The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Like Illicini, Machiavelli, the historian and political philosopher, took it upon himself to write a novel which few people have read and yet which has a certain exaggeration of social satire which sets it rather closely in touch with our time. The story represents indeed a curious ever-recurring phase of the attitude that men are accustomed--for jest purposes only--to assume toward marriage. According to the story, the devils were very much disturbed over the fact that most of the married men who came to hell blamed their coming on their wives. Hell had been well enough so long as people were willing to admit that they were punished deservedly, but society there became very uncomfortable under this new dispensation. The devils resolved to send one of their number up to earth to find out about it. Belphagor, one of the fallen Archangels, having assumed the body of a handsome man of thirty and a large fortune, is commissioned [{456}] to marry and live with a wife for ten years. He finds no difficulty in getting a bride, having "soon attracted the notice of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and small incomes. The former of these was soon offered to him, and Belphagor chose a very beautiful girl with the name of Onesta." The name, which signifies purity, is evidently chosen for a purpose by Machiavelli, for, while the wife is as pure as an angel, she has more than the pride of Lucifer.

A good idea of the way the story develops can only be obtained by quoting a passage from the translation of the novel:

"He had not long enjoyed the society of his beloved Onesta before he became tenderly attached to her, and was unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now, along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of pride that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her, for her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo's attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an ascendency over him and rule him with an iron rod. Not content with this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her father, her brothers, her friends and relatives, the duty of the matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her taste for dress and every article of the newest fashion, in which our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater's establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his fortune was soon consumed. At length the carnival season was at hand; the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to vie with each other in the splendor of their parties, and the Lady Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance, insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their feasts. For the reason above stated he submitted to her will; nor, indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult it [{457}] might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of preserving the peace and comfort of his household and of awaiting quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case, inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height of asperity, by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered, in consequence of having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs, it is impossible to express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself, amidst his turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being still in good credit, in order to support his rank, he resorted to bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy speculators in the market. Just as his case became extremely delicate, there arrived sudden tidings, both from the East and West, that one of his wife's brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo's profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he himself was lost."

Belphagor fled and, having suffered much from his pursuers, finally escapes, and at the end of the novel is having a rather good time at the court of the King of France, where he has entered into possession of the daughter of the King and is attracting much appreciated attention from friends, relatives, courtiers, physicians and the clergy by the acts which he causes her to perform. An Italian to whom Belphagor had confided his secret comes to Court and recognizes the particular devil's activities. He tries to persuade Belphagor to leave his victim, but the demon refuses absolutely. Finally the Italian, catching Belphagor unawares, calls out that his wife is coming after him. With a shriek, the poor devil abandons his victim and is glad to find his way back to hell.

During the first half of the sixteenth century there are a whole series of Italian novelists, each one of them the writer of many novels. One of the earliest of these is Firenzuola, who is said to have been a monk and who was a scholar, for among his collected works are a translation of "Apuleius' [{458}] Golden Ass," treatises on animals, two comedies, as well as critical and literary work of other kinds. After him came Cinthio, who wrote "Hecatomithi or Hundred Fables." He was a very prolific writer, perhaps the most popular in his own time, with recurring periods of popularity since. His praises were celebrated by nearly all the scholars of the period. His writing was vivid but daring, and the style shows the beginning of that degeneration, from over-consciousness of effort to make it scholarly, so often characteristic of a period when genius is giving place to mere talent. One of his stories furnished the incidents for Shakespeare's "Tragedy of Othello," and this has given Cinthio a place in the commentators on Shakespeare. Another of the Italian novelists whose memory has been frequently renewed for a similar reason was Matteo Bandello, who is often spoken of as the best from a literary standpoint, as he is the most voluminous of the Italian novelists of this period. He is almost the only one of them, besides Boccaccio, known beyond the confines of Italy, and though he was a priest and afterwards a bishop, his stories are as immoral as those of the other novelists of the time.

Indeed, the most important characteristic of all this novel-writing in Italy is that most of the stories were quite without moral qualities, not a few of them were licentious and some of them made their appeal mainly through the liking for descriptions of cruelty to which mankind is apparently always attracted. In our time the corresponding reading is the daily newspaper. The stories of the crime and cruelty of the day before that are told each morning are about of the average length of these novelle as written by the Italian novelists of the Renaissance. There is the same demand for them and they are just as much talked about. For literary quality the novels are infinitely higher than our modern newspaper stories. The interesting thing about these novels of indecency and cruelty is that the claim of their authors at least was that they were written in order to bring about reformation and the correction of evil by spreading the knowledge of it and so making people realize its hideousness. Whenever any excuse is given for our publication of the cruel and immoral details [{459}] of crime in our newspapers, it follows this same specious line of reasoning. Not a few of the writers of the popular novels were clergymen. Bandello was made a bishop, yet continued his writing of novels. It is perfectly possible for good, well-meaning men at any time to be mistaken in the accomplishment of a purpose, and popularity was as great a bait as the making of money is in our time.

One of the most interesting contributions to Italian prose at this time is the "Autobiography" of Benvenuto Cellini, which finds its place very properly after the fiction of the period. The book has been famous in the modern time, particularly since Goethe translated it, and has gone through many editions in nearly every language in Europe. Long ago, Walpole pronounced it "more amusing than any novel," and it is probably rather as fiction than as genuine autobiography that it must be judged. The style is simple, direct, straightforward, and the wonderful romance has great historical value, for Cellini was in contact with most of the great men and many of the higher nobility of his time, and he has used his experiences as the groundwork of the story. It is hard to tell now how much of it may be true, for Cellini's great works of art would seem to contradict it, in so far as it represents him as a frequent brutal murderer, while the amount of labor that he must have given to the many works we have from him would seem to make impossible that he should have spent quite so much time as his life would hint in light living and idleness, while the affection of his contemporaries and their respect for him in his declining years would seem to be further contradiction. He was evidently one of those men who like to be thought worse than they really are and like so many of the artists of all times who are anxious to produce the impression that their works were flashes of genius and not the result of careful patient labor as well.

One of the books that had a very wide influence at this period and which deserves much more than Benvenuto's romance to be thought typical of the time is Baldassare Castiglione's "Cortigiano," in which the author depicts the ideal courtier or gentleman of the time. The method of presentation is by a series of conversations held at the Court of [{460}] Urbino among the distinguished persons who frequented it in the time when most of the best-known characters of the Renaissance found their way occasionally up to the little hill town. Castiglione's standard for the gentleman is very high, not only in personal conduct, but especially in intellectual accomplishment. His purpose to draw the picture of a scholar-gentleman, the ideal of an accomplished knight, seemed to his contemporaries to have been successfully fulfilled. The book was widely read. It influenced not only Italy and France and the Latin-American countries, but above all affected the English deeply. Mr. Courthope says that, "Carried to the North of Europe and grafted on the still chivalrous manners of the English aristocracy, the ideal of Castiglione contributed to form the character of Sir Philip Sidney. Augustus Hare in his "Ladies of the Italian Renaissance" (New York, 1904) says:

"Spenser declared that the aim of his book is the same: 'To fashion a gentleman in noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline.' We might fill a volume with instances of the marvellous influence which the work of Castiglione had upon Elizabethan literature, as we hear it echoing through the sonnets of Shakespeare, Spenser's hymns 'Of Heavenly Love,' Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Burton, the poets and early dramatists, even the grave Ascham; and, amongst later writers, Shelley's 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' is steeped in the same Italian Platonism."

As a rule, indeed, it may be said that what was best in the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance had a much wider influence than the worse elements in it. It is only in after-times that many of the unfortunately too human contributions to the intellectual life of this period have been revived among scholars and have come to be looked upon as expressive of the spirit of the time. In every movement there are always the lesser men whose notes are discordant and who exaggerate the significance of their own ideas and often exhibit the worst side of human nature. To conclude from them, however, as to the real temper of the time and its influence would be a sad mistake. Castiglione meant ever so much more in the Europe of his day than Cellini. The [{461}] "Courtier" sank deep into the minds of poets, artists and literary and educated folk of all classes and aroused what was best in those who were influencing their generation. The "Autobiography" was read much more widely, but mainly by people whose influence over others was to be slight, while the poets and writers and artists did not take it very seriously, but spent a leisure hour or two over it as over any other romance, and turned to their work again.