“For no sin except for lack of faith.”
Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel hands of tourists.
A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St. Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping because he had come too late for him.
In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor. Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as “My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo, snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am every instant tempted to exclaim: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis, and to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”
Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”
As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice. Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de Rossi, in the Roma Sotteranea, quotes the following passage from a letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity. Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However, the pope, so far from being the farouche and sanguinary ruler M. Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement, and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great number of bishops and prelates of the church.[[87]] Pope Leo X. himself, before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its reunions. Archæology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature, especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life. Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato, after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane reading.
Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.
The De Partu Virginis is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of paganism.
A BIRTH-DAY SONG.
TWENTY-ONE.
Bright summer sun, to-day