Yet the decadence does not seem to have been universal, or at least was not continuous. In Sicily, it is alleged, though the statement is hardly credible, the revenue, which in 1558 was 1,770,000 ducats, was in 1620 5,000,000 (Leo, Geschichte von Italien, v, 506, 507); and at the latter date, according to Howell, Naples abounded "in rich staple commodities, as silks, cottons, and wines," from which there accrued to the King of Spain "a mighty revenue," which, however, was mostly spent in the province, being "eaten up 'twixt governors, garrisons, and officers" (Letter of October, 1621, in Epistolæ Ho-elianæ, Bennett's ed. 1891, i, 130). Thus there would seem to have been marked fluctuations, for in the time of Pope Gregory Naples is described as sinking under oppression and Milan as prosperous (Zeller, p. 407). The inference seems to be that some governors learned from the failures of their predecessors to handle trade aright.
The case of Florence after 1587, finally, shows how a wise ruler could so profit by experience as to restore prosperity where misrule had driven it out. Duke Ferdinand (1587-1609) was technically as much a "tyrant" as his brother and predecessor Francis, but by wise public works he restored prosperity to Leghorn and to Pisa, whose population had latterly fallen from 22,000 to 8,000 (Zeller, pp. 406, 411), and so increased both population and revenue that he even set up a considerable naval power. The net result was that at 1620, even under less sagacious successors, Florence "marvellously flourished with buildings, with wealth, and with artisans"; and the people of all degrees were declared to live "not only well but splendidly well, notwithstanding the manifold exactions of the Duke upon all things" (Howell's Letter of November, 1621, ed. cited, i, 136).
We are in sight, then, of the solution of the dispute as to whether it was the republics or the "tyrants" that evoked the arts and literature in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The true generalisation embraces both sides. It may be well, however, to meet in full the "protectionist" or "monarchist" view, as it has been very judiciously put by an accomplished specialist in Italian culture history, in criticism of the other theory:—
"The obliteration of the parties beneath despotism was needed, under actual conditions, for that development of arts and industry which raised Italy to a first place among civilised nations. We are not justified by the facts in assuming that, had the free burghs continued independent, arts and literature would have risen to a greater height. Venice, in spite of an uninterrupted republican career, produced no commanding men of letters, and owed much of her splendour in the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castle-franco, and Verona. Genoa remained silent and irresponsive to the artistic movement of Italy to the last days of the Republic, when her independence was but a shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune. Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature. The art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families. The painting of the Milanese school owes its origin to Lodovico Sforza, and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Next to Florence, the most brilliant centres of literary activity during the bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples. Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary evolution. Thus the facts of the case seem to show that culture and republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some historians would seek to make us believe.
"On the other hand, it is impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were necessary to the perfecting of art and literature. All that can be safely advanced upon this subject is that the pacification of Italy was demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to pass through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the oligarchies of Venice and Florence. It might further be urged that the despots were in close sympathy with the masses of the people, shared their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry.... To be a prince and not to be the patron of scholarship, the pupil of the humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes her magnificence to the despotic popes. Even the pottery of Gubbio was the creation of the ducal house of Urbino."[576]
The criticism of this well-marshalled passage may best be put in a summary form, as thus:—
I. (a) The despot promoter of arts and letters is here admittedly the pupil and product of a previous culture. That being so, he could avail for fresh culture in so far as he gave it economic furtherance. He might even give such furtherance on some sides in a fuller degree than ever did the Republics. But he could not give (though after the invention of printing he could not wholly destroy) the mental atmosphere needed to produce great literature. None of the above-cited illustrations goes any way to prove that he could; and it is easy to show that his influence was commonly belittling to those who depended on him.
(b) The point as to pacification is unduly pressed, or is perhaps accidentally misstated. It is not to be denied that the despot in the Italian cities, as in old Greece and Rome, did in a measure earn popular support by giving the common people relief from the strifes of Guelphs and Ghibellines. But the despots did not pacify Italy, though they to some extent set up local stability by checking faction feuds.
(c) The popes were in the earlier Middle Ages a main cause of the ill-development of Rome. Their splendid works were much later than many of those of the Republics. St. Mark's at Venice, a result of Byzantine contact, was built in the eleventh century, as was the duomo of Pisa, whose baptistery and tower belong to the twelfth. The Campo Santa of Pisa, again, belongs to the thirteenth and fourteenth, and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence to the end of the thirteenth. And the great architects and sculptors of the thirteenth century were mostly Pisans.[577]
II. The point as to the lack of the right intellectual atmosphere under the princes can be proved by a comparison of products. The literature that is intellectually great, in the days before printing equalised and distributed cultures, belongs from first to last to Florence. Dante and Machiavelli are its terms; both standing for the experience of affairs in a disturbed but self-governing community; and it was in Florence that Boccaccio formed his powers. "Florentine art and letters, constituting the most fertile seeds of art and letters in Italy, were essentially republican; many writers, and most of the artists, of Florence were the offspring of traders or labouring men."[578] What the popes and the princes protected and developed was the literature of scholarship, their donations constituting an endowment of research. If the revival of classic learning and the rapid growth of art after the middle of the fifteenth century be held, as by some historians, to be the essence of the Renaissance,[579] then the Renaissance is largely the work of the despots. But even the artists and scholars patronised by Cosimo de' Medici were formed before his time,[580] and there is no proportional increase in number or achievement afterwards. On the other hand, it was mere scholarship that the potentates fostered: Lorenzo Valla, welcomed for his Elegantiae latinae linguae, had barely escaped exile for his De falsa donatione Constantini Magni;[581] and it is impossible to show that they promoted thought save in such a case as the encouragement of the Platonic philosophy by Cosimo and Lorenzo. For the rest, the character of the humanists whom the potentates fostered is admittedly illaudable in nearly every case. Pomponius Lætus, who almost alone of his class bears scrutiny as a personality, expressly set his face against patronage, and sought to live as a free professor in the University of Rome.[582] And it is open to argument, finally, whether the princely patronage of the merely retrospective humanists did not check vital culture in Italy.[583] It is true that when "despotism" has been so long acquiesced in as to mean a stable social state, there may take place under it new forms of intellectual life. The later cases of Galileo and Vico would suffice to prove as much. But it will hardly be suggested that monarchic rule evoked such forms of genius, any more than that the papacy was propitious to Galileo. In both cases the effective stimulant was foreign thought.