Another point for observation is that the centre of humanistic studies has shifted.[506] Florence, disillusioned, drained of strength, and sucked dry by the tyrants, holds her tongue. The schools of Naples and of Rome are silent. Lombardy is now the mother of poets, who draw their inspiration no longer from Valdarno or the myrtle groves of Posilippo, but from the blue waves of Garda.[507] The university where science still flourishes is Padua. The best professors of the classics, Celio Calcagnini and Lilius Gyraldus, teach at Ferrara. Bembo, the dictator of letters for his century, Navagero, the sweetest versifier, Contarini, the most sober student, are Venetians. Stefano Sauli, the author of a Ciceronian treatise on the Christian hero, is a patrician of Genoa. Sadoleto and Molsa are Modenese. Verona claims Fracastoro and the Torriani. Imola is the mother city of Flaminio. Castiglione and Capilupo are natives of Mantua; Amalteo and Vida of Forli and Cremona; Bonfadio and Archio of Lake Garda. If we seek the causes of this change, we find them partly in the circumstance that Venice at this period was free, while Ferrara still retained her independence under native princes; partly also in the fact that Florence had already overtaxed her intellectual energies. Like a creeping paralysis, the extinction of liberty and spiritual force was gradually invading all the members of the Italian community. The Revival of Learning came to an end, as far as Italy was concerned, in these Transpadane poets.
To trace the history of philosophic thought, set in motion by the Renaissance and stamped out by the Counter-Reformation, and to describe the aftergrowth of art and literature encouraged by the Catholic reaction, must form the subject of a separate inquiry.
I hope, if I have time and strength, after the completion of my work on the Renaissance, to trace this sequel in a volume on 'Italy and the Council of Trent.' To this chapter of Italian history will also belong the philosophy of the sixteenth century, the poetry of Tasso, the painting of the Bolognese masters, and the new music of Palestrina.
[CHAPTER IX]
CONCLUSION
General Survey—The Part played in the Revival by the Chief Cities—Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest—Place of the Humanists in Society—Distributors of Praise and Blame—Flattery and Libels—Comparison with the Sophists—The Form preferred to the Matter of Literature—Ideal of Culture as an end in itself—Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen—Intrusion of Humanism into the Church—Irreligion of the Humanists—Gyraldi's 'Progymnasma'—Ariosto—Bohemian Life—Personal Immorality—Want of Fixed Principles—Professional Vanity—Literary Pride—Estimate of Humanistic Literature—Study of Style—Influence of Cicero—Valla's 'Elegantiæ'—Stylistic Puerilities—Value attached to Rhetoric—'Oratore'—Moral Essays—Epistolography—Historics—Critical and Antiquarian Studies—Large Appreciation of Antiquity—Liberal Spirit—Poggio and Jerome of Prague—Humanistic Type of Education—Its Diffusion through Europe—Future Prospects—Decay of Learning in Italy.
In tracing the history of the Revival, we have seen how the impulse, first communicated by Petrarch, was continued by Boccaccio and his immediate successors. We have watched the enthusiasm for antiquity strike root in Florence, spread to Rome, and penetrate the Courts of Italy. One city after another receives the light and hands it on, until the whole cycle of study has been traversed and the vigour of the nation is exhausted. Florence discovers manuscripts, founds libraries, learns Greek, and leads the movement of the fifteenth century. Naples criticises; Rome translates; Mantua and Ferrara form a system of education; Venice commits the literature of the classics to the press. By the combined and successive activity of the chief Italian centres, not only is the culture of antiquity regained; it is also appropriated in all its various branches, discussed and illustrated, placed beyond the reach of accident, and delivered over in its integrity to Europe. The work thus performed by the Italians was begun in peace; but it had to be continued under the pressure of wars and national disasters unparalleled in the history of any other modern people. Not for a single moment did the students relax their energy. In the midst of foreign armies, deafened by the roar of cannon and the tumult of sacked towns, exiled from their homes, robbed of their books, deprived of their subsistence, they advanced to their end with the irresistible obstinacy of insects. The drums and tramplings of successive conquests and invasions by four warlike nations—Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Swiss—could not disturb them. Drop by drop, Italy was being drained of blood; from the first the only question was which of her assailants should possess the beauty of her corpse. Yet the student, intent upon his manuscripts, paid but little heed. So non-existent was the sense of nationality in Italy that the Italians did not know they were being slowly murdered. When the agony was over, and the ruin was accomplished, they congratulated themselves on being still the depositaries of polite literature. Nations that are nations, seek to inspire fear, or at least respect. The Italians were contented with admiration, and looked confidently to the world for gratitude. The task of two toilsome, glorious centuries had been accomplished. The chasm between Rome and the Renaissance was bridged over, and a plain way was built for the progressive human spirit. Italy, downtrodden in the mire of blood and ruins, should still lead the van and teach the peoples. It was a sublime delusion, the last phase of an impulse so powerful in its origin that to prophesy an ending was impossible. Yet how delusive was the expectation is proved by the immediate history of Italy, enslaved and decadent, outstripped by the nations she had taught, and scorned by the world that owed her veneration.
The humanists, who were the organ of this intellectual movement, formed, as we have seen, a literary commonwealth, diffused through all the Courts and cities of Italy. As the secretaries of Popes and princes, as the chancellors of republics, as orators on all occasions of public and private ceremony, they occupied important posts of influence, and had the opportunity of leavening society with their opinions. Furthermore, we have learned to know them in their capacity of professors at the universities, of house-tutors in the service of noblemen, and of authors. Closely connected among themselves by their feuds no less than by their friendships, and working to one common end of scholarship, it was inevitable that these men, after the enthusiasm for antiquity had once become the fashion, should take the lead and mould the genius of the nation. Their epistles, invectives, treatises, and panegyrics, formed the study of an audience that embraced all cultivated minds in Italy. Thus the current literature of humanism played the same part in the fifteenth century as journalism in the nineteenth, and the humanists had the same kind of coherence in relation to the public as the quatrième état of modern times. The respect they inspired as the arbiters of praise and blame, was only equalled by their vast pretensions. Eugenius IV., living at the period of their highest influence, is reported to have said that they were as much to be feared for their malice as to be loved for their learning. While they claimed the power of conferring an immortality of honour or dishonour, no one dared to call their credit with posterity in question. Nothing seemed more dreadful than the fate reserved for Paul II. in the pages of Platina; and even so robust a ruler as Francesco Sforza sought to buy the praises of Filelfo. Flattery in all its branches, fulsome and delicate, wholesale and allusive, was developed by them as an art whereby to gain their living. The official history of this period is rendered almost worthless by its sustained note of panegyrical laudation. Our ears are deafened with the eulogies of petty patrons transformed into Mæcenases, of carpet knights compared to Leonidas, of tyrants equalled with Augustus, and of generals who never looked on bloodshed tricked out as Hannibals or Scipios. As a pendant to panegyric, the art of abuse reached its climax in the invectives whereby the scholars sought to hand their comrades down to all time 'immortally immerded,' or to vilify the public enemies of their employers. As in the case of praise, so also in the case of blame, it is impossible to attach importance to the writings of the humanists. Their vaulting ambition to depreciate each other overleaped itself. All their literature of defamation serves now only to throw light on the general impurity of an age in which such monstrous charges carried weight. Unluckily, this double vice of humanism struck deep roots into Italian literature. Without the scholars of the fifteenth century, it is hardly possible that such a brigand as Pietro Aretino, who levied black mail from princes at the point of his venomous quill, or such an unprincipled biographer as Paolo Giovio, who boasted that he wrote with a golden or a silver pen, as pleased him best, could have existed. Bullying and fawning tainted the very source of history, and a false ideal of the writer's function was established by the practice of men like Poggio.
It is obvious and easy to compare the humanists of the Renaissance with the sophists of antiquity. Whether we think of the rivals of Socrates at Athens, or of the Greek rhetoricians of the Roman period,[508] the parallel is tolerably close. From certain points of view the Italian scholars remind us of the former class; from others, again, they recall the latter. The essence of sophism is the substitution of semblance for reality, indifference to truth provided a fair show be made, combined with verbal ingenuity and practice in the art of exposition. The sophist feels no need of forming opinions on a sound basis, or of adhering to principles. Regarding thought as the subject-matter of literary treatment, he is chiefly concerned with giving it a fair and plausible investiture in language. Instead of recognising that he must live up to the standard he professes, he takes delight in expressing with force the contrary of what he acts. The discord between his philosophy and his conduct awakes no shame in him, because it is the highest triumph of his art to persuade by eloquence and to dazzle by rhetoric. Phrases and sentences supply the place of feelings and convictions. Sonorous cadences and harmonies of language are always ready to conceal the want of substance in his matter or the flimsiness of his argument. At the same time the sophist's enthusiasm for a certain form of culture, and his belief in the sophistic method, may be genuine.