[906] Were these wandering knights really married?
[907] Trattato del Governo della Famiglia. See above, p. 132, note 1. Pandolfini died in 1446, L. B. Alberti, by whom the work was really written, in 1472.
[908] A thorough history of ‘flogging’ among the Germanic and Latin races treated with some psychological power, would be worth volumes of dispatches and negotiations. (A modest beginning has been made by Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften, v. 276-283.) When, and through what influence, did flogging become a daily practice in the German household? Not till after Walther sang: ‘Nieman kan mit gerten kindes zuht beherten.’
In Italy beating ceased early; Maffeo Vegio (d. 1458) recommends (De Educ. Liber. lib. i. c. 19) moderation in flogging, but adds: ‘Caedendos magis esse filios quam pestilentissmis blanditiis laetandos.’ At a later time a child of seven was no longer beaten. The little Roland (Orlandino, cap. vii. str. 42) lays down the principle:
‘Sol gli asini si ponno bastonare,
Se una tal bestia fussi, patirei.’
The German humanists of the Renaissance, like Rudolf Agricola and Erasmus, speak decisively against flogging, which the elder schoolmasters regarded as an indispensable means of education. In the biographies of the Fahrenden Schüler at the close of the fifteenth century (Platter’s Lebensbeschriebung, ed. Fechter, Basel, 1840; Butzbach’s Wanderbuch, ed. Becher, Regensburg, 1869) there are gross examples of the corporal punishment of the time.
[909] But the taste was not universal. J. A. Campanus (Epist. iv. 4) writes vigorously against country life. He admits: ‘Ego si rusticus natus non essem, facile tangerer voluptate;’ but since he was born a peasant, ‘quod tibi deliciae, mihi satietas est.’
[910] Giovanni Villani, xi. 93, our principal authority for the building of villas before the middle of the fourteenth century. The villas were more beautiful than the town houses, and great exertions were made by the Florentines to have them so, ‘onde erano tenuti matti.’
[911] Trattato del Governo della Famiglia (Torino, 1829), pp. 84, 88.
[912] See above, part iv. chap. 2. Petrarch was called ‘Silvanus,’ on the ground of his dislike of the town and love of the country. Epp. Fam. ed. Fracass. ii. 87 sqq. Guarino’s description of a villa to Gianbattista Candrata, in Rosmini, ii. 13 sqq., 157 sqq. Poggio, in a letter to Facius (De Vir. Ill. p. 106): ‘Sum enim deditior senectutis gratia rei rusticæ quam antea.’ See also Poggio, Opp. (1513), p 112 sqq.; and Shepherd-Tonelli, i. 255 and 261. Similarly Maffeo Vegio (De Lib. Educ. vi. 4), and B. Platina at the beginning of his dialogue, ‘De Vera Nobilitate.’ Politian’s descriptions of the country-houses of the Medici in Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 73, 87. For the Farnesina, see Gregorovius, viii. 114.