The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

by Jacob Burckhardt

[352] Quatuor navigationes, etc. Deodatum (St. Dié), 1507. Comp. O. Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1859, ed. 2, 1876.

[353] Paul. Jov. De Romanis Piscibus, Præfatio (1825). The first decade of his histories would soon be published, ‘non sine aliqua spe immortalitatis.’

[354] Comp. Discorsi, i. 27. ‘Tristizia’ (crime) can have ‘grandezza’ and be ‘in alcuna parte generosa’; ‘grandezza’ can take away ‘infamia’ from a deed; a man can be ‘onorevolmente tristo’ in contrast to one who is ‘perfettamente buono.’

[355] Storie Fiorentine, l. vi.

[356] Paul. Jov. Elog. Vir. Lit. Ill. p. 192, speaking of Marius Molsa.

[357] Mere railing is found very early, in Benzo of Alba, in the eleventh century (Mon. Germ. ss. xi. 591-681).

[358] The Middle Ages are further rich in so-called satirical poems; but the satire is not individual, but aimed at classes, categories, and whole populations, and easily passes into the didactic tone. The whole spirit of this literature is best represented by Reineke Fuchs, in all its forms among the different nations of the West. For this branch of French literature see a new and admirable work by Lenient, La Satire en France au Moyen-âge, Paris, 1860, and the equally excellent continuation, La Satire en France, ou la littérature militante, au XVI^e Siècle, Paris, 1866.

[359] See above, p. 7 note 2. Occasionally we find an insolent joke, nov. 37.

[360] Inferno, xxi. xxii. The only possible parallel is with Aristophanes.

[361] A modest beginning Opera, p. 421, sqq., in Rerum Memorandarum Libri IV. Again, in Epp. Seniles, x. 2. Comp. Epp. Fam. ed. Fracass. i. 68 sqq., 70, 240, 245. The puns have a flavour of their mediæval home, the monasteries. Petrarch’s invectives ‘contra Gallum,’ ‘contra medicum objurgantem,’ and his work, De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia; perhaps also his Epistolæ sine Titulo,’ may be quoted as early examples of satirical writing.