Chapter XXIV (30)

The Gonzaghi held rule at Mantua, and there an academy flourished under the princely patronage of the Marquis John Francis, concerning which I must speak a little more particularly, as its master in some respects stands alone among the pedagogues of the Renaissance. Who has not heard of Victorino da Feltre, and the “Casa Giojosa,” in which he taught his crowd of princely pupils, contriving to mingle in their ranks not a few poor scholars, the perpetual objects of his generous solicitude; whose fame was so widely spread, and whose blameless character was so respected, that in those days of bitter scholastic jealousies all the greatest masters of Italy offered him their gratuitous services, and counted it an honour to direct a class in the “Joyous House” of Mantua? The house derived its name from the beauty of its situation, and the care which Gonzaga had taken to adorn it with everything that could contribute to the pleasure or instruction of its inmates. It contained galleries and arcades, all painted with pictures of children at prayer, at study, or at play; around it stretched delicious gardens and woods well stored with game, and the graver lectures of the master were relieved by lessons in riding, dancing, fencing, and every other graceful accomplishment suitable for noble youth. Victorino, on assuming the direction of the academy, did not entirely discountenance these pleasant pastimes, nor did he turn the Joyous House into a Castle Dismal; he contented himself with introducing such reforms as banished habits of self-indulgence, and prepared his pupils, not only to become elegant gentlemen, but hardy soldiers. He reduced the princely banquets to a reasonable limit, confiscated sweetmeats, and showed himself pitiless upon all coxcombry in dress. It is remarkable, that though he left not a line behind him as a monument of his scholarship, his celebrity has survived to our own day, and certainly equals that of the greatest of his contemporaries, resting as it does solely on his merits as a teacher of youth. Not merely was he distinguished as a lecturer in Greek, Latin, and mathematics (though even in that capacity he had few equals), but as one who trained the heart, formed the manners, and established, as the basis of all education, a strict observance of religious duties, victory over the passions, and the mortification of pride, selfishness, and sensuality.

A no less passionate admirer of the ancient authors than his friend Guarino, who often assisted him in his school, Victorino was careful to guard his pupils from the paganising tendencies which he discerned in the spirit of the age. Along with the Greek and Latin classics, therefore, he presented to their study the Fathers of the Church, and the Divine Scriptures, and when lecturing on the heathen poets and historians, he was wont, in a few luminous words, to lay before his hearers the grand Christian principles which were never to be effaced from the soul by Gentile sophistries and eloquence. Those principles he taught yet more by example than by precept. Two hours before his classes opened, Victorino might have been found in the hospitals and prisons of Mantua, relieving and comforting every form of distress. He founded among his noble pupils an association of charity, for enabling poor scholars to pursue their studies with greater facility, and this he did, not merely as a means of carrying out his favourite work of charity, but yet more with the view of training the sons of the Italian _noblesse_ from their earliest years to care for the inferior classes, and to give to the poor out of their abundance. His whole life was marked by a total disregard of his own private interests. The good Marchioness, Paula Gonzaga, never made but one complaint of him, and that was, that often as she tried to furnish him with a better wardrobe, he frustrated her charitable attempts; for so soon as he found himself possessed of two coats, one went to clothe a poorer man than himself. It may be added, that though a simple layman, he embraced a stricter rule of life than was followed by many an ecclesiastic of the time. In an age when the practice of frequent communion was far from common, he approached the holy table twice every week, and encouraged his pupils to communicate every Sunday. It is said that in the early part of his scholastic career, his intercourse with St. John Capistran and St. Bernardine of Siena had awakened in his soul a strong desire to enter the cloister, from which he was deterred by the arguments of his learned friend Ambrose Traversari, who assured him that his vocation was to remain in the world, and there train souls for heaven. And as a divine vocation he embraced it; and cast over the scholastic profession a grace, a dignity and a beauty of holiness which made Eugenius IV. exclaim, when he was presented to him at Florence, “If my rank as Supreme Pontiff permitted it, I would rise from my seat to show honour to so great a man!”

However, it must not be supposed that Victorino was a mere devotee, or that his school was of a retrograde class, excluding the new lights of classical literature. He was the friend and correspondent of all the scholars of his day, and the pupils of the “Casa Giojosa” were no whit behind their countrymen in classical acquirements. Ambrose Traversari, who was considered to equal Leonard of Arezzo as a Latinist, and to surpass him in his knowledge of Greek, has left an account, in his “Hodœporicon” and in his epistles, of a visit which he paid to the school of Victorino, and a kind of friendly examination to which he subjected its pupils. “I reached Mantua,” he writes, “where I was welcomed with singular kindness by Victorino, the best of men, and my very dear friend. He is with me as much as his serious occupations allow; and not he alone, but the greater part of his disciples. Some of them are so well advanced in Greek, that they translate it into Latin. He teaches Greek to the sons and daughters of the prince, and they all write in that language.” Again, “Yesterday Victorino presented to me Gian Lucido, the youngest son of the prince of Mantua, a youth of about fourteen. He recited to me 200 Latin verses of his own composition, in which he described the pomp with which the Emperor Sigismund had been received at Mantua. The little poem was very beautiful, and rendered more so by the grace and correctness of its delivery. Then he showed me two theorems which the boy had added to the geometry of Euclid. There was also one of his sisters at the academy who, though only ten years old, writes Greek so well, that I am ashamed to say many of my own scholars cannot show anything to equal it.” This last-named pupil was Cecilia Gonzaga, whose learning afterwards became renowned throughout Italy. Her sister Margaret, also a pupil of Victorino, became the wife of Lionel of Este, but she herself consecrated her talents to God, and entered a convent of poor Clares, founded by her mother in the city of Mantua.[307]

While the smaller potentates of Italy were vying one with another in their encouragement of letters and learned men, the Sovereign Pontiffs were setting them the example on a yet more magnificent scale. From 1447 to 1455 the chair of St. Peter was filled by Nicholas V., who to extreme simplicity of manners united immense learning, and a mind capable of vast and magnificent designs. Whilst he was restoring peace to Italy putting an end to the schism which had sprung out of the Council of Basle, planning a fresh crusade, and laying plans for the rebuilding of Rome, on a plan realised only in the pages of Vasari, his agents were busy, all over the world, collecting, collating, or translating manuscripts, and giving to the world, in versions undertaken at his sole expense, those long-forgotten works of classical antiquity, the “History of Diodorus Siculus,” the “Cyropedia” of Xenophon, the histories of Polybius, Thucydides, and Herodotus, the “Iliad” of Homer, the geography of Strabo, many of the works of Plato, and the Greek Fathers of the Church. Most of the scholars of whom we shall have to speak in the following pages were employed by him as translators and secretaries, and were amply recompensed for their work. Poggio was thus enabled to complete his version of Diodorus. Lorenzo Valla received 500 gold scudi for his translation of Thucydides; 10,000 scudi, a house and estate, were promised to Filelfo for his translation of Homer, and when giving Perotti 500 scudi for his Latin Polybius, the Pontiff condescended to apologise for the smallness of the sum, which he owned was below the value of the book. He is known to have offered 5000 scudi for a Hebrew version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which, however, was never found. In his early years he had often given utterance to the promise that if he ever found himself in the possession of riches, he would employ them in the multiplication of good books. He nobly kept his word; and, when he died, left, as his bequest to his successor, the Vatican library, furnished, through his munificence, with 5000 precious manuscripts.

The accession to the pontifical chair of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who became Pope in 1458, under the title of Pius II., seemed to promise much for the world of letters. He had already acquired a European fame as a poet and historian, and had received the laurel crown from the hands of Frederic III. But his short pontificate was almost entirely absorbed in preparations for the projected crusade, which he had resolved to undertake for the recovery of the Eastern Empire, and death alone prevented his carrying out his grand designs, and accompanying the army into the East in order to encourage the soldiers with his presence. Meanwhile a flood of Greek refugees poured into Europe, contributing very largely to encourage the restoration of ancient learning, though they certainly had not given the movement its first impulse. Even before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek scholars had judged it prudent to pass over into Italy in order to escape the ruin impending over their country. Others, again, had been attracted thither by the Council of Florence, held in 1441, for the extinction of the Greek schism. Among the latter was the celebrated Bessarion, Archbishop of Nice, who, convinced of the fallacy of the Greek claims by the arguments of the Latin prelates, urged his countrymen to acknowledge the supremacy of the Holy See, and thereby incurred so much odium among them as to be forced to remain in exile. He was raised to the purple by Pope Eugenius IV., and employed in several important legations, but it was as a man of letters that he chiefly distinguished himself. His house at Rome became a sort of academy, and in it he trained a number of scholars, both Greek and Latin, not only in learning, but in piety and good manners; for Bessarion was as remarkable for his courtesy and virtue as for his erudition. His great library, collected at a cost of 30,000 golden scudi, was presented to the Republic of Venice, in return for the affection with which he had been received in that city; and though he only acquired a knowledge of the Latin tongue after his removal to Italy, he produced several works in that language, among which was a “Defence” of his favourite philosopher Plato.

But neither Rome nor Naples was destined to be the Athens of modern Europe, but a city, still proud of her republican institutions, though on the point of surrendering all but the name of sovereignty into the hands of a successful family of merchant princes. Many circumstances had combined to render Florence the focus of the great literary movement then in progress, and thither chiefly resorted the exiled Greek scholars--such as Argyrophilus, George of Trebizond, Theodore of Gaza, and Gemistus. Schools had been opened in this city so early as 1393 by Emmanuel Chrysoloras, which may be said to have given the first impulse to the revival of Greek studies. Emmanuel came over to Italy, in the first instance, in the quality of ambassador from Constantinople, to seek for aid against the Turkish arms among the princes of the West. But he found it more to his taste, and possibly also to his profit, to exchange his diplomatic functions for those of a professor of letters, and soon reckoned among his disciples a group of scholars who were in their turn promoted to chairs of Greek rhetoric in the universities of Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, and Naples. One of these, Guarino, had been formerly acquainted with Chrysoloras at Constantinople, whither he had travelled in 1388 in search of manuscripts. Guarino was at that time only eighteen years of age, and after acquiring the Greek language, he set out on his return to Italy, bearing with him two great chests filled with the treasures which he had collected. A storm overtook the vessel, and in his dismay the captain ordered the whole cargo on board the ship to be cast into the sea. In vain did Guarino throw himself at his feet, and conjure him to spare his precious volumes; they were ruthlessly hurled to the fishes, and when morning dawned the poor scholar’s raven locks were discovered to have turned as white as snow, such had been the anguish which his loss had caused him. However, if he had lost his books, he had not lost his learned gifts, and on reaching Italy, he became professor of rhetoric, first at Florence, and afterwards at Venice and Ferrara. John Aurispa was more fortunate in his researches, and succeeded, in 1423, in bringing back to Italy 238 Greek manuscripts. We have already spoken of him as lecturing at Ferrara under the patronage of the Este. He was secretary both to Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V., and before settling at Ferrara had also taught both at Bologna and Florence. He was succeeded in the chair of rhetoric in the latter city by the celebrated Filelfo, who had likewise made the grand tour of the East, and brought home a magnificent Greek library. This last-named scholar had studied at Constantinople under John Chrysoloras, brother to Emmanuel, whose daughter Theodora he married, a circumstance which swelled his already preposterous vanity, and which he never lost any opportunity of trumpeting to the Greek-loving world.

Filelfo, on returning to Italy, first selected Bologna as the happy spot which was to be blessed with his erudite presence. He entered the city in a sort of triumph, the enthusiastic populace giving him the welcome ordinarily reserved for sovereign princes, and erecting a chair of Moral Philosophy and eloquence for his express occupation, with the handsome annual salary of 450 gold scudi. Every day saw some new festa invented to do honour to the great Professor and his charming “Chrysolorine,” as he somewhat affectedly designated his Greek spouse; and for a brief space Filelfo declared himself satisfied with the amount of homage offered to his genius. “Bologna is a charming city,” he writes in one of his epistles; “the inhabitants are courteous, and not insensible to letters; and what specially pleases me is the consideration and affection which they display towards _me_.” In 1428, however, a popular revolution dissipated all these pleasing prospects; Filelfo, in company with the Papal Legate, had to fly for his life, and while the cities of Italy scrambled which should obtain possession of so rare a scholar, the coveted prize fell to the share of Florence, where Cosmo de’ Medici and his rival, Philip Strozzi, were just then struggling which should outshine the other in acts of princely munificence. The vanity of Filelfo was once more for a time amply gratified for the Florentines yielded him their hearty applause, and if we are to credit his own words, made him the great lion of their city. “All Florence runs after me” he writes in his letters; “everybody loves me; everybody honours me and lauds me to the skies; my name is in everybody’s mouth. Not only the first men of the city, but the noble ladies also give place when they meet me, and show me so much respect that I am really ashamed. I have every day 400 hearers, or more, and all of them persons of rank and importance.”

And it must be owned that Filelfo worked hard to gain their applause. The routine of his everyday work involved an amount of labour to voice and brain, under which any one but a professor of the fifteenth century must have succumbed. About daybreak he began by lecturing to a crowded audience on Cicero, Livy, or the Iliad. His explanations of Cicero were considered his greatest successes and by his ready and brilliant eloquence he seemed to reproduce the Roman orator to the eyes and ears of his hearers. Returning home, he gave audience to the favoured few who were happy enough to be on his list of private pupils; and at mid-day he was again in the public chair, commenting on Terence, or the Greek historians, Xenophon and Thucydides. Every evening there were literary reunions and learned academies to be attended, or private assemblies, in which Filelfo was, or, at any rate, considered himself to be, the great centre of attraction, and nurtured his good opinion of himself with the homage of an obsequious crowd. Even Sunday was no day of rest to him, for then, in the Church of Sta. Maria dei Fiori, he lectured and commented on Dante.

The fascination of such a life, however, had a make-weight of mortification. Filelfo was possessed with one of those bitter and malignant dispositions that turn the very sweets of life into poison. His very jokes were malignant, as, when disputing with another grammarian on the quantity of a Greek syllable, he offered to pay him 200 scudi if he were proved wrong, on condition that, if right, he might have the satisfaction of shaving off his adversary’s beard. The poor grammarian lost his wager, and, in spite of all his entreaties, Filelfo gratified his revenge in the true spirit of a literary Shylock. It was quite enough for any other scholar to be praised and honoured for him to become at once the mark for Filelfo’s spite. “What does Guarino know, of which Filelfo is ignorant?” he exclaims in one of his letters, his bile being excited by the fact that Guarino’s name was just then in everybody’s mouth. This intolerable presumption raised him enemies in every city; and, indeed, in those days it seems to have been the habit of literary men to spend the greater part of their time in biting and devouring one another. Filelfo, perhaps, may be regarded as the most venomous disputant of them all. He who talked so much of being “loved” by everybody, hated and made himself hated by the entire world. He hated the men of learning who shared with him the favour of the Florentines, because he regarded them as his rivals. He hated the great Cosmo, the Pericles of the New Athens, because his benefits were not exclusively showered on himself. He hated the good and honest citizen Niccoli, the founder of St. Mark’s public library, because he was a friend of the Medici. And he hated the very populace who gaped and wondered at his erudition, because his appetite for flattery growing as it was ministered to, they could not always satisfy its cravings, and at such times Filelfo was ready to denounce them all in that malignant language of which the elegant commentator on Tully was an accomplished master. He poured out his venom on Cosmo in a series of villanous libels, accusing him of attempting his life by poison and the dagger; yet, at the very time when he was inventing these calumnies against a man who had loaded him with favours, he was himself hiring assassins to attack his rival, Carlo Marsuppini, in the streets of Florence--a crime for which the Republic afterwards condemned him to have his tongue cut out, should he ever set foot again upon their territory.

To his other vices Filelfo added that of a grasping avarice: he was continually appealing to the different princes of Italy for larger money advances, and loading them with abuse if they did not satisfy his demands. He threatened Pius II. to turn Turk, if the pension granted by that Pontiff were not more regularly paid; and his contemporary scholars continually complained that, after promising them books, he would afterwards withdraw from his bargain, and demand back again from them what was not really his own property. But, in candour, it must be confessed that, in this last-named matter, Filelfo appears to have been more sinned against than sinning. A very bad habit prevailed at that time among literary men of borrowing books and never returning them. Francesco Barbaro is accused of keeping a chest of Filelfo’s books for thirty years; and similar peccadilloes are charged to the account of Aurispa and Giustiniani. Possibly, observes Tiraboschi, they regarded book thefts in the same light as monks had been used occasionally to regard the pilfering of holy relics. Anyhow, the injury was sensibly felt by the unfortunate owner, and did not improve the asperity of his temper.

Whatever infamy attaches to the character of Filelfo, he met with his match in one of the literary rivals whom he encountered at Florence. Poggio Bracciolini had received his education in his native city, and to a perfect knowledge of Latin and Greek literature added the rarer merit of being a good Hebrew scholar. For thirty-four years of his life he held the office of apostolic secretary under successive Pontiffs, and during all that time he never spent an entire year in any one city. He was present in his official capacity at the Council of Constance, and to while away the hours that hung heavy on his hands, made an excursion to the neighbouring abbey of St. Gall, and disinterred from a damp tower the mouldering manuscript of Quinctilian’s “Institutes.” From thence he passed over to England to pursue his researches in the monastic libraries of this country, but declares that they were full of nothing but “modern doctors, whom _we_ should not think worthy so much as to be heard.” By his discoveries of classic authors, and his own critical and historical writings, he contributed more than any other scholar of his time to the revival of learning, so that some writers have gone so far as to confer on the first half of the fifteenth century the title of “the age of Poggio.” But his glory was sadly clouded by the furious quarrels in which he engaged with all his contemporaries, and the foul and disgraceful language which he poured out against every one who was unhappy enough to come into collision with him. Among the works of this great champion of classic Latinity are four “Invectives” against Filelfo, and five against Lorenzo Valla. The latter were written in revenge for certain criticisms which Valla had published of his Epistles, and are, says Tiraboschi, “a disgraceful monument to the memory of a writer who observes neither rule nor measure, but defiles his pen with every hideous abomination which malice could suggest against his adversaries.” Valla, who was a scholar of precisely the same temper, replied in his “Antidotes to Poggio,” and Filelfo in his “Satires”--all of which are said to be conceived in the same rabid and malignant strain. Nor was it only against such men as these that Poggio directed his venom. Guarino was made the subject of another ferocious onslaught, for no worse misdemeanour than having differed from Poggio in preferring the character of Cæsar to that of Scipio! George of Trebizond, a man of like temper to his own, was another of his opponents, and on one occasion the two disputants, after publicly giving each other the lie, came to blows, and were with difficulty separated by their hearers. And at last this detestable spirit grew on him to such a degree that, no longer content with attacking individuals, he published libels, if we may so say, on the literary world at large, and did his best in his “Dialogue against Hypocrites,” to slaughter the reputation of every man of virtue and celebrity in the world of letters, such as the Blessed John Dominic, Ambrose Traversari, Cardinal Luca Manzuoli, and the entire Franciscan Order. With all this, Poggio probably held the first place among the scholars of his time, unless the superiority be given to his adversary, Lorenzo Valla, who is generally held to have surpassed him in grammatical erudition. Erasmus, indeed, treated the merits of Poggio very lightly. “Poggio was possessed of so little real learning,” he says, “that, even if his books were less full of abominations than they are, they would not repay perusal; as it is, were he even the most erudite of writers, all good men must regard him with horror.” Nor can a much better character be given to Valla; in arrogance and vanity he equalled Filelfo; and in his famous “Treatise on the Elegance of the Latin Tongue,” gave the world to understand that he was about to explain a language which before his time had been understood by none. “These books,” he says, “_will contain nothing that has ever been said by anybody else_. For many ages past, not only has no one been able to speak Latin, but none have understood the Latin they read, the philosophers have had no comprehension of the philosophers, the advocates of the orators, the lawyers of the jurists,” and so of the rest. This kind of self confidence is, however, so universal among scholars of the age as hardly to call for special notice; but it was the least fault of which Valla stands charged. Passing over grosser accusations brought against him by adversaries whose habits of calumny render their testimony of little value, there was a taint of ingratitude in Valla’s character which is particularly offensive. Having, in his “Declamation against the Donation of Constantine,” attacked the claims of the Holy See in terms which Hallam himself admits could not be excused, be retired from Rome, and found a warm welcome at the court of Naples. Here, however, he soon got involved in difficulties with the Inquisition, in consequence of certain impieties to which he gave utterance on the subject of the Holy Trinity and other fundamental dogmas of the faith. He was only released from prison through the friendly interference of Panormita. Yet as soon as he recovered his liberty he engaged in a furious quarrel with his benefactor, and spared no calumnies by which he could bring discredit on his name and character. He treated it as a crime for any one to differ from him in any point of taste and criticism, and punished all such transgressions by blackening the fair fame of his opponents. Nevertheless, he met with far gentler treatment than he deserved, for it was after he had established his renown as the best Latinist, and, next to Poggio, the most malignant calumniator of his day, that Nicholas V. invited him back to Rome, made him a canon of St. John Lateran, and employed him in numerous translations, all of which were liberally paid for. Valla accepted the dignities and the money offered him by the Pope, and took advantage of his favourable turn of fortune to complete that attack on the papal sovereignty which he had before left unfinished; and he did so in a style which, Hallam informs us, rather resembles the violence of Luther than what might have been expected from a Roman official of the fifteenth century. The clemency shown him by the Pope was perhaps excessive, for he was suffered to live at Rome unmolested, and retained the office and pension of apostolic secretary to the day of his death.

It must be owned that the portrait gallery through which we are passing, has thus far been anything but pleasing, nor can it be denied that in their main features of malice and presumption, most of the scholars of the age exhibit a family resemblance to those noted above. Hallam observes that the inferior renown enjoyed by Giannozzo Manetti, is probably owing to the greater mildness of his character, which involved him in fewer of those altercations to which Poggio and Valla owed a great part of their celebrity. And Tiraboschi apologises to his readers for leaving some portions of his history somewhat obscure, on the ground that the calumnies and misrepresentations indulged in by almost all writers of the period, render it nearly impossible to rely on any of their statements, and to accept as facts anything which they may say unfavourable of one another.

Some noble exceptions, however, are to be found, and among them may be quoted the example of Leonard Bruni, or, as he is more frequently styled from the place of his birth, Leonard Aretino. Whilst Chancellor of Florence he one day engaged in a public philosophic dispute with Giannozzo Manetti, in which the latter gained the advantage over him. Stung with annoyance, Leonard let fall some injurious words, to which, however, Giannozzo replied with his customary good temper, and both returned to their respective homes. But Leonard was so pursued by remorse for his fault that he could not close his eyes all night, and so soon as morning dawned, he hastened to the house of Giannozzo, who was greatly surprised to see the first magistrate of Florence at his door at such an early hour. Leonard, however, only bade him follow him into the city, and conducting him to the great bridge over the Arno, then the most frequented thoroughfare, he publicly asked his pardon, and acknowledged he had had no rest since he had spoken injuriously of so noble an adversary. Giannozzo received his apology with a modesty which was equally admirable, and the friendship which from that day sprung up between these two great men, remained unbroken to the death of Leonard, on which occasion the funeral oration was spoken over his body by Giannozzo.

From the scholars of Florence let us now turn to her Mecænas, the merchant prince, who, for thirty years, held the first rank in the Republic, and deserved to obtain from his grateful fellow citizens the title of “Father of his country.” Cosmo de’ Medici was beyond all question the greatest of his illustrious race. Machiavel calls him the most magnificent and most generous of men, and Flavio declares that he surpassed all his contemporaries in wisdom, humanity, and liberality. His political career seems to have been for the most part free from the vice of selfish ambition; whilst as a patron of letters, even in that age of splendid patrons, he had no equal. In Florence alone he founded three public libraries, expending 36,000 ducats on that of St. Mark’s, which he enriched with 400 Latin and Greek manuscripts, whilst he appointed as librarian Thomas di Sarzana, afterwards Pope Nicholas V. A few years later he rebuilt the library, and added a collection of Hebrew, Arabic, Sanscrit, and Chaldaic books, collected at enormous cost. His love of literature was so genuine, and so superior to the selfishness of a mere bibliopolist, that even when in temporary exile at Venice, he could not help opening his purse-strings in favour of the Venetian library of St. George, and employed his fellow exile, the architect Michelozzi, in providing it with reading benches and other conveniences, presenting it also with many books. It was his wish to draw to Florence all the learned men of the day. He it was who invited thither the Greek Professor Argyrophilus, to the end that he might instruct the Florentine youth in the philosophy of Aristotle. A vast number of Greek exiles received from him a princely welcome, to say nothing of the crowd of native scholars who thronged his palace. Pages might be filled with the mere enumeration of the convents, churches, and hospitals which he built or endowed, not merely at Florence, but even at Jerusalem, where he founded a large hospital for poor pilgrims. He had stewards and administrators in every part of Europe, who helped him to dispense his treasures on worthy objects. Yet with all this, his own establishment was always conducted on the most modest scale, and he who enriched scores of Florentine families, never assumed a more brilliant appearance than that of an ordinary citizen. His liberality was altogether free from ostentation, and appears to have flowed from the purest and most Christian motives. “Never yet,” he complained to one of his friends, “have I been able to spend in God’s honour the sums for which, when I look over my ledger, I find myself indebted to Him.”

It was in the year 1438, whilst Pope Eugenius IV. was residing at Florence, and the Council was still sitting which had for its object the extinction of the Greek schism, that a certain Greek, named George Gemistus, arrived in the city, and one day entered the palace of Cosmo with a copy of Plato under his arm. This celebrated scholar had received the surname of _Pletho_, in consequence of his enthusiastic admiration of the academic philosopher, and is more commonly known by this sobriquet than by his patronymic. Pletho, as we shall therefore call him, read a few pages of his book to the enraptured ears of Cosmo, and very soon communicated to him a portion of his own enthusiasm. Until then Cosmo had been a stranger to all save the Peripatetic philosophy, and the ideas which now presented themselves to his mind seemed like the opening of some new world. In his delight he conceived the plan of establishing a Platonic academy at Florence, a design which was put into execution without delay. Platonism, however, was then so new in the schools of the West, that Cosmo could find no professor who seemed capable of filling the chair of philosophy to be attached to this academy; and he resolved to educate for that purpose a child whose talents had already attracted his notice. Marsilius Ficinus was the son of his physician; his tiny frame and delicate constitution seemed incapable of making head against the host of maladies with which he had been beset from the cradle. But Cosmo’s quick eye discerned the indications of early genius. “This boy,” he said, “is destined to cure, not the maladies of the body, but those of the soul.”

With his customary bounty, he became a second father to his future professor, and under his direction, Ficinus received a thoroughly Platonic education. He was carefully reared in the maxims and philosophy of the great master, to the end that having early imbibed the principles of Platonism as a kind of second nature, he might be qualified afterwards to become the head preceptor of the new academy. The whole scheme had something visionary about it, and no less so was the character of the man chosen to carry it out. From his boyhood he was a poet and a dreamer. He loved to wander at early daybreak by the banks of the Arno, and recite aloud to the woods and the stream the verses of Virgil’s “Georgics.” Light and country air were his two necessaries; he seemed to live in the sunshine, and on those rare occasions when the fair sky of Florence was overspread with clouds, he could neither write nor study. His work as a composer was exclusively carried on in the early morning hours; then it was that his genius seemed to wake with the sunrise; and if he also spent long night hours over his manuscripts, he only then applied himself to the labour of revision. Cosmo gave him a little lamp, which was often found burning when daylight dawned in the east; he also provided him with books, and specially with manuscripts of Plato procured from Venice at an enormous cost, and to these Ficinus applied himself with such incessant application, that his health almost entirely gave way; in fact, his life seemed always hanging by a single thread, and was preserved only by such extraordinary precautions as are bestowed on some exotic plant. At the age of twenty-three, the young student considered himself ready to read to a learned assembly, presided over by Cosmo, the first pages of his “Platonic Institutions.” When the lecture was over, his patron smiled and gently shook his head. Ficinus understood the gesture, but was not discouraged; he prepared for a fresh course of studies, and placed himself under the historian Platina, more illustrious for his Greek erudition than for his orthodoxy, but the latter condition was not greatly cared for by the young Platonist. In a few months he found that he had made such rapid progress, that, remodelling his work, he submitted it to the judgment of Marcus Musurus, the Greek professor of Venice, and the first editor of Aristophanes. He found Musurus sitting at his writing-table, and having engaged him to give an impartial opinion, began the reading of his manuscript. As the professor listened, he amused himself with turning over the various implements before him. Ficinus at last paused, and asked him what he thought of it.

“I think _this_,” said Musurus, and taking the ink bottle, he shook it over the open manuscript as if it had been sand. Ficinus betrayed no impatience, which is saying something for his philosophy; and retiring to the country house which Cosmo had presented to him, devoted himself to the task of a third revision. Before it was completed his great patron died leaving his son Pietro and his grandson Lorenzo de Medici to succeed him in his pre-eminence, both in the literary and political world. Pietro and Lorenzo showed themselves as eager to encourage the Platonic academy as its first founder had been; and their enthusiasm was shared by their contemporaries. All the scholars of Italy aspired to the honour of membership; Landino, Alberti, and John Picus of Mirandola, these met together, and contended for the silver laurel wreath, which was the prize of merit; and one of Pietro’s first acts was to establish a professorship, the chair of which was immediately bestowed on Ficinus. In the meetings of this academy the honours bestowed on Plato came very near to idolatry. Its festivals were the anniversaries of his birth and death, a lamp was burnt in his honour, and the professor, in lecturing to his fellow academicians, addressed them, not as “my brethren in Christ,” but as “my brethren in Plato.” It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Ficinus did not rest content with his professor’s chair and his academic reputation. In such a position his Platonic enthusiasm might have been productive of little injury, but at the age of forty-two he entered the priesthood, became canon of Florence, and took up the study of theology. Plato, however, was not laid aside for St. Paul. On whatever subject he wrote or spoke, says Tiraboschi, he seemed unable to refrain from tinging it with the doctrines of the academy. Gemistus, his first master, had been an avowed disciple of the Alexandrian school, and in the furious controversy then raging between the Platonists and the Aristotelians, had highly lauded not only the writings of the Greek philosopher, but those of Hermes and Zoroaster. In fact, as Hallam cautiously expresses it, “there were some grounds for ascribing to him a rejection of Christianity.” Ficinus cannot be charged with similar scepticism, though his lectures seem to have sown the seeds of religious doubt in the minds of some of his hearers. He believed the Gospels, but they were the Gospels _Platonised_. He went so far as to desire that his favourite author should be read in the Christian churches, and published eighteen books of what he called “Platonic Theology.” Hallam calls this work “a beautiful, but visionary and hypothetical system of Theism.” He did not attack the Christian dogmas, but he treated them as a philosopher rather than as a theologian. He was not content with gathering up and giving to the world the profound maxims of his illustrious master; but he undertook to harmonise the teaching of Plato and the teaching of Scripture, and attempted to prove that all the most prominent Christian mysteries were to be found in the _Criton_, which he regarded almost as a second Gospel.[308]

The extravagances in which Ficinus indulged were equally maintained in other learned academies. That which flourished at Rome under the direction of Pomponius Lœtus drew on its members the hostility of Paul II., who has been repeatedly charged with “persecuting the learned,” out of that natural antipathy to learning, of which Popes and cardinals are sometimes imagined to possess a kind of monopoly. The historian who originated the charge, however, is no other than Platina, the former master of Ficinus, whom Paul II. had made an enemy by suppressing the college of the _Abbreviatori_ to which he belonged. He was himself a member of the Roman academy, the suppression of which has been differently related by different historians, but it appears certain that the alleged crime of the members was, not their learning, but a real or supposed plot against the Government and certain impious and anti-Christian tenets which they were reported to hold. Tiraboschi considers that their innocence of the charges brought against them may be deduced from the fact that, after a year’s imprisonment, they were all set at liberty, and that Platina in particular was afterwards honourably employed by Sixtus IV., who made him librarian of the Vatican Library. Possibly the impieties of which they were guilty might rather have sprung from the foolish conceit of pedants than any positive unbelief; yet still it must be owned that some of their acts had a suspicious character, and could not but have appeared reprehensible in the eyes of the Pontiff. Michael Canensius declares they were wont to affirm that the Christian religion rested on no sufficient evidence, but only on the testimony of a few weak-headed saints: that they laid aside the use of their Christian names, and adopted others chosen from the great heathens of antiquity; that they were in the habit of swearing by the heathen gods and goddesses; that they disputed concerning the immortality of the soul, and maintained many Platonic errors, that Pomponius disdained the Scriptures, and was wont to say that Christianity was only fit for barbarians, and that, in his enthusiasm for ancient Rome, he even raised and decorated altars to the god Romulus. Some of these charges the accused did not deny; but though examined under the torture, it does not seem that anything transpired which offered satisfactory proofs of the existence of a conspiracy.[309] Paul contented himself, therefore, with suppressing the academy, and thereby earned for himself immense obloquy, and the character of being an enemy of letters; a most undeserved reproach, for, besides maintaining a number of poor scholars in his palace, and being an eager collector of ancient manuscripts and monuments, his biographer tells us that he was accustomed to spend many hours of the night reading the ancient authors, and “that he loved all learned men, _provided_ that to their learning were joined good manners.” This last condition was not always thought equally essential by patrons of letters of this period, who seem, as a general rule, to have cared but little what a man’s life was, provided he knew Greek. Filelfo, however, adds his testimony (which, in this instance, may perhaps be regarded as trustworthy), that Paul II. “was ever a favourer of learned men.”

We must not, however, suppose that the scholars of the Renaissance were exclusively made up of captious grammarians and philosophic sceptics. The movement had its fairer side; it was bewitching in its promise of literary excellence, and was not even devoid of its character of romance. Chivalry was not yet entirely extinct, and among the masters and scholars of the Italian schools some took up the cause of learning in a truly chivalrous spirit, and without a thought of self-interest, devoted themselves to study and teaching, as to a work by which they might benefit their kind. Their enthusiasm for their favourite pursuits appears sometimes in a more amiable character than that which it assumed in the hands of Poggio and his adversaries. Among the grammar professors enumerated by Tiraboschi we find the name of Piattino de’ Piatti, a noble youth brought up as a page in the household of Galeazzo Sforza, who for a very small offence caused him to be imprisoned for fifteen months in a frightful dungeon. We next find him figuring at a splendid tournament at the court of Ferrara, where he bore away the prize, and at the same time struck up an ardent friendship with the poet Strozza, who addressed some verses to him, praising him for knowing how to blend together the merits of the soldier and the scholar. For several years he bore arms under the Duke of Urbino, but his warlike occupations did not hinder him from cultivating the Muses, and he published a volume of Latin poems, which was one of the earliest works printed in Italy. Disappointed at not receiving the promotion he expected from the French kings Charles VIII. and Louis XII., he abandoned the profession of arms, and embraced that of schoolmaster in the little village of Garlasco, opening his humble academy with as much solemnity as if it had been a university, with a learned Latin oration. And we are assured that the number of good scholars then to be found in Italy was so great that many other villages besides Garlasco could boast of possessing as their schoolmasters first-rate professors of eloquence.

But the palm of Christian scholarship belongs, at this time, beyond all question, to John Picus, Prince of Mirandola, whose brief life closed in his thirty-second year, and whose acquirements probably surpassed those recorded of any other scholar. Whilst still a child he evinced so retentive a memory as to be able at once to repeat any verses recited in his presence, and displayed a sort of natural predisposition to the study of the _belles-lettres_. His mother, however, who wished him to embrace the ecclesiastical state, sent him to Bologna, to read canon law, at the age of fourteen, and after spending two years there, he proceeded to study philosophy in the principal schools of France and Italy. Besides a knowledge of the scholastic writers, he acquired during the next six years the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic tongues; but his enthusiastic and imaginative disposition led him to explore with eagerness the mysteries of the Jewish Cabala, a mass of mystic doctrine attributed to Esdras; on which idle fallacies, says Corniani, Mirandola expended a genius which was fitted to reach the most elevated truths of philosophy.

In his twenty-third year the young scholar appeared at Rome, and astonished the learned world by offering publicly to defend nine hundred theses on questions logical, ethical, mathematical, physical, metaphysical, theological, magical, and cabalistic; in short, _de omni re scibili_. Four hundred of these propositions were taken from Latin, Greek, Jewish, and Arabic doctors; the rest were announced to be his own opinions, which he was prepared to defend, subject to the judgment of the Church. There was a dash of vanity in all this, excusable perhaps in so young a scholar, who could not but be conscious of his superiority, and who in his anxiety to display it, offered to pay the expenses of any learned man who might come to oppose him from the utmost parts of the earth. His propositions were meanwhile examined by order of Innocent VIII., and thirteen of them pronounced unsound; whereupon he published an “Apology,” explaining in what sense they were put forth, but wholly submitting to the judgment passed on them by authority. The Holy Father, therefore, while condemning the theses, forbade their author to be in any way molested, and when some of his enemies revived these accusations on the death of Innocent, his successor, Alexander VI., appointed a commission, which declared his innocence of the charge of heresy. He next appeared at Florence, the most brilliant of all the brilliant throng that was gathered in the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and was admitted to the closest friendship of that prince, and his favourite scholars Ficinus and Politian. Young, gifted in mind and person, and possessed of all the fairy favours of rank, wealth, and an honourable fame, Picus of Mirandola yielded at first to the fascinations of the world, which perhaps never assumed a more bewitching guise than in the court of the Medici. His ardent poetic temperament was sensitively alive to the seductions of pleasure, when pleasure came hand in hand with all that was graceful in art and polished in literature. But a few years of such life sufficed to withdraw the veil from his eyes; the pursuit after worldly honours and delights seemed after all, to use his own words, but a child’s chase after painted soap-bubbles; and the day came when, flinging all his lighter poetry into the flames, he prostrated before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, and vowed to dedicate the remainder of his life to the service of God alone. From that time he became as remarkable for his admirable virtues, as he had been before for his learning; his charities to the poor were dispensed on a princely scale, and so great a horror did he conceive for the vain glory into which he had been once betrayed, that he only allowed his writings to appear under the name of some other author. He refused every solicitation to engage in public disputations, and spent the remainder of his days in mingled prayer and study, to which latter exercise, says Paul Cortese, he generally devoted twelve hours a day.

It is remarkable that Picus of Mirandola, though so thoroughly imbued with the literary tastes of the Renaissance, was very far from sharing in that contempt for the elder Christian schoolmen, in which the scholars of the fifteenth century commonly indulged. When Hermolaus Barbarus, in one of his letters, gave vent to his sentiments of scorn for men who could write such bad Latin, Picus replied in an epistle, which Hallam quotes as affording a favourable example of the ease and elegance of his own style, and in which he puts a very good defence in the mouth of those despised barbarians; and Hermolaus had nothing better to say in return than that they would certainly have disowned their advocate for defending them in such classical language.