At last matters came to an open breach. On May 6, 1479, Poliziano wrote to Lorenzo from Careggi: ‘I am here at Careggi, having left Caffaggiuolo by command of Madonna Clarice. The grounds of my departure, I desire, aye I earnestly entreat, to be allowed to explain to you by word of mouth, for it is a prolix affair. I believe that, when you have heard me, you will find that the wrong is not all on my side. For decency’s sake, and in order not to go to Florence without your orders, I came here, and am waiting till your Magnificence informs me what I am to do. For I am yours, though the world itself should turn upside down; and if fortune will not smile upon me in your service, that will not prevent me from always faithfully devoting myself to that service. I commend myself to your Magnificence, and am entirely at your commands.’ What had moved Madonna Clarice to this strong measure is clear. She could have nothing to say against the scholar; but the man inspired her with very little confidence, although we cannot think that she was influenced by the evil rumours which were afterwards spread as to Poliziano’s moral conduct—rumours characteristic of a time that delighted in the most dishonouring accusations. Men of letters were so full of exaggerated self-importance, and so incapable of controlling their tongues or their pens, that Lorenzo’s wife probably had right on her side. She wanted to superintend her children’s education; the tutor would not suffer it. ‘As for Giovanni,’ wrote he to Lorenzo from Caffaggiuolo on April 6, when he enclosed a letter from Piero, ‘his mother makes him read in the Psalter, which I cannot at all approve. When she does not interfere with him his progress is surprising, so that he can read without any help.’ To give the Psalter to a child of three as a reading-book is certainly a strange proceeding. But if, as we must suppose, it was the translation made for Clarice by Marsilio Ficino, the scholar of the fifteenth century could not make the same objection which was made in the next by another scholar, who received the cardinalate—Pietro Bembo—to the reading of St. Paul’s Epistles: that they spoilt one’s style.
At this time Lorenzo was so much occupied with the crisis in public affairs that strife in his own household must have been doubly troublesome to him. He did not think of restoring to his post the pedagogue who had been turned out of doors. He offered him the villa at Fiesole, where Poliziano wrote Latin verses in praise of Lorenzo, about the leisure he was himself enjoying, of the pleasant view towards the city of the Muses, and of the winding Arno,[50] but evidently put no bridle on his tongue. ‘I should like,’ wrote Madonna Clarice to her husband on May 28 from Caffaggiuolo,[51] after affectionately entreating him to take care of his health during the continued sickness, ‘not to be put into a fable like Luigi Pulci in Matteo Franco’s verses. I also wish that Messer Angelo shall not be able to boast of remaining in the house in defiance of me, or of your having offered him a home at Fiesole. You know I told you that if it was your will that he should remain here, I would be content, and although I have had to submit to his rudeness, I would bear it patiently if such were your decision, though I cannot believe it possible.’ Clarice’s remonstrances must have made some impression on Lorenzo. Although Poliziano saw him frequently, he remained excluded from the house. He repeatedly and urgently commended his cause to Madonna Lucrezia, to whom he represented his difficult position, if the hopes set on Piero came to nothing.[52] He begged her to try to fathom Lorenzo’s intentions concerning him. The tutor of Giovanni Tornabuoni’s sons, Martino della Comedia, gave lessons to Piero for a time, as did also Bernardo Michelozzi (son of the architect), who actually educated Giovanni, and was afterwards Bishop of Forlì. Poliziano’s impatience and vexation are clearly shown. ‘I shall be much surprised,’ he wrote, ‘if they let Piero lose his time, and it really would be a pity. I understand that Messer Bernardo is there, but I cannot quite see how he is to go on with my work, unless he remains permanently. In this case, indeed, it will be just as well that the shell has burst. But I do not believe it, and therefore I beg you to find out Lorenzo’s intentions, that I may judge whether to arm myself for the tourney or the battle. I will always order myself according to Lorenzo’s wishes, for I am certain that he sees deeper into things than I, and that he will guard my honour as he always has done, and as my faithful services give me some right to expect.’
When the reconciliation took place cannot be discovered from Poliziano’s letters, which are missing for several years at this period. The verses addressed to Lorenzo on his return from Naples, show that at that time Poliziano had not returned to his house.[53] A year after, in 1481, Piero was again entrusted to his guidance; for the Latin dictation for him,[54] in which the siege of Otranto by the Duke of Calabria is mentioned, is of this year. In these subjects for translation, which sometimes treat of contemporary events, sometimes allude to this or that occurrence of daily life, we vainly seek any really healthy food for a youthful mind. Their want of connectedness and gravity gives no brilliant testimony to the highly gifted man’s powers of teaching. But Piero had other teachers besides Poliziano; among them was the theologian Giorgio Cenigno, in whose learning and conduct Lorenzo, who was often present at his lectures, had great confidence, and to whose judgment he afterwards submitted the defence of Pico della Mirandola. This is the same man who many years later took so decided a part with Reuchlin against those who accused him of heresy. Giovanni del Prato, afterwards Bishop of Aquila, and Antonio Barberini, a professor of theology at Florence, were also called in.[55] When Piero went to Rome, in 1484 and again in 1488, the first time to welcome Pope Innocent VIII., the second time to be married, Poliziano accompanied him, and he remained until his death a member of the most intimate circle of the family. He never was a priest, though he held a couple of ecclesiastical benefices.
We can well understand that the choice of a man of such uncommon intellectual gifts as a tutor, at a time when everything was expected to give way to classical culture, found many eulogists; and the words of Cristoforo Landino in his dedication of Virgil’s works to Piero de’ Medici do not stand alone. Piero was wanting neither in understanding nor the desire to learn, and the instruction he received was not wasted so far as concerns the elegant culture which was fast superseding the more practical education of older times. But the essential principle of a serious moral view of the world Angelo Poliziano could not give to his pupil, for he had it not himself. The father rejoiced in the progress of the son, promoted as it was by the liberal, scientific, artistic and social movement of which the house of Medici formed the centre. Piero, like his father, entered life early, and was thus prepared for the position he was in some degree destined to inherit. He always showed interest in scientific matters. It was at his desire that his tutor made the collection of letters above mentioned, which, however, were not printed till after Poliziano’s death and Piero’s banishment; a collection which, like many of the kind, contains much that for the writer’s honour had better have remained unprinted. But posterity has not confirmed Poliziano’s judgment on his pupil. It was the judgment of a courtier. In Piero, thus he wrote to Pico della Mirandola,[56] there lived again the spirit of his father, the virtue of his grandfather, the humanity of his great-grandfather, the honesty, piety, generosity, and high-mindedness of all his ancestors.
If Lorenzo could not keep the peace in his own house between his wife and a literary friend, still less could he keep it between the latter and another member of his confidential circle. To this belonged, like Poliziano, a man whose literary merits contributed nothing to the celebrity of the age, but who attained to a higher and more secure position than most of his compeers because he showed himself a manageable and useful tool. Bartolommeo Scala,[57] born about 1430 at Colle in the valley of the Elsa, has himself described his origin and the commencement of his fortunes in a letter to Poliziano, and he deserves at least some credit for avowing so openly what it is true everybody already knew. ‘Deprived of all worldly goods, poor, and born of parents of low degree, I came here, without means, without claims, without protectors, without relations. Cosimo, the father of the country, took me up, and I rose in the service of his family.’[58] His father was a miller, and the youth’s first years in Florence were passed in bitter want, as we know from the letters of Cardinal Ammanati, who was there in not very brilliant circumstances. As in the case of other protégés, Cosimo’s favour was continued by his heirs. This only will account for the fact that, after the death of Benedetto Accolti, Scala received the office of chancellor.[59] Although by no means without cultivation and practice in business, Scala stood far below those who had preceded him with so much distinction in the chancellorship, since the days of Coluccio Salutati to the time of the man whom he replaced. For Benedetto Accolti, who died in the prime of manhood, did honour to the name which his family had already acquired in the field of learning, and united sound knowledge of law with unusual elegance of expression; while his eloquence and excellent memory rendered him peculiarly fit for the various solemnities at which addresses and replies had to be made without long preparation. His Latin history of the first Crusade, founded on French materials, and dedicated to Piero de’ Medici, is valuable as the source whence Torquato Tasso drew the subject of his ‘Gerusalemme.’
Fortune continued to favour Bartolommeo Scala, and even in the great commotion of 1494 he was not overthrown. Posts of honour, embassies, knighthood, riches, fell to his share. He was Lorenzo’s confidant, and in constant correspondence with him on civil and political affairs. In the storms of 1478 and the following years he was of no small use to him, and it was chiefly through him that Lorenzo always kept the Signoria well in hand. Scala had a pretty villa—which afterwards passed to the Guadagni[60]—on the slope of the hill at Fiesole, and his town house (now belonging, with its beautiful gardens, to the Count della Gherardesca) still bears on its walls the coat of arms which he adopted in allusion to his name. As two of his predecessors had written a history of Florence, he thought it needful to do the same. His work, which comes down to Charles of Anjou, has no intrinsic value; and his other writings are even more utterly forgotten than those of the obscurest among his contemporaries. That he was most anxious to give no ground of displeasure to foreign princes on whose relations to Florence he was obliged to touch in his history is shown by his oft-repeated request to the Ferrarese ambassador for information about the Este family, ‘because he wished to write in praise of that illustrious house.’[61]
Bartolommeo Scala’s position made him boastful. His letters to Poliziano are full of the most ridiculous conceit.[62] ‘Thou wilt hardly venture to compete with my honours. The Florentine people have raised me first to the Priorship, then to the Gonfaloniership, and now to the rank of senator and knight, with such unanimity that many were of opinion there had never been a more popular act; besides which I have the brilliant testimony of Lorenzo de’ Medici that distinction was never conferred on one more worthy.’ Whereupon Poliziano did not fail to pay him back with an abusive answer. His boast of praise from Cosimo and Lorenzo was a lie; the latter had often said that in advancing him he was influenced by other considerations, not by his own opinion, and had often given Poliziano Scala’s official papers to correct, as the latter must have known very well. Lorenzo had prevented the former from destroying the mocking iambics on Scala,[63] saying it was a pity to sacrifice such good verses. Lorenzo de’ Medici was dead when the two became involved in that violent strife which gave rise to accusations as passionate, coarse, and spiteful as those flung about by Filelfo, Poggio, and Valla. But in the lifetime of Lorenzo a quarrel broke out between the two men, who emulated each other in abasing the moral dignity of scholarship.
There seems to have been another cause of strife besides literary rivalry—Scala’s beautiful and accomplished daughter Alessandra. Like many other women of her day, she devoted herself in her youth to the study of Greek, and her teachers were Demetrius Chalcondylas and Johannes Lascaris. That Poliziano was inspired with a violent passion for her is shown by his Greek epigrams.[64]
‘Now at last have I found the object I long have been seeking,
Object of loving desire, present in all my dreams.’