More than a generation after Fra Giovanni Dominici, a man standing in the midst of the new classical school took up the same subject from a wider point of view. He belonged to the family for whose use the book of his predecessor had been destined. We meet with Leon Batista Alberti in almost every field—in science, literature, and art—and only his unexampled versatility hindered him from ascending to the height which he often approached. In his dialogue, consisting of several books, ‘La Cura della Famiglia,’[411] Alberti, to whom in a certain sense all the knowledge of the times lay open, displays, in his moral and philosophical view of life, the greatest harmony with the monk who hardly crossed the threshold of his age, and expresses himself on education and the true relation of the authors of antiquity to Christian morality in the same sense, and sometimes in the same words, as Giovanni. Dante and Petrarca had completed and purified by Christian wisdom the old philosophy as it had appeared to them; Alberti, a disciple of Greek learning, maintained the doctrine that, without Christianity, the world would remain in a valley of error, and wisdom would be impossible or vain. There was no lack of similar tendencies; out of the theological circle no book has spoken so decidedly.
If we regard the style of this work, which purported to be popular, we feel the difference between it and that of the book which gave the author the impulse to its composition. Here is a learned man who endeavours to make use of a language despised by the learned, if not for strictly scientific purposes, yet for the discussion of questions which include a philosophy of life. He will, so he declares, write in a simple, naked style, though he has always Xenophon in his mind. More than the lost sovereignty of the world, he laments the loss of the rich and harmonious language of the world; but he does not understand why the Tuscan language of his day should excite so much aversion that even excellent things composed in it should displease. It was only a question of being easily understood, and knowing how to handle the language. It would be foolish to despise what was in daily use or to praise what no one understood. The ancient language had attained such authority because numerous learned men had written in it. It would be the same with that of the present day if learned men would expend real industry and pains to purify and cultivate it. Thus wrote Leon Batista Alberti about the middle of the century. His words indicate the direction of the effort then made to impart to the popular language dignity and euphony, not merely by an imitation of Latin phrases like Boccaccio’s, but even by a Latin formation of words. The error was not entirely avoided by this gifted man, who in the book under discussion, though striving after simplicity and comprehensiveness did not overcome the pedantry which sought safety in foreign elements only. When the accomplished scholar, Cristoforo Landino, at the commencement of his explanation of Petrarch’s poetry, before the ‘Padri Conscripti,’[412] expressed his opinion of the feasability of cultivating the Tuscan language which, like the Latin, ought to be subjected to grammar, he propounded the aphorism ‘He who would be a good Tuscan must be a Latinist.’ He then praised Leon Batista as the foremost master of the prose of later times, Leonardo Bruni as the reviver of antique poetry, and the hendecasyllabics as Sapphic and heroic verses. Knowing all this we cannot see from whence the fresh spirit was to come that could alone breathe life into the forms of language.
How far they went in this direction, when dead if learned imitation triumphed over nature, genius, and the laws of a living language, which, as a modern writer expresses it, produced a greater reverence for the dead than for the living, is shown best by the Academy of Languages held in 1441, principally at the instigation of Alberti, under the patronage of Piero de’ Medici, in Sta. Maria del Fiore, to celebrate the presence of Pope Eugenius IV. The rectors of the university proclaimed a poetical competition, the theme of which was to be a eulogy on friendship. A silver laurel-wreath was appointed the prize; from this is derived the name of ‘Academia coronaria;’ the papal secretaries were the umpires. Before the Signoria, the archbishop, the Venetian ambassadors, prelates, nobles, and people, eight poets read their verses, most of them in triplets or terza rima, and one in stanzas or ottava rima, on Sunday, October 22. The worst poets certainly would not have presented themselves; but we search in vain for poetry in these dry and bombastic productions. The amusing yet pathetic character of this competition was most manifested in the dialogues recited by a celebrated man, Leonardo Dati, the first and second part of which were in hexameters, the third in Sapphic metre, and the fourth ended in a sonnet, composed, as it was said, after antique rules. The metres corresponding with the language, neither Italian nor Latin, were modelled after Latin words and syntax; an incomprehensible and most indigestible mixture of new and old.[413] The judges awarded the prize to none of the competitors, but gave it to the Church, which, in respect to poetry, was accustomed to something different when the ‘Divine Comedy’ was expounded in her lofty halls. He who gave the impulse to the competition seems, however, not to have found this degradation of poetry so dreadful, for he arranged a second tournament on Envy, which, however, happily did not take place. This corrupted taste found sufficient defenders in the following century, and even men of genius retained the morbid taste for mingling languages and exaggerated artificial forms of words, which these times made a fashion, and which bore the same relation to the true language as periwigs to natural hair. Happily a counterpoise to such a caricature was not wanting—a counterpoise that weighed all the heavier because connected with the inward nature and life of the people, with their faith and feeling, their religious requirements and traditions, which, if much degenerated into superficiality and mere observance, not only opposed the progress of worldliness, but won before the end of the century a victory, the echoes of which were long heard. Not to speak of the low comic branch of popular poetry, the people’s language was preserved living and fresh in letters, both those relating to business and those of a religious character, in smaller writings intended for the people, and in sacred poetry.
Thus in the second half of the fourteenth century, when the schism in the Church oppressed the minds of men, when that which had been held to be unchangeable began to totter, as well as in the first half of the following, when humanism began to develop its necessary but undermining effects, there still existed a fervent and living religious sense, which held together many things that threatened to fall asunder, and explains much that would otherwise be a riddle. Caterina of Siena is the greatest and most brilliant figure in the first epoch; all the more significant because in her the purest piety is united to penetration, blended with mysticism. Her insight into the secrets of the soul and the nature of doctrine, and her clear perception of the requirements of the age, were combined with unwearied activity and frank courage. The respect due and willingly shown by her to popes and princes, detracts in nothing from the decided character and expressive language of her discourses. But St. Caterina, unequalled before or since, does not stand alone. In writings which contain the natural unadorned expression of feeling and opinion, and in letters which, unlike those of learned men, were not intended for the public and for national collections, we find the explanation of many phenomena that contrast with the facts of public life noted by history. These phenomena must surprise him who does not regard the domestic life of the people in all ranks, or who has not sounded the inner working of a religious feeling, the manifestation of which in architectural monuments in an age full of violence and predominating worldly activity, attracts our principal attention, and scarcely seems in accord with the time. Besides several ecclesiastical representatives of this school, like Giovanni Dominici and Giovanni delle Celle, who was also canonised, Chiara Gambacorti—the foundress of the Pisan convent of Dominican nuns of the Strict Observance, who died in 1420—may be mentioned. We find others certainly not less important in that class of laymen, who were as numerous as they were influential in the towns of Tuscany in the two centuries we have spoken of—men who divided their activity between public offices and private business, and who with time and power, had an open eye, and a warm heart for whatever concerned intellectual interests, especially religious tendencies and ecclesiastical matters. These fervent natures, whose numbers increased as worldliness became more threatening, finally gathered round Fra Girolamo Savonarola as round a fixed centre in their protest against the pagan tendencies which constantly gained ground, in spite of many contradictory phenomena, in the second half of the fifteenth century. And the same natures, thirty years later, at the last flash of this mystic piety and ascetic reformatory movement in the decisive battle for life or death of the commonwealth, lent their best powers to the champions of freedom, who were overthrown for a second and last time.[414]
With this intellectual tendency a style of poetry was connected to which the philologists of the Renaissance period would have disdained to award a place in literature, even if they would have noticed it at all, had not their attention been in a certain measure forced to it by persons of high standing who guided the general taste in their circles. Popular sacred poetry was as old as the language of Dante’s time, and Fra Jacopone of Todi, to whom some pathetic if not grand Latin hymns of the later Middle Ages are ascribed, touched the keynote in his Canticles, which was echoed for three centuries in the lauds or hymns of praise. But Fra Jacopone himself only transmitted the tradition, which had remained alive since Francis of Assisi. The great number of fraternities, who assembled after the day’s work in churches and chapels and at the corners of streets and sang hymns; the numerous processions and pilgrimages, even if we except those which, like the processions of the White Penitents, set whole villages and towns in commotion; the frequent evening devotions, which were shared in by others than members of the confraternities; the expressions of pious feeling and religious aspiration, after the labour and toil of the day—all this contributed to the growth of a species of popular poetry which bore rich fruit, especially in the fifteenth century. The continuance of Christian feeling and the desire to manifest it among the people at a time when paganism had revived in the learned world is remarkable, and to judge of the general opinions and tendencies merely by the literary monuments of the age would lead to wrong conclusions.
If, as we have said, the full development of this kind of poetry belongs to the fifteenth century, the preceding age, when trials of every kind—sanguinary civil wars, devastating marches of mercenary and robber bands, pestilence and Church schism—called men to serious reflection, presents hardly less activity in this direction. The crowds of Florentine burghers who, during the strife with Pope Gregory XI. on his return from Avignon, sought compensation for the discontinuance of Divine worship in the city while under the interdict by devotions in the open air, by prayer and psalmody before the tabernacles in the streets, were a remarkable and, in their way, elevating sight. The oldest company, or schola, of the psalm-singers, or laudesi, which originated in a chapel near the cathedral church where the bell-tower now stands, and was named after the Holy Virgin or St. Zanobi, was instituted before the end of the twelfth century. From it proceeded the pious men who founded the order of Servi di Maria (Servites), who had their residence in Florence, near the church of the Annunziata, on the wooded heights of the Apennines, in the far-seen cloisters of Monte Senario, and who are often mentioned in connection with the history of the Florentine patriciate.[415] Other societies followed: the companies of Or San Michele, Sta. Maria Novella, Sta. Croce, Sto. Spirito, of the Carmine and Ognissanti. In short from all the large churches were formed brotherhoods which, in conjunction with similar ones for benevolent purposes, included a considerable part of the higher class of citizens, and several of which still exist. The style of poetry fostered in and by these fraternities had a long life, and sent forth aftershoots centuries later, when Vincenzo da Filicaia composed hymns for the society of St. Benedict, which, in the Jubilee year 1700, undertook a pilgrimage to Rome at the same time as the last but one of the Medicean rulers.
Nor do we meet with these phenomena in Florence alone, but in the neighbouring towns of Tuscany also. In Siena—where, as in adjacent Umbria, in the midst of all civil disturbances, not seldom accompanied with bloodshed, a peculiar spiritual life penetrated with mysticism had been developed and long upheld—arose the society of Jesuates about the middle of the fourteenth century, originally a congregation of laymen which formed themselves into an order and, like the Humiliates before them, combined monastic life with the practice of arts and industry. When in 1367 Pope Urban V., for whom all the serious and believing inhabitants of Rome longed, arrived at Corneto on his return from Avignon to Rome, Giovanni Colombini, the founder of this congregation, marched with his followers singing lauds through Viterbo to the sea-shore. With olive branches in their hands they accompanied with hymns the procession of the Holy Father, who granted the white robe to them in Toscanella. From its origin this popular order had sacred poets,[416] by whom the tradition of Fra Jacopone was kept alive, himself a member of one of the most popular orders. When the Venetian Antonio Bembo, who belonged to the Jesuates, lay on his death-bed in Pistoja, the two brethren who tended him began at his wish to sing the hymn of the saint of Todi, ‘Thou love of God hast wounded me.’ Towards the end of the century we find the fraternity of the Bianchi in Siena singing lauds like the Florentine brotherhoods. In Lorenzo de’ Medici’s days these consisted principally of artisans who assembled on Saturdays, after nine, in a church and sang lauds in four voices before a picture of the Madonna, changing about among themselves with every hymn. It was partly a kind of canto fermo, and partly sung after popular melodies. If we consider that till the reform of church music, undertaken at the wish of the Council of Trent by Giovanni Pierluigi of Palestrina, Divine worship had been accompanied by vaudeville melodies, we cannot be surprised if the same tunes to which carnival songs were sung—Italian, French, and Flemish—were occasionally used with the lauds without anyone taking offence at it. Thus we find them founded on melodies as those of the ‘Leggiadra damigella,’ or ‘Una donna d’amor fino,’ ‘O Rosa mia gentile,’ ‘O crudel donna ch’hai lassato me,’ ‘Vicin, vicin, vicin, chi mol’ spazar camin,’ ‘Plus que je vis le regar gracieuse,’ and similar ones. Occasionally it is remarked that the melody is the same as that of dances or strambotti, as the popular songs were called, which might be referred to King Manfred’s days and make the nearest approach to our street-tunes.
This sacred poetry is very prolific, and though the frequent recurrence of the same motive is wearying, we are astonished at the endless wealth of the variations and the delicate expression of effect, elegant in its simplicity. The form and metre of the hymns, some of which are quite short and others extending to several verses, are very different. Fra Jacopone was succeeded by the Minorite, Fra Ugo Panziera of Prato; the Dominican, Fra Domenico Cavalco of Vico Pisano, who, as an ascetic writer, has proved himself a master of prose; Bianco dall’Anciolina, one of the companions of Giovanni Colombini; and, about the beginning of the fifteenth century, by the learned Venetian Leonardo Giustiniani, brother of the patriarch Lorenzo who was venerated as a saint; contemporaneous with him were Fra Giovanni Dominici, Francesco d’Albizzo, and many others. The succeeding epoch witnessed the appearance of the two men who have given this popular poetry its greatest brilliancy and importance: they were Feo Belcari and Girolamo Benivieni.[417]
The birth of Feo Belcari[418] occurred at a time when the sad divided condition of the Church—which the Pisan Council did not help by the choice of a third Pope—had excited in Florence a movement which was only terminated by the restoration of unity. He was born on February 4, 1410, and belonged to a respectable family extinct before the sixteenth century. He filled many public offices, sat in the magistracy of the priors in the summer of 1454, was secretary in the office of the Public Debt, and died on August 16, 1484. He is the best representative of the tendency, intellect, and feeling which we are now considering. Feo Belcari was no dreamer, but a man of active life, a sharer in the cheerful society, principally composed of artists, which was a characteristic element of the social condition of the time. All that we possess of him belongs to devotional literature. His book on the founders of the Jesuates, dedicated to Giovanni de’ Medici, describes times and circumstances which he knew from oral tradition, being in the most intimate connection with the orders that had acquired importance in Florence. His letters—one of which on humility, addressed to his daughter Orsola, gives a clear view of his opinions—are moral philosophical treatises, in which the familiarity with the Fathers of the Church and Christian authors of the Middle Ages would make us take them for the work of a theologian, had not the knowledge of this literature been so widely disseminated among a portion of the laity. His dramatic works are among the most important of the kind which introduced Sacred History into the circle of festivals, half ecclesiastical half secular, and claimed the equal attention of high and low. In 1449 his mystery of the ‘Sacrifice of Abraham’ was acted in the church of Cestello. But more than all, his laudi have made him a name. The number of them is very great, for many are only variations of the same theme—that of Divine love and the powerlessness of human nature without grace. But the different turns and shades of meaning are remarkable, and the ease with which the metre harmonises with the hymn is astonishing, whilst there is no want of reality. In 1455, when the author was at the height of his powers and activity, a collection of this poetry had been arranged for the Compagnia de’ Battuti di San Zanobi, and the plays were kept in use till far into the following century. The style is mostly simple, as befits popular productions, but it is not entirely free from Latinisms and affectation in his prose writings.
The death of Feo Belcari, the ‘Christian Poet,’ was sung by Girolamo Benivieni[419] in terza rima, where we read among other things: