At Ferrara, Nicholas of Este not only refounded the university of that city, but succeeded in gaining possession of two great teachers, Guarino the Elder, and John Aurispa, who directed the education of his son Lionel, and whose schools were frequented by students from every European land. Lionel repaid their care by himself becoming an elegant scholar, and establishing at his court an academy of poetry; and his brother Borso, who succeeded him, proved, perhaps, a yet more splendid patron of letters, though he had not himself received a learned education. A new poem of Leonardi, a map of the world, or a correct copy of Ptolemy’s geography, were treasures which won from Duke Borso many a golden florin for the scholar fortunate enough to present them; and the archives of Ferrara and Modena became crowded with decrees for the protection of scholars, which Tiraboschi assures us are no less remarkable for the elegant Latinity in which they are drawn up, than for the munificent spirit in which they are conceived.
The Gonzaghi held rule at Mantua, and there an academy flourished under the princely patronage of the Marquis John Francis, concerning which I must speak a little more particularly, as its master in some respects stands alone among the pedagogues of the Renaissance. Who has not heard of Victorino da Feltre, and the “Casa Giojosa,” in which he taught his crowd of princely pupils, contriving to mingle in their ranks not a few poor scholars, the perpetual objects of his generous solicitude; whose fame was so widely spread, and whose blameless character was so respected, that in those days of bitter scholastic jealousies all the greatest masters of Italy offered him their gratuitous services, and counted it an honour to direct a class in the “Joyous House” of Mantua? The house derived its name from the beauty of its situation, and the care which Gonzaga had taken to adorn it with everything that could contribute to the pleasure or instruction of its inmates. It contained galleries and arcades, all painted with pictures of children at prayer, at study, or at play; around it stretched delicious gardens and woods well stored with game, and the graver lectures of the master were relieved by lessons in riding, dancing, fencing, and every other graceful accomplishment suitable for noble youth. Victorino, on assuming the direction of the academy, did not entirely discountenance these pleasant pastimes, nor did he turn the Joyous House into a Castle Dismal; he contented himself with introducing such reforms as banished habits of self-indulgence, and prepared his pupils, not only to become elegant gentlemen, but hardy soldiers. He reduced the princely banquets to a reasonable limit, confiscated sweetmeats, and showed himself pitiless upon all coxcombry in dress. It is remarkable, that though he left not a line behind him as a monument of his scholarship, his celebrity has survived to our own day, and certainly equals that of the greatest of his contemporaries, resting as it does solely on his merits as a teacher of youth. Not merely was he distinguished as a lecturer in Greek, Latin, and mathematics (though even in that capacity he had few equals), but as one who trained the heart, formed the manners, and established, as the basis of all education, a strict observance of religious duties, victory over the passions, and the mortification of pride, selfishness, and sensuality.
A no less passionate admirer of the ancient authors than his friend Guarino, who often assisted him in his school, Victorino was careful to guard his pupils from the paganising tendencies which he discerned in the spirit of the age. Along with the Greek and Latin classics, therefore, he presented to their study the Fathers of the Church, and the Divine Scriptures, and when lecturing on the heathen poets and historians, he was wont, in a few luminous words, to lay before his hearers the grand Christian principles which were never to be effaced from the soul by Gentile sophistries and eloquence. Those principles he taught yet more by example than by precept. Two hours before his classes opened, Victorino might have been found in the hospitals and prisons of Mantua, relieving and comforting every form of distress. He founded among his noble pupils an association of charity, for enabling poor scholars to pursue their studies with greater facility, and this he did, not merely as a means of carrying out his favourite work of charity, but yet more with the view of training the sons of the Italian noblesse from their earliest years to care for the inferior classes, and to give to the poor out of their abundance. His whole life was marked by a total disregard of his own private interests. The good Marchioness, Paula Gonzaga, never made but one complaint of him, and that was, that often as she tried to furnish him with a better wardrobe, he frustrated her charitable attempts; for so soon as he found himself possessed of two coats, one went to clothe a poorer man than himself. It may be added, that though a simple layman, he embraced a stricter rule of life than was followed by many an ecclesiastic of the time. In an age when the practice of frequent communion was far from common, he approached the holy table twice every week, and encouraged his pupils to communicate every Sunday. It is said that in the early part of his scholastic career, his intercourse with St. John Capistran and St. Bernardine of Siena had awakened in his soul a strong desire to enter the cloister, from which he was deterred by the arguments of his learned friend Ambrose Traversari, who assured him that his vocation was to remain in the world, and there train souls for heaven. And as a divine vocation he embraced it; and cast over the scholastic profession a grace, a dignity and a beauty of holiness which made Eugenius IV. exclaim, when he was presented to him at Florence, “If my rank as Supreme Pontiff permitted it, I would rise from my seat to show honour to so great a man!”
However, it must not be supposed that Victorino was a mere devotee, or that his school was of a retrograde class, excluding the new lights of classical literature. He was the friend and correspondent of all the scholars of his day, and the pupils of the “Casa Giojosa” were no whit behind their countrymen in classical acquirements. Ambrose Traversari, who was considered to equal Leonard of Arezzo as a Latinist, and to surpass him in his knowledge of Greek, has left an account, in his “Hodœporicon” and in his epistles, of a visit which he paid to the school of Victorino, and a kind of friendly examination to which he subjected its pupils. “I reached Mantua,” he writes, “where I was welcomed with singular kindness by Victorino, the best of men, and my very dear friend. He is with me as much as his serious occupations allow; and not he alone, but the greater part of his disciples. Some of them are so well advanced in Greek, that they translate it into Latin. He teaches Greek to the sons and daughters of the prince, and they all write in that language.” Again, “Yesterday Victorino presented to me Gian Lucido, the youngest son of the prince of Mantua, a youth of about fourteen. He recited to me 200 Latin verses of his own composition, in which he described the pomp with which the Emperor Sigismund had been received at Mantua. The little poem was very beautiful, and rendered more so by the grace and correctness of its delivery. Then he showed me two theorems which the boy had added to the geometry of Euclid. There was also one of his sisters at the academy who, though only ten years old, writes Greek so well, that I am ashamed to say many of my own scholars cannot show anything to equal it.” This last-named pupil was Cecilia Gonzaga, whose learning afterwards became renowned throughout Italy. Her sister Margaret, also a pupil of Victorino, became the wife of Lionel of Este, but she herself consecrated her talents to God, and entered a convent of poor Clares, founded by her mother in the city of Mantua.[307]
While the smaller potentates of Italy were vying one with another in their encouragement of letters and learned men, the Sovereign Pontiffs were setting them the example on a yet more magnificent scale. From 1447 to 1455 the chair of St. Peter was filled by Nicholas V., who to extreme simplicity of manners united immense learning, and a mind capable of vast and magnificent designs. Whilst he was restoring peace to Italy putting an end to the schism which had sprung out of the Council of Basle, planning a fresh crusade, and laying plans for the rebuilding of Rome, on a plan realised only in the pages of Vasari, his agents were busy, all over the world, collecting, collating, or translating manuscripts, and giving to the world, in versions undertaken at his sole expense, those long-forgotten works of classical antiquity, the “History of Diodorus Siculus,” the “Cyropedia” of Xenophon, the histories of Polybius, Thucydides, and Herodotus, the “Iliad” of Homer, the geography of Strabo, many of the works of Plato, and the Greek Fathers of the Church. Most of the scholars of whom we shall have to speak in the following pages were employed by him as translators and secretaries, and were amply recompensed for their work. Poggio was thus enabled to complete his version of Diodorus. Lorenzo Valla received 500 gold scudi for his translation of Thucydides; 10,000 scudi, a house and estate, were promised to Filelfo for his translation of Homer, and when giving Perotti 500 scudi for his Latin Polybius, the Pontiff condescended to apologise for the smallness of the sum, which he owned was below the value of the book. He is known to have offered 5000 scudi for a Hebrew version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which, however, was never found. In his early years he had often given utterance to the promise that if he ever found himself in the possession of riches, he would employ them in the multiplication of good books. He nobly kept his word; and, when he died, left, as his bequest to his successor, the Vatican library, furnished, through his munificence, with 5000 precious manuscripts.
The accession to the pontifical chair of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who became Pope in 1458, under the title of Pius II., seemed to promise much for the world of letters. He had already acquired a European fame as a poet and historian, and had received the laurel crown from the hands of Frederic III. But his short pontificate was almost entirely absorbed in preparations for the projected crusade, which he had resolved to undertake for the recovery of the Eastern Empire, and death alone prevented his carrying out his grand designs, and accompanying the army into the East in order to encourage the soldiers with his presence. Meanwhile a flood of Greek refugees poured into Europe, contributing very largely to encourage the restoration of ancient learning, though they certainly had not given the movement its first impulse. Even before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek scholars had judged it prudent to pass over into Italy in order to escape the ruin impending over their country. Others, again, had been attracted thither by the Council of Florence, held in 1441, for the extinction of the Greek schism. Among the latter was the celebrated Bessarion, Archbishop of Nice, who, convinced of the fallacy of the Greek claims by the arguments of the Latin prelates, urged his countrymen to acknowledge the supremacy of the Holy See, and thereby incurred so much odium among them as to be forced to remain in exile. He was raised to the purple by Pope Eugenius IV., and employed in several important legations, but it was as a man of letters that he chiefly distinguished himself. His house at Rome became a sort of academy, and in it he trained a number of scholars, both Greek and Latin, not only in learning, but in piety and good manners; for Bessarion was as remarkable for his courtesy and virtue as for his erudition. His great library, collected at a cost of 30,000 golden scudi, was presented to the Republic of Venice, in return for the affection with which he had been received in that city; and though he only acquired a knowledge of the Latin tongue after his removal to Italy, he produced several works in that language, among which was a “Defence” of his favourite philosopher Plato.
But neither Rome nor Naples was destined to be the Athens of modern Europe, but a city, still proud of her republican institutions, though on the point of surrendering all but the name of sovereignty into the hands of a successful family of merchant princes. Many circumstances had combined to render Florence the focus of the great literary movement then in progress, and thither chiefly resorted the exiled Greek scholars—such as Argyrophilus, George of Trebizond, Theodore of Gaza, and Gemistus. Schools had been opened in this city so early as 1393 by Emmanuel Chrysoloras, which may be said to have given the first impulse to the revival of Greek studies. Emmanuel came over to Italy, in the first instance, in the quality of ambassador from Constantinople, to seek for aid against the Turkish arms among the princes of the West. But he found it more to his taste, and possibly also to his profit, to exchange his diplomatic functions for those of a professor of letters, and soon reckoned among his disciples a group of scholars who were in their turn promoted to chairs of Greek rhetoric in the universities of Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, and Naples. One of these, Guarino, had been formerly acquainted with Chrysoloras at Constantinople, whither he had travelled in 1388 in search of manuscripts. Guarino was at that time only eighteen years of age, and after acquiring the Greek language, he set out on his return to Italy, bearing with him two great chests filled with the treasures which he had collected. A storm overtook the vessel, and in his dismay the captain ordered the whole cargo on board the ship to be cast into the sea. In vain did Guarino throw himself at his feet, and conjure him to spare his precious volumes; they were ruthlessly hurled to the fishes, and when morning dawned the poor scholar’s raven locks were discovered to have turned as white as snow, such had been the anguish which his loss had caused him. However, if he had lost his books, he had not lost his learned gifts, and on reaching Italy, he became professor of rhetoric, first at Florence, and afterwards at Venice and Ferrara. John Aurispa was more fortunate in his researches, and succeeded, in 1423, in bringing back to Italy 238 Greek manuscripts. We have already spoken of him as lecturing at Ferrara under the patronage of the Este. He was secretary both to Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V., and before settling at Ferrara had also taught both at Bologna and Florence. He was succeeded in the chair of rhetoric in the latter city by the celebrated Filelfo, who had likewise made the grand tour of the East, and brought home a magnificent Greek library. This last-named scholar had studied at Constantinople under John Chrysoloras, brother to Emmanuel, whose daughter Theodora he married, a circumstance which swelled his already preposterous vanity, and which he never lost any opportunity of trumpeting to the Greek-loving world.
Filelfo, on returning to Italy, first selected Bologna as the happy spot which was to be blessed with his erudite presence. He entered the city in a sort of triumph, the enthusiastic populace giving him the welcome ordinarily reserved for sovereign princes, and erecting a chair of Moral Philosophy and eloquence for his express occupation, with the handsome annual salary of 450 gold scudi. Every day saw some new festa invented to do honour to the great Professor and his charming “Chrysolorine,” as he somewhat affectedly designated his Greek spouse; and for a brief space Filelfo declared himself satisfied with the amount of homage offered to his genius. “Bologna is a charming city,” he writes in one of his epistles; “the inhabitants are courteous, and not insensible to letters; and what specially pleases me is the consideration and affection which they display towards me.” In 1428, however, a popular revolution dissipated all these pleasing prospects; Filelfo, in company with the Papal Legate, had to fly for his life, and while the cities of Italy scrambled which should obtain possession of so rare a scholar, the coveted prize fell to the share of Florence, where Cosmo de’ Medici and his rival, Philip Strozzi, were just then struggling which should outshine the other in acts of princely munificence. The vanity of Filelfo was once more for a time amply gratified for the Florentines yielded him their hearty applause, and if we are to credit his own words, made him the great lion of their city. “All Florence runs after me” he writes in his letters; “everybody loves me; everybody honours me and lauds me to the skies; my name is in everybody’s mouth. Not only the first men of the city, but the noble ladies also give place when they meet me, and show me so much respect that I am really ashamed. I have every day 400 hearers, or more, and all of them persons of rank and importance.”
And it must be owned that Filelfo worked hard to gain their applause. The routine of his everyday work involved an amount of labour to voice and brain, under which any one but a professor of the fifteenth century must have succumbed. About daybreak he began by lecturing to a crowded audience on Cicero, Livy, or the Iliad. His explanations of Cicero were considered his greatest successes and by his ready and brilliant eloquence he seemed to reproduce the Roman orator to the eyes and ears of his hearers. Returning home, he gave audience to the favoured few who were happy enough to be on his list of private pupils; and at mid-day he was again in the public chair, commenting on Terence, or the Greek historians, Xenophon and Thucydides. Every evening there were literary reunions and learned academies to be attended, or private assemblies, in which Filelfo was, or, at any rate, considered himself to be, the great centre of attraction, and nurtured his good opinion of himself with the homage of an obsequious crowd. Even Sunday was no day of rest to him, for then, in the Church of Sta. Maria dei Fiori, he lectured and commented on Dante.
The fascination of such a life, however, had a make-weight of mortification. Filelfo was possessed with one of those bitter and malignant dispositions that turn the very sweets of life into poison. His very jokes were malignant, as, when disputing with another grammarian on the quantity of a Greek syllable, he offered to pay him 200 scudi if he were proved wrong, on condition that, if right, he might have the satisfaction of shaving off his adversary’s beard. The poor grammarian lost his wager, and, in spite of all his entreaties, Filelfo gratified his revenge in the true spirit of a literary Shylock. It was quite enough for any other scholar to be praised and honoured for him to become at once the mark for Filelfo’s spite. “What does Guarino know, of which Filelfo is ignorant?” he exclaims in one of his letters, his bile being excited by the fact that Guarino’s name was just then in everybody’s mouth. This intolerable presumption raised him enemies in every city; and, indeed, in those days it seems to have been the habit of literary men to spend the greater part of their time in biting and devouring one another. Filelfo, perhaps, may be regarded as the most venomous disputant of them all. He who talked so much of being “loved” by everybody, hated and made himself hated by the entire world. He hated the men of learning who shared with him the favour of the Florentines, because he regarded them as his rivals. He hated the great Cosmo, the Pericles of the New Athens, because his benefits were not exclusively showered on himself. He hated the good and honest citizen Niccoli, the founder of St. Mark’s public library, because he was a friend of the Medici. And he hated the very populace who gaped and wondered at his erudition, because his appetite for flattery growing as it was ministered to, they could not always satisfy its cravings, and at such times Filelfo was ready to denounce them all in that malignant language of which the elegant commentator on Tully was an accomplished master. He poured out his venom on Cosmo in a series of villanous libels, accusing him of attempting his life by poison and the dagger; yet, at the very time when he was inventing these calumnies against a man who had loaded him with favours, he was himself hiring assassins to attack his rival, Carlo Marsuppini, in the streets of Florence—a crime for which the Republic afterwards condemned him to have his tongue cut out, should he ever set foot again upon their territory.