Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 3

[Footnote 53: Canto xliii. 169.]

Homer had compared the wound of Menelaus to ivory stained by a Maeonian woman with crimson.[54] Ariosto refines on this conceit:[55]

Cos talora un bel purpureo nastro Ho veduto partir tela d'argento Da quella bianca man piu ch'alabastro.

Da cui partire il cor spesso mi sento.

[Footnote 54: _Iliad_, iv. 140.]

[Footnote 55: Canto xxiv. 66.]

Both Homer and Virgil likened their dying heroes to flowers cut down by the tempest or the plow. The following pa.s.sage will bear comparison even with the death of Euphorbus:[56]

Come purpureo fior languendo muore, Che 'l vomere al pa.s.sar tagliato la.s.sa, O come carco di superchio umore Il papaver nell'orto il capo abba.s.sa: Cos, giu della faccia ogni colore Cadendo, Dardinel di vita pa.s.sa; Pa.s.sa di vita, e fa pa.s.sar con lui L'ardire e la virtu di tutti i sui.

[Footnote 56: Canto xviii. 153.]

One more example may be chosen where Ariosto has borrowed nothing from any model. He uses the perfume that clings to the hair or dress of youth or maiden, as a metaphor for the aroma of n.o.ble ancestry:[57]

L'odor ch'e sparso in ben notrita e bella O chioma o barba o delicata vesta Di giovene leggiadro o di donzella, Ch'amor sovente sospirando desta; Se spira, e fa sentir di se novella, E dopo molti giorni ancora resta, Mostra con chiaro ed evidente effetto, Come a principio buono era e perfetto.

[Footnote 57: Canto xli. 1.]

The unique importance of Ariosto in the history of Renaissance poetry justifies a lengthy examination of his masterpiece. In him the chief artistic forces of the age were so combined that he remains its best interpreter. Painting, the cardinal art of Italy, determined his method; and the tide of his narrative carried with it the idyl, the elegy, and the _novella_. In these forms the genius of the Renaissance found fittest literary expression; for the epic and the drama lay beyond the scope of the Italians at this period. The defect of deep pa.s.sion and serious thought, the absence of enthusiasm, combined with rare a.n.a.lytic powers and an acute insight into human nature, placed Ariosto in close relation to his age. Free from illusions, struggling after no high-set ideal, accepting the world as he found it, without the impulse to affirm or to deny, without hate, scorn, indignation or revolt, he represented the spirit of the sixteenth century in those qualities which were the source of moral and political decay to the Italians. But he also embodied the strong points of his epoch--especially that sustained pursuit of beauty in form, that width of intellectual sympathy, that urbanity of tone and delicacy of perception, which rendered Italy the mistress of the arts, the propagator of culture for the rest of Europe.

CHAPTER X.

THE NOVELLIERI.

Boccaccio's Legacy--Social Conditions of Literature in Italy--Importance of the _Novella_--Definition of the _Novella_--Method of the Novelists--Their Style--Materials used--Large Numbers of _Novelle_ in Print--Lombard and Tuscan Species--Introductions to Il Lasca's _Cene_, Parabosco's _Diporti_--Bandello's Dedications--Life of Bandello--His Moral Att.i.tude--Bandello as an Artist--Comparison of Bandello and Fletcher--The Tale of _Gerardo and Elena_--_Romeo and Juliet_--The Tale of _Nicuola_--The _Countess of Salisbury_--Bandello's Apology for his Morals and his Style--Il Lasca--Mixture of Cruelty and l.u.s.t--Extravagant Situations--Treatment of the _Parisina_ Motive--The Florentine _Burla_--Apology for Il Lasca's Repulsiveness--Firenzuola--His Life--His Satires on the Clergy--His Dialogue on Beauty--Novelettes and Poems--Doni's Career--His Bizarre Humor--Bohemian Life at Venice--The Pellegrini--His _Novelle_--Miscellaneous Works--The _Marmi_--The Novelists of Siena--Their specific Character--Sermini--Fortini--Bargagli's Description of the Siege of Siena--Illicini's Novel of _Angelica_--The _Proverbi_ of Cornazano--The _Notti Piacevoli_ of Straparola--The Novel of _Belphegor_--Straparola and Machiavelli--Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_--Description of the Sack of Rome--Plan of the Collection--The Legend of the Borgias--Comparison of Italian Novels and English Plays.

Of Boccaccio's legacy the most considerable portion, and the one that bore the richest fruit, was the Decameron. During the sixteenth century the _Novella_, as he shaped it, continued to be a popular and widely practiced form of literature. In Italy the keynote of the Renaissance was struck by the _Novella_, as in England by the Drama.

Nor is this predominance of what must be reckoned a subordinate branch of fiction, altogether singular; for the _Novella_ was in a special sense adapted to the public which during the Age of the Despots grew up in Italy. Since the fourteenth century the conditions of social life had undergone a thorough revolution. Under the influence of dynastic rulers stationed in great cities, merchants and manufacturers were confounded with the old n.o.bility; and in commonwealths like Florence the _bourgeoisie_ gave their tone to society. At the same time the community thus formed was separated from the people by the bar of humanistic culture. Literature felt this social transformation.

Its products were shaped to suit the taste of the middle cla.s.ses, and at the same time to amuse the leisure of the aristocracy. The _Novella_ was the natural outcome of these circ.u.mstances. Its qualities and its defects alike betray the ascendency of the _bourgeois_ element.

When a whole nation is addressed in drama or epic, it is necessary for the poet to strike a lofty and n.o.ble note. He appeals to collective humanity, and there is no room for aught that savors of the trivial and base. Homer and Sophocles, Dante and Shakspere, owed their grandeur in no slight measure to the audience for whom they labored.

The case is altered when a nation comes to be divided into orders, each of which has its own peculiar virtues and its own besetting sins.

Limitations are of necessity introduced and deflections from the canon of universality are welcomed. If the poet, for example, writes for the lowest cla.s.ses of society, he can afford to be coa.r.s.e, but he must be natural. An aristocracy, taken by itself, is apt, on the contrary, to demand from literature the refinements of fas.h.i.+onable vice and the subtleties of artificial sentiment. Under such influence we obtain the Arthurian legends of the later middle ages, which contrast unfavorably, in all points of simplicity and directness, with the earlier Niebelungen and Carolingian Cycles. The middle cla.s.ses, for their part, delight in pictures of daily life, presented with realism, and flavored with satire that touches on the points of their experience. Literature produced to please the _bourgeois_, must be sensible and positive; and its success will greatly depend upon the piquancy of its appeal to ordinary unidealized appet.i.tes. The Italians lacked such means of addressing the aggregated ma.s.ses of the nation as the panh.e.l.lenic festivals of Greece afforded. The public, which gave its scale of grandeur and sincerity to the Attic and Elizabethan drama, was wanting. The literature of the _cinque cento_, though it owed much to the justice of perception and simple taste of the true people, was composed for the most part by men of middle rank for the amus.e.m.e.nt of citizens and n.o.bles. It partook of those qualities which characterise the upper and middle cla.s.ses. It was deficient in the breadth, the magnitude, the purity, which an audience composed of the whole nation can alone communicate. We find it cynical, satirical, ingenious in sly appeals to appet.i.te, and oftentimes superfluously naughty. Above all it was emphatically the literature of a society confined to cities.

It may be difficult to decide what special quality of the Italian temperament was satisfied with the _Novella_. Yet the fact remains that this species of composition largely governed their production, not only in the field of narrative, but also in the a.s.sociated region of poetry and in the plastic arts. So powerful was the attraction it possessed, that even the legends of the saints a.s.sumed this character.

A notable portion of the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ were dramatized _Novelle_. The romantic poets interwove _Novelle_ with their main theme, and the charm of the _Orlando Furioso_ is due in no small measure to such episodes. Popular poems of the type represented by _Ginevra degli Almieri_ were versified _Novelle_. Celebrated trials, like that of the Countess of Cellant, Vittoria Accoramboni, or the Cenci, were offered to the people in the form of _Novelle_. The humanists--Pontano, Poggio, aeneas Sylvius--wrote _Novelle_ in Latin.

The best serial pictures of the secondary painters--whether we select Benozzo Gozzoli's legend of S. Augustine at San Gemignano, or Carpaccio's legend of S. Ursula at Venice, or Sodoma's legend of S.

Benedict at Monte Oliveto, or Lippo Lippi's legend of S. John at Prato--are executed in the spirit of the novelists. They are _Novelle_ painted in their salient incidents for the laity to study on the walls of church and oratory.

The term _Novella_ requires definition, lest the thing in question should be confounded with our modern novel. Although they bear the same name, these species have less in common than might be supposed.

Both, indeed, are narratives; but while the novel is a history extending over a considerable s.p.a.ce of time, embracing a complicated tissue of events, and necessitating a study of character, the _Novella_ is invariably brief and sketchy. It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture of human life within certain artistically chosen limitations, but confines itself to a striking situation, or tells an anecdote ill.u.s.trative of some moral quality.

This is shown by the headings of the sections into which Italian _Novellieri_ divided their collections. We read such rubrics as the following: "On the magnanimity of princes"; "Concerning those who have been fortunate in love"; "Of sudden changes from prosperity to evil fortune"; "The guiles of women practiced on their husbands." A theme is proposed, and the _Novelle_ are intended to exemplify it. The _Novelle_ were descended in a direct line from the anecdotes embedded in medieval Treasuries, Bestiaries, and similar collections. The novel, on the other hand, as Cervantes, Richardson, and Fielding formed it for the modern nations, is an expansion and prose digest of the drama. It implies the drama as a previous condition of its being, and flourishes among races gifted with the dramatic faculty.

Furthermore, the _Novelle_ were composed for the amus.e.m.e.nt of mixed companies, who met together and pa.s.sed their time in conversation. All the _Novellieri_ pretend that their stories were originally recited and then written down, nor is there the least doubt that in a large majority of cases they were really read aloud or improvised upon occasions similar to those invented by their authors. These circ.u.mstances determined the length and ruled the mechanism of the _Novella_. It was impossible within the short s.p.a.ce of a spoken tale to attempt any minute a.n.a.lysis of character, or to weave the meshes of a complicated plot. The narrator went straight to his object, which was to arrest the attention, stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts, excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his audience by some fantastic, extraordinary, voluptuous, comic, or pathetic incident. He sketched his personages with a few swift touches, set forth their circ.u.mstances with pungent brevity, and expended his force upon the painting of the central motive. Sometimes he contented himself with a bare narrative, leaving its details to the fancy. Many _Novelle_ are the mere skeletons of stories, short notes, and epitomes of tales. At another time he indulged in descriptive pa.s.sages of great verbal beauty, when it was his purpose to delight the ideal audience with pictures, or to arouse their sympathy for his characters in a situation of peculiar vividness. Or he introduced digressions upon moral themes suggested by the pa.s.sion of the moment, discoursing with the easy flow of one who raises points of casuistry in a drawing-room. Again, he heightened the effects of his anecdote by elaborate rhetorical development of the main emotions, placing carefully-studied speeches into the mouth of heroine or hero, and using every artifice for appealing directly to the feelings of his hearers. Thus, while the several _Novellieri_ pursue different methods at different times according to their purpose, their styles are all determined by the fact that recitation was essential to the species.

All of them, moreover, have a common object in amus.e.m.e.nt. Though the _Novellieri_ profess to teach morality by precept, and though some of them prefix prayers to their most impudent debauches of the fancy,[58]

it is clear that entertainment was their one sole end in view. For their success they relied on the novelty and strangeness of their incidents; on obscenity, sometimes veiled beneath the innuendoes and suggestive metaphors of Italian convention, but more often unabashed and naked to the view; on startling horrors, acts of insane pa.s.sion, or the ingenuities of diabolical cruelty. The humor of _beffe_ and _burle_, jests played by rogues on simpletons, practical jokes, and the various devices whereby wives and lovers fooled confiding husbands, supplied abundant material for relieving the more tragic stories. Lastly, the wide realm of pathos, the spectacle of beauty in distress, young lovers overwhelmed by undeserved calamity, sudden reverses of fortune, and accidents of travel upon land and sea, provided the narrator with plentiful matter for working on the sympathy of his readers. Of moral purpose in any strict sense of the phrase the _Novelle_ have none. This does not mean that they are invariably immoral; on the contrary, the theme of a considerable number is such that the tale can be agreeably told without violence to the most sensitive taste. But the novelist had no ethical intention; therefore he brought every motive into use that might amuse or stimulate, with business-like indifference. He felt no qualm of conscience at provoking the cruder animal instincts, at dragging the sanct.i.ties of domestic life in the mire of his buffoonery, or at playing on the appet.i.te for monstrous vice, the thirst for abnormal sensations, in his audience. So long as he could excite attention, he was satisfied. We cannot but wonder at the customs of a society which derived its entertainment from these tales, when we know that n.o.ble ladies listened to them without blus.h.i.+ng, and that bishops composed them as a graceful compliment to the daughter of a reigning duke.[59]

[Footnote 58: See Bandello's Introduction to _Nov._ x.x.xv. of Part i., where a most disgusting story is ushered in with ethical reflections; and take this pa.s.sage from the opening of one of Il Lasca's least presentable novels: "Prima che al novellare di questa sera si dia principio, mi rivolgo a te, Dio ottimo e grandissimo, che solo tutto sai e tutto puoi, pregandoti divotamente e di cuore, che per la tua infinita bonta e clemenza mi conceda, e a tutti questi altri che dopo me diranno, tanto del tuo ajuto e della tua grazia, che la mia lingua e la loro non dica cosa niuna, se non a tua lode e a nostra consolazione."--_Le Cene_ (Firenze, Lemonnier, 1857), p. 7.]

[Footnote 59: It may be mentioned that not _all_ stories were recited before women. Bandello introduces one of his tales with the remark that in the absence of the ladies men may be less careful in their choice of themes (_Nov._ x.x.x. pt. i.). The exception is singular, as ill.u.s.trating what was thought unfit for female ears. The _Novella_ itself consists of a few jokes upon a disgusting subject; but it is less immodest than many which he dedicated to n.o.ble women.]

In style the _Novelle_ are, as might be expected, very unequal.

Everybody tried his hand at them: some wrote sparkling Tuscan, others a dense Lombard dialect; some were witty, others dull. Yet all affected to be following Boccaccio. His artificial periods and rhetorical amplifications, ill-managed by men of imperfect literary training, who could not free themselves from local jargons, produced an awkward mixture of discordant faults. Yet the public expected little from the novelist in diction. What they required was movement, stimulus, excitement of their pa.s.sions. So long as the tale-maker kept curiosity awake, it was a matter of comparative indifference what sort of words he used. The _Novella_ was a literary no-man's-land, where the critic exercised a feeble sway, and amateurs or artists did what each found suited to his powers. It held its ground under conditions similar to those which determined the supply of plays among us in the seventeenth century, or of magazine novels in this.

In their material the _Novelle_ embraced the whole of Italian society, furnis.h.i.+ng pictures of its life and manners from the palaces of princes to the cottages of _contadini_. Every cla.s.s is represented--the man of books, the soldier, the parish priest, the cardinal, the counter-jumper, the confessor, the peasant, the duke, the merchant, the n.o.ble lady, the village maiden, the serving-man, the artisan, the actor, the beggar, the courtesan, the cut-throat, the astrologer, the lawyer, the physician, the midwife, the thief, the preacher, the nun, the pander, the fop, the witch, the saint, the galley-slave, the friar--they move before us in a motley mult.i.tude like the masquerade figures of carnival time, jostling each other in a whirl of merriment and pa.s.sion, mixing together in the frank democracy of vice. Though these pictures of life are brightly colored and various beyond description, they are superficial. It is only the surface of existence that the _Novelliere_ touches. He leaves its depths una.n.a.lyzed, except when he plunges a sinister glance into some horrible abyss of cruelty or l.u.s.t, or, stirred by gentler feeling, paints an innocent unhappy youthful love. The student of contemporary Italian customs will glean abundant information from these pages; the student of human nature gathers little except reflections on the morals of sixteenth-century society. It was perhaps this prodigal superfluity of striking incident, in combination with poverty of intellectual content, which made the _Novelle_ so precious to our playwrights. The tales of Cinthio and Bandello supplied them with the outlines of tragedies, leaving the poet free to exercise his a.n.a.lytic and imaginative powers upon the creation of character and the elaboration of motive. But that in spite of all their faults, the _Novelle_ fascinate the fancy and stimulate the mental energies, will be admitted by all who have made them the subject of careful study.

To render an adequate account of the _Novellieri_ and their works is very difficult.[60] The printing-press poured novels forth in every town in Italy, and authors of all districts vied with one another in their composition. At Florence Firenzuola penned stories with the golden fluency and dazzling wealth of phrase peculiar to him. Il Lasca's _Cene_ rank among the most considerable literary products of the age. At Florence again, Machiavelli wrote _Belphegor_, and Scipione Bargagli printed his _Trattenimenti_. Gentile Sermini, Pietro Fortini and Giustiniano Nelli were the novelists of Siena; Masuccio and Antonio Mariconda, of Naples. At Rome the Modenese Francesco Maria Molza rivaled the purity of Tuscan in his _Decamerone_. But it was chiefly in the North of Italy that novelists abounded. Giraldi's hundred tales, ent.i.tled _Hecatommithi_, issued from Ferrara. They were heavy in style, and prosaic; yet their matter made them widely popular. Sabadino wrote his _Porretane_ at Bologna, and Francesco Straparola of Caravaggio published his _Tredici piacevoli Notti_ at Venice. There also appeared the _Diporti_ of Girolamo Parabosco, the _Sei Giornate_ of Sebastiano Erizzo, Celio Malespini's _Ducento Novelle_, and the _Proverbi_ of Antonio Cornazano. Cademosto of Lodi, Monsignor Brevio of Venice, Ascanio de' Mori of Mantua, Luigi da Porto of Vicenza, and, last not least, the ill.u.s.trious Matteo Bandello, proved how rich in this species of literature were the northern provinces. The Lombards displayed a special faculty for tales in which romance predominated. Venice, notorious for her pleasure-marts of luxury, became the emporium of publications which supplied her courtesans and rufflers with appropriate mental food. The Tuscans showed more comic humor, and, of course, a purer style. But in point of matter, intellectual and moral, there is not much to choose between the works of Florentine and Lombard authors.

[Footnote 60: _I Novellieri in Prosa_, by Giambattista Pa.s.sano (Milano, Schiepatti, 1864), will be found an excellent dictionary of reference.]

Following the precedent of Boccaccio, it was usual for the _Novellieri_ to invent a framework for their stories, making it appear that a polite society of men and women (called in Italy a _lieta brigata_) had by some chance accident been thrown upon their own resources in circ.u.mstances of piquant novelty. One of the party suggests that they should spend their time in telling tales, and a captain is chosen who sets the theme and determines the order of the story-tellers. These introductions are not unfrequently the most carefully written portion of the collection, and abound in charming sketches of Italian life. Thus Il Lasca at the opening of _Le Cene_ feigns that a company of young men and women went in winter time to visit at a friend's house in Florence. It was snowing, and the youths amused themselves by a snow-ball match in the inner courtyard of the palace. The ladies watched them from a _loggia_, till it came into their heads to join the game. Snow was brought them from the roofs, and they began to pelt the young men from their balcony.[61] The fire was returned; and when the _brigata_ had enough of this fun, they entered the house together, dried their clothes, and, sitting round a blazing hearth, formed a plan for telling stories at supper. Girolamo Parabosco places the scene of his _Diporti_ on the Venetian lagoons. A party of gentlemen have left the city to live in huts of wood and straw upon the islands, with the intention of fowling and fis.h.i.+ng. The weather proves too bad for sport, and they while away the hours of idleness with anecdotes. Bandello follows a different method, which had been suggested by Masuccio. He dedicates his _Novelle_ to the distinguished people of his acquaintance, in prefaces not devoid of flattery, but highly interesting to a student of those times. Princes, poets, warriors, men of state, ill.u.s.trious women, and humanists pa.s.s before us in these dedications, proving that polite society in Italy, the society of the learned and the n.o.ble, was a republic of wit and culture. Alessandro Bentivoglio and Ippolita Sforza, the leaders of fas.h.i.+on and Bandello's special patrons, take the first rank.[62] Then we have the Gonzaga family of Mantua, Lancinus Curtius, Aldus Manutius, Machiavelli, Molsa, Guicciardini, Castiglione, the d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino, Giovanni de' Medici, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Bernardo Ta.s.so, Prospero Colonna, Julius II., Porcellio, Pontano, Berni, the Milanese Visconti, the Neapolitan Sanseverini, the Adorni of Genoa, the Foscari of Venice, the Estensi of Ferrara. Either directly addressed in prefaces or mentioned with familiar allusion in the course of the narratives, these historic names remind us that the author lived at the center of civilization, and that his _Novelle_ were intended for the entertainment of the great world. What Castiglione presents abstractedly and in theory as a critique of n.o.ble society, is set before us by Bandello in the concrete form of every-day occurrence.

Nor does the author forget that he is speaking to this company. His words are framed to suit their prejudices; his allusions have reference to their sentiments and predilections. The whole work of art breathes the air of good manners and is tuned to a certain pitch-note of fas.h.i.+onable tone. We may be astounded that ladies and gentlemen of the highest birth and breeding could tolerate the licenses of language and suggestion furnished by Bandello for their delectation. We may draw conclusions as to their corruption and essential coa.r.s.eness in the midst of refined living and external gallantries[63]. Yet the fact remains that these _Novelle_ were a customary adjunct to the courtly pleasures of the sixteenth century; and it was only through the printing-press that they pa.s.sed into the taverns and the brothels, where perhaps they found their fittest audience.

[Footnote 61: This motive may have been suggested by Folgore da S.

Gemignano's sonnet on the month of January.]

[Footnote 62: These are the pair so n.o.bly painted by Luini above the high-altar of S. Maurizio at Milan. See my _Sketches and Studies in Italy_.]

[Footnote 63: What we know about manners at the Courts of our Elizabeth and James, and the gossip of the French Court in Brantome's _Dames Galantes_, remind us that this blending of grossness and luxury was not peculiar to Italy.]

Matteo Bandello was a member of the petty Lombard n.o.bility, born at Castelnuovo in Tortona. His uncle was General of the Dominicans, and this circ.u.mstance determined Matteo's career. After spending some years of his youth at Rome, he entered the order of the Predicatori in the Convent delle Grazie at Milan. He was not, however, destined to the seclusion of a convent; for he attended his uncle, in the character apparently of a companion or familiar secretary, when the General visited the chief Dominican establishments of Italy, Spain, France and Germany. A considerable portion of Bandello's manhood was pa.s.sed at Mantua, where he became the tutor and the platonic lover of Lucrezia Gonzaga. Before the date 1525, when French and Spaniards contested the Duchy of Milan, he had already formed a collection of _Novelle_ in ma.n.u.script--the fruits of all that he had heard and seen upon his frequent travels. These were dispersed when the Spaniards entered Milan and pillaged the house of the Bandello family.[64]

Matteo, after numerous adventures as an exile, succeeded in recovering a portion of his papers, and retired with Cesare Fregoso to the Court of France. He now set himself seriously to the task of preparing his _Novelle_ for the press; nor was this occupation interrupted by the duties of the see of Agen, conferred upon him in 1550 by Henry II. The new bishop allowed his colleague of Gra.s.se to administer the see, drawing enough of its emoluments for his private needs, and attending till his death, about the year 1560, to study and composition.

[Footnote 64: See Dedication to _Nov._ xi. of second part.]

Bandello's life was itself a _novella_. The scion of a n.o.ble house, early dedicated to the order of S. Dominic, but with the General of that order for his uncle, he enjoyed rare opportunities of studying men and manners in all parts of Europe. His good abilities and active mind enabled him to master the essentials of scholars.h.i.+p, and introduced him as tutor to one of the most fascinating learned women of his age. These privileges he put to use by carrying on a courtly flirtation with his interesting pupil, at the same time that he penned his celebrated novels. The disasters of the Milanese Duchy deprived him of his literary collections and probably injured his fortune. But he found advancement on a foreign soil, and died a bishop at the moment when Europe was ringing with the scandals of his too licentious tales. These tales furnished the Reformers with a weapon in their war against the Church; nor would it have been easy to devise one better to their purpose. Even now it moves astonishment to think that a monk should have written, and a bishop should have published, the _facetiae_ with which Bandello's books are filled.

Bandello paints a society in dissolution, bound together by no monarchical or feudal principles, without patriotism, without piety, united by none of the common spiritual enthusiasms that make a people powerful. The word honor is on everybody's lips; but the thing is nowhere: and when the story-teller seeks to present its ideal image to his audience, he proves by the absurdity of his exaggeration that he has no clear conception of its meaning.[65] The virtues which inspired an earlier and less corrupt civility, have become occasions for insipid rhetoric. The vice that formerly stirred indignation, is now the subject of mirth. There is no satire, because there is no moral sense. Bandello's revelations of clerical and monastic immorality supplied the enemies of Rome with a full brief; but it is obvious that Bandello and his audience regarded the monstrous tale of profligacy with amus.e.m.e.nt. His frankness upon the very eve of the Council of Trent has something at once cynical and sinister. It makes us feel that the hypocrisy engendered by the German Reformation, the _si non caste tamen caute_ of the new ecclesiastical _regime_, was the last resort of a system so debased that vital regeneration had become impossible. This does not necessarily mean that the Italian Church had no worthy ministers in the sixteenth century. But when her dealing with the people ended in a humorous acceptance of such sin, we perceive that the rottenness had reached the core. To present the details of Bandello's clerical stories would be impossible in pages meant for modern readers. It is enough to say that he spares no rank or order of the Roman priesthood. The prelate, the parish curate, the abbot and the prioress, the monk and nun, are made the subject of impartial ribaldry.[66] The secrets of convents abandoned to debauchery are revealed with good-humored candor, as though the scandal was too common to need special comment.[67] Sometimes Bandello extracts comedy from the contrast between the hypocritical pretensions of his clerical ruffians and their lawless conduct, as in the story of the priest who for his own ends persuaded his paris.h.i.+oners that the village was haunted by a griffin.[68] Sometimes he succeeds in drawing a satirical portrait, like that of the Franciscan friar who domesticated himself as chaplain in the castle of a n.o.ble Norman family.[69] But the majority of these tales are simply obscene, with no point but a coa.r.s.e picture or a shockingly painful climax.[70]

[Footnote 65: Read, for example, the _Novella_ of Zilia, who imposed silence on her lover because he kissed her, and the whole sequel to his preposterous obedience (iii. 17); or the tale of Don Giovanni Emmanuel in the lion's den (iii. 39); or the rambling story of Don Diego and Ginevra la Bionda (i. 27). The two latter have a touch of Spanish extravagance, but without the glowing Spanish pa.s.sion. In quoting Bandello, I shall refer to _Part_ and _Novel_ by two numerals.

References are made to the Milanese edition, _Novellieri Italiani_, 1813-1816.]

[Footnote 66: For instance, Parte ii. _Nov._ 14; ii. xlv.; iii. 2, 3, 4, 7, 20.]

[Footnote 67: See the description in ii. 36 (vol. v. p. 270); and again, iii. 61; ii. 45.]

[Footnote 68: ii. 2.]

[Footnote 69: ii. 24.]

[Footnote 70: See, for instance, ii. 20; ii. 7.]