The Book of the Courtier

by conte Baldassarre Castiglione

NOTES TO THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER

Note [429] page 243. Gaspar Pallavicino died in 1511, at the age of twenty-five.

Note [430] page 243. Cesare Gonzaga died in 1512, at about the age of thirty-seven. See note 43.

Note [431] page 244. Federico Fregoso was named Archbishop of Salerno in 1507, very soon after the date of the Courtier dialogues; see note [41].

Ludovico da Canossa became Bishop of Bayeux in 1520; see note [44].

Ottaviano Fregoso became Doge of Genoa in 1513; see note [11].

Bibbiena was made cardinal, and Bembo was appointed papal secretary, in 1513; see notes 10 and 42.

Giuliano de’ Medici was created Duke of Nemours in 1515. As he died in 1516, Castiglione’s use of the present tense (‘that greatness where now he is’) is inconsistent with the mention of Canossa as Bishop of Bayeux. See note 9.

Francesco Maria della Rovere succeeded to the dukedom in 1508; see note 3.

Note [432] page 244. Eleanora Gonzaga, (born about 1492; died 1543), was the eldest daughter of the Marquess Gianfrancesco of Mantua and Isabella d’Este. In 1505 Castiglione negotiated her union with Francesco Maria della Rovere, but the marriage did not take place until Christmas Eve 1509, upon which occasion Bembo wrote to Federico Fregoso that he had never seen a comelier, merrier or sweeter girl, and that her amiable disposition and surprisingly precocious judgment won general admiration. She seems to have maintained affectionate relations with her aunt and predecessor (“my lady Duchess” of The Courtier), whose fame quite outshone her own, and to have exhibited in after life no little strength of character. She is said to have excluded, and even to have expelled, great ladies of questionable morality from her court. Titian’s portrait (1537) represents her in middle age, but his pictures, La Bella and Das Mädchen im Pelz, as well as several of his Venus heads, are generally regarded as idealized presentations of her more youthful face.

Note [433] page 249. The Piazza d’Agone occupied the site of the ancient Circus Agonalis, which derived its name from the Agonalia, a festival held twice a year in honour of Janus. Before, during and long after Castiglione’s time, it was a centre of festivals, amusements and spectacles at the carnival season. It is now called the Piazza Navona.

Note [434] page 250. The famous Athenian commander Cimon, (died 449 B.C.), was the son of the still more famous Miltiades. His victories repulsed the last Persian aggressions and consolidated the Athenian supremacy. Although an admirer of Spartan institutions, he seems to have been of a somewhat indulgent disposition. The Scipio here referred to, is probably Publius Cornelius Scipio the Elder, who was the victor over Hannibal and died 183 B.C. Lucullus is cited earlier in The Courtier as an instance of a soldier with studious tastes; see note [113].

Note [435] page 250. The Theban general and statesman Epaminondas, (died 362 B.C.), is said by Plutarch to have enjoyed the instruction of the Pythagorean philosopher Lysis of Tarentum, who was driven out of Italy in the persecution of his sect, and found refuge at Thebes.

Note [436] page 250. Agesilaus was King of Sparta 398-361 B.C. Although small and lame, he was the greatest Spartan commander, and became famous for his victories against the Persian and Greek enemies of his country. Xenophon, historian, essayist and disciple of Socrates, was banished from Athens about the time of Socrates’s death (399 B.C.), accompanied Agesilaus into Asia, and wrote a panegyric upon him, regarded by Cicero as more glorious than all the statues erected to kings.

The reverence and love of Scipio the Younger (about 185-129 B.C.) for the Rhodian Stoic philosopher Panaætius (about 180-111 B.C.) is frequently mentioned by Cicero, from whose De Oratore Castiglione seems to have taken this whole passage.

Note [437] page 252. In Greek mythology Epimetheus (Afterthought) and Prometheus (Forethought) were sons of the Titan Iapetus and the ocean nymph Clymene. Angered by a deceit practised upon him by Prometheus, Zeus withheld from men the use of fire; but Prometheus stole fire from heaven and brought it to earth in a hollow reed. For this offence he was chained to a rock where an eagle preyed daily upon his liver (which grew again in the night), until he was finally liberated by Hercules. As compensation for the boon of fire, Zeus sent Pandora (the first woman, endowed with beauty, cunning and other attributes designed to bring woe to man) to be the wife of Epimetheus. Although warned by his brother, Epimetheus accepted her, with the result that she set free the evils which Prometheus had concealed in a box. In a later form of the legend, she received from the gods a box containing the blessings of life, and on her being moved by curiosity to open the box, all of them (save hope) escaped and were lost.

Note [438] page 263. Bias was born at Priene in Asia Minor, and lived in the 6th century B.C. He was celebrated for his apothegms and reckoned among the Seven Sages of Greece,—the other six being: Thales of Miletus, Solon of Athens, Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Rhodes, Periander of Corinth, and Pittacus of Mitylene,—all of whom flourished about 600 B.C. The fame of these seven men rested not upon their philosophy, as we use the word, but upon their practical wisdom—the fruit of experience.

GIANFRANCESCO GONZAGA
MARQUESS OF MANTUA
BROTHER OF “MY LADY DUCHESS”
1466-1519

Enlarged from a photograph, kindly furnished by Signer Alessandro Luzio and made by his friend Signor Lanzoni, of a portrait attributed to Francesco Bonsignori (1455-1519) and owned by the antiquary Bressanelli of Mantua.

Note [439] page 264. Clearchus, (died 353 B.C.), was for twelve years a cruel tyrant, not of Pontus, but of Heraclea (the modern Eregli), a city on the Black Sea about 140 miles east of Constantinople. He is said to have been a pupil of both Plato and Isocrates, the latter of whom represents him as a gentle youth.

Note [440] page 264. Of the dozen or more ancients known to have borne the name Aristodemus, none seem to fit precisely the description given in the text, which is taken from a passage in Plutarch’s “On the Ignorant Prince.” Plutarch may have had in mind a certain tyrant of Megalopolis in the 3d century B.C.

Note [441] page 269. The reference here is to Book V of “The Republic.”

Note [442] page 270. Fregoso here declares for what has been called “that Utopia of the 16th Century—the Governo Misto—a political invention which fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last century.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 306.) In this regard the men of Castiglione’s time, men like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, were only following Plato and Aristotle.

Note [443] page 270. The reference here is to the Cyropædia, i, 6.

Note [444] page 270. Castiglione seems to have in mind the game of tavola reale, which is similar to our backgammon.

Note [445] page 273. Circe’s transformation of some of Ulysses’s companions into swine is narrated in the tenth book of the Odyssey. In Castiglione’s day the term “King of France” was used to signify the acme of royal power.

Note [446] page 274. Gianfrancesco—more commonly called Francesco—Gonzaga, (born 1466; died 1519), was the eldest son of the Marquess Federico of Mantua and Margarita of Bavaria, and a brother of “my lady Duchess.” Having succeeded his father in 1484, he married (1490) Isabella d’Este, to whom he had been betrothed at the age of sixteen. Like his ancestors and most other petty Italian rulers of his time, he was at once condottiere and sovereign prince. He commanded the Italian troops against Charles VIII, and although with an overwhelmingly superior force he failed to block the retreat of the French at Fornovo, he treated that disgraceful affair as a glorious victory, and even caused it to be commemorated by Mantegna in a votive picture now in the Louvre. He served successively as captain of the imperial troops in Italy, as commander of Duke Ludovico Sforza’s army, as viceroy of Naples under Louis XII, etc. He joined the League of Cambray and was taken prisoner by the Venetians. In the general disorders that filled the period of his reign, he and his more brilliant wife had the address to protect his dominions from the ravages of war. Although, as Castiglione’s natural lord, he was asked and gave his consent to the latter’s entry into the Duke of Urbino’s court (1504), he seems to have continued to resent the affair until Castiglione’s return (1516) to his service,—in which the author remained when this part of the text was written. Castiglione’s eulogy was far from undeserved, for to the Marquess’s munificence, no less than to his consort’s taste and enthusiasm, must be ascribed the lustre of their provincial court. Besides being a patron of art and letters, he was also a successful breeder of horses for use both in war and in racing.

Note [447] page 274. The duke is said to have had no small share in planning the palace; his chief architect was one Luciano, a native of Laurana in Dalmatia on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The cost of the structure was about £400,000 sterling. See, besides the authorities cited in note 28, Luzio and Renier’s Mantova e Urbino, (Roux: Turin: 1893), p. 10, note 1.

Note [448] page 274. The ancient basilica of St. Peter’s had become ruinous by 1450, but little was done towards rebuilding it until 1506, when the execution of Bramante’s plan was begun with the solemn laying of the first stone by Julius II on Sunday, 18 April. On the death of Bramante, Raphael was put in charge of the work in 1514, as we have seen (note 98), but, apparently owing to lack of funds, progress was slow until 1534 when Michelangelo’s designs were substituted. The dome was completed in 1590, and the church dedicated in 1626.

Note [449] page 274. This ‘street’ was designed by Bramante to be a kind of triumphal way connecting the Vatican with the Belvedere pavilion. It was to be bordered by palaces, courts, gardens, porticoes, terraces, etc., but the death of Julius II led to the abandonment of the plan.

Note [450] page 274. Pozzuoli (the ancient Puteoli), situated seven miles west of Naples, was originally a Greek city, but became one of the chief commercial ports of the Roman Empire, and a resort of the patrician class. It is noted for its ruins, especially those of a large amphitheatre.

Baja (the ancient Baiæ), on the Gulf of Pozzuoli, was the chief Roman watering place, famous for its luxury, and containing the villas of many celebrated Romans. Its principal antiquities are ruins of baths.

Civita Vecchia lies on the coast about thirty-eight miles north-west of Rome, and was anciently known as Centum Cellæ. The Emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117 A.D.) converted it from a poor village into a great seaport, and of his monuments some remains are still extant.

Porto was a Roman city near the mouths of the Tiber. In Castiglione’s time it had become a marshy island. One of the earliest Italian archæologists, Flavio Biondo, visited the site in 1451, and found there many huge marble blocks ready for building and bearing quarry marks of the imperial period. The Apollo Belvedere was discovered here in 1503.

Note [451] page 274. Almost the same phrase occurs in the well known letter which Raphael (who had been appointed guardian of antiquities) wrote to Leo X, urging the pontiff to avert the complete destruction of “that little which remains of Italian glory and greatness in proof of the worth and power of those divine minds.” Castiglione was long supposed to be the author of the letter, but is now believed only to have aided Raphael in its composition.

Note [452] page 274. Alexandria was founded by the conqueror in 332 B.C.

Bucephalia (founded 327 B.C.) was situated on the river Hydaspes (the modern Jhelum), a branch of the Indus, about 120 miles north-west of Lahore, and was named in honour of Alexander’s favourite horse, which died there. Bucephalus (ox-headed) is supposed to have been a name given to Thessalian horses, which were branded with a bull’s head.

Note [453] page 274. Mount Athos (6780 feet high) forms the extremity of the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice in Macedonia. During the Persian invasion of Xerxes (480 B.C.) it was temporarily converted into an island, and since the Middle Ages has been noted for its monasteries. Both Vitruvius and Plutarch give an account of the project mentioned in the text, and ascribe it to a Macedonian architect who appears under the names, Dinocrates, Cheirocrates, and Stasicrates,—and who also planned the city of Alexandria and was chosen to rebuild the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The statue was to represent Alexander, who is said to have abandoned the idea when he learned that the city to be placed in the hand of the statue would be without territory and could be provisioned only by sea,—saying that such a city would be like a child that cannot grow for failure of its nurse’s milk.

Note [454] page 275. In Athenian legend Procrustes was a cruel robber, who had a bed upon which he tortured his captives by stretching those who were too short and by cutting off the legs of those who were too long. He was finally slain by the hero Theseus.

Sciron was another legendary Attic robber, who compelled his victims to wash his feet on the Scironian rocks near Athens, and then kicked them into the sea where they served to fatten the turtles upon which he fed. He also was slain by Theseus, and in the same manner in which he had slain others.

In Roman myth Cacus was a gigantic son of Vulcan, living near the site of Rome. He robbed Hercules of some of the cattle stolen from the monster Geryon, and dragged them into his cave backwards, so that they could not be tracked; but Hercules discovered them by their lowing, and slew the thief.

Diomed (not the Argive prince of the Iliad, but Ares’s mythical son, who was king over the Bistones in Thrace) was slain by Hercules because he was accustomed to feed his mares on human flesh.

Antæus was a fabulous and gigantic wrestler of Libya, reputed to be the son of Poseidon and Gæa, the Earth goddess. Being held aloft and thus deprived of the miraculous strength derived from contact with his mother earth, he was crushed to death by Hercules. Geryon was the mythical three-headed king of Hesperia, the theft of whose cattle constituted the tenth of the Twelve Labours of Hercules.

Note [455] page 275. “The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honourable; and the proverb, ‘He who gives his own life can take a tyrant’s,’ had worked itself into the popular language.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 154.) “The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this time as also during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of patriots.” (Id., 151, note 2.)

Note [456] page 275. Similar exhortations to a fresh crusade are of frequent occurrence in Italian literature of this period, and were often used by popes and princes as a cover for their selfish designs.

Note [457] page 275. The meaning obviously is that if they had not been exiled, they never would have enjoyed their present prosperity. Plutarch tells the story in four slightly varying forms.

Note [458] page 276. Monseigneur d’Angoulême afterwards became Francis I (see note [111]). Even stronger evidence of the author’s admiration than this and another passage (see page [57]), is afforded by the Proem with which he originally intended to preface the dialogues, but for which he seems to have been led by political considerations to substitute the introduction finally printed.

Note [459] page 276. Henry, Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry VIII, (born 1491; died 1547), was the younger son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and was educated for the church. Having succeeded his father in 1509, he married (in accordance with his parents’ wish) his elder brother Arthur’s widow, Catherine, the youngest child of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. His accession was hailed with enthusiasm. Left rich through his father’s avarice, he was generous, frank, handsome, exceptionally robust, and an accomplished athlete and scholar. Good men were delighted with the purity of his life, his gaiety pleased the courtiers, and sober statesmen found in him a singular capacity for business. Besides being a musician, he spoke Latin, French and Spanish, and was very devout,—usually attending mass five times daily. Even as late as 1521 he dedicated to the pope an anti-Lutheran tract on the Seven Sacraments, and in return received the title of Defender of the Faith. As an offset to the enormities of his later life, it is only just to remember that he raised England to the rank of a great European power, and that for twenty years he did nothing to mar the harmony of his reign.

HENRY VII OF ENGLAND
1457-1509

Reduced from Walker and Boutall’s photograph of an anonymous portrait (no. 416) in the National Portrait Gallery at London. Painted on an oak panel for one Herman Rinck in October 1505, the picture was once owned by M. Julien at Le Mans, by M. Émile Barre at Paris, and by Mr. E. J. Muller, from whom it was acquired by the Gallery in 1876.

Note [460] page 276. ‘His great father,’ i.e., Henry VII, (born 1457; died 1509), was the son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, (a son of Henry V’s widow Catherine), and Margaret Beaufort, whose paternal grandfather was an illegitimate half-brother of Henry IV. After the downfall of the House of Lancaster and the death of the young York princes, Henry succeeded in gathering a strong party, landed in England and wrested the crown from Richard III, 1485. Soon afterwards, by his marriage to Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York, he united the hostile factions that had so long harassed the kingdom. As a ruler he was avaricious, calculating, and far from popular. He is said to have left a treasure of £2,000,000 sterling. The marriage of his daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland finally led (on the failure of his son’s issue) to the accession of the Stuarts in the person of her grandson, James I.

Note [461] page 276. This is consistent with the earlier passage (see page [8]) where Castiglione pretends to have been absent in England at the date of the Courtier dialogues. An earlier MS. version here reads: “as we are told by our friend Castiglione, who has just returned from England,” which accords with what we have seen (note 23) to be the fact.

Note [462] page 276. Don Carlos, afterwards the Emperor Charles V, (born 1500; died 1558), was the son of the Emperor Maximilian’s son Philip of Austria, and of Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. Born and bred in the Low Countries, and educated at least partly under the care of the future pope Adrian VI, he is said to have shown less taste for study than for military exercises, and on his accession to the Spanish throne in 1516, he was ignorant of the Spanish language. By right of his grandmother Mary of Burgundy, he already held the Netherlands. As representative of the house of Aragon, he was king of Naples and Sicily. On the death of his grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he inherited Austria, and (in spite of the rivalry of Francis I and the intrigues of Leo X) was elected Emperor;—thus achieving, without a blow, a dominion vaster than any in Europe since the time of Charlemagne.

In an earlier MS. version the text here reads: “Then messer Bernardo Bibbiena said: ‘I do not think that any of those present, except myself, have seen the prince Don Carlos, who, having recently lost such a father as the king Don Philip was, has shown such courage and wisdom in this great bereavement, that although he has not reached the tenth year of his age, we may nevertheless regard him as competent to rule over all his hereditary possessions, vast though they be,—and that the Empire of Christendom (which men think will be in his hands) must grow not a little in power and dignity.’”

Note [463] page 279. Federico Gonzaga, the first Duke of Mantua, (born 1500; died 1540), was the son of the Marquess Gianfrancesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. At the age of ten he spent some time as the hostage-guest of Julius II at Rome, where he seems to have been generally caressed. Raphael is known to have introduced the boy’s face into one of the Vatican frescoes, and a little later to have painted his portrait. Having succeeded his father as marquess in 1519, he waged war for Leo X against the French. In 1527 he joined the league of Italian princes against Charles V, but went over to the Emperor’s side two years later, and was created Duke of Mantua. In 1531 he married Margarita Paleologus. Both Giulio Romano and Benvenuto Cellini were in his employ.

Note [464] page 280. These lines were written after Ottaviano Fregoso’s election as Doge of Genoa; see note [11].

Note [465] page 281. In an earlier MS. version, my lady Emilia continues: “‘And even if it were so, I do not see how he is on that account set above the Court Lady.’ The Magnifico Giuliano said: ‘We regard the Lady as the equal of the Courtier, and according to my lord Ottaviano, the Courtier is superior to the Prince; therefore the Court Lady comes to be superior to the Prince.’”

Note [466] page 284. Phœnix appears in the Iliad as appointed by Peleus to superintend the education of the latter’s son Achilles.

Note [467] page 284. Aristotle was summoned (342 B.C.) to undertake the education of Alexander, who was then thirteen years old, and whom no one had thus far been able to control. The philosopher’s training continued uninterruptedly for four years, included instruction in poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, physics, and medicine,—and is said to have had beneficial effect upon the future conqueror’s character.

Note [468] page 285. Stagira lay on the easterly side of the Chalcidic peninsula. Philip had destroyed it in his Olynthian campaign of 348 B.C., but rebuilt it at Aristotle’s request and caused a gymnasium to be erected there, in a shady grove, for the use of the philosopher and his pupils, among whom was Alexander.

Note [469] page 285. Plutarch expressly affirms that Alexander’s policy, of uniting all the nations under his sway into a single people, was not founded on Aristotle’s advice, as indeed an examination of the latter’s political theories would seem to prove.

Note [470] page 285. The Bactrians were an Aryan people dwelling on the upper Oxus, in what is now Afghanistan. They were conquered in 327 B.C. by Alexander, who married Roxana, the daughter of one of their princes. In ancient times the inhabitants of northern and eastern Europe and Asia were called Scythians.

Note [471] page 285. Callisthenes was a cousin and fellow pupil of Alexander’s. On Aristotle’s recommendation, Alexander took Callisthenes with him on his Asiatic expedition of 334 B.C., but, exasperated by his young kinsman’s plain-spoken disapproval of his conduct, had Callisthenes put to death.

DON CARLOS
PRINCE OF SPAIN
1500-1558

Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 43.099) of the portrait, in the Borghese collection at Rome, attributed to Bernhard Strigel (1460?-1528).

Note [472] page 285. Dio, (born about 408; died about 354 B.C.), was an austere Syracusan philosopher who became an ardent disciple of Plato on the occasion of the latter’s short residence at the court of Dionysius the Elder, and later induced the younger Dionysius also to invite Plato to Syracuse, where, however, the philosopher was unable long to check the tyrant’s profligacy.

Note [473] page 287. Bembo was thirty-six years old at the date of the Courtier dialogues.

Note [474] page 288. In Book III of Bembo’s Gli Asolani (1505), a hermit discourses to Lavinello on the beauty of mystical Christian love. Bembo had a villa called Lavinello, near Padua.

Note [475] page 288. Much of the following disquisition seems to be drawn from Plato and from Bembo’s Gli Asolani. As Bembo is known to have revised The Courtier before publication, we may assume that he was content with the form and substance of the discourse here attributed to him.

Note [476] page 294. Stesichorus was a Greek lyric poet who lived about 630-550 B.C., and was supposed to have been miraculously stricken blind after writing an attack upon Helen of Troy. His true name is said to have been Tisias, and to have been changed to Stesichorus because he was the first to establish a chorus for singing to the harp. Fragments of his verse have survived.

Note [477] page 294. These ‘five other stars’ are of course the five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), in addition to the Sun and Moon, which were until long afterwards regarded as planets. “The sun, the moon and the five planets were always to be found within a region of the sky extending about 8° on each side of the ecliptic. This strip of the celestial sphere was called the Zodiac, because the constellations in it were (with one exception) named after living things (Greek ζῷον, an animal); it was divided into twelve equal parts, the Signs of the Zodiac, through one of which the sun passed every month, so that the position of the sun at any time could be roughly described by stating in what ‘sign’ it was.” Arthur Berry’s “Short History of Astronomy” (London, 1898), p. 13.

Note [478] page 305. Castiglione here follows that version of the Hercules myth which represents the hero, tormented by the poisoned shirt sent him by the jealous Deianeira, as throwing himself upon a burning pyre on Mount Œta, whence he was caught up to heaven in a cloud.

Note [479] page 305. Compare: Exodus, iii, 2; Acts, ii, 1-4; and II Kings, ii, 11-2.

Note [480] page 307. This dialogue is by some represented as having actually taken place in the presence of Raphael.

Note [481] page 308. Plotinus was born in Egypt about 204 A.D., and taught philosophy at Rome. He lived so exclusively the life of speculation that he seemed ashamed of bodily existence, and concealed his parentage, birthplace and age.

Note [482] page 308. St. Francis, (Gianfrancesco Bernardone, 1182-1226), was born and died at Assisi near Perugia, and was canonized in 1288.

Note [483] page 308. II Corinthians, xii, 2-4.

Note [484] page 308. Acts, vii, 54-60.

Note [485] page 308. St. Luke, vii, 37.

Note [486] page 309. Mount Catria lies less than twenty miles to the southward of Urbino, between Pergola and Gubbio, and rises a little more than a mile above the sea level. It is mentioned by Dante in the Paradiso (xxi, 109).

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The stamp imprinted on the cover of this volume was engraved from an enlarged outline drawing made by Mr. Kenyon Cox from a photograph of one of the many examples of Castiglione’s seal preserved in the Royal State Archives at Mantua.