APPENDIX III.

On Palmieri's "Città di Vita." (To illustrate [Part I. p. 171].)

In the first part of this sketch of Italian literary history (Renaissance in Italy, [vol. iv.] [p. 171], [note 2]) I promised, if possible, to give some further notice of Palmieri's poem entitled the Città di Vita. This promise I was unable to fulfill in the proper place. But while my book was going through the press, I obtained the necessary materials for such a study of Palmieri's work through the courtesy of a Florentine scholar, Signor A. Gherardi, who sent me extracts from a MS. existing in the Laurentian Library. This MS., which is an illuminated parchment codex, contains, besides the poem, the commentary of Lionardo Dati, with his Life of the author and two of his letters addressed to Palmieri. Whether or not the codex is an autograph, remains uncertain. But it has this singular interest, that Matteo Palmieri himself presented it to the Art of the Notaries in Florence, sealed and under the express condition that it should not be opened so long as he lived imprisoned in his body—"ut non aperiatur dum in suo religatus corpusculo vivat." After his death, the Republic decreed a public funeral to their honored magistrate and servant; and the MS. in question was placed upon his breast in the church of S. Pier Maggiore, where he was interred in the family chapel of the Palmieri. Alamanno Rinuccini pronounced the panegyrical oration on this occasion; and in his speech he alluded to "this bulky volume which lies upon his breast, a poem in terza rima, called by him the City of Life."

It would appear, from the circumstance of the volume having been presented under seal to the Art of the Notaries, that Palmieri, while wishing to secure the safety of his poem, was aware of its liability to censure. What he may have dreaded, happened after his decease; for his opinions were condemned as heretical, and the picture Botticelli painted for him in illustration of his views, was removed from its place in the Palmieri Chapel of S. Pier Maggiore. This picture is now in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton.

The MS. of the Città di Vita passed from the Art of the Notaries into the Laurentian Library. Since the biographical notices from the pen of Palmieri's friend, Lionardo Dati, which this MS. contains, form our most trustworthy source of information about the poet's life, it may be well to preface the account of his poem with an abstract of their contents. Matteo Palmieri was a member of an honorable Florentine family. Born in 1405, he received his first education in grammar from Sozomeno of Pistoja. Afterwards he studied Greek and Latin letters in the schools of Carlo Aretino and Ambrogio Traversari. In early manhood he entered public life, and passed through the various Florentine magistracies to the dignity of Gonfalonier of Justice. The Signory employed him upon embassies to Calixtus III., Frederick III., Alfonso the Magnanimous and Paul II. Matteo devoted his leisure to study and composition. The treatise Della Vita Civile, which he wrote in Italian, was a work of his adolescence. Then followed, in Latin, a Life of Niccolò Acciaiolo, a narrative of the successful war with Pisa, and a Universal History, which was subsequently continued by Mattia Palmieri—a Pisan, who, though he bore the same name, was in no wise related to our author. The Città di Vita was a work of his mature age. He died probably in 1478.

Matteo told Lionardo Dati that on the first of August, 1451, while he was living at Pescia as Governor of the Val di Nievole, he dreamed that his dead friend Cipriano Rucellai appeared to him, and invited him to the yearly festival which was celebrated on that day in a monastery, called Il Paradiso, near Florence. In his dream, Matteo accompanied the ghost of Cipriano, conversing on the way about the state of spirits after death—where they dwell, and how they are permitted to revisit their living friends. Cipriano, moreover, revealed to him weighty matters concerning the nature of the human soul. He told him how God first made angels in innumerable hosts. These angels separated into three companies. The one band followed Lucifer, when he rebelled. The second held with Michael and abode firm in their allegiance. The third decided neither for God nor for the Devil. After Lucifer's defeat, these angels of the third class were relegated to the Elysian fields, which extend at all points over the extreme periphery of the highest sphere; and God, wishing to give them a final chance of determining for good or evil, ordained that they should, one by one, be sent to dwell in human bodies. There, attended by a good and a bad spirit, they have the choice of lives, and after their death in the body, are drafted into the trains of Lucifer or Michael according to their conduct. Having communicated this doctrine, Cipriano vanished from his friend's sight with these words upon his lips:

Misero ad noi quanto mal segno
Rizoron quelli che si fer ribelli
Per porre in aquilon loco più degno.

Palmieri forgot or neglected the import of his dream until the year 1455, when he was at Alfonso's Court in Naples. There Cipriano appeared to him again, rebuked him for his carelessness, and bade him write a poem in terza rima, after Dante's method, on the subject of their former discourse. He also recommended him three books, which would assist him in the labor. When Palmieri returned to Florence, he obtained these helps and set about the composition of his poem. It must have been completed in 1464; for in this year Dati received a copy, which he styled opus pæne divinum, and began to annotate. In 1466 Dati wrote again to Palmieri, thanking him for an emended copy of the work, which the author had sent him from Florence to Rome. Palmieri's own letter accompanying the gift, refers to the poem as already published. This proves (as would, indeed, appear from the title given him by Ficino of Poeta Theologicus) that, whatever may have been his dread of a prosecution for heresy, he had at least divulged the Città di Vita to the learned.