travels either horrified with what they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham writes:[1] 'I was once in Italy myself; but I thank God my abode there was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of London in nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear shoe or pantocle.' Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to declare.'[2] The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these witnesses, while the proverb, Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how pernicious to the coarser natures of the north were the refined vices of the south. What principally struck our ancestors in the morality of the Italians was the license allowed in sensual indulgences, and the bad faith which tainted all public and private dealings. In respect to the latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries of Europe they carried on the banking business of monarchs, cities, and private persons.

[1] The Schoolmaster; edn. 1863, p. 87. The whole discourse on Italian traveling and Italian influence is very curious, when we reflect that at this time contact with Italy was forming the chief culture of the English in literature and social manners. The ninth satire in Marston's Scourge of Villanie contains much interesting matter on the same point. Howell's Instructions for forreine Travell furnishes the following illustration: 'And being in Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devill, and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himself, and become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonnesse.'

[2] The Repentance of Robert Greene, quoted in the memoir to Dyce's edition of his Dramatic Works.

[3] See chapter v.

With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied that the corruption of Italy was shameful. Putting aside the profligacy of the convents, the City of Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as many as 6,800 public prostitutes, besides those who practiced their trade under the cloak of concubinage.[1] These women were accompanied by confederate ruffians, ready to stab, poison, and extort money; thus violence and lust went hand in hand, and to this profligate lower stratum of society may be ascribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine played professor.[3] Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola's sermons give the best picture.

[1] Infessura, p. 1997. He adds: 'Consideratur modo qualiter vivatur Romæ ubi caput fidei est.' From what Parent Duchatelet (Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, p. 27) has noted concerning the tendency to exaggerate the numbers of prostitutes in any given town, we have every reason to regard the estimate of Infessura as excessive. In Paris, in 1854, there were only 4,206 registered 'filles publiques,' when the population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; while those who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously computed at 20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000. Accurate statistics relating to the population of any Italian city in the fifteenth century do not, unfortunately, exist.

[2] Memoirs, lib. vii. 'C'est la plus triomphante cité que j'ai jamais vue, et qui plus fait d'honneur à ambassadeurs et étrangers, et qui plus sagement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus solemnellement faict.' The prostitutes of Venice were computed to number 11,654 so far back as the end of the 14th century. See Filiasi, quoted by Mutinelli in his Annali urbani di Venezia.

[3] Satires, ii.

But the characteristic vice of the Italian was not coarse sensuality. He required the fascination of the fancy to be added to the allurement of the senses.[1] It is this which makes the Capitoli of the burlesque poets, of men of note like Berni, La Casa, Varchi, Mauro, Molsa, Dolce, Bembo, Firenzuola, Bronzino, Aretino, and de' Medici, so amazing. The crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their cynicism. A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the Canti Carnascialeschi of Florence, proving that however profligate the people might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness of personal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of ingenuity or the avoidance of peril an enhancement of pleasure to the Italians. This is perhaps one of the reasons why all the imaginative compositions of the Renaissance, especially the Novelle,