Throughout the eighteenth century the papal part in European affairs was insignificant; and in Italy the general effects of papal rule were steadily increasing poverty, superstition, and incompetence. It is a relief to turn away, knowing that the French Revolution is blowing its refreshing blasts ahead of us.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE AGE OF STAGNATION, THE ARTS (1580-1789)
We should do wrong to leave these centuries to stand solely on their political record. Even this dreary period has contributed not a little to the sum of Italy's attractions. After the moral vigour of republican Florence, after the freshness of the Renaissance and its later grandeur, after the elegance of the courts of Urbino, Ferrara, and Milan, it requires time to adjust ourselves to a different standard and to acquire a relish for this period of dissipated little kings and dukes. But once familiar with the altered standard of excellence, these centuries, with their arts, their habits, their idleness, become exceedingly sympathetic, and lure with peculiar dexterity the idler who seeks entertainment and the picturesque. Not that there is no serious element in them, for there is. Italy, though known to us through her lovers as a woman land, has always happily commingled feminine charm and masculine strength. Like the Apennines which stretch their grim strength from the Alps to the toe of the peninsula, virility runs throughout the length of Italian history, though at times it avoids notice. In this period it is best represented by science; and we must not omit to mention a few of the most distinguished scientific thinkers.
Giordano Bruno (1550-1600) and Campanella (1568-1639) were philosophers rather than men of science; their philosophy ran counter to the scholastic philosophy sanctioned by the Church, and they came into collision with the stern spirit of the Catholic Reaction. Campanella was persecuted and punished; Bruno was condemned as a heretic and burnt to death in the city of Rome. Greater than either was Galileo (1564-1642), whose name is one of the most illustrious in astronomy. He was born at Pisa, where he was educated in the university. He devoted himself to study, especially to mathematics, and became a professor. In 1609 he heard that a Dutchman had made an instrument which in some way by means of a lens magnified objects. Acting on this hint he constructed a telescope; and, if not strictly the inventor, he was the first to use the telescope in astronomy. The next year he made various eventful discoveries: that there are mountains in the moon, and spots on the sun; that Venus has phases; that Saturn has an appendage, which later was proved to be rings; that Jupiter has four satellites, a discovery which increased the number of heavenly bodies from the mystically sacred seven (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) to the uninspiring eleven. These discoveries persuaded Galileo to adopt the Copernican theory, and brought him into collision with the Church. Much has been said about his cruel persecution, but he appears to have received gentle treatment and to have undergone a merely nominal imprisonment. Another philosopher, Vico (1668-1744), a Neapolitan, enjoys a very high reputation in Italy as a thinker. He wrote a philosophy of history, in which he investigated the laws that govern human progress, showed that philosophical theories must treat mankind collectively, and anticipated Comte's theory of the three stages of social development.
Science is not the characteristic trait of this period; for that is to be found in the arts or in the pleasant enervating lassitude of life. In the grand-ducal atmosphere there is a sense of having browsed on lotus-flowers. As we glance back on the great centuries, their efforts look splendid, their high purposes noble, their infinite curiosity commendable, but we are content to sit in a ducal garden, to listen to the Tritons spout into the fountains, to sip chocolate, to meditate sonnets to a partner for the minuet, to gossip about "His Highness and Contessa B——, who, so that young milord, Horry Walpole, says, was once a ballerina," and to confess our sins to fat, amiable priests. We enjoy the badinage of the abbés, the ingenious vacuity of the littérateurs, the cheerful buzz of the café, the daily saunter on the fashionable promenade, the drive in the park, and all the details of theatrical make-believe existence.
As one becomes used to this lotos-laden atmosphere, one gets lenient impressions of the arts, of their peculiar and characteristic agreeableness, and rapidly loses one's previous too scornfully classical attitude. In an earlier chapter we indulged in some high-flown denunciation of the Baroque in architecture. That was because we were fresh from the Renaissance. Now that we have eaten of the lotos, we refrain from comparison and enjoy the arts in their new phases, in and for themselves. There is hardly an Italian city that would not be poorer for the absence of the Baroque. Rome, for instance, owes most of its charm to these decadent generations, to the Villa Medici, the Villa Borghese, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza Navona.
A Neapolitan, Bernini (1598-1680), was the master spirit of the best Baroque, both in architecture and in sculpture. His greatest achievement is the splendid colonnade which reaches out like two arms from St. Peter's Church and clasps the sunny piazza in its embrace (1667). Bernini's statues, his fountains, his decorations and ornaments, make a good history of the time. They undoubtedly reveal decadence, yet they are respectfully imitative of the great achievements of the Renaissance, whereas the works of his numerous disciples are surcharged with contortion, obvious effort, and strain for effect. There is a maximum of visible exertion with a minimum of real accomplishment. Details are multiplied, and ornaments bear little or no relation to the organic structure of the buildings which they adorn; yet that practice is an Italian trait, and even in excess has a picturesque merit. The baser work of this style, exhibited in the vainglorious churches of the Jesuits, is sometimes called the Jesuit style. After this period of stormy ornament came a calm in the eighteenth century, façades became rectilinear, and there was a general subsidence of obvious effort.