Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) became chancellor
of the University of Florence in 1385.
Pier Paolo Vergerio (1370-1444) studied grammar
at Padua and dialectic in Florence.
He began teaching dialectic and went on to study physics
and medicine at Bologna and law at the University of Padua.
He was influenced by Petrarca and Salutati
and was taught by Giovanni Malpaghini.
In late 1390 or 1391 Vergerio gave a Ciceronian oration
to persuade Francesco Carrara to withdraw his condottiere
Bartolomeo Cermisone, who was still in Padua
and was serving Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
Cermisone was officially recalled in January 1392.
Like Salutati, Vergerio vindicated Cicero, and in 1394
he wrote a reply to Petrarca’s letter to Cicero in Hades.
He favored a republic, but he wrote biographies of the
Carrara despots in his Vitae Principium Carrarensium.
In his fragment De Monarchia Vergerio argued that more
than one ruler tended to cause injustice
and abuse of the weak as the strong strive for power.
He wrote the Life of Francesco Petrarca before returning
to Florence, where he studied Greek 1398-1400.
Salutati and Vergerio were among the first to read Petrarca’s
epic poem Africa about Scipio, and it was edited by Vergerio.
In 1404 while Francesco Novello da Carrara stopped
paying his scholars in order to fund military defense,
Vergerio’s teacher Giovanni Conversino wrote the
Discussion of the Preferable Way of Life,
which is a dialog between a Paduan and a Venetian.
He argued that whenever the people took power,
peace and prosperity were destroyed.
He especially praised King Lajos of Hungary
for lifting his country from barbarism to civilization
while he ruled 1342-82, but he also admired
Niccolo II d’Este of Ferrara and Francesco II da Carrara.
Conversino noted that King Robert of Naples,
Jacopa da Carrara, Niccolo d’Este, and especially
Gian Galeazzo Visconti were the patrons
of the new humanistic learning.
He found that the Venetians were so absorbed
in commerce that they had little time for studies.
In 1405 Venice took over Padua,
and both Conversino and Vergerio were forced to leave.
Vergerio wanted to end the schism in the Church
and attended the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418.
Emperor Sigismund crowned Vergerio poet laureate,
invited him to his court, and gave him a pension.
He spent the rest of his life in Germany.
In 1402 Vergerio wrote the influential humanist treatise
on education, The Character and Studies Befitting a
Free-born Youth (De ingenius moribus et liberalibus
adulescentiae studiis liber) for young Ubertino da Carrara.
He wrote that parents should instruct their children in the
liberal arts so that they may learn virtue
while they are young and impressionable.
People desire wealth, glory, and pleasure,
but they should seek to excel in what is greatest—
virtue and the development of character.
Humans should look to their own abilities
and develop the intellect in order to be free.
The well-constituted mind does not reject anyone
but puts the best construction on what is said and done.
In developing their character the youth should be
discouraged from lying, which may become a bad habit.
Vices change with age.
The young burn with lust; the middle-aged are ambitious;
and the elderly waste away in avarice.
The young should be kept as pure as possible by
preventing
premature sexual activity, by keeping away from wine,
by practicing religion,
and by treating elders
with profound respect.
Vergerio outlined a program of liberal studies worthy
of the free that develops virtue and wisdom.
Seeking profit and pleasure are for the illiberal.
Excessive freedom may be too indulgent,
but harsh discipline and criticism may sap intellectual vigor.
A noble nature rises above hardships, and great wealth
usually injures good minds more than poverty.
Hercules took the path of virtue rather than pleasure.
The pursuit of knowledge leads to wondrous pleasures
in the mind and, when nurtured, bears fruit.
Books extend human memories, and by reading
one can learn from many generations and from far and wide.
Knowledge of history aids the study of moral philosophy
because of the examples.
Philosophy is a liberal study because it makes one free.
Developing eloquence helps one in civic life
because one can persuade others.
Rhetoric is the art of eloquence.
Literature benefits the whole life for any kind of person.
Disputation helps one learn science
and opens up every kind of knowledge.
Music helps to harmonize the soul.
Arithmetic and geometry are more exact sciences
and discipline the mind.
Studying nature opens the fields of science,
and learning medicine is beneficial to bodily health.
Being skilled in law is useful to the individual and the
community, but Vergerio did not recommend the
professional practice of law or medicine for the noble mind.
The speculative intellect understands ideals
and is good at metaphysics,
and it complements the practical mind.
Teaching is the best way to improve oneself
if one continues to doubt and learn more.
Vergerio went on to discuss physical exercises
and military training, and he concluded by urging Ubertino
to strive with all his strength to develop his abilities;
or if he does not, he will only have himself to blame.
Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) was the son
of a Guelf grain merchant in Arezzo.
In 1384 Ghibelline exiles and the French army
seized his father and him.
Leonardo was held prisoner in a castle
in a room with a portrait of Petrarca.
He later wrote that this experience
inflamed his passion to study his writings.
His father died in 1386 and his mother in 1388.
Bruni spent two years in the studio (university) of Florence
and four years in its law school.
He studied with Petrarca’s leading disciple Salutati.
Manuel Chrysoloras was the most eminent Byzantine scholar
of the era, and in 1396 Salutati invited him to fill the first chair
of Greek established at the University of Florence.
Jacopo Angeli had gone to Constantinople in 1395,
and he brought back Greek books with Chrysoloras in 1397.
Chrysoloras helped Uberto Decembrio
translate Plato’s Republic into Latin.
Bruni learned Greek from Chrysoloras,
and his 1401 translation of Basil’s
Letter to Young Men was very popular.
About 1403 Bruni wrote Laudatio Florentinae urbis
in imitation of the ancient panegyrics to Athens,
especially the Panathenaicus by Aelius Aristides
in the second century CE.
Bruni believed that Florence was the greatest city on Earth
and praised it for its architecture, cleanliness,
moderate climate, large population, and prosperity.
The city included farms, was self-sufficient,
and was encircled by rings of protective walls.
He believed that Florence had the right
to have dominion over the entire world.
Thus he prejudged that all its wars were just
because they were to defend or recover its own territory.
He bragged that Florence had the moral authority to settle
all disputes and tried to do so by persuasion.
He claimed that it never went back on a promise.
When Florence was saved from aggression by Milan
because of Gian Galeazzo’s death in 1402,
he praised the city for crediting God with saving them.
He believed that Florence was republican because
they had checks and balances with nine magistrates,
government by the majority with short terms of office,
and two men elected from each of four quarters.
Some issues were passed to the Council of the People
and the Council of the Commune for a final decision.
He admitted that the Florentine Guelfs were defeated
by the Ghibellines at Montaperto in 1260;
but Pope Urban IV sent them
Charles of Anjou to gain revenge in 1265.
Bruni claimed equality because the upper class was
protected by its wealth, the lower class by the state,
and all by fear of punishment.
Florence also extended its protection to foreigners
and even made them judges because of their impartiality.
In 1405 Salutati recommended Bruni,
and he became secretary to Pope Innocent VII.
That year Bruni finished his translation of Plato’s Phaedo.
After Salutati’s death Bruni completed his
Dialogi ad Petrum Istram, discussing the controversial
issues between Salutati and his disciples.
In the first dialog at Salutati’s house the master
criticizes his students for failing to study disputation.
In the second dialog, written several years later,
at the home of Roberto Rossi, Niccolo Niccoli
argues against his previous position, which he says
he had taken to spur discussion.
They argue whether the works of Dante, Petrarca,
and Boccaccio are as great as the classics,
and in the second dialog they consider them favorably.
Bruni also served Pope Gregory XII, but he left him in 1409
to be a secretary for the new Pope Alexander V.
He also served his successor Pope John XXIII until 1415
when the Council of Constance deposed all three popes.
Then Bruni returned to Florence, where he spent
the rest of his life, and he began writing
his History of the Florentine People.
Bruni was a skilled Ciceronian stylist and translated into Latin
four dialogs by Plato, several works by Aristotle,
speeches by Demosthenes, and biographies by Plutarch.
His manuscripts and printed editions of Aristotle’s Politics
and Nicomachean Ethics were widely distributed.
Instead of translating word for word,
he tried to get the overall meaning of each sentence.
In his Introduction to Moral Philosophy Bruni wrote that
all the ancient philosophies, such as the Peripatetics, Stoics,
and even the Epicureans as well as the Christians,
emphasized that virtue is essential to the good life.
About 1424 he wrote The Study of Literature for the
Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro,
and he advised her to read only the best
and most approved authors.
Those he recommended included Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose,
Cyprian, Lactantius, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom,
Basil, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Sallust,
Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and Curtius.
He encouraged her to devote herself to divinity and
moral philosophy and added the names of Pythagoras,
Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Aristotle, Theophrastus,
Epicurus, Zeno, Varro, and Seneca.
Among poets he also mentioned Homer, Hesiod, Pindar,
Euripides, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and Boethius.
Bruni became chancellor of Florence in 1427
and served until his death in 1444.
In a funeral oration, modeled on the oration by Pericles
in Thucydides, for the Ferrarese general Nanni degli Strozzi
in 1428 Bruni favored a republican form of government.
Strozzi’s personal sacrifice may have
prevented
a victory by Milan.
Bruni believed that the laws of Florence aimed at
the liberty and equality of all citizens.
Every man has the hope of winning public honor if his natural
gifts and industry enable him to lead a respected life.
Gregorio Dati had written a history of Florence during
the period of its wars with Milan (1380-1402) in 1406,
using a question-and-answer
method to discuss pertinent issues.
Bruni built on this research and completed his
History of the Florentine People from the ancient
Etruscans to 1402 in twelve books before he died.
He also wrote biographies of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio.
Bruni argued that the free city state
caused the rise and fall of culture.
When the Roman republic was taken over by a series
of emperors, their literature deteriorated.
He was one of the first to separate antiquity from the
modern period by calling the era in between the middle ages.
Bruni’s research on ancient Italy’s Etruscan past was use
in his 1439 Greek treatise On the Florentine Polity
in which he argued that educated citizens,
rather than the masses, should make political decisions.
He believed that human perfection can only be reached
in a civic community, and therefore knowledge of the state
is the most important branch of human learning.
He discovered useful philosophies of government in
Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero as well as in Christian thinkers.
Bruni found that when citizens fulfilled their duty
of bearing arms to defend Florence, it was more
democratic than when they hired mercenaries,
which shifted power to rich aristocrats.
In his history he noted that Florence abolished
military service for its citizens in 1351.
Also in 1439 a Byzantine delegation led by the Platonist
Gemistos Pletho attended the Council of Florence.
He wanted to set up a Platonist system,
and he had a great influence on Cosimo de’ Medici
and the humanists in Florence.
The Byzantine John Argyropoulos
stayed in Florence and taught Plato.
George of Trebizond was also a Byzantine exile,
but he criticized Plato in his
Comparationes philosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis.
Cardinal Bessarion then defended Plato in his
In calumniatorem Platonis, showing how
Plato’s philosophy was more similar
to Christian theology than Aristotle’s.
Theodorus Gaza came from Greece to Italy about 1430
and taught Greek at Ferrara 1441-50 before settling in Rome.
He is best known for his Greek grammar
and his translations of Aristotle.
Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) was the son of a poor notary.
In 1396 he went to the University of Padua,
where he could study all the arts.
Petrarca’s library of ancient books was available there.
Over the next twenty years Vittorino studied grammar, rhetoric,
dialectic, moral philosophy, and mathematics.
He taught grammar and was the most popular math teacher.
In 1407 the respected Gasparino Barzizza came there
to teach rhetoric, and he lectured on the orations
and other works by Cicero.
Vittorino lived with Barzizza for several years.
Guarino was born in Verona in 1370
and learned Latin from Giovanni da Ravenna.
He studied with Vergerio at the University of Padua.
Guarino went to teach at Venice, where he met
the Greek scholar Manuel Chrysoloras.
In 1403 Guarino went with Chrysoloras to Constantinople,
where he lived with him for five years.
He brought back more than fifty
Greek
manuscripts to Venice in 1408.
Guarino could not find a post in Venice and went to Bologna,
where he met Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Bruni,
who invited him to go to Florence.
In 1411 Guarino published his translation
of Plutarch’s influential treatise on education.
The next year Florence re-opened its studium,
and Guarino taught Greek there for five years.
Like Chrysoloras, Guarino had difficulty
getting along with Niccolo de’ Niccoli.
When Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454) visited Florence
in 1414, he persuaded Guarino to go with him to Venice.
Barbaro was a Venetian humanist and had been tutored
by Barzizza and Giovanni Conversini.
Barbaro took Guarino into his house and learned Greek.
In 1415 Barbaro wrote De re uxoria on marriage
and dedicated a copy to the newly married
Lorenzo de’ Medici and Ginevra Cavalcanti.
Barbaro wrote that the purpose of marriage is to have children,
and the wife’s duty is to educate them.
The first book of De re uxoria discusses how to select a wife,
and the second book explains her duties
to her husband, household, and children.
He expected the husband to give orders and the wife to obey.
Wives are to love their husbands and practice the virtues
of moderation and modesty,
but they should be permitted to go out.
She should teach the children.
In 1419 Barbaro married and entered Venetian politics,
rising to become the presiding officer over the Venetian
Senate in 1449 and procurator of St. Mark in 1452,
second only to the Doge.
Vittorino criticized Paduan students for celebrating Bacchus
too often, and in 1415 he too moved to Venice.
Guarino da Verona taught him Greek, and Vittorino’s mastery
of Latin helped Guarino,
who taught Latin to George of Trebizond.
George had come to Venice in 1415 to teach Greek.
In 1416 a plague drove Guarino and Vittorino back to Padua.
Like Barzizza and Guarino, Vittorino took students
into his house, and he became the most popular teacher.
In 1418 Guarino married and returned to his native Verona,
where he was elected professor of rhetoric.
He fathered at least a dozen children who were well educated.
After Barzizza went to Milan in 1422, Vittorino reluctantly
accepted the chair of rhetoric at Padua.
However, he disliked the temptations there,
and in 1423 he resumed teaching in Venice.
That year Marquis Gian Francesco Gonzaga invited Guarino
to come to Mantua,
but he declined and recommended Vittorino.
Gonzaga offered to pay Vittorino whatever he wanted,
and he agreed on the understanding that the Marquis
would not require him to do anything unworthy.
He said he would serve the lord of Mantua
as long as his life commanded respect.
Francesco Filelfo was in Constantinople 1421-27,
and he brought back Greek books by Herodotus,
Thucydides, Polybius, Demosthenes, and Aeschines
and seven plays by Euripides.
The Florentine priest Christoforo Buondelmonti
was in Greece 1414-30.
For 22 years Vittorino lived and taught in the
Gonzaga palace until his death in 1446.
A large garden-house in the castle park became
the school and was called the “Joyful House.”
The entire text of Cicero’s De Oratore had been
discovered in 1422 at Lodi,
and Vittorino began lecturing on Cicero’s rhetoric.
He taught Gonzaga’s sons and daughters and the sons
of his friends who included princes from northern Italy.
Even the great scholars Guarino, Poggio, and Filelfo
sent their sons to his school in Mantua,
where there were fewer temptations.
Sons of the wealthy paid high fees,
but those without means paid nothing.
Vittorino insisted on removing luxuries and distractions,
and all his students were expected to lead a sober life.
The Greek ideal of training the body
included diet and exercise.
He had as many as seventy students under his charge,
but he did not use harsh punishments.
Although he was quick-tempered,
Vittorino practiced self-control.
Corporal punishment was not used
except as an alternative to expulsion.
Vittorino respected the boys’ freedom and dignity,
and he did not force the unwilling to learn.
Vittorino’s students ranged from age four or less up to 21.
He devised games to help the youngest learn their letters.
By the age of eleven they were writing their own compositions.
Reading aloud was a regular exercise and accompanied meals.
He emphasized grammar and rhetoric in both Latin and Greek.
They were taught to recite and later to declaim.
Students memorized classical writings,
and some even learned all of Virgil's Aeneid.
Virgil was from Mantua.
Latin was the common language
of the educated in western Europe.
Vittorino included geometry in mathematics and some algebra.
Music was carefully supervised
and was sometimes played at meals.
He often lectured on Livy, and the biographies of Plutarch
were also used to learn history and morals.
Advanced and older students read
the works of Plato and Aristotle.
Vittorino had acquired essentially all the extant books by Plato.
Logic was studied to improve thinking in definitions,
classification, inference, and detection of fallacies.
He used the Socratic method of asking questions
to expose ignorance and arrogance.
At that time European universities emphasized theology, law,
and medicine, but the schools of Vittorino and Guarino
broadened the curriculum to include
the humanities of literature, history, and philosophy.
Vittorino taught seven or eight hours a day, lecturing to
classes in the day and tutoring individuals in the evening.
Physical exercises were important,
and many games were played.
Students were required to attend religious instruction
and practice the ordinances of the Church.
The Gonzagas helped Vittorino expand their palace library.
Manuscript copiers were employed
so that books could be shared.
The Marquis did not allow his oldest son Ludovico
to participate in military exercises
as he did his second son Carlo.
Ludovico’s resentment led to a breach,
but Vittorino was able to reconcile
the father with his oldest son.
Vittorino’s health began declining in 1444,
and he died in 1446.
The scholar William Harrison Woodward
called Vittorino the “first modern schoolmaster."
Ognibene da Lonigo revived the spirit of the school in 1449
for the next four years before moving on to Vicenza.
In 1429 Marquis Niccolo d’Este invited Guarino to Ferrara
to tutor his son Leonello and other children
for a stipend of 350 ducats, which was later increased.
He was allowed to teach others too.
When Leonello married in 1435, Guarino moved
into a house and began taking in boarders.
The next year the Ferrara Municipio
appointed him professor of rhetoric.
Guarino served as a translator of Greek at the
Council of Ferrara that began in 1438
and then moved to Florence.
Leonello d’Este became Marquis of Ferrara and
organized the school that Emperor Friedrich III
proclaimed a university in 1442.
Guarino edited and translated Strabo’s Geography,
and he published On the Art of Orthography.
He is best known for his textbooks
on Greek and Latin grammar.
He used detailed methods for teaching grammar
and the writings of historians and poets.
To the traditional trivium and quadrivium he added
the study of history, literature, rhetoric,
and philosophy (Plato and Aristotle).
His instruction of rhetoric was based mostly
on works by Cicero and Quintilian.
Virgil, Terence, and Lucan were the primary poets used.
Guarino was a devoted Christian and also lectured on
Augustine's City of God and the works of
Basil, Jerome, and Cyprian.
He made his students adhere to religious principles,
and he developed teaching manuals for all his courses.
His humanistic school became famous
and attracted students from all over Europe.
Guarino wrote more than seventy orations and more than
nine hundred letters, and he translated Livy, Plautus,
some of Plutarch’s Lives, Pliny the Elder, and Catullus.
He also wrote commentaries on
Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Aristotle, and Cicero.
Guarino died at Ferrara on December 4, 1460.
Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) grew up in Florence
and studied grammar with Giovanni da Ravenna
and Greek with Chrysoloras.
He studied with the humanist Coluccio Salutati
and became a friend of Niccolo Niccoli.
Poggio was skilled at copying manuscripts and became
a notary and a secretary to Cardinal Maramori.
Bracciolini went to Rome in 1403 and spent
about fifty years serving in the papal curia.
He worked for Pope John XXIII during the
Council of Constance 1414-18.
He found many valuable Latin manuscripts in the
monasteries of France and Germany, including
a complete text of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria,
one of the most important works on classical education.
He also discovered the last twelve comedies of Plautus.
He went with Bishop Henry Beaufort to England
but did not like it and returned to Rome in 1422
and became secretary and advisor of Pope Martin V.
Poggio studied the ruins of Rome and published
four volumes describing them.
He translated Diodorus and Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.
At the age of 56 he married an 18-year-old woman
and wrote the apologetic tract On Marriage in Old Age.
Over the years he wrote many moral essays including
On the Inconstancy of Fortune,
On the Misery of the Human Condition,
and On the Infelicity of Princes.
In On Nobility he contended that true nobility comes from
a person’s spirit, not from birth,
and he bitterly condemned hypocrisy in Contra hypocrita.
Poggio is also known for a collection
of salacious anecdotes called Facetiae.
In 1453 Poggio was appointed chancellor of Florence,
and he wrote a history of Florence from the middle of the
14th century to the Peace of Lodi in 1454.
He resigned in 1458 and died the next year.
In his dialog On Avarice he condemned most churchmen
of the day except San Bernardino da Siena.
Bartolomeo da Montepulciano uses classical allusions to
show that avarice is the worst human affliction.
Then Antonio Loschi argues that the needs of society
and government require capital to function well.
However, the theologian Andrea of Constantinople
condemns avarice as ruinous in many ways.
He concludes by quoting Cicero.
For there is nothing so characteristic of narrowness
and smallness of soul as the love of riches,
and there is nothing more honorable and noble
than to be indifferent to money if one does not possess it,
and to devote it to beneficence
and generosity if one does possess it.1
Battista Alberti was born in Genoa on February 18, 1404,
and later in life he adopted Leone as his first name.
He was one of two illegitimate sons of a wealthy
Florentine merchant who became his heirs.
His father was in exile, and they were vagabonds.
His father taught him mathematics and sent him to be educated
for four years by Gasparino Barzizza at Padua.
His father died in 1421, and Alberti spent seven years
at the University of Bologna.
When he was twenty, he wrote the Latin comedy Philodoxus,
pretending it was from an ancient codex.
Many years later Aldus Manutius printed it
as by the ancient Roman Lepidus.
Alberti earned his doctorate in canon law in 1428,
and that year Pope Martin V removed the ban
on the Alberti family from Florence.
Alberti became secretary to Cardinal Albergati
and traveled with him to France and Germany.
By 1429 he had written “On the Utility and Disadvantages
of the Study of Letters” in Latin, and he wrote
two dialogs in Italian on the difficulties of love.
In 1431 he went to Rome to be
Cardinal Biagio Molin’s secretary.
The next year Alberti became a secretary in the papal chancery,
and he served as apostolic abbreviator until 1464.
He went with Pope Eugenius IV in 1434
when he left Rome and fled to Florence.
Alberti was ordained and appointed to the priory
of Gangalandi in Florence.
A patron hired him to revise the traditional lives
of the saints in more elegant Latin.
Although Alberti continued a religious life, his own writings
tended to be humanistic and secular.
He wrote the first three books of On the Family
between 1432 and 1434 and published it in four books in 1443.
The first book is on education, the second on creating
a happy family, the third on the household economy,
and the fourth book is on friendship.
Influenced by Cicero and Seneca, he believed
that the family is the most important social unit.
Parents are responsible for providing for their children
and for educating them as well.
He valued the vernacular and spoke Italian in his home.
Games may be used, and one should have a spirit of inquiry.
He believed that the father should be head of the house
because women are more passive.
Everyone’s duty is to pursue justice, the primary social value,
and he emphasized the importance
of working for the common good.
He believed in the power of will
and that much could be accomplished.
After justice the most important virtues
are truthfulness and self-control.
Humans are born to be useful to others,
and virtuous action is important even in failure.
In 1435 Alberti wrote On Painting in Latin and explained
the mathematical rules of perspective.
He became a friend of the geographer Toscanelli
and collaborated with him on astronomy.
Alberti wrote a treatise on surveying and mapping,
using Rome as an example.
In 1437 he wrote On Law and attended the ecumenical
council at Ferrara with Pope Eugenius.
The council moved to Florence in 1438.
There Alberti knew Cosimo de’ Medici, Brunelleschi,
Donatello, and Masaccio.
In the early 1440s Alberti wrote On the Origin of the Gods,
two moral dialogs, Sofrona on love, and Uxoria on marriage.
He returned to Rome with Pope Eugenius in 1443.
Alberti was influenced by Lucian, Apuleius, and Aesop,
and he wrote the comic Momus between 1443 and 1450.
To be like a god Alberti writes a book that is rare
because it is so unusual.
The god Momus is in love with Mischief and does many
things to entertain and exasperate the gods and goddesses
such as creating insects.
He falls out of heaven and lands in Italy where
he pretends to be a poet and then a philosopher.
He criticizes religion.
Humans increase their prayers so much
the gods have to work hard, and gifts pile up.
Momus returns to heaven and tries to please Jupiter,
but he provokes strife among the gods.
Momus gives Jupiter books of advice,
but Jupiter goes down to earth and meets Diogenes.
The other gods resent Momus being the representative
of Jupiter, and they throw him out and castrate him.
Momus thwarts the gods’ view of earth
by getting sea deities to create a black cloud.
Momus is chained to a rock as the gods play in a theater.
Jupiter realizes he should read the books Momus gave him
on government and how good and evil should be distributed.
Ferrara’s Marquis Leonello d’Este asked Alberti
to restore the work of the ancient architect Vitruvius.
In 1447 his friend became Pope Nicholas V
and made Alberti his architectural advisor
to restore buildings in Rome.
They initiated the reconstruction of St. Peter’s
and the Vatican Palace.
In 1452 Alberti published his influential
Ten Books on Architecture, which was first printed in 1485.
In the next twenty years he carried out
various architectural projects.
In 1459 he went with Pope Pius II to Mantua,
where Ludovico Gonzaga commissioned
him to design two churches.
In 1460 he wrote a handbook on rhetoric in Latin
that he dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici.
He invented the odometer, a device for measuring
the depth of the sea, and the polyalphabetic cipher
which is called the Alberti cipher.
In 1468 he wrote in Italian De iciarchia,
a moral dialog on the prince and the first citizen.
Alberti was also known as an athlete, and he composed music.
He died in 1472 and is an early example of the multi-talented
universal person who flourished during the Renaissance.
Matteo Palmieri (1406-75) was a Florentine
who was educated by famous humanists.
Like Alberti he emphasized the importance of civic life.
He wrote Della vita civile in 1429
and began circulating it in 1435.
In a dialog the main speaker Agnolo Pandolfini discusses
the virtues most desired to perfect citizens.
The first of the four books is on the
training and education of the child.
The next two books discuss the moral life and the importance
of justice and honesty in all human relations.
The fourth book is about the motives of individual
perfection and social responsibility.
The youth learns to control his lower self, and this discipline
is carried over into family and social life.
To overcome poverty Palmieri urged the state
to provide free schools for the sons of all the citizens.
Palmieri wrote the first history of the Middle Ages
by continuing the work of an ancient chronicler from
449 to 1449 in De temporibus.
He also wrote a history of Florence and an account
of how Florence captured Pisa in 1406.
Palmieri was guided by a dream to write the Italian poem
La citta di vita in 100 cantos in imitation of Dante.
The poet is guided by a Cumaean Sibyl in the Elysian Fields
where the souls of angels have refused to decide
between God and Satan.
They are to be born as humans in order to choose.
He did not publish the poem during his life
but left instructions for it to be opened after his death,
and the Church later condemned it as heretical.
Lorenzo Valla (1407-57) was born in Rome
and was the son of a lawyer in the papal court.
He studied Latin grammar and rhetoric in Rome.
A lost book he wrote compared Cicero and Quintilian,
and he favored the style of the latter.
In 1429 Valla went to the University of Pavia,
where he taught rhetoric.
He published On Pleasure and later changed the title to
On the True Good, which is a dialog between
a Stoic, an Epicurean, and a Christian.
The Stoic philosopher represented by Bruni takes
an ascetic position against nature and is refuted
by the Epicurean who defends nature and utility.
The Christian is named after Niccolo Niccoli
but represents Valla and argues for a life of faith
and virtue that will lead to happiness after death.
Valla contended that orators are superior to
philosophers because they are moral
by appealing to the values of many people.
One serves God by virtue (honestas)
and people by being useful (utilitas).
He became a priest in 1431.
His Epistola de insigniis et armis on judicial methods
challenged the authority of Bartolo da Sassoferrato,
and Valla was forced to leave Pavia in 1433.
After a few years in Milan and Florence
Valla went to Naples in 1437 and served as secretary
and historian to Alfonso V of Aragon.
He wrote a history of the reign of Alfonso’s father
Fernando I (1412-16).
In his dialog De professione religiosorum he criticized
the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,
recommending devotion instead.
During the Middle Ages a legend circulated that
Pope Sylvester healed Emperor Constantine of leprosy,
and in gratitude the Emperor gave the Pope the territory
around Rome in 324 CE and moved his capital to
Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople.
In 1440 Valla’s Declamation on the Donation of
Constantine presented proof that the document donating
temporal power by Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester
was a forgery because some words in it
were not used until the 8th century.
He also exposed that the letters claiming to be between
the philosopher Seneca and the apostle Paul were fictional.
He questioned whether the “Apostles’ Creed”
was written by the original twelve apostles,
and he applied his humanist philology to criticize
Jerome’s Latin translation of the New Testament.
In On Free Will he argued against ideas in
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
In The Profession of the Religious in 1442 Valla argued
that monks may not excel laymen in holiness.
He also criticized Aristotelian scholastic philosophers
in his Dialectical Disputations.
An orator is greater than a philosopher
because he can persuade others of what is good.
He believed that the seat of the soul was neither the intellect
nor the will but the heart and that love is really the only virtue.
Valla visited Rome in 1444 and urged the people
to overthrow the papal state.
Pope Eugenius had him summoned
before the Inquisition in Naples.
Valla merely stated his orthodox views,
and Alfonso persuaded them to release him.
After Alfonso was reconciled with Eugenius,
Valla wrote a letter apologizing to the Pope
and asking for a pardon.
Valla reduced Aristotle’s nine categories to
substance, quality, and action.
He returned to Rome in 1448 and served as
Pope Nicholas V’s secretary while teaching rhetoric.
That year Valla’s Elegantiarum latinae linguae
was published, and it became a popular textbook
of grammar and was printed in 1471.
Erasmus considered Valla the best guide to Latin grammar.
Valla translated Aesop and the histories of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and others into Latin.
He continued as papal secretary to Pope Calixtus III.
In 1450 Valla competed with George of Trebizond
for the chair at the Roman studium and won.
He revised his Elegances and completed his
Notations on the New Testament by 1453.
In 1457 Dominicans invited Valla to give an encomium
on Thomas Aquinas, but he advocated a return to the
Fathers of the Church and criticized Thomas
for his style and for being too interested in logic.
Valla never married but had three children
by his mistress in Rome.
Gianozzo Manetti (1396-1459) was born into a wealthy family
in Florence, and he worked as head clerk in his father’s bank.
He also mastered Greek, Latin, and Hebrew,
sleeping only five hours a night so that
he would have more time for study.
He joined a circle of humanist friends that included
Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Filelfo,
Niccolo Niccoli, and Lorenzo Valla.
Manetti began serving the republic of Florence in 1429,
and they appointed him governor of Pescia
in 1440 and of Pistoia in 1446.
Pistoia was divided by factions, but he won the favor of all
and was honored for stopping corruption and settling disputes.
He was very honest, and the humanist librarian
Vespasiano da Bisticci wrote that
he never heard him speak falsely.
Whenever Manetti received a gift,
he would either pay for it or give it back.
He taught that honesty pays best.
He believed that we must account for
every moment of our lives.
He wrote and published a collection of biographies in 1439,
and in 1440 he wrote comparative biographies of
Socrates and Seneca and of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarca.
Manetti became a member of Florence’s Assembly
and served on several councils.
He represented the city in several diplomatic missions
to Genoa in 1437, Siena in 1448, Venice in 1448 and 1453,
and he visited the popes Eugenius IV and Nicholas V
several times and Alfonso of Naples
many times from 1443 to 1451.
In March 1452 Manetti led the Florentine embassy
to Rome for the imperial coronation of Friedrich III.
He was made Florence’s vicar of the Scarperia,
and he solved difficult disputes,
calling on those who refused to come to him.
During this time he wrote
On the Dignity and Excellence of Man
and sent it to King Alfonso of Naples.
When Manetti opposed Cosimo de’ Medici’s order
to change their alliance from Venice to Milan,
Cosimo imposed a heavy tax on him.
In 1448 Manetti gave two orations condemning
Alfonso V’s policy; but he went on numerous diplomatic
missions for Naples in the next five years,
and he favored the peace treaty negotiated in 1451.
He left Florence in February 1453 with no money
and went to Rome, where the humanist Pope Nicholas V
made him his secretary and gave him a pension
of 600 ducats a year beyond his salary.
He translated the Psalms and began the collection
of Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican Library.
Nicholas sent him as his ambassador to Florence,
and Manetti told the Signory how
he had paid them 135,000 florins already.
Manetti’s controversial
On the Dignity and Excellence of Man
answered The Misery of the Human Condition
by Pope Innocent III.
He dedicated this work to Alfonso V
as an exemplar of a worthy person.
In Book I Manetti described the great endowments of the
human body, in Book II the rational soul, and in Book III
the admirable attributes of the whole person.
In Book IV he chose to answer those who had argued
for the misery of human existence and the advantages of death.
He showed how the pleasures of life far outweigh the pains.
With his faith in Christ he listed the blessings of the after-life
as perpetual health, eternal youth, freedom, beauty,
immortality, and peace.
The opposites of these may be suffered
by the miserable damned.
He argued that those who follow the divine commandments
will obtain temporal rewards as well as eternal ones.
He urged his readers to shun all vices and love virtue
with the power of one’s soul and body.
Those who practice virtue will be blessed.
Manetti also translated the New Testament and Aristotle’s
Magna Moralia and Nicomachean Ethics into Latin
before completing his controversial work
against the Jews and Gentiles.
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was born into a noble Sienese
family in exile on October 18, 1405.
After attending the University of Siena, he became
Cardinal Domenico Capranica’s secretary
and went with him to the Council of Basel in 1431.
For the next six years he worked for clerics
who wanted to make the Council superior
to the Pope, and then he published his
Commentary on the Council of Basel.
In 1439 after Pope Eugenius IV transferred the
Council to Ferrara, Piccolomini became secretary
to the remnant Council’s chosen Pope Felix V.
In 1442 Germany’s King Friedrich III invited Piccolomini
to Vienna and made him poet laureate and his secretary.
His excommunication was lifted
after he renounced Felix in 1445.
He suffered a serious illness and gave up his dissolute life
that had included fathering several illegitimate children.
Piccolomini was ordained a priest in 1446.
After Pope Eugenius IV deposed two German archbishops
who were imperial electors, Piccolomini successfully
reconciled the Pope and the German princes.
In 1447 Pope Nicholas V appointed him bishop of Trieste,
and three years later he was transferred to Siena.
In 1450 he negotiated Friedrich’s betrothal to the princess
Eleonora of Portugal, and the next year he was sent
as an envoy to the Hussite George of Podebrady.
In 1452 Piccolomini went to Rome with Friedrich
and attended his wedding and coronation
as Emperor by Pope Nicholas.
Piccolomini became a cardinal and then Pope Pius II in 1458.
He died in 1464.
Piccolomini wrote The Education for Boys in 1450
for ten-year-old Laszlo V of Hungary.
He urged the pursuit of learning as the greatest way
of acquiring virtue and suggested that a king
needs this learning more than anyone.
He addressed the boy and his teachers
and discussed instructions for the body and the mind.
He advised teachers to guide pupils
with advice instead of blows.
He cited several ancient authorities who
opposed the custom of flogging students.
He argued that blows can cause hatred that lasts into manhood.
Nothing is worse than for students
to hate their teachers, for they should love learning.
He considered the intellect and reason most excellent.
He warned the young king not to let riches spoil his virtue,
and he recommended moderate eating and drinking.
Piccolomini assumed that he was being instructed as a
Christian with the Lord’s prayer, the Gospel of John,
the creed, the ten commandments, and other teachings.
He emphasized that he seek first the kingdom of God,
and he asked what we must do to know God.
He realized that his people would know Hungarian
and Bohemian, but he urged them all to learn Latin also.
Piccolomini warned the prince against baseness in speech
as well as the extremes of servility and arrogance.
He must learn to express himself with distinction.
Memory is a great aid to learning, and he suggested that
he commit some verses or maxims to memory daily.
Grammar is the basis of learning and literature.
He described its four principles as
logic, antiquity, authority, and custom.
Logic uses analogy for comparison and etymology
to understand the origin of words.
Old words often have a majesty or religious attraction.
Authority may come from orators, historians, poets,
and philosophers as well as from Christians.
Custom in speech is a kind of common currency.
The ancients believed that reading
should begin with Homer and Virgil.
Piccolomini doubted that his student could learn Greek;
but he argued that it would be useful in governing Hungary.
He often cited Jerome as a useful source,
and he recommended Cicero as the greatest orator.
He urged students to read historians such as Livy and Sallust,
but he warned that boys should not read Suetonius.
He quoted Cicero who said,
“History is the witness of the times, the light of truth,
the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity.”2
He accepted the Pythagorean belief that
music soothes and refreshes the mind.
Geometry helps one to develop perceptive
and reasoning abilities and should be added to arithmetic.
Philosophy seeks wisdom and so goes beyond the seven
liberal arts to understand human and divine causes.
In moral philosophy one should learn one’s duty to God,
parents, elders, strangers, civil and military powers,
fellow citizens, wife, friends, tenants, and slaves.
Moral philosophy will also teach him to despise avarice
and greed for money, behave modestly toward women,
be affectionate to children and relatives,
treat servants without cruelty, obey laws, control anger,
despise pleasures, pity the oppressed, help the needy,
reward the deserving, punish the guilty,
and render to everyone what is due.
Most of all, one should not be overjoyed by favorable
fortune nor be sad because of misfortunes.
Finally Piccolomini recommended writings by Cicero, Seneca,
Pliny, and Boethius, and he urged him
to practice what he has been taught.
Marsilio Ficino was born on October 19, 1433 near Florence.
He began studying Greek in Florence with
John Argyropoulos in 1459, and in 1462 Cosimo de’ Medici
granted him a villa and gave him access to Greek manuscripts
in exchange for his teaching Platonic philosophy.
In 1463 Ficino translated the complete
Corpus Hermeticum into Latin.
He became a priest in 1473 and received several benefices.
In his De Christiana Religione in 1474
he defended Christianity against Jews and Muslims.
He translated all of Plato’s works into Latin by 1477,
and he considered Plato a forerunner of Christianity.
He also wrote a biography of Plato and Platonic Theology.
He wrote a book on love and introduced
the ideal of Platonic love to western Europe.
He exchanged love letters with Giovanni Cavalcanti,
but in his Convivium he condemned sodomy.
In 1484 Pico della Mirandola visited Florence
and persuaded Ficino to translate The Enneads of Plotinus
which he completed in 1491.
Pico became one of Ficino’s disciples
who was honored with the title “conphilosophus.”
Ficino became interested in astrology and was accused
of magic and heresy by Pope Innocent VIII in 1489.
That year he published his influential Three Books on Life.
In 1492 Lorenzo paid for the publication of
Ficino’s translation of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus.
Ficino wrote that a new golden age had restored the
liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, painting, sculpture,
architecture, and music while perfecting astrology.
He believed that loving a person prepares one to love God.
The true love between persons
is like the common love for God.
Ficino wrote to Cavalcanti that friendship by mutual consent
of the lovers cultivates the soul through virtue.
Yet the true and stable union between persons cannot be
established except through the eternal unity of God.
Ficino wanted to base his school on the concept
of Platonic love, which is the love of God
concretely confirmed in the love of friends.
Happiness comes from the knowledge of God
and in the soul separating from the body in ecstatic joy.
The mind can be purified from all disturbances of the body
through moral discipline
directed by an ardent love of divine truth.
Ficino noted that Democritus laughed at the stupidity of men
while Heraclitus mourned their misery.
He recommended fighting against fortune
with prudence, patience, and generosity.
Peace may be made with fortune by adjusting our will
lest we be dragged there by force.
The strong do not submit to injustices but overcome them.
Patience enables us to bear and transform evils into good.
Most virtues consist of doing well, but patience is able to
suffer well without increasing the passion caused by evils.
Those who act badly convert goods into evils;
but those who suffer well turn them into good,
for by enduring evils one becomes good.
For Ficino moral philosophy is separating
the soul from the passion of the body.
Plato recommended meditating on death,
which is the liberation of the soul from the body.
Thus philosophy is the ascent of the soul from lower to higher
things and from darkness to light,
and the end is the highest good, the best guidance for humans.
Ficino believed that evil is imaginary or an illusion
because under infinite good all things turn out well.
Pleasure appears in the guise of good, but it contains evils.
People are ashamed of the mortal blessings
because they are neglecting the eternal good.
If what we have learned does not enable us to know ourselves,
then we must unlearn what we have learned.
We must learn what we have neglected
in order to know ourselves.
The soul cannot be forced from outside;
but by love it delves into the body,
and by love it emerges from the body.
Angelo Ambrogini (1454-94) was born on July 14, 1454
in Montepulciano and was called Poliziano (Politian).
His father died when he was ten years old,
and he went to Florence, where he learned Greek and Latin.
By the time he was sixteen he was
translating Homer’s Iliad into Latin verse.
In 1473 he began teaching the Medici children
and became the friend of Lorenzo.
He wrote poetry in Latin, even for his lectures on classical
authors at the University of Florence,
as well as in Italian and Greek.
He began writing the epic poem Stanze per la Giostra
about Giuliano de’ Medici
and Simonetta Vespucci in a tournament.
Simonetta died in 1476 of tuberculosis,
and Giuliano was murdered two years later.
Poliziano never finished the poem, but he wrote an account
of how Giuliano was murdered as Lorenzo survived.
He compared Lorenzo to Augustus who survived
after Julius Caesar was assassinated.
His edition of Justinian’s Pandects
stimulated the study of Roman law.
In 1477 Lorenzo got Poliziano the benefice of the priory
of San Paolo and in 1483 a villa in Fiesole.
His lyrical play Fabula di Orfeo was performed
with music in 1480 at a princely feast in Mantua.
In June of that year Lorenzo recalled Poliziano
to teach in the Studium in Florence.
The first century of Poliziano’s Miscellanea was published
in 1489, and the second century was not completed.
His Nutricia describes the Greek and Latin poets.
He came into conflict with the more
practical Bartolomeo Scala in 1493.
Poliziano has been called the greatest classical scholar
of his era and the best Italian poet in the fifteenth century.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was born on February 24, 1463
as the younger son of the Count
of La Mirandola and Concordia.
He studied canon law at the University of Bologna
and transferred to the University of Ferrara in 1479.
That year he visited Florence
and became friends with Poliziano.
Pico studied the Averroist philosophy of Aristotle
at the University of Padua for two years
and began learning Greek in 1482.
After traveling he went in 1484 to Florence,
where he met Lorenzo de’ Medici and Marsilio Ficino
and began studying the works of Plato.
The next year Pico went to the University of Paris,
but he came back in 1486.
He studied Hebrew and proposed 900 theses
in the scholastic style of Latin used in Paris.
To introduce his theses he wrote his
Oration on the Dignity of Man.
Pico was going to Rome to a public disputation on his theses,
but at Arezzo he fell in love with the wife of Lorenzo’s cousi
and tried to run off with her.
Her husband wounded Pico and had him
put in prison until Lorenzo had him released.
The disputation was cancelled by Pope Innocent VIII
in February 1487, and a papal commission decided that six
of the theses were heretical and that six were suspect.
Pico fled to France, but Philip II of Savoy
had him arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes.
Lorenzo and several Italian princes persuaded Charles VIII
to release Pico, and the Pope
let him go back to Florence in 1488.
Pico defended his theses with an Apology.
Pico was welcomed back to Florence by his friend
Marsilio Ficino, and Lorenzo provided him
with a villa near Fiesole.
Pico wrote Heptalus or Septiform Narration
of the Six Days of Creation in 1489 as a commentary
on Genesis, and he also wrote commentaries on the Psalms.
In 1491 he wrote On Being and the One (De ente et uno)
to reconcile the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
Pico became friends with Savonarola
and persuaded Lorenzo to invite him to Florence.
After Lorenzo died in 1492, Pico moved to Ferrara.
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI granted Pico a full pardon.
Pico studied Hebrew, and he tried to harmonize the Jewish
Kabbala and the Greek Hermetics with Christian theology.
In 1494 he wrote Disputations Against Astrology
to emphasize his belief in free will.
Pico died of illness on November 17, 1494,
and a rumor spread that he was poisoned by his secretary
for having supported Savonarola,
who delivered his funeral oration.
The bodies of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola were
exhumed in 2007, and forensic tests showed that
they probably died of arsenic poisoning.
Lorenzo’s successor, Piero de’ Medici was suspected.
In his Oration on the Dignity of Man Pico della Mirandola
wrote about the great wonder that is man.
God placed humans in the center of the world
in order to see what is in the world.
Humans are the molders and makers of themselves.
They can grow down in the lower natures of brutes
or grow upward from the soul’s reason
into the higher nature of the divine.
Humans are able to reason and love beauty
and wonder at its greatness.
If a person takes himself up into the center of his own unity
and is made one spirit with God, who is above all,
then one will stand ahead of everything.
A philosopher who is using right reason
is a heavenly rather than an earthly animal.
A pure contemplator in the innermost recesses of the mind
is more superbly a divinity clothed in human flesh.
As the prophets said, we are all gods,
children of the most high.
Pico urged people to spurn earthly things
and struggle toward the heavenly.
Fly beyond the chambers of the world
to the most lofty divinity.
A lover is in God, and God is one with that person.
Because we are flesh and of the earth let us go
to the ancients who can give us substantial faith.
Pico wrote,
Let us fly on winged feet like earthly Mercurie
into the embrace of our most blessed mother
and enjoy the longed-for peace: the most holy peace,
the indivisible bond, the friendship which is one soul,
the friendship whereby all minds do not merely
accord in one intellect that is above every intellect
but in some inexpressible fashion become absolutely one.
This is that friendship which the Pythagoreans
say is the end of all philosophy.
This is that peace which God makes on his heights
and which the angels descending to earth announced
to men of good will, that by this peace
the men themselves ascending
into heaven might become angels.
Let us desire this peace for our friends, for our age.3
For Pico death is the fullness of life which the wise
meditate on to study philosophy.
He asked who does not want to be initiated into those
mysteries which make one a companion of the gods
and immortal in the heavenly Jerusalem.
He followed the precepts of the Delphic oracle
to be moderate and avoid excess and to know oneself.
He studied the doctrines of Zarathushtra and the Kabbalists.
Those who set their entire lives on making money or
ambition do not embrace the knowledge of truth for itself.
Philosophy taught him to weigh things by his own
conscience rather than by the judgments of others.
He believed that disputation strengthens the soul
as gymnastics exercises the body.
Pico noted that the ancients studied every school of thought,
and so he endeavored to bring into view what is taught
in every doctrine so that by comparison the truth may be found.
He proposed the concord of Plato and Aristotle.
He laid down 72 new doctrines which he thought out
from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.
He hoped that by contemplating the wonders of God
he would be inspired to worship and love the creator.
Yet some people condemn and hate what they do not
understand just as dogs bark at strangers.
Jesus warned against giving what is holy to dogs.
Pico concluded his oration by declaring
he was ready for the disputation.
Pico della Mirandola discussed metaphysics in
On Being and the One, but in the last chapter he went into
how the argument leads to improving conduct.
If we wish to be blessed, we must imitate God and possess
in ourselves unity, truth, and goodness.
Ambition upsets the peace of unity and tears the soul apart.
The splendor and light of truth can also
be lost in the darkness of pleasures.
Greed steals goodness from us.
Pico urged people to fly to God and the
unifying peace, truest light, and best happiness.
Love of what is above gives us the wings,
but the desire of earthly things will make us
lose unity, truth, and goodness.
Giovanni Nesi (1456-1506) was a disciple of Marsilio Ficino,
and his poem Oracle of the New Century
(Oraculum de novo saeculo) in 1496 was influenced
by Pico della Mirandola and Savonarola.
Pico’s mysticism also inspired Girolamo Benivieni’s poem
Canzone d’Amore, and in 1496 Benivieni translated
Savonarola’s treatise on the Christian life.
After Ficino died in 1499, humanist scholars in Florence
continued to meet in the Rucellai Gardens led by Francesco
Cattani da Diacceto, who wrote Tre libri d’Amore
and translated it into Italian.
Ficino’s theory of love can be found in Pietro Bembo’s
1505 Asolani and Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore.
In 1499 Angelo Colocci published his erotic novel
Poliphili’s Dream about Love’s Struggle
(Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) in Venice.
Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530) produced a Christian epic
poem in Latin called De partu Virginis, and he pioneered
pastoral poetry in the Renaissance with his Arcadia which was
composed in the early 1480s and was first published in 1504.
The poet imagines himself as Sincero who comes to live
among the shepherds and tells them of his unhappy love affair.
In 1508 Jacopo Caviceo dedicated his romantic
Libro del Peregrino to Lucrezia Borgia.
In 1513 Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibiena staged his
obscene play La Calandria at the court of Urbino.
The first classical tragedy in Italian
was Trissino’s Sofonisba in 1515.
Students came from all over Europe to study at Italian
universities, and Italian replaced French
as the best-known foreign language.
The libraries of princes became repositories for books
in Greek, and Pope Nicholas V (1447-55)
added many to the Vatican library.
Duke Federigo of Urbino (1422-84) collected Greek books,
and Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-92)
acquired an excellent collection.
Yet the greatest collector of Greek volumes was Cardinal
Basilios Bessarion (1403-72) who gave more than 700 Greek
and Latin manuscripts to the Marciana Library in Venice.
He rose in the Greek Church
and became archbishop of Nicaea in 1437.
He attended the Council of Florence and was instrumental
in bringing about a union of the Greek and Roman Churches
in 1439, though it did not last long.
Pope Eugenius IV made him a cardinal in December 1439
and offered him a position at his papal court in Florence,
where he studied Latin and Italian.
Bessarion served as papal legate in Bologna 1450-55
and revived the university.
He welcomed Greek refugees into his home.
He wrote In Calumniatorem Platonis,
a defense of Plato in four books against
the attacks made by George of Trebizond.
In 1463 Pope Pius II gave Bessarion
the title “Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.”
Flavio Biondo (1392-1463) coined the term “Middle Ages”
as the period that began in 412 CE when the Roman empire
divided into eastern and western parts.
He saw the end of this medieval period as his own time
which was breaking free of old patterns.
Bruni also used a three-period framework at the same time
in his History of the Florentine People (1442).
Biondo pioneered archaeology in his three volumes of
Rome Restored (Roma Instaurata) which he completed
in 1446 and historical geography in his Italy Illuminated
which he finished in 1458.
Both these books were published in 1474.
In Rome Triumphant (1459) he recommended ancient Rome
as a model for reforming government and the military.
His Decades of History from the Deterioration
of the Roman Empire, which was completed in 1453
and published in 1483, is a history of Europe
in 32 books from 410 CE to 1442.
Most of the major Latin classics were
printed between 1465 and 1473.
The Greek geographies of Ptolemy and Strabo were studied,
and the work of the cosmographers Pierre d’Ailly
and Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli gave Columbus
the confidence he needed to sail west in 1492.
In 1510 Paolo Cortesi wrote that an erudite education
and good writing had helped Nicholas V,
Pius II, and Sixtus IV become cardinals and popes.
Ermolao Barbaro the Younger (1453-93) was Venetian
and studied in Verona, Rome, and at the University of Padua.
He edited and translated Aristotle’s
Ethics and Politics in 1474 and his Rhetoric in 1479.
In 1483 he was elected to the Senate in Venice,
and the next year he established a private school
based on the Aristotelian system.
Barbaro became ambassador to Milan
in 1489 and then to Rome in 1490.
The next year Pope Innocent VIII nominated him
to be Patriarch of Aquileia.
Venetian law prohibited its ambassadors from accepting
a position from a foreign power; but the Pope and his
successor threatened to excommunicate him
if he renounced being Patriarch.
The Venetian Senate cancelled
his ambassadorship and exiled him.
Barbaro died during a plague at Rome in 1493.
In 1492 he had published his Castigationes Plinianae,
explaining the difficult passages in Pliny’s Natural History.
Barbaro’s friend Girolamo Donato (1457-1511)
translated De Anima by Alexander of Aphrodisia.
In 1487 Alessandro Farnese (later Pope Paul III)
left Rome to study Greek in Florence.
His sister Giulia was mistress to Pope Alexander VI
and helped Farnese become a “petticoat cardinal” in 1493.
He became Bishop of Parma in 1509
and was known for his careful administration.
Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) was born in Mantua
and studied at Padua where he became a physician in 1487
and a professor of philosophy the next year.
He taught natural philosophy there until the war in 1509
caused him to move to Ferrara,
where he lectured on Aristotle’s book On the Soul.
In 1512 he accepted a position at Bologna.
In 1516 Pomponazzi wrote On the Immortality of the Soul,
which caused so much controversy that Catholics
during the Fifth Lateran Council threatened his life.
He wrote two pamphlets to defend his combination
of materialistic philosophy and Catholic belief.
In morality he argued that virtue is good and is
its own reward just as vice brings
its own punishment by divine justice.
By refusing to do an unjust act, a person becomes virtuous.
In De incantationibus he tried to give natural explanations
for demons and spirits, miracles and wonders,
and astral influences.
He studied cycles of history and wondered
if Christianity was beginning to decline.
He was influenced by Stoicism, and in On Fate
he discussed fate, free will, and divine predestination.
While holding to his Christian beliefs
he explored philosophical issues with a scientific spirit.
Pietro Bembo was born in Venice on May 20, 1470.
Eight years later his father went to Florence as ambassador,
and they lived there two years.
In 1492 Pietro left Venice to learn Greek
from Constantine Lascaris in Messina.
The next year he came back to Venice and was part
of the circle around the publisher Aldus Manutius.
In 1497 his father helped Venice rule Ferrara,
and Pietro lived at the court.
There he became friends with Lucrezia Borgia
who was married to Duke Alfonso d’Este.
He began writing his three dialogs (Gli Asolani)
on Platonic love and dedicated the book to her
when it was printed in March 1505.
Bembo had had a love affair with a Venetian woman
identified as M. G. who was from a lower social class.
In his second affair he wrote 77 love letters
to another Venetian woman in 1501 and 1502.
The letters between Pietro and married Lucrezia have been
published as The Prettiest Love Letters in the World.
These three love affairs gave Bembo the experience to write
his Gli Asolani about Caterina Cornaro who was forced
to abdicate as Queen of Cyprus to become
the Lady of Asolani in 1489.
Bembo visited her there in 1495.
He published a revised edition of Gli Asolani in 1530.
In the presence of the Lady of Asolani three gentlemen
accompanied by three young ladies give discourses on love.
In the first book the unhappy lover Perottino
expresses his bitterness about love.
The second book contrasts this with the fortunate experience
of Gismondo who describes the good aspects of love.
In the third book Lavinello explains that earthly love is bad,
but the Platonic love that contemplates ideal beauty is the best.
Lavinello then relates what a holy man told him about the
divine love of true beauty, concluding,
“We must believe that virtuous love is to be eternally enjoyed
and that the other which is evil damns us to eternal grief.”4
Bembo edited Petrarca’s Conzoniere and Dante’s
Divina Commedia, and these were published
by Aldus Manutius in 1501 and 1502.
In his Prose della volgar lingua Bembo set up Petrarca
as the best literary model.
In 1506 he went to the Montefeltri court at Urbino,
and Castiglione used his name for the climactic discourse
on Platonic love in his Book of the Courtier that was set there.
After six years in Urbino, Bembo went to Rome with
Giuliano de’ Medici in 1512,
and he became a secretary to Pope Leo X.
He wrote in Latin a history of Venice from 1487 to 1513
that was not printed until 1551.
He eventually became a cardinal in 1539, and he died in 1547.
In addition to Manetti several other humanists served
King Alfonso V of Naples and Sicily.
Antonio Beccadelli was born at Palermo in 1394
and was known as Panormita.
The University of Palermo awarded him
a grant to study abroad.
He went to Florence and in 1420 to Padua
where he studied with Gasparino Barzizza.
He studied law at Siena from 1421 to 1424.
Panormita wrote in the epigrammatic style of Martial
the obscene Latin verses of Hermaphroditus,
which he dedicated to Cosima de’ Medici.
Published at Bologna in 1425, the sexually explicit poem
was greeted with cries of scandal,
and it was banned by the Church.
Guarino praised its style and defended its subject matter
that included celebrating various forms of sexual activity.
The Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena
denounced sodomy and organized public burnings
of the book in Milan, Bologna, and Ferrara.
Panormita admitted the poem was obscene
and at times regretted he published it.
Panormita was such a scholar that he once
sold a farm to buy a manuscript of Livy.
He became a professor of history at Milan, and in
December 1429 Duke Filippo Maria Visconti appointed
him court poet with a stipend of 400 gold florins per year.
In May 1432 Emperor Sigismund crowned him
poet laureate at Parma.
He returned to the University of Pavia
to teach rhetoric for only 30 florins a year.
Then he went back to his native Sicily
and supervised Alfonso’s library at Palermo.
In 1434 he accompanied Alfonso V to Naples
as one of the first humanists to serve the Aragonese king,
tutoring his son Ferrante for 450 ducats a year.
In 1440 Panormita persuaded the alternative Pope Felix V
in Savoy to recognize Alfonso’s claim to Naples.
In 1451 Alfonso sent him as a diplomat to Florence,
Ferrara, and Venice, and in 1452 he met
with Emperor Friedrich III in Rome.
In October 1453 Panormita urged the Genoese
to join the Italian alliance against the Turks.
Then from 1454 to 1469 he served as royal secretary in Naples.
In 1456 he was granted 1,000 ducats for completing his
Sayings and Deeds of Alfonso (De dictis et factis Alphonsis).
Bartolommeo Facio studied with Guarino at Verona
in the 1420s, and then he tutored the three sons
of Venice’s Doge Francesco Foscari.
In 1441 he was serving the Genoese admiral
Francesco Spinola and Raffaele Adorno.
Those two men expelled Doge Tommaso Fregoso in December
1442, and Adorno was elected doge in January 1443.
Facio went on diplomatic missions for Adorno,
and in September he negotiated peace
between Genoa and Alfonso of Naples.
In February 1444 Adorno sent Facio to Naples
as chancellor of the commune,
and Panormita gave him a position in Alfonso’s court.
In 1446 he completed his De humanae vitae felicitate
and in 1448 On the Dignity and Excellence of Man
(De excellentia ac praestantia hominis)
which was dedicated and sent to Pope Nicholas V.
Facio served as court historian and wrote ten books
on the career of Alfonso V of Naples 1420-55.
Facio gave the King a collection of short biographies
called De viris illustribus liber in 1456.
Facio criticized the language in Valla’s
history of Fernando of Aragon,
and they exchanged a series of invectives.
Giovanni Pontano (1426-1503) went to Naples with
Alfonso V in 1447, and Panormita became his patron.
Pontano became a leader of their Neapolitan Academy
and tutored the royal children.
He wrote many treatises on political and moral themes including
De principe, De rebus coelistibus, De fortitudine,
De liberaliste, De beneficentia, De magnificentia,
De splendore, De conviventia, De magnanimitate,
De fortuna, and De sermone.
In De obedientia he argued that a monarch could bring
about peace, harmony, and stability
better than a republican government.
Pontano also served in the court of King Ferrante (r. 1458-94)
of Naples, became his chancellor, and tutored his son
Duke Alfonso of Calabria, later serving as
his diplomat until he abdicated in 1495.
Pontano’s only historical work, De bello neapolitano,
in 1499 described Ferrante’s struggle to consolidate his rule
over the kingdom of Naples 1458-64.
Also in 1499 Pontano wrote De prudentia and recommended
for governing the qualities of consideration, looking ahead
(providence), perspicacity, versatility, willingness to deceive
when there was no good alternative,
appraising situations, industry, and vigilance.
In his 1501 De immanitate he discussed how human beings
degenerated into bestial behavior
and how they can be cured.
Diomede Carafa (1406-87) also served Alfonso V
and Ferrante, and he tutored Ferrante’s son Alfonso.
About 1475 he completed a work on the duties of a prince
in which he argued that governing with love is better
and more effective than ruling by fear because subjects
will come to the prince’s aid willingly
if they believe he cares about them.
Yet he also noted that the presence of soldiers
can encourage obedience and deter evil actions.
Educated Jews, who had to flee from Portugal and Spain,
also ended up in Italy and Naples.
Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (1437-1508) was the son of
Portugal’s treasurer and succeeded him in that office.
After Joao II became king in 1481, he was accused of
conspiracy and had his fortune confiscated.
In 1483 Abravanel fled to Toledo in Castile.
He had studied rabbinical literature and wrote commentaries
on the Pentateuch, the books of Kings and Samuel,
and Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides.
He also organized provisions for the royal army
and made another fortune from which he made loans
to the government during the Moorish wars.
He refused to become a Christian in 1492 and went to Naples,
where he became the royal treasurer
until the French army took over the city in 1495.
Abravanel became a refugee again and ended up in Venice,
where he served as a diplomat before he died.
Judah Leon Abravanel (Leo Hebraeus) may have been
Isaac’s son and was also born in Lisbon about 1460.
During the 1480s he studied at Seville, and in 1492 he also
went to Naples, where he became physician to the Viceroy.
Later Leon went to Florence and joined
the circle of Platonists around Ficino.
He wrote his Dialogs on Love in Italian, and they were
translated into French, Spanish, Latin, and Hebrew.
Philo and Sophia discuss the differences
between love and desire.
Sophia argues they are incompatible affects of the will
because we love things we possess
but desire only what we do not have.
Philo suggests that love of pleasure is universal.
Sophia agrees but believes that
the love of virtue is most worthy.
Philo states that some things such as children may be desired
for their use while the love between
a husband and wife is pleasurable.
Love and desire of power may combine pleasure and profit.
Philo also expounds upon friendship and the love of God.
The latter also requires desire because
God is infinite and cannot be possessed.
Philo lists the five faculties of the intellect as
art, prudence, understanding, science, and wisdom.
Sophia considers reason the ruler of all good,
but Philo believes that love is most important.
Luigi Pulci was born on August 15, 1432 in Florence.
He loved poetry and began working
on the epic Morgante about 1460.
He was befriended by Lorenzo de’ Medici and wrote the poem
La Giostra di Lorenzo de’ Medici in 150 stanzas describin
a tournament in Florence on February 7, 1469.
Pulci went on missions for Lorenzo to Naples
in 1471 and to Milan in 1473.
He was a jester and made Charlemagne into a comic character
in his Morgante, which was first published in 23 cantos in 1481.
The long epic tells fantastic stories about the legendary
Orlando and Rinaldo during the era of Charlemagne.
The giant Morgante is Orlando’s squire.
The 28-canto edition was published as Morgante Maggiore
at Florence in February 1483.
There is a time break in the story before the last five cantos
which recount the heroic battle of Roncesvalles
and the death of Roland (Orlando).
Pulci died while traveling to Venice
when he fell ill at Padua in the fall of 1484.
The poet Byron was influenced by Morgante
and translated the first canto in 1822.
Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440-94) became
count of Scandiano in 1460.
He was a poet who adopted as his motto
Amor omnia vincit (Love conquers all).
His uncle was the humanist poet Tito Vespasiano Strozzi,
and his cousin was Pico della Mirandola.
In 1469 Boiardo fell in love with Antonia Caprara and wrote
a Petrarcan sequence of sonnets on love in three books.
His love was unrequited, and he turned to the love of God.
In January 1476 Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara gave him
a stipend as a companion at court,
but he returned to Scandiano in 1478.
He married Tadda Gonzaga the next year,
and they had six children.
In July 1480 Ercole made Boiardo governor of Modena.
During the Ferrara war citizens of Modena mobbed
storehouses to relieve their hunger, and Boiardo was replaced
by his uncle Roberto Strozzi on January 23, 1483.
Boiardo went back to Scandiano and issued the
first sixty cantos of his Orlando Innamorato.
Ercole, descended from the characters Bradamante
and Ruggiero, may have published the poem
to enhance the importance of Ferrara.
In January 1487 Boiardo became captain of Reggio
for the rest of his life.
He became known as a generous governor who would
rather write verses than punish criminals.
He suffered from gout and finished only 69 cantos of
Orlando Innamorato before he died in 1494
during the French invasion.
His poem was published in 1495
and went through sixteen editions.
However, his Tuscan diction was not considered as pure
as that of Ariosto who wrote a continuation
called Orlando Furioso in 1516.
Francesco Berni edited Boiardo’s poem in 1542,
but it was not reprinted between 1545 and 1725.
Boiardo’s original manuscript was discovered and published
by Antonio Panizzi from 1830 to 1835.
Boiardo’s romantic epic is based on earlier
Carolingian and Arthurian cycles.
Orlando is the hero of the old French Le Chanson de Roland.
King Charlemagne invites his paladins and barons to
tournaments and feasts in Paris that
include Saracens as well as Christians.
Uberto with four giant bodyguards brings his beautiful sister
Angelica and offers her to any knight who can defeat him
in jousts, but he will take as prisoner any knight he unhorses.
Orlando immediately desires Angelica.
The magician Malagigi learns that Uberto is Argalia,
son of King Galaphron of Cathay.
Malagigi tries to cast a spell on Argalia and Angelica
but he is captured and put in a dungeon.
Argalia in the jousts takes many prisoners before
the Spanish knight Ferrau kills the four giants.
Then Argalia and his sister disappear and are pursued
in the Arden forest by Ferrau, Ranaldo, and Orlando.
Ranaldo drinks from a fountain that Merlin used to relieve
the love between Tristan and Isolde,
causing him to hate Angelica.
She drinks from a stream that causes her
to love Ranaldo who flees from her.
Ferrau finds Argalia and kills him in combat.
Orlando lays down beside sleeping Angelica,
and Ferrau finds them and assumes he is her protector.
They duel as Angelica flees.
The maiden Fiordespina tells Ferrau that King Gradasso
of Sericane has invaded Spain,
and Ferrau departs with her to help his country.
Gradasso is trying to get Orlando’s Durindana sword
and Ranaldo’s horse Bayardo.
Charlemagne summons his knights and sends an army
led by Ranaldo to help King Marsilio against the pagans.
Ranaldo plans to fight Gradasso for the prisoners,
but Angelica has persuaded Malagigi to help her get Ranaldo,
who is lured away from his troops.
Gradasso invades France and takes Charlemagne
and his knights prisoners.
Charlemagne agrees to get Durindana and Bayardo
for Gradasso and is released with his lands restored.
Astolpho refuses to give up the horse
and challenges Gradasso to a duel.
Astolpho wins with an enchanted lance,
and Gradasso releases the prisoners and goes home.
Orlando searches for Angelica and learns that King Agrican
of Tartary was rejected by Angelica
and is besieging Albracca, capital of Cathay.
Orlando and Astolpho help defend Cathay,
but Ranaldo, hating Angelica, fights for Agrican.
Orlando kills Agrican in single combat
and then begins fighting Ranaldo.
At night they withdraw, and Angelica to save Ranaldo
sends Orlando to destroy the garden of Falerina in Orgagna.
Meanwhile King Agramant of Africa with a large army,
which includes Rodamonte, Ferrau, and Gradasso,
is besieging Paris to avenge his father Troiano
who was killed by Orlando.
Agramant is advised he cannot succeed without
the knight Ruggiero, who is imprisoned by the
magician Atlantes on Mount Carena.
Ranaldo pursues Orlando but disappears
into a lake with a ruffian.
King Rodamonte decides to invade France.
Agramant learns that Orlando needs Angelica’s
magic ring to free Atlantes and find the invisible garden,
and the dwarf Brunello offers to get the ring.
Orlando accomplishes his quest
and comes upon Ranaldo’s arms by the lake.
Orlando defeats the guardian there and frees the
prisoners from the enchanted garden under the lake
who had been held by the sorceress Morgana.
The knights go back to defend France,
but Orlando is reconciled with Ranaldo
and goes back to Albracca.
With the aid of the ring Agramant gets Ruggiero
to join his tournament and become his knight.
Ranaldo fights Rodamonte in single combat
and pursues him to the Arden forest.
When Orlando arrives at Albracca, Angelica persuades
him to help her escape and go to France
because she is in love with Ranaldo.
After many adventures they arrive in the forest of Arden
where she drinks the waters of hate
while Ranaldo drinks from the stream of love.
Then she runs away from him.
Ranaldo and Orlando fight again
as Angelica flees to Charlemagne’s camp.
Ranaldo’s sister Bradamante is a warrior and falls
in love with Ruggiero and goes over to the Saracens.
When she takes off her helmet,
Ruggiero falls in love with her.
They are attacked, and she is wounded in the head.
Ruggiero defeats the enemies but is separated from
Bradamante, his future wife and the mother of the
noble Este family that the poet Boiardo served.
Ludovico Ariosto was born on September 8, 1474
in Reggio as the oldest of ten children.
While his father had him studying law 1489-94,
Ludovico was more interested in theater
and acted in the comedies of Plautus and Terence.
He studied Latin and Greek under the humanist Gregory
of Spoleto, and in 1498 he entered into the service
of Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara.
When his father died in 1500, Ludovico took over the raising
of his younger brothers and sisters.
He began serving Cardinal Ippolito d’Este in 1503
and was sent as an ambassador to Rome.
He began working on his epic poem,
Orlando Furioso, about 1506.
In 1508 Ariosto presented the comedy La Cassaria
based on three plays by Plautus and two by Terence,
and he wrote I Suppositi,
which was produced the following year.
Set in Ferrara, the young aristocrat Erostrato pretends to be
his own servant Dulipo so that he can be near Polinesta.
They get a Sienese man to pretend to be Erostrato
who is being impersonated by Dulipo;
but the mistaken identities abound when Erostrato’s
father Filogono arrives to see his son.
The comedy ends happily, and even the gluttonous
parasite Pasifilo gets a free meal.
In 1519 I Suppositi was presented before the pontifical
court of Leo X before two thousand guests
with a curtain painted in perspective by Rafael.
Ariosto fell in love with Alessandra Benucci in June 1513.
Her husband Tito Strozzi died in 1515, but they waited
until 1526 to marry secretly so that Ariosto could maintain
his ecclesiastical income
or to protect her legacy from her first marriage.
In 1516 Ariosto published the first edition
of his Orlando Furioso in forty cantos.
In 1517 the poet refused to go with Ippolito
to Hungary and fell out of favor.
He began writing satires.
In 1518 Ariosto entered the service of Duke Alfonso d’Este,
and on February 7, 1522 the Duke appointed him
commissioner of the wild Garfagnana province.
Ariosto wrote 157 letters from there complaining about the
brigands and his lack of support to enforce the laws.
In 1523 he made a treaty with the republic of Lucca
for the extradition of brigands
and for cooperation in arresting them.
In 1525 he refused to be an ambassador
to Pope Clement VII, and he returned to Ferrara.
Like his father had been, he was elected
Judge of the Twelve Sages in 1528.
His final edition of Orlando Furioso in 46 cantos was
published in 1532, and a copy was presented to
Emperor Charles V.
Ariosto died in July 1533.
Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso took up the story where
Boiardo left off in his unfinished Orlando Innamorato.
Pursued by Christian and Saracen lovers, Angelica flees into
the woods to try to take a ship back to her home in Cathay.
She sees Ranaldo and flees from him,
running into the tired warrior Ferrau.
While he and Ranaldo fight over her, she rides off.
They follow but take different forks in the road.
Angelica is found by King Sacripant of Circassia
and pretends to love him so that he will help her.
Ranaldo catches up with them and fights Sacripant,
whose shield is shattered.
Angelica flees again and meets an elderly magician
who puts her into a trance.
Some sailors take her on a boat to the island of Ebuda
where beautiful maidens are sacrificed to a monster orc.
The islanders prepare her to be sacrificed; but Orlando
in besieged Paris dreams she is in trouble
and begins searching for her.
Meanwhile Ranaldo’s sister Bradamante
is looking for her Saracen lover Ruggiero.
Count Pinabel tells her that he is imprisoned
in the castle of old Atlantes in the Pyrenees.
Pinabel tries to kill her by pushing her into
a deep cavern, but she falls into a tree.
The seeress Melissa tells her
they are in the wizard Merlin’s cave.
Melissa foretells her wonderful future with Ruggiero
and advises Bradamante to get the magic ring that
King Agramant of Africa gave to his dwarf Brunello.
Bradamante finds the dwarf and uses the ring to liberate
Ruggiero and the other imprisoned knights.
Ruggiero manages to capture the magician’s hippogryph
that flies off with him to Alcina,
a sorceress who has enchanted Astolpho.
Bradamante consults Melissa again and learns that
Ruggiero succumbed to the beauty of Alcina.
Melissa transports herself and gives Ruggiero
a magic ring to break the spell.
He gets on the hippogryph and flies to Ebuda,
where he sees Angelica chained and naked.
He puts the ring on her finger and then battles
the monster, blinding him with his shield.
Ruggiero flies away with Angelica to Britain,
and he swears to be true to her forever.
However, Angelica uses the ring
to become invisible and leaves Ruggiero.
The hippogryph has flown back to its master,
and Ruggiero returns to his country.
There he sees Bradamante submitting to a giant.
His former tutor Atlantes to protect him lures him to an
enchanted palace where many knights
and ladies are held captive.
In Paris the Christians have defeated the Saracens
led by Rodamonte, and Ranaldo has killed
King Dardinello of Zumara.
While the Christians are celebrating at night,
two Saracen youths, Cloridan and Medoro,
kill Christian warriors in revenge.
At dawn Prince Zerbino and his Scottish knights
kill Cloridan and leave Medoro on the field to die.
Angelica finds Medoro
and at a shepherd’s hut nurses him back to health.
She gives her bracelet to the shepherd and returns
to Cathay with Medoro, whom she makes a king.
Orlando happens on the hut, and the shepherd tells him
how Angelica fell in love with Medoro
and shows him her bracelet.
Orlando goes mad and throws away his armor and clothes,
wandering naked in the forest.
The Saracens besiege Paris again, but in camp Rodamonte
fights over the Spanish princess Doralice
with Prince Mandricardo of Tartary.
When she chooses Mandricardo, Rodamonte leaves
King Agramant’s camp and goes to Princess Isabella of Galicia.
Mandricardo killed her lover Zerbino, and she is mourning him.
Rodamonte gets drunk and kills her.
In remorse he builds a bridge near her tomb
and challenges passing knights.
Only the naked Orlando and Bradamante
are able to defeat him.
Because Rodamonte had captured Brandimart,
his wife Flordelice persuaded Bradamante to fight the Saracen.
When Rodamonte is defeated,
he promises to release all his prisoners.
Bradamante takes the horse Frontino,
which belongs to Ruggiero,
and asks Flordelice to return it to him.
Melissa had released Astolpho from Alcina,
and Astolpho then frees Ruggiero from the spell of Atlantes
Astolpho then mounts the hippogryph and flies to the land
of Prester John, who gives him
a tour of the regions of the moon.
Astolpho sees the lost wits of Orlando in a vial
and takes them down to Nubia, where Orlando regains
his senses and leads a Nubian army
with Astolpho that sacks the city of Biserta.
Ruggiero goes back to the Saracen camp,
quarrels with Mandricardo, and kills him in single combat.
The Saracens are divided by dissension,
and Agramant withdraws his army.
They decide to settle the war by a battle of champions.
The Christian Ranaldo fights Ruggiero,
but during the duel Agramant breaks his oath
and attacks the knights of Charlemagne.
Ruggiero had promised Bradamante that he would become
a Christian after the battle,
but he leaves with the defeated Agramant.
He ends up on a desert island, where a holy man baptizes him.
Orlando, Oliver, and Brandimart fight against the Saracen kings
Agramant, Gradasso, and Sobrino, defeating them at Lipadusa.
Agramant, Gradasso, and Brandimart are killed,
and the elderly Sobrino converts to Christianity.
Orlando returns by way of the desert island
and rescues Ruggiero.
The Christians are glad he has been baptized.
Ranaldo promises his sister Bradamante to Ruggiero,
but her parents want her to marry Emperor Constantine’s
son Leo and lock her up in a castle.
Ruggiero goes to challenge Leo and joins the Bulgarian army
to fight Constantine’s forces.
The Greeks flee, and he pursues them into their territory.
Ruggiero is captured and imprisoned
by Constantine’s sister Theodora.
The chivalrous Leo rescues Ruggiero and hides him in his home.
They learn that Bradamante has vowed she would wed
only a knight whom she could not conquer in combat.
Leo does not know Ruggiero’s name
but persuades him to be his champion.
Ruggiero defeats Bradamante and goes alone into the forest.
Leo finds him weak with grief, but he learns who he is
and renounces his claim to Bradamante
and goes with Ruggiero back to Charlemagne’s court.
There Ruggiero betroths Bradamante.
Rodamonte accuses Ruggiero of apostasy
but is slain in single combat.
The Christian knights celebrate the
wedding of Ruggiero and Bradamante,
and news comes that the Bulgarians
have chosen Ruggiero to be their king.
After he stopped serving Cardinal Ippolito in 1517,
Ariosto began writing his seven Satires
which he completed by 1525.
In the first one he is without employment and satirizes
his own poverty, though he is happy to be free.
In the second satire he criticizes the greed, pride, and ambition
of clerics, noting how prelates never seem to have
enough money to satisfy themselves.
In his third satire Ariosto explains why he is better off
working for Duke Alfonso rather than his brother the cardinal.
He also tells how he went to Rome and talked with his friend,
the new Pope Leo X, but he did not represent the Este family
and was generally disappointed.
He was granted the financial rights to his Orlando Furioso,
and his son Virginio was declared legitimate.
In the fourth satire Ariosto describes his problems governing
the Garfagnana province and how in his letters to the
Duke of Ferrara he asked for help in driving out
the thieves who are all around him.
Ariosto discusses marriage in his fifth satire after being
offended for not having been sent an announcement
of the wedding of his cousin Annibale Malaguzzi to
Lucrezia Pio from the ruling family of Carpi.
Ariosto admits he has no wife because of various
circumstances,
but he writes, “No man can perfect himself in all
good fortune without a wife to help him.
Nor wifeless, can one live without sin.”5
This is why priests are cruel and ravenous.
He advises his cousin not to marry a woman
who is used to wealth because she will
spend more than he can afford.
He recommends a simple girl rather than
a society dame raised at court.
He suggests he examine how her mother and sisters behave.
Ariosto urges him to marry an equal so that this wife
will not start new customs in his house.
He should never take a wife who is older or the same age
but recommends that she be about ten years younger.
Ariosto’s sixth satire is dedicated to the famous poet
Pietro Bembo, whom he is asking to tutor
his son Virginio in the arts that ennoble a man.
Bembo had persuaded Ariosto to purify his language in
Orlando Furioso by using the lingua toscana.
He hopes that his son will have a preceptor who is moral
and does not ignore small vices as many humanists do.
In the seventh and last satire he explains why he is reluctant
in 1524 to accept being an ambassador
to another Medici prelate, Pope Clement VII.
The poet renounces the life of ambition,
preferment, benefices, and sinecures.
He claims he has all the honor he wants, and he only needs
enough money to live in freedom without having to borrow.
Ariosto loves his nest and wants to stay there.
Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 as an
illegitimate son of the notary Ser Piero di Antonio da Vinci
and the peasant Caterina in Vinci in the domain of Florence.
His first five years were spent in the home of his mother.
Then she married, and he moved to the household
of his father and grandfather.
Leonardo was educated in Latin, geometry, and mathematics.
In 1468 his father moved to Florence, and Leonardo became
an apprentice to the painter Andrea del Verrocchio.
He asked unusual questions about mathematics
and learned to play the lyre.
Leonardo quickly took to drawing, painting, sculpture,
and architecture, but he also learned drafting, chemistry,
metallurgy, plaster casting, leather-work,
mechanics, and carpentry.
Other apprentices of Verrocchio included Sandro Botticelli,
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi.
In 1472 the Guild of San Luca recognized Leonardo as master,
and his father Pietro set him up in his own shop.
Yet he continued to do work in Verrocchio’s studio until 1478.
On April 9, 1476 Leonardo, Verrocchio’s 17-year-old
assistant Jacopo Saltarelli, and two other apprentices were
accused of sodomy, but the charges were dismissed on June 16.
Leonardo never married and once said,
“You own yourself when you are alone.”
Verrocchio let Leonardo paint two angels in his
“Baptism of Christ,” and some believed his angels
were better than the master’s work.
In January 1478 his father Piero helped him get
his first major contract to do an altar painting
for the Bernhard Chapel in Florence’s government palace.
Leonardo did not finish the work,
and he often was so distracted by his studies
that he failed to complete his projects.
He wrote, “Despise me not, for I am not poor—
Poor is he only who has material desires.”6
In 1482 Leonardo wrote to Ludovico Il Moro Sforza in Milan
offering his expertise as a military engineer, painter, and sculptor.
Leonardo had made his own lyre of silver
and played it for Ludovico.
His musical performance was superior; he could improvise,
and his conversation was most interesting.
He completed the altar painting “Virgin of the Rocks” in 1486,
and in the next two years he worked as the consultant
architect in the Milan Cathedral Workshop.
In 1489 he designed festivities for the wedding of
Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon.
That year Leonardo volunteered to make a huge equestrian
statue to be cast in bronze as a memorial to Ludovico’s father,
Francesco Sforza, the founder of the ruling dynasty in Milan.
However, he designed it so large that
it could not be cast in one piece.
The enormous clay model was preserved;
but when the French came to Milan, they smashed it.
In 1490 Leonardo took the ten-year-old boy Salai
into his house, and they became close friends for many years.
In 1492 Leonardo designed the costumes for a parade
of Scythians and Tartars at the wedding
of Ludovico Sforza Beatrice d’Este.
Ludovico Sforza became duke of Milan in 1494
and persuaded Leonardo to paint a “Nativity” scene
or an altarpiece that was sent to the Emperor.
In November Sforza used the bronze acquired for the
equestrian statue to make cannons to defend
against the French invasion led by Charles VIII.
In 1495 Ludovico commissioned Leonardo to paint
“The Last Supper” in the Dominican monastery of Milan,
and he finished it in 1498.
On February 9 that year Ludovico sponsored a scientific duel
between Leonardo, the mathematician Luca Pacioli,
and theologians, teachers, and physicians.
Also in 1498 Pacioli published his De Divina Proportione
with illustrations designed by Leonardo.
Once when asked to paint a fresco, Leonardo spent
several days sitting and looking at the wall.
When his patron asked him when he was going to begin
working, the artist replied that he was doing the most
difficult part of the work before he started painting.
After the French defeated Ludovico Sforza in 1499,
Leonardo left Milan in December
and went to Mantua and then Venice.
He returned to Florence in April 1500,
and the next year he painted the “Virgin and Child.
In August 1502 Cesare Borgia hired him as his chief architect
and military engineer for his campaign in Romagna.
Leonardo made topographical studies and a map of Imola.
Leonardo employed musicians and jesters to keep his models
entertained while he painted them, and the beautiful Mona Lisa
was depicted with an unusual smile.
In 1506 Leonardo left unfinished his wall painting of the
Battle of Anghiari in Florence and went back to Milan,
where the French governor
Charles d’Amboise became his patron.
In July 1507 King Louis XII made Leonardo
his “regular painter and engineer.”
He also studied human anatomy by dissecting corpses,
and in 1510 he studied anatomy at the University of Pavia
with professor Marcantonio della Torre.
Leonardo loved animals and was a vegetarian.
Leonardo probably met Machiavelli as early as
November 1502 in the court of Cesare Borgia,
and it is likely they were friends over several years.
Leonardo persuaded Machiavelli who got approved
a project to divert the water of the Arno River
away from Pisa in the summer of 1503.
In his Notebooks Leonardo discussed how massed artillery
changed the vulnerability of castles and shifted
the military advantage from defense to offense.
Machiavelli also adopted this view in his Discourses 2:17.
Both Leonardo and Machiavelli looked at the human
condition with scientific detachment and worked
to find practical ways of improving living.
Leonardo drew from life and made clay models.
He made drawings for flying machines and a bicycle with
two equal wheels and a chain connecting one wheel to pedals.
He designed musical instruments, drums, clocks, motors, mills,
fulling machines, engines to drive water, parabolic mirrors
for using solar energy, machines for manufacturing concave
mirrors, textile machines for spinning thread or twining cord,
and military machines.
He learned how to lift weights with levers, hoists,
a revolving crane, and winches,
and he used pumps to clean harbors.
He wrote in reverse with his left hand
and kept it secret that these could be read in a mirror.
In his Notebooks he wrote that a good painter will learn
from nature rather than by imitating the works of others
as the painters did after the Roman era.
He noted that Giotto lived in the mountains and drew things
as he saw them so that he surpassed
those who came before him.
Another Florentine called Tommaso,
who was known as Masaccio,
also perfected his work by taking nature as his standard.
In 1513 Leonardo went with Giuliano de’ Medici to Rome
where Giuliano’s brother Giovanni was elected Pope Leo X.
Leonardo stayed in Rome, working on experiments and
a project to reclaim the Pontini marshes south of Rome.
After Giuliano died in March 1516, Leonardo accepted
an invitation to be the court painter of King François,
who had recaptured Milan in October 1515.
He spent the rest of his life at the French court,
and according to legend the King visited him on the day
of Leonardo’s death on May 2, 1519.
Leonardo left his manuscripts to his student
and disciple Francesco Melzi.
Raphael was born in Urbino on March 28 or April 6, 1483.
His mother died a few years later, and his father, a painter
introduced him to humanist philosophy at the court of Urbino
before his death in 1494.
Raphael became an apprentice of Perugino at Perugia by 1495,
and he was declared a master in 1500.
His early paintings included “Coronation of the Virgin,”
“The Marriage of the Virgin,” “Vision of a Knight,”
“Three Graces,” and “St. Michael.”
By 1504 he had moved to Florence to meet
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
He was influenced by the lighting and shading techniques
of Leonardo and completed three more
paintings of madonnas by 1507.
That year a Perugian commissioned him
to paint the “Deposition of Christ.”
Bramante persuaded Pope Julius II to invite Raphael
to Rome in 1508, and he spent the rest of his short life there.
In 1515 Pope Leo X appointed him
superintendent of antiquities in Rome.
Raphael is most famous for his
three “Stanza” paintings at the Vatican.
The “Stanza della Signatura” includes “The School of Athens,”
“The Parnassus,” and the “Disputa,”
and the “Stanza di Eliodor” contains “The Mass at Bolsena”
and “Deliverance of St. Peter.”
Raphael is also admired for “Galatea,”
“The Miraculous Draught of Fishes,”
“Il Spasimo,” and “Transfiguration.”
His most famous portraits are of Elizabetta Gonzaga,
Pope Julius II, Bindo Altoviti, and Baldassare Castiglione.
Raphael never married but was known for having several
mistresses including La Fornarina, whom he painted.
After a night of excessive sex with her
he was given a wrong prescription, and after fifteen days
of illness he died on Good Friday, April 6, 1520.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475
in Caprese, and his father was the mayor of that town.
That year they moved to Florence, and his mother died in 1481.
After going to school but not learning Latin, Michelangelo was
apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio in April 1488.
The next year he began studying sculpture in the Medici garden.
For two years the young artist was allowed to live in the
Palazzo Medici and dine with Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano,
Pico della Mirandola, and Marsilio Ficino.
He also heard sermons by Savonarola, and they probably
influenced his painting of “The Last Judgment.”
He carved reliefs of “Madonna of the Stairs”
and “Battle of the Centaurs.”
After the death of Lorenzo in 1492 Michelangelo
returned to his father’s house, and the prior of the
Santo Spirito hospital allowed him to use a private room
to dissect corpses and learn anatomy.
Piero de’ Medici persuaded him to live in the
Casa Medici in January 1494, but later that year
Michelangelo fled to Bologna.
He came to back to Florence in 1495,
but he moved to Rome in June 1496
and lived in Cardinal Riario’s house.
After carving “Bacchus” in marble for the banker
Jacopo Galli, he sculpted his famous “Pieta” that
depicts the crucified Jesus laying in his mother’s lap.
Michelangelo went back to Florence in 1501 and completed
his gigantic statue of “David” in April 1504.
In August the Commune’s secretary Soderini persuaded him
to paint a fresco on a large wall of the “Battle of Cascina”
in which Florentines defeated Pisans in 1364.
At the same time Soderini commissioned Leonardo da Vinci
to paint on the opposite wall the “Battle of Anghiari”
showing Florence’s victory over Milan in 1440.
These two great artists often quarreled,
and neither completed these battle scenes.
Michelangelo fled from Rome on April 17, 1506,
but he humiliated himself before
Pope Julius II at Bologna in December.
He made a bronze statue of Julius by February 1507,
which was sent to Ferrara, but Duke Alfonso d’Este
had it melted down to make cannons in May 1512.
Michelangelo began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
in May 1508 and completed it in October 1512.
The next year he began working on a tomb for Julius
which included his famous “Moses” sculpture.
He was obligated to do much more
and for years he quarreled with the heirs of Julius.
Baldesar Castiglione was born on December 6, 1478
near Mantua.
In 1494 he began studying with humanists in Milan.
He served Duke Ludovico Maria Sforza from 1496
until the Duke was taken prisoner by the French in 1500.
Then Castiglione served the ruler of Mantua for a while
before working for Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
(r. 1482-1508) at Urbino.
In 1506 Castiglione wrote a pastoral play
and the eclogue Tirsi.
Urbino’s Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere (r. 1508-17)
sent him as an ambassador to Rome in 1512,
and he became a close friend of Raphael,
who painted his portrait.
In 1516 Castiglione went back to Mantua
and married Ippolita Torelli.
That year he wrote The Book of the Courtier
(Il Libro del Cortegiano)
which was set at the court of Urbino
in 1507 but was not published until 1528.
In the next 88 years 108 editions were published.
Castiglione’s ecclesiastical career
began in 1521, and he died in 1529.
Castiglione addressed each of the four books of The Courtier
to Alfonso Ariosto, cousin of the poet Ludovico Ariosto.
He began by describing Urbino and its pleasant surroundings
and expressed admiration for its former Duke
Federico da Montefeltro who ruled Urbino 1474-82.
The court has a beautiful palace well furnished with statues,
paintings, musical instruments, and rare books.
Guidobaldo da Montefeltro was only ten years old
when he became Duke, and by twenty
he was suffering from gout.
Pope Julius II made him Captain of the Church, and his court
was filled with gentlemen who knew Latin and Greek.
The Duke usually retired after supper, and the Duchess
Elisabetta Gonzaga presided over the
court discussions with Emilia Pia.
Castiglione wrote that everyone wants to please the Duchess,
and they enjoy fine conversation and intellectual games.
After Pope Julius subdued Bologna in 1506, he visited Urbino
for several days on his way back to Rome.
The Duchess asks Gasparo Pallavicino to suggest a game,
and he proposes that each person say which virtue is best
and which defect in the beloved is worst.
They agree to exempt the ladies,
and Emilia asks Cesare Gonzaga to begin.
He suggests that each discuss his own folly.
After hearing these Emilia asks Federico Fregoso to suggest
a game, and he proposes they describe the perfect courtier.
Emilia agrees and tells Count Ludovico da Canossa to begin.
He wants their courtier to be from a noble family because
they attempt to go beyond their ancestors;
but Gasparo judges that Fortune is foremost because
humble people may also be endowed with great talents.
The Count admits they may be virtuous and says
they must be good with arms and be loyal and courageous,
yet humane and modest.
Gasparo complains they often praise themselves.
Bernardo Bibbiena suggests they should have beauty and grace.
The Count adds he should be a good horseman and have
good judgment and nonchalance (sprezzatura).
They discuss this and various attributes
of a good courtier at length.
The Count finally gets around to the virtues of honor
and the soul such as prudence, goodness, and temperance.
They also discuss how courtiers should be well versed
in literature and speak and write well.
Being skilled in music and painting also help,
and they retire to sleep.
In the second book Federico Fregoso
emphasizes wisdom and doing things well.
A courtier should be able to converse well with different
people without being obstinate and contentious.
Humility is important, and one should be deserving
of honors without seeking them, though many do the latter.
One should hold to the good
and refuse to serve one who is wicked.
One is obligated to disobey a dishonorable order.
Federico warns that they should choose their friends
carefully because people judge a person by their friends.
The poet Pietro Bembo doubts whether one should ever
trust a friend completely; but Federico believes the
supreme friendship is good,
and there can be no real friendship with the wicked.
Federico recommends that the courtier “sweeten and refresh
the minds of his hearers”7 with witticisms and pleasantries.
Bembo asks what part art plays in this.
Federico suggests that humor often results
from something incongruous but not amiss.
They share various funny anecdotes and try to analyze them.
Bernardo Bibbiena discourses and relates that the Archbishop
of Florence told Cardinal Alessandrino that people
“have only their goods, their body, and their soul:
their goods are harried by lawyers, their body by physicians,
and their soul by theologians.”8
Using biting remarks about the powerful is imprudent,
and to do so about the weak is cruel.
Bernardo goes into practical jokes and finds
they are often based on a friendly deception
that leads to something contrary to expectation.
One may deceive someone in an amusing manner or gradually
draw one into a trap that causes a man to trick himself.
Gasparo Pallavicino, who is ridiculed for his belief that women
are inferior or at least should not be given special privileges
that men do not receive, complains that even disgracing
a woman’s chastity can have a parallel dishonor among men.
Boccaccio’s tales often showed clever women fooling men.
Emilia asks Giuliano de’ Medici to comment, and he says
the courtier should show fitting respect for women
to show that he is discreet and courteous.
He has found that most men of merit love and honor women
and that their virtue is not inferior to that of men.
The Duchess concludes the evening by asking Giuliano
to describe the highest perfection in women the next day.
Giuliano de’ Medici begins the third book by saying that
as men should behave with sturdy manliness,
a woman should show a soft and delicate tenderness
and be graceful in all her actions.
Both ought to have the virtues of prudence,
magnanimity, temperance, and kindness.
She must be able to recognize the kind of person
she is talking to and respond accordingly.
She is more concerned in her personal appearance
with beauty than men are.
Once again Gasparo interjects with his prejudice
against women, but Giuliano argues that women are equal
to men in understanding and intellect.
Men have been in more powerful positions
because they have arrogated to themselves
authority over women.
Giuliano gives several examples of great women
from ancient Rome, and he commends the Sabine women
for stopping the violence of the Romans against their men,
helping the two peoples to become one.
He also gives recent examples of great ladies
such as Queen Isabel of Spain.
Cesare Gonzaga counters the misogyny of Gasparo
by noting that women benefit the world by bearing children,
and they should be commended for abstaining
from appetites more than men do.
He gives examples of women who have courageously
committed suicide after having been dishonored by rape,
both in the ancient world and in their time.
Federico Fregoso asks Giuliano to discourse on
what women know about love
and how they should converse discreetly with lovers.
Giuliano suggests that she can discreetly pretend
not to recognize the intentions of a lover.
She can respond with spiritual love but may react
honestly to someone who may marry her.
She should not give men hope of
obtaining anything dishonorable from her.
If she is virtuous, the courtier is more likely to be worthy also.
The Duchess congratulates Giuliano for having told
how women should love even though
how the courtier should love had not been described.
Unico Aretino believes that they should teach the courtier
how to be loved, and Emilia asks him to do that.
Unico says that men can gain the favor of ladies
by serving them and pleasing them,
and they can learn these from the ladies themselves.
He asks Emilia to say what pleases women, and she responds.
Giuliano says that the courtier may make his love known
to the lady by actions rather than words,
and he advises him to keep his love secret.
Gasparo asks Giuliano how a man
is to keep his love a secret.
Giuliano warns them not to trust anyone.
Ottaviano wants to hear more about what makes a
courtier more perfect, and at the conclusion of the third
evening the Duchess asks him to do that the next night.
In the fourth book of The Courtier Ottaviano Fregoso
arrives late and goes into how a courtier should win favor
from a prince by showing him how honor and benefit
will come to him from justice, liberality, magnanimity,
gentleness, and other virtues.
He should tell the truth to the prince.
Some princes try to impose their will by force
and think only of how to maintain their power.
Not knowing how to govern
causes the worst disasters to mankind.
The honest courtier can gain the good will
of the prince and gain access to him.
Gradually he should teach him
justice, courage, and temperance.
Nothing is better than a good prince
nor worse than a bad one.
Wicked courtiers try to manipulate the prince
for their own profit by turning him from virtue to vice.
Gasparo questioned whether princes
can be taught these things because he believes
they are natural and granted by God.
Ottaviano replies that virtues can be learned
as prudence develops.
Yet reason can be overcome by passion,
but those with true knowledge will not err.
One can learn to moderate the passions with temperance.
Pietro Bembo suggests that God gives us liberty as the
supreme gift and that well ordered republics preserve freedom.
Gasparo asks more questions, and the Duchess requests
Ottaviano to answer how he would teach his prince.
Ottaviano believes that contemplation is the goal of life
as peace is the goal of war and rest is of work.
We should teach by practicing how to govern appetites
by using intelligence.
The prince should consult with the wisest gentlemen
and give them authority to speak honestly
to him about anything.
Maintaining justice is the prince’s most important duty,
and he should appoint prudent judges.
Princes can better understand justice
by being pious and guided by God.
The prince should love his country and his people
and not keep them in bondage.
Excessive wealth, as in Italy, can lead to ruin
when other people seek it.
The value of the people to the prince
is not their numbers but their worth.
Judgment can be easily corrupted by pleasure,
and so the prince should practice
the mean between excess and lack.
After hearing Ottaviano, Giuliano criticizes him for raising
the courtier above what a court lady may attain
and for putting him above the prince himself,
but Ottaviano denies he did that.
In regard to courtship Pietro Bembo offers to show how older
courtiers who are wise can also love.
He explains the three ways of cognition as the appetite
of animals, the reason of humans,
and the intellect of angels from which comes will.
He discusses the importance of beauty to love
but goes beyond physical beauty to the Platonic concept
that lifts one from the senses into the mind.
He argues that rational love is better than sensual love
and says chaste lovers are satisfied
by a kiss that unites souls.
Thus the courtier can turn his love
from the body to beauty itself.
Ultimately we may direct our thoughts
to the “most holy light” that leads us to heaven.
Notes
1. Cicero, De officiis 1.26.92 in On Avarice by Poggio Bracciolini
tr. Benjamin G. Kohl and Elizabeth B. Welles in The Earthly Republic, p. 288.
2. Cicero, De oratore. 2.9.36 in The Education of Boys by Piccolomini 73
in Humanist Educational Treatises tr. Craig W. Kallendorf, p. 225.
3. On the Dignity of Man by Pico della Mirandola tr. Charles Glenn Wallis, p. 11-12.
4. Gli Asolani by Pietro Bembo tr. Rudolf B. Gottfried, p. 194-195.
5. The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto tr. Peter Desa Wiggins, p. 125.
6. Codex Atlanticus, 71 recto quoted in Leonardo da Vinci:
The Tragic Pursuit of Perfection by Antonina Vallentin tr. E. W. Dickes, p. 3.
7. The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione tr. Charles S. Singleton, p. 140.
8. Ibid., p. 165.