An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 34

In 1311 the famous Council of Ten was created, whose members were elected by the Grand Council for one year. The whole government, domestic and foreign, was placed in the hands of this smaller council, in conjunction with the doge (i.e., duke), the nominal head of the republic; but they were both held strictly accountable to the Grand Council for all that they did. The government was thus concentrated in the hands of a very few. Its proceedings were carried on with great secrecy, so that public discussion, such as prevailed in Florence and led to innumerable revolutions there, was unheard of in Venice. The Venetian merchant was a busy person who was quite willing that the state should exercise its functions without his interference. In spite of the aristocratic measures of the council, there was little tendency to rebellion, so common in the other Italian towns. The republic of Venice maintained pretty much the same form of government from 1300 until its destruction by Napoleon in 1797.

[Sidenote: Milan and the despotically governed towns of northern Italy.]

118. Milan was the most conspicuous example of the large cla.s.s of Italian cities which were governed by an absolute and despotic ruler, who secured control of a town either by force or guile, and then managed its affairs for his own personal advantage. At the opening of the fourteenth century a great part of the towns which had leagued themselves against Frederick Barbarossa[216] had become little despotisms. Their rulers were constantly fighting among themselves, conquering, or being conquered by, their neighbors. The practices of the Visconti, the family who seized the government of Milan, offer a fair example of the policy of the Italian tyrants.

The power of the Visconti was first established by the archbishop of Milan. He imprisoned (1277) in three iron cages the leading members of the family who were in control of the city government at the moment, and had his nephew, Matteo Visconti, appointed by the emperor as the imperial representative. Before long Matteo was generally recognized as the ruler of Milan, and was followed by his son. For over a century and a half some one of the family always showed himself skillful enough to hold his precarious position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tomb of Gian Galeazzo Visconti]

[Sidenote: Gian Galeazzo Visconti, 1385-1402.]

The most distinguished of the Visconti despots was Gian Galeazzo. He began his reign by capturing and poisoning his uncle, who was ruling over a portion of the already extensive territory of the Visconti.[217]

It seemed for a time that he might conquer all of northern Italy; but his progress was checked by the republic of Florence and then cut short by premature death. Gian Galeazzo exhibited all the characteristic traits of the Italian despots. He showed himself a skillful and successful ruler, able to organize his government admirably. He gathered literary men about him; and the beautiful buildings which were begun by him indicate his enthusiasm for art. Yet he was utterly unprincipled, and resorted to the most hideous methods in order to gain possession of coveted towns which he could not conquer or buy outright.

[Sidenote: Position and character of the Italian despots.]

There are many stories of the incredible ferocity exhibited by the Italian despots.[218] It must be remembered that they were very rarely legitimate rulers, but usurpers, who could only hope to retain their power so long as they could keep their subjects in check and defend themselves against equally illegitimate usurpers in the neighboring cities. This situation developed a high degree of sagacity, and many of the despots found it to their interest to govern well and even to give dignity to their rule by patronizing artists and men of letters. But the despot usually made many bitter enemies and was almost necessarily suspicious of treason on the part of those about him. He was ever conscious that at any moment he might fall a victim to the dagger or the poison cup.

[Sidenote: The _condottieri_.]

The Italian towns carried on their wars among themselves largely by means of hired troops. When a military expedition was proposed, a bargain was made with one of the leaders (_condottieri_), who provided the necessary force. As the soldiers had no more interest in the conflict than did those whom they opposed, who were likewise hired for the occasion, the fight was not usually very b.l.o.o.d.y; for the object of each side was to capture the other without unnecessarily rough treatment.

It sometimes happened that the leader who had conquered a town for his employer appropriated the fruits of the victory for himself. This occurred in the case of Milan in 1450. The Visconti family having died out, the citizens hired a certain captain, named Francesco Sforza, to a.s.sist them in a war against Venice, whose possessions now extended almost to those of Milan. When Sforza had repelled the Venetians, the Milanese found it impossible to get rid of him, and he and his successors became rulers over the town.

[Sidenote: Machiavelli's _Prince_.]

An excellent notion of the position and policy of the Italian despots may be derived from a little treatise called _The Prince_, written by the distinguished Florentine historian, Machiavelli. The writer appears to have intended his book as a practical manual for the despots of his time. It is a cold-blooded discussion of the ways in which a usurper may best retain his control over a town after he has once got possession of it. The author even takes up the questions as to how far princes should consider their promises when it is inconvenient to keep them, and how many of the inhabitants the despot may wisely kill. Machiavelli concludes that the Italian princes who have not observed their engagements over-scrupulously, and who have boldly put their political adversaries out of the way, have fared better than their more conscientious rivals.

[Sidenote: Florence.]

119. The history of Florence, perhaps the most important of the Italian cities, differs in many ways from that of Venice and of the despotisms of which Milan is an example. In Florence all cla.s.ses claimed the right to interest themselves in the government. This led to constant changes in the const.i.tution and to frequent struggles between the different political parties. When one party got the upper hand it generally expelled its chief opponents from the city. Exile was a terrible punishment to a Florentine, for Florence was not merely his native city,--it was his _country_, and loved and honored as such.

[Sidenote: The Medici.]

[Sidenote: Lorenzo the Magnificent.]

By the middle of the fifteenth century Florence had come under the control of the great family of the Medici, whose members played the role of very enlightened political bosses. By quietly watching the elections and secretly controlling the selection of city officials, they governed without letting it be suspected that the people had lost their power. The most distinguished member of the house of Medici was Lorenzo the Magnificent (d. 1492); under his rule Florence reached the height of its glory in art and literature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Palace of the Medici in Florence]

[Sidenote: Character of Florentine culture.]

As one wanders about Florence to-day, he is impressed with the contradictions of the Renaissance period. The streets are lined with the palaces of the n.o.ble families to whose rivalries much of the continual disturbance was due. The lower stories of these buildings are constructed of great stones, like fortresses, and their windows are barred like those of a prison; yet within they were often furnished with the greatest taste and luxury. For in spite of the disorder, against which the rich protected themselves by making their houses half strongholds, the beautiful churches, n.o.ble public buildings, and works of art which now fill the museums indicate that mankind has never, perhaps, reached a higher degree of perfection in the arts of peace than amidst the turmoil of this restless town.

"Florence was essentially the city of intelligence in modern times.

Other nations have surpa.s.sed the Italians in their genius.... But nowhere else except at Athens has the whole population of a city been so permeated with ideas, so highly intellectual by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so subtle, as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit of the Italians existed in quintessence among the Florentines. And of this superiority not only they, but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and Naples were conscious.... The primacy of the Florentines in literature, the fine arts, law, scholars.h.i.+p, philosophy, and science was acknowledged throughout Italy" (Symonds).

[Sidenote: The Renaissance, or _new birth_.]

120. The thirteenth century had been, as we have seen, a period of great enthusiasm for learning. The new universities attracted students from all parts of Europe, and famous thinkers like Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon wrote great treatises on religion, science, and philosophy. The public delighted in the songs and romances composed and recited in the language of the people. The builders contrived a new and beautiful style of architecture, and, with the aid of the sculptors, produced buildings which have never since been surpa.s.sed and rarely equaled. Why, then, are the two succeeding centuries called the period of the _new birth_,--the Renaissance,--as if there was a sudden reawakening after a long sleep, as if Europe first began in the fourteenth century to turn to books and art?

The word _renaissance_ was originally used by writers who had very little appreciation of the achievements of the thirteenth century. They imagined that there could have been no high degree of culture during a period when the Latin and Greek cla.s.sics, which seemed so all-important to them, were not carefully studied. But it is now coming to be generally recognized that the thirteenth century had worthy intellectual and artistic ambitions, although they were different both from those of Greece and Rome and from our own.

We cannot, therefore, conceive the "new birth" of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries quite as it was viewed by writers of a century ago, who failed to do justice to the preceding period. Nevertheless, about the middle of the fourteenth century, a very great and fundamental change did begin in thought and taste, in books, buildings, and pictures, and this change we may very well continue to call the _Renaissance_. We can best judge of its nature by considering the work of the two greatest men of the fourteenth century, Dante and Petrarch.

[Sidenote: Dante, 1264-1321.]

Dante was first and foremost a poet, and is often ranked with Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare. He is, however, interesting to the historian for other things than his flights of fancy and the music of his verse.

He had mastered all the learning of his day; he was a scientist and a scholar as well as a poet. His writings show us how the world appeared about the year 1300 to a very acute mind, and what was the range of knowledge available to the most thoughtful men of that day.

[Sidenote: Dante's use of Italian.]

Dante was not a churchman, as were all the scholars whom we have hitherto considered. He was the first literary layman of renown since Boethius,[219] and he was interested in helping other laymen who knew only their mother tongue to the knowledge heretofore open only to those who could read Latin. In spite of his ability to write Latin, he chose the mother tongue for his great poem, _The Divine Comedy_. Italian was the last of the important modern languages to develop, perhaps because in Italy Latin remained longest intelligible to the ma.s.s of the people.

But Dante believed that the exclusive use of Latin for literary purposes had already in his time become an affectation. He was confident that there were many people, both men and women, who knew only Italian, who would gladly read not only his verses but his treatise on science,--_The Banquet_,[220] as he poetically calls it.

[Sidenote: Extent of Dante's knowledge.]

Dante's writings indicate that mediaeval scholars were by no means so ignorant of the universe as they are popularly supposed to have been.

Although they believed, like the ancients, that the earth was the center around which the sun and stars revolved, they were familiar with some important astronomical phenomena. They knew that the earth was a sphere and guessed very nearly its real size. They knew that everything that had weight was attracted towards its center, and that there would be no danger of falling off should one get on the opposite side of the globe; they realized also that when it was day on one side of the earth it was night on the other.

[Sidenote: Dante's veneration for the ancient writers.]

While Dante shows a keen interest in the theological studies so popular in his time and still speaks of Aristotle as "the Philosopher," he exhibits a profound admiration for the other great authors of Rome and Greece. When in a vision he visits the lower world, Virgil is his guide.

He is permitted to behold the region inhabited by the spirits of virtuous pagans, and there he finds Horace and Ovid, and Homer, the sovereign poet. As he reclines upon the green turf he sees a goodly company of ancient worthies,--Socrates, Plato, and other Greek philosophers, Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and many others. He is so overcome by the honor of sitting among such great men that he finds no words to report what pa.s.sed between them. He feels no horror for their paganism, and while he believes that they are not admitted to the beatific joys of heaven, he a.s.signs them a comfortable abode, where they hold dignified converse with "faces neither sad nor glad."[221]

[Sidenote: Petrarch, 1304-1374.]

121. The veneration for the ancient writers felt by Dante becomes a burning enthusiasm with Petrarch, who has been well called "the first modern man." He was the first scholar and man of letters to desert entirely the mediaeval learning and lead his contemporaries back to a realization of the beauty and value of Greek and Roman literature. In the mediaeval universities, logic, theology, and the interpretation of Aristotle were the chief subjects of study. While scholars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries possessed and read most of the Latin writers who have come down to us, they failed to appreciate their beauty and would never have dreamed of making them the basis of a liberal education.[222]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Petrarch]

Petrarch declares that when a boy he delighted in the sonorous language of Cicero even before he could understand its meaning. As the years went on he became convinced that he could have no higher aim in life than that of collecting copies of all the Latin cla.s.sics upon which he could lay hands. He was not only an indefatigable scholar himself, but he possessed the power of stimulating, by his example, the intellectual ambition of those with whom he came in contact. He rendered the study of the Latin cla.s.sics popular among cultivated persons; and by his own untiring efforts to discover the lost or forgotten works of the great writers of antiquity he roused a new enthusiasm for the formation of libraries.[223]

[Sidenote: Obstacles to the study of the cla.s.sics.]

It is hard for us to imagine the obstacles which confronted Petrarch and the scholars of the early Renaissance. They possessed no good editions of the Roman and Greek authors, in which the correct wording had been determined by a careful comparison of all the known ancient copies. They considered themselves fortunate to secure a single ma.n.u.script of even the best known authors, and they could have no a.s.surance that it was not full of mistakes. Indeed, the texts were so corrupted by the carelessness of the copyists that Petrarch declares that if Cicero or Livy should return and stumblingly read his own writings, he would promptly p.r.o.nounce them the work of another, perhaps a barbarian.

[Sidenote: Petrarch's European reputation and influence.]

Petrarch enjoyed an unrivaled influence throughout western Europe, akin to that of Erasmus and Voltaire in later times. He was in constant communication with scholars, not only in Italy, but in the countries beyond the Alps. From his numerous letters which have been preserved, a great deal may be learned of the intellectual life of the time.[224]

[Sidenote: Petrarch has no sympathy with the popular studies of his time.]

It is clear that he not only promoted the new study of the Roman writers, but that he also did much to discredit the learning which was popular in the universities. He refused to include the works of the great scholastic writers of the thirteenth century in his library. Like Roger Bacon he was disgusted by the reverence in which the bad translations of Aristotle were held. As for the popular study of logic, Petrarch declared that it was good enough for boys, but that nothing irritated him more than to find a person of mature years devoting himself to the subject.

[Sidenote: Contrast between Petrarch's and Dante's att.i.tude toward their mother tongue.]

While Petrarch is far better known for his beautiful Italian verses than for his long Latin poems, histories, and essays, he did not share Dante's confidence in the dignity of their mother tongue. He even depreciates his Italian sonnets as mere popular trifles written in his youth. It was not unnatural that he and those in whom he aroused an enthusiasm for Latin literature should look scornfully upon Italian. It seemed to them a crude form of speech, good enough perhaps for the common people and for the transaction of the daily business of life, but immeasurably inferior to the language in which their predecessors, the Roman poets and prose writers, had written. The Italians, it must be remembered, felt the same pride in Latin literature that we feel in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare. The Italian scholars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries merely turned back to their own earlier national literature for their models, and tried their best to imitate the language and style of its masters.