The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
by Jacob Burckhardt
Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore, 1878
THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART
The Republics: Venice and Florence
The Italian municipalities had, in
earlier
days, given signal proof of that force
which
transforms the city into the State.
It remained
only that these cities should combine
in
a great confederation; and this idea
was
constantly recurring to Italian statesmen,
whatever differences of form it might
from
time to time display. In fact, during
the
struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries,
great and formidable leagues actually
were
formed by the cities; and Sismondi
is of
opinion that the time of the final
armaments
of the Lombard confederation against
Barbarossa
(from 1168 on) was the moment when
a universal
Italian league was possible. But the
more
powerful States had already developed
characteristic
features which made any such scheme
impracticable.
In their commercial dealings they shrank
from no measures, however extreme,
which
might damage their competitors; they
held
their weaker neighbors in a condition
of
helpless dependence in short, they
each fancied
they could get on by themselves without
the
assistance of the r est, and thus paved
the
way for future usurpation. The usurper
was
forthcoming when long conflicts between
the
nobility and the people, and between
the
different factions of the nobility,
had awakened
the desire for a strong government,
and when
bands of mercenaries ready and willing
to
sell their aid to the highest bidder
had
superseded the general levy of the
citizens
which party leaders now found unsuited
to
their purposes. The tyrants destroyed
the
freedom of most of the cities; here
and there
they were expelled, but not thoroughly,
or
only for a short time; and they were
always
restored, since the inward conditions
were
favourable to them, and the opposing
forces
were exhausted.
Among the cities which maintained their
independence
are two of deep significance for the
history
of the human race: Florence, the city
of
incessant movement, which has left
us a record
of the thoughts and aspirations of
each and
all who, for three centuries, took
part in
this movement, and Venice, the city
of apparent
stagnation and of political secrecy.
No contrast
can be imagined stronger than that
which
is offered us by these two, and neither
can
be compared to anything else which
the world
has hitherto produced.
Venice recognized itself from the first
as
a strange and mysterious creation the
fruit
of a higher power than human ingenuity.
The
solemn foundation of the city was the
subject
of a legend: on March 25, 1413, at
midday,
emigrants from Padua laid the first
stone
at the Rialto, that they might have
a sacred,
inviolable asylum amid the devastations
of
the barbarians. Later writers attributed
to the founders the presentiment of
the future
greatness of the city; M. Antonio Sabellico,
t who has celebrated the event in the
dignified
flow of his hexameters, makes the priest
who completes the act of consecration
cry
to heaven, 'When we hereafter attempt
great
things, S grant us prosperity! Now
we kneel
before a poor altar; but if [ our vows
are
not made in vain, a hundred temples,
O God,
of 6 gold a nd marble shall arise to
Thee.'
The island city at the end [' of the
fifteenth
century was the jewel-casket of the
world.
It ; is so described by the same Sabellico,
with its ancient cupolas, [ its leaning
towers,
its inlaid marble facades, its compressed
k splendor, where the richest decoration
did not hinder the y practical employment
of every corner of space. He takes
us to
the crowded Piazza before San Giacometto
at the Rialto, where the business of
the
world is transacted, not amid shouting
and
confusion, but with the subdued bum
of many
voices; where in the porticoes round
the
square and in those of the adjoining
streets
sit hundreds of money changers and
goldsmiths,
with endless rows of shops and warehouses
above their heads. He describes the
great
Fondaco of the Germans beyond the bridge,
where their goods and their dwellings
lay,
and before which their ships are drawn
up
side by side in the canal; higher up
is a
whole fleet laden with wine and oil,
and
parallel with i t, on the shore swarming
with porters, are the vaults of the
merchants;
then from the Rialto to the square
of St.
Mark come the inns and the perfumers'
cabinets.
So he conducts the reader from one
quarter
of the city to another till he comes
at last
to the two hospitals, which were among
those
institutions of public utility nowhere
so
numerous as at Venice. Care for the
people,
in peace as well as in war, was characteristic
of this government, and its attention
to
the wounded, even to those of the enemy,
excited the admiration of other States.
Public institutions of every kind found
in
Venice their pattern; the pensioning
of retired
servants was carried out systematically,
and included a provision for widows
and orphans.
Wealth, political security, and acquaintance
with other countries, had matured the
understanding
of such questions. These slender fair-
haired
men, with quiet cautious steps and
deliberate
speech, differed but slightly in costume
and bearing from one another; ornaments,
especially pearls, were reserved for
the
women and girls. At that time the general
prosperity, notwithstanding the losses
sustained
from the Turks, was still dazzling;
the stores
of energy which the city possessed,
and the
prejudice in its favour diffused throughout
Europe, enabled it at a much later
time to
survive the heavy blows inflicted upon
it
by the discovery of the sea route to
the
Indies, by the fall of the Mamelukes
in Egypt,
and by the war of the League of Cambrai.
Sabellico, born in the neighbourhood
of Tivoli,
and accustomed to the frank loquacity
of
the scholars of his day, remarks elsewhere
with some astonishment, that the young
nobles
who came of a morning to hear his lectures
could not be prevailed upon to enter
into
political discussions: 'When I ask
them what
people think, say, and expect about
this
or that movement in Italy, they all
answer
with one voice that they know nothing
about
the matter.' Still, in spite of the
strict
imposition of the State, much was to
be learned
from the more corrupt members of the
aristocracy
by those who were willing to pay enough
for
it. In the last quarter of the fifteenth
century there were traitors among the
highest
officials; the popes, the Italian princes,
and even the second-rate Condottieri
in the
service of the government had informers
in
their pay, sometimes with regular salaries;
things went so far that the Council
of Ten
found it prudent to conceal important
political
news from the Council of the Pregadi,
and
it was even supposed that Lodovico
il Moro
had control of a definite number of
votes
among the latter. Whether the hanging
of
single offenders and the high rewards
such
as a life-pension of sixty ducats paid
to
those who informed against them were
of much
avail, it is hard to decide; one of
the chief
causes of this evil, the poverty of
many
of the nobility, could not be removed
in
a day. In the year 1492 a proposal
was urged
by two of that order, that the State
should
spend 70,000 ducats for the relief
of those
poorer nobles who held no public office;
the matter was near coming before the
Great
Council, in which it might have had
a majority,
when the Council of Ten interfered
in time
and banished the two proposers for
life to
Nicosia in Cyprus. About this time
a Soranzo
was hanged, though not in Venice itself,
for sacrilege, and a Contarini put
in chains
for burglary; another of the same family
came in 1499 before the Signory, and
complained
that for many years he had been without
an
office, that he had only sixteen ducats
a
year and nine children, that his debts
amounted
to sixty ducats, that he knew no trade
and
had lately been turned into the streets.
We can understand why some of the wealthier
nobles built houses, sometimes whole
rows
of them, to provide free lodging for
their
needy comrades. Such works figure in
wills
among deeds of charity.
But if the enemies of Venice ever founded
serious hopes upon abuses of this kind,
they
were greatly in error. It might be
thought
that the commercial activity of the
city,
which put within reach of the humblest
a
rich reward for their labor, and the
colonies
on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
would have diverted from political
affairs
the dangerous elements of society.
But had
not the political history of Genoa,
notwithstanding
similar advantages, been of the stormiest?
The cause of the stability of Venice
lies
rather in a combination of circumstances
which were found in union nowhere else.
Unassailable
from its position, it had been able
from
the beginning to treat of foreign affairs
with the fullest and calmest reflection,
and ignore nearly altogether the parties
which divided the rest of Italy, to
escape
the entanglement of permanent alliances,
and to set the highest price on those
which
it thought fit to make. The keynote
of the
Venetian character was, consequently,
a spirit
of proud and contemptuous isolation,
which,
joined to the hatred felt for the city
by
the other States of Italy, gave rise
to a
strong sense of solidarity within The
inhabitants
meanwhile were united by the most powerful
ties of interest in dealing both with
the
colonies and with the possessions on
the
mainland, forcing the population of
the latter,
that is, of all the towns up to Bergamo,
to buy and sell in Venice alone. A
power
which rested on means so artificial
could
only be maintained by internal harmony
and
unity; and this conviction was so widely
diffused among the citizens that conspirators
found few elements to work upon. And
the
discontented, if there were such, were
held
so far apart by the division between
the
noble and the burgher that a mutual
understanding
was not easy. On the other hand, within
the
ranks of the nobility itself, travel,
commercial
enterprise, and tb^ incessant wars
with the
Turks saved the wealthy and dangerous
from
that fruitful source of conspiracies
idleness.
In these wars they were spared, often
to
a criminal extent, by the general in
command,
and the fall of the city was predicted
by
a Venetian Cato, if this fear of the
nobles
'to give o ne another pain' should
continue
at the expense of justice. Nevertheless
this
free movement in the open air gave
the Venetian
aristocracy, as a whole, a healthy
bias.
And when envy and ambition called for
satisfaction,
an official victim was forthcoming
and legal
means and authorities were ready. The
moral
torture which for years the Doge Francesco
Foscari (d. 1457) suffered before the
eyes
of all Venice is a frightful example
of a
vengeance possible only in an aristocracy.
The Council of Ten, which had a hand
in everything,
which disposed without appeal of life
and
death, of S financial affairs and military
appointments, which included the Inquisitors
among its number, and which overthrew
Foscari,
as it had overthrown so many powerful
men
before this Council was yearly chosen
afresh
from the whole governing body, the
Gran Consiglio,
and was consequently the most direct
expression
of its will. It is not probable that
serious
intrigues occurred at these elections,
as
the short duration of the office and
the
accountability which followed rendered
it
an object of no great desire. But violent
and mysterious as the proceedings of
this
and other authorities might be, the
genuine
Venetian courted rather than fled their
sentence,
not only because the Republic had long
arms,
and if it could not catch him might
punish
his family, but because in most cases
it
acted from rational motives and not
from
a thirst for blood. No State, indeed,
has
ever exercised a greater moral influence
over its subjects, whether abroad or
at home.
If traitors were to be found among
the Pregadi,
there was ample compensation for this
in
the fact that every Venetian away from
home
was a born spy for his government.
It was
a matter of course that the Venetian
cardinals
at Rome sent home news of the transactions
of the secret papal consistories. The
Cardinal
Domenico Grimani had the dispatches
intercepted
in the neighbourhood of Rome (1500)
which
Ascanio Sforza was sending to his brother
Lodovico il Moro, and forwarded them
to Venice;
his father, then exposed to a serious
accusation,
claimed public credit for this service
of
his son before the Gran Consiglio,
in other
words, before all the world.
The conduct of the Venetian government
to
the Condottieri in its pay has been
spoken
of already. The only further guarantee
of
their fidelity which could be obtained
lay
in their great number, by which treachery
was made as difficult as its discovery
was
easy. In looking at the Venetian army
list,
one is only surprised that among forces
of
such miscellaneous composition any
common
action was possible. In the catalogue
for
the campaign of 1495 we find 15,526
horsemen,
broken up into a number of small divisions.
Gonzaga of Mantua alone had as many
as I,
200, and Gioffredo Borgia 740; then
follow
six officers with a contingent of 600
to
700, ten with 400, twelve with 400
to
200, fourteen or thereabouts with 200
to
100, nine with 80, six with 50 to 60,
and
so forth. These forces were partly
composed
of old Venetian troops, partly of veterans
led by Venetian city or country nobles;
the
majority of the leaders were, however,
princes
and rulers of cities or their relatives.
To these forces must be added 24,000
infantry
we are not told how they were raised
or commanded
with 3,300 additional troops, who probably
belonged to the special services. In
time
of peace the cities of the mainland
were
wholly unprotected or occupied by insignificant
garrisons. Venice relied, if not exactly
on the loyalty, at least on the good
sense
of its subjects; in the war of the
League
of Cambrai (1509) it absolved them,
as is
well known, from their oath of allegiance,
and let them compare the amenities
of a foreign
occupation with the mild government
to which
they had been accustomed. As there
had been
no treason in their desertion of St.
Mark,
and consequently no punishment was
to be
feared, they returned to their old
masters
with the utmost eagerness. This war,
we may
remark parenthetically, was the result
of
a century's outcry against the Venetian
desire
for aggrandizement. The Venetians,
in fact,
were not free from the mistake of those
over-clever
people who will credit their opponents
with
no irrational and inconsiderate conduct.
Misled by this optimism, which is,
perhaps,
a peculiar weakness of aristocracies,
they
had utterly ignored not only the preparations
of Mohammed II for the capture of Constantinople,
but even the armaments of Charles VIII,
till
the unexpected blow fell at last. The
League
of Cambrai was an event of the same
character,
in so far as it was clearly opposed
to the
interests of the two chief members,
Louis
XII and Julius II. The hatred of all
Italy
against t}e victorious city seemed
to be
concentrated in the mind of the Pope,
and
to have blinded him to the evils of
foreign
intervention; and as to the policy
of Cardinal
d'Amboise and his king, Venice ought
long
before to have recognized it as a piece
of
malicious imbecility, and to have been
thoroughly
on its guard. The other members of
the League
took part in it from that envy which
may
be a salutary corrective to great wealth
and power, but which in itself is a
beggarly
sentiment. Venice came out of the conflict
with honour, but not without lasting
damage.
A power whose foundations were so complicated,
whose activity and interests filled
so wide
a stage, cannot be imagined without
a systematic
oversight of the whole, without a regular
estimate of means and burdens, of profits
and losses. Venice can fairly make
good its
claim to be the birthplace of statistical
science, together, perhaps, with Florence,
and followed by the more enlightened
despotisms.
The feudal state of the Middle Ages
knew
of nothing more than catalogues of
seignorial
rights and possessions (urbaria); it
looked
on production as a fixed quantity,
which
it approximately is, so long as we
have to
do with landed property only. The towns,
on the other hand, throughout the West
must
from very early times have treated
production,
which with them depended on industry
and
commerce, as exceedingly variable;
but even
in the most flourishing times of the
Hanseatic
League, they never got beyond a simple
commercial
balance-sheet. Fleets, armies, political
power and influence fall under the
debit
and credit of a trader's ledger. In
the Italian
States a clear political consciousness,
the
pattern of Mohammedan administration,
and
the long and active exercise of trade
and
commerce, combined to produce for the
first
time a true science of statistics.
The absolute
monarchy of Frederick II in Lower Italy
was
organized with the sole object of securing
a concentrated power for the death
struggle
in which he was engaged. In Venice,
on the
contrary, the supreme objects were
the enjoyment
of life and power, the increase of
inherited
advantages, the creation of the most
lucrative
forms of industry. and the opening
of new
channels for commerce.
The writers of the time speak of these
things
with the greatest freedom. We learn
that
the population of the city amounted
in the
year 1422 to 190,000 souls; the Italians
were, perhaps, the first to reckon,
not according
to hearths, or men able to bear arms,
or
people able to walk, and so forth,
but according
to 'animae,' and thus to get the most
neutral
basis for further calculation. About
this
time, when the Florentines wished to
form
an alliance with Venice against Filippo
Maria
Visconti, they were for the moment
refused,
in the belief, resting on accurate
commercial
returns, that a war between Venice
and Milan,
that is, between seller and buyer,
was foolish.
Even if the duke simply increased his
army,
the Milanese, through the heavier taxation
they must pay, would become worse customers.
'Better let the Florentines be defeated,
and then, used as they are to the life
of
a free city, they will settle with
us and
bring their silk and woollen industry
with
them, as the Lucchese did in their
distress.'
The speech of the dying Doge Mocenigo
(1423)
to a few of the senators whom he had
sent
for to his bedside is still more remarkable.
It contains the chief elements of a
statistical
account of the whole resources of Venice.
I cannot say whether or where a thorough
elucidation of this perplexing document
exists;
by way of illustration, the following
facts
may be quoted. After repaying a war-loan
of four million ducats, the public
debt ('il
monte') still amounted to six million
ducats;
the current trade (it seems) to ten
millions,
which yielded, the text informs us,
a profit
of four millions. The 3,000 'navigli,'
the
300 'navi,' and the 45 galleys were
manned
respectively by 17,000, 8,000 and 11,000
seamen
(more than 200 for each galley). To
these
must be added 16,000 shipwrights. The
houses
in Venice were valued at seven millions,
and brought in a rent of half a million.
These were 1,000 nobles whose incomes
ranged
from 70 to 4,000 ducats. In another
passage
the ordinary income of the State in
that
same year is put at 1,100,000 ducats;
through
the disturbance of trade caused by
the wars
it sank about the middle of the century
to
800,000 ducats.
If Venice, by this spirit of calculation,
and by the practical turn which she
gave
it, was the first fully to represent
one
important side of modern political
life,
in that culture, on the other hand,
which
Italy then prized most highly she did
not
stand in the front rant. The literary
impulse,
in general, was here wanting, and especially
that enthusiasm for classical antiquity
which
prevailed elsewhere. The aptitude of
the
Venetians, says Sabellico, for philosophy
and eloquence was in itself not smaller
than
that for commerce and politics. George
of
Trebizond, who, in 1459, laid the Latin
translation
of Plato's Laws at the feet of the
Doge,
was appointed professor of philology
with
a yearly salary of
150 ducats, and finally dedicated his
'Rhetoric'
to the Signoria. If, however, we look
through
the history of Venetian literature
which
Francesco Sansovino has appended to
his well-known
book, we shall find in the fourteenth
century
almost nothing but history, and special
works
on theology, jurisprudence, and medicine;
and in the fifteenth century, till
we come
to Ermolao Barbaro and Aldo Manuzio,
humanistic
culture is, for a city of such importance,
most scantily represented. The library
which
Cardinal Bessarion bequeathed to the
State
(1468) narrowly escaped dispersion
and destruction.
Learning could be had at the University
of
Padua, where, however, physicians and
jurists
the latter for their opinion on points
of
law received by far the highest pay.
The
share of Venice in the poetical creations
of the country was long insignificant,
till,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
her deficiencies were made good. Even
the
art of the Renaissance was imported
into
the city from without, and it was not
before
the end of the fifteenth century that
she
learned to move in this field with
independent
freedom and strength. But we find more
striking
instances still of intellectual backwardness.
This Government, which had the clergy
so
thoroughly in its control, which reserved
to itself the appointment to all important
ecclesiastical offices, and which,
one time
after another, dared to defy the court
of
Rome, displayed an official piety of
a most
singular kind. The bodies of saints
and other
relics imported from Greece after the
Turkish
conquest were bought at the greatest
sacrifices
and received by the Doge in solemn
procession.
12 For the coat without a seam it was
decided
(1455) to offer 10,000 ducats, but
it was
not to be had. These measures were
not the
fruit of any popular excitement, but
of the
tranquil resolutions of the heads of
the
Government, and might have been omitted
without
attracting any comment, and at Florence,
under similar circumstances, would
certainly
have been omitted. We shall say nothing
of
the piety of the masses, and of their
firm
belief in the indulgences of an Alexander
VI. But the State itself, after absorbing
the Church to a degree unknown elsewhere,
had in truth a certain ecclesiastical
element
in its composition, and the Doge, the
symbol
of the State, appeared in twelve great
processions
('andate') in a half-clerical character.
They were almost all festivals in memory
of political events, and competed in
splendor
with the great feasts of the Church;
the
most brilliant of all, the famous marriage
with the sea, fell on Ascension Day.
The most elevated political thought
and the
most varied forms of human development
are
found united in the history of Florence,
which in this sense deserves the name
of
the first modern State in the world.
Here
the whole people are busied with what
in
the despotic cities is the affair of
a single
family. That wondrous Florentine spirit,
at once keenly critical and artistically
creative, was incessantly transforming
the
social and political condition of the
State,
and as incessantly describing and judging
the change. Florence thus became the
home
of political doctrines and theories,
of experiments
and sudden changes, but also, like
Venice,
the home of statistical science, and
alone
and above all other States in the world,
the home of historical representation
in
the modern sense of the phrase. The
spectacle
of ancient Rome and a familiarity with
its
leading writers were not without influence;
Giovanni Villani confesses that he
received
the first impulse to his great work
at the
jubilee of the year 1300, and began
it immediately
on his return home. Yet how many among
the
200,000 pilgrims of that year may have
been
like him in gifts and tendencies and
still
did not write the history of their
native
cities? For not all of them could encourage
themselves with the thought: 'Rome
is sinking;
my native city is rising, and ready
to achieve
great things, and therefore I wish
to relate
its past history, and hope to continue
the
story to the present time, and as long
as
any life shall last.' And besides the
witness
to its past, Florence obtained through
its
historians something further a greater
fame
than fell to the lot of any other city
of
Italy.
Our present task is not to write the
history
of this remarkable State, but merely
to give
a few indications of the intellectual
freedom
and independence for which the Florentines
were indebted to this history. In no
other
city of Italy were the struggles of
political
parties so bitter, of such early origin,
and so permanent. The descriptions
of them,
which belong, it is true, to a somewhat
later
period, give clear evidence of the
superiority
of Florentine criticism.
And what a politician is the great
victim
of these crises, Dante Alighieri, matured
alike by home and by exile ! He uttered
his
scorn of the incessant changes and
experiments
in the constitution of his native city
in
ringing verses, which will remain proverbial
so long as political events of the
same kind
recur; 14 he addressed his home in
words
of defiance and yearning which must
have
stirred the hearts of his countrymen.
But
his thoughts ranged over Italy and
the whole
world; and if his passion for the Empire,
as he conceived it, was no more than
an illusion,
it must yet be admitted that the youthful
dreams of a newborn political speculation
are in his case not without a poetical
grandeur.
He is proud to be the first who trod
this
path, 16 certainly in the footsteps
of Aristotle,
but in his own way independently. His
ideal
emperor is a just and humane judge,
dependent
on God only, the heir of the universal
sway
of Rome to which belonged the sanction
of
nature, of right and of the will of
God.
The conquest of the world was, according
to this view, rightful, resting on
a divine
judgement between Rome and the other
nations
of the earth, and God gave his approval
to
this empire, since under it He became
Man,
submitting at His birth to the census
of
the Emperor Augustus, and at His death
to
the judgement of Pontius Pilate. We
may find
it hard to appreciate these and other
arguments
of the same kind, but Dante's passion
never
fail s to carry us with him. In his
letters
he appears as one of the earliest publicists,
and is perhaps the first layman to
publish
political tracts in this form. He began
early.
Soon after the death of Beatrice he
addressed
a pamphlet on the State of Florence
'to the
Great ones of the Earth,' and the public
utterances of his later years, dating
from
the time of his banishment, are all
directed
to emperors, princes, a nd cardinals.
In
these letters and in his book De Vulgari
Eloquentia (About the Vernacular) the
feeling,
bought with such bitter pains, is constantly
recurring that the exile may find elsewhere
than in his native place an intellectual
home in language and culture, which
cannot
be taken from him. On this point we
shall
have more to say in the sequel.
To the two Villani, Giovanni as well
as Matteo,
we owe not so much deep political reflection
as fresh and practical observations,
together
with the elements of Florentine statistics
and important notices of other States.
Here
too trade and commerce had given the
impulse
to economic as well as political science.
Nowhere else in the world was such
accurate
information to be had on financial
affairs.
The wealth of the Papal court at Avignon,
which at the death of John XXII amounted
to twenty-five millions of gold florins,
would be incredible on any less trustworthy
authority. Here only, at Florence,
do we
meet with colossal loans like that
which
the King of England contracted from
the Florentine
houses of Bardi and Peruzzi, who lost
to
his Majesty the sum of 1,365,000 gold
florins
(1338) their own money and that of
their
partners and nevertheless recovered
from
the shock. Most important facts are
here
recorded as to the condition of Florence
at this time: the public income (over
300,000
gold florins) and expenditure the population
of the city, here only roughly estimated,
according to the consumption of bread,
in
'bocche,' i. e. mouths, put at 50,000
and
the population of the whole territory;
the
excess of 300 to 500 male children
among
the 5,800 to 8,000 annually baptized
18 the
schoolchildren, of whom 8,000 to 10,000
learned
reading, 1,000 to 1,200 in six schools
arithmetic;
and besides these, 600 scholars who
were
taught Latin grammar and logic in four
schools.
Then follow the statistics of the churches
and monasteries; of the hospitals,
which
held more than a thousand beds; of
the wool
trade, with most valuable details;
of the
mint, the provisioning of the city,
the public
officials, and so on. Incidentally
we learn
many curious facts; how, for instance,
when
the public funds ('monte') were first
established,
in the year 1353, the Franciscans spoke
from
the pulpit in favour of the measure,
the
Dominicans and Augustinians against
it. The
economic results of the black death
were
and could be observed and described
nowhere
else in all Europe as in this city.
20 Only
a Florentine could have left it on
record
how it was expected that the scanty
population
would have made everything cheap, and
how
instead of that labor and commodities
doubled
in price; how the common people at
first
would do no work at all, but simply
give
themselves up to enjoyment, how in
the city
itself servants and maids were not
to be
had except at extravagant wages; how
the
peasants would only hill the best lands,
and left the rest uncultivated; and
how the
enormous legacies bequeathed to the
poor
at the time of the plague seemed afterwards
useless, since the poor had either
died or
had ceased to be poor. Lastly, on the
occasion
of a great bequest, by which a childless
philanthropist left six 'denarii' to
every
beggar in the city, the attempt is
made to
give a comprehensive statistical account
of Florentine mendicancy.
This statistical view of things was
at a
later time still more highly cultivated
at
Florence. The noteworthy point about
it is
that, as a rule, we can perceive its
connection
with the higher aspects of history,
with
art, and with culture in general. An
inventory
of the year 1422 mentions, within the
compass
of the same document, the seventy-two
exchange
offices which surrounded the 'Mercato
Nuovo';
the amount of coined money in circulation
(two million golden florins); the then
new
industry of gold spinning; the silk
wares;
Filippo Brunellesco, then busy in digging
classical architecture from its grave;
and
Leonardo Aretino, secretary of the
republic,
at work at the revival of ancient literature
and eloquence; lastly, it speaks of
the general
prosperity of the city, then free from
political
conflicts, and of the good fortune
of Italy,
which had rid itself of foreign mercenaries.
The Venetian statistics quoted above
which
date from about the same year, certainly
give evidence of larger property and
profit
and of a more extensive scene of action;
Venice had long been mistress of the
seas
before Florence sent out its first
galleys
(1422) to Alexandria. But no reader
can fail
to recognize the higher spirit of the
Florentine
documents. These and similar lists
recur
at intervals of ten years, systematically
arranged and tabulated, while elsewhere
we
find at best occasional notices. We
can form
an approximate estimate of the property
and
the business of the first Medici; they
paid
for charities, public buildings, and
taxes
from 1434 to 1471 no less than 663,755
gold
florins, of which more than 400,000
fell
on Cosimo alone, and Lorenzo Magnifico
was
delighted that the money had been so
well
spent. In 1478 we have again a most
important
and in its way complete view of the
commerce
and trades of this city, some of which
may
be wholly or partly reckoned among
the fine
arts such as those which had to do
with damasks
and gold or silver embroidery, with
woodcarving
and 'intarsia,' with the sculpture
of arabesques
in marble and sandstone, with portraits
in
wax, and with jewelry and work in gold.
The
inborn talent of the Florentines for
the
systematization of outward life is
shown
by their books on agriculture, business,
and domestic economy, which are markedly
superior to those of other European
people
in the fifteenth century. It has been
rightly
decided to publish selections of these
works,
although no little study will be needed
to
extract clear and definite results
from them.
At all events, we have no difficulty
in recognizing
the city, where dying parents begged
the
government in their wills to fine their
sons
1,000 florins if they declined to practice
a regular profession.
For the first half of the sixteenth
century
probably no State in the world possesses
a document like the magnificent description
of Florence by Varchi. In descriptive
statistics,
as in so many things besides, yet another
model is left to us, before the freedom
a
nd greatness of the city sank into
the grave.
This statistical estimate of outward
life
is, however, uniformly accompanied
by the
narrative of political events to which
we
have already referred. Florence not
only
existed under political forms more
varied
than those of the free States of Italy
and
of Europe generally, but it reflected
upon
them far more deeply. It is a faithful
mirror
of the relations of individuals and
classes
to a variable whole. The pictures of
the
great civic democracies in France and
in
Flanders, as they are delineated in
Froissart,
and the narratives of the German chroniclers
of the fourteenth century, are in truth
of
high importance; but in comprehensiveness
of thought and in the rational development
of the story, none will bear comparison
with
the Florentines. The rule of the nobility,
the tyrannies, the struggles of the
middle
class with the proletariat, limited
and unlimited
democracy, pseudo-democracy, the primacy
o? a single house, the theocracy of
Savonarola,
and the mixed forms of government which
prepared
the way for the Medicean despotism
all are
so described that the inmost motives
of the
actors are laid bare to the light.
At length
Machiavelli in his Florentine history
(down
to 1492) represents his native city
as a
living organism and its development
as a
natural and individual process; he
is the
first of the moderns who has risen
to such
a conception. It lies without our province
to determine whether and in what points
Machiavelli
may have done violence to history,
as is
notoriously the case in his life of
Castruccio
Castracani--a fancy picture of the
typical
despot. We might find something to
say against
every line of the 'Storie Fiorentine,'
and
yet the great and unique value of the
whole
would remain unaffected. And his contemporaries
and successors, Jacopo Pitti, Guicciardini,
Segni, Varchi, Vettori, what a circle
of
illustrious names! And what a story
it is
which these masters tell us! The great
and
memorable drama of the last decades
of the
Florentine republic is here unfolded.
The
voluminous record of the collapse of
the
highest and most original life which
the
world could then show may appear to
one but
as a collection of curiosities, may
awaken
in another a devilish delight at the
shipwreck
of so much nobility and grandeur, to
a third
may seem like a great historical assize;
for all it will be an object of thought
and
study to the end of time. The evil
which
was for ever troubling the peace of
the city
was its rule over once powerful and
now conquered
rivals like Pisa-a rule of which the
necessary
consequence was a chronic state of
violence.
The only remedy, certainly an extreme
one
and which none but Savonarola could
have
persuaded Florence to accept, and that
only
with the help of favourable chances,
would
have been the well-timed dissolution
of Tuscany
into a federal union of free cities.
At a
later period this scheme, then no more
than
the dream of a past age, brought (1548)
a
patriotic citizen of Lucca to the scaffold.
From this evil and from the ill-starred
Guelph
sympathies of Florence for a foreign
prince,
which familiarized it with foreign
intervention,
came all the disasters which followed.
But
who does not admire the people which
was
wrought up by its venerated preacher
to a
mood of such sustained loftiness that
for
the first time in Italy it set the
example
of sparing a conquered foe while the
whole
history of its past taught nothing
but vengeance
and extermination? The glow which melted
patriotism into one with moral regeneration
may seem, when looked at from a distance,
to have soon passed away; but its best
results
shine forth again in the memorable
siege
of 1529-30. They were 'fools,' as Guicciardini
then wrote, who drew down this storm
upon
Florence, but he confesses himself
that they
achieved things which seemed incredible;
and when he declares that sensible
people
would have got out of the way of the
danger,
he means no more than that Florence
ought
to have yielded itself silently and
ingloriously
into the hands of its enemies. It would
no
doubt have preserved its splendid suburbs
and gardens, and the lives and prosperity
of countless citizens; but it would
have
been the poorer by one of its greatest
and
most ennobling memories.
In many of their chief merits the Florentines
are the pattern and the earliest type
of
Italians and modern Europeans generally;
they are so also in many of their defects.
When Dante compares the city which
was always
mending its constitution with the sick
man
who is continually changing his posture
to
escape from pain, he touches with the
comparison
a permanent feature of the political
life
of Florence. The great modern fallacy
that
a constitution can be made, can be
manufactured
by a combination of existing forces
and tendencies,
was constantly cropping up in stormy
times;
even Machiavelli is not wholly free
from
it. Constitutional artists were never
wanting
who by an ingenious distribution and
division
of political power, by indirect elections
of the most complicated kind, by the
establishment
of nominal offices, sought to found
a lasting
order of things, and to satisfy or
to deceive
the rich and the poor alike. They naively
fetch their examples from classical
antiquity,
and borrow the party names 'ottimati,'
'aristocrazia,'
as a matter of course. The world since
then
has become used to these expressions
and
given them a conventional European
sense,
whereas all former party names were
purely
national, and oithor rhnrnotPrimPrl
tho rnilqP
nt iqqllP or cnrsnz from the caprice
of accident.
But how a name colors or discolors
a political
cause!
But of all who thought it possible
to construct
a State, the greatest beyond all comparison
was Machiavelli. He treats existing
forces
as living and active, takes a large
and accurate
view of alternative possibilities,
and seeks
to mislead neither himself nor others.
No
man could be freer from vanity or ostentation;
indeed, he does not write for the public,
but either for princes and administrators
or for personal friends. The danger
for him
does not lie in an affectation of genius
or in a false order of ideas, but rather
in a powerful imagination which he
evidently
controls with difficulty. The objectivity
of his political Judgement is sometimes
appalling
in its sincerity; but it is the sign
of a
time of no ordinary need and peril,
when
it was a hard matter to believe in
right,
or to credit others with just dealing
Virtuous
indignation at his expense is thrown
away
on us, who have seen in what sense
political
morality is understood by the statesmen
of
our own century. Machiavelli was at
all events
able to forget himself in his cause.
In truth,
although his writing s, with the exception
of very few words, are altogether destitute
of enthusiasm, and although the Florentines
themselves treated him at last as a
criminal,
he was a patriot in the fullest meaning
of
the word. But free as he was, like
most of
his contemporaries, in speech and morals,
the welfare of the State was yet his
first
and last thought.
His most complete program for the construction
of a new political system at Florence
is
set forth in the memorial to Leo X,
composed
after the death of the younger Lorenzo
Medici,
Duke of Urbino (d. 1519), to whom he
had
dedicated his 'Prince.' The State was
by
that time in extremities and utterly
corrupt,
and the remedies proposed are not always
morally justifiable; but it is most
interesting
to see how he hopes to set up the republic
in the form of a moderate democracy,
as heiress
to the Medici. A more ingenious scheme
of
concessions to the Pope, to the Pope's
various
adherents, and to the different Florentine
interests, cannot be imagined; we might
fancy
ourselves looking into the works of
a clock.
Principles, observations, comparisons,
political
forecasts, and the like are to be found
in
numbers in the 'Discorsi,' among them
flashes
of wonderful insight. He recognizes,
for
example, the law of a continuous though
not
uniform development in republican institutions,
and requires the constitution to be
flexible
and capable of change, as the only
means
of dispensing with bloodshed and banishments.
For a like reason, in order to guard
against
private violence and foreign interference--'the
death of all freedom'--he wishes to
see introduced
a judicial procedure ('accusa') against
hated
citizens, in place of which Florence
had
hitherto had nothing but the court
of scandal.
With a masterly hand the tardy and
involuntary
decisions are characterized which at
critical
moments play so important a part in
republican
States. Once, it is true, he is misled
by
his imagination and the pressure of
events
into unqualified praise of the people,
which
chooses its officers, he says, better
than
any prince, and which can be cured
of its
errors by 'good advice.' With regard
to the
Government of Tuscany, he has no doubt
that
it belongs to his native city, and
maintains,
in a special 'Discorso' that the reconquest
of Pisa is a question of life or death;
he
deplores that Arezzo, after the rebellion
of 1502, was not razed to the ground;
he
admits in general that Italian republics
must be allowed to expand freely and
add
to their territory in order to enjoy
peace
at home, and not to be themselves attacked
by others, but declares that Florence
had
un at the wrong end, and from the first
made
deadly Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, while
Pistoia,
'treated like a brother,' had voluntarily
submitted to her.
It would be unreasonable to draw a
parallel
between the few other republics which
still
existed in the fifteenth century and
this
unique city--the most important workshop
of the Italian, and indeed of the modern
European spirit. Siena suffered from
the
gravest organic maladies, and its relative
prosperity in art and industry must
not mislead
us on this point. Aeneas Sylvius looks
with
longing from his native town over to
the
'merry' German imperial cities, where
life
is embittered by no confiscations of
land
and goods, by no arbitrary officials,
and
by no political factions. Genoa scarcely
comes within range of our task, as
before
the time of Andrea Doria it took almost
no
part in the Renaissance.
Indeed, the inhabitant of the Riviera
was
proverbial among Italians for his contempt
of all higher culture. Party conflicts
here
assumed so fierce a char- acter, and
disturbed
so violently the whole course of life,
that
we can hardly understand how, after
so many
revolutions and invasions, the Genoese
ever
contrived to return to an endurable
condition.
Perhaps it was owing to the fact that
all
who took part in public affairs were
at the
same time almost without exception
active
men of business. The example of Genoa
shows
in a striking manner with what insecurity
wealth and vast commerce, and with
what internal
disorder the possession of distant
colonies,
are compatible.
THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART
Foreign Policy
As the majority of the Italian States
were
in their internal constitution works
of art,
that is, the fruit of reflection and
careful
adaptation, so was their relation to
one
another and to foreign countries also
a work
of art. That nearly all of them were
the
result of recent usurpations, was a
fact
which exercised as fatal an influence
in
their foreign as in their internal
policy.
Not one of them recognized another
without
reserve; the same play of chance which
had
helped to found and consolidate one
dynasty
might upset another. Nor was it always
a
matter of choice with the despot whether
to keep quiet or not. The necessity
of movement
and aggrandizement is common to all
illegitimate
powers. Thus Italy became the scene
of a
'foreign policy' which gradually, as
in other
countries also, acquired the position
of
a recognized system of public law.
The purely
objective treatment of international
affairs,
as free from prejudice as from moral
scruples,
attained a perfection which sometimes
is
not without a certain beauty and grandeur
of its own. But as a whole it gives
us the
impression of a bottomless abyss.
Intrigues, armaments, leagues, corruption
and treason make up the outward history
of
Italy at this period. Venice in particular
was long accused on all hands of seeking
to conquer the whole peninsula, or
gradually
so to reduce its strength that one
State
after another must fall into her hands.
But
on a closer view it is evident that
this
complaint did not come from the people,
but
rather from the courts and official
classes,
which were commonly abhorred by their
subjects,
while the mild government of Venice
had secured
for it general confidence Even Florence,
with its restive subject cities, found
itself
in a false position with regard to
Venice,
apart from all commercial jealousy
and from
the progress of Venice in Romagna.
At last
the League of Cambrai actually did
strike
a serious blow at the State which all
Italy
ought to have supported with united
strength.
The other States, also, were animated
by
feelings no less unfriendly, and were
at
all times ready to use against one
another
any weapon which their evil conscience
might
suggest. Lodovico il Moro, the Aragonese
kings of Naples, and Sixtus IV--to
say nothing
of the smaller powers--kept Italy in
a constant
perilous agitation. It would have been
well
if the atrocious game had been confined
to
Italy; but it lay in the nature of
the case
that intervention sought from abroad--in
particular the French and the Turks.
The sympathies of the people at large
were
throughout on the side of France. Florence
had never ceased to confess with shocking
naivete its old Guelph preference for
the
French. And when Charles VIII actually
appeared
on the south of the Alps, all Italy
accepted
him with an enthusiasm which to himself
and
his followers seemed unaccountable.
In the
imagination of the Italians, to take
Savonarola
for an example the ideal picture of
a wise,
just, and powerful savior and ruler
was still
living, with the difference that he
was no
longer the emperor invoked by Dante,
but
the Capetian king of France. With his
departure
the illusion was broken; but it was
long
before all understood how completely
Charles
VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I had
mistaken
their true relation to Italy, and by
what
inferior motives they were led. The
princes,
for their part, tried to make use of
France
in a wholly different way. When the
Franco-English
wars came to an end, when Louis XI
began
to cast about his diplomatic nets on
all
sides, and Charles of Burgundy to embark
on his foolish adventures, the Italian
Cabinets
came to meet them at every point. It
became
clear that the intervention of France
was
only a question of time, even if the
claims
on Naples and Milan had never existed,
and
that the old interference with Genoa
and
Piedmont was only a type of what was
to follow.
The Venetians, in fact, expected it
as early
as 1462. The mortal terror of the Duke
Galeazzo
Maria of Milan during the Burgundian
war,
in which he was apparently the ally
of Charles
as well as of Louis, and consequently
had
reason to dread an attack from both,
is strikingly
shown in his correspondence. The plan
of
an equilibrium of the four chief Italian
powers, as understood by Lorenzo the
Magnificent,
was but the assumption of a cheerful
optimistic
spirit, which had outgrown both the
recklessness
of an experimental policy and the superstitions
of Florentine Guelphism, and persisted
in
hoping for the best. When Louis XI
offered
him aid in the war against Ferrante
of Naples
and Sixtus IV, he replied, 'I cannot
set
my own advantage above the safety of
all
Italy; would to God it never came into
the
mind of the French kings to try their
strength
in this country! Should they ever do
so,
Italy is lost.' For the other princes,
the
King of France was alternately a bugbear
to themselves and their enemies, and
they
threatened to call him in whenever
they saw
no more convenient way out of their
difficulties.
The Popes, in their turn, fancied that
they
could make use of France without any
danger
to themselves, and even Innocent VIII
imagined
that he could withdraw to sulk in the
North,
and return as a conqueror to Italy
at the
head of a French army.
Thoughtful men, indeed, foresaw the
foreign
conquest long before the expedition
of Charles
VIII. And when Charles was back again
on
the other side of the Alps, it was
plain
to every eye that an era of intervention
had begun. Misfortune now followed
on misfortune;
it was understood too late that France
and
Spain, the two chief invaders, had
become
great European powers, that they would
be
no longer satisfied with verbal homage,
but
would fight to the death for influence
and
territory in Italy. They had begun
to resemble
the centralized Italian States, and
indeed
to copy them, only on a gigantic scale.
Schemes
of annexation or exchange of territory
were
for a time indefinitely multiplied.
The end,
as is well known, was the complete
victory
of Spain, which, as sword and shield
of the
counter-reformation, long held Papacy
among
its other subjects. The melancholy
reflections
of the philosophers could only show
them
how those who had called in the barbarians
all came to a bad end.
Alliances were at the same time formed
with
the Turks too, with as little scruple
or
disguise; they were reckoned no worse
than
any other political expedients. The
belief
in the unity of Western Christendom
had at
various times in the course of the
Crusades
been seriously shaken, and Frederick
II had
probably outgrown it. But the fresh
advance
of the Oriental nations, the need and
the
ruin of the Greek Empire, had revived
the
old feeling, though not in its former
strength,
throughout Western Europe. Italy, however,
was a striking exception to this rule.
Great
as was the terror felt for the Turks,
and
the actual danger from them, there
was yet
scarcely a government of any consequence
which did not conspire against other
Italian
States with Mohammed II and his successors.
And when they did not do so, they still
had
the credit of it; nor was it worse
than the
sending of emissaries to poison the
cisterns
of Venice, which was the charge brought
against
the heirs of Alfonso, King of Naples.
From
a scoundrel like Sigismondo Malatesta
nothing
better could be expected than that
he should
call the Turks into Italy. But the
Aragonese
monarchs of Naples, from whom Mohammed--at
the instigation, we read, of other
Italian
governments, especially of Venice--had
once
wrested Otranto (1480), afterwards
hounded
on the Sultan Bajazet II against the
Venetians.
The same charge was brought against
Lodovico
il Moro. 'The blood of the slain, and
the
misery of the prisoners in the hands
of the
Turks, cry to God for vengeance against
him,'
says the State historian. In Venice,
where
the government was informed of everything,
it was known that Giovanni Sforza,
ruler
of Pesaro, the cousin of Lodovico,
had entertained
the Turkish ambassadors on their way
to Milan.
The two most respectable among the
Popes
of the fifteenth century, Nicholas
V and
Pius II, died in the deepest grief
at the
progress of the Turks, the latter indeed
amid the preparations for a crusade
which
he was hoping to lead in person; their
successors
embezzled the contributions sent for
this
purpose from all parts of Christendom,
and
degraded the indulgences granted in
return
for them into a private commercial
speculation.
Innocent VIII consented to be gaoler
to the
fugitive Prince Djem, for a salary
paid by
the prisoner's brother Bajazet II,
and Alexander
VI supported the steps taken by Lodovico
il Moro in Constantinople to further
a Turkish
assault upon Venice (1498), whereupon
the
latter threatened him with a Council.
It
is clear that the notorious alliance
between
Francis I and Soliman II was nothing
new
or unheard of.
Indeed, we find instances of whole
populations
to whom it seemed no particular crime
to
go over bodily to the Turks. Even if
it were
held out as a threat to oppressive
governments,
this is at least a proof that the idea
had
become familiar. As early as 1480 Battista
Mantovano gives us clearly to understand
that most of the inhabitants of the
Adriatic
coast foresaw something o f this kind,
and
that Ancona in particular desired it.
When
Romagna was suffering from the oppressive
government of Leo X, a deputy from
Ravenna
said openly to the Legate, Cardinal
Giulio
Medici: 'Monsignore, the honorable
Republic
of Venice will not have us, for fear
of a
dispute with the Holy See; but if the
Turk
comes to Ragusa we will put ourselves
into
his hands.'
It was a poor but not wholly groundless
consolation
for the enslavement of Italy then begun
by
the Spaniards, that the country was
at least
secured from the relapse into barbarism
which
would have awaited it under the Turkish
rule.
By itself, divided as it was, it could
hardly
have escaped this fate.
If, with all these drawbacks, the Italian
statesmanship of this period deserves
our
praise, it is only on the ground of
its practical
and unprejudiced treatment of those
questions
which were not affected by fear, passion,
or malice. Here was no feudal system
after
the northern fashion, with its artificial
scheme of rights; but the power which
each
possessed he held in practice as in
theory.
Here was no attendant nobility to foster
in the mind of the prince the mediaeval
sense
of honour with all its strange consequences;
but princes and counsellors were agreed
in
acting according to the exigencies
of the
particular case and to the end they
had in
view. Towards the men whose services
were
used and towards allies, come from
what quarter
they might, no pride of caste was felt
which
could possibly estrange a supporter;
and
the class of the Condottieri, in which
birth
was a matter of indifference, shows
clearly
enough in what sort of hands the real
power
lay; and lastly, the government, in
the hands
of an enlightened despot, had an incomparably
more accurate acquaintance with its
own country
and with that of its neighbors than
was possessed
by northern contemporaries, and estimated
the economical and moral capacities
of friend
and foe down to the smallest particular.
The rulers were, notwithstanding grave
errors,
born masters of statistical science.
With
such men negotiation was possible;
it might
be presumed that they would be convinced
and their opinion modified when practical
reasons were laid before them. When
the great
Alfonso of Naples was (1434) a prisoner
of
Filippo Maria Visconti, he was able
to satisfy
his gaoler that the rule of the House
of
Anjou instead of his own at Naples
would
make the French masters of Italy; Filippo
Maria set him free without ransom and
made
an alliance with him. A northern prince
would
scarcely have acted in the same way,
certainly
not one whose morality in other respects
was like that of Visconti. What confidence
was felt in the power of self-interest
is
shown by the celebrated visit (1478)
which
Lorenzo Magnifico, to the universal
astonishment
of the Florentines, paid the faithless
Ferrante
at Naples--a man who would certainly
be tempted
to keep him a prisoner, and was by
no means
too scrupulous to do so. For to arrest
a
powerful monarch, and then to let him
go
alive, after extorting his signature
and
otherwise insulting him, as Charles
the Bold
did to Louis XI at Peronne (1468),
seemed
madness to the Italians; so that Lorenzo
was expected to come back covered with
glory,
or else not to come back at all. The
art
of political persuasion was at this
time
raised to a point--especially by the
Venetian
ambassadors of which northern nations
first
obtained a conception from the Italians,
and of which the official addresses
give
a most imperfect idea. These are mere
pieces
of humanistic rhetoric. Nor, in spite
of
an otherwise ceremonious etiquette
was there
in case of need any lack of rough and
frank
speaking in diplomatic intercourse.
A man
like Machiavelli appears in his 'Legazioni'
in an almost pathetic light. Furnished
with
scanty instructions, shabbily equipped,
and
treated as an agent of inferior rank,
he
never loses his gift of free and wide
observation
or his pleasure in picturesque description.
A special division of this work will
treat
of the study of man individually and
nationally,
which among the Italians went hand
in hand
with the study of the outward conditions
of human life.
THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART
War as a Work of Art
It must here be briefly indicated by
what
steps the art of war assumed the character
of a product of reflection. Throughout
the
countries of the West the education
of the
individual soldier in the Middle Ages
was
perfect within the limits of the then
prevalent
system of defence and attack: nor was
there
any want of ingenious inventors in
the arts
of besieging and of fortification.
But the
development both of strategy and of
tactics
was hindered by the character and duration
of military service, and by the ambition
of the nobles, who disputed questions
of
precedence in the face of the enemy,
and
through simple want of discipline caused
the loss of great battles like Crecy
and
Maupertuis. Italy, on the contrary,
was the
first country to adopt the system of
mercenary
troops, which demanded a wholly different
organization; and the early intro-
duction
of firearms did its part in making
war a
democratic pursuit, not only because
the
strongest castles were unable to withstand
a bombardment, but because the skill
of the
engineer, of the gunfounder, and of
the artillerist--
men belonging to another class than
the nobility--was
now of the first importance in a campaign.
It was felt, with regret, that the
value
of the individual, which had been the
soul
of the small and admirably organized
bands
of mercenaries, would suffer from these
novel
means of destruction, which did their
work
at a distance; and there were Condottieri
who opposed to the utmost the introduction
at least of the musket, which had lately
been invented in Germany. We read that
Paolo
Vitelli, while recognizing and himself
adopting
the cannon, put out the eyes and cut
off
the hands of the captured 'schioppettieri'
(arquebusiers) because he held it unworthy
that a gallant, and it might be noble,
knight
should be wounded and laid low by a
common,
despised foot soldier. On the whole,
however,
the new discoveries were accepted and
turned
to useful account, till the Italians
became
the teachers of all Europe, both in
the build-
ing of fortifications and in the means
of
attacking them. Princes like Federigo
of
Urbino and Alfonso of Ferrara acquired
a
mastery of the subject compared to
which
the knowledge even of Maximilian I
appears
superficial. In Italy, earlier than
elsewhere,
there existed a comprehensive science
and
art of military affairs; here, for
the first
time, that impartial delight is taken
in
able generalship for its own sake,
which
might, indeed, be expected from the
frequent
change of party and from the wholly
unsentimental
mode of action of the Condottieri.
During
the Milano-Venetian war of 1451 and
1452,
between Francesco Sforza and Jacopo
Piccinino,
the headquarters of the latter were
attended
by the scholar Gian Antonio Porcellio
dei
Pandoni, commissioned by Alfonso of
Naples
to write a report of the campaign.
It is
written, not in the purest, but in
a fluent
Latin, a little too much in the style
of
the humanistic bombast of the day,
is modelled
on Caesar's Commentaries, and interspersed
with speeches, prodigies, and the like.
Since
for the past hundred years it had been
seriously
disputed whether Scipio Africanus or
Hannibal
was the greater, Piccinino through
the whole
book must needs be called Scipio and
Sforza
Hannibal. But something positive had
to be
reported too respecting the Milanese
army;
the sophist presented himself to Sforza,
was led along the ranks, praised highly
all
that he saw, and promised to hand it
down
to posterity. Apart from him the Italian
literature of the day is rich in descriptions
of wars and strategic devices, written
for
the use of educated men in general
as well
as of specialists, while the contemporary
narratives of northerners, such as
the 'Burgundian
War' by Diebold Schilling, still retain
the
shapelessness and matter-of-fact dryness
of a mere chronicle. The greatest dilettante
who has ever treated in that character
of
military affairs, Machiavelli, was
then busy
writing his 'Arte della Guerra.' But
the
development of the individual soldier
found
its most complete expression in those
public
and solemn conflicts between one or
more
pairs of combatants which were practiced
long before the famous 'Challenge of
Barletta'
(1503). The victor was assured of the
praises
of poets and scholars, which were denied
to the northern warrior. The result
of these
combats was no longer regarded as a
Divine
judgement, but as a triumph of personal
merit,
and to the minds of the spectators
seemed
to be both the decision of an exciting
competition
and a satisfaction for the honour of
the
army or the nation.
It is obvious that this purely rational
treatment
of warlike affairs allowed, under certain
circumstances, of the worst atrocities,
even
in the absence of a strong political
hatred,
as, for instance, when the plunder
of a city
had been promised to the troops. After
the
forty days' devastation of Piacenza,
which
Sforza was compelled to permit to his
soldiers
(1477), the town long stood empty,
and at
last had to be peopled by force. Yet
outrages
like these were nothing compared with
the
misery which was afterwards brought
upon
Italy by foreign troops, and most of
all
by the Spaniards, in whom perhaps a
touch
of oriental blood, perhaps familiarity
with
the spectacles of the Inquisition,
had unloosed
the devilish element of human nature.
After
seeing them at work at Prato, Rome,
and elsewhere,
it is not easy to take any interest
of the
higher sort in Ferdinand the Catholic
and
Charles V who knew what these hordes
were,
and yet unchained them. The mass of
documents
which are gradually brought to light
from
the cabinets of these rulers will always
remain an important source of historical
information; but from such men no fruitful
political conception can be looked
for.
THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART
The Papacy
The Papacy and the dominions of the
Church
are creations of so peculiar a kind
that
we have hitherto, in determining the
general
characteristics of Italian States,
referred
to them only occasionally. The deliberate
choice and adaptation of political]
expedients,
which gives so great an interest to
the other
States is what we find least of all
at Rome,
since here the spiritual power could
constantly
conceal or supply the defects of the
temporal.
And what fiery trials did this State
undergo
in the fourteenth and the beginning
of the
fifteenth century, when the Papacy
was led
captive to Avignon! All, at first,
was thrown
into confusion; but the Pope had money,
troops,
and a great statesman and general,
the Spaniard
Albornoz, who again brought the ecclesiastical
State into complete subjection. The
danger
of a final dissolution was still greater
at the time of the schism, when neither
the
Roman nor the French Pope was rich
enough
to reconquer the newly-lost State;
but this
was done under Martin V, after the
unity
of the Church was restored, and done
again
under Eugenius IV, when the same danger
was
renewed. But the ecclesiastical State
was
and remained a thorough anomaly among
the
powers of Italy; in and near Rome itself,
the Papacy was defied by the great
families
of the Colonna, Orsini, Savelli and
Anguillara;
in Umbria, in the Marches, and in Romagna,
those civic republics had almost ceased
to
exist, for whose devotion the Papacy
had
shown so little gratitude; their place
had
been taken by a crowd of princely dynasties,
great or small, whose loyalty and obedience
signified little. As self-dependent
powers,
standing on their own merits, they
have an
interest of their own; and from this
point
of view the most important of them
have already
been discussed.
Nevertheless, a few general remarks
on the
Papacy can hardly be dispensed with.
New
and strange perils and trials came
upon it
in the course of the fifteenth century,
as
the political spirit of the nation
began
to lay hold upon it on various sides,
and
to draw it within the sphere of its
action.
The least of these dangers came from
the
populace or from abroad; the most serious
had their ground in the characters
of the
Popes themselves.
Let us, for this moment, leave out
of consideration
the countries beyond the Alps. At the
time
when the Papacy was exposed to mortal
danger
in Italy, it neither received nor could
receive
the slightest assistance either from
France,
then under Louis XI, or from England,
distracted
by the Wars of the Roses, or from the
then
disorganized Spanish monarchy, or from
Germany,
but lately betrayed at the Council
of Basle.
In Italy itself there was a certain
number
of instructed and even uninstructed
people
whose national vanity was flattered
by the
Italian character of the Papacy; the
personal
interests of very many depended on
its having
and retaining this character; and vast
masses
of the people still believed in the
virtue
of the Papal blessing and consecration
;24
among them notorious transgressors
like Vitelozzo
Vitelli, who still prayed to be absolved
by Alexander VI, when the Pope's son
had
him strangled. But all these grounds
of sympathy
put together would not have sufficed
to save
the Papacy from its enemies, had the
latter
been really in earnest, and had they
known
how to take advantage of the envy and
hatred
with which the institution was regarded.
And at the very time when the prospect
of
help from without was so small, the
most
dangerous symptoms appeared within
the Papacy
itself. Living as it now did, and acting
in the spirit of the secular Italian
principalities,
it was compelled to go through the
same dark
experiences as they; but its own exceptional
nature gave a peculiar color to the
shadows.
As far as the city of Rome itself is
concerned,
small account was taken of its internal
agitations,
so many were the Popes who had returned
after
being expelled by popular tumult, and
so
greatly did the presence of the Curia
minister
to the interests of the Roman people.
But
Rome not only displayed at times a
specific
anti-papal radicalism, but in the most
serious
plots which were then contrived, gave
proof
of the working of unseen hands from
without.
It was so in the case of the conspiracy
of
Stefano Porcari against Nicholas V
(1453),
the very Pope who had done most for
the prosperity
of the city. Porcari aimed at the complete
overthrow of the papal authority, and
had
distinguished accomplices, who, though
their
names are not handed down to us, are
certainly
to be looked for among the Italian
governments
of the time. Under the pontificate
of the
same man, Lorenzo Valla concluded his
famous
declamation against the gift of Constantine
with the wish for the speedy secularization
of the States of the Church.
The Catilinarian gang with which Pius
II
had to (1460) avowed with equal frankness
their resolution to overthrow the government
of the priests, and its leader, Tiburzio,
threw the blame on the soothsayers,
who had
fixed the accom- plishment of his wishes
for this very year. Several of the
chief
men of Rome, the Prince of Taranto,
and the
Condottiere Jacopo Piccinino, were
accomplices
and supporters of Tiburzio. Indeed,
when
we think of the booty which was accumulated
in the palaces of wealthy prelates--the
conspirators
had the Car- dinal of Aquileia especially
in view--we are surprised that, in
an almost
unguarded city, such attempts were
not more
frequent and more successful. It was
not
without reason that Pius II preferred
to
reside anywhere rather than in Rome,
and
even Paul II was exposed to no small
anxiety
through a plot formed by some discharged
abbreviators, who, under the command
of Platina,
besieged the Vatican for twenty days.
The
Papacy must sooner or later have fallen
a
victim to such enterprises, if it had
not
stamped out the aristocratic factions
under
whose protection these bands of robbers
grew
to a head.
This task was undertaken by the terrible
Sixtus IV. He was the first Pope who
had
Rome and the neighbourhood thoroughly
under
his control, especially after his successful
attack on the House of Colonna, and
consequently,
both in his Italian policy and in the
internal
affairs of the Church, he could venture
to
act with a defiant audacity, and to
set at
nought the complaints and threats to
summon
a council which arose from all parts
of Europe.
He supplied himself with the necessary
funds
by simony, which suddenly grew to unheard-of
proportions, and which extended from
the
appointment of cardinals down to the
granting
of the smallest favours. Sixtus himself
had
not obtained the papal dignity without
recourse
to the same means.
A corruption so universal might sooner
or
later bring disastrous consequences
on the
Holy See, but they lay in the uncertain
future.
It was otherwise with nepotism, which
threatened
at one time to destroy the Papacy altogether.
Of all the 'nipoti,' Cardinal Pietro
Riario
enjoyed at first the chief and almost
exclusive
favour of Sixtus. He soon drew upon
him the
eyes of all Italy, partly by the fabulous
luxury of his life, partly through
the reports
which were current of his irreligion
and
his political plans. He bargained with
Duke
Galeazzo Maria of Milan (1473), that
the
latter should become King of Lombardy,
and
then aid him with money and troops
to return
to Rome and ascend the papal throne;
Sixtus,
it appears, would have voluntarily
yielded
to him. This plan, which, by making
the Papacy
hereditary, would have ended in the
secularization
of the papal State, failed through
the sudden
death of Pietro. The second 'nipote,'
Girolamo
Riario, remained a layman, and did
not seek
the Pontificate. From this time the
'nipoti,'
by their endeavors to found principalities
for themselves, became a new source
of confusion
to Italy. It had already happened that
the
Popes tried to make good their feudal
claims
on Naples un favour of their relatives,
but
since the failure of Calixtus III.
such a
scheme was no longer practicable, and
Girolamo
Riario, after the attempt to conquer
Florence
(and who knows how many others places)
had
failed, was forced to content himself
with
founding a State within the limits
of the
papal dominions themselves. This was
in so
far justifiable as Romagna, with its
princes
and civic despots, threatened to shake
off
the papal supremacy altogether, and
ran the
risk of shortly falling a prey to Sforza
or the Venetians, when Rome interfered
to
prevent it. But who, at times and in
circumstances
like these, could guarantee the continued
obedience of 'nipoti' and their descendants,
now turned into sovereign rulers, to
Popes
with whom they had no further concern?
Even
in his lifetime the Pope was not always
sure
of his own son or nephew, and the temptation
was strong to expel the 'nipote' of
a predecessor
and replace him by one of his own.
The reaction
of the whole system on the Papacy itself
was of the most serious character;
all means
of compulsion, whether temporal or
spiritual,
were used without scruple for the most
questionable
ends, and to these all the other objects
of the Apostolic See were made subordinate.
And when they were attained, at whatever
cost of revolutions and proscriptions,
a
dynasty was founded which had no stronger
interest than the destruction of the
Papacy.
At the death of Sixtus, Girolamo was
only
able to maintain himself in his usurped
principality
of Forli and Imola by the utmost exertions
of his own, and by the aid of the House
of
Sforza, to which his wife belonged.
In the
conclave (1484) which followed the
death
of Sixtus--that in which Innocent VIII
was
elected--an incident occurred which
seemed
to furnish the Papacy with a new external
guarantee. Two cardinals, who, at the
same
time, were princes of ruling houses,
Giovanni
d'Aragona, son of King Ferrante, and
Ascanio
Sforza, brother of Lodovico il Moro,
sold
their votes with shameless effrontery;
so
that, at any rate, the ruling houses
of Naples
and Milan became interested, by their
participation
in the booty, in the continuance of
the papal
system. Once again, in the following
conclave,
when all the cardinals but five sold
themselves,
Ascanio received enormous sums in bribes,
not without cherishing the hope that
at the
next election he would himself be the
favored
candidate.
Lorenzo the Magnificent, on his part,
was
anxious that the House of Medici should
not
be sent away with empty hands. He married
his daughter Maddalena to the son of
the
new Pope-- the first who publicly acknowledged
his children-- Franceschetto Cibo,
and expected
not only favours of all kinds for his
own
son, Cardinal Giovanni, afterwards
Leo X,
but also the rapid promotion of his
son-in-law.
But with respect to the latter, he
demanded
impossibilities. Under Innocent VIII
there
was no opportunity for the audacious
nepotism
by which States had been founded, since
Franceschetto
himself was a poor creature who, like
his
father the Pope, sought power only
for the
lowest purpose of all--the acquisition
and
accumulation of money. The manner,
however,
in which father and son practiced this
occupation
must have led sooner or later to a
final
catastrophe--the dissolution of the
State.
If Sixtus had filled his treasury by
the
sale of spiritual dignities and favours,
Innocent and his son, for their part,
established
an office for the sale of secular favours,
in which pardons for murder and manslaughter
were sold for large sums of money.
Out of
every fine 150 ducats were paid into
the
papal exchequer, and what was over
to Franceschetto.
Rome, during the latter part of this
pontificate,
swarmed with licensed and unlicensed
assassins;
the factions, which Sixtus had begun
to put
down, were again as active as ever;
the Pope,
well guarded in the Vatican, was satisfied
with now and then laying a trap, in
which
a wealthy misdoer was occasionally
caught.
For Franceschetto the chief point was
to
know by what means, when the Pope died,
he
could escape with well-filled coffers.
He
betrayed himself at last, on the occasion
of a false report (1490) of his father's
death; he endeavored to carry off all
the
money in the papal treasury, and when
this
proved impossible, insisted that, at
all
events, the Turkish prince, Djem, should
go with him, and serve as a living
capital,
to be advantageously disposed of, perhaps
to Ferrante of Naples. It is hard to
estimate
the political possibilities of remote
periods,
but we cannot help asking ourselves
the question
if Rome could have survived two or
three
pontificates of this kind. Also with
reference
to the believing countries of Europe,
it
was imprudent to let matters go so
far that
not only travellers and pilgrims, but
a whole
embassy of Maximilian, King of the
Romans,
were stripped to their shirts in the
neighbourhood
of Rome, and that envoys had constantly
to
turn back without setting foot within
the
city.
Such a condition of things was incompatible
with the conception of power and its
pleasures
which inspired the gifted Alexander
VI (1492-1503),
and the first event that happened was
the
restoration, at least provisionally,
of public
order, and the punctual payment of
every
salary.
Strictly speaking, as we are now discussing
phases of Italian civilization, this
pontificate
might be passed over, since the Borgias
are
no more Italian than the House of Naples.
Alexander spoke Spanish in public with
Cesare;
Lucrezia, at her entrance to Ferrara,
where
she wore a Spanish costume, was sung
to by
Spanish buffoons; their confidential
servants
consisted of Spaniards, as did also
the most
ill-famed company of the troops of
Cesare
in the war of 1500; and even his hangman,
Don Micheletto, and his poisoner, Sebastiano
Pinzon Cremonese, seem to have been
of the
same nation. Among his other achievements,
Cesare, in true Spanish fashion, killed,
according to the rules of the craft,
six
wild bulls in an enclosed court. But
the
Roman corruption, which seemed to culminate
in this family, was already far advanced
when they came to the city.
What they were and what they did has
been
often and fully described. Their immediate
purpose, which, in fact, they attained,
was
the complete subjugation of the pontifical
State. All the petty despots, who were
mostly
more or less refractory vassals of
the Church,
were expelled or destroyed; and in
Rome itself
the two great factions were annihilated,
the so-called Guelph Orsini as well
as the
so-called Ghibelline Colonna. But the
means
employed were of so frightful a character
that they must certainly have ended
in the
ruin of the Papacy, had not the contemporaneous
death of both father and son by poison
suddenly
intervened to alter the whole aspect
of the
situation. The moral indignation of
Christendom
was certainly no great source of danger
to
Alexander; at home he was strong enough
to
extort terror and obedience; foreign
rulers
were won over to his side, and Louis
XII
even aided him to the utmost of his
power.
The mass of the people throughout Europe
had hardly a conception of what was
passing
in Central Italy. The only moment which
was
really fraught with danger--when Charles
VIII was in Italy--went by with unexpected
fortune, and even then it was not the
Papacy
as such that was in peril, but Alexander,
who risked being supplanted by a more
respectable
Pope. The great, permanent, and increasing
danger for the Papacy lay in Alexander
himself,
and, above all, in his son Cesare Borgia.
In the nature of the father, ambition,
avarice,
and sensuality were combined with strong
and brilliant qualities. All the pleasures
of power and luxury he granted himself
from
the first day of his pontificate in
the fullest
measure. In the choice of means to
this end
he was wholly without scruple; it was
known
at once that he would more than compensate
himself for the sacrifices which his
election
had involved, and that the seller would
far
exceed the simony of the buyer. It
must be
remembered that the vice-chancellorship
and
other offices which Alexander had formerly
held had taught him to know better
and turn
to more practical account the various
sources
of revenue than any other member of
the Curia.
As early as 1494, a Carmelite, Adam
of Genoa,
who had preached at Rome against simony,
was found murdered in his bed with
twenty
wounds. Hardly a single cardinal was
appointed
without the payment of enormous sums
of money.
But when the Pope in course of time
fell
under the influence of his son Cesare
Borgia,
his violent measures assumed that character
of devilish wickedness which necessarily
reacts upon the ends pursued. What
was done
in the struggle with the Roman nobles
and
with the tyrants of Romagna exceeded
in faithlessness
and barbarity even that measure to
which
the Aragonese rulers of Naples had
already
accustomed the world; and the genius
for
deception was also greater. The manner
in
which Cesare isolated his father, murdering
brother, brother-in-law, and other
relations
or courtiers, whenever their favour
with
the Pope or their position in any other
respect
became inconvenient to him, is literally
appalling. Alexander was forced to
acquiesce
in the murder of his best-loved son,
the
Duke of Gandia, since he himself lived
in
hourly dread of Cesare.
What were the final aims of the latter?
Even
in the last months of his tyranny,
when he
had murdered the Condottieri at Sinigaglia,
and was to all intents and purposes
master
of the ecclesiastical State (1503),
those
who stood near him gave the modest
reply
that the Duke merely wished to put
down the
factions and the despots, and all for
the
good of the Church only; that for himself
he desired nothing more than the lordship
of the Romagna, and that he had earned
the
gratitude of all the following Popes
by ridding
them of the Orsini and Colonna. But
no one
will accept this as his ultimate design.
The Pope Alexander himself, in his
discussions
with the Venetian ambassador, went
further
than this, when committing his son
to the
protection of Venice: 'I will see to
it,'
he said, that one day the Papacy shall
belong
either to him or to you.' Cesare indeed
added
that no one could become Pope without
the
consent of Venice, and for this end
the Venetian
cardinals had only to keep well together.
Whether he referred to himself or not
we
are unable to say; at all events, the
declaration
of his father is sufficient to prove
his
designs on the pontifical throne. We
further
obtain from Lucrezia Borgia a certain
amount
of indirect evidence, in so far as
certain
passages in the poems of Ercole Strozza
may
be the echo of expressions which she
as Duchess
of Ferrara may easily have permitted
herself
to use. Here, too, Cesare's hopes of
the
Papacy are chiefly spoken of; but now
and
then a supremacy over all Italy is
hinted
at, and finally we are given to understand
that as temporal ruler Cesare's projects
were of the greatest, and that for
their
sake he had formerly surrendered his
cardinalate.
In fact, there can be no doubt whatever
that
Cesare, whether chosen Pope or not
after
the death of Alexander, meant to keep
possession
of the pontifical State at any cost,
and
that this, after all the enormities
he had
committed, he could not as Pope have
succeeded
in doing permanently. He, if anybody,
could
have secularized the States of the
Church,
and he would have been forced to do
so in
order to keep them. Unless we are much
deceived,
this is the real reason of the secret
sympathy
with which Machiavelli treats the great
criminal;
from Cesare, or from nobody, could
it be
hoped that he 'would draw the steel
from
the wound,' in other words, annihilate
the
Papacy--the source of all foreign intervention
and of all the divisions of Italy.
The intriguers
who thought to divine Cesare's aims,
when
holding out to him hopes of the Kingdom
of
Tuscany, seem to have been dismissed
with
contempt.
But all logical conclusions from his
premises
are idle, not because of the unaccountable
genius, which in fact characterized
him as
little as it did Wallenstein, but because
the means which he employed were not
compatible
with any large and consistent course
of action.
Perhaps, indeed, in the very excess
of his
wickedness some prospect of salvation
for
the Papacy may have existed even without
the accident which put an end to his
rule.
Even if we assume that the destruction
of
the petty despots in the pontifical
State
had gained for him nothing but sympathy,
even if we take as proof of his great
projects
the army composed of the best soldiers
and
officers in Italy, with Leonardo da
Vinci
as chief engineer, which followed his
fortunes
in 1502, other facts nevertheless bear
such
a character of unreason that our judgement,
like that of contemporary observers,
is wholly
at a loss to explain them. One fact
of this
kind is the devastation and maltreatment
of the newly-won State, which Cesare
still
intended to keep and to rule over.
Another
is the condition of Rome and of the
Curia
in the last decades of the pontificate.
Whether
it were that father and son had drawn
up
a formal list of proscribed persons,
or that
the murders were resolved upon one
by one,
in either case the Borgias were bent
on the
secret destruction of all who stood
in their
way or whose inheritance they coveted.
Of
this, money and movable goods formed
the
smallest part; it was a much greater
source
of profit for the Pope that the incomes
of
the clerical dignitaries in question
were
suspended by their death, and that
he received
the revenues of their offices while
vacant,
and the price of these offices when
they
were filled by the successors of the
murdered
men. The Venetian ambassador Paolo
Capello
reported in the year 1500: 'Every night
four
or five murdered men are discovered--bishops,
prelates and others--so that all Rome
is
trembling for fear of being destroyed
by
the Duke (Cesare).' He himself used
to wander
about Rome in the night-time with his
guards,
and there is every reason to believe
that
he did so not only because, like Tiberius,
he shrank from showing his now repulsive
features by daylight, but also to gratify
his insane thirst for blood, perhaps
even
on persons unknown to him.
As early as the year 1499 the despair
was
so great and so general that many of
the
Papal guards were waylaid and put to
death-
But those whom the Borgias could not
assail
with open violence fell victims to
their
poison. For the cases in which a certain
amount of discretion seemed requisite,
a
white powder of an agreeable taste
was made
use of, which did not work on the spot,
but
slowly and gradually, and which could
be
mixed without notice in any dish or
goblet.
Prince Djem had taken some of it in
a sweet
draught, before Alexander surrendered
him
to Charles VIII (1495), and at the
end of
their career father and son poisoned
themselves
with the same powder by accidentally
tasting
a sweetmeat intended for a wealthy
cardinal.
The official epitomizer of the history
of
the Popes, Onofrio Panvinio, mentions
three
cardinals, Orsini, Ferrerio and Michiel,
whom Alexander caused to be poisoned,
and
hints at a fourth, Giovanni Borgia,
whom
Cesare took into his own charge--though
probably
wealthy prelates seldom died in Rome
at that
time without giving rise to suspicions
of
this sort. Even tranquil scholars who
had
withdrawn to some provincial town were
not
out of reach of the merciless poison.
A secret
horror seemed to hang about the Pope;
storms
and thunderbolts, crushing in walls
and chambers,
had in earlier times often visited
and alarmed
him; in the year I 500, when these
phenomena
were repeated, they were held to be
'cosa
diabolica.' The report of these events
seems
at last, through the well-attended
jubilee
of 1500, to have been carried far and
wide
throughout the countries of Europe,
and the
infamous traffic in indulgences did
what
else was needed to draw all eyes upon
Rome.
Besides the returning pilgrims, strange
white-robed
penitents came from Italy to the North,
among
them disguised fugitives from the Papal
State,
who are not likely to have been silent.
Yet
none can calculate how far the scandal
and
indignation of Christendom might have
gone,
before they became a source of pressing
danger
to Alexander. 'He would,' says Panvinio
elsewhere,
'have put all the other rich cardinals
and
prelates out of the way, to get their
property,
had he not, in the midst of his great
plans
for his son, been struck down by death.'
And what might not Cesare have achieved
if,
at the moment when his father died,
he had
not himself been laid upon a sickbed!
What
a conclave would that have been, in
which,
armed with all his weapons, he had
extorted
his election from a college whose numbers
he had judiciously reduced by poison--and
this at a time when there was no French
army
at hand! In pursuing such a hypothesis
the
imagination loses itself in an abyss.
Instead of this followed the conclave
in
which Pius III was elected, and, after
his
speedy death, that which chose Julius
II
--both elections the fruits of a general
reaction.
Whatever may have been the private
morals
of Julius II, in all essential respects
he
was the savior of the Papacy. His familiarity
with the course of events since the
pontificate
of his uncle Sixtus had given him a
profound
insight into the grounds and conditions
of
the Papal authority. On these he founded
his own policy, and devoted to it the
whole
force and passion of his unshaken soul.
He
ascended the steps of St. Peter's chair
without
simony and amid general applause, and
with
him ceased, at all events, the undisguised
traffic in the highest offices of the
Church.
Julius had favorites, and among them
were
some the reverse of worthy, but a special
fortune put him above the temptation
to nepotism.
His brother, Giovanni della Rovere,
was the
husband of the heiress of Urbino, sister
of the last Montefeltro, Guidobaldo,
and
from this marriage was born, in 1491,
a son,
Francesco Maria della Rovere, who was
at
the same time Papal 'nipote' and lawful
heir
to the duchy of Urbino. What Julius
elsewhere
acquired, either on the field of battle
or
by diplomatic means, he proudly bestowed
on the Church, not on his family; the
ecclesiastical
territory, which he found in a state
of dissolution,
he bequeathed to his successor completely
subdued, and increased by Parma and
Piacenza.
It was not his fault that Ferrara too
was
not added the Church. The 700,000 ducats
which were stored up in the Castel
Sant'
Angelo were to be delivered by the
governor
to none but the future Pope. He made
himself
heir of the cardinals, and, indeed,
of all
the clergy who died in Rome, and this
by
the most despotic means; but he murdered
or poisoned none of them. That he should
himself lead his forces to battle was
for
him an unavoidable necessity, and certainly
did him nothing but good at a time
when a
man in Italy was forced to be either
hammer
or anvil, and when per- sonality was
a greater
power than the most indisputable right.
If
despite all his high-sounding 'Away
with
the barbarians! ' he nevertheless contributed
more than any man to the firm settlement
of the Spaniards in Italy, he may have
thought
it a matter of indifference to the
Papacy,
or even, as things stood, a relative
advantage.
And to whom, sooner than to Spain,
could
the Church look for a sincere and lasting
respect, in an age when the princes
of Italy
cherished none but sacrilegious projects
against her? Be this as it may, the
powerful,
original nature, which could swallow
no anger
and conceal no genuine good-will, made
on
the whole the impression most desirable
in
his situation--that of the 'Pontefice
terribile.'
26 He could even, with comparatively
clear
conscience, venture to summon a council
to
Rome, and so bid defiance to that outcry
for a council which was raised by the
opposition
all over Europe. A ruler of this stamp
needed
some great outward symbol of his conceptions;
Julius found it in the reconstruction
of
St. Peter's. The plan of it, as Bramante
wished to have it, is perhaps the grandest
expression of power in unity which
can be
imagined. In other arts besides architecture
the face and the memory of the Pope
live
on in their most ideal form, and it
is not
without significance that even the
Latin
poetry of those days gives proof of
a wholly
different enthusiasm for Julius than
that
shown for his predecessors. The entry
into
Bologna, at the end of the 'Iter Julii
Secundi'
by the Cardinal Adriano da Corneto,
has a
splendor of its own, and Giovan Antonio
Flaminio,
in one of the finest elegies, appealed
to
the patriot in the Pope to grant his
protection
to Italy.
In a constitution of his Lateran Council,
Julius had solemnly denounced the simony
of the Papal elections. After his death
in
1513, the money-loving cardinals tried
to
evade the prohibition by proposing
that the
endowments and offices hitherto held
by the
chosen candidate should be equally
divided
among themselves, in which case they
would
have elected the best-endowed cardinal,
the
incompetent Raphael Riario. But a reaction,
chiefly arising from the younger members
of the Sacred College, who, above all
things,
desired a liberal Pope, rendered the
miserable
combination futile; Giovanni Medici
was elected
--the famous Leo X.
We shall often meet with him in treating
of the noonday of the Renaissance;
here we
wish only to point out that under him
the
Papacy was again exposed to great inward
and outward dangers. Among these we
do not
reckon the conspiracy of the Cardinals
Petrucci,
De Sauli, Riario, and Corneto (1517),
which
at most could have occasioned a change
of
and to which Leo found the true antidote
in the un-heard-of creation of thirty-one
new cardinals, a measure which additional
advantage of rewarding, in some cases
at
least, real merit.
But some of the paths which Leo allowed
himself
to tread during the first two years
of his
office were perilous to the last degree.
He seriously endeavored to secure,
by negotiation,
the kingdom of Naples for his brother
Giuliano,
and for his nephew Lorenzo a powerful
North
Italian State, to comprise Milan, Tuscany,
Urbino and Ferrara. It is clear that
the
Pontifical State, thus hemmed in on
all sides,
would have become a mere Medicean appanage,
and that, in fact, there would have
been
no further need to secularize it.
The plan found an insuperable obstacle
in
the political conditions of the time.
Giuliano
died early. To provide for Lorenzo,
Leo undertook
to expel the Duke Francesco Maria della
Rovere
from Urbino, but reaped from the war
nothing
but hatred and poverty, and was forced,
when
in 1519 Lorenzo followed his uncle
to the
grave, to hand over the hard-won conquests
to the Church. He did on compulsion
and without
credit what, if it had been done voluntarily,
would have been to his lasting honour.
What
he attempted against Alfonso of Ferrara,
and actually achieved against a few
petty
despots and Condottieri, was assuredly
not
of a kind to raise his reputation.
And this
was at a time when the monarchs of
the West
were yearly growing more and more accustomed
to political gambling on a colossal
scale,
of which the stakes were this or that
province
of Italy. Who could guarantee that,
since
the last decades had seen so great
an increase
of their power at home, their ambition
would
stop short of the States of the Church?
Leo
himself witnessed the prelude of what
was
fulfilled in the year 1527; a few bands
of
Spanish infantry appeared of their
own accord,
it seems-- at the end of
1520, on the borders of the Pontifical
territory,
with a view to laying the Pope under
contribution,
but were driven back by the Papal forces.
The public feeling, too, against the
corruptions
of the hierarchy had of late years
been drawing
rapidly to a head, and men with an
eye for
the future, like the younger Pico della
Mirandola,
called urgently for reform. Meantime
Luther
had already appeared upon the scene.
Under Adrian VI (1521-1523), the few
and
timid improvements, carried out in
the face
of the great German Reformation, came
too
late. He could do little more than
proclaim
his horror of the course which things
had
taken hitherto, of simony, nepotism,
prodigality,
brigandage, and profligacy. The danger
from
the side of the Lutherans was by no
means
the greatest; an acute observer from
Venice,
Girolamo Negro, uttered his fears that
a
speedy and terrible disaster would
befall
the city of Rome itself.
Under Clement VII the whole horizon
of Rome
was filled with vapors, like that leaden
veil which the sirocco drew over the
Campagna,
and which made the last months of summer
so deadly. The Pope was no less detested
at home than abroad. Thoughtful people
were
filled with anxiety, hermits appeared
upon
the streets and squares of Rome, foretelling
the fate of Italy and of the world,
and calling
the Pope by the name of Antichrist;
the faction
of the Colonna raised its head defiantly;
the indomitable Cardinal Pompeo Colonna,
whose mere existence was a permanent
menace
to the Papacy, ventured to surprise
the city
in 1526, hoping with the help of Charles
V, to become Pope then and there, as
soon
as Clement was killed or captured.
It was
no piece of good fortune for Rome that
the
latter was able to escape to the Castel
Sant'
Angelo, and the fate for which he himself
was reserved may well be called worse
than
death. By a series of those falsehoods
which
only the powerful can venture on, but
which
bring ruin upon the weak, Clement brought
about the advance of the Germano-Spanish
army under Bourbon and Frundsberg (1527).
It is certain that the Cabinet of Charles
V intended to inflict on him a severe
castigation,
and that it could not calculate beforehand
how far the zeal of its unpaid hordes
would
carry them. It would have been vain
to attempt
to enlist men in Germany without paying
any
bounty, if it had not been well known
that
Rome was the object of the expedition.
It
may be that the written orders to Bourbon
will be found some day or other, and
it is
not improbable that they will prove
to be
worded mildly. But historical criticism
will
not allow itself to be led astray.
The Catholic
King and Emperor owed it to his luck
and
nothing else that Pope and cardinals
were
not murdered by his troops. Had this
happened,
no sophistry in the world could clear
him
of his share in the guilt. The massacre
of
countless people of less consequence,
the
plunder of the rest, and all the horrors
of torture and traffic in human life,
show
clearly enough what was possible in
the 'Sacco
di Roma.'
Charles seems to have wished to bring
the
Pope, who had fled a second time to
the Castel
Sant' Angelo, to Naples, after extorting
from him vast sums of money, and Clement's
flight to Orvieto must have happened
without
any connivance on the part of Spain.
Whether
the Emperor ever thought seriously
of the
secularization of the States of the
Church,
for which every body was quite prepared,
and whether he was really dissuaded
from
it by the representations of Henry
VIII of
England, will probably never be made
clear.
But if such projects really existed,
they
cannot have lasted long: from the devastated
city arose a new spirit of reform both
in
Church and State. It made itself felt
in
a moment. Cardinal Sadoleto, one witness
of many, thus writes: 'If through our
suffering
a satisfaction is made to the wrath
and justice
of God, if these fearful punishments
again
open the way to better laws and morals,
then
is our misfortune perhaps not of the
greatest....
What belongs to God He will take care
of;
before us lies a life of reformation,
which
no violence can take from us. Let us
so rule
our deeds and thoughts as to seek in
God
only the true glory of the priesthood
and
our own true greatness and power.'
In point of fact, this critical year,
1527,
so far bore fruit that the voices of
serious
men could again make themselves heard.
Rome
had suffered too much to return, even
under
a Paul III, to the gay corruption of
Leo
X.
The Papacy, too, when its sufferings
became
so great, began to excite a sympathy
half
religious and half political. The kings
could
not tolerate that one of their number
should
arrogate to himself the right of Papal
gaoler,
and concluded (August 18, 1527) the
Treaty
of Amiens, one of the objects of which
was
the deliverance of Clement. They thus,
at
all events, turned to their own account
the
unpopularity which the deeds of the
Imperial
troops had excited. At the same time
the
Emperor became seriously embarrassed,
even
in Spain, where the prelates and grandees
never saw him without making the most
urgent
remonstrances. When a general deputation
of the clergy and laity, all clothed
in mourning,
was projected, Charles, fearing that
troubles
might arise out of it, like those of
the
insurrection quelled a few years before,
forbade the scheme. Not only did he
not dare
to prolong the maltreatment of the
Pope,
but he was absolutely compelled, even
apart
from all considerations of foreign
politics,
to be reconciled with the Papacy, which
he
had so grievously wounded. For the
temper
of the German people, which certainly
pointed
to a different course, seemed to him,
like
German affairs generally, to afford
no foundation
for a policy. It is possible, too,
as a Venetian
maintains, that the memory of the sack
of
Rome lay heavy on his conscience, and
tended
to hasten that expiation which was
sealed
by the permanent subjection of the
Florentines
to the Medicean family of which the
Pope
was a member. The 'nipote' and new
Duke,
Alessandro Medici, was married to the
natural
daughter of the Emperor.
In the following years the plan of
a Council
enabled Charles to keep the Papacy
in all
essential points under his control,
and at
one and the same time to protect and
to oppress
it. The greatest danger of all--secularization--the
danger which came from within, from
the Popes
themselves and their 'nipoti,' was
adjourned
for centuries by the German Reformation.
Just as this alone had made the expedition
against Rome (1527) possible and successful,
so did it compel the Papacy to become
once
more the expression of a world-wide
spiritual
power, to raise itself from the soulless
debasement in which it lay, and to
place
itself at the head of all the enemies
of
this reformation. The institution thus
developed
during the latter years of Clement
VII, and
under Paul III, Paul IV, and their
successors,
in the face of the defection of half
Europe,
was a new, regenerated hierarchy, which
avoided
all the great and dangerous scandals
of former
times, particularly nepotism, with
its attempts
at territorial aggrandizement, and
which,
in alliance with the Catholic princes,
and
impelled by a newborn spiritual force,
found
its chief work in the recovery of what
had
been lost. It only existed and is only
intelligible
in opposition to the seceders. In this
sense
it can be said with perfect truth that
the
moral salvation of the Papacy is due
to its
mortal enemies. And now its political
position,
too, though certainly under the permanent
tutelage of Spain, became impregnable;
almost
without effort it inherited, on the
extinction
of its vassals, the legitimate line
of Este
and the house of Della Rovere, the
duchies
of Ferrara and Urbino. But without
the Reformation--if,
indeed, it is possible to think it
away--the
whole ecclesiastical State would long
ago
have passed into secular hands.
THE STATE AS A WORK OF ART
Patriotism
In conclusion, let us briefly consider
the
effect of these political circumstances
on
the spirit of the nation at large.
It is evident that the general political
uncertainty in Italy, during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, was of a kind
to
excite in the better spirits of the
time
a patriotic disgust and opposition.
Dante
and Petrarch, in their day, proclaimed
loudly
a common Italy, the object of the highest
efforts of all her children. It may
be objected
that this was only the enthusiasm of
a few
highly instructed men, in which the
mass
of the people had no share; but it
can hardly
have been otherwise even in Germany,
although
in name at least that country was united,
and recognized in the Emperor one supreme
head. The first patriotic utterances
of German
literature, if we except some verses
of the
'Minnesanger,' belong to the humanists
of
the time of Maximilian I and after,
and read
like an echo of Italian declamations.
And
yet, as a matter of fact, Germany had
been
long a nation in a truer sense than
Italy
ever was since the Roman days. France
owes
the consciousness of its national unity
mainly
to its conflicts with the English,
and Spain
has never permanently succeeded in
absorbing
Portugal, closely related as the two
countries
are. For Italy, the existence of the
ecclesiastical
State, and the conditions under which
alone
it could continue, were a permanent
obstacle
to national unity, an obstacle whose
removal
seemed hopeless. When, therefore, in
the
political intercourse of the fifteenth
century,
the common fatherland is sometimes
emphatically
named, it is done in most cases to
annoy
some other Italian State. But those
deeply
serious and sorrowful appeals to national
sentiment were not heard again till
later,
when the time for unity had gone by,
when
the country was inundated with Frenchmen
and Spaniards. The sense of local patriotism
may be said in some measure to have
taken
the place of this feeling, though it
was
but a poor equivalent for it.
|
Evans Experientialism 
