This man, to whom we are indebted in a variety of ways, belonged to a burgher family of mediocre means, residing at the little village of Sta. Lucia, near Bisticci in the upper valley of the Arno, and was born in Florence in 1421.[400] He had evidently attained by business practice a certain literary cultivation (which is shown in his writings, and, with the hearty interest of the author in person and things, makes us easily forget his deficiencies of style), and he witnessed the most brilliant epoch of the Italian book trade, in which one library arose after another and the treasures of antiquity were speedily multiplied; an epoch in which numerous practised copyists worked in Florence for natives and strangers. Here, as elsewhere, many foreigners pursued the same calling; French, German, and Dutch, ecclesiastics and laymen, associated themselves with the Italians, and sometimes settled entirely in Italy. The beauty and regularity of the writing, the richness of the miniatures, the fineness and smoothness of the parchments, the value of the niellos adorning the bindings, explain why, long after the discovery of the art of printing by types, manuscripts such as these retained the favour of those who did not fear expense. The codex of the Divine Comedy which Cristofo degli Amerighi of Pesaro, Podestà of Florence in 1457, caused to be executed here for his wife in that year, and which is now in the National library, is a splendid specimen of the luxury in books at that time.[401] The regularity of the writing on the finest parchment is such that at first we are rather reminded of mechanical reproduction than of penmanship. That those who belonged neither to the learned class nor to the special trade of copyists were occasionally employed in it, is shown by the manuscript found in the Laurentian library of the Divine Comedy, which an Umbrian soldier, Gasparo di Tommaso of Montone, wrote in ‘semi-Gothic characters’ in 1456 at Ferrara, where he was in the service of the Podestà.[402]
The prices of books still remained very high, which was unavoidable considering it was a question of new copies, and the price depended on the rate of pay of the copyists. In older books their rarity, state of preservation, &c., had of course to be considered. About 1430 Traversari informs Leonardo Giustiniani that he has found a skilful man to copy Livy, &c., for thirty gold florins yearly salary and comfortable board and lodging.[403] About 1442 Poggio sold two volumes of the letters of St. Jerome to Lionello of Este for a hundred gold florins. The marquis, a generous and munificent master, found the price extravagant, and regarded the surplus pay as a present to Poggio, who considered, however, that the present was too small for a prince, and that he should receive it as a pledge of future liberality.[404] Even persons like Poggio paid a good deal; twenty-five golden florins for a copy of the Bible that was not even complete, ten for a Lactantius, and seven for some tragedies. Piero de’ Medici obtained a Cornelius Celsus for twenty gold florins; the price was pretty high, Giannozzo Manetti thought, but it was a fine and beautiful manuscript.[405] In the years 1470-72 Vespasiano furnished Cardinal Bessarion with a copy of the works of St. Augustine for the price of 500 gold florins.[406] The constant commissions from abroad, especially from King Matthias Corvinus, Alessandro Sforza, the Earl of Worcester, &c.,[407] necessarily had an influence on the prices, and it may be easily understood how the whole business was restricted to a few persons by the extravagant cost of the books. Just when manuscript copies were at their dearest, printing by types began. Vespasiano da Bisticci died fully twenty-six years after the first book had been printed at the Florentine press;[408] but in his writings, which certainly extended to the year 1482, we only find one mention of the new discovery, which so quickly produced the greatest revolution in the field where he had worked so honourably. This mention is characteristic enough. ‘In this library,’ we read in the description of the treasures collected by the Duke of Urbino,[409] ‘all the volumes are of the most faultless beauty, written by hand, with elegant miniatures, and all on parchment. There are no printed books among them; the duke would have been ashamed to have them.’
CHAPTER V.
LITERATURE OF THE VULGAR TONGUE. POPULAR AND SACRED POETRY.
The period succeeding Petrarca and Boccaccio gave indications that the spirit of poetry was extinguished for some time to come. After Boccaccio’s death, his would-be rival, Franco Sacchetti, a man not only skilled in grave and gay compositions, but able to unite literary work with political office at home and abroad, a man capable of thoroughly appreciating the varied circumstances of life, merrily sang:
The spring of poetry is now grown dry,
No living form dwells on the Muses’ mount;
Nor can we think that Dante could return,
Since none will slake their thirst at his pure fount.
Where’er we listen we but hear the tone
Of horns, that blow the signal to refrain:
Where’er we look we see but dead leaves strewn,
And time must pass ere verdure clothes the plain.
Nor were indications deceptive. For many centuries elapsed ere a poet of real significance arose. Here and there a hand touched the lyre of Petrarca, as, for instance, the Roman Giusto de’ Conti, the best among the imitators of Madonna Laura’s poet. We can hardly call poetry the greater works of the Florentine Antonio Pucci, in which he recounts the chronicle of Villani in terzine and the Pisan war in ottava rima, the eight-lined stanza. He was a popular poet, who was not wanting in either feeling or talent, as many of his sonnets testify. Whatever might be attempted in various quarters passed without leaving a trace amid the efforts of the humanists, who despised the language of the people, and thought of nothing but perpetuating ancient culture, compared to which, according to the prevailing opinion, this language took the position of an inferior in birth. All its native power, and the cheerful, calm energy of the Tuscan people, were necessary to prevent its perishing in the midst of a twofold danger. Contempt might have excluded the language from any application to nobler ends, and so caused it to deteriorate. The attempts of the philologists to elevate the vulgar tongue after their fashion might have robbed it of naturalness, independence, character, and originality, and made it a clumsy compromise between old and new, without life or root in the people. The Tuscan language, which became the written speech of Italy, was in the fifteenth century threatened with both these dangers from a want of appreciation of its true spirit and life.
At the commencement of this century we meet with a work which, like its author, still represents the thirteenth, but which casts some rays of light over the following period. It is the tract, ‘Del governo di cura familiare,’ by the Dominican monk Giovanni Dominici, who has been already mentioned (p. 426). The book originated at the suggestion of a noble lady, Bartolommea degli Obizzi, who, with her husband Antonio degli Alberti and four children, were involved in the fearful persecution which the family had to endure in consequence of the implication of one of the Alberti in the events of 1378. The sensible, God-fearing woman, suddenly overwhelmed with all the cares of the household and the education of her children under the most distressing circumstances, had turned to a pious preaching friar whose counsel stood in high repute in and beyond his native town. He answered with this book, which was preceded by others of the same kind. It is an introduction to Christian life, and to the duties of a Christian education, containing many small details inseparable from the opinions and manners of the time. It is full of a manly spirit, with a clear recognition of the position and duties of parents and heads of families in the midst of changes which arose everywhere in consequence of the newly discovered antique world having already begun to penetrate, as it were, into a society hitherto hedged about by the narrow limits of mediæval culture and customs. From a special reference to the duties of a mother left in some sense in the position of a widow, the book passes to general remarks and considerations suggested by the state of a commonwealth torn by sectarian hatred.[410] The domestic ordinances for a Christian education in reference to respect for parents and authorities are followed by those which are dictated by active patriotism, zeal for the common good, and the preservation of unity. Parts of this book afford us a complete picture of the domestic condition of the time. The language is still that of the thirteenth century, but the structure of the sentences has no longer the graceful simplicity and transparent clearness which characterise more than one of the author’s brethren in orders.