Renaissance in Italy, Volume 4 (of 7) / Italian Literature, Part 1

by John Addington Symonds

Another poem of Dantesque derivation was the Quadriregio of Federigo Frezzi, Bishop of Foligno.[180] It is an allegorical account of human life; and the four regions, which give their name to the book, are the realms of Love, Satan, Vice and Virtue.[181] To cast the moralizations of the middle ages in a form imitated from Dante, after Dante had already condensed the ethics and politics, the theology and science of his century in the Divine Comedy, was little less than a hopeless task. Nor need a word be spent upon the Quadriregio, except by way of illustrating the peculiar conditions of the poetic art, here upon the border-land between the middle age and the Renaissance. Federigo Frezzi was intent on depicting the victories of virtue over vice, and on explaining the advantage offered to the Christian by grace. Yet he chose a mythological framework for his doctrine. Cupid, Venus and Minerva are confused with Satan, Enoch and Elijah. Instead of Eden there is the golden age. Nymphs of Diana, Juno, and the like, are used as emblems. Pallas discourses about Christ, and expounds the Christian system of redemption. The earthly Paradise contains Helicon, with all the antique poets. Jupiter is contrasted with Satan. It is the same blending of antique with Christian motives which we note in the Divine Comedy; but the tact of the great artist is absent, and the fusion becomes grotesque. After reading through the poem we lay it down with the same feeling as that produced in us by studying some pulpit of the Pisan School, where a Gothic Devil, all horns and hoofs and grinning jaws, squats cheek by jowl with a Madonna copied from a Roman tomb. The following description of Cupid recalls the manner of the Sienese frescanti[182]:

Appena questo priego havea io decto quando egli apparve ad me fresco et giocondo, in un giardino ove io stava solecto. Di mirto coronato il capo biondo in forma pueril con si bel viso che mai piu bel fu visto in questo mondo. Creso haverai che su del paradiso fusse el suo aspecto, tanto era sovrano, se non che quando a lui mirai fiso Vidi che haveva uno archo orato in mano col quale Achille et Hercole percosse.

Here is the picture of the Golden Age, transcribed from Latin poetry, much as it was destined to control the future of Italian fancy[183]:

Vergine saggia e bella el ciel adorna di cui Virgilio poetando scripse, nuova progenie al mondo dal ciel torna, Rexe già el mondo et si la gente visse socto lei in pace che la età dell oro et seculo giusto et beato si disse. La terra allora senza alcun lavoro dava li fructi, et non faceva spine, ne ancho al giogo si domava el thoro; Non erano divisi per confine anchora i campi, et nesun per guadagno cercava le contrade pelegrine; Ognuno era fratello, ognun compagno, et era tanto amor, tanta pietade, che ad un fonte bevea el lupo et l'agno; Non eran lancia, non erano spade, non era anchor la pecunia peggiore che 'l guerigiante ferro piu si fiade; La invidia allor vedendo tanto amore di questo bene ad se genero pene e desto gaudio ad se diede dolore.

A little while beyond this foretaste of the cinque cento, we find Charon copied, without addition, but with a fatal loss of poetry, from the Inferno[184]:

Vidi Caron non molto da lontano con una nave in mezo la tempesta, che conducea con un gran remo in mano: Et ciaschuno occhio chelli havea in testa, pareva come di nocte una lumiera, o un falo quando si fa per festa. Quando egli fu appresso alla riviera un mezo miglio quasi o poco mancho, scacci sua faccia grande vizza e nera. Egli havea el capo di canuti biancho, el manto adosso rapezato et uncto, el volto si crudel non vidi un quancho.

Last upon the list of Dantesque imitators stands Matteo Palmieri, a learned Florentine, who composed his Città di Vita in the middle of the fifteenth century. This poem won for its author from Marsilio Ficino the title of Poeta Theologicus.[185] Its chief interest at the present time is that the theology expressed in it brought suspicion of heresy on Palmieri. He held Origen's opinion that the souls of men were rebel angels. How a doctrine of this kind could be rendered in painting is not clear. Yet Giorgio Vasari tells us that a picture executed for Matteo Palmieri by Sandro Botticelli, which represented the Assumption of the Virgin into the celestial hierarchy—Powers, Princedoms, Thrones and Dominations ranged around her in concentric circles—fell under the charge of heterodoxy. The altar in S. Pietro Maggiore where it was placed had to be interdicted, and the picture veiled from sight.[186] The story forms a curious link between this last scion of medieval literature and the painting of the Renaissance. After Palmieri the meter of the Divine Comedy was chiefly used for satire and burlesque. Lorenzo de' Medici adapted its grave rhythms to parody in I Beoni. Berni used it for the Capitoli of the Pesche and the Peste. At Florence it became the recognized meter for obscene and frivolous compositions, which delighted the Academicians of the sixteenth century. The people, meanwhile, continued to employ it in Lamenti, historical compositions, and personal Capitoli.[187] Thus Cellini wrote his poem called I Carceri in terza rima, and Giovanni Santi used it for his precious but unpoetical Chronicle of Italian affairs. Both Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti composed elegies in this meter; and numerous didactic eclogues of the pastoral poets might be cited in which it served for analogue to Latin elegiacs. In the Sacre Rappresentazioni it sometimes interrupted ottava rima, on the occasion of a set discourse or sermon.[188] Both Ariosto and Alamanni employed it in their satires. From these brief notices it will be seen that terza rima during the Renaissance period was reserved for dissertational, didactic and satiric themes, the Capitoli of the burlesque poets being parodies of grave scholastic lucubrations. But no one now attempted an heroic poem in this verse.[189]

To give a full account of Italian prose during this period of transition from the middle age to the Renaissance is not easy. At the close of the fourteenth century, S. Catherine of Siena sustained the purity and "dove-like simplicity" of the earlier trecento style, with more of fervor and personal power than any subsequent writer. Her letters, whether addressed to Popes and princes on the politics of Italy, or dealing with private topics of religious experience, are models of the purest Tuscan diction.[190] They have the garrulity and over-unctuous sweetness of the Fioretti and Leggende. But these qualities, peculiar to medieval piety among Italians, are balanced by untutored eloquence which borders on sublimity. Without deliberate art or literary aim, the spirit of a noble woman speaks from the heart in Catherine's letters. The fervor of her feeling suggests poetic imagery. The justice of her perception dictates weighty sentences. The intensity with which she realizes the unseen world of spiritual emotion, gives dramatic movement to her exhortations, expositions and entreaties. These rare excellences of a style, where spontaneity surpasses artifice, are combined in the famous epistle to her confessor, Raimondo da Capua, describing the execution of Niccolò Tuldo.[191] He was a young man of Perugia, condemned to death for some act of insubordination. Catherine visited him in prison, and induced him to take the Sacrament with her for the first time. He besought her to be present with him at the place of execution. Accordingly she waited for him there, praying to Mary and to Catherine, the virgin saint of Alexandria, laying her own neck upon the block, and entering into harmony so rapt with those celestial presences that the multitude of men who were around her disappeared from view. What followed, must be told in her own words:

Poi egli giunse, come uno agnello mansueto: e vedendomi, cominciò a ridere; e volse che io gli facesse il segno della croce. E ricevuto il segno, dissi io: "Giuso! alle nozze, fratello mio dolce! chè tosto sarai alla vita durabile." Posesi quì con grande mansuetudine; e io gli distesi il collo, e chinàmi giù, e rammentalli il sangue dell'Agnello. La bocca sua non diceva se non, Gesù, e Catarina. E, così dicendo, ricevetti il capo nelle mani mie, fermando l'occhio nella divina bontà e dicendo: "Io voglio."