CHAPTER XIII. ASPECTS OF LATER RENAISSANCE CULTURE
What we call, for want of a better name, the Renaissance, was a period of transition from the Middle Ages to the first phase of modern life. It was a step which had to be made, at unequal distances of time and under varying influences, by all the peoples of the European community. At the commencement of this period, the modern nations acquired consistency and fixity of type. Mutually repelled by the principle of nationality, which made of each a separate organism, they were at the same time drawn and knit together by a common bond of intellectual activities and interests. The creation of this international consciousness or spirit, which, after the lapse of four centuries, justifies us in regarding the past history of Europe as the history of a single family, and encourages us to expect from the future a still closer interaction of the western nations, can be ascribed in a great measure to the Renaissance.[b]
We must now interrupt the story of political development, to make a casual survey of the culture of the time of the Medici and the succeeding generation. Scholarship had progressed pretty steadily since the days of Petrarch. “Even the early part of the fifteenth century,” says Roscoe,[j] “produced scholars as much superior to Petrarch and his coadjutors, as they were to the monkish compilers and scholastic disputants who immediately preceded them; and the labours of Leonardo Aretino, Gianozzo Manetti, Guarino Veronese, and Poggio Bracciolini, prepared the way for the still more correct and classical productions of Politiano, Sannazaro, Pontano, and Augurelli.”
Now there came a fresh impulse through the arrival of numerous Greek scholars from the East, and their example led to a more philosophical study of classical languages. The establishment of public libraries in Italy began now to be a prominent feature of the culture development. Cosmo de’ Medici was particularly active in this direction; his son Piero steadily pursued the same object; and Lorenzo brought the work to a culmination in the final development of the Laurentian library. The interest in the classics was probably influential in retarding the development of Italian literature. Nevertheless, the influence of Lorenzo de’ Medici was directed also towards the field of creative literature, and he himself was prominent in the restoration of Italian poetry.[a] He attempted to restore the poetry of his country, to the state in which Petrarch had left it; but this man, so superior by the greatness of his character, and by the universality of his genius, did not possess the talent of versification in the same degree as Petrarch. In his love verses, his sonnets, and canzoni, we find less sweetness and harmony. Their poetical colouring is less striking; and it is remarked that they display a ruder expression, more nearly allied to the infancy of the language. On the other hand, his ideas are more natural, and are often accompanied by a great charm of imagination.
The most talented literary protégé of Lorenzo was the famous scholar, Angelo Politiano. Politiano was born on the 24th of July, 1454, at Monte Pulciano (Mons Politianus), a castle, of which he adopted the name, instead of that of Ambrogini, borne by his father. He applied himself with ardour to those scholastic studies which engaged the general mind in the fifteenth century. Some Latin and Greek epigrams, which he wrote between the age of thirteen and seventeen, surprised his teachers and the companions of his studies. But the work which introduced him to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and which had the greatest influence on his age, was a poem on a tournament, in which Julian de’ Medici was the victor, in 1468. From that time, Lorenzo received Politiano into his palace; made him the constant companion of his labours and his studies; provided for all his necessities, and soon afterwards confided to him the education of his children. Politiano, after this invitation, attached himself to the more serious studies of the Platonic philosophy, of antiquity, and of law; but his poem in honour of the tournament of Julian de’ Medici remains a monument of the distinguished taste of the fifteenth century. This celebrated fragment commences like a large work, but unfortunately was never finished.[c]
We need not now mention the other minor poets of the age. Suffice it that, all in all, the age of the Medici cannot be called a time of really great literary development. It produced no Dante, Petrarch, or Boccaccio. But it witnessed a tremendous advance in general culture, due in part to the study of the classics, and it prepared the way for Ariosto and Tasso.