Chapter XLVII
The Prince's marriage--The Duke entrusts to him the government and retires to Castel Durante--His dissolute career and early death--Birth of his daughter Vittoria--The Duke rouses himself--He arranges the devolution of his state to the Holy See--Papal intrigues.
The anxiety of Francesco Maria for continuance of his line, and for the maintenance of his state against the risk of a minority, led him to select a match of policy for his son while yet a mere infant. In October, 1608, he sent a confidential adviser, Count Francesco Maria Mammiani, to attend on his behalf the marriage of Cosimo Prince of Tuscany; and during its prolonged festivities, a negotiation was happily concluded for the betrothal of Princess Claudia, youngest daughter of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. to Prince Federigo. The death of her father, soon after, did not delay the ratification of an engagement so advantageous to all parties, and on the 24th of April following, it was publicly announced,--the united ages of the childish couple amounting to eight years and a half, and the Princess being the elder by eight months. In November, she sent to "her husband" the appropriate presents of a nicely accoutred pony, a poodle taught to leap, a jackdaw, and an inkstand in the form of Mount Calvary containing various conveniences. In honour, probably, of the same auspicious occasion, was a gift of jewels from Philip III. of Spain to the Duke and Duchess in 1609, consisting of a girdle, necklace, and brooch of gold; the girdle containing twenty-eight, and the necklace eighteen links, studded with a hundred and twenty-six diamonds; sixty gold buttons enamelled in white and red, each with three diamonds; and a string of two hundred and twenty-six pearls of various sizes.[101]
[Footnote 101: Oliveriana MSS. No. 375, vol. XXXI., p. 62.]
The long and friendly intercourse of the Dukes of Urbino with the crown of Spain had moulded their court to a tone of Spanish gravity, and a certain severity of manner, which the cold character, reserved habits, and strict morals of Francesco Maria had served to confirm. To this the conduct of the youthful Prince soon offered the strongest contrast. Wilful in all things, and impatient of control, he endured no constraint upon his gratifications. These were generally of the most trifling and childish description; and in one respect alone, and that an unfortunate one, did he exhibit any manly quality. His precocious gallantry was a scandal to the staid manners of the court, and proved ruinous to his own constitution. Too late was his father made aware of follies and vices which he had allowed to attain a dangerous height; and to the counsels of his advisers, that even yet a decided check should be applied, he weakly replied, in the subtleties of a false philosophy, that restraints now imposed would but irritate his son, and surely lead to greater excesses so soon as they could be removed or burst. In truth, the old man shrank from the exertions which his interference would require, and selfishly calculated on being removed from the scene ere the mischief was fully matured. But, whatever may have been the Duke's motives, his refusal to interfere was quickly reported to the Prince, who, thus secured against control, was emboldened to new excesses.
Finding that years only confirmed those vicious symptoms which the Prince had manifested from childhood, and which a bad education had not even attempted to eradicate, his father thought fit to try the experiment of sending him forth to see the world, where, in the intercourse of courts, and in contact with men of distinction, he might observe those qualities which mankind deem worthy of honour, and might learn the reputation acquired by his ancestors. This plan, which had more good sense than most of those which Francesco Maria was in the habit of forming, unfortunately failed, and brought about results exactly the reverse of those which had been anticipated.
On his journey through Romagna towards Florence, Federigo's evil genius brought him into the company of some strolling comedians returning from Venice. Delighted with their loose manners, he threw himself among them without reserve, and a taste for their pursuits was formed at first sight, which disgracefully occupied the few remaining years of his life. Such is the account given by Passeri; and two entries in the Duke's Diary mention that the Prince set out to visit Florence on the 1st and returned on the 22nd of October, 1616. During the following month the Grand Duke Cosimo II. arrived from Loreto on a visit to Pesaro, with his brother the Cardinal; they travelled with a large suite partly in coaches and six, partly in litters, or on horseback, escorted by a guard of cuirassiers, being in all not less than six hundred persons. The Prince met and welcomed them at the head of a hundred mounted gentlemen, and accompanied them on a hunting party. They stayed six days at Pesaro, and thence proceeded to Rimini, leaving many presents, among which the Grand Duke gave Federigo a beautiful little office-book in a case, worth 1000 golden scudi. Regarding his youthful irregularities the Journal maintains a uniform silence, and the few notices of amusements at court scarcely afford us any index of his tastes. It would seem that up to his marriage he rarely left his parents' residence. During that time we find but two theatrical representations mentioned. In the carnival of 1617 nine couples of knights fought within a barrier, where there were also two chariots, one of Pallas, the other of Venus. The following year a wild boar, caught near Mondolfo, where it had attacked various peasants, was baited in the palace-yard at Pesaro with large dogs and spears; and some days thereafter the Prince, with five others of his age, held a mimic tourney in the great hall.
The melancholy turn which the Prince's folly had taken determined his unhappy parent at once to conclude his marriage, which, even should it unhappily fail in rescuing him from a disgraceful career, might at least secure the continuance of his family. The Princess had a character for high spirit, not free from hauteur, but accompanied with decided talent; qualities that seemed likely to influence her destined husband, or, at all events, to maintain his dignity against the debasing tendency of dissolute habits. An intimate alliance with so powerful and so close a neighbour was in every view politic, but especially at a time when the duchy of Urbino had become a more than ever desirable adjunct to the Papal States. If any further inducements were wanting to render this the most advisable marriage for the Prince, it was supplied by the dowry of 300,000 crowns of gold. But an arrangement so eligible seemed fated at every step to be thwarted by the unsparing hand of death. When all was ready for publishing the betrothal, the bride's father was, as we have seen, called away; just as the nuptials were on the eve of celebration, thirteen years later, her brother, the Grand Duke Cosimo II., died on the 28th of February, 1621. The urgent and advantageous circumstances of the connection again superseded the formality of court etiquette, and an early day was fixed for the marriage.
On the 19th of April the Prince sent on a confidential envoy with the following letter to his bride[102]:--
"To the Princess Claudia, Consort of the Prince of Urbino.
"Most serene Highness, my Lady, and most affectionate Consort,
"Giordani precedes me, and will give your Highness certain assurance of my arrival next week, by the favour of God. I beseech your Highness to accompany me on this journey with the favour of your good wishes and prayers; and meanwhile I, with all my heart, kiss your hands. From Pesaro, the 16th of April, 1621.
"Your Highness's most affectionate servant and husband, who loves you more than himself,
"THE PRINCE OF URBINO."
[Footnote 102: Bibl. Oliveriana MSS. No. 396, p. 131.]
The same day Federigo went to visit his father, and on the 22nd left Castel Durante. At the Alpine frontier he was met by a guard of honour, under whose escort he arrived on the 25th in Florence, where, after a pompous entrance into the city, the Villa Baroncelli was assigned for his reception. The ceremony was performed on the 29th, the respective ages of the parties being sixteen and seventeen.[*103] The public joy felt in the duchy at a step which promised to secure the continued succession of the ducal house, and with it the nationality of the state, was proportioned rather to the importance of those objects than to the merits of Federigo. As yet, however, his faults had been shown to but a limited extent, and by most of those who were cognisant of them were generally believed the exuberant but passing growth of boyish folly, which time, and, above all, a respectable marriage, would surely eradicate. The Duke was willing to second the manifestation of these feelings, and the festivities wherewith the event was celebrated at Pesaro were consequently very elaborate. Among the most striking novelties was a device by which discharges of artillery were so regulated as to harmonise, or rather to beat time with the military bands, and the great hall of the palace was fitted up as a theatre for the performance of entertainments similar to what we have lately described.[104]
[Footnote *103: The ceremony was performed on the 28th February without any pomp. Cf. UGOLINI, op. cit., vol. II., p. 437.]
[Footnote 104: See p. 177.]
The Prince preceded his bride, and, after passing a day with his father at Castel Durante, reached Pesaro on the 15th of May. On the 21st, she set out on her ill-fated journey, and on the 26th was met at Lamole by her husband. Although it is only within the last few years that the Apennine range has been there opened up by a road equalling in convenience any of the celebrated Alpine passes, a hasty effort was made to render her route practicable for a carriage from the frontier to her new capital. In the communal records of S. Angelo in Vado, I noticed an instruction that the town should bear its portion of the repairs of the way from Borgo S. Sepolchro, preparatory to her passage, and should contribute towards the public rejoicings, triumphal arches, and other complimentary demonstrations. Among the ingenious devices adopted in honour of the occasion, was the construction in wood of a colossal equestrian figure of the Prince on horseback, part of which still remains in the public hall of S. Angelo. Tradition ascribes it to Frederico Zuccaro, but his death in 1609 places him beyond the suspicion of executing what seems to have been little creditable to the artistic skill of his townsmen. The bridal party, after sleeping at Mercatello, proceeded by easy journeys to Pesaro, spending only a forenoon at Castel Durante with the Duke, who, unequal to the journey, had deputed his principal courtiers, escorted by a hundred gentlemen on horseback, to receive the Princess on the Apennines, and conduct her home. Among the deputations which on this occasion attended to welcome her to her future dominions, was one from S. Leo, the ancient capital of the original fief of the Feltrian race, bringing a donative of twelve silver cups valued at 500 scudi, to whom she returned the following answer:--
"To the most magnificent and my much loved the Gonfaloniere and Priors of the city of S. Leo.
"Most magnificent and well-beloved,
"On entering this state, I brought with me a firm resolution impartially to favour all, but this I shall especially observe towards you; for I have particularly to acknowledge your affectionate devotion, and gratefully to accept the duty you have expressed towards me by the mouth of your deputation, and by the compliment of plate you have given me in token of your attachment. I shall ever cherish towards you the like good will, and a desire of usefully testifying it. May God preserve you. From Pesaro, 19th December, 1621.
"Your most loving,
"CLAUDIA, PRINCESS OF URBINO."[105]
[Footnote 105: MARINI, Saggio di S. Leo.]
With infatuation unequalled perhaps in the long catalogue of parental errors, Francesco Maria now gave the finishing stroke to a system which had trained up his only child to become the scourge of his people and the ruin of his house. We have seen him deprecate a minority as a national misfortune; we have now to witness him anticipating all its evils, by voluntarily entrusting the reins to one whom youth, education, inexperience, and follies combined to render utterly inefficient for their management. That this plan had long been cherished as a favourite speculation, may be gathered from those instructions to his son which have been already quoted; that its most attractive feature was the escape it secured to him from the business and duties of his station, admits not of a doubt. Flattering himself that, in providing the Prince with an honourable and eligible match, he had done his utmost to retrieve past errors and secure a prosperous future, he hurried the execution of his scheme, apprehensive perhaps that delay would render its absurdity more glaring, or bring to light some new disqualification in Federigo. In absence of any rational explanation of such a step, it has been supposed a secret stipulation with the Grand Duke at the time of the marriage, but of this there is not a shadow of evidence. The motive imputed by Gozzi, that it was a device of the Duke to prevent his son from longing for his death and for the delights of sovereignty, seems quite reconcileable with the false philosophy by which he so perversely regulated his general conduct. We turn with interest to the Diary at a moment thus important to his history and that of his state, but find it here more than usually meagre, alluding neither to the fact of his abdication, its manner, nor its motives.[106] Like King Lear, the old man already felt--
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child,"
and his Memoirs abruptly conclude with the negotiation for the Prince's marriage. From Passeri's investigations, we only learn that he one day called round him his son and principal officers, and, after addressing to both a long exhortation on the new duties about to be devolved upon them, made over to the former the reins of government.[107] Reserving for his own use one-third of the private revenues of his family, which from various documents seem to have amounted to about 300,000 crowns, he shut himself up more closely than ever in his--
"Boasted seat Of studious peace and mild philosophy."
Among the Oliveriana MSS. I found a list of his court taken to Castel Durante, which, though undated, probably refers to the arrangements made at this period.
1 counsellor, 1 secretary, 5 gentlemen of the household 7 4 captains, 5 chamberlains, 4 assistant chamberlains 13 1 dwarf or hunchback, 1 watchmaker, 1 barber 3 1 master of the wardrobe, 2 porters, 4 pages and their 2 servants 9 1 physician, 1 apothecary, 2 chaplains, 3 readers 7 18 household servants, 10 stable servants 28 __ Total 67
[Footnote 106: As a specimen of the style of this most disappointing MS., and in proof of its small historical importance, I extract all the notices for August 1621, the month in which, according to Passeri, this transaction took place.
"6. News arrived of the death of the Archduke Albert, which happened at Brussels on the 13th ult.
15. Vespers began to be performed in the church of S. Rocca of Castel Durante.
21. A stag was killed, weighing fully 530 lbs.
26. Four large English dogs coursed in the park, which belong to the Prince; they killed two fallow deer."]
[Footnote 107: It appears that on the 25th of July the Prince arrived from Urbino, and stayed two days, during which probably this scene took place.]
Yet the theoretical tendencies of his mind had not prevented him from establishing, in the early portion of his reign, many practical regulations conducive to the acceleration of business, and to the due order of public affairs. His sway had been upon the whole a mild one; and on a retrospect of two centuries, the government of his predecessors must be pronounced to have promoted, in a degree rarely paralleled, general happiness and public decorum, and at the same time the true glory of their state. But all this was now to be changed, and the brilliant dynasty of Urbino was doomed to expire, exhaling a vile and loathsome odour. That court which the refined tastes of the Feltrian Dukes and the polished pen of Castiglione had rendered a model to the world, which the literature and conduct of its later sovereigns had maintained in like honourable distinction, was about to present a melancholy spectacle of unexampled degradation. To enumerate the debasing excesses successively introduced by Federigo is a sad and sickening task, which it were well briefly to go through. His fancy for music was indulged, to the exclusion of more serious avocations. His casual acquaintance with the company of Venetian comedians was ripened into an intimacy, which gradually monopolised his time and thoughts, and was followed out with frenzied enthusiasm. These persons, belonging then to the vilest classes, and treated accordingly, became the Prince's associates in public and in private. Conforming his morals to theirs, he admitted the actresses into his palace in daring defiance of decency, and openly established one, named Argentina, as his mistress, fêting her publicly in Pesaro, and lavishing upon her large sums. Advancing from one extravagance to another, this petty Nero of a petty court delighted to bear a part in their dramatic representations before his own subjects, generally choosing the character of a servant or a lover, as most congenial to his degraded capacity. His people, imbued with respect for the traditionary glories of their former Dukes, and accustomed to the gravity of Spanish manners, stood in consternation at such spectacles. But they scarcely dared express their feelings or hope for redress, for, whilst he thus
"Moiling lay, Tangled in net of sensual delight,"
the Prince had adopted the most severe precautions to prevent his father becoming cognisant of what was passing.
But, however he might succeed in blinding one who was probably too happy to shut his eyes and ears against all that occurred beyond the limits of his favourite park and convent at Castel Durante, those who owed the youthful tyrant no allegiance of apprehension carried rumours of his doings to Florence. The family of the Princess anxious to interrupt a career so disgraceful to her husband, so miserable for herself, invited Federigo to visit them; and we find from the Diary so often quoted, that he went to Florence on the 12th of September, and returned on the 3rd of December, 1622.
The Princess still fondly hoped (for women's hopes when fed by their wishes die slowly) that the case was not desperate; she accordingly received her husband with the joy and affection of a faithful wife, and ordered a salute of a hundred cannon to welcome him back. But her trust was doomed to a grievous disappointment. The recent restraints of a foreign residence were speedily compensated by new indulgences, more scandalous, if possible, than before. The buffoonery he had learned on the stage was carried into the streets, through which he sallied in some low disguise, insulting all and sundry, and striking them with the flat of his sword, till frequently obliged to discover himself to the astonished spectators. The time which he could spare from such ribaldry, and from his comedians, was devoted to the stable. Besides driving his own horses, an occupation in those stately days exclusively menial, he performed about them the vilest offices of farrier and stable-boy. At length, in executing a feat, unattempted, perhaps, by subsequent Jehus, that of driving eighteen horses in hand, he galloped over a poor child. This outrage, having reached his father, provoked him, in a fit of passionate indignation, and in forgetfulness of his abdicated powers, to pronounce sentence of exile from Pesaro against the Prince,--an order which, of course, was not enforced. The reserved inanity of the Diary throws no light whatever on the Duke's knowledge or feelings in regard to such occurrences, though the following notices are scarcely reconcileable with his ignorance of one excess of his son's headstrong career.
"1623, February 24. The Duchess went to Urbino for the comedy represented there the following day, and returned on the 26th.
"----, ---- 27. The comedy was performed in Castel Durante."[108]
[Footnote 108: The succeeding entry abruptly concludes the Journal:--"March 7. The Prince arrived about 10 A.M., having left Pesaro the preceding day, and returned there the 10th;" probably his last meeting with his father.]
Resuming Passeri's Memoir, to which, although incorrect in many details, we are mainly indebted for this portion of our narrative, we find that the Prince moved to Urbino early in the summer, the company of actors forming the strength of his court, and there nightly performed with them, amid the acclamations of a rabble audience. With a view to conciliate his mother-in-law, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, whose interference in behalf of her insulted daughter he had too good reason to anticipate, he prepared a magnificent coach and six costly horses as a present to her. On the 28th of June he acted as usual on the stage, the part which he sustained on this occasion being (according to Galuzzi) the degraded one of a pack-horse, carrying about the comedians on his back, and finally kicking off a load of crockery with which he was laden. About midnight he retired to rest, worn out by this buffoonery, after giving orders for a chasse next day at Piobbico near Castel Durante. At dawn, hearing the clatter of the horses which were setting out for Florence, he rose and gave some orders from the window in his night dress. In the morning his attendants, surprised at not being summoned, and fearing he would be too late to attend mass before noon, knocked in vain at his door. Three hours passed away in doubts and speculations, and at length two of the courtiers burst open the door, exclaiming "Up, your Highness, 'tis time for the comedy!" But for him that hour was past; the well-known and welcome words fell on an ear whose silver cord was broken. His body was under the icy grip of death; his spirit had fled to its awful account.
The body was discovered on its back, bleeding at the nose and mouth, the left hand under the pillow, one leg drawn up, and the mattress much discomposed. The Prince always slept alone, and locked himself in, without retaining any attendants in the adjoining apartment. Six strangers, with the Tuscan accent, had been observed about the palace the day before. From these circumstances, and from his odious character, suspicions of foul play were entertained; but most of the accounts which I have seen attribute his death to apoplexy, resulting probably from premature and excessive dissipation. The body was opened, and no traces of poison were detected; but a small quantity of water was found upon the brain, which the medical report attributed to over indulgence in athletic sports, and to the bushy thickness of his hair, which he greatly neglected. The most probable explanation of this catastrophe was that of the astrologer Andrea Argoli, who, after an elaborate calculation of the Prince's horoscope, pronounced him to have died of an epileptic fit, induced by the chill of the morning air; a conclusion dictated, no doubt, by medical experience, rather than by the study of those malignant planetary influences which the quack thought fit to quote as decisive of the question.
On the first alarm the Princess had rushed to the room, breaking through all opposition, and exclaiming, "What! my Lord is ill, and am I not to see him?" but finding him dead, she fainted. The chief anxiety of all was how to break the dire news to the "way-worn and way-wearied" Duke, who was suffering from a severe fit of gout, in his wonted retirement. At length, the Bishop of Pesaro, nominally head of the court, undertook the painful mission. Having arrived at Castel Durante, he sent in by a chamberlain a sealed note, containing the words "The Prince is dead." This the Duke at first desired to be laid aside till later, with his other letters; but on being told that the Bishop was in attendance, he read it without emotion, and exclaimed in Latin, "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." This Christian stoicism might seem inexplicable, but from the context of the narrative, which states that to the lamentations of his attendants, he without a sigh or tear supplied consolation, assuring them that the event was irremediable, and one for which he had long been prepared; and adding, with Sancho Panza-like resignation, "He who lives badly comes to a bad end, and one born by a miracle dies by violence." He then with perfect self-command gave directions necessary for the funeral, and for the exigencies of the government; and at supper ordered the reading of Italian and Spanish books of edification to be continued as usual.
In an age when omens were observed with a heathenish superstition, the people began to take note of these before they considered the recent event in its practical and political bearings. It was now recollected that the journey of the Prince and Princess, on their return from their marriage, had been interrupted, before they reached Pesaro, by an extraordinary tempest, which flooded their capital, and delayed their public entry. On the day month preceding Federigo's death, a flight of brown moths passed over Urbino towards the sea, darkening the air for hours. Again, during the fatal night, a strange and threatening cloud was seen by many to cast its gloomy shadow over that city, and, after successively assuming the forms of the eagle of Montefeltro, and the tree of Rovere, to disperse and vanish in the direction of Rome. Others saw serpents and similar monstrous apparitions wrestling in mid-air, and contributed their quota to the strange saws and marvellous instances which fed the popular craving for prodigies. It is scarcely necessary to observe that these facts, or at all events their application, had called for no remark until men's minds were filled with the catastrophe of which they were then interpreted as the precursors. But it may be thought singular that those who busied themselves in finding out ominous coincidences omitted to note a circumstance chronicled by the often-cited Diary, that, on the 21st of August, 1604, nine months before the Prince's birth, lightning struck the Duke's chamber at Castel Durante. Thunder on the left was hailed by the Roman augurs as lucky, but this visitation seems too violent for a good omen.
* * * * *
The honours of a royal sepulture were lavished on one whose life had been thus unworthy of his station; and such was the magnificence displayed in the trappings of death that, besides many overcharged narratives of the funeral, portraits were multiplied of the Prince laid out in his richly-silvered robes. He was deposited in a tomb which Francesco Maria had destined for himself in the grotto or crypt of the metropolitan cathedral, with an inscription to the following purport:--
In this tomb, Prepared for himself by Francesco Maria II., Last Duke of Urbino, Rest the ashes of His son Federigo, Who was cut off by a sudden death, On the 29th June, MDCXXIII., Aged XVIII. years.
On a tablet in the church of Sta. Chiara, his fate is thus touchingly commemorated:--"The waning day saw Federigo Prince of Urbino, in whom sank the house della Rovere, sound in health, and pre-eminent in every gift of fortune; the succeeding dawn beheld him struck down by sudden death, on the 29th of June, 1623. Stranger! pass on, and learn that happiness, like the brittle glass, just when brightest is most fragile."[109]
[Footnote 109: See these and other monumental inscriptions of Urbino sovereigns, Appendix, No. VII.]
* * * * *
The first year of the Prince's marriage had given him a daughter, born at Pesaro, on the 7th of February, 1622, whose advent, as we learn from her grandfather's Diary, was marked by the appearance of three suns in the heavens. She was baptized Vittoria, and was hailed by the Duke and his people with joyful anticipations of a fruitful union, which were destined never to be realised. Francesco Maria's age and infirmities cut off all hopes of a new alliance, and the male line of the Rovere race, to whom were limited the ducal dignity and state, was obviously doomed to extinction in his person. It was true that a similar failure of rightful heirs had, in the preceding century, been supplied by a substitution of the heir-general to this very fief; but that transaction was, in fact, a new investiture, dictated by papal nepotism, and scarcely veiled under the guise of a heritable title. The spirit of the papacy had, since then, been greatly changed in the ordeal of the Reformation; and the ambition of its successive heads, purified from selfish motives, had been long concentrated upon advancing the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the Holy See. But here the question rested not merely on such general principles of law and policy. The foresight of Paul V. had interposed a barrier clause in the marriage contract of Federigo, whereby the Grand Duke's solemn renunciation of all pretensions in behalf of the female issue of that union was distinctly recorded.
As soon as the widowed princess had rallied a little from an advent which, however shocking to her nerves, could not be supposed very long to weigh upon her feelings, she despatched a courier to Florence with the news, and soon prepared to leave for ever a country which she had adopted with bright hopes, quickly turned to bitter experience. After paying a brief visit to the Duke, in whose hands she left her child at Castel Durante, she returned to her family, to forget the troubled dream of the last two years. That she succeeded in banishing it from her thoughts may be presumed from her remarriage, three years after, to the Archduke Leopold of Austria; and it is interesting to notice that the latest jotting in the Diary of her former father-in-law, long after its regular entries had ceased, runs thus:--"On 26th March, 1626, Count delle Gabiccie was sent to Florence to visit Donna Claudia, Archduchess of Austria."
* * * * *
The situation into which Francesco Maria found himself thrown by the Prince's death was one requiring the support of all that philosophy which it had been the chief pursuit of his life to attain. His house was desolate; his line suddenly extinguished; his sovereignty about to lapse. But these crushing blows were accompanied by aggravating circumstances, which called for immediate exertion. The brief reign of Federigo had proved equally detrimental to his state and ruinous to himself. The government was falling to pieces, the finances were in hopeless confusion. Thus was the literary retirement which the Duke had thought to secure from the residue of his life rudely interrupted, and the cares of sovereignty he had shaken off were thrown back upon him, more inextricable than ever. The good order at home and influence abroad, from thirty-seven years of prudent and popular sway, had, in two brief years, been scattered, and there remained to the old man but the choice of recommencing the labours of a lifetime, or abandoning the reins of government now thrust back into his unnerved hands. Judging from his dispositions and past history, it would not be difficult to conjecture which of these alternatives had the greater attraction; yet at this juncture, sense of duty for a time triumphed over the dictates of inclination, and Francesco Maria showed himself every inch a monarch.
After consulting for a few days with the Bishop of Pesaro, Count Francesco Maria Mammiani, his favourite, and Count Giulio Giordani, a friend of forty years' tried service, he thus matured his measures. The papal chair being vacated by the death of Gregory XV., on the 8th of July, he sent to the College of Cardinals an official intimation of his son's death, and a full assurance of dutiful devotion. He accompanied the like notification to his subjects with an injunction for the election of a new council of eight, to whom he proposed to commit the administration of civil and criminal justice, for the burden of which his years were incompetent. To the widowed Princess he made every overture which affectionate sympathy could suggest. Finally, he resumed the ducal mantle, and the functions which he had so unfortunately devolved; and, dismissing the whole administration which his son had employed, he entered upon the government, with the assistance of a small but select cabinet. His first thoughts were bestowed upon the destiny of his orphan granddaughter, and, notwithstanding the suggestion of his counsellors, that he should keep her as an instrument whereby the policy of neighbouring powers, who would doubtless aspire to so eligible a match, might be made subservient to strengthen his relations abroad, he insisted upon some immediate arrangement, which would relieve him from the apprehension of leaving unprotected a prize so tempting to papal or princely ambition. The question was brought to a speedy solution by a well-timed offer from the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. of Tuscany, to receive and educate in his family his niece, and eventually to make her his consort, on condition of her being declared heiress of all the Duke's allodial and personal property. To secure the intimate alliance and support of the Medici had, as we have seen, long been the cherished policy of Francesco Maria, and the importance of a connection sufficiently powerful to maintain the rights of the Princess, in that revolution which must succeed immediately upon his death, was self-evident. But there was another consideration equally cogent, for, on the extinction of her father's family, nature and law pointed out her maternal cousin as the most suitable guardian of her childhood and education. Having decided in favour of a proposal at once advantageous to his granddaughter, and releasing him from one of the greatest anxieties of his position, the Duke lost no time in sending her to the court of Tuscany, under protection of Count and Countess Mammiani. Indeed, these arrangements were all concluded within four months of his son's death.
On the 6th of August, the conclave elected Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, of a family originally Florentine, who had only attained his fifty-fifth year; a man respectable at once from his talents, his habits of business, and his moral character. It was observed that, during the sittings of the conclave, a hive of bees swarmed under one of their windows, an incident rendered notable from the Barberini carrying that insect in their arms. On ascending the chair of St. Peter, the first business which occupied Urban VIII. was the important accession to the ecclesiastical state promised by the Prince of Urbino's death. There was no legal doubt that the fief, limited to the male line of Guidobaldo II., must lapse on that of the old Duke; but the struggles whereby church vassals had formerly supplied, by steel or gold, similar defects of constitutional title, were not forgotten, and the College of Cardinals looked upon the infant Princess as a subject of keen interest.[*110] It was, therefore, not without jealousy that they learned her sudden betrothal to so powerful a sovereign; and the Pontiff's remonstrances, though avowedly grounded on the conclusion of that important transaction without enabling him to display his friendly respect for the parties, were probably intended to keep the arrangement open for after cavil. A brief interval supplied new grounds for anxiety, on the arrival of a messenger from Francesco Maria with tidings of an overture on the part of the Emperor Ferdinand II., directly at variance with the pretensions of the Holy See. Ferdinand had accompanied his condolence with a proposal that the Duke should recognise the imperial title to the countships of Montefeltro and Castel Durante on his death, as being original fiefs of the empire, and offered to renew the investiture of these in favour of the infant heiress. But, faithful to his ecclesiastical allegiance, the Duke courteously declined availing himself of a favour which seemed more likely to reawaken the slumbering controversies (though scarcely now the conflicts) between Guelph and Ghibelline, than to secure any available benefit to Princess Vittoria. Pleading a disinclination to open up questions that might disturb the peace of his declining years, he left it to the Emperor, when these should close, to transact any such arrangement directly with the Holy See; a reply which pleased neither him nor the Grand Duke.
[Footnote *110: Cf. Memorie istoriche concernenti la devoluzione dello stato d'Urbino alla Sede Apostolica (Amsterdam, 1723).]
The Emperor being uncle of the Grand Duke, his proposition could not be viewed in any other light than as an attempt to establish a legal basis for whatever claims on the states of Urbino it might suit the husband of Vittoria hereafter to make. It was accordingly met by Urban with very decided measures. He delegated three prelates of tried fidelity to the circumjacent provinces of the Church, with instructions to watch closely the affairs of the duchy, and, in case of any movement adverse to the ecclesiastical interests, to march troops at once across the frontier. He then made a formal appeal to the Duke, as the faithful and devoted adherent of the Holy See, to resign into its safe custody S. Leo, which, besides being considered the most impregnable fortress in Italy, was capital of the countship of Montefeltro, and formed part of the mortgage assigned by Clement VII. to the Medici, in security for alleged debts, still unsettled since the usurpation of Lorenzo de' Medici. This unceremonious proposition was accompanied by a distinct avowal of the Pope's resolve to make sure of the devolution to the ecclesiastical state of every morsel of the dukedom; and an intimation that any refusal would necessitate military demonstrations at Rimini and Città di Castello. So decided, indeed, was his Holiness to abate nothing of the renown which he anticipated from effecting this important accession to the pontifical temporalities, that he is said to have avowed his resolution to fall under the walls of Urbino, or be hanged on its battlements, rather than yield one tittle of his demands.[*111]
[Footnote *111: It is curious to note the shameless zeal, astuteness, and cunning of the papacy in this matter. I believe a work on the subject is promised by Professor C. SCOTONI. The Pope could not have proved his right to Urbino in any tribunal. His claim was really more absurd than the claim of the Emperor.]
But this precipitation failed in its object. The Duke was startled by what seemed at best a harsh return for the leal and true faith towards his ecclesiastical over-lord which had actuated his conduct. His suspicions thus aroused placed him on the defensive in his interviews with the legate Pavoni, whose persuasions were coldly repelled, and whose tone of menace called up all the old man's pride. He briefly and indignantly replied that death alone should deprive him of a sovereignty which he was fully able to maintain; that the extinction of his family was a dispensation of God; but that the Pontiff's demand was an insinuation against his good faith, which was far beyond question; finally, that his Holiness would do well to await the close of his few remaining days, when he would obtain everything in the due course of nature. To show that he spoke in earnest, he the same night despatched a reinforcement to the garrison of S. Leo; and his jealousy being thoroughly awakened, he refused to perform the alternative which the Legate had, with modified tone, suggested as a satisfactory solution of the difficulty, by writing a formal acknowledgment that his entire state was held under the Church, and a promise to do no act that might compromise or prejudice her rights over it. Monsignor Pavoni, interpreting some hasty expression of the Duke into a dismissal, was about to set out for Rome the same night; but, having remained till morning to allow time for cooler consideration, he obtained, under the hand of his Highness, such a declaration as he had suggested. On his return, he met Cardinal Cennino, another ambassador whom the impatient anxiety of Urban had despatched to insist with still greater urgency on the original terms. It were useless and irksome to follow the thread of diplomatic intrigue now brought to bear on the poor bereaved Duke. He felt himself demeaned even by the document which he had consented to give; but when he found it was but a prelude to new demands,--when he ascertained that a war establishment was ready along the ecclesiastical frontier to pounce upon his territory on the slightest pretext,--and when he was actually called upon to administer to the governors of his principal fortresses, and to the officers in command of his militia, an oath ensuring their allegiance to the Pope from the day of his own death, accompanied with a promise on his part not to appoint any one to those situations who had not taken a similar oath, indignation brought on an attack of illness which had nearly put an end to all difficulties by carrying him to the grave. This new misfortune, far from obtaining for the old man relief from these persecutions, stimulated the papal emissaries who surrounded him to fresh importunities. Urban's apprehensions were augmented by measures which Francesco Maria had taken for garrisoning his principal fortresses with troops from Tuscany and Naples, and by rumours of a new intrigue for transferring the hand of Vittoria to Leopold, son of the Emperor, thus giving to the latter a direct interest in this already involved dispute, which Philip IV. of Spain, jealous of the prospective aggrandisement of the Church, showed every disposition still further to complicate. The Pope, in order to forward his views upon the duchy, had, without consulting the Duke, promoted Monsignor Paulo Emilio Santorio from the see of Cesena to be Archbishop of Urbino, a man of violent temper and coarse manners, whose nomination was regarded as an insult by Francesco Maria, and who injudiciously substituted threats for conciliation in his intercourse with the Duke. This example was followed by subordinate agents who surrounded his sick bed, and wore him out by alternately working on his irritable disposition, his avarice, and his superstitious belief in astrology. Every turn of his malady was watched, and reported to Rome as matter of hope or fresh anxiety, whilst his palace was beset by troublesome and meddling spies.
Nor were his negotiations with the Pontiff the only sources of irritation which daily accumulated upon the unhappy Francesco Maria. The cares of state, from which he had of late escaped, returned more irksomely than before. The brief misgovernment of the Prince had thrown upon him a greatly aggravated burden of anxiety and labour in the direction of these affairs; and his old favourites and tried counsellors were dropping around him, just at the crisis when he most required their services. His constitution, impaired by years and broken by gout, gave way under his agony of mind, and a paralytic seizure made fresh breaches upon his system. With a frame thus enfeebled, a mind thus disgusted, he sent for Antonio Donato, a noble Venetian long resident at his court, who had been at various times employed in political affairs, and addressed him in words which his Narrative of these events has preserved to us:--
"Your Lordship sees to what a condition God has reduced me. My house he has left unto me desolate: he has taken from me my dominion, my health, and my honour. I have sold myself to one skilful in profiting by my misfortunes: I am reduced to the shadow of sovereignty, and continually exposed to new inroads. To await death in so miserable a plight is impossible, to anticipate it were a crime: unable to recover what is gone from me, all now left me is to die without disgrace, after living for seventy-six years with nothing to regret. To you I would impart my ideas, that we may consider whether, by surrendering what remains, I might mitigate my vexations. I think of entreating the Pope to send me any one he pleases, who may govern this country, dependent upon me and by virtue of my authority, which I shall delegate to him as fully as it is vested in my person. Thus may his Holiness more effectually secure the return of these states after my death under the sway of the Church, and thus will he be enabled to liberate me from the restraint of obligations and oaths, no longer necessary when his own deputy is invested with the government, leaving me, in these my last hours, time to think of death, and to prepare myself suitably to meet it, as I well know it cannot be distant.... And perhaps this plan, which I own is hard to digest, may be less irksome in practice than it now seems in discussion; for in truth, I am no longer what I once was, nor ought I at this juncture to think but of my people's peace and my own. After all that has occurred, this ecclesiastical governor may prove the least annoying expedient; at all events it will free me from the irritation and slavery which past events have brought upon me."
After having at first argued against the measure thus suggested, Donato was at length induced to carry the proposal formally to the Pope, without previous consultation with any one else. Suspicious perhaps of so sudden a change in the sentiments of Francesco Maria, the Sacred College raised difficulties in order to gain time for deliberation; but when, with his wonted impatience, he proposed to recall Donato and reconsider the matter, with a view to some other measure, the proffered devolution was accepted without further delay. The papal brief to that effect was dated the 10th December, 1624, and on the 20th, the Duke executed a blank warrant, making over his whole sovereign authority to the governor who might be named, and reserving only the empty name of his subject's allegiance.
The Devolution was effected on the following terms. Along with all sovereign rights, there were conveyed to the Holy See the various fortified places in the duchy, and the residences at Urbino, Pesaro, and S. Leo. The Camera was allowed a preference in purchasing such warlike instruments, ammunition, and stores, as these places might contain, and was to pay to the Duke 100,000 scudi in name of expenses and ameliorations. To him and his heirs were reserved the furniture and movables in these three residences, and the whole allodial possessions of the family, including the palaces of Castel Durante, Sinigaglia, Gubbio, Cagli, Fossombrone, Novilara, and Della Carda; the palazzetti or villas of Imperiale, Montebello, Monte Berticchio, Mirafiori, Velletta, and Barchetto, the three last being at Pesaro; many parks, forests, vineyards, houses, and particularly thirty-two mills. The Grand Duke of Tuscany was a party to the deed of devolution, which was executed on the 30th April, 1624, and he therein specially renounced for himself and his family all claim to the dukedom and states.[112] The assertion of Muratori, that Francesco Maria often regretted this step is not borne out by any authorities I have consulted.
[Footnote 112: Oliveriana MSS. No. 324. Many documents regarding these transactions are printed in Riposati, vol. II.]
In these arrangements the party most immediately interested had no voice, for the consent of the governed was then little studied in such transactions. Though the eloquent historian of the Italian republics maintains, upon true Guelphic principles, the blessings of the ecclesiastical sway compared with that of the petty seigneurs,[*113] those who have read the preceding chapters may hesitate ere they apply this doctrine to the duchy of Urbino. Four times have we seen the people throw off the transient rule of the Church, and recall their native princes to maintain that microscopic nationality which, to an Italian, is far dearer than personal liberty. Guicciardini admits that those who, under the princes, were maintained in ease with little personal exertion, generally hated papal domination. But under the popular dynasty of those dukes whose lives we have endeavoured to sketch, the loyalty implanted by selfishness was watered by affection, until its mature growth overshadowed the land. The extinction of their race was therefore bewailed by a grateful people, whose degradation to provincialism was felt as a still greater, and, in the circumstances, an irremediable misfortune.
[Footnote *113: Here I heartily agree with Dennistoun. If the people preferred the ecclesiastical sway to that of the Signori, why was the whole state of Urbino so eager to get Francesco Maria II. married? And if we want another example from more recent times, why, in 1860, did the people of Perugia turn out en masse and tear down the papal fortress, leaving a desert, which they still gloat over, in its place? The temporal rule of the Church has been bad everywhere at all times and in every way. That is why we have beggared her.]
It is but justice to Urban to contrast his conduct on this occasion with the eagerness displayed by many of his predecessors for the aggrandisement of their own houses, by investing them with the lapsed fiefs of the Church. The obstacles to such an arrangement were no doubt increased by the altered spirit of the age, by the curtailed influence of the papacy, by the watchful jealousy of the great powers, and by numerous bulls directed against such alienations. Yet other ambitious pontiffs had trampled upon parchments, had braved public opinion, and had deluged Italy in blood for less tempting baits, and Muratori hints that such an attempt might, in the present case, have been sanctioned by Spain. Whilst, therefore, we blame the discourteous manner in which his Holiness made the aged Duke feel, with unnecessary acuteness, his bereaved and enfeebled position, we give him credit for a self-denying policy becoming the head of a Christian church.[*114]
[Footnote *114: This is amusing of Urban VIII., of whom Pasquino said--
"_Quod non fecerunt Barbari Fecerunt Barberini._"]
The first governor delegated by the Pope was Monsignor Berlinghieri Gessi, Bishop of Rimini, who took possession on the 1st January, 1625. The Duke assigned to him his palaces, and a salary of 2000 scudi, paying also the other officials, and the only internal change in the government was the dismissal of the council of Eight. Indeed, the deference shown by the people for those forms under which they had long been governed, obtained a guarantee for their continuance during ten years; and we are told that the chief innovation upon them consisted in an extension of literary academies, which had been discouraged by Francesco Maria on an apprehension of their taking a political tendency.[115] In January, 1626, the Bishop received a scarlet hat, and was succeeded as governor three years subsequently by Monsignor Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Cesena, afterwards of Sinigaglia who held that office until the death of Francesco Maria.
[Footnote 115: Brit. Mus. Lib. Add. MSS. Ital. No. 8511, art. 3.]
But, though happy to escape from the personal superintendence of the government,
"The old man, broken with the storms of state,"
did not consider himself exempted from all concern in the welfare of his subjects. We accordingly find, in a collection of his letters made by his secretary Babucci,[116] a very long remonstrance addressed to Cardinal Gessi regarding certain malversations in the management of public affairs. His complaints were directed against abuses of patronage, by conferring places of trust upon young and inexperienced persons, especially in the army, where many officers were rather children than soldiers; against a laxity of manners and conversation among the women, extending even to the nunneries; against the indiscriminate bearing of arms, which had already led to numerous homicides, and to the extirpation of game in the preserves. To Campeggi, the next governor, he complains, in 1628, of an increasing expenditure with impaired revenues.
[Footnote 116: Dr. Antonio Babucci transcribed for the press a number of letters written by the Duke after the Devolution, and dedicated them to the Grand Duchess Vittoria. The MS. is preserved in the Magliabechiana Library, class xxv. No. 77, and fully bears out the commendation we have given to his epistolary style at p. 213.]
Chapter XLVIII
The Duke's monkish seclusion--His Death and Character--His Portraits and Letters--Notices of Princess Vittoria and her Inheritance--Fate of the Ducal Libraries--The Duchy Incorporated with the Papal States--Results of the Devolution.
After his release from the cares of state, and from all anxiety as to the fate of his subjects and of his granddaughter, Francesco Maria was left to employ his unimpaired powers of mind on more congenial topics. His few remaining years were passed in the society of those monks of the order of Minims,[*117] whom he had brought to the new convent, and who had been selected for their literary acquirements. He made them the companions and aids of his studies, and discussed with them such subjects as his reading suggested. Though ever respectful of the doctrines and observances of religion, fanaticism had no part in his character; and it is clear from his last will, and other evidence, that, in circumstances peculiarly favourable to an undue exercise of priestly influence, he kept himself free from its thraldom. Yet was he exemplary in pious preparation for the change which his sinking frame, as well as his philosophy, taught him to regard as at hand. To blighted hopes, parental anguish, and a desolate old age, were added great bodily sufferings. Gout, to which he had been subject from his thirty-fourth year, had by degrees so twisted his limbs that he was fed like a child, and a fresh paralytic seizure at length completed his decrepitude. Still, amid
"The waste and injury of time and tide,"
his mind continued unclouded. To the end his letters maintained their clear and graceful style; and the frequent correspondence he kept up with his granddaughter, a child in years rather than in ideas, formed the latest link that connected his thoughts and hopes with mundane objects. Of this correspondence, so creditable to the hearts of the writers, a few specimens will be found at p. 220.
[Footnote *117: An order not of monks but of friars, founded by S. Francis of Paola in Calabria in 1436. The rule is based on the Franciscan, and the religious are mendicants.]
The registers of the Roman convent of Minims of S. Lorenzo[*118] enable us to trace the closing scenes of the old man's feeble existence. During the autumn of 1630 a change took place, and he was chiefly confined to bed during the subsequent winter. The rapid decay of his digestive organs was accelerated by rigid fastings during Lent, in which he persisted despite of his confessor's remonstrances. From the debilitating effects of this discipline, exhausted nature could not rally; but life ebbed so slowly, that four days elapsed after extreme unction had been administered, ere his flickering pulse was still. At length, on the 28th of April, 1631, he passed away, bewailed by his subjects, regretted by all Italy. To the citizens of Castel Durante his death was an especial bereavement. "They wept for a beloved father, the chastener of the bad, the rewarder of the good, the stay and advocate of the poor, the protector of the orphan, the support of the weak and oppressed, the consoler of the afflicted, the benefactor of all."[119] Thus deprived of the glorious and desired shade and shelter of their goodly OAK, which, transplanted from the Ligurian shores, had branched out so boldly in their mountain soil, his people saw their independence extinguished, and their position in provincial insignificance riveted for ever.
[Footnote *118: This I know not. Their present Casa generalizia is at S. Andrea delle Fratte. The basilica of S. Lorenzo is now in the care of the Franciscans.]
[Footnote 119: CIMARELLI, Istoria dello Stato d'Urbino.]
He lay in state during two days, arrayed in the ducal mantle of silver tissue lined with purple taffetas; on his head a coronet of gold surmounted the velvet cap of maintenance; the collar of the Fleece was on his neck, the ring on his finger, the sceptre in his hand. In these trappings of sovereignty, a last tribute to the station which he had quitted for ever, and which none remained to fill, he was by his own desire interred. Seven years before, he had prepared for himself an unornamented tomb under the holy-water vase in the church of the Crucifixion, at Castel Durante. There he chose his final resting-place, amid sites endeared as the scene of his youthful sports, the relaxation of his busy manhood, the retreat of his chastened age. Thither he was escorted by a procession of five hundred gentlemen, besides a numerous attendance of priests and monks. Each of the latter received a scudo and a pound of wax; and by one of them, Padre Ludovico Munaxho, the funeral oration was pronounced. At his own desire, this prayer, from the liturgy of his church, was inscribed under the front, in lieu of epitaph:--"O Lord, incline thine ear to our prayers, wherein we supplicate thy mercy, and that thou wouldst establish in peace, and in the realms of the elect, the soul of thy servant Francesco Maria II., Duke of Urbino, which thou hast summoned from this life, and that thou wouldst ordain it to be received into the company of thy saints, through Christ our Saviour. Amen. He died in the year of God MDCXXXI., and of his age LXXXIII."
* * * * *
The character of Francesco Maria presented many strange contradictions. The manifold inconsistencies of his precepts and practice have already been pointed out; and the opinions of his contemporaries varied, not only from the estimate with a perusal of such memorials as I have discovered of his reign would lead one to form, but also from each other. It may be well to give the judgments of those who had best opportunities of forming just conclusions, leaving the reader to reconcile their discrepancies. Donato, his chief counsellor in the Devolution of his state, whose experience was chiefly of his latter years, writes of him as follows:--
"For sixty years did he enjoy his dukedom, ever loved but ever feared by his subjects, and highly esteemed by foreigners. Having had always about him the most famous literary characters of his time, having himself mastered many sciences, and read a multitude of books, it would be difficult in a few words to do justice to his finished knowledge, to his acute genius, to his profound memory, to his elegant and unaffected style in speaking and in writing, to his intimate acquaintance with natural history and geography, as well as with the political relations of states. Nor was he less skilled in the more important acquirements of theology and sacred subjects, upon which he was accustomed to dispute with those whose business it was to teach these doctrines. He was a prince of great piety, of exemplary manners, of austere address. He lived as a sovereign, but spoke like a simple gentleman. His modesty veiled the pride of his station; his strict justice obtained for him the respect due to a king; his conduct was on all occasions exemplary. Fond of despatch, he was impatient of dilatory measures and superfluous discussions. He would have been a paragon for princes, and worthy of undying fame, had not the irritability which unaccountably swayed his temper, and his violent fits of passion in matters regarding himself, hurried him unrestrained by his many virtues into numerous excesses and errors. Among such may be accounted his throwing up the reins to his son, his abandoning himself to the guidance of favourites, his credulous adherence to first impressions, his abhorrence of those who had once alienated his regard. Timid and suspicious from his solitary habits, he was averse to generosity, cautious in his expenditure, but, punctual to his promises, was fully to be relied upon for an exact performance of his word. In person he was well-proportioned, neither stout nor thin. He was a good knight, skilled in arms and equestrian exercises; he was devoted to the chase and all manly exercises; attached to persons of accomplishment and high birth."
Thus speaks his courtier Donato; and he is in the main confirmed by a somewhat less favourably coloured testimony from Gozze, who seems to have been a contemporary, and whose narrative is contained in No. 324 of the Oliveriana MSS. According to it, he was singularly active, skilful in all manly exercises, and particularly fond of racket and of hunting. He was hasty in temper and in speech; impatient of contradiction, and obstinate; so cunning that one scarcely knew when he was in favour. He had much practical good sense, but was wayward, choleric, discontented, selfishly inconsiderate of those about him, and, having taken offence, was apt to brood over and resent it. He was most exact in business, and habitually regular in its duties; punctual in payments, but most strict in accounting with those who managed his affairs. He was fond of magnificence, and maintained a numerous court, though less brilliant than his father's. He had but one favourite at a time, keeping all others at a distance; indeed, his stern manner overawed even when his words were gracious. He was handsome, in person scrupulously nice, but neither effeminate nor extravagant in his habits. His disposition was retired and melancholy, and he indulged it much by reading, writing, or walking in solitude. He was ostensibly devout, and was regular in the observance of religious duties. He spoke and wrote very well and solidly, studying a terse and simple style. His tastes were decidedly literary, with a partiality for the graver sciences, and he ever maintained about him persons distinguished in letters and art.
Writing at an interval of nearly a century and a half after his death, but with the advantage of access to many original documents, Passeri thus characterises Francesco Maria II. "In him military skill, intercourse with courts, and scientific studies, combined to form the rare instance of a sovereign philosopher. No prince of the day was more wise, more courtly, or more attached to his people; and his systematic government by means of excellent ministers might be adopted as a model. To men of letters he paid the greatest honour, and he willingly sought their converse; none such ever passed through Pesaro whom he did not receive with distinction. It was his desire to introduce all sorts of manufactures, that his subjects might have no occasion to send their money abroad for the purchase of necessaries; indeed, they exported silks, woollens, leather, and majolica, which produced a large balance over their imports. The improvement of agriculture shared his anxious care, and the means he adopted to effect this merit high encomium. He wrought to advantage the iron mines of Lamole, and those of copper at Gubbio. Thus did his state become populous and wealthy, while lightly taxed, for the expenses of his court were nearly limited to the income of his private estates, and to the profits derived from the importation of grain out of the dominions of the Church. He maintained a sort of standing militia of thirteen thousand men in the pay of Spain, who, in peace, pursued their occupations at home, but, in war, were placed under the command of that power. From this arrangement great benefit resulted; for thus had the military spirit, for which the country had always been remarkable, an ample and safe outlet, whilst the talents so developed often led to individual distinctions and promotion."
From a narrative of Urbino, compiled in 1648,[120] we gather one or two anecdotes of this Duke. When irritated he used to apply contemptuous epithets to his various cities, founded upon the temperament he had discovered in their inhabitants. Thus he called the people of Urbino proud and foul-mouthed; those of Pesaro, cowards; of S. Leo, Mantuan sheep; of Cagli, bum-bailiffs; of Fossombrone, tax-gathers; for the citizens of Mondavio alone he reserved a compliment, saying that they were born courtiers. Though fond of letters, he ever set his face against the establishment of academies, alleging that they might degenerate into revolutionary conventicles. To the just views which guided his political arrangements the best testimony is supplied by the fact above mentioned, that his people interceded for a prolongation of all his government institutions during the ten years succeeding the Devolution, and that, Urban having consented, these were found so well adapted to the well-being of the province, that they remained undisturbed after that period of probation had expired.
[Footnote 120: Maruccelli MSS. C. No. 308.]
In person, Francesco Maria was handsome, and, from being puny and stunted in childhood, grew up active and graceful, but with a complexion of almost effeminate beauty. He was, therefore, fortunate in having for his court painter one whose men and women, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has happily remarked, seem nourished by roses. Although it is improbable that Baroccio executed the swaddled effigy of him in the Pitti Gallery, there can be little question that the four portraits we shall now mention are by that artist. One of these, in the Tribune of the Uffizi at Florence, with a repetition of equal merit in Baron Camuccini's choice collection at Rome, represents to perfection a strikingly elegant youth in the gorgeous uniform worn on his naval expedition in 1571.[*121] There is in my possession a half-length, with one of Ambrogio Baroccio's curious timepieces upon the table, which came from the Durazzo Gallery at Genoa; and the head introduced above, at p. 151, done in full manhood, when the cares of sovereignty had begun to furrow his features with "lines of anxious thought," was purchased by me at Pesaro, in 1843. In the Antaldi Palace there, I saw a head of this Duke ascribed to Baroccio, but evidently done some years after his death. It is a slight sketch, thrown off at a sitting, and painfully preserving features whereon age and sickness, sorrow and anxiety, have set their seal. Portraiture can show no contrast more startling than that time-worn figure, with glassy eye and ghastly visage, offers to the glowing cheek and gallant bearing of the richly accoutred hero of Lepanto. But still more melancholy the change that had come over the man, then gladsome in youthful beauty, rising fame, and chivalrous hope, burning to enjoy the advantages of high station, to maintain and transmit the respect and popularity of a long-honoured name.
[Footnote *121: No longer in the Tribuna, but in the Sala di Baroccio. It is the painter's masterpiece [Cat. No. 1119].]
We have referred to letters of the Duke written during his last years, as interesting expressions of his state of mind. Besides the collection of Babucci already quoted, a considerable number of these are preserved in two other MSS. in the same library; also many others, addressed by her relations to the Princess Vittoria, with her answers, dated between 1627 and 1632.[122] The whole exceed two hundred in number, and form a series of royal correspondence equally remarkable for Christian sentiment and domestic affections. In the following pages we give literal translations of a few of them, which pleasingly illustrate these virtues in the Duke and Duchess, in their daughter-in-law, now remarried to the Archduke Leopold, and in the young Princess herself. By the first letter, the Archduchess announces to her daughter the birth of a brother; by the second, Francesco Maria intimates his confidence in the husband he had chosen for his grandchild. In Nos. 3 and 6 the warmth of his attachment to her is gracefully tinged with the pious resignation of a dying Christian. Nos. 4 and 5 relate to his making over to her his family jewels, a precaution, perhaps, against any difficulties that might arise after his decease. No. 7 was his last letter, dictated about a month before his release from sufferings. The remaining four refer to that event, and to the affliction of his nearest relatives.
[Footnote 122: Magliabechiana MSS., class viii., Nos. 60, 61.]
1. The Archduchess Claudia to the Princess Vittoria.
"My most serene and beloved daughter,
"Now that you have obtained from God your little brother, after, as you tell me, having prayed for him (who, when he is grown tall, will love you well), it remains for you to thank the same God, who is the giver of all good. You say that you wish to have this little brother for yourself; and I agree to humour you under these conditions: First, that your prayers obtain for me another next year; second, that you come hither yourself to take him, so that you may have the pleasure of seeing me, and I you; third, that, in the meantime, you in everything obey Madam [the Dowager Grand Duchess] and your other superiors, and that you often pray for the health of the Lord Duke, to whom you owe so much. And now I and my Lord your [step] father [the Archduke Leopold] give you our blessing, beseeching for you a divine one much more ample and perpetual. 3rd June, 1628.
"Your most affectionate mother,
"CLAUDIA."
2. The Duke Francesco Maria to the Princess Vittoria.
"Your Highness having now attained the age of seven, his serene Highness the Grand Duke, your betrothed husband, has intimated to me that, the better to secure his intentions in your behalf from the speculations and gossip of the public, he will forthwith voluntarily contract with you the sacred rite of marriage. But, as I have adopted my measures, after taking every conjuncture into account, I cannot allow myself to suppose any purpose of drawing back in the mind of a prince of his station, endued with virtues which must ever render him estimable to posterity, and a worthy grandson of the great Ferdinand. I have, therefore, declined his request, and have offered my consent that the contracts already executed and concluded between us should be carried into effect when most agreeable to himself. And, though I should not be then a party to these arrangements, as, surely, I am little likely to be, considering the years and ails which, lame as I am, hurry me with long and great strides towards the tomb, yet is it my hope to behold from heaven the comfort of your Highness, which I pray God may be perpetual, and uninterrupted by any misfortune. I have informed you of this that you may be aware of what is going on, and I salute you," &c.
3. The Duke Francesco Maria to the Princess Vittoria.
"Most serene Lady, my grandchild,
"Your Highness has much reason to send me happiness, for, as I am so closely united to you, and love you so much, it will all return to you for your own benefit. But, feeling myself reduced to such a state that I can no longer find it in this world, I shall take it as a great favour that your Highness pray God Almighty to grant me, instead of such enjoyments as are prized in this life, patience amid the great sufferings wherewith he visits me, and to account these as meritorious for my glory in the next. Keep yourself well and joyous; love me as always; and command my paternal benediction: and I kiss your hands. From Castel Durante, 7th January, 1630.
"Your Highness's servant, and grandfather, who loves you from his heart,
"THE DUKE OF URBINO."
4. The Duke Francesco Maria to the Princess Vittoria.
"I send to your Highness all the jewels remaining in this house after its many calamities, and I consign them to you during my life, since God knows what may happen after my death. Your Highness will accept them in token of my sincere affection towards you, and in good time will ornament with them your person, forgetting not first to adorn your mind with those virtues which become ladies of your station, and which may render you more and more dear to your most serene husband. And so I salute your Highness." [9th April, 1630.]
5. The Princess Vittoria to the Duke Francesco Maria.
"Most serene Lord, my most respected grandfather,
"I know that I ought always to pray God more for your Highness's health and long life, seeing how, for affection to me, you never cease to consider what may be for my benefit. On Saturday morning I received your Highness's letter of the 9th, by your master of the wardrobe, and had the greatest joy in hearing that your Highness has been pleased to send me the jewels. Yesterday too, after breakfasting at the palace with Madam my most serene grandmother, and the Lady Princess Anna, I had such delight in seeing them all in presence of the most serene Grand Duke my spouse. And as they are already brought to this convent, your Highness may rest assured that they will be kept in safe custody, and will serve to adorn me as I may choose, as well as the others of the most serene Archduchess my mother, which also I willingly believe she will reserve for me. The thanks I shall render to your Highness are my prayers for your behalf, which I shall continue devoutly to offer several times a day, having no other way of doing you a service; and I give you my most humble duty with all my heart. From Florence, 15th April, 1630."
6. The Duke Francesco Maria to the Princess Vittoria.
"Most serene Lady, my granddaughter,
"I am sorry to trouble your Highness with so many of my letters, but the love I bear you, and the news I have from your city so contrary to my wishes, compel me to this. Your Highness must therefore bear with it, and believe that in writing I fancy myself with you, and find in this a satisfaction even beyond what I derive from knowing that you are settled where no demonstration of courtesy and affection will ever be wanting to you. I pray God to send a change of weather, that so I may feel assured your Highnesses are exempt both from danger and from its consequent anxieties. I augur for your Highness a continuance of health and every good; and I endearingly kiss your hands. From Castel Durante, 29th November, 1630.
"Your Highness's servant, and grandfather, who loves you from his heart,
"THE DUKE OF URBINO."
7. The Duke Francesco Maria to the Princess Vittoria.
"Most serene Lady, my granddaughter,
"My usual ailments have for the last several days so harassed me, that the prayers which your Highness addresses to God for me have been most appropriate. For these I heartily thank you, and since His great goodness gives me a hope that the Almighty listens to them, I beg of you to continue them for that divine assistance of which we all have need, but I in particular, who in age bear so many additional ills. I hear from the letters of your most serene spouse, that he, your Highness, and all his most serene house are in health, and that the prevailing epidemic may be considered extinct. On this I heartily congratulate your Highness, of whom I would daily learn some new good fortune and happiness, and by such would esteem myself fully recompensed for the sufferings to which my few remaining days must be subject. And with all my heart I kiss your Highness's hands. From Castel Durante, 2nd April, 1631.
"Your Highness's servant, and grandfather, who loves you heartily,
"THE DUKE OF URBINO."
8. The Duchess Livia to the Princess Vittoria.
"Most serene Lady, my beloved granddaughter,
"As, by connection of blood and of affection, our consolations are in common, so also are our griefs and afflictions. We have lost, by the death of the most serene Lord Duke, more than I am able to express on paper, but I know that your Highness's ready comprehension will be sensible of this. It pains me to have to send you the sad and mournful tidings of his death, which took place last Monday, about half-past three o'clock; but since I could not give you such news without sorrow, I pray you to excuse me and console yourself, as I myself do in so far as possible. And I affectionately kiss your hands, only adding that to ensure your receiving it I have sent a duplicate of this. Castel Durante, 2nd May, 1631.
"Your Highness's servant, and most affectionate mother, who loves you more than herself,
"LIVIA DUCHESS OF URBINO."
9. The Princess Vittoria to the Duchess Livia.
"My most serene Lady, and respected grandmother,
"I feel deeply the bad news of my grandfather, and though they do not say he is dead, I much fear it, for they do not speak plainly. Should it have pleased God to call him to glory after such sufferings, I cannot but pray for his soul in my devotions. And in the extreme grief which I shall feel under so great a bereavement, and so heavy a loss, I shall beseech your Highness to consent to come and stay in this serene family, where I know you are much wished by all their Highnesses, for this will be the utmost consolation I could have. Meanwhile I await that of your Highness's letters and commands, and I make you my reverence, praying God to grant you every happiness. From Florence, 3rd May, 1631."
10. The Princess Vittoria to the Archduchess Claudia.
"My most serene Lady, and respected mother,
"The most serene Lord Duke my grandfather is at length dead, to my infinite sorrow, and I seem to stand abandoned by all; for I never knew other father but him; and your Highness, though my mother, is so far away, that I feel not the warmth of your affection, as I in some measure felt that of my Lord grandfather, by his proximity and the frequent comfort I had from his loving letters and other tokens. Your Highness will therefore sympathise with me, whilst I condole with you on so great a loss and severe a misfortune, and I beseech you to give me what consolation you can. And I make you my reverence, praying God ever to increase your happiness. From Florence, 10th May, 1631."
11. The Archduchess Claudia to the Princess Vittoria.
"Princess, my beloved daughter,
"The regret has been universal for the departure of your grandfather, the Lord Duke of Urbino, to a better life, and for the loss of a prince who maintained the superiority of his rank by that of his merits; no wonder, therefore, that it has been so great in you, for this is just by the laws of blood, and due as a debt of gratitude. I too have found it bitter, partly on your account, partly from my own obligations. But considering that the good Lord has gone from us at an age when life began to be a burden, and death desirable, I resign myself to the divine will, conforming to that which He had from eternity ordained. This surely you also have done, after the first bursts of feeling, to which, rather than to your reason, I ascribe your lamenting to me your bereavement of him as a loss of all support, and your entire abandonment. And, my daughter, I should be much distressed, did I not believe that by this time you have changed that view, so injurious to the affectionate solicitude your Lord grandfather took in so well providing for your future. Though distant from you, I bear you in my heart, and your little brothers grow up with a thousand inducements to love and serve you, prompted by nature and my suggestions. Their Highnesses, too, are always most disposed to caress and honour you, in particular Madam my Lady [Dowager Grand Duchess], who will fill my place in administering with watchful affection to all your sympathies and wants. You have likewise your lady grandmother, whom you should ever most affectionately respect, and from whom you may expect a lively interest in your welfare and success. You have, lastly, what is still more important, the protection of the Lord God, provided you fail not to deserve it, by acquiring those virtues, which, if displayed by you, will prove to the world that the glory of our race is not entirely extinguished. Be careful, then, to grow up cheerfully; and be it your aim to fulfil the expectations generally entertained of your good abilities, assured that the greater your attainments the more will be my comfort in you. Humbly kiss in my name the hem of your serene grandmother, and beseech the blessed Lord our Saviour that he would listen to my prayers and longings, the first of which are for your prosperity and happiness. From Inspruck, the 24th May, 1631.
"Your most affectionate mother from the heart,
"CLAUDIA."
Princess Vittoria seems to have merited the affections of her relations, so warmly expressed in these and many similar letters. On arriving at her future capital, she had been placed for education in a convent, where her progress was so rapid that before she was eight years old, she composed as well as penned her letters, and within two other years could write them in Spanish. From the period of her betrothal, she was always addressed as Grand Duchess, and her marriage was privately celebrated in 1633, when she was under twelve, her husband being then double her age. Four years later, the public celebration of this union took place with suitable demonstrations of joy, and in due time it produced two sons, Cosimo, afterwards Grand Duke, and Francesco Maria, Cardinal de' Medici. In her grandson, the Grand Duke Giovanni Gaston, the male line of the Medici expired in 1737, when their state passed to the house of Lorraine. The portraits of Vittoria preserved in the Pitti Gallery represent her as an overgrown but comely matron, of good-humoured expression. Her matured character did not realise its early promise. Proud, vain, suspicious, and weak, she inherited her grandfather's predilection for the society of priests; and her bigotry, increasing with her years, so contrasted with the frank and lively temperament of her husband, that a separation became advisable. These faults she transmitted to her favourite son Cosimo, under whose reign they bred many public evils. She died in 1694, after twenty-four years of widowhood, disliked by her subjects as much as her husband had been esteemed. The Duchess Livia retired a few weeks after her bereavement to her paternal estate of Castel Leo, near Sassoferrato, where she lived in great retirement, and in religious exercises, varied by visits to Assisi and Loreto. She left her whole property to her granddaughter the Grand Duchess Vittoria.
The Duke must have taken great pleasure in will-making, as his Diary frequently mentions his being employed in that way. At his death it would seem that more than one valid testament was found, the general provisions of which, as stated in a contemporary abstract,[123] were as follows:--He desired to be buried in the church of the Crucifixion at Castel Durante, and that two thousand masses should be said for his soul. He instituted his granddaughter Vittoria his universal heir and executrix, burdened with these legacies: To his Duchess Livia, 50,000 scudi, and an annuity of 4000 scudi; to his sister, the Marchioness del Vasto, the palace and garden at Montebello, in which she was living; to the Marquis of Pescara, a jewel, a gold watch, and 2000 scudi; to the Duke of Modena, the Marquis del Vasto, and the Cardinals Farnese and de' Medici, each a gold watch; to the Zoccolantine monastery in the park of Castel Durante, 50,000 scudi; among his servants 12,000 scudi; to the community of Urbino, the library of MSS. and printed books in his palace there, with the Campo dei Galli under the fortress for maintenance of a librarian; to the convent of Minims, at Castel Durante, the library he had at that residence. In case of the death of his granddaughter without issue, he substituted the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Aiello, to his succession.
[Footnote 123: Magliabechiana MSS., class viii., No. 74.]
The inheritance thus conveyed was immense. The lowest estimate I have seen states its amount at 2,000,000 of golden scudi, though probably somewhat impaired by a litigation which arose with the Camera Apostolica, in consequence of involved questions, as to what were public and what allodial rights of the late Duke. It included lands in Naples worth 50,000 scudi, and estates in the duchy, which, in 1648, were computed to yield 15,000 scudi a year, besides the residences and their dependencies, worth 4000 more.[124] The personal property was valued at 340,000 ducats, exclusive of family jewels previously sent to the Princess, and of the libraries otherwise bequeathed.[125]
[Footnote 124: Maruccelli MSS. C. No. 308. Mercurius Gallicus, 1624.]
[Footnote 125: Such particulars of the wardrobe inventory as relate to objects of art are included in the last No. of the Appendix.]
The fate of the two famous Urbino libraries deserves more special inquiry, and it is very disappointing to offer but a meagre result. Those who have glanced over our eighth chapter will be aware that the collection of MSS. made by Duke Federigo was the wonder of his age, and the admiration of all who have celebrated the glories of his lettered dynasty. The circumstances under which it was amassed, the accommodation provided for it in the palace of Urbino, and the most beautiful of its contents, have already been introduced to the reader. The losses it had sustained during the Borgian usurpation by plunder and accident were, we are assured by Paulo Maria, bishop of that metropolitan see, nearly supplied by the anxious care of succeeding Dukes; and, though none of these appear to have been bibliomanes, literary as they were in taste, and ever surrounded by men of high acquirement, it may be supposed that their library was from time to time recruited with works issuing from the press. But this casual supply was inadequate to the wants of the studious Francesco Maria II. Instead of disturbing the old library at Urbino, he drew from all quarters to his residence at Pesaro a numerous and choice store of printed books which he eventually transported to Castel Durante, for the amusement of his leisure hours.
Such were the two libraries separately bequeathed by the Duke's will, to which we have just referred. He left "to the community of Urbino his library of MSS. in that city, as well as all MSS. and drawings in that of Castel Durante, as soon as they can be transported thither; and, in order that the said community may maintain a person to take charge thereof, he conveyed to them certain lands for his support; expressly enjoining that the said library shall never be removed from the place where it then was, nor be diminished by a single volume, under forfeiture of their right thereto, in favour of the company Confraternita della Grotta of Urbino." The library remained under charge of Vittorio Venturelli, a man of some literary note; but ere many years had elapsed, the destination by Francesco Maria was defeated. In 1657, the community had formal notice from Alexander VII. of his wish to transport the collection to the Vatican, "for the increase of its splendour, and the benefit of Christendom." After some delay and hesitation, this proposal was reluctantly acceded to by the magistracy, who took the opportunity of stipulating certain favours and immunities for the public. The chief of these were a diminution of the contingent of interest payable by Urbino on the state debt; exemption from certain imposts; the establishment there of educational institutions under charge of the Jesuits; the removal thither from Urbania of the Minims, with the other library left to them by the late Duke; an annual sum for repairs of the ducal palace; the preservation of their library in the Vatican under its proper name, and the perpetual appointment of a native of their city among the librarians there; lastly, a surrender to the community of the property bequeathed for the support of their librarian. The Pope's interference seems to have been suggested, or perhaps only excused, by a rumoured intention of the community to sell the collection to some foreign prince. The MSS., numbering 1793 volumes, were finally sent to Rome in sixty-three cases; and a tradition is still current in Urbino that they were removed secretly, and during night, to the bitter mortification of the inhabitants, who regarded this as the last relic of sovereignty and independence remaining to them, and who probably esteemed it more as a monument of better days than from a just appreciation of its real value. The MSS. were assuredly worth a far higher ransom than was obtained by the citizens, but there can be little doubt that their safety and utility were enhanced by the transfer. They were deposited in a section of the vast corridor at the Vatican, where an obscure lapidary inscription informs us that "in 1658, Alexander VII. added to the Vatican collection the ancient MSS., of all sorts and in all languages, which formed the library of Urbino, thereby insuring their preservation and proper treatment, after compensating those who assigned over the boon."[126] The printed books of this library, in number 233, were retained in Urbino.[127]
[Footnote 126:
Alexander VII. Pont. Max. Antiqua omnis generis omniumque linguarum Urbinatis bibliothecæ manuscripta volumina Repenso cedentibus beneficio D. tutiorem custodiam atque proprietatem Vaticanæ adjunxit an. sal. MDCLVIII.]
[Footnote 127: Most of these particulars have been gleaned from the communal archives at Urbino, R. No. 30.]
It remains to trace the library at Castel Durante. In the archives of the Convent of Minims at S. Lorenzo in Lucina, at Rome, I discovered a copy of a settlement by Francesco Maria, dated 1628, in which he leaves the Minims of the Crucifixion, at Castel Durante, "all the library of printed books which may be in Castel Durante," with the room in which they are, and the shelving, etc.; but under an obligation "that before taking possession thereof, they shall without delay send to the library of Urbino, at the expense of the heir, all such MSS. and books of designs as may be among them." There is also a special condition that, if these monks permit any part, however small, of the collection to be removed from thence or transported elsewhere, the bequest shall lapse to the Confraternita della Grotta, at Urbino; and a small provision is made for maintaining a librarian. The active interest taken by Urban VIII. in Castel Durante (now Urbania) did not overlook the benefit which such a public library was likely to afford to that town, and he provided for its perpetual security by proclaiming ecclesiastical censures against such as should dilapidate or carry it away.
About twenty-seven years after the Duke's death, Alexander VII., being at a loss how to furnish with books the library of his newly-erected university, the Sapienza, at Rome, bethought himself of the collection at Castel Durante; and on the assumption of its very limited utility there, and of the excellent purpose to which it might be made subservient at the Sapienza, transported it thither. He had previously obtained a sort of forced consent on the part of the monks of the Crucifixion to this arrangement, by promising to the convent of their order at Rome the custody of the new library, and other favours: the opposition of the Confraternita della Grotta he had also neutralised, by purchasing their reversionary interest in the bequest. The transaction was enveloped in great secrecy, in anticipation of opposition from the grand-ducal family, or from the citizens of Castel Durante; indeed, when the removal of the books was begun, the latter manifested such indignation and discontent, that about five hundred volumes were allowed to remain for their use. Notwithstanding this concession, and their unwillingness to agree to the arrangement, the monks were for a long time greatly persecuted by the people; their Provost fled in terror of his life, and nothing but dread of papal censures would have induced their compliance. Upon the pretext that persons bound to reside in a cloister, at some distance, could not be efficient guardians of the new library at Rome, even the promised boon was withheld from their brethren of S. Lorenzo, who received in compensation the lectureship of moral philosophy at the Sapienza, along with certain exemptions affecting the internal discipline of their order.
The consulting catalogue of the Vatican Urbino MSS., now used by the librarians, was compiled in 1797 by Mauro Coster, and being alphabetical, does not show the number of MSS.; but the numeration of articles exceeds 4000. In it, at No. 1388, will be found another catalogue by Stefano Gradio, wherein the numeration of volumes, many of them containing several articles, amounts to 1361; but in the general catalogue for reference, the volumes are only 1026. Under the regulations prohibiting indiscriminate access to the Vatican catalogues, I have not been able satisfactorily to reconcile these discrepancies, nor to pronounce upon the accuracy of any of these calculations; they, however, afford sufficient data to estimate the extent of the Urbino MSS. Their value is probably greater in reference to their number than that of any other component portion of the Vatican collection; indeed, than any existing library except the Laurentian; but this point, too, must remain unresolved, so long as the present restrictions are maintained.[*128]
[Footnote *128: I am not able to state more accurately than Dennistoun the number of volumes from the Urbino collection now in the Vatican. Unhappily there is not a library in all Italy that possesses a catalogue fit to use. For the MSS. to-day existing in the library of the University at Urbino, see Le Marche, An. iv., p. 212.]
* * * * *
As soon as the Duke's demise seemed to be certainly approaching, Urban had directed his nephew, Prince Taddeo Barberini, general-in-chief of the ecclesiastical troops, to occupy the frontier, who, on that event, marched through the state to receive its allegiance, and thus secured its unopposed Devolution to the Holy See, to the infinite satisfaction of the Pontiff. Another nephew, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, was soon after named Legate, under whom the ancient Dukedom passed at once into its new position as a province of the papal state. But after a few months he resigned the appointment, and it was bestowed upon his brother, Cardinal Francesco, who, preferring Rome as a residence, governed the province for many years by a vice-legate. The Pontiff, in proof of his paternal affection for his new subjects, conferred a Cardinal's hat on the Bishop of Gubbio, and established in that town a branch of the Inquisition!
The revenue drawn by the Camera from the state of Urbino, in the years immediately subsequent to the Devolution, fell considerably short of the expenses; but after the imposts had been augmented, the income, in 1648, exceeded 40,000 scudi, leaving a balance at the credit of the government. The population was then above two hundred thousand. The change from independent to provincial rank had already become painfully manifest. The vaunted fidelity of the natives was degenerated into servility of demeanour. Everywhere their eyes rested on some symptom of departed grandeur. The palaces of their dukes were falling into neglect, crumbling and grass-grown; the gardens, overrun by rank weeds, sadly recalled days of past festivity; the degraded castles testified to an impoverished and absentee nobility. The glories of Urbino were gone.[129]
[Footnote 129: Maruccelli MSS. C. No. 308. See App. No. VIII. for statistical notices of this period.]
But the cup was charged with a bitterness beyond these humiliations. Surrounded by ecclesiastical provinces, the inhabitants of the duchy had long a foretaste of their coming fate, which amply accounted for the exultation with which they had hailed the promised continuance of the ducal line, and their sullen despair on witnessing its inevitable extinction. The Venetian Relazioni, quoted by Ranke, supply us with the opinion of disinterested contemporaries as to the condition of the papal state during the seventeenth century. In 1600, its "nobles and people would gladly cast themselves upon any sovereign whatever, to escape from the hands into which they had fallen." Ten years later, the very blood of the inhabitants was wrung from them by excessive taxation, and their enterprise was crushed by commercial restrictions. "The foreign traders had quitted Ancona, the native merchants were bankrupt, the gentry impoverished, the artizans ruined, the populace dispersing." A year or two after the last Duke's death, his people are described as grumbling much at the change, calling the new government a tyranny, and sneering at the priests as interested solely in accumulating wealth, and aggrandising themselves. In 1666, we have this calamitous but probably overcoloured picture:--"It is palpably evident that the ecclesiastical realm is quite overburdened, so that many landholders, unable to extract enough from their possessions to meet the extraordinary public imposts, resort of necessity to the abandonment of their estates, in order to seek fortune and sustenance in less rapacious communities. I speak not of duties and customs, from which nothing eatable is excepted; because the taxes, donatives, subsidies, and other extraordinary extortions would excite pity and astonishment, even if the terrible commissioners sent from Rome into these cities, with absolute authority to inquire, sell, carry off, and confiscate, did not exceed all belief; no month ever passing without a flight of griffins and harpies, in the guise of commissioners, either of the fabric of St. Peter's, or of pious bequests, or of movable goods, or of archives, or of some five-and-twenty other Roman courts, by all which the already drained purses of the helpless subjects are tortured to the last degree. And thus,--setting aside Ferrara and Bologna, to which some consideration is extended, and which are favoured by nature and art with excellent soil, and with manufacturing industry,--all other cities of Romagna, La Marca, Umbria, the Patrimony, Sabina, and the Campagna are utterly wretched; and, to the disgrace of the Roman government, in none of them do woollen or silk factories exist, nor even of gold stuffs, except in a few such little towns as Fossombrone, Pergola, Matelica, Camerino, and Norcia, although the abundance of wool and silk might afford a most advantageous trade. The ecclesiastical territory is merely an estate leased out to tenants, who give no thought to its improvement, but only to extract the greatest possible amount of its produce from the unhappy land, whose scourged and arid soil will be unable to yield more than very barren crops to succeeding occupants.... The more hateful and abhorred they find themselves, the more merciless do they become; and dragging their hats over their brows, they look no one in the face. They glean all sorts of corn into their sheaves, intent wholly upon their own interests, without the smallest regard to the public." By the end of the century, matters had become worse, the country being "depopulated and uncultivated, ruined by extortions, and destitute of industry." The duchy of Urbino, which, according to the preceding extract, was the last refuge of the silk trade, had then fallen into deep decay, and the corn commerce of La Marca was clogged by export dues and injudicious restrictions.[130]
[Footnote 130: The state of feeling in the duchy, even under the comparatively beneficent sway of its native pope, Clement XI., may be inferred from an incident of trifling moment. Having obtained trace of a petition or remonstrance addressed to that Pontiff among the MSS. of the Bibliotheca Borbonica at Naples, I was refused a sight of it by the Archbishop then at the head of that library, on the ground of its injurious allegations against the authorities. Verily such overcaution may defeat its own end, by leaving an exaggerated impression of the mischief it would veil. So Gergorovius was turned out of the Vatican Library.]
These plaintive notes might still [1859] find not a few echoes along the papal coasts of the Adriatic--the focus of Italian discontent,--over-taxation to maintain a distant government being ever the burden of their song. But the question is not, in truth, one of financial administration. However open to stricture the fiscal details may be, when tested by sound principles, the amount of revenue raised is moderate in consideration of the wealth there lavished by beneficent nature, in a degree denied to other not less burdened districts of the Peninsula. Nor can the papal sway, however objectionable, be in fairness regarded as otherwise than mild. But centralisation is necessarily alien to the spirit of a people long broken up into miniature communities, as it was formerly uncongenial to their ancestors, whose personal pride, political influence, and hopes of promotion, equally turned upon the continuance of a sectional independence. Hence the popular dissatisfaction rests as much upon traditional evils as upon existing and obvious misgovernment. Four centuries ago there were above a dozen capitals, flourishing in the balmy atmosphere of as many gay courts, and basking in patronage and prosperity, all within the circuit of that province where now a few priestly legates perform the functions of sovereignty without either the taste or the means for indulging its trappings, and dwell in princely palaces without the habits or the popularity of their ancient lords.
But these are not matters for casual discussion. From the accession of Count Guidantonio in 1404, till the Devolution by Duke Francesco Maria in 1624, this little state had enjoyed two hundred and twenty years of a prosperity unknown to the neighbouring communities. Her sovereigns were distinguished in arts and arms, respected abroad, esteemed at home; her frontiers were comparatively exempt from invasion, her tranquillity unruffled by domestic broils: within her narrow limits were reared or sheltered many of the brightest names in literature, science, and art; her court was the mirror of refinement, her capital the Athens of Italy. Since the Devolution, she has passed an equal number of lustres in provincial obscurity and neglect. It has been the object of this work to portray somewhat of the splendours of that former period, though the subject would require colours more brilliant, and a hand more skilled. Here our task must close, for to follow her destinies to their decline and fall were one of few attractions.
"Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains Clank over sceptred cities, nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go!"
BOOK NINTH
OF LITERATURE AND ART UNDER THE DUKES DELLA ROVERE AT URBINO
Chapter XLIX
Italian literature subject to new influences--The academies--Federigo Comandino--Guidobaldo del Monte--The Paciotti--Leonardi--Muzio Oddi--Bernardino Baldi--Girolamo Muzio--Federigo Bonaventura.
"For a long lapse of years, Italy had been an organised body of highly civilised states, different in their origin, laws, and constitutions, divided by local jealousies and opposite interests, constantly engaged in their endeavours to establish a political equilibrium by the manoeuvres of a wary and even unprincipled diplomacy, baffled oftentimes in their ambitious schemes, and brought into sudden collision, but still deriving new energies from their very rivalry, and promoting, with their own, the interests of social progress."[131]
[Footnote 131: MARIOTTI'S Italy, II., p. 177.]
It was in a state of things thus happily described that letters and art attained their zenith of glory in the Peninsula. But the close of the fifteenth century had introduced elements of change, which a fatal policy permitted to spread. Those foreign aggressions and domestic convulsions which we have seen extirpating nationality and crushing independence were not less destructive to mind and its efforts. A struggle of thirty-five years against her ultramontane invaders,--a series of unavailing because ill-directed and discordant efforts,--closed with the coronation of Charles V., and left Italy for nearly two centuries at the mercy of Spain. The states which escaped the direct miseries of that iron domination, and retained a nominal independence under the papal sway or their native dynasties, sank unresisting before an influence affecting at once their politics, their manners, and their literature. The pride of the Spaniard had long been proverbial, and was little susceptible of modification even in a new country. The conquered race quickly conformed to fashions which they could neither shake off nor exclude. They aped a pompous bearing that sat with singularly bad grace upon a vanquished people, and the affectation which at first loaded their language with fulsome epithets, soon corrupted their writings by elaborate adulation. It is difficult for those whose taste has been formed upon the models of a less copious language to judge fairly of Italian ornamental literature, for its authors, in availing themselves of the resources at their command, are prone to lavish them too unsparingly. When tried by such a standard their prose may seem tedious or tumid verbiage, their epics may teem with overstrained hyperbole, and even their lighter poetry may appear to substitute subtle conceits and elaborate epithets for graceful ease and flexibility. But these idiomatic peculiarities are but echoes of the national genius, and ought not perhaps in fairness to be subjected to canons of criticism unknown to their authors. Yet it cannot be denied that facilities such as the language of Italy affords to flowery composition are virtually premiums on feebleness, and that decorations of style afford a tempting disguise for indolence of mind or poverty of matter. The influence of petty courts was peculiarly and fatally favourable to such qualities. Trifling incidents there assumed an importance that justified magniloquence befitting loftier themes, whilst the narrow views common to limited circles found ample scope in exaggerated phrases of metaphor and hyperbole. Thus came abundance without fertility, exuberance yielding only redundancy.
Associations and clubs for political or social objects being then incompatible equally with the spirit of governments and the habits of the people, men readily formed themselves into religious confraternities or literary academies. But these academies acted as drags upon the progress of that literature which they were instituted to promote; they clogged its chariot wheels with devices originally dictated by pedantry, and soon degenerating into puerile verbiage. From the draughts of inflated poetry and corrupted rhetoric which they manufactured, every stimulating ingredient was gradually withdrawn, while opiates were freely introduced in their stead. They thus lulled to sleep what little public spirit had survived the subjugation of the Peninsula; and the governments of the new régime, quickly aware of their emasculating tendencies, lavished upon them patronage until they deluged the land, and stifled the energies of the national mind in all-prevailing mediocrity. The classic spirit of the fifteenth century had originated this mischief, by diverting letters from the sphere of popular sympathy, and nourishing that affectation to which an almost exclusive study of the dead languages must ever lead. But the evil was aggravated by Spanish influence. Ingrafting frigid forms and stately phrases upon the lively intercourse of a naturally light-hearted people, it did for the manners what pedantry had effected for the letters of Italy. Nature and originality were replaced by imitation and servility. Parodies suppressed inspiration, compliments chilled cordiality. In both cases genius languished, epithets multiplied, and terse and vigorous diction passed with independence to happier lands.
In all histories of Italian literature the academies occupy a conspicuous place, and we have already noticed the Assorditi of Urbino, for whom municipal vanity has asserted an origin in the reign of Duke Federigo.[132] They appear to have occasionally met as early at least as that of his successor, although not formally constituted until about 1520. Their name, like that of most similar associations, being probably adopted from some foolish whim, the next step was to invent a badge suited to the humour of the times, so they assumed "the ship of Ulysses surrounded by sirens"; and for motto, playing at once on sound and sense Canitur surdis, "They sing to the deaf." The word assorditi properly means "the deafened," but its signification might be stretched by punning to include absurdity, niggardness, or filth, none of them very flattering qualities to connect with the epithet. The rolls of this fantastic association included many authors who were harboured at Urbino, but it is in no way identified with their reputation. Having fallen into neglect, it was revived in 1623, and, after nearly a century of provincialism, was once more reconstituted in 1723.
[Footnote 132: See vol. II., p. 112.]
As these literary associations rose, their predecessors, the scholastic academies, declined. That which Lorenzo the Magnificent had founded at his villa of Carreggi, was closed in 1522, and Platonism having consequently waned, the Stagirite philosophy was once more master of the field. But another and more deadly struggle awaited it. When men began to study nature and base their reasonings upon her laws, the deficiencies of their old guide were detected, and its authority was impugned. Yet the peripatetic system was too deeply founded to be at once dismissed, and the ingenuity of its disciples was long directed to accommodate its dogmas to modern discoveries,--a vain effort which only divided their ranks and led them into inextricable dilemmas, until Galileo appeared "to furnish forth creation," and conduct them clear of the labyrinth by a silver thread of truth. But though a new light had dawned, new snares beset the way. From bold investigation and speculative inquiry, ecclesiastical authority and civil despotism had much to lose, nothing to gain. Their side was therefore soon chosen. War was declared against thought, backed by the whole armoury of oppression. Where prevention failed, persecution followed, and the censor's veto was enforced by rack and faggot.
Thus was it that the Reformation had but an indirect influence on the Italian mind. The scanty seeds wafted across the Alps fell upon stony ground, and ere long withered away. But the great reaction of the papacy was not only directed against the new truths; it waged war upon every thing calculated to afford them a disguise under which they might become dangerous. The policy of pontiffs and the duty of the Inquisition tended to exclude all light, lest any rays of Protestantism should reach the faithful. During three centuries have these efforts been continued; and when we consider the talent by which they have been directed, the stern ministers by whom they have been carried out, we well may wonder that the Italian mind has not been utterly debased by foreign tyranny and priestly domination. They have sown the wind; it remains to reap the whirlwind.
The fashion for classic imitation was succeeded in Italy by an age of rhetoricians, with Bembo at their head, and the academies as their strongholds. But they either encouraged or inadequately repressed a too fluent facility which has ever since been the blemish of their mellifluous language. In Boccalini's satirical Ragguagli di Parnaso, some prolix writer is condemned to a perusal of Guicciardini's narrative of the Pisan war; but, after a brief essay, he avows his preference for the galleys to pursuing, through dreary details, the siege and capture of a pigeon-house. This biting jest is applicable in a far greater degree to other writers of the sixteenth century, whose cumbrous grandiloquence is often diluted by trivialities, or tinselled with factitious pomp. Yet there were some authors of purer taste, who resisted such extravagance, and it is curious to find Caro, della Casa, and Bernardo Tasso concerting measures for curtailing the use of superabundant compliments. The two principal points of their attack were the recent substitution of the feminine pronoun in the third person singular for the second person plural in addressing any one, and the indiscriminate use of Lordship, Excellency, Gentility, as courteous phrases, to the entire exclusion of Master and Madam. Against the former of these abuses Caro and Tasso declare open war; but, although they unite in condemnation of the latter as still more fatal to vernacular purity, and avow themselves ready to support any onset, each shrinks from leading the charge. "This age of ours is altogether given up to adulation. Every one, in inditing a letter, bandies 'lordship'; all expect it when addressed. And not, forsooth, our grandees alone, but even the middle classes and the very plebeians aspire to such distinctions, taking affront if they receive them not, and noting as blunderers all who do not offer them the like. Most silly and revolting does it seem to me that we should have to speak to one person as if he were another, always talking to a sort of ideal abstraction, quite different from the individual himself. Yet this abuse is now established and general." Thus far Caro, to whom Tasso replies, "Oh the wonderful charm of Italy, which every one seeks to destroy! It sufficed not that the Goths, the Vandals, and other strange and barbarous nations have sought, and still seek, to possess thee, and that multitudes flock hither from earth's farthest corners; even Lordships, never previously seen or known here, quitting their native Spain, are come in swarms to sojourn among us, and have so mastered our vanity and ambition that we cannot shake them from our shoulders." In a subsequent letter to Claudio Tolomei, Bernardo congratulates him on having applied the lash to such empty titles, and promises to follow his example by retrenching them all when he revises his own letters for the press.[133] But these attempts met with little success; redundant superlatives still lead Italian literature, and an Italian letter is little more than a tissue of exaggerated epithets, from its address to its signature.[134]
[Footnote 133: Lettere di Bernardo Tasso, edit. 1733; vol. I., pp. 14-22 and 427-30.]
[Footnote 134: In proof of this I give in IX. of the Appendix a letter of introduction, of which I was bearer, from one of the most accomplished professori of Rome.]
* * * * *
Few branches of human knowledge more flourished during the palmy days of Italian literature than the exact sciences, especially in connection with military affairs, and the elegant arts. Their application to both objects was received with marked favour by the successive Dukes of Urbino, who, for a century and a half, combined the pursuit of arms with the patronage of art. We have seen this done by Federigo and Guidobaldo I., for the defence of their duchy and the decoration of their capital; we now have to mention the progress of similar studies under the della Rovere princes. During the latter epoch, pure mathematics were brought into fashion by numerous translations of standard Greek works into Latin or Italian, a labour shared by various literati of Urbino, but especially by Comandino, Baldi, and Alessandro Giorgi. This, however, but served to facilitate their practical development in pursuits more congenial to those martial dispositions for which the inhabitants of Romagna have in all ages been noted. Whilst the revived literature of Greece and the philosophy of Plato flourished on the banks of the Arno, the exact sciences were cultivated in the highlands of Umbria, and took the practical turn of strengthening those fastnesses with which nature had provided that mountain-land. Francesco di Giorgio, of Siena, was less in request by Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo as architect of their stately palaces, than as the most famous military engineer of his time. Events which made their duchy the seat of repeated invasions early in the sixteenth century, as well as the warlike character of Francesco Maria I., maintained a demand for fortifications, and, from the school which thus grew up in his capital, there issued a series of military architects whose fame and services extended beyond the Alps.
* * * * *
The first of these whom we shall mention was FEDERIGO COMANDINO, born at Urbino, in 1509, of a noble family. His grandfather was secretary of Duke Federigo, whose last confidential instructions he received, when death surprised that veteran general in the fens of Ferrara. Baldi has claimed the invention of those bulwarks in fortification called baluardi for his father, Gian Battista,[135] who built the walls at Urbino in the beginning of the sixteenth century. After a liberal education, Federigo passed several years at the court of Clement VII., nominally as a privy chamberlain, but really to amuse with learned disquisitions the Pontiff's leisure hours, on whose death he repaired to Padua, where he devoted ten years to the study of philosophy and medicine. Having graduated, he settled for clinical practice at Ferrara, but seems soon to have abandoned the healing art for mathematical research. He accompanied his sovereign, Guidobaldo II., to the camp at Verona when in the Venetian service, and, having gained his confidence by successfully treating him in a severe illness, he was selected to instruct him in astronomy and cosmography, as well as in military tactics and engineering. Soon, however, resuming his more abstruse studies, under the patronage of Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese, brother of Duchess Vittoria, he was carried by him to Rome, and introduced into the society of Annibale Caro, Fulvio Orsini, Baldassare Turrio, and Cardinal Cervini, the last of whom was cut off too quickly after his election as Marcellus II. to be able to benefit his friends. But for Comandino ambition offered few temptations, and courts had no charm. In studious retirement he devoted to the exact sciences the matured powers of a comprehensive and most retentive mind. He explored all that classical authors were known to have left on these subjects, and rendered again accessible much that lay forgotten among the rubbish of by-gone learning. He translated, and copiously edited, Ptolemy's treatise on the planisphere, which was published at Venice, in 1558, and, four years afterwards, gave to the world a work on the analemma, founded upon the same author's previous and imperfect discoveries. His labours were then transferred to the writings of Archimedes, several of which he printed for the first time, as well as the dissertations of Serenus and Apollonius upon conic sections, all with elaborate commentaries.
[Footnote 135: This has also been imputed to Francesco di Giorgio, to Sanmichele, and to Bartolomeo Centogatti of Urbino.]
After spending the prime of life in these pursuits at Rome, he returned to his native duchy, where his instructions in mathematics were sought by Prince Francesco Maria, with whom he read and expounded Euclid's Elements; and afterwards, at the request of his pupil, published a Latin translation of them. It was about 1569 that he was visited there by a young Englishman named John Dea, whose love of the exact sciences induced him to seek so distinguished a professor, and who supplied him with some Arabic MSS., hitherto unknown.[136] Six years thereafter he was surprised by death, with many unfinished works on his hands, part whereof saw the light under the superintendence of the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte. The life of a hard student is rarely one of varied incident; and even the voluble pen of his pupil Baldi has failed to illustrate that of Comandino with interest, beyond his scholiast labours.[137] Yet severity formed no part of his social character, and he was ready at all times to relax his toils by Epicurean indulgences, which are said eventually to have curtailed his life. To the last, however, his engrossing pleasure was in books; and, although his works number more translations than original compositions, he is ranked by Montucla among the most able and judicious of commentators.
[Footnote 136: GROSSI, Uomini Illustri di Urbino.]
[Footnote 137: It is printed in the Raccolta Calogeriana, XIX., 140.]
* * * * *
One of the pupils whom Comandino left in his native state was GUIDOBALDO, MARQUIS DEL MONTE, who was born of distinguished lineage, in 1544. Tiraboschi has cited, as a singular proof of the engrossing nature of his studies, the fact that his life offers a nearly total want of incident. So tranquilly did his days flow on at his castle of Monte Baroccio, amid abstruse occupations, that he seemed to have forgotten a world unconscious of his very existence, and the only memorials of his life are his works. His treatise upon Perspective successfully carried forward what had been indicated by Pietro della Francesca in the preceding century, and he was afterwards engaged upon the doctrine of Planispheres, the correction of the kalendar, and the solution of astronomical problems. But though thus devoted to abstruse science, he spared a portion of his thoughts for its practical branches, working upon mechanics, and translating from Archimedes. It is unnecessary here to go into an examination of results which modern discoveries have left far behind; the ground has been well sifted by Montucla, whose work indicates whatever is still of value in this class of now somewhat superseded labours. The Marquis was addressed by Torquato Tasso in a sonnet beginning Miserator de' gran celesti campi, and died early in the seventeenth century, survived by a younger brother, Francesco Maria, who had been made cardinal by Sixtus V.
* * * * *
Among the names distinguished in Urbino for mathematical talent, that of PACIOTTI was conspicuous. Jacopo Paciotti, who held several situations of trust under the two first Dukes of the Rovere dynasty, was father of three sons, all eminent proficients in the exact sciences. Felice was one of those commissioned to rectify the Gregorian Kalendar, and invented an instrument for constructing dial-plates. Orazio became a military engineer, and erected fortresses for the States of the Church, for Savoy, and for Lucca, with such reputation that his services were sought for Poland and for the Emperor Rudolph. But the most remarkable of the family was Francesco,[*138] who, after enjoying a liberal education, and thoroughly grounding himself in architecture under Girolamo Genga, went to Rome, where, in 1550,[*139] he was named engineer-in-chief by Julius III. Next year, he was employed to fortify Ancona against the dreaded descents of the Turk; but, leaving this undertaking to be completed by Fontana, he passed in 1551, to the service of the Farnesi, and thence to that of Emanuel Duke of Savoy, with 60 scudi of monthly pay. He soon afterwards published a plan of Rome; but his attention was chiefly devoted to military architecture, in which his reputation rapidly spread. In 1558, he was employed by Philip II. to survey, and report upon, the principal defences of the Low Countries, for which he was remunerated with 6000 scudi, and a massive gold chain.
[Footnote *138: Cf. MADIAI, Il Giornale di Francesco Paciotti da Urbino in Arch. St. per le Marche e per l'Umbria, vol. III., p. 48 et seq.]
[Footnote *139: This is the year in which the journal begins. In 1551 he tells us he left the service of the Pope to enter that of the Duke of Parma.]
Paciotti was now on the ladder of royal favour, and, having accompanied Duke Emanuel to Paris, for his marriage, was decorated by Henry II. with another magnificent chain worth 1000 scudi. The gorgeous compliment, however, nearly cost him his life, for, while wearing it next day, he was set upon by two robbers, one of whom he slew, and wounded the other, a feat which procured him new marks of favour. The next ten years of his life were chiefly spent in the service of Savoy; but he was at various times summoned for engineering purposes to Spain and Flanders. The warm personal regard in which he was held by Philip II. was proved by his winning a bet, that he would make that proud monarch hold a light to examine his plans, and was more substantially shown by many rich presents which he carried from that court. In consequence of recommendations from his Catholic Majesty, he had from the King of Portugal the order of Jesus Christ; and in 1578, at the Duke of Savoy's request, the Castle of Montefabri was erected into a countship in his favour, by Francesco Maria II. of Urbino. After for several years superintending fortifications in the papal states, and those of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he retired to his native place, and passed the remainder of his life in honourable ease, enjoying from various sovereigns pensions of above 3000 scudi a year. He died in 1591, aged seventy, leaving behind him a European reputation, and three sons, in whom the mathematical talents of the family were hereditarily developed, all being military engineers of some note; one of them, Federigo, became a Knight of Malta, and Guidobaldo was blown up by a mine, while in the service of Charles V.
* * * * *
GIAN GIACOMO LEONARDI is mentioned by a recent writer[140] as "one of those extraordinary men, so abundant in Italy during the fifteenth and following century, who have left little fame to posterity, and who, though universally known in their day, were after death forgotten, and overlooked by subsequent writers." Nor is this surprising in his case; for his distinction, gained in the camp, was spread still wider by his diplomacy. He was at one moment referred to on delicate points of honour between knights and sovereigns; at another consulted on questions of legal intricacy; whilst his writings have remained unedited and unknown. They are all upon fortification and engineering, and are enumerated by Promis in his elaborate compilation upon these subjects. His services, though eagerly sought by great monarchs, were affectionately devoted to his native princes, being long companion in arms of Francesco Maria I., and ambassador to Venice from Guidobaldo II. He was born at Pesaro, near which he had from the latter the countship of Monte l'Abbate in 1540, with permission to bear the name and arms of della Rovere, and died about 1560.
[Footnote 140: Trattato di Architettura da Francesco di Giorgio, edited by C. Promis, Turin, 1841.]
* * * * *
Although we have been led to mention engineers in connection with mathematical science, they were in these days usually architects, and regarded as belonging to the class of artists. Ricotti informs us that no vocation was more varied or laborious. Uniting the practice of arms with an intimate knowledge of design, their services were sought for in every part of Europe, either to plan fortresses, build palaces, cast statues, paint frescoes, execute hydraulics, or command troops. Lazzari, in his Uomini Illustri del Piceno, enumerates sixteen such as conferring lustre upon Urbino, but of these we shall only name one more. MUZIO ODDI was nobly born there, in 1569. In 1595, he accompanied, as military engineer, a contingent sent by the Duke into Burgundy; and, three years after, employed his architectural skill for the festive decorations in honour of a visit by Clement VIII. to his native city. He had less success in placing a cupola upon the cathedral there, in 1604, which was said to contain 100,000 pounds of iron-work and 80,000 of lead, the weight of which brought it down in 1789. On some indistinctly recorded charge, he was thrown into the citadel of Pesaro, and there detained many years in a loathsome dungeon. Denied the use of books or writing materials, he made for himself ink of charcoal and candle-soot, mixed with water in a walnut-shell, and, by pasting together shreds of paper with bread-dough, contrived to jot down mathematical treatises on sundials and the square, using for compasses a couple of twigs tied together. On his liberation, in 1609, he passed into Lombardy, and spent above twenty years of exile in sighing for his country; nor was it till within two years of the close of life that he was appointed mathematical professor at Urbino. He died at seventy, leaving a Treatise on Mathematics, in two volumes 4to.
* * * * *
BERNARDINO BALDI[*141] has a double claim upon our attention, as the most prolific writer whom the duchy has produced, and as one who devoted a large share of his literary labours to the illustration of his native state. He was born at Urbino in 1553, of a family which, during several generations, had held with credit various important situations in the magistracy. By force of that extraordinary diligence, which continued to stimulate his entire life, his youthful studies advanced with precocious success; yet it is singular to find him confessing that his early inclinations were all towards painting, and that his preference of his pencil to his grammatical exercises often brought him into intimate acquaintance with the birch. We cannot echo the observation of his biographer Affò,[*142] that this discipline may have deprived Urbino of a second Raffaele; but though he assuredly was gifted neither with the lofty genius nor the pervading sense of beauty which characterised his countryman, a deep devotional feeling would doubtless have inspired his paintings. The peculiar connection which existed at Urbino between the exact sciences and the liberal arts frequently attracts our notice; and this it may have been which led the thwarted painter to turn with his accustomed energy to mathematical studies, under Federigo Comandino, for whose edition of Euclid, published in 1572, he is said to have drawn the diagrams. It was about this time, that, urged by his parents to choose between law and medicine for a profession, he preferred the latter, rather, as he tells us, from its analogy with philosophical inquiries than with any special liking for the healing art. With these views he was sent to the University of Padua, where he brought his vast application successively to bear upon logic, and ethical and physical philosophy, varied by his favourite mathematics, and by a comprehensive cycle of Greek literature. To that seat of learning there then resorted the youth of ultramontane lands, whose harsh language so piqued Baldi's curiosity, and developed his prodigious philological talents, that in an inconceivably short time he mastered French and German. But these multifarious pursuits did not suffice his versatile mind, so he enlivened them by draughts of the Castalian spring. There may seem something ludicrous in an epic, entitled "Artillery," and illustrative of gunnery practice; but a theme so ponderous for poetry was suited to the spirit of the age, as well as congenial to its author's thoughts. A visit to the mountain home of Petrarch, at Arqua, gave, however, a lighter turn to his muse, and taught his number to flow in madrigals, to the honour of some nameless Laura of his love or fancy, containing more borrowed classicism than inspired passion.
[Footnote *141: Cf. ZACCAGNINI, La vita e le opere edite e inedite di B.B. (Modena, 1903); UGOLINI, Versi e prose scelte di B.B. (Firenze, 1859); see also MADIAI, Pierantonio Paltroni e B.B. biografi di Federigo da Montefeltro in Le Marche (1902), vol. II., pp. 5-6.]
[Footnote *142: Cf. AFFÒ, La Vita di B.B. (Parma, 1783).]
In 1575 he returned home, to share the last labours, and watch the death-bed, of his friend Comandino, and to encounter from his parents many a remonstrance as to his neglected professional acquirements, of which, in the various food with which he had appeased his literary craving at the university, he seems entirely to have lost sight. But their efforts were vain. The Eugubinean tables, that philological enigma, having attracted his attention, he boldly encountered their solution, and studied Arabic as a stepping-stone to the lost dialects of Central Italy. His biographers insert Etruscan in the catalogue of his polyglot acquirements, but the tables of Gubbio remain a puzzle to antiquaries. Those who made literature a profession, before there existed a "public" to remunerate their exertions, looked for maintenance to princes or private patrons; and in 1580 Baldi gratefully accepted the offer of Don Ferrante Gonzaga, Lord of Guastalla, to instruct him in mathematics, on an allowance of ten scudi a month, besides board for himself and a servant,--an appointment which made him favourably known to Cardinal (afterwards St.) Carlo Borromeo, uncle of that prince, and to many persons of literary reputation who frequented his miniature court. There his time was divided between mathematical and poetic compositions, until, in 1586, a sudden change took place in his position by his adopting a clerical habit, at the request of Don Ferrante, in order that he might hold the Abbacy of Guastalla, the emoluments of which yielded him about 320 golden ducats. This promotion brought out a curious feature in the character of so hard a student, and we find him immediately repairing to Rome, to canvass for the higher honours of a titular bishopric, on being refused which, he struggled for permission to wear some trifling distinction in his canonical robes with pertinacity befitting a worldling rather than a philosopher. Neither was it from such a character that we should have looked for a zeal in the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline, which led him beyond the bounds of prudence in wielding his inquisitorial powers.[*143]
[Footnote *143: In Rome he pursued too his artistic studies; it was this sojourn which inspired the Sonetti Romani. He seems to have passed the years 1592-1609 between Rome, Urbino, and Guastalla.]
Those theological studies which usually precede ordination were in his case followed out with his wonted energy, after obtaining the preferment to which they are generally intended to lead, and it was probably then that he added Hebrew and Chaldee to his accomplishments. But his first great undertaking, after thus gaining a position of leisure and independence, was a General Biography of famous mathematicians. This he never completed for the press; but a sort of vidimus of the three hundred and sixty lives, which it was intended to contain, was printed after his death, with the title Cronica de' Mathematici. Several minor works in science and literature at the same time occupied his pen, among which were his Description of the Urbino palace, his Eulogy of that state, and his History of Guastalla. Nor were his poetic inspirations neglected, and, besides a variety of occasional effusions, his Nautica, or the Art of Navigation, was printed at Venice in 1590. We may include among his lighter labours an Essay on History, dedicated in 1611 to the Duke of Urbino, and lately published by Cardinal Mai.[144] Although, like most similar essays, some of its observations are trite and even trivial, the various topics are well handled, and many useful suggestions are offered as to the best method and style for history, the qualities requisite in its author and desirable for its students. It would have been well had Baldi attended, in his historical biographies, to his own recommendation, that the prolix and copious diction of Livy should be chastened by that terse and sententious manner found in Tacitus and Sallust. Nor were it amiss that he had construed less literally the maxim by which Pliny the Younger pleads for mediocrity, Content yourself to do much indifferently, if it be beyond you to do a little well.[145]
[Footnote 144: Spicilegium Romanum, I., xxviii., from Vat. Urb. MSS.]
[Footnote 145: Satius est plurima mediocriter facere, si non possis aliquid insigniter. Lib. V., Epist. 5.]
Although Baldi appears to have entered the Church rather from temporal considerations than any spiritual vocation, no priest was ever more tenacious of rights and privileges; and it was his misfortune to find, in the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, ever-recurring misunderstandings with his clergy or the civil authorities, and even with the superior tribunals at Rome. Through these we shall not follow him. As early as 1590, the Duke of Urbino interfered as a friendly counsellor to recommend him moderate measures; but new jars from time to time recurred, and in 1609 he carried into effect a step which he had proposed seventeen years before, by resigning his benefice, under reservation of two-fifths of its income. But these wranglings penetrated not within the portal of his study, where his active mind and adamantine pen laboured assiduously, through good report and bad, upon the most incongruous matters.
The Abbot renounced his preferment on the plea of family matters, requiring his presence in his native city, and, faithful to this domestic duty, declined an offer from Cardinal d'Este of a situation in his household. His own sovereign received him with that friendship he ever extended to men of piety and literary merit, and, in 1612, sent him on a mission to congratulate the New Doge of Venice.[*146] The remainder of his life passed in peace, amid the varied resources of an ever-busy mind, interrupted only by those occasional bereavements, whereby, as years wear on, death warns us that our turn will also come. Besides sad breaches in his domestic circle, Baldi had to mourn his long-attached friend Baroccio, the painter, who died in 1612. Prepared by such proofs of human frailty, he resigned his spirit on the 10th of October, after a lingering but lenient malady, and was carried to the tomb amid the sincere regrets of many friends and admirers.[*147] It was remarked that, in his long and minute will, he left no instructions regarding his multifarious unpublished works, most of which passed into the library of his relations, the Albani, where they remain at Rome. His epitaph reckons his compositions at forty-eight,[*148] and the languages he knew at twelve, which Crescimbeni increases to sixteen--substantial testimony to that avidity of application which is said to have been habitually appeased by perusing the Fathers whilst at table, and by conning over Euclid in Arabic, as an aid to digestion. To detail and criticise the results of labours as Protean as Herculean is a task which we cannot attempt. His diligent biographer Affò enumerates about thirty printed works, running to above two thousand 4to pages, and seventy left in manuscript, some of which have been since published. They may be thus classed:--
Printed. MSS. In Theology and biblical criticism 13 " Mathematics 7 14 " Philosophy 2 " Geography 2 " Law 2 " History 1 8 " Topography and antiquities 4 4 " Poetry 10 8 " General literature and philology 4 16
[Footnote *146: Cf. ZACCAGNINI, Un'ambasceria di B.B. in Rassegna Crit. d. Lett. Ital., vol. VII., p. 201.]
[Footnote *147: He died in Urbino, October 10th, 1617.]
[Footnote *148: I record the more important. In 1575 he wrote a poem on Artiglieria, and in 1579 another on the Invenzione del bossolo da navigare; this was published by CANEVAZZI (Livorno, Giusti, 1901). Cf. concerning it, PROVASI in Le Marche (1902), and ZACCAGNINI in Rass. Crit. d. Lett. Ital., vol. VII., p. 166. His masterpiece, Nautica, written between 1580-85, is a didactic poem in four books imitating the Georgics. Concerning it see ZACCAGNINI, Le fonti della Nautica in Giornale St. d. Lett. Ital., vol. XL., p. 366, and PROVASI, Contributo allo studio della Nautica di B.B. (Fano, 1903). The Egloghe Miste were dedicated to Ranuccio Farnese in 1590, and consist of nineteen poems in various metres in a Theocritan vein. Cf. RUBERTO, Le Egloghe edite e inedite di B.B. in Propugnatore (1882), and for Epigrammi, RUBERTO, op. cit. An. cit. His youthful erotic poems were published under the title Lauro (Pavia, 1600), and, not to speak of other volumes, the Sonetti Romani appeared in Versi e Prose (Venice, Franceschi, 1590). His works in prose were very numerous. I note here La Descrizione del Palazzo Ducale d'Urbino (circa 1587), and the Vite of Federigo and Guidobaldo I. of Urbino, the first published in Rome in 1820 and a bad edition of the second in Milan, 1821. He wrote also a Cronaca (Urbino, 1707), a life of Federigo Comandino, the Encomio della Patria, cf. ZACCAGNINI, Uno scritto inedito di B.B. in Le Marche (Fano), vol. I., p. 4; and the Lettere Familiari, cf. POLIDORI, Lettere di Baldi (Firenze, 1854), RONCHINI, Lettere di B. (Parma, 1873) and SAVIOTTI, Lettere di B. (Pesaro, 1887).]
Of these a number were translations, chiefly from Arabic and other Oriental tongues. It is evident that his own preference lay towards his compositions in verse, a judgment which wants confirmation if continued popularity be the test. Yet several of his fugitive poems, and especially some sonnets on the ruins of Rome, possess much lyric beauty; and, though his epic on the Deluge is but a wretched attempt at novelty in versification, that on the Art of Navigation is a work of merit for the age which produced it. Hallam, after classing it with Bernardo Tasso's Amadigi, as two of the most remarkable productions of that sort then written in Italy, pronounces the Nautica "a didactic poem in blank verse, too minute sometimes, and prosaic in detail, like most of its class, but neither low, turgid, or obscure, as many others have been. The descriptions, though never very animated, are sometimes poetical and pleasing. Baldi is diffuse, and this conspires with the triteness of his matter to render the poem somewhat uninteresting. He by no means wants power to adorn his subject, but does not always trouble himself to exert it, and is tame where he might be spirited. Few poems bear more evident marks that their substance had been previously written down in prose." But what he wanted in genius--for therein lay his great deficiency--he in some degree supplied by wonderful versatility. Whichever of his many subjects he took up seemed that in which he was born to excel. Of his painstaking diligence we have said much, but we may add the pertinent remark of Grossi, "that so extensive was his reading as apparently to leave no time for writing, and yet that he wrote about as much as it seemed possible for any one to read." To this Tiraboschi adds the more flattering testimony that "his praises would be appropriate to almost each chapter of this history, for there was scarcely any department of literature and science in which he did not apply himself and attain excellence."
By an author so prolific, redundancy and diffuseness, the blemishes of his age, were inevitable. But in his lives of the two Montefeltrian dukes, these are conjoined with a tendency to elaborate his details into microscopic minuteness, which weary and distract the reader, and which, though valuable adjuncts to the testimony of an eye-witness, engender more suspicion than credit in a narrative compiled, after a long interval, from less specific authorities. Being, however, a shrewd observer and diligent narrator, anxious to do full justice to his subject, these works, although deficient in personal interest, and relieved by no enlarged views or general application, fulfil the task prescribed by his patron, the last Duke della Rovere; and, were his life of Francesco Maria I. to be published,[149] Baldi would be our standard historiographer of the duchy. In him are, indeed, wanting the qualities of a philosophic historian,--elevation of sentiment, variety of matter, selection of incident; but they belonged not to his age, and were scarcely compatible with his position. The fate of Scarpi and Varchi gave timely warning to the literary world, that historic verity might have its martyrs, as well as metaphysical speculation of religious truth. His life of Duke Federigo, written in 1603, was printed in 1824; that of Guidobaldo I., completed in 1615, saw the light in 1821. The substance of these narratives had, however, been appropriated and published by Reposati, omitting imaginary conversations and supposititious harangues. Of the degree of impartiality with which they were compiled, an idea may be formed from the following extracts of letters addressed to their author by his sovereign, proving that his judgment was not by any means left unfettered:--"It has given me satisfaction to hear all that you have written me in regard to the life of Duke Federigo of happy memory, and I fail not to acknowledge with pleasure your devotion and diligence. In mentioning my house, I approve of your naming it of Montefeltro rather than Feltrian, but as to seeking out its source and foundation, I do not recollect telling you to pass these over in silence. On the contrary, I deem it necessary to discuss this, yet not in the way I saw it treated at Urbino, attributing to it a mere bourgeois and private origin, much humbler than its deserts. It will, therefore, be well to keep this in view, observing in your eulogies, and generally throughout the work, a becoming consideration and regard for it, such as, without further hint, I look for from your sound discretion."--"As to the Life of Duke Federigo, only a few days have passed since I have done looking through it; but we must talk it over together more than once, ere anything can be decided on."[150]
[Footnote 149: Vat. Urb. MSS., No. 906.]
[Footnote 150: Oliveriana MSS. In 1602 the Duke instructed his resident at Venice to procure for Gian Battista Leoni access to its archives for the life of Francesco Maria I. he had commissioned him to write, which was published three years later.]
Had Baldi lived among our fathers, he would have dwelt in Grub Street, and become, by his powers of application and memory, a successful book-maker; among ourselves, he would have proved valuable as a penny-per-line scribe. In Italy, his renown was, for a time, more brilliant, but it has now passed into comparative, and not unmerited, neglect. Yet his is a name of which his native city may justly be proud, and may cherish with respectful approbation this epitaph, once proposed for his tomb:--
"Ah! happy he who spent a lengthened span, Not in the vulgar dreams of grovelling man, But passed his days in living truly well; Urbino's honour! Passenger, farewell."
Among the literary labourers of this age GIROLAMO MUZIO[*151] is entitled to a prominent place, more from the variety and volume of his writings than from their actual worth. The epithet Giustinopolite, usually applied to him, is latinised from Capo d'Istria, the adopted home of his family, who were originally emigrants from Udine, and spelt their name Nuzio. He, however, was born at Padua, in 1496, and, after receiving a good education, finding himself dependent upon his own exertions, was fain to sell his services of sword or pen to the highest bidder. The same rule of self-interest that actuated Italian condottieri was too often followed by literary adventurers in that country, conscience and glory being generally made subservient by both to a livelihood. Girolamo had a double chance, in his twofold capacity of soldier and author, and tells us "that it was ever his fate to earn his bread by serving in the armies and courts of popes, emperors, kings, or petty princes; sometimes with one Italian commander, sometimes with another; now in France, then in Upper, again in Lower Germany." Through these vicissitudes it were needless to follow him. For a time he was rival or successor of Bernardo Tasso in the promiscuous affections of Tullia d'Aragona, a lettered courtezan, and, without her sanction, published, in 1547, her Dialogue on the Infinitude of Love. In the preface he avowed a connection which occasioned him neither compunction nor shame, and which, in days when love was a science as well as a passion, was openly shared by Varchi, Speroni, Strozzi, and Molza. Four years later a dangerous illness taught him reflection on his past ways, and brought him to a devotional frame of mind. It was about the same time that he became an inmate of the court of Urbino, receiving from Duke Guidobaldo the ample pension of 400 scudi, with permission to "attend to his studies, appearing only when he chose." The Duchess Vittoria countenanced him much, and he spent a good deal of time in her society, probably in consequence of his appointment as governor to her eldest son, and of his marrying a lady of her suite. From thence he went to reside at Rome, about 1567, and died in Tuscany, in 1576.
[Footnote *151: On Muzio, see GIAXICH, Vita di Girolamo Muzio (Trieste, 1847); MORPURGO, Girolamo Muzio (Trieste, 1893), NOMI, in Miscellanea Stor. della Valdelsa, No. 24; NOTTOLA, Appunti sul Muzio poeta (Aosta, 1895).]
Tiraboschi declines the task of compiling the long catalogue of his various writings, in poetry, sacred and profane history, moral essays, and familiar letters,[*152] nor need we undertake it. A large portion of his works were directed against protestant doctrines, and, having reformed the habits of his somewhat stormy youth, he lent willing and efficient aid in strangling the progress of Calvinism in Italy, after a protracted struggle, upon which the investigations of Dr. M'Crie have thrown much valuable light. Muzio is alleged to have exhibited in this contest more of martial dexterity than theological acumen; but his controversial effusions, being published in Italian, and clothed in a homely slashing style, were probably supposed quite as efficacious against the progress of heretical opinions among his countrymen, as the disquisitions of more profound theologians. It was not, however, for the dogmas of faith alone that Muzio wielded his pen. The soldier of fortune was quite as happy, and more at home, on topics belonging to the chivalry of his profession. His treatises on Duels and the Point of Honour were suited to the spirit of the age, and had in consequence a considerable run of popularity, now of course long ago past. The like fate has befallen his didactic poem on the Art of Poetry, in the literature of his own country. What most concerns us are his Lives of Dukes of Urbino. That of Federigo is dedicated to Guidobaldo II., and the original is deposited in the Vatican Library. Having been compiled with considerable care, it continues our best narrative of his reign, and has been greatly drawn upon by Baldi and Riposati. The edition printed at Venice in 1605 is but an abridgment, containing less than half the original matter. His Life of Francesco Maria I. was left unfinished, and remains unedited in the Vatican.[153]
[Footnote *152: The fullest collection of his letters seems to be that of GIOLITI, 1551. Cf. also ZENATTI, Lettere inedite (Capodistria, 1896).]
[Footnote 153: Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 1011, and No. 1023, f. 50.]
We shall mention but one more prose writer of Urbino. FEDERIGO BONAVENTURA was born in 1555, and owed to Cardinal Giulio della Rovere a fashionable education at Rome. On his return home, the marked favour of Francesco Maria II. was attracted by his good sense and winning manners; but finding his courtly accomplishments unequal to the profound pursuits of that young prince, he laboured assiduously to supply his own deficiencies. By close application, his progress in Greek, mathematics, and natural philosophy was amazingly rapid; but these studies were happily blended with the business of life, and, directing his powerful judgment to political affairs, he established his reputation by a work on public polity, which, for the first time in Italy, methodised the principles of government. These talents his sovereign turned to account by sending him on various diplomatic missions. Conforming in many respects to the maxims inculcated by the Cortegiano, he filled in the Duke's court somewhat the same place which Castiglione had done in that of Guidobaldo I., and died in 1602.
Chapter L
Italian versification--Ariosto--Pietro Aretino--Vittoria Colonna--Laura Battiferri--Dionigi Atanagi--Antonio Galli--Marco Montano--Bernardo Tasso.
The liquid vocables of the Italian language flow in melody with a facility perilous to genius, fatal to mediocrity: its stream is equally apt to dilute Castalian inspiration, or to quench poetic fire. Hence the poets of Italy are far outnumbered by its versifiers; and hence among the laureates of Urbino we find but few historic names. But, in absence of native bards, the dukes of the second dynasty attracted to their court several of those most conspicuous on the Ausonian Parnassus, under whose influence a great change came over the manner and spirit of national poetry. Hitherto their predecessors had before them two models, whose excellence is still universally admitted. Dante, in founding an epic literature, chose the grandest and most difficult theme ever dared by man, and his success, by immeasurably distancing his few competitors, has deterred competition. Petrarch addressed himself to passions and sympathies essentially earthly, and constructed a lyrical versification demanding no sustained exertion; whose trammels sufficed, in his melodious and pliant idiom, to stimulate ingenuity without imposing labour; whose perfection depended rather upon elaborate polish than upon originality or vigour. Thus, while Dante continued a model, Petrarch became a snare; and hence, a "multitude of imitators, satisfied with copying the latter in his defects; who could easily follow him in the choice of his subject, but not in the beauty of his style, the variety of his knowledge, and the elegance of his imagery." Sonnets are indeed the most peculiarly Italian form of poetry, but they are avowedly ill-suited to the naïve expression of pure and artless feelings. Their laboured strain and studied melody are adapted to an artificial cast of sentiment; they encourage exaggeration and tend to mannerism and commonplace. Singly they are charming, but "when taken collectively we become indifferent to their unity, felicity, and grace, and accuse them of what under other circumstances we might possibly commend, their recurring metaphors, their uniform structure, and the unfailing sweetness of their versification."[154] Yet in their complex form, a prolonged repetition of the same rhyme tends, like the return to a simple air amid difficult variations, touchingly to renew the feeling originally and pleasingly evoked; and thus is it that sonnets often possess a charm of which, in their ambitious attempts, their authors were probably quite unconscious.[155]
[Footnote 154: British and Foreign Quarterly Review, xi. 376.]
[Footnote 155: See above, Vol. II., cap. xxv.]
It is not now our object to analyze the varied metrical arrangements to which the fertile language of Italy willingly lent itself, and which its minstrels,
"A mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,"
delighted to mingle and multiply. Enough, in addition to the polished sonnet, to name noble canzoni, sublime odes, and tender elegies. But the absence of ballad poetry, with its wide-circling echoes of long antecedent events and feelings, is remarkable, and has been imputed to an early addiction of the nation to prosaic habits of trade. This solution is, however, little satisfactory in itself, and is equally at variance with the genius and the language of the people. Perhaps it would be more just to assign a diametrically opposite cause, and to seek in their vivid imaginations, and in the exuberant facility of their melodious tongue, that universality of versification which tended to depreciate its quality, or, at all events, to diminish the estimation bestowed even on their most popular compositions. It is accordingly in nations among whom poetry is a rare gift, and whose idiom can embody it in terse and simple diction, that we find those lyrics which, possessing a traditional popularity, are at once the germ and index of national sentiment.[*156] We seek in vain for such among the recognised literature of Italy; and though the dulcet chants of the Venetian gondolier, and the monotonous lazzaroni ditties of Naples, may be deemed of that class, their infinite and ever-changing variety appears to divest them of the historic charm that attaches to the chivalric redondillas of Spain, and to the pensive minstrelsy of our fatherland.
[Footnote *156: How could Italy have a ballad poetry full of national sentiment before she became a nation? Her living poetry then and for centuries before, as now, is the Rispetto. Cf., for the Poesie Popolari generally, D'ANCONA, La Poesia Popolare Italiana (Livorno, 1906); for the Marche especially GIANANDREA, Canti Popolari Marchigiani (Torino, Loescher, 1875).]
* * * * *
In poetry alone did the age of the della Rovere excel that of the Montefeltri, and among the great names whom it was their pride to shelter were Ariosto and Tasso, the only ones worthy to rival those of the bards of Hell and of Love.
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO[*157] was born of noble parentage at Reggio, in 1474, and, after a precocious struggle against the uncongenial legal career for which he was intended, was left by his father to follow the bent of his genius in favour of general literature.[*158] From an early age he had composed dramas on Thisbe and similar themes, and had secretly drilled his brothers and sisters to perform them; but when about seventeen, his youthful inclination was gratified by accompanying Duke Ercole I. to Pavia and Milan, for diversion, and to enact certain comedies. These boyish efforts have not been preserved, but the Cassaria and Suppositi, composed in 1494, engraft upon classic models the licentious speech of his age. Though well-born, he had the double misfortune to require a patron, and to find an ungrateful one in Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, whose ferocious character and lax morals exceeded even the ordinary licence then permitted to members of the Sacred College, and whose taste for literature, or perhaps emulation of a prevailing fashion, led him to favour men of genius. The services of Ariosto were invoked, as a soldier and diplomatist, when Ferrara was exposed to imminent danger in the wars following the League of Cambray. As ambassador to Julius II. in 1512, he braved perils greater perhaps than those of the field; but his fine temper and knowledge of the world ensured his safety, and bespoke the regard even of that domineering Pontiff, whose threats mellowed into favours before his conciliatory bearing.
[Footnote *157: I shall not attempt to give a bibliography, however scanty, of Ariosto. He has really nothing to do with Urbino, and the work done concerning him would fill a library. The best life after those of Baretti, Campori, and Baruffaldi is that of Cappelli prefacing the Lettere (Hoepli, Milano, 1887). The best edition of his poems is that of PAPINI (Firenze, Sansoni, 1903). For Bibliographia Ariostesca, see FERRAZZI (Bassano, Pozzato, 1881). For the controversy, Ariosto-Tasso, see VIVALDI, La Più Grande polemica del Cinquecento (Catanzaro, Caliò, 1895). Consult also EDMUND GARDNER, Dukes and Poets at Ferrara (Constable, 1904), a charming and a learned book.]
[Footnote *158: Ariosto has told us in great part his own life in his Satire; best edition that of Tambara (Livorno, 1903).]
The time at which he first visited Urbino is uncertain; but in 1515, when the designs of Leo X. upon that duchy and Ferrara, the only Romagnese principalities which still withstood the grasping policy of the papacy, had given rise to anxieties in the families of d'Este and della Rovere, the Cardinal repaired to Francesco Maria I., in order to concert measures for their common safety. Ariosto accompanied him on this journey, and, having been detained at the Furlo pass by an attack of fever, which in his eighth Capitulo he mentions as dangerous, he repaired to recruit his health at Urbino, whilst Ippolito proceeded to Rome. The greeting which met our poet at that lettered court partook of the discriminating hospitality which genius could ever there command; and though his own poetical reputation was as yet but dawning, his intimacy with Guido Posthumo of Pesaro was probably a claim in his behalf to special distinction, which the publication of his Orlando Furioso, before the end of that year, firmly established. On proceeding to Rome, the favour bestowed upon him at the Vatican was not such as either to satisfy his just anticipations, or to do credit to the Pontiff's discernment. In his third and seventh Satires, Ariosto comments upon the long and intimate friendship of their former years, when the Cardinal de' Medici had proffered him a fraternal partiality, and vows that never again will he rely on other men's promises, postponed from ides to calends, and from calends to ides. The reception he at first met with might well give confidence to his hopes; for on his presentation Leo stooped forward to press his hand, saluting him on both cheeks. But, as the Venetian envoy caustically observed, his Holiness promised largely, but performed not. All that followed this flattering accolade was a privilege of copyright, not even gratuitously issued; and as those substantial benefits, which his merits deserved and his position required, were vainly expected, the poet quitted Rome "with humbled crest," a disappointed man. Yet he was of too kind a nature to harbour malice, as well as of a temper too easy for courtly struggles. He returned to the quiet of his native state, content to seek some respectable employment, and avowing his indifference to scenes of wider or more varied ambition.
"Let him who golden spur or scarlet hat affects Serve king, or duke, or cardinal, or pope; This suits not me, who care for neither gaud."[159]
[Footnote 159: Part of this third Satire will be found translated in ROSCOE'S Leo X., ch. xvi., where the demands of nepotism upon his Holiness are playfully exposed.]
Whether his patron's proverbially slighting reception of a dedication of the first fruits of his epic muse proceeded from obtuseness, or, as Tiraboschi suggests, was a poor jest, it could not but be mortifying to a man of delicacy and conscious genius. Ere long a breach occurred between them, on Ludovico declining to attend the Cardinal in a distant and fatiguing embassy to Hungary.[*160] This occurred in 1517; but he was soon after admitted into the Duke of Ferrara's service with a monthly salary of seven crowns, and allowances for three servants and two horses. His first employment in this new sphere was a mission, in 1519, to condole with Lorenzo de' Medici, the usurping Duke of Urbino, on the loss of his consort Madeleine of France; but ere he reached Florence, Lorenzo's own death had supervened. It was on this occasion he composed his first Capitulo, where, and in his Stanze, he speaks of that prince in the usual fulsome style of courtly bards, alluding to his uncles Leo and Giuliano as
"Twin suckers from that long descended laurel stem, Which in its verdure decked a golden age."
[Footnote *160: Cf. Satire II., vv. 1-24, 85-93, 97-114, 217-231, 238-265, and III., 1-81.]
How little the duty thus imposed upon him consisted with his own tastes may, however, be gathered from an incident characteristic of the age. The venal conduct of Duke Francesco Maria's Spanish followers having brought to a sudden close his attempt to regain his patrimonial states, in the manner detailed in our thirty-sixth chapter, one of their number resented an imputation to that effect, cast upon his comrades by some gentlemen of Ferrara. A challenge was the result, each party selecting a bravo to maintain their cause. This duel by deputy took place on the Neapolitan territory, and, of the combatants, who fought naked with swords, the Spaniard was left dead on the field. The victor returned to be fêted in the capital of the d'Este; and Ariosto composed his thirty-fifth sonnet upon "Ferrara's true paladin, of truth, genius, worth, and valour, who has cleared up the Spaniard's slippery trick upon the good Duke of Urbino, and testified to Italian bravery." We may well suppose the satisfaction with which the minstrel saw this "good Duke" restored to his station in 1521, and may conjecture that he paid him homage in his mountain capital. A room in the ducal palace there, decorated with his portrait, went by his name, and he was enrolled among the Assorditi academicians.[161] In 1532, a few months previous to his death, Prince Guidobaldo wrote to ask of him an unacted comedy, for representation at Pesaro, to which he replied, regretting his inability to comply with the request, as he had long ceased to write such things.
[Footnote 161: See above, pp. 255-6.]
Ariosto's life presents few remarkable incidents, considering the space which his name justly occupies in the literary annals of Italy. Though honoured and complimented by the Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara, and by Leo X., he seems to have incurred few solid obligations from these Maecenases of his age. The only promotion awarded to him was the administration of Garfagna, a mountain-holding under the d'Este family, chiefly peopled by banditti, which he obtained in 1522, but resigned after three years' sad experience of the turbulent charge. His coronation by Charles V. is apocryphal, although he is understood to have received from that Emperor a diploma as his poet laureate. He died on the 6th of June, 1533, in his home at Ferrara, and was buried in the old church of S. Benedetto. In 1573 his body was transported to the new church, and in 1801 to the Public Library of Ferrara.
It would be foreign to the object proposed in these pages to enter fully into the merits of works so universally known, and so little connected with our immediate subject, as the heroic poems of Ariosto. But we have ample evidence of the popularity enjoyed by his Orlando Furioso, during the first half-century after its publication, in the testimony of one not likely to be partial to a successful rival: "And if the aim which a good poet ought to keep in view be that of imparting pleasure and enjoyment, it is obvious that this was accomplished by Ariosto; for there is neither artisan, nor man of learning, nor boy, nor girl, nor old person, who is satisfied with a second perusal of him. Are not his stanzas a solace to the jaded pilgrim, who sings them to alleviate the irksomeness of his hot and weary way? Do you not hear them chanted all day long in the highways and the fields? I believe that there have not been printed as many copies of Homer or Virgil as of the Furioso, during the time that has elapsed since that most accomplished gentleman published his poem; and if so, as cannot be doubted, is not this a clear proof of its beauty and excellence?"[162] We set aside the minor faults which have been found in the execution, and most gladly escape from all critical discussion of the vexed question, as to its due observance of unity and sustained action. The absence of perfections so questionable is by many accounted a charm. Nowhere has imagination been more freely indulged, nowhere the poetic vein left to play such fantastic tricks; but in its sallies, effort and restraint are alike unknown. As the figures in a magic-lantern, or the endless changes of the kaleidoscope, its phantasmagoria appear and pass by, without our being aware of the machinery which called them up; yet, from time to time, there occur images of life so veracious, traits of nature so touching, that we are again summoned to the realities of existence and the sympathies of humanity, with a startling effect scarcely less marvellous than the wild creations which precede and follow these charming episodes. Even extravagance thus ceases to be a blemish, whilst facility and freshness are ever multiplying new beauties. Episodes and incidents, serious or grotesque, capriciously introduced into the poem, give it a motley and heterogeneous aspect; variety of matter and diversity of style are its familiar characteristics; and its unequal execution is, perhaps, less pardonable than the desultory character of its plan. Nor is it only by its novelty that this freedom of action sustains the interest of the work. The introduction of real personages and recent events relieves the tedium of long continued allegory, and stamps nature and individuality on adventures in themselves extravagant and apocryphal.
[Footnote 162: Bernardo Tasso, Lettere, II., No. 165. In a privilege of copyright granted in very complimentary terms by Leo X., the Orlando is pedantically described by Bembo as "a work in vernacular verse regarding the feats of those called knights-errant, composed in a ludicrous style, but with long study, and the laborious application of many years."--Bembo, Epistolæ nomine Leonis X., Lib. X., No. 40.]
In estimating the rank of this poet, critical judgment has too often been diverted from the quality of his verses to the fittingness of his style; and in comparing him with Tasso, the argument resolves itself into a contrast between romantic and classic poetry. Upon such a discussion we purpose not to enter. Ariosto found his countrymen under the charm of old legendary histories, perpetuated by tradition from the days of Charlemagne and his paladins, and more recently popularised in Pulci's burlesque epic of the Morgante Maggiore, and by Boiardo's unfettered fancy in the Orlando Innamorato. He was content to sail with the stream, spreading his canvas to the prevailing breeze, rather than to strike out another course, and steer in search of newer attractions. This decision necessarily limited the scope of a highly original genius to varying the details and episodes of inventions already familiarised to his readers by other less inspired pens; and it were difficult to account for his thus contentedly following their track, except from the conviction that none else was so certain a guide to success. Domenichi and Berni, aware that Boiardo had unworthily handled his theme, were content to employ themselves in recasting it into more attractive shape, and Le Sage's French translation is a mere paraphrase. But Ariosto chose the higher aim of taking up the story where Boiardo had left it incomplete, and working it out in forms less exaggerated and fanciful, but far more nobly conceived, and executed with infinitely greater polish and poetic beauty.
* * * * *
PIETRO ARETINO[*163] has been designated by Ariosto[164] "the scourge of princes," a description somewhat more just than the epithet of "divine," which is added possibly in irony; for few men, it is hoped, have been so destitute of those high aspirations which form the link between human and divine nature. He has been aptly compared to an ill-conditioned cur, ever ready to yelp and snap at all who do not feed or fondle him, but to such as do, the most fawning of his species. He was born at Arezzo in 1492, and was natural son of one Luigi Bacci. After serving his apprenticeship to a bookbinder at Perugia, he went to push his fortunes in Rome, where his first remarkable productions were verses illustrating a set of engravings by Marcantonio, after designs by Giulio Romano,--a work so scandalously offensive to decency that scarcely any copies have escaped destruction.[*165] After the death of Giovanni de' Medici delle bande nere, his earliest patron, he went to Venice, and subsequently visited most of the Italian courts. His foul scurrilities and loathsome adulation were dealt out with equal readiness, as best served his insatiable avarice and undisguised selfishness. These base qualities, tempered by tact and great readiness, gained for him a success equally unaccountable and undeserved; he became rich, caressed, applauded, dreaded, and is said to have earned not less than 70,000 scudi during his career. The popularity which his writings enjoyed among all ranks seems an infatuation,[*166] considering their very moderate merit, and must be viewed as symptomatic of a generally depraved taste, though no doubt his own ineffable conceit and insolence contributed to the delusion. "There truly never was a man who combined such haughty presumption with equal ignorance of literature, meanness of spirit, and debauchery of morals. His style possesses no elegance or grace; indeed he seems to me one of the first to introduce those ludicrous hyperboles and extravagant metaphors that came so generally into use during the next century. Never assuredly have I met with books so empty and useless as those of this impostor, whose baseness equalled his profound ignorance, and the sole object of whose writings was self-interest and lucre. As to his manners, they are amply testified by his works, wherein, besides a prodigal sprinkling of obscenity, there are mentioned the women with whom he intrigued, and the children these bore him; they in fact prove him destitute of moral or religious principle; and if ever he makes a show of compunction or amendment, it is but to relapse speedily into his wonted profanity. Truly such a fellow, who ought hardly to have ventured to show himself in public, stands unequalled in presumptuous arrogance. But the most surprising thing is to see a majority of European princes, and not a few learned Italians, humbling themselves before him without a blush, and rendering him a degrading tribute of gifts and eulogies. Chains of gold, considerable sums of money, pensions, and handsome presents of every sort, came in so constantly from various quarters, that he confesses to receiving from different princes 25,000 scudi within eighteen years. The most amusing part of it is that these rich donations were made because he assumed the proud epithet of scourge of princes, on the plan, as it would seem, of threatening them with his indignation, and with attacks upon their actions in his writings; yet never was there a more sordid adulator of the great, and no work of his contains a single word against any sovereign." It would be difficult to select words more graphic or more just than this description by Tiraboschi, which we have preferred adopting, to the task of reviewing so filthy a character.[*167] We shall elsewhere allude to him in connection with Michael Angelo and Titian, and other notices might be selected of his intercourse with Duke Guidobaldo II. The self-assumed privilege of his position did not however always protect him from the merited consequences of his meanness and malevolence. Boccalini (an author scarcely less mordent than himself, who is said to have expiated his satiric vein by being beaten to death) calls him "a magnet of fisty-cuffs and cudgels, whose enemies' hands, rivalling the promptitude of his own pen, had scarred him all over with as many lines as a navigator's chart." Among those who met him with his own weapons was Antonio Francesco Doni, a literary adventurer of Florence, whose arrival about 1552 at the court of Guidobaldo II. inspired Aretino with jealousy which exploded in an impertinent letter. The intruder, however, maintained his ground till 1558, the year after his opponent's characteristic death, and retaliated in a volume published in 1556, entitled Doni's Earthquake, overthrowing the great beastly colossal Antichrist of our Age; a Work composed in Honour of God and the Holy Church, and in Defence of good Christians, and dedicated "to the infamous and rascally source and fountain of all malice, Pietro Aretino, the putrid limb of public imposture, and true Antichrist of our time."
[Footnote *163: A good edition of the Lettere of ARETINO was published under the care of Vanzolini and Bacci della Lega, in four volumes, in Bologna, 1873-75. The best edition, now very rare, of I Ragionamenti is that of Florence, 1892. See also FABI, Opere da P.A., Milano, 1881. For his life, consult LUZIO, P.A. nei primi suoi anni a Venezia e la corte dei Gonzago (Torino, 1888); GAUTHIEZ, L'Aretin, 1492-1556 (Paris, 1895); and SINIGAGLIA, Saggio di uno studio su P.A. con scritti e documenti inediti (Roma, 1892). It was, I think, Mr. Claude Phillips who wittily called Aretino not the scourge but "the screw of princes." Nevertheless, those who knew Aretino best will appreciate him most. Titian was wise enough to have him for a friend, and, indeed, he was capable of many very human and even beautiful actions, as when he would daily throw wide his doors at nightfall and take the lost and the beggars into his house. After all, those he blackmailed were blackmailers themselves. He made even the Pope fear him.]
[Footnote 164: Orlando Furioso, XLVI., st. 14.]
[Footnote *165: These designs have lately been found and photographed and published in Paris. They are impossible, but extremely vigorous and lovely. The verses are even more terrible than the drawings, but splendid too, with a sort of fullness of joy.]
[Footnote *166: His writings have much of the undoubted fascination of the daily paper, but are on the whole less vulgar and probably less harmful and enervating.]
[Footnote *167: This is sheer hypocrisy. Aretino's intercourse with Urbino was so slight as to be easily ignored, and Dennistoun, as a fact, says next to nothing of it.]
Still more pungent was the epigrammatic epitaph proposed for him by Francesconi:
"Arezzo's hoary libeller here is laid, Whose bitter slanders all save CHRIST essayed: He for such slip this reason good can show,-- 'How could I mock one whom I do not know?'"
Aretino, returning a Roland for his Oliver, rejoined:
"Francescon, wretched rhymer, here is laid, Who of all things save asses evil said: His plea in favour of the long-eared race, A cousinship that none could fail to trace."[168]
[Footnote 168:
"Qui giace l'Aretino, poeta Tosco, Che d'ognun disse male fuorchè di Christo, Scusandosi col dir--'Non lo conosco.'"
"Qui giace Francescon, poeta pessimo, Che disse mal d'ognun fuorchè del asino, Scusandosi col dir--che egli era prossimo."]
But enough of such ribaldry. The writings of Aretino and his biography are in one respect useful to the historian of his time. The degrading views of human nature afforded by both form a contrast to the bright luminaries which yet lingered above the horizon, whilst by their shadows they complete the verity of the picture. Favoured by fortune far beyond his deserts during life, his memory is equally indebted to art. The encomium of Ariosto has already been quoted, and the pencil of his friend Titian has preserved his person in several portraits; one of them, which, though unfinished, is perhaps the noblest commemorated on Vecellio's canvass, adorns the Pitti Gallery, and almost persuades us that Aretino was a gentleman.
* * * * *
From an age too prolific in parasitical literature and in shameless morals, there has descended to us a name radiant with genius, and unsullied in reputation. The historian of Urbino may contribute a leaf to the garland which fame has hung upon the brows of VITTORIA COLONNA,[*169] for her mother was a princess of Montefeltro, and to her maternal ancestry she seems indebted for her heritage of talent. She was daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, by Agnesina daughter of Duke Federigo of Urbino, and was born in 1490. When but four years old she was betrothed, in conformity with the usage of her times, to a mere infant. Yet her marriage may be deemed fortunate, for her husband, Ferdinando Francesco Marquis of Pescara, was not only a cadet of the very ancient house of Avalos, which had accompanied Alfonzo of Aragon from Spain to Naples, and had married the heiress of Aquino and Pescara in the Abruzzi, but, among the warriors of an era still fertile in heroes, none was more early distinguished or promoted. He died prematurely at thirty-three, while in command of the imperial troops. His consort, imitating her grandmother Battista Sforza, had learned to console the childless solitude of his prolonged absences by habits of study, and in them found resource amid the bereavements of a widowhood which no offer of marriage could tempt her to infringe. But though she sought not the world or its incense, her high rank, wealth, and personal graces, gained many an admirer, whilst the elevated beauty of her poetry, the charms of her conversation and correspondence, attracted to her the respectful adoration of the learned. She cherished her husband's memory with rare constancy, modifying grief by spiritual solace. In her piety there was neither blind superstition nor cold formality. Devotional exercises and religious intercourse shared her hours with poetry and literature tinged by their influence, and among her most welcome visitors were some of those Italian divines who favoured the Reformation. On this account she has been claimed as a convert to protestantism, but upon insufficient grounds. She adhered apparently to the faith of her fathers, and was spared by a timely death, in 1547, from witnessing the persecutions undergone by her friends of the new creed.[*170] Among those to whom the sympathies of genius and piety united her was Michael Angelo, who testified his respect by a visit to her death-bed, and his regret by a touching sonnet to her memory.[*171] Not less gratifying was the tribute to her worth which Ariosto has embalmed in seven stanzas of the Furioso, canto xxxvii.:--
"One will choose, and such will choose, that she All envy shall so well have overthrown, No other woman can offended be, If, passing others, her I praise alone; No joys this one but immortality, Through her sweet style, and better know I none."
[Footnote *169: For the life of Vittoria Colonna, see CAMPORI, Vittoria Colonna in Atti e Mem. della Dep. di St. Pat. dell'Emilia, N.S., vol. III., (Modena, 1878). LUZIO, V.C., in Rivista St. Mantovana (1885), vol. I., p. 1 et seq. On her mother, Agnese di Montefeltro, cf. CASINI-TORDI, in Giornale Vittoria Colonna, vol. I., No. 10. On her poems, cf. MAZZONE, V.C. e il suo Canzoniere (1900). She was born at Marino in 1492. She was married 27th December, 1509, in Ischia, to Ferrante d'Avalos Marchese di Pescara. Miss MAUD JERROLD has published recently (Dent, 1907) a work in English on Vittoria Colonna which should be excellent.]
[Footnote *170: See, on this subject, RODOCANACCHI, V.C. et la Réforme en Italie (Versailles, 1892), and TACCHI-VENTURI, V.C. fautrice della riforma cattolica (Roma, 1901).]
[Footnote *171: For her relations with Michelangelo, see RACZYNSKI, Les Arts en Portugal (Paris, 1846, pp. 1-78).]
Of her writings few remain, and these but fugitive pieces.[*172] We are happy in being able to make our readers acquainted with them through the graceful translations of the late Mr. Glassford, selecting three sonnets in which she tenderly alludes to the blight of her widowhood, mildly inculcates the cloisters' quiet, and clothes in glowing language orisons of holiest fervour.
[Footnote *172: For her writings, see FERRERO e MULLER, Il Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna (Torino, 1859), with the supplement (1892) of TORDI, who has also published (Pistoia, 1900) Il codice delle rime di V.C. app. a Margh. d'Angoulême, and some unpublished Sonetti (Roma, 1891).]
I.
"Methinks the sun his wonted beam denies, Nor lends such radiance to his sister's car; Methinks each planet mild, and lovely star, Has left its sweet course in the spangled skies. Fallen is the heart of noble enterprise, True glory perished and the pride of war; All grace and every virtue perished are, The leaf is withered and the floweret dies. Unmoved I am, though heaven and earth invite, Warmed by no ray nor fanned if zephyr blow; All offices of nature are deranged: Since the bright sun that cheered me vanished so, The courses of the world have quite been changed; Ah no! but sorrow veils them from my sight."
II.
"If those delights which from the living well Above are dropped into the heart contrite Were also visible, and others might Know what great peace with love divine can dwell, Perhaps it would be then less hard to tell Why fame and fortune have been counted light, And how the wisest men transported quite Would take their cross and seek the mountain cell, Finding that death-sweet life; and not alone In prospect, but now also while the blind And erring world from the shadows will not cease. When the awakened soul to God has flown With humble will to what He wills inclined, Then outward war to such is inward peace."
III.
"Thanks to thy sovereign grace, O God! if I Am graff'd in that true vine a living shoot, Whose arms embrace the world, and in whose root, Planted by faith, our life must hidden lie, But thou beholdest how I fade and dry, Choked with a waste of leaf, and void of fruit, Unless thy spring perennial shall recruit My sapless branch, still wanting fresh supply. O cleanse me then, and make me to abide Wholly in thee, to drink thy heavenly dew, And watered daily with my tears to grow. Thou art the truth, thy promise is my guide; Prepare me when thou comest, Lord, to show Fruits answering to the stock on which I grew."
In Italy the Muses have ever had numerous priestesses, welcomed with an enthusiasm measured rather by the gallantry of their admirers than by their real deserts. Among these was LAURA BATTIFERRI, born at Urbino in 1522-3, whose genius has inspired the pens of Caro, Varchi, Mazzuchelli, and others; and whom by a questionable, and, as regarded her morals, a most unmerited compliment, Pietro Vettori compared to Sappho. Following a very different model, she, like Vittoria Colonna, composed many devotional pieces, often versifying the sadder portions of sacred writ, two volumes of which were published at Florence. Rarer perhaps, and more creditable than her poetic celebrity, was the reputation for moral worth transmitted to us in connection with her name, which she happily exchanged by her union with Bartolomeo Ammanati, notwithstanding frowns from a high quarter. The Duchess Vittoria, proud of her talents, laid upon her an injunction not to marry out of her native state. This restriction had the usual result; her husband was a Florentine sculptor, and it required all the influence of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese with his sister to obtain pardon for such flagrant disobedience.
* * * * *
"In 1558, there were at the court of Urbino--of old the resort of talented persons--many great and famous poets, such as Messer Bernardo Capello, Messer Bernardo Tasso, Messer Girolamo Muzio, and Messer Antonio Gallo, whose whole occupation it was, like white gentle swans, emulously to sing, and celebrate in verse, the eminent beauty, and far more eminent virtues, of the illustrious Duchess." With these names might be coupled Dionigi Atanagi, the writer of this euphuism, and also Annibale Caro, Antonio Allegretti, Marco Montano, and Cornelio Lanci. Of Tasso and Muzio we elsewhere speak. Caro and Capello were connected with the ducal family only by one or two complimentary effusions, in return for occasional hospitality. Allegretti indited an epithalamium on the marriage of Duchess Vittoria, in which, alluding to the heraldic bearings then united, he celebrated the prudent hand of the wise shepherd (Paul III.), who transplanted that virgin Lily into good soil under the shadow of the mighty Oak; in conclusion, he summoned the attendants to scatter acorns and fleurs-de-lis before the bridal pair. Lanci's comedies no longer "fret and strut their hour upon the stage," but they are said to deserve the praise of comparative purity in an age when decency was no necessary ingredient of scenic merit. Three names remain for consideration, who, as natives of the duchy, may claim a brief notice.
DIONIGI ATANAGI was born at Cagli, and, after twenty-five years spent at the Roman court, returned, in 1557, to recruit his constitution in his native air. He was invited to Pesaro by his sovereign, at the suggestion of Bernardo Tasso, who wished him to revise the Amadigi; but there he found his health still further impaired by mental fatigue. Several of his sonnets are addressed to members of the ducal family and court; one of them, inscribed to Guidobaldo II., lauds him as "a prince and captain of invincible valour, of wisdom superhuman, of bounty and benignity past belief, of ineffable eloquence, of incomparable liberality and magnificence, a paragon of religion, the lofty stay of Italian honour and renown. Being the natural sovereign as well as special patron and singular benefactor of the author, whose every hope rests in him next to God, it is his desire, in the full knowledge how much is due to his Excellency's infinite merits, to fill with heroic praises of him whatever work he may undertake; but overwhelmed by the grandeur of the theme, his silence is broken only by excuses for his deficiency." This fulsome trash is no unfair specimen of such compositions. The following invitation to Urbino, as an asylum of the Muses, is in a somewhat happier vein, which we have endeavoured to render:--
"Anime belle, e di virtute amiche, Cui fero sdegno di fortuna offende, Sì che ven gite povere e mendiche, Come e lei piace, che pietà contende; Se di por fine alle miserie antiche Caldo desio l'afflitto cor v'incende, Ratte correte alia gran QUERCIA d'oro, Ond'avrete alimento ombra e ristoro.
"Qui regna un Signor placido e benigno, Ch'altro ch'altrui giovar unqua non pensa, Cortese, e d'ogni real laude degno; Che ciascun pasce a sua ricca mensa, E 'n buon revolge ogni destin maligno, Mentre le grazie sue largo dispensa GUIDOBALDO, di principi fenici, Che può col guardo sol far l'uom felice.
"Qui le buone arti ed i nobili costumi, Senno, fede e valor, fido albergo hanno; Qui fioriscon gl'ingegni, e chiari lumi Via più ch'il sol spargendo intorno vanno: Qui mel le piante, qui dan latte i fiumi; Qui pace è queta senza alcuno affanno; Qui 'l vizio è morto, e virtù bella è viva Beato chi ci nasce e chi ci arriva."
1.
Ah! beauteous souls, to virtue ever prone, Whom evil Fortune's cruel grudge offends, Bereft of every stay, and left to groan By her caprice, while heavy grief impends; If in your aching hearts that grief evoke A wish such lengthened miseries to close, Speed 'neath the umbrage of the golden OAK To share its genial shelter and repose.
2.
A gentle and benignant Prince there reigns, On other's weal exclusively intent, Courteous, and worth all praise in royal strains, From whose well plenished table none are sent. Each evil destiny by him disarmed, His gracious boons are scattered widely round; E'en by his winning glance is each one charmed, Phoenix of princes, GUIDOBALDO crowned.
3.
Ennobling arts and noble manners here, With wit, and faith, and courage have their home, While genius' meteor gleams more bright appear Than Phoebus flickering in the skiey dome. Here honey-laden meads and milky streams To painless peace attract, and gentle rest; Here vice is dead, while worth resplendent seems: Happy such duchy's native, or its guest!
Among the men of letters whom it was the pride of Guidobaldo II. to attract round him, was ANTONIO GALLI, of Urbino. His uncle, the Cavalier Angelo, had preceded him, both in the cultivation of the muses, and in the good graces of the Dukes, having been employed on various political missions by Guidantonio, Oddantonio, and Federigo; during his leisure hours he had composed sonnets and canzonets in imitation of Petrarch, then the popular model for minor poets. For Antonio has been claimed the questionable honour of introducing pastoral dramas, which long exercised a debilitating influence on the literature of Italy, and spread from there the vitiating style to other lands. He, too, held diplomatic appointments at the courts of Rome and Spain, and to the republic of Venice; and having acquired the reputation of a man, not less of business than of letters, the Duke entrusted him with the superintendence of Prince Francesco Maria, until his death in 1551. His contemporary and friend MARCO MONTANO enjoyed his sovereign's favour without sharing any public employments. In youth he had been secretary of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, and afterwards addicted himself to Latin and Italian verse, with a success sufficient to gain him applause from Baldi, and from Tasso the compliment of being ranked next to Guarini among the living bards of Italy. The suffrage of these partial friends has not been confirmed by posterity; for Montano's poetry lies forgotten, and his name is cherished only in connection with the literary history of his native state.
* * * * *
Among the names which shed a lustre upon Urbino, in return for hospitalities received at that court, was that of BERNARDO TASSO,[*173] whose splendour would have been more conspicuous in the galaxy of Italian poets, had he not given birth to a son of yet brighter genius. The house of Tasso was of ancient descent in the Bergamasque territory; but Bernardo drew his first breath at Venice, the home of his mother, a lady of the Cornari. Of his youth we know nothing, except that he enjoyed the advantage of a liberal education, and that his morals were no exception to the lax habits of the age. An avowed lover of the matronly Ginevra Malatesta, he sang her beauty in strains complaining of her continence; and at Rome he dangled in poverty after Tullia d'Aragona, one of those splendid examples of wasted powers and successful vice over which the philosopher puzzles while the historian sighs, whose talents were given to the Muses, whose graces were devoted to Venus.
[Footnote *173: Cf. PASOLINI, I Genitori di T. Tasso (Roma, 1895).]
Finding himself past thirty without either an independence or a career, he commenced the life of a literary courtier, for which the social condition of Italy under her many principalities held out considerable inducements. His first essay was as private secretary to Count Guido Rangone, a warrior chief of some distinction; and during the Lombard campaign in 1526 Bernardo was sent by him on missions of importance to the Doge of Genoa and to the Pope.[*174] He remained with the latter on Bourbon's approach, and was commissioned by his Holiness to seek out Lannoy at Siena, and urge him to repair to Rome, take command of the imperial troops, and put an end to their outrages. In this journey the speed of his Turkish charger enabled him to escape from an assault which proved fatal to one of his attendants. Though unsuccessful in the negotiation, his dexterity recommended him as papal envoy to the court of France, in order to arrange the advance of Lautrec, whom he accompanied into Italy. After the destruction of the French army before Naples, we find him for a time secretary to Laura Duchess of Ferrara, and he accompanied the Marquis of Vasto on the Turkish campaign in Hungary.
[Footnote *174: He went in 1528 to Paris on behalf of Conte Guido.]
It was in 1531 that he entered the service of Ferdinando or Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, whom he attended to Africa in the expedition of Charles V. against Tunis. His patron was a prince of ample means, and of corresponding generosity to persons of literary merit; and Tasso, having distinguished himself by several published collections of verses, as well as by the able performance of his more immediate duties, was rewarded by offices and pensions yielding him about 1000 scudi a year. Finding himself thus independent at forty-six, he married Porzia de' Rossi, the beautiful, accomplished, and well-dowried daughter of a noble family in Pistoia, and settled himself at Sorrento, where he spent the best and happiest years of his life, and, with occasional interruptions of business and calls to the camp, pursued his poetical studies.[*175]
[Footnote *175: Cf. CAPASSO, Il Tasso e la sua famiglia a Sorrento (Napoli, 1866).]
On that plain which matures a tropical luxuriance of vegetation, and where nature lavishes the brightest of her varying tints, his inspiration was developed, and the more brilliant genius of his son imbibed its earliest impressions. The casino in which Torquato first saw the light[176] commanded a view of unparalleled beauty;--the bright bay and its far-off islands of picturesque outline,--Naples, with its endless line of white suburbs glittering along the shore,--Vesuvius, the marvellous workshop of volcanic wonders,--golden sunsets of unclouded glow, and mellowed combinations of mountain and marine scenery awaiting the pencil of Salvator Rosa. Nor were these the only charms which the poet found in this spot. He has celebrated in his correspondence its balmy and healthful climate, and the courteous hospitality of its inhabitants. These qualities still attract strangers to the Piano di Sorrento, and the villa which sheltered Torquato on his escape from Ferrara is now a comfortable hotel, inviting them to gaze from its beetling cliff on the scenes of his youthful inspiration.
[Footnote 176: On the 11th of March, 1544; Bernardo was born the 11th November, 1493.]
The Amadigi was commenced in that genial spot, and the Prince of Salerno complacently anticipated the extended reputation which it promised to his protégé. But the storm, meanwhile, gathered, which was to sweep patron and poet from their palmy state. The Prince, by entanglements which we need not trace, found himself compromised with the Viceroy, Don Pedro Toledo, and, from mingled alarm and pique, sacrificed his vast hereditary stake, by passing over to the French service. This happened in 1552,[*177] and Tasso followed his fortunes without being involved in his treason. After accompanying him to France, he came, in 1554, to Rome, where he took up his abode, in the hope of soon being joined by his wife and family, and of establishing himself there. But she was detained at Naples, for the purpose of recovering part of her husband's property, or at all events her own fortune, which had been escheated on his flight. Her difficulties were increased by the selfish conduct of her own relations, and at length, in the spring of 1556, she died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison. "I have lost," writes her husband, "a woman whose virtues and estimable qualities rendered her beloved and endeared to me as life itself, who was worthy of general admiration, and in whose bosom I had hoped peacefully to pass the closing years of my old age!" But other cares were falling thickly around him. Though joined by his son Torquato, he could never rescue his only other child Cornelia from her maternal relations, and suffered intense anxiety for her welfare. Still nominally in the Prince of Salerno's service, and actually employed as his confidential agent, he found himself estranged from his regard, his correspondence interrupted, and his salary irregularly paid. Bitterly experiencing the not unfrequent guerdon of fidelity to fallen dignitaries, he thus addressed his patron in February, 1556:--
"Your Excellency has now to learn the influence of unstable and malignant fortune upon this your unhappy servant. You know how often you have quoted me as an instance of happiness, saying that I had a beautiful and virtuous wife, by whom I was beloved, and on whom I doated; that I had the finest children, ample means, an excellent house well decorated, as well as comfortably furnished; and that I enjoyed the respect and good opinion of the world, as well as that most important advantage of all, your favour. Now you may see in how brief an interval I have fallen from that height of happiness into the depths of misery. I have lost my means, earned, as all know, most honourably, and with no small fatigue and peril. I have lost my independence; and, in a word, my every comfort. I have been deprived of my dearest wife, and with her have occasioned to my unhappy children the sacrifice of their mother's dowry, and of all my remaining prospect of maintaining them, and conducting them to that position which every respectable and affectionate parent would desire. But, worst of all, I perceive from obvious symptoms, that I have forfeited your favour without having given you the slightest cause. The reason of my sinking into these misfortunes, being obvious to the whole world, should not be concealed from you. I am so situated, that any one refusing to compassionate me must be devoid of pity and all good feeling; and if you still retain the smallest share of that magnanimity, generosity, or gratitude which you were wont so honourably to manifest to your servants, you will yet have pity on me, and will endeavour to raise me from that abyss of wretchedness into which I have fallen in your service."
[Footnote *177: 1547.]
This sad appeal meeting with no response, he retired from the Prince's service with a nominal pension of 300 scudi, which seems never to have been paid him. Writing to a friend, he says, "I have thrown out into this sea of troubles many anchors of reason, to save my tempest-tost mind from shipwreck. But I fear that, in the long run, if not conducted into port by a favouring breeze from some benignant prince, I may be swamped, from the cable of my constancy parting; for it is hard from prosperity and happiness to fall into misery, and struggle with famine." Scared away from Rome by the din of coming war, in the renewed strife between France and Spain for the domination of the Peninsula, and
"Eating the bitter bread of banishment,"
he had reached Ravenna, when an invitation arrived from Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino, a cousin of his late patron, whose court offered to genius just such a haven as he had hoped for. In October, 1556, he reached Pesaro, where the Duke assigned as a residence for the poet his casino called the Barchetto, a house which still stands within the walls of Pesaro, surrounded by a smiling garden. Its very limited accommodation, now used by the gardener, cannot have afforded a commodious dwelling, but such as it was, it appears to have satisfied Bernardo, who after a few weeks was encouraged by the Duke's courtesy to send for his son, with a view to establishing himself in that capital. His residence there somewhat exceeded two years, during which we gather from his correspondence few incidents beyond his literary occupations. Though avowing himself in the service of Guidobaldo, he does not seem to have had from him either employment or a fixed maintenance, but was probably supported by his hospitality. He now put the finishing touches to his Amadigi, begun fourteen years before, and repaid the favours bestowed upon him with the usual homage of a courtly poet. Anxiously clinging to the hope of making his peace with Spain, in order to recover his own and his wife's property which had been confiscated at Naples, he obtained the mediation of several courts in his favour, and even had recourse to the good offices of Cardinal Pole with Philip II., then husband of the English Queen Mary. In this object Guidobaldo particularly interested himself, and it was at his suggestion that Bernardo dedicated his poem to that monarch, whose praises, with those of his consort, had been already sung in its eleventh canto. But his pearls were lavished unavailingly on one incapable of appreciating either the gift or the donor, and a long apologetic letter from Girolamo Ruscelli, which accompanied the peace-offering, remained unacknowledged.
In these times literary advertisements were unknown, but the reputation of a forthcoming work was heralded by a scarcely less effectual expedient. Passages of it were handed about in manuscript among literary circles, and criticisms were requested from the author's more intimate friends. Thus was it with the Amadigi; and Bernardo has not shrunk from giving to the world the letters by which he sought for or replied to such suggestions. Dionigi Atanagi was summoned from Cagli by the Duke, for the purpose of making those verbal corrections which were rendered irksome to the poet by weak sight. Sperone Speroni writes to the author that, in two revisions, he had removed the vulgarisms, roughnesses, and redundancies, cancelling above two hundred stanzas, and that, in a third reading, he would probably delete as many more. The first conception was that of a regular epic; but the cold reception which it met with from his friends induced Bernardo to adopt a manner more conformable to the romantic and less fettered taste of the age. In the summer of 1557 he read a canto each night, at Urbino, to the Duchess Vittoria and a select audience. Having thus raised public anticipation, the poet was anxious to reap the fruits of his labours in honour and emolument; but he found a double difficulty in obtaining the 500 scudi required for the expense of an edition, and in procuring the papal licence without having the work submitted regularly to the censure. At length, in 1560, it issued, by the aid of Guidobaldo, from the press of Giolito, at Venice, in which town Tasso had chiefly resided for eighteen months, and where he, for a short time, acted as secretary to a literary academy, established in 1558, before which he read his Essay on Poetry. His remaining years produced few incidents. After an ineffectual overture to take service at the court of Savoy, he became chief secretary to the Duke of Mantua, who made him governor of Ostiglia. There he died on the 4th of September, 1569; and the epitaph penned by his son, but never placed over his ashes, runs thus:--
Erected by his son Torquato to BERNARDO TASSO, Distinguished for the fertility and eminence of his genius, in the relaxation of poetry and in the affairs of princes, in both of which he has left memorials of his industry, as well as for the fickleness and inconstancy of his fortunes. He lived LXXVI. years, and died IV Sept. MDLXIX.
His bereavement was thus intimated by Torquato to the Duke of Urbino: "On the 4th of September it pleased the Lord God to call to himself the blessed soul of my father, whose death, although in all respects mature, is nevertheless felt by me as most untimely, and, I am persuaded, will be very unacceptable to your Excellency, who by so many proofs of regard considered him among your most esteemed servants, and towards whom I know his especial reverence. Of this respect, and of the infinite obligations under which he lay to your Excellency, I am most willingly the representative; and if that favour which your Excellency ever extended for his protection, and that of his interests, be devolved upon me, I shall deem it an ample patrimony that he has left me. And herewith praying a happy issue to all your honoured desires, I humbly kiss your hands. From Ferrara, the 28th September, 1569."
An amiable disposition and agreeable manners procured for Bernardo Tasso, in all the fluctuations of his career, troops of friends, including the brightest names of his age. In the many situations of trust which he filled, his prudence and address, his fidelity and sincerity, acquired for him general estimation. Although his literary reputation now hangs, in a great degree, upon that of his son, his contemporaries, who knew not what the latter had in store for them, regarded him as the first epic poet of his age, comparing him even with Ariosto, whom he freely and avowedly imitated. To draw out some fifty-seven thousand verses on a borrowed and almost barren theme, in a style anticipated by several preceding minstrels, was an effort repugnant to fine genius, and susceptible of no marked success. Its necessary failing is diffuseness, varying from inflation to languor; its redeeming merit an acknowledged facility, sustained at times by fertile images, and by delicately beautiful descriptions. It is generally flowing, though, at times, feeble; yet is considered by Panizzi "unquestionably the best romantic narrative from amongst those not founded on the traditions respecting Charlemagne." Indeed, his poetry, while sharing with coeval productions the blemishes of exuberant ornament and quaint conceits, is seldom surpassed in pathos, and his dulcet numbers reconcile us to his faults of manner. What, to its author, was probably its most important quality, is now, perhaps, its greatest defect,--the profuse flattery of which it was made the medium. "To eat the bread of others" was the often hard, usually degrading, tenure self-imposed on court poets; and to such, a subject admitting of endless episodes, and the frequent introduction of existing personages, in their real characters or under transparent allegories, was a harvest of princely favour and of wealth. This, however, was an error of the age, which ought not to be charged on any single poet, least of all on one who had given his best and worthiest efforts to a barren soil. The fugitive poetry of Tasso partakes largely of this adulatory colouring. But, for him is claimed such praise as the invention of the Ode deserves; and this was deemed creditable service to a literature which has often invested trifles with undue importance.
Bernardo was a secretary ere he became a poet, and his reputation rests more surely upon his correspondence than on his verses. That rhetoric which Bembo inculcated by precept and practice had become a fashion among men of literary pretension; their letters were composed as models of style, and manuscript or printed collections of them were in very general circulation. Such compositions, when thus written for the public, wanted the freshness and simplicity which constitute their best charm; but they gained attractions of another sort, and came to be read more for their manner than their matter. To this class belong the letters of the elder Tasso: nitid in style, but cold in feeling, they exhibit the niceties of Italian idiom, rather than the familiarities of Italian life. A very favourable specimen, but too long for insertion here, is that in which he proposes to his wife the principles which ought to guide her in bringing up their children, and in the formation of their manners and character. Though sometimes smoothed down to commonplace, it breathes a fine spirit of paternal affection, and combines religious observance with a becoming knowledge of the world.