There cannot have been an entire absence of dramatic literature in Italy in the 14th century, but traces of it are wanting, although we find them again in great abundance in the 15th century. The 14th century had, however, one Drama. drama unique of its kind. In the sixty years (1250 to 1310) which ran from the death of the emperor Frederick II. to the expedition of Henry VII., no emperor had come into Italy. In the north of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, with the title of imperial vicar, had taken possession of almost the whole of the March of Treviso, and threatened Lombardy. The popes proclaimed a crusade against him, and, crushed by it, the Ezzelini fell. Padua then began to breathe again, and took to extending its dominion. There was living at Padua Albertino Mussato, born in 1261, a year after the catastrophe of the Ezzelini; he grew up among the survivors of a generation that hated the name of the tyrant. After having written in Latin a history of Henry VII. he devoted himself to a dramatic work on Ezzelino, and wrote it also in Latin. The Eccerinus, which was probably never represented on the stage, has been by some critics compared to the great tragic works of Greece. It would probably be nearer the truth to say that it has nothing in common with the works of Aeschylus; but certainly the dramatic strength, the delineation of certain situations, and the narration of certain events are very original. Mussato’s work stands alone in the history of Italian dramatic literature. Perhaps this would not have been the case if he had written it in Italian.
In the last years of the 14th century we find the struggle that was soon to break out between the indigenous literary tradition and the reviving classicism already alive in spirit. As representatives of this struggle, of this antagonism, we may consider Luigi Marsilio and Coluccio Salutati, both learned men who spoke and wrote Latin, who aspired to be humanists, but who meanwhile also loved Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and felt and celebrated in their writings the beauty of Italian literature.
3. The Renaissance.—A great intellectual movement, which had been gathering for a long time, made itself felt in Italy in the 15th century. A number of men arose, all learned, laborious, indefatigable, and all intent on one great Graeco-Latin learning. work. Such were Niccolò Niccoli, Giannozzo Manetti, Palla Strozzi, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Filelfo, Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo d’Arezzo, Lorenzo Valla. Manetti buried himself in his books, slept only for a few hours in the night, never went out of doors, and spent his time in translating from Greek, studying Hebrew, and commenting on Aristotle. Palla Strozzi sent into Greece at his own expense to search for ancient books, and had Plutarch and Plato brought for him. Poggio Bracciolini went to the Council of Constance, and found in a monastery in the dust-hole Cicero’s Orations. He copied Quintilian with his own hand, discovered Lucretius, Plautus, Pliny and many other Latin authors. Guarino went through the East in search of codices. Giovanni Aurispa returned to Venice with many hundreds of manuscripts. What was the passion that excited all these men? What did they search after? What did they look to? These Italians were but handing on the solemn tradition which, although partly latent, was the informing principle of Italian medieval history, and now at length came out triumphant. This tradition was that same tenacious and sacred memory of Rome, that same worship of its language and institutions, which at one time had retarded the development of Italian literature, and now grafted the old Latin branch of ancient classicism on the flourishing stock of Italian literature. All this is but the continuation of a phenomenon that has existed for ages. It is the thought of Rome that always dominates Italians, the thought that keeps appearing from Boetius to Dante Alighieri, from Arnold of Brescia to Cola di Rienzi, which gathers strength with Petrarch and Boccaccio, and finally becomes triumphant in literature and life—in life, because the modern spirit is fed on the works of the ancients. Men come to have a more just idea of nature: the world is no longer cursed or despised; truth and beauty join hands; man is born again; and human reason resumes its rights. Everything, the individual and society, are changed under the influence of new facts.
First of all there was formed a human individuality, which was wanting in the middle ages. As J. Burckhardt has said, the man was changed into the individual. He began to feel and assert his own personality, which was constantly New social conditions. attaining a fuller realization. As a consequence of this, the idea of fame and the desire for it arose. A really cultured class was formed, in the modern meaning of the word, and the conception was arrived at (completely unknown in former times) that the worth of a man did not depend at all on his birth but on his personal qualities. Poggio in his dialogue De nobilitate declares that he entirely agreed with his interlocutors Niccolò Niccoli and Lorenzo de’ Medici in the opinion that there is no other nobility but that of personal merit. External life was growing more refined in all particulars; the man of society was created; rules for civilized life were made; there was an increasing desire for sumptuous and artistic entertainments. The medieval idea of existence was turned upside down; men who had hitherto turned their thoughts exclusively to heavenly things, and believed exclusively in the divine right, now began to think of beautifying their earthly existence, of making it happy and gay, and returned to a belief in their human rights. This was a great advance, but one which carried with it the seeds of many dangers. The conception of morality became gradually weaker. The “fay ce que vouldras” of Rabelais became the first principle of life. Religious feeling was blunted, was weakened, was changed, became pagan again. Finally the Italian of the Renaissance, in his qualities and his passions, became the most remarkable representative of the heights and depths, of the virtues and faults, of humanity. Corruption was associated with all that is most ideal in life; a profound scepticism took hold of people’s minds; indifference to good and evil reached its highest point.
Besides this, a great literary danger was hanging over Italy. Humanism threatened to submerge its youthful national literature. There were authors who laboriously tried to Literary dangers of Latinism. give Italian Latin forms, to do again, after Dante’s time, what Guittone d’Arezzo had so unhappily done in the 13th century. Provincial dialects tried to reassert themselves in literature. The great authors of the 14th century, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were by many people forgotten or despised.
It was Florence that saved literature by reconciling the classical models to modern feeling, Florence that succeeded in assimilating classical forms to the “vulgar” art. Still gathering vigour and elegance from classicism, Influence of Florence. still drawing from the ancient fountains all that they could supply of good and useful, it was able to preserve its real life, to keep its national traditions, and to guide literature along the way that had been opened to it by the writers of the preceding century. At Florence the most celebrated humanists wrote also in the vulgar tongue, and commented on Dante and Petrarch, and defended them from their enemies. Leone Battista Alberti, the learned Greek and Latin scholar, wrote in the vernacular, and Vespasiano da Bisticci, whilst he was constantly absorbed in Greek and Latin manuscripts, wrote the Vite di uomini illustri, valuable for their historical contents, and rivalling the best works of the 14th century in their candour and simplicity. Andrea da Barberino wrote the beautiful prose of the Reali di Francia, giving a colouring of “romanità” to the chivalrous romances. Belcari and Benivieni carry us back to the mystic idealism of earlier times.
But it is in Lorenzo de’ Medici that the influence of Florence on the Renaissance is particularly seen. His mind was formed by the ancients: he attended the class of the Greek Argyropulos, sat at Platonic banquets, took pains to Lorenzo de’ Medici. collect codices, sculptures, vases, pictures, gems and drawings to ornament the gardens of San Marco and to form the library afterwards called by his name. In the saloons of his Florentine palace, in his villas at Careggi, Fiesole and Ambra, stood the wonderful chests painted by Dello with stories from Ovid, the Hercules of Pollajuolo, the Pallas of Botticelli, the works of Filippino and Verrocchio. Lorenzo de’ Medici lived entirely in the classical world; and yet if we read his poems we only see the man of his time, the admirer of Dante and of the old Tuscan poets, who takes inspiration from the popular muse, and who succeeds in giving to his poetry the colours of the most pronounced realism as well as of the loftiest idealism, who passes from the Platonic sonnet to the impassioned triplets of the Amori di Venere, from the grandiosity of the Salve to Nencia and to Beoni, from the Canto carnascialesco to the Lauda. The feeling of nature is strong in him—at one time sweet and melancholy, at another vigorous and deep, as if an echo of the feelings, the sorrows, the ambitions of that deeply agitated life. He liked to look into his own heart with a severe eye, but he was also able to pour himself out with tumultuous fulness. He described with the art of a sculptor; he satirized, laughed, prayed, sighed, always elegant, always a Florentine, but a Florentine who read Anacreon, Ovid and Tibullus, who wished to enjoy life, but also to taste of the refinements of art.
Next to Lorenzo comes Poliziano, who also united, and with greater art, the ancient and the modern, the popular and the classical style. In his Rispetti and in his Ballate the Poliziano. freshness of imagery and the plasticity of form are inimitable. He, a great Greek scholar, wrote Italian verses with dazzling colours; the purest elegance of the Greek sources pervaded his art in all its varieties, in the Orfeo as well as the Stanze per la giostra.
As a consequence of the intellectual movement towards the Renaissance, there arose in Italy in the 15th century three academies, those of Florence, of Naples and of Rome. The Florentine academy was founded by Cosmo I. The Academies. de’ Medici. Having heard the praises of Platonic philosophy sung by Gemistus Pletho, who in 1439 was at the council of Florence, he took such a liking for those opinions that he soon made a plan for a literary congress which was especially to discuss them. Marsilius Ficinus has described the occupations and the entertainments of these academicians. Here, he said, the young men learnt, by way of pastime, precepts of conduct and the practice of eloquence; here grown-up men studied the government of the republic and the family; here the aged consoled themselves with the belief in a future world. The academy was divided into three classes: that of patrons, who were members of the Medici family; that of hearers, among whom sat the most famous men of that age, such as Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, Leon Battista Alberti; that of disciples, who were youths anxious to distinguish themselves in philosophical pursuits. It is known that the Platonic academy endeavoured to promote, with regard to art, a second and a more exalted revival of antiquity. The Roman academy was founded by Giulio Pomponio Leto, with the object of promoting the discovery and the investigation of ancient monuments and books. It was a sort of religion of classicism, mixed with learning and philosophy. Platina, the celebrated author of the lives of the first hundred popes, belonged to it. At Naples, the academy known as the Pontaniana was instituted. The founder of it was Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed Il Panormita, and after his death the head was Il Pontano, who gave his name to it, and whose mind animated it.
Romantic poems were the product of the moral scepticism and the artistic taste of the 15th century. Italy never had any true epic poetry in its period of literary birth. Still less could it have any in the Renaissance. It had, Romantic poetry. however, many poems called Cantari, because they contained stories that were sung to the people; and besides there were romantic poems, such as the Buovo d’ Antona, the Regina Ancroja and others. But the first to introduce elegance and a new life into this style was Luigi Pulci, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and who wrote the Morgante Maggiore at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The material of the Morgante is almost completely taken from an obscure chivalrous poem of the 15th century recently discovered by Professor Pio Rajna. On this foundation Pulci erected a structure of his own, often turning the subject into ridicule, burlesquing the characters, introducing many digressions, now capricious, now scientific, now theological. Pulci’s merit consists in having been the first to raise the romantic epic which had been for two centuries in the hands of story-tellers into a work of art, and in having united the serious and the comic, thus happily depicting the manners and feelings of the time. With a more serious intention Matteo Boiardo, count of Scandiano, wrote his Orlando innamorato, in which he seems to have aspired to embrace the whole range of Carlovingian legends; but he did not complete his task. We find here too a large vein of humour and burlesque. Still the Ferrarese poet is drawn to the world of romance by a profound sympathy for chivalrous manners and feelings—that is to say, for love, courtesy, valour and generosity. A third romantic poem of the 15th century was the Mambriano by Francesco Bello (Cieco of Ferrara). He drew from the Carlovingian cycle, from the romances of the Round Table, from classical antiquity. He was a poet of no common genius, and of ready imagination. He showed the influence of Boiardo, especially in something of the fantastic which he introduced into his work.