Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

II. As a notable informer in the Annals of the exact spirit of his age, Bracciolini necessarily places before his reader not a few pictures of the deterioration of moral principles in the aphrodisiac direction; his book reflects in the most vivid light the strange and very wonderful depravities of his period, some so huge as to deviate greatly out of the common course of nature. From time to time the historic and philosophic gravity of the last six books of the Annals suffers great eclipses by his leaving aside weighty affairs of State to descend into petty descriptions of the erratic conduct of Messalina, with her extravagant lewdness (XI. 26-8), Nero, with his abominable pollutions (XVI. 37), and that Emperor's mother, Agrippina, with her monstrous incest (XIV. 2). These matters, even if true of the ancient Romans in the first century of our aera, Tacitus, we may be certain, would have avoided as not coming within the scope of the historian's province, and as being altogether uncongenial to his sublime tone of elevated sentiments and high-minded refinement. But anyone conversant with the writings and temper of Bracciolini will know well that such passages, instead of being in any way distasteful, would be altogether agreeable. To be convinced, one has only to glance at the collection of anecdotes, styled "Facetiae," at the end of his works, which even a frequenter of the Judge and Jury Society would consider justly liable to objection, howbeit that a pious gentleman in holy orders who wrote a Life of Bracciolini, the Reverend William Shepherd, can find words of palliation for them as sprightly pleasantries. They show us Bracciolini in his merry mood; they give us a fresh glimpse into the fifteenth century; they may be considered the best jokes or Joe Millerisms of the fifteenth century, such as the one commencing "Homo è nostris rusticanus, et haud multum prudens" (Pog. Op. 423), the one that follows entitled "De Vidua accensa libidine cum paupere" (ibid); and that which begins "Adolescens nobilis et forma insignis" (p. 433).

The taste of Bracciolini which is shown by these "Facetiae," is still more forcibly exhibited in a letter to Becadelli of Bologna (Ep. II. 40), in which he gloats over a book of indecent epigrams which his friend had written; he describes it as a "work at once waggish and luxuriating in voluptuousness," "opus et jocosum et plenum voluptatis," and as "a most sweet book," "liber est suavissimus." With respect to his own feelings on reading it, he observes, "that he was delighted beyond measure at the variety of the subjects and the elegance of the poetry; at the same time he wondered how things so improper and so obscene could be represented by his friend so gracefully and so neatly, and" he was of opinion that "the many excessive obscenities were expressed in such a manner that they seemed not only to be depicted but to have been actually committed; for he could not help thinking that they must be considered as facts, and not as fictions merely for the sake of entertaining the reader":—"Delectatus sum, mehercule, varietate rerum et elegantia versuum: simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas tam venuste, tam composite a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula, ut non enarrari, sed agi videantur: neque ficta a te jocandi causa, ut existimo, sed acta aestimari possunt." Such was his extravagant commendation, and, consequently, his hearty approbation of a most unnatural production, "Hermaphroditus," which ultimately received the censure of the author himself, who was ashamed that he had written it, as shown in the following epigram preserved by Cardinal Quirini in his "Diatriba in Epistolas Francisci Barbari":—

"Hic faeces varias Veneris, moresque prophanos, Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet."

III. We shall now see how accurately a writer in the middle of the last century, the Reverend Thomas Hunter, in his "Observations on Tacitus" (p. 51), hit off the character of Bracciolini, all the while that he fancied he was venting objurgations on the staid old Roman: "If he is anywhere happy in his description, it is in the display of … luxury refined and high-flavoured … Never writer had a happier pen at describing wickedness … Were we to give room to suspicions … we should say that he might have been … a party in every lewd scene he represents."

Mr. Hunter proceeds: "Messalina's guilty amours with Silius are described with a gay and festive air, with that pride of voluptuousness, and feeling taste of pleasure, as show the writer well versed in court intrigue. The description is too luscious, and may lead to a perpetration of the crime, rather than an abhorrence of the criminals."

Only one fault is to be found with this criticism, which is both excellent and curious,—excellent, because remarkable for its simple truthfulness,—curious, because it looks as if Hunter, who knew nothing about Bracciolini, had the eyes of a cat and could see in the dark;—the fault is that the writer applies the criticism to one eminently undeserving of its causticity;—because though we have quoted "If he is," Hunter wrote, "If Tacitus is"; now Tacitus never wrote any descriptions of the nature commented on by the Vicar of Wrexham; they are not to be found in any of the works that pass under his name except the Annals; there is this excuse to be found for Hunter, that, at the time when he wrote, he was compelled to take the majestic Roman Consul to be the author of the Annals; but though his criticism is not applicable in a single syllable to Tacitus, it is strictly applicable in every word to Bracciolini, whom he never dreamt of as the composer of the Annals.

IV. It matters not what a man may attempt in literature, what style he may adopt, or what old pattern imitate,—he cannot get away from the impulses of his own time, strive he ever so hard: the tone and colour of his work will be modified by actual history and current politics; his strongest impressions will be influenced by the deeds that are being transacted and the lives that are being passed around him; so that however wide, searching and vigorous may be his powers of observation, thought and intellect, he cannot liberate these from contemporary associations; any endeavour to do that must end in failure, ending, as it must, in artificial coldness and unemotional lifelessness. Bracciolini never made the attempt; he gave way to Nature, and never did his genius shine so brightly, and never was it more prolific, than when dealing with the diversity required of it by the history embraced in the Annals.

V. I am now about to make some remarks which I am glad to say, will get for this book a place in the "Index Expurgatorius" in Rome; and which will do a great deal more than that,—considerably amaze the shade of Bracciolini (supposing that he has a shade), perhaps as much as M. Jourdain was astonished when told that he had been talking prose all his life.

Every student of the Annals, in order rightly to understand its meaning and properly to appreciate its greatness, should bear in mind that the Emperors who play a part in it, Claudius and Nero in the last six books, and Tiberius in the first six, are intended to be the representatives or personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century. Hence it is that Claudius, Nero and Tiberius are depicted as superhuman in monstrosities,—colossal in crime,—perpetrators of enormities that never yet met, and never will meet, in combination in any single man. Each is, in fact, a fiend, and not a human being. It was thus only that Bracciolini could show us in its true light the Church of Rome as it acted in his day. In the language of Wickliffe it was the "Synagogue of Satan." A mere trifle was it that reprobates in the form of bishops and priests ordained, consecrated and sacrificed. See the Church at an Oecumenical Council; then it capped the climax of cruelty and crime; it resorted to demoniacal subterfuge to condemn good men as heretics and burn them alive, believing that death by fire would inflict the most exquisitely excruciating tortures; at the Council of Constance it sought to condemn Wickliffe, by making an inference from some of his principles that he propagated the doctrine,—"God is obliged to obey the Devil,"—nowhere to be found in the Trialogue, Dialogue, and all the other works, treatises, and opuscles or small pieces bearing the name of that honoured and most pious divine: it consigned to the flames those two intimate friends and associates, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, for holding just and virtuous views about the degradation of the priestly office, and for nobly and fearlessly inveighing against the corruptions of the pontifical court, the pomp and pride of prelates, and the dissipated habits and abuses of the clergy.

When we read in the Annals of men, who, in spite of their nobility, innocence and virtues, were put to death by the sword of the executioner or the poisoned bowl, we must not think that we are reading of real Romans who thus actually suffered: the whole is a fabrication placing before us fictitious pictures, meant to be life-like, of what the DOMINATING POWER CAN DO IN SOCIETY: they are not pictures intended to show with truthfulness monstrosities positively done by Emperors of Rome in the first century: they are pictures that reflect with fidelity the atrocities that stained the Church of Rome in the beginning of the fifteenth century.