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Individualism in the Early Italian Renaissance: Burden and Blessing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Marvin B. Becker
Marvin B. Becker*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

Almost all Elizabethan criticism of any seriousness and weight was written in Latin. Yet no one would imagine this, to look at the literary histories.’ A Latin treatise in defense of poetry and acting by Alberico Gentili, which it is my purpose here to edit and translate, has altogether escaped the notice of historians of criticism and students of Elizabethan literature, even though it was published at Oxford by the University Printer, in the greatest days of Queen Elizabedi's reign.

The main outlines of the life of Alberico Gentili are well enough known. He was born in Italy at San Ginesio in 1552, and studied at the University of Perugia, whence he graduated as a doctor of civil law in 1572. A Protestant, suspected of heresy, he was compelled to flee the Inquisition, along with his father Matteo, and younger brother Scipione.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 19 , 1972 , pp. 273 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1972

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the Anglo-American Historical Conference in London in July 1970.

References

1 The present discussion does not consider the experiences of South Italy and Sicily. The exceptional nature of the culture of the South has been underscored by generations of scholars. In my particular case the materials consulted were chiefly prose, poetry, and chronicles; southern exemplars of these genres display notable differences from those of North and Central Italy. For instance, historical writing in Sicily lacks that high sensibility for ‘social facts’ that characterized so many of the North Italian chronicles. Cf. Gina Fasoli's Cronache medievali di Sicilia (Catania, 1950). Moreover, chroniclers focused upon the behavior of eminent personages from clergy and nobility, while ilpopolo played but a minor role. The emergence of the commoners serves to differentiate between the chronicles from South Italy and Sicily on the one hand, and Lombardy and Tuscany on the other. Of all the southern chroniclers only Michele da Piazza has an appreciation for social facts. Neither the histories of Saba Malaspina, the pseudo-Jamsilla, Bartolomeo di Neocastro, Nicola Speciale, nor Simone Lentini possess this sensibility. By the same token, literary developments displayed what one scholar has termed a ‘desolante agnosticismo politico’. Cf. De Bartholomaeis', V. Primordi della lirica d'arte in Italia, (Turin, 1943), p. 148 Google Scholar. Another literary scholar, Folena, dwells upon the ‘anti-storico’ bias of the aristocratic lay culture of Sicily. The vernacular poetry of the South was of prime importance for the development of North Italian culture. What this verse lacked, however, was a sense of lyrical development and a ‘true spiritual history’. When compared with Tuscan or Bolognese poets (Guido d'Arezzo and Guinizzelli), the works of the Southerners seldom disclose a spiritual dialectic or have the intellectual movement of an internal history. Cf. Folena's, Gianfranco chapter, ‘Cultura e poesia dei Siciliani’, in Storia della Letteratura Italiana, ed. E. Cecchi and N. Sapegno (Milan, 1965), pp. 273–316 Google Scholar. Exceptions there are, of course: the canzone ‘Ben m'è venuto prima cordoglienza’ by Iacopo da Lentini is the most notable. For additional bibliography on the theme of medieval Italian historiography, see Capitani, O., ‘Motivi e momenti di storiografia medioevale italiana’, in Nuove questioni di storia medioevale, (Milan, 1964), pp. 729–800 Google Scholar.

2 Certainly a case can be made for dedicating historical studies to a variety of ends. One of these might well be the multiplication of alternate explanations, especially in the areas of human behavior where they are in short supply. In this type of endeavor we of course must recognize that the historian is concerned with the increase of possible explanations for past behavior and that his energies are devoted not ‘to narrating what really happened’, but rather to multiplying the store of possible explanations. The historian's critical intelligence can be self-consciously directed toward rejection or acceptance of alternate explanations, the assumption being that the proper exercise of this faculty will bring him closer to that generalization capable of subsuming the largest quantity of data. If one, therefore, raises the question, can we ever know the thirteenth century? the answer would be, of course not, but we can know the reasons why we reject one explanation and accept another. In the area of psychological history the critical choice is too limited.

3 Burckhardt, J., The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Huizinga, J., The Waning of the Middle Ages, (Garden City, N.Y., 1954)Google Scholar.

4 Bibliography on this theme is extensive, but see especially Ferguson, W.K., The Renaissance in Historical Thought, (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), pp. 179–194 Google Scholar; and Kaegi, W., Jacob Burckhardt, (Basle, 1956)Google Scholar, Vol. 3.

5 Writings on this subject are legion but a few are of particular interest: cf. Morghen, R., Medioevo Cristiano (Bari, 1953), pp. 212–286 Google Scholar; Manselli, R., L'eresia del male, (Naples, 1963)Google Scholar, and his and other contributions in the volume Povertà e ricchezza nella spiritualità dei secoli XI e XII, (Todi, 1969).

6 From a methodological point of view the admonition of Federico Chabod is crucial: We must not confuse practical life with the life of the mind, or the day-to-day activities of man with his rational consciousness of these activities. Such a clear statement disposes of the naive disclaimer of the historian, who argues in the name of common sense that medieval practices differed not at all on the consciolis level from those of the Renaissance. Our concern here is not with certain instinctual and fundamental passions but rather with their elevation to the status of a consciously articulated program of life. It is the programmatic that finds expression in the chronicle, the Tuscan lyric or fresco. To quote Chabod: 'Ever since the world began men in their everyday life have always obeyed certain instinctive and fundamental passions; and love and ambition, sensuality and the need for amusement, the desire for riches and the yearning for political power are peculiar to men of all ages and countries. Hence, if we had to reconstruct history in the light of such considerations we should be obliged to regard as equal and alike in their significance all the things that have happened from the times of the Egyptians and the Babylonians down to the present day, and history would become a grey blur in which we could no longer distinguish one epoch from another. But this is not so; for when we speak of historical “periods”, of the classical world and the mediaeval world, of the Renaissance, of the Age of Enlightenment, of Romanticism, to what are we referring if not to political, moral and cultural ideas and the institutions in which those ideas have found expression—ideas and institutions which characterize individual epochs?’ Cf. Chabod's Machiavelli and the Renaissance (New York, 1965), pp. 162-164. A telling correlation between Tuscan painting and literature is found in the sacralization of familial love and domesticity. Cf. Panofsky, E., Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 22–23 Google Scholar; da Barberino, Francesco, II trionfo d'amore, ed. Zenatti, A. (Catania, 1901), p. 36.Google Scholar Barberino is among the first of the European poets to lend spiritual validation to conjugal love. His forerunner in the area of prose may have been another North Italian, Albertano da Brescia, who also celebrated the sacred bond of familial love. Writing in the early thirteenth century he suggested the image employed by Barberino a century later when husband and wife were depicted as a single figure with two heads. See da Brescia, Albertano, Dei trattati morali, (Bologna, 1873), p. 266 Google Scholar. For an effective treatment of the theme of chivalric love, see the recent work of Nelli, René, L'erotique des troubadours, (Toulouse, 1963), pp. 46 Google Scholar, 175, 178, 250, 256, 264, 314.

7 For a general discussion of these topics, see Goldthwaite's, Richard valuable study, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence, (Princeton, 1968)Google Scholar.

8 See my review of Donald J. Wilcox's The Development of Florentine Historiography in the Fifteenth Century in the Journal of Historical Studies (Winter, 1969-70), 1, 297-302.

9 Mommsen, T. E., ‘Petrarch's Concept of the Dark Ages’, Speculum, XVII (1942), 226–242 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Panofsky, E., ‘Renaissance or Renascences?’ Kenyan Review, VI (1944), 225 Google Scholar, and his Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm, 1965), 1,108-113. For a discussion of distancing from the present, see Petrarch's introduction to his De viris illustribus, where he announces that contemporary princes furnish materials not (for) ‘historie sed satyre’. For a discussion of this text, see Struever, N.S., The Language of History in the Renaissance, (Princeton, 1970), pp. 79–81 Google Scholar. Important revisions have been made by Carlo Calcaterra and Guido Martellotti based upon the chronology of De viris illustribus. We can now appreciate the fragility of Petrarch's commitment to the ‘new concept of history’. The profound effects of his spiritual crisis of 1342 dispelled the even tenor of his dedication to the ideals of a republican Rome. Subsequent versions of the De viris illustribus disclose his mounting concern with the consequences of the stain of Adam's fall on history. Petrarch's spiritual travail adds another dimension to the problem of alienation and history in fourteenth- century intellectual circles. Cf. Baron's, Hans incisive discussion of the scholarship on this vital issue in From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, (Chicago, 1968), pp. 23–27 Google Scholar.

10 For bibliography on this and other matters, see N. Sapegno's chapter ‘Francesco Petrarca’ in Storia della Letteratura Italiana, ed. E. Cecchi and N. Sapegno (Milan, 1965), II, 187-313, but especially pp. 305-313.

11 Petrarch and Salutati are but two of the more talented exemplars of a trend toward the laici2ation of the priestly role. A recent assessment of Petrarch's intellectual commitment maintains that ‘the most persistent pattern in [his] long career as a writer is his urge towards the cure of souls through exhortation’. Petrarch's interest is ‘in the “cure of souls,” not their analysis: in the remedies for their ills, not their spiritual topography’. Cf. Trinkaus, C., In Our Image and Likeness, (Chicago, 1970), 1 Google Scholar, p. 11. Tateo, Francesco, in his Dialogo interiore e pokmica ideologica net ‘Secretum’ del Petrarca, (Florence, 1965)Google Scholar, discloses that among the clerical precedents for his writings were Gregory the Great's Regula pastoralis and the De gradibus humilitatis of Bernard of Clairvaux. A reading of Salutati's letters indicates the vitality of his role as spiritual counselor and lay confessor. Two centuries before, such a function would have surely been performed by a cleric. The rise of lay culture in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Italy was marked especially by the enhancement of lay spiritual roles, and the theme of consolation was a persistent one. Indeed, the first serious Latin poem in late medieval Italy to gain a European audience was Enrico da Settimello's De diversitatefortunae et philosophise. Cf. Battaglia, S., La coscienza letteraria del medioevo, (Naples, 1965), pp. 585–607 Google Scholar.

12 F. Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, p. 170.

13 De rebus Laudensibus in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, (Scriptores), ed. P. Jaffe, XVIII (Hanover, 1863), 640-641. (I wish to thank my student Louis La Favia for directing my attention to many of the relevant passages in the Lombard and Genoese chronicles.)

14 During the two centuries after the death of Charlemagne we observe a flowering of local history characterized by an intense municipal pride. Regional resistance to Carolingian reforms was tied to an abiding sense of urban identity. Even the Benedictine school at Monte Cassino remained extraneous from universalistic historical narrative (ab origine mundi). Cf. Cilento, N., ‘Le struttura del racconto nelle cronache benedettino- Cassinesi della Longobardia meridionale nei secoli DC e X’, Bullettino del Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, LXXIII (1962), 85–112 Google Scholar. The development of universalist historical conceptualization came quite late to medieval Italy. Romualdo di Salerno's history, written late in the twelfth century, was the first narrative in this genre. Also, historical philosophizing was not so fashionable in Italy as across the Alps.

15 See Dermis’, Otto ‘A Renaissance of Early Christian Art in Thirteenth-Century Venice’ in Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend Jr., (Princeton, 1955), pp. 348 Google Scholarff. Cf. also Martini's, G. useful review essay, ‘Lo spirito cittadino e le origini della storiografia comunale Iombarda’, Nuova Rivista Storica, LIV (1970), 1–22 Google Scholar.

16 Gesta Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. L. Bethmann and W. Wattenbach, vm (Hanover, 1848), 1-31.

17 Landulfus Senior, Mediolanensis Historiac Libri Quatuor, op. cit., pp. 32-100

18 Junior, Landulfus, Historia Mediolanensis in Monumenla Germaniae Historica, ed. L. Bedimann and P. Jaffe, xx (Hanover, 1868), 17–49 Google Scholar.

19 Annali Genovesi di Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori, ed. L. T. Belgranno (Rome, 1890). Shortly before 1152 it is probable that Caffaro commenced to dictate his chronicle to the notary Columba, so great was the concern for giving this history a juridical validity. Cf. Arnaldi, G., ‘Il notaio-cronista e le cronache cittadine in Italia’, in La storia del diritto nel quadro dette scienze storiche, (Florence, 1966), pp. 293–309 Google Scholar.

20 A. Monteverdi observes that Latin literature in Italy from 1000 to 1200 was not of superior quality. But for some rhymes and odes of Alfano da Salerno we have a tiresome abundance of prose and poetry treating contemporary events; historical and legal writing dominates the literary scene. Cf. Monteverdi's, Studi e saggi sulla letteratura italiana dei primi secoli, (Milan-Naples, 1954), pp. 3–14 Google Scholar.

21 Liber Maiolichinus, ed. C. Calisse (Rome, 1904). Cf. Fisher, C., ‘The Pisan Clergy and an Awakening of Historical Interest in a Medieval Commune’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, III (1966), 143–219 Google Scholar, particularly the last few pages.

22 Lapoesia epico-storica latina dell'Italia tnedioevale (Modena, 1939). Cf. also his L'epica medioevale latina e la Chanson de Roland, (Genoa, 1936).

23 Hyde, J. K., ‘Medieval Descriptions of Cities’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLvm (1966), 308–340 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further discussion of Da Nono, also see Hyde's, Padua in the Age of Dante, (Manchester, 1966), pp. 63–90 Google Scholar passim, 260-261. On the theme of urban patriots writing chronicles in other Italian cities, see Buck, A., ‘Zür Geschichte des italienischen Selbstverstandnisses im Mittelalter’, Medium Aevum Romanicum, (Munich, 1963), pp. 63–77 Google Scholar.

24 For a translation of Villani's Laudatio urbis, see R. Lopez and Raymond, I., Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, (New York, 1954), pp. 71–74 Google Scholar. Cf. also Villani's Cronica, ed. F. Dragomanni (Florence, 1844-1845), VI, 69; xi, 88; XI, 94.

25 For a translation of appropriate portions of this text, see Lopez and Raymond, op. cit., pp. 56-60. The document is also published by A. Hofmeister in Monumenta Cermaniae Historica (Scriptores), xxx, part 2,1450-1457. Cf. also Solmi, A., L'amministrazione finanziaria del Regno Italico, (Pavia, 1932), pp. 21–24 Google Scholar.

26 Giuseppe Martini in his recent article, ‘Lo spirito cittadino’, op. cit., pp. 10-12, speaks persuasively about Moses of Bergamo, who composed his civic verse (Liber Pergaminus) around 1120 (just before the younger Landolfo of Milan wrote his chronicle), as possessing an ‘incipient lay conscience’. Setting aside the first adjective, one can only agree that Martini's emphasis upon the poet's conception of the city was hberated from the world of ecclesiastical tutelage. This reflects the decline of episcopal authority and the rise of the first aristocratic citizen commune. Title for the city's nobility was no longer sought in its apostolic foundation or its holy martyrs, though these references are not forgotten; instead, its ‘lay and profane’ origins were sedulously explicated. Cf. also G. Cremaschi's Mose del Brolo e la cultura a Bergamo nei secoli XI e XII (Bergamo, 1946). Bonvicino, writing in 1288, furnished a secular explanation for Milan's historical situation. He posed the question, What was the cause of the city's problems? Was it her pride that prompted the Lord to make an example of her? The reply was, no. Had not Milan fought valiantly against the German emperors on the side of the church? The first explanation was the prevalence of civic discord, while the second focused upon the lack of a port for the great city. For selections from this panegyricist, see Lopez and Raymond, op. cit., pp. 66-70. The text, De magnalibus urbis Mediolani, has been edited by F. Novati (Rome, 1898).

27 Davis’, Charles ‘II buon tempo antico’, Florentine Studies, ed. N . Rubinstein (London, 1968), pp. 45–69 Google Scholar is a valuable analysis.

28 Chabod, F., ‘La “concezione del mondo” di Giovanni Villani’, Nuova Rivista Storica, XIII (1929), 334–337 Google Scholar; Hyde, J., ‘Italian Social Chronicles in the Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLVIII (1966), 107–132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Becker, M., Florence in Transition, (Baltimore, 1968), II, 228–250 Google Scholar.

30 Sestan, E., ‘Dante e Firenze’, Archivio Storico Italiano, cxxm (1965), 105 Google Scholar. Sestan refers to the leading scholars of Dante's language: Castellani, Migliorini, Parodi, Segré Schiaffini, and Zingarelli. In the writing of poetry we observe a shift toward a language increasingly self-conscious of its liturgical and hagiographical usages. Cf. Corti, M., Studi sulla sintassi della lingua poetica avanti lo stilnovo (Florence, 1961)Google Scholar; Vita di San Petronio, ed. M. Corti (Bologna, 1962). For further discussion of the theme of conscious archaism, see Bertoni, G., Il duecento (Milan, 1951), pp. 160rf.Google Scholar; Poetigiocosi del tempo di Dante, ed. M. Marti (Milan, 1956).

31 Rubinstein, N., ‘Some Ideas on Municipal Progress and Decline in the Italy of the Commune’, in Fritz Saxl 1890-1948, (London, 1957), pp. 165–181 Google Scholar; Nardi, B., Saggi Sull’Aristotelismo padovano dalsecolo XIV-XVI, (Florence, 1958), pp. 1–74 Google Scholar. It is notable that the first group of medieval chroniclers to be committed to certain methodological premises derived from Aristotelianism were Paduans whose city was the center for such philosophical activity.

32 See Amaldi's, G. masterful analysis of this theme in Paduan historiography in his Studi sui cronisti della Marca Trevigiana nell'età di Ezzelino da Romano, (Rome, 1963)Google Scholar.

33 Cf. G. Villani, Cronica, vm, 8. For additional bibliography on this theme, see M. Becker, ‘Towards a Renaissance Historiography in Florence’, Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. A. Molho and J. Tedeschi (Dekalb, 111., 1971), pp. 143-171.

34 Brum's Historiarum Florentine populi libri XII deserves to be studied not only for its treatment of constitutionalism and libertas, but also because of its sponsorship of Florentine imperialism. The themes of territorial expansion and defense of the polis usher in a sensibility that more dynamic styles of civic leadership will be required.

35 Cf. n. 33 and Compagni, D., Cronica, ed. I. del Lungo (Florence, 1889), 1 Google Scholar, 12-14.

36 Becker, M., Florence in Transition, (Baltimore, 1967), 1 Google Scholar, 39-43. Significant in this context is the recognition accorded social determinants in interpretations of the past. In describing the civic heroism of Cicero, literati such as Dante, Latini, and Villani commented upon this Roman's parvenu status. His triumphs were all the more remarkable, since he was a ‘cittadino di Roma, nuovo e di grande altezza’. Cf. C. T. Davis, ‘Brunetto Latini and Dante’, Studi medievali, ser. 3, VIII (1967), 424.

37 We observe that in urban chronicles of the early thirteenth century wealth and power are seen as expressions of God's love for man. In the latter half of the century an interesting reversal occurs with obsessive concern being expressed by chroniclers for the sin of usury. This deepening of moral conscience coincides with the diffusion of lay piety and the onset of large-scale restitution of usury. Cf. G. Arnaldi, Studi sui cronisti, pp. 44ff.; J. K. Hyde, Padua in the Age of Dante, pp. 113-117, 177-234; Fiumi, E., Storia economica e sociale di San Gimignano, (Florence, 1961), pp. 86–87 Google Scholar.

38 Kristeller, P. O., Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 1964), pp. 73– 74 Google Scholar; also his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, (Rome, 1956), pp. 569ff.

39 See Branca's, V. persuasive remarks in his Boccaccio medieuale, (Florence, 1957), pp. 68–73 Google Scholar: Carnal passion obtains its highest consecration and tragedy in those spiritual moments of love and death. Thus, in the lyrical and subjective we discern a solemn and heroic tension. In this interior climate we have the echoes of this tension, always solemn and heroic, standing as the highest exemplars of tragic passion. In his De viris illustrious Petrarch argues that the historian must deal with the truly illustrious deed rather than the merely fortuitous. Earned nobility cannot be discerned in the chance event or lucky action. Cf. N. S. Struever, The Language of History, p. 78.

40 For much of the discussion that follows, I am much indebted to my colleague, Professor Bruce Cole of the Department of Fine Arts, University of Rochester.

41 To cite only one of many examples, see the eccentric definition presented by that Florentine arch-Guelf Lapo da Castiglionchio in Davidsohn, R., “Tre orazioni di Lapo da Castiglionchio’, Archivio Storico Italiano, xx (1897), 225–246 Google Scholar.

42 Green, L., ‘Historical Interpretation in Fourteenth-Century Florentine Chronicles’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXVIII (1967), 161–178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 I wish to thank Professor Richard Goldthwaite of Johns Hopkins University for allowing me to read his unpublished manuscript: ‘The Patrician Palace of Renaissance Florence as Domestic Architecture’.

44 Bertram, A., Florentine Sculpture, (London, 1969), p. 13 Google Scholar.

45 E. Carli, José Gudiol, and Souchal, G., Gothic Painting, (London, 1965), pp. 16–17 Google Scholar.

46 Panofcky, E., Early Netherlandish Painting, (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 22–23 Google Scholar

47 Meiss, M., Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, (Princeton, 1951), pp. 27–30 Google Scholar.

48 Battisti, E., Cimabue, (Milan, 1963), pp. 18–80 Google Scholar; Chiesa, A. Delia, Pittura lombarda del Quattrocento, (Bergamo, 1961), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

49 V. Branca, Boccaccio medievale, pp. 18ff.; M. Becker, Florence in Transition, 1, 11-64.

50 This is not to suggest that courtly style was without lively and progressive qualities. Classical influences and advanced techniques were readily accommodated within this genre from the time of Pisanello through to Veronese. Cf. E. Sindona's Pisanello, trans. J. Ross (New York, 1961).