Cristoforo Landino stands far below Marsilio Ficino in scientific importance. But both as a professor and in the learned circle of the Medici he held a peculiar position; and by one of his literary works he opened out a path which hundreds trod after him without taking away the relative value of his labours. His life was not like that of his contemporary and friend, dedicated solely to literature. As Chancellor of the Magistracy of the Guelphic party, and one of the secretaries of the Republic, he was concerned in public affairs till a late period of his life.[9] During the lifetime of Pope Eugene IV. he passed some time in Rome, and studied those antiquities the decay of which made a painful impression on him, as on other Florentines of his time. But when complaining, like others, that the travertine of the amphitheatre is broken up and burnt for chalk, and that the antique sculptures lie about mutilated, he exaggerates strangely when he says:[10]
Though round the mighty city thy gaze contemplative wanders,
Vainly around does it look for monuments vanished and gone.
In January, 1458, he accepted the professorship of eloquence and poetry at the University, and gathered round him a continually renewed circle of hearers, his influence being equalled by that of no contemporary save Ficino. In 1460 he began to lecture on the Italian poems of Petrarca, being desirous to stem the tide of contempt for the vulgar tongue which still existed in learned circles. Though in this respect he deserves all praise, yet his remarks on contemporaries, on Bruni, Alberti, Palmieri, show how he was himself still prejudiced in his view of the philological treatment of the language. His labours in the field of classical philology have no great weight. He wrote a commentary on Horace and one on Virgil, the former of which he dedicated to Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, and the latter to the young Piero de’ Medici. He also translated Pliny’s ‘Natural History,’ and undertook translations of modern Italian works, such as Giovanni Simonetta’s Latin ‘History of Francesco Sforza,’ which was published at Milan in 1490. He composed a letter-writer and a formulary for speeches, which was printed two years later, with a dedication to Duke Ercole d’Este. But the true centre of his activity and its importance lies elsewhere—in his relation to and share in that intellectual movement amid which the Medici lived, and in his position as a leader of the revival of the study of Dante. In illustration of the first point, his ‘Disputationes Camaldulenses,’ which belong to the history of Lorenzo’s youth, deserve especial consideration.
Amidst the fir and beech woods which still cover the Casentino hills, where they rise towards the Apennines, lies the convent which gave its name to the order of St. Romuald. For nearly a thousand years countless pilgrims and travellers have rested within the hospitable walls of Camaldoli, which now seem threatened with abandonment and desolation. The Medici had long kept up intimate relations with the Order. Cosimo and his brother were frequent visitors to the monastery of the Angeli; and here, in the mother-convent of the Casentino, Madonna Contessina had built a chapel to the Baptist. The connection lasted long. Lorenzo’s son Giovanni dedicated some peaceful days in his youth to contemplation and prayer here, as did many before and after him who sat on the chair of St. Peter or were reckoned by the Church among her saints—Gregory IX., Eugene IV., Paul III., Francis of Assisi, and Charles Borromeo. More than four centuries ago, there assembled here a select society composed of elements the most diverse and yet congenial. Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici came to exchange the noise and glare of the city for the delicious freshness and solitude of the woods. Piero and Donato Acciaiuoli, Alamanno Rinuccini, whose youthful studies had been directed by Poggio Bracciolini, and who had been one of the best pupils of Argyropulos, Marco Parenti, and Antonio Canigiani, accompanied the youths. Cristoforo Landino and his brother Piero came up from their home in the valley to the cooler height of the convent, where they also met Leon Battista Alberti and Ficino. Thus many of the most eminent men of the Medicean circle assembled round Lorenzo and Giuliano, who, notwithstanding their youth, were already accustomed to take part in serious discourse. The abbot, Mariotto Allegri, as host, was the centre of the circle; but it was Alberti who, with his many-sided knowledge and easy command of it, gave the tone to the evening’s discourse.
On the following morning, after the whole company had assisted at mass in the church of the convent, they all moved along the pleasant woodland path leading to the summit of the mountain ridge, past the little group of dwellings and gardens, the place where, according to the legend, the saint had a dream which led him to change his black Benedictine robe for the white one which continued to be worn at Camaldoli, as it is represented in Andrea Sacchi’s fine picture at the Vatican. We know not whether the travellers reached the neighbouring mountain ridge, the watershed of Italy, whence the eye looks down on Romagna and takes in the wide sweep of the far-off Adriatic. The narrator makes the company halt on the height near a spring, under the shelter of a mighty beech; a tree which, defying the mountain storms, overtops all other trees on the Apennines, whose brow it adorns here in the midst of fine pasture lands. Here Leon Battista, again taking the lead in the conversation, dilated on the good effects of retirement and meditation on the mind of the statesman and the scholar, and showed that only when the mind is set free from contact with the individual does it become capable of embracing the whole. Then turning to the two young men the speaker reminded them that their father’s failing health would probably soon call them to the guidance of state affairs, which, he said, were already in some degree entrusted to their care. After a somewhat extravagant eulogium of Lorenzo’s qualities, his courage, prudence, and moderation, Alberti continued to set forth how, notwithstanding such qualities and the moderate bearing he had hitherto displayed, quiet meditation or discourse held with a confidential circle on the deepest questions of human nature could not but be beneficial to the community. When the learned man thus adopted the Platonic principle, according to which complete abstinence from worldly pursuits brings our nature most surely to perfection, it would not have been difficult for Lorenzo, who was already well acquainted with this doctrine, to show that a man who practically applied and followed this principle must necessarily be brought into contradiction with his duties as a citizen; whereas the two phases of our nature—the active and the contemplative life—not divided, but united and balancing each other, lead to the true fulfilment of the purpose of existence.
From the objection put into the mouth of the young man and directed against Landino’s own teaching, as well as from the praises bestowed on Lorenzo’s conduct, it is clear that the date of the conversation is shortly before the death of Piero de’ Medici, when the Pitti transactions had given evidence of the prudence and talents of his son. The visit to Camaldoli may have taken place earlier, but the ‘disputations,’ which are the actual conversations expanded and embellished, were certainly not composed before 1470. In the discourses of the three following days Alberti again took the lead, and expounded the connection of the ‘Æneid’ with Platonic philosophy. What is here said of the character of Virgil’s poetry, of the ancient wisdom therein, which has become common property, of the poet’s knowledge and reverence for antiquity, of the relation between the poetical garniture and the more solid contents of the work, was probably drawn from Landino’s own Virgilian studies, for the author of the book speaks through the mouths of those to whom he attributes the conversations held in the woods of Camaldoli. He dedicated his work to Federigo of Montefeltro. If, as it seems, this dedication to the valiant and accomplished prince of Urbino was made in 1472, the book has a certain connection with the sad occurrences at Volterra, in which Lorenzo de’ Medici’s action belied only too strongly the Platonic theory of wisdom.[11]
If Cristoforo Landino is ever mentioned nowadays, it is only on account of his studies of Dante, which constitute his only value in the eyes of posterity. The study of the ‘Divine Comedy’ went through the most varied phases in Florence as elsewhere. On the petition of divers citizens (see above, vol. i. p. 80) in 1373, fifty-two years after Dante’s death, the Republic decreed the establishment of public lectures on his great poem.[12] On Sunday, October 3, in the church of Sto. Stefano, Giovanni Boccaccio began the lectures, the interruption of which by his death shortly after was lamented by Francesco Sacchetti. Messer Antonio, priest of Vado, and Filippo Villani succeeded him. A mass of commentaries were composed almost immediately after the poet’s own time, partly by his own friends. Numerous copies of the poem were in circulation; that which was formerly in the library of the convent of Sta. Croce, and is now in the Laurentiana, was attributed to Filippo Villani. Most of these copies were faulty. ‘I am trying,’ wrote Coluccio Salutati to Niccolò of Todi, at the beginning of the fifteenth century,[13] ‘to get a correct copy of the work of our divine Dante. Believe me, we possess nothing more sublime than these three poems, nothing more richly adorned, nothing more carefully worked out, nothing which penetrates further into the depths of knowledge. What only comes to others in part this one man has mastered as a whole. His moral precepts are sublime; he throws light on natural history and theology, and his masterly handling of language and rhetoric is such that it would be difficult to find equal beauty of style even in the greatest writers. With him the laws, manners, tongues, the history of all nations, shine like stars in the firmament with such majesty that no one can equal him in this respect, far less surpass him. Wherefore do I say all this? That my eagerness to obtain a correct text may cause thee less astonishment.’
This enthusiasm for Dante—an enthusiasm which one cannot but feel was less for the poet than for the man who had mastered more than any other all the learning of his time—was, however, by no means shared by all the learned men of the fifteenth century, whose threshold Coluccio barely crossed. Niccolò Niccoli, by his attacks on his great countryman, exposed himself to obloquy from which he never recovered; though it must not be forgotten that the words in which Niccoli calls Dante’s book reading for cobblers and bakers are only found in a writing of Leonardo Bruni, who was just as excitable as Niccoli himself. Niccoli’s rage seems to have been especially excited by the unclassical Latin in Dante’s letters; but the reproach which he brings against Dante, that he knew nothing of classical literature, and drew all his information from monkish compendiums—a reproach which, strangely enough, he also applies to Petrarca and Boccaccio[14]—resembles other tokens of the pride of the humanistic school too strongly to be seriously examined. The lecture given at the end of 1430 by Francesco Filelfo against the censurers of Dante, and the controversial treatise composed for the same object by Cino Rinuccini, father of Alamanno, are sufficiently clear proofs how false was the judgment of many. Filelfo himself declared, more than forty years later, that he undertook the public exposition of the ‘Divine Comedy’ of his own accord, and in deference to a general wish.[15] About the close of the fourteenth century Filippo Villani wrote a short life of Dante; a longer biography came out in 1436 written by Leonardo Bruni; twenty years later he was followed by Gianozzo Manetti. Not long after the latter, Gian Maria Filelfo, Francesco’s son, who had many opportunities of acquiring information from the poet’s descendants living in Verona, wrote a new biography which he dedicated to Pietro Alighieri, and which the latter sent, at the end of 1467, to Piero de’ Medici and Tommaso Soderini.[16] The erection in Sta. Maria del Fiore of a monument in the shape of the poet’s statue was decreed in 1465. Ten years later, the picture painted by Domenico di Michelino was placed in the north aisle of the church.[17] In literature the great poet’s countrymen had wandered far away from the path which he had pointed out; but they guarded his memory faithfully, and the beautiful manuscripts which appeared about the middle of the fifteenth century, shortly before the introduction of printing, prove how much his work was held in honour.
In 1472 a German named Johann Numeister (Neumeister), and a native of Fuligno, printed the ‘Divine Comedy’ for the first time in that Umbrian city.[18] Other impressions at Mantua, Jesi, and other places were followed in 1477 by the first edition at Venice, with a commentary of the fourteenth century. At last, after Florence had allowed nine editions to take precedence of her, the first Florentine edition appeared in the summer of 1481, with the glosses of Cristoforo Landino. A Silesian named Nicolaus (Niccolò di Lorenzo della Magna) had the honour of presenting to the poet’s native city the text of his work, accompanied by the commentary in smaller type, in a form highly creditable to his still youthful art. The Magliabecchian library possesses the copy, printed on parchment, which Landino presented to the Signoria, with a speech which also appeared in print.[19] Rich miniatures at the beginning, arabesque borders, a medallion portrait of Dante, and on the binding, striped with the Florentine colours, red and white, niello-work representing the lion and Hercules, the seal of the commonwealth, with the lily-shield and that of the red cross, show with what pretensions this edition came forth. By a decree of somewhat tardy justice the Republic reinstated the exile of 1301 in his civil rights and honours, and placed his statue, crowned with laurel, in the baptistery of San Giovanni. In a Latin address Ficino set forth the rejoicings of Florence at the restoration of his honour by the hands of one of his fellow-citizens; and Benivieni celebrated in harmonious terza rima the fulfilment of the prophecy in which the exile predicted his future fame, and his ultimate return to his ungrateful city: