In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Volume 1: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought [Course Book ed.] 9781400859412

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
PART I. An Anatomy of Florentine Civic Humanism
One. The Background of the Early Florentine Renaissance
Two. New Historical and Psychological Ways of Thinking: From Petrarch to Brum and Machiavelli
Three. The Changed Perspective of the Past in Bruni's Histories of the Florentine People
Four. Bruni's Histories as an Expression of Modern Thought
Five. The Memory of Cicero's Roman Civic Spirit in the Medieval Centuries and in the Florentine Renaissance
Six. The Florentine Revival of the Philosophy of the Active Political Life
Seven. Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Petrarch
Eight. Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Florence
Nine. Civic Wealth and the New Values of the Renaissance: The Spirit of the Quattrocento
Ten. Leon Battista Alberti as an Heir and Critic of Florentine Civic Humanism
Index of Names

Citation preview

IN SEARCH CIVIC

OF

FLORENTINE

HUMANISM

In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism ESSAYS

ON

THE TRANSITION MEDIEVAL MODERN

FROM

TO

THOUGHT

HANS B A R O N

V O L U M E

PRINCETON

I

UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON.

NEW

PRESS

J E R S E Y

C o p y r i g h t © 1988 by P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press P u b l i s h e d by P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, 41 W i l l i a m Street, Princeton, N e w Jersey 08540 In the U n i t e d K i n g d o m . P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, Guildford, Surrey ALL

RIGHTS

RESERVED

L I B R A R Y OF C O N G R E S S C A T A L O M N G - I N - P U B L C A T I O N

DATA

Baron, Hans, 1900In search o f F l o r e n t i n e c i v i c h u m a n i s m . Includes i n d e x e s 1.

Humanism—Italy—Florence—History

2 F l o r e n c e ( I t a l y ) — P o l i t i c s and g o v e r n m e n t — T o

1421.

3 F l o r e n c e ( I t a l y ) — P o l i t i c s and g o v e r n m e n t — 1 4 2 1 - 1 7 3 7 4 R e n a i s s a n c e — I t a l y — F l o r e n c e . 5. C i t y states 6

Political p a r t i c i p a t i o n — I t a l y — F l o r e n c e . I. T i t l e

D G 7 3 7 5 5 - B 3 5 1988

9 4 5 ' 51

88-2328

ISBN 0 - 6 9 1 - 0 5 5 1 2 - 2 (alk p a p e r v

1)

ISBN 0 - 6 9 1 - 0 5 5 1 3 - 0 (alk. p a p e r : v 2) P u b l i c a t i o n o f this b o o k has been aided by a grant f r o m T h e A n d r e w W. M e l l o n F o u n d a t i o n T h i s b o o k has been c o m p o s e d in L m o t r o t i B e m b o C l o t h b o u n d editions o f P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press b o o k s are printed 011 a c i d - f r e e paper, and b i n d i n g materials are c h o s e n f o r strength and d u r a b i l i t y . P a p e r b a c k s , a l t h o u g h s a t i s f a c t o r y f o r p e r s o n a l collections, are not usually suitable f o r l i b r a r y r e b i n d m g Printed 111 the U n i t e d States o f A m e r i c a by P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y Press, Princeton, N e w Jersey

PRINCETOH UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

PAIR>

32 01 009786193

To Renate and Marcel Franciscono,

my indispensable helpers

PREFACE

F O R M A N Y Y E A R S I have devoted part of my time to preparing a book on Florentine civic Humanism which would differ in aim from The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance of 1955 and 1966. The Crisis was an attempt to understand the Florentine spirit during the first decades of the fifteenth century by ex­ amining the reactions of the citizens of the republic to its grav­ est crisis: the threat it faced from the long, victorious expan­ sion through the Italian peninsula of the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples. To fully grasp the moral, social, and politico-historical ideas that motivated Florentine humanists, one must use another approach as well. The originality and intellectual power of the pioneering period after 1400 become more visible when we investigate a larger portion of the Flor­ entine development, confronting early Quattrocento thought with that of the Trecento, Petrarch's age, on the one hand and of the Cinquecento, Machiavelli's age, on the other. Up to a point, of course, scholars have always done this; the Crisis often raises the question how a specific idea or value accepted in the early Quattrocento appeared to citizens or writers a cen­ tury before or would appear a century later. What I have in mind is something more systematic, however: an examination of selected Florentine conceptions and attitudes, followed up in essays tracing either their vicissitudes from the age of Pe­ trarch to that of Machiavelli or their impact on later times. This approach has the benefit of putting the concept of the early Florentine Renaissance presented here on a broader and, therefore, more secure foundation, and also, incidentally, of sharpening our perspective of the ages of Petrarch and Machiavelli. These are the goals I set myself in composing the present collection of published and unpublished essays on Florentine thought. A disadvantage of this method is that it necessitates repeated returns to the Trecento, or even earlier periods, after VLL

PREFACE

we have pursued other problems down the road to the Quat­ trocento and Machiavelh's time. It can be highly instructive, however, to revisit an already familiar terrain with related yet different questions in mind. I have, accordingly, sometimes used the same quotations in more than one essay. In such cases. I have done my best to demonstrate that the cited sources reveal new meanings when the perspective changes. To alert the reader to these recurrences. I have, whenever fea­ sible. referred to parallel discussions elsewhere in the book. The eighteen essays stem from widely diverse periods of my life, but most of the early ones were reworked and ex­ panded later. E.xcept for the first two. which have been left essentially as they were m order to show the point from which 1 started out. those from the 1930s were revised, rewritten, a n d a u g m e n t e d m t h e 1960s a n d e a r l y i9~os. after t h e Crisis was completed and I was at leisure to work on my second Florentine project. Each essay is preceded by a note on the time or times of its composition, and. where appropriate, its translation from German or Italian. A special word ot explanation is needed about the first es­ say. which serves as an introduction to my analvses of Flor­ entine Humanism. Unlike most of the following essays, it does not trace a gradual development or sudden mutation of motifs and concepts, but rather presents a synthetic sketch of Florentine life and thought in the early Quattrocento, such as I had in mind when I embarked upon the more detailed in­ quiries. However incomplete or slanted parts of that youthful survey may appear today, its inclusion, after some biblio­ graphical updating in the notes, seems to me justified because it attords an overview of many of the themes and materials at my disposal in the 1930s. The reader had best be familiar with them at the start. I have added a tew historiographical and autobiographical commentaries at the end that should provide helpful back­ ground for the approach to civic Humanism used here and in the Crisis. The most important of these is an essay on BurckVlll

PREFACE

hardt, which is intended not only to comment on my closc ties to him but also to present an incipient critique of the Burckhardtian picture. Cambridge, Massachusetts May 1986

Η. B.

CONTENTS

VOLUME I I.

AN ANATOMY OF FLORENTINE CIVIC HUMANISM

One The Background of the Early Florentine Renaissance Two New Historical and Psychological Ways of Thinking: From Petrarch to Brum and Machiavelli

3

24

Three The Changed Perspective of the Past in Bruni's Histories of the Florentine People

43

Four Bruni's Histories as an Expression of Modern Thought

68

Five The Memory of Cicero's Roman Civic Spirit in the Medieval Centuries and in the Florentine Renaissance

94

Six The Florentine Revival of the Philosophy of the Active Political Life

134

Seven Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Petrarch

158

Eight Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Florence

191

Nine Civic Wealth and the New Values of the Renaissance: The Spirit of the Quattrocento Ten Leon Battista Alberti as an Heir and Critic of Florentine Civic Humanism Index of Names

226

258 289

Xl

CONTENTS VOLUME Il II. THE HISTORICAL SETTING AND INFLUENCE OF FLORENTINE HUMANISM

Eleven Fifteenth-Century Civilization North of the Alps and the Italian Quattrocento: Contrast and Confluence Twelve A Sociological Interpretation of the Early Florentine Renaissance

3 40

Thirteen The Humanistic Revaluation of the 1 'ita Activa in Italy and North of the Alps

55

Fourteen The Querelle of the Ancients and the Moderns as a Problem for Present Renaissance Scholarship

72

Fifteen Machiavelli the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince

101

III. HISTORIOGRAPH ICAL AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMMENTARIES

Sixteen The Limits of the Notion of "Renaissance Individualism": Burckhardt After a Century (i960)

155

Seventeen The Course of Mv Studies in Florentine Humanism (1965)

182

Eighteen A Defense of the View of the Quattrocento First Offered in The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (1970) Index of Names

194 213

Xll

PART I

An Anatomy of Florentine Civic Humanism

O N E

The Background of the Early Florentine Renaissance* I

O

U R V I E W S of the Italian Renaissance are changing. The

old conception of the fifteenth century was that of an age of unparalleled aristocratic patronage to which Renaissance Humanism and the new art owed their existence. Indeed, the early Renaissance was called the age of the Medici, after the Florentine family which contributed most to the en­ couragement of art and letters. The truth is that Humanism and Renaissance art had flour­ ished in Florence before the patronage of the Medici began; they were creations of pre-Medici Florence. Not only did they owe much more to the Middle Ages than scholars realized half a century ago but they bore the impress of a time when Flor­ ence had not yet become a Renaissance principality but was still a free city-state. What the Medici did for literature and art from the second half of the fifteenth century onward will never be forgotten. But w 7 e cannot maintain that Humanism was the culture of an age in which the political life of the Ital­ ian city-states was already at such low ebb that only the strong individual (the tyrant, the great artist, or the famous scholar) was esteemed. Actually, this was characteristic of Humanism in an advanced stage. Whoever wishes to understand its his­ tory as a whole must also study it in its youth, when Florence was still a free republic whose citizens were eager to absorb * For the nature and intent of this introductory essay, see the preface above, ρ

viu The essay was published under the title "The Historical Background

of the Florentine Renaissance," without most of the notes, m Hntory, n.s , vol

22 (1938). It also appeared in an Italian translation, with more notes, as

"Lo Sfondo Storico del Rinascimento Fiorentino," in vol (1938)

1 of Lii Rmasata

The text reprinted here is that published in History, with numerous

stylistic changes and additional notes

I. A N A N A T O M Y

classical ideas about the state, society, and morals because they found a model for their own lives in the civic life of ancicnt Athens and R o m e . T h e contrast between the first and second halves of the f i f teenth century can easily be perceived from the history of Florentine art. Individualism, so characteristic of the art of the Renaissance, had triumphed ever since the beginning of the century. B u t in the days of Donatello and Brunelleschi, the new art, steeped in the spirit ot individualism, was for the most part not yet in the service o f private patrons. T h e most commanding palaces of the Florentine Renaissance, erected by wealthy families as imperishable monuments to their own greatness, were not built, as we k n o w today, until a much later time, when a principate of the Medici was already established. T h e new Medici palace (now known as the Palazzo Riccardi) was not constructed until 1444, ten years after C o s i m o had risen to power. T h e palaces of the Rucellai, Pitti, Pazzi (now Quaratesi), and Strozzi followed even later.' A t the beginning of the fifteenth century architects and sculptors had still been working mainly in the service of the commune and the great guilds. T h e entire center of the city, between the cathedral and the Piazza Signoria, acquired at that time the impressive appearance it has retained to the present. From 1 3 7 6 onward, the Loggia dei Signori (later called the Loggia dei Lanzi) provided a dignified background for the government (the "Signori") on public occasions. A generation later the bare walls of the little church of O r San Michele were gradually covered with their famous statues of saints, each the gift of one of the fourteen great guilds. A m o n g them is the youthful, warlike figure of Donatello's Saint George (1416), whose feet are planted firmly on this earth like a very symbol 1

A .

W a r b u r g , " D c r B a u b c g i n n des P a l a z z o M e d i c i , " in vol

melte Sclinften

( L e i p z i g . iy_U). l 6 s t - . 366

E r b a u u n g 1 4 5 8 - 1 4 6 6 , " mjaluhuch iioff

H

dcr Picussischeit

F o r the P a l a z z o P a z z i - Q u a r a t e s i , see H

Kunstuimnhmgcn

( 1 9 1 4 ) . 331".

4

GCMIH-

Seme

51 ( 1 9 3 0 ) .

W i l l i c h . " D i e B a u k u n s t dcr

R e n a i s s a n c e in Italien bis z u m T o d e M i c h e l a n g e l o s , " in vol Kimstunsscnsihjfl

1 of

B u s s e . " D e r Pitti-Palast

1 of HJIULNC SiJJhJuttJ-'-'unc

Meinecke

und - u n

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

Analyse des Mcnschcn," in Dilthey's words) was applied to history and politics prior to Machiavelli has not been explored in any detail. Even the earliest phase of Humanism, however, yields rel­ evant information. Not only do we find Petrarch using the concept and word virtu (or the Latin, virtus) in a sense similar to Machiavelli's, but like him Petrarch had already combined it with the idea of psychological necessita: coercion exerted by the state or by the relations between states can engender greater virtu in a nation. Petrarch, in fact, had already asked himself the question Machiavelli later posed in a more mature form: Does not a people cease to flourish when the removal of external danger minimizes its political and military virtu? Does not a people that no longer has enemies and has become self-satisfied face moral ruin? When, in Petrarch's view, Genoa became excessively belli­ cose in 1352, after a Genoese victory over a Venetian fleet in the Bosporus, he pointed warningly in a letter to the example of the ancient Respublica Romatta, which had tried to secure an untroubled existence for itself by destroying its historic adver­ sary, Carthage, and thereby sapped its own strength. For a healthy military balance, Petrarch insisted, is necessary among powerful states. "Like corpulent bodies that look de­ ceptively healthy, great and peaceful cities may be riddled with hidden disease. . . . Wars arc often salutary for great na­ tions, just as is exercise for obese bodies; and just as the body is made heavy and sick by excessive indolence, so is a city that lives too tranquilly. Such a life allows fluids to accumulate in the body, and in a nation it produces rivalries, discordant spir­ its, and clashing emotions. Moderate activity is the friend of good health; pleasant idleness prepares the way for disease. The virtus Romana would never have been destroyed if Car­ thage had been left standing. Once that burden of fear was lifted from the shoulders of the Romans, the way lay open for foreign vices and civil wars. The end of one great affliction was thus the beginning of an even greater onc."- "Solct cquidcni ut exterior magnorum corporuni samtas, sic pax magna-

I. A N A N A T O M Y

In another letter (Epistola Fam. X X I I 14), probably written about eight years later under the influence o f Sallust's remark that fortune changes along with mores and that domination passes f r o m the less to the m o r e suited, Petrarch depictcd the perpetual shifting o f political virtus f r o m one people to another. Is it surprising, he asked, that ingenia, virtus, and nomina changed their location; that Macedonia, Carthage, and R o m e rose to p o w e r each in its turn and sank again? When a people is satiated with prosperity it begins to fall back on its reputation. Indolence, the g o o d life, and the enjoyment o f luxury, w h i c h conquer armies and unnerve citizens, become w i d e spread. T h e n another people, inured to danger and hardship, disdainful o f pleasure, energetic and persevering, rises to the top. H i s t o r y has s h o w n the only w a y to escape such change and degeneration. T h e greatness o f R o m e was upheld f o r m a n y generations by the virile martial spirit—the prisca ilia Romatia militia masculorum militum—alive in the days o f Scipio and o f Metellus, by simplicity, discipline, and the contempt f o r soft living. T h o s e times gave Petrarch a standard f o r denouncing both the misery produced by the mercenary system and the general degeneration o f modern Italy—the same der u m u r b i u m m o r b i s abundare latcntibus

S e p c ut g r a v i b u s c o r p o r i b u s

.

e x e r c i t i a , sic m a g m s p o p u l i s m e d i c i n a h a bclla s u n t , et sicut q u i e s i m m o d i c a c o r p u s g r a v a t a t q u e i n f i c i t , sic u r b e m l i n m o d e r a t a t r a n q u i l l i t a s , h e c et in c o r p o r e v a r i o s h u m o r e s et m p o p u l o s i m u l t a t e s varias ac d i s c o r d e s a m n i o s g i g n i t atTectusquc c o n t r a r i o s , a g i t a t i o t e m p e r a t a s a m t a t i s arnica est. leta q u i e s m a l e v a h t u d i m c a u s a s p r e b e t . N u n q u a m r o m a n a v i r t u s p e r u s s e t si m c o h n m s C a r t h a g o m a n s i s s e t ; llle t e r r o r c e r v i c i b u s a m o t u s , p e r c g r i m s Vitus et bellis c i v i h bus v i a m fecit, m a g m q u e laboris finis maioris lmtium f u i t " (Petrarch, lae Fatmltaivs. to Hp

Fain

ed. R o s s i , vol

3, p p

i 2 i ( , Hp Fain

xiv

117-iy])

Fpislo-

According

x n 2 (7). the i n s p i r a t i o n tor the C a r t h a g e s t a t e m e n t c a m e f r o m

F l o r a s ' d e s c r i p t i o n o f S c i p i o ' s o p p o s i t i o n to C a t o ' s d e m a n d that C a r t h a g e s h o u l d be c o m p l e t e l y d e s t r o y e d , " n o , m e t u a b l a t o e n u i l a e u r b i s . l u x u r i a r i f e hcitas n o s t r e u r b i s i n c i p e r c t , " is the a r g u m e n t g i v e n In F l o r a s ' S c i p i o . T h e r e is a l s o a r e f e r e n c e 111 P e t r a r c h ' s D e O f i o Religiose

to the senirnas

that R o m e

e x p e c t c d f r o m the e l i m i n a t i o n o f C a r t h a g e a n d to the d e b i l i t v (signifies) R o m a n s that a c t u a l l y r e s u l t e d ( O p e r a | B a s e l , e d i t i o n ( V a t i c a n C i t y , i y s 8 J , 20)

26

o f the

1 5 S 1 1 . 3 0 1 : n o w 111 R o t o n d i ' s

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

nunciation that was to pervade Machiavelli's writings several generations later. The question whether coercion or "necessity" could create military strength, another of Machiavelli's central themes, was taken up by Petrarch's school, which after his death in­ cluded Florentine citizens who dreamed, long before Machiavelli, of replacing their foreign mercenaries with a native cit­ izen army. In Matteo Palmieri's Vita Civile.' the idea that iiecessita produces military virtu is presented entirely in the Machiavellian sense. Palmieri's Greek literary model, Aris­ totle, had regarded the daring in battle which is owed to pas­ sion, coercion, or blindness to danger, as a flawed virtue. Ac­ cording to Aristotle, a brave man "ought to be brave not because he is coerced but because bravery is beautiful." 4 In contrast, the Quattrocento Florentine Palmieri was keenly aware that coercion could be a spur to brave deeds that other­ wise would not be undertaken, a "great help to those imper­ fect people with whom one commonly lives." "For fear of dis­ honor, risks are taken in battle by a man who will not hold his ground because it is the right thing to do. Because he sees cowards scorned and brave men rewarded and honored, he stands firm so as not to be considered cowardly and base." Besides this psychological incentive, Palmieri says, there is the brutal iiecessita of battle, which leaves only the choice of dying or fighting bravely. With evident satisfaction he translated into the Florentine vernacular the words in which, according to Sallust, Catilina had once told his comrades per tale necessita —in a desperate situation on the battlefield—that for them there was only victory or death. Machiavelh was later to react with similar delight when he read in Livy the cry of a leader of the Volsci to his men, who had been surrounded by the enemy: Follow me, necessitas will make you victors!* • For the date of the I 'ita Civile-—the 1430s—see Essay Six. note 1 3 4

Αεί δ'οΰ δι'άνάγκην άνδρείον είναι, άλλ' οτι καλόν (Aristoteles. Ulh

S i c 111.8; B e k k e r , c h . 11, p

ιιιό)

jd

Palmieri's difference from Aristotle will

be discussed in m o r e detail in Essax Six. i >51f • Matteo Pahmeri. ΓιM O n I e (autograph). Firetize Bihl

Naz

cod

II. IV.

I

AN ANATOMY

How could anyone tracing the rise and fall of virtu to natural causes and believing that culture and political power follow a psychologically conditioned cycle also retain the medieval be­ lief in the eternal Roman Empire, which would endure forever according to divine plan and, in the role of judge, finally end the clash of nations? Yet Petrarch still held these conflicting notions. It is true that unlike Dante he understood the reluc­ tance of other nations to submit to the Roman Empire and expressly stated that he no longer condemned it as a foolish and sinful rebellion against God's will; 6 and at least in his Africa, the epic of his youth, he showed himself to be unde­ ceived by the medieval assumption that the German Holy Ro­ man Empire was the same political institution that the Roman people had founded in the age of the Scipios. Nonetheless, Petrarch did not doubt that the ancient Roman world, whose literature and art seemed to be reviving after centuries of ob­ livion, could be brought back to political life as well. Like all the humanists of the Trecento, he was a political as well as a cultural classicist, whose dream of a Roman revival included the revival of its empire. What began to change with Petrarch was the medieval Christian idea of eternal holy Rome, which was giving way to the idea of Roma Actema found in the clas­ sical authors. In the final analysis, he was scarcely closer than writers of the preceding ages to gaining the historical insight that nothing of the past simply returns and that every state and people is bound to reflect its own time. In fact, between Pe­ trarch's belief in the resurgence of Rome's everlasting empire and Machiavelli's historical conception, which ignores every­ thing but the naturally conditioned rise and fall of peoples and states, there stretches almost the entire distance dividing the medieval trust in the permanence or rcnovatio of Rome from historical thinking in the modern sense. Xi Iol 32vf , now edizione critica bv Gmo Bclloni (Florence. 1982), y^ff O n Machiavelh, Discorsi 111 12, cf Memccke. Iitcc der Stjiitsmson, 47 '· Petrarch, Hpistohe S m c Xomme. ed Pnir. Hp i \ . p 174. to be compared with Dante. ΜοιιοηΊιια H 1

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

II A decisive break with medieval thinking did not occur until the generation that saw the art of Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Masaccio. Now, a fresh, less dualistic view of man was elab­ orated by humanists, and it became the basis for a new psy­ chology, which was eventually to leave its mark on historiog­ raphy and historical imagination. Writers and educators began to acknowledge that ideas and ideals are unalterably rooted in natural drives, emotions, and passions. Humanists took pleas­ ure in discovering a bond between lofty virtues and earthbound humanitas and rejected any ethical theory that might oblige them to suppress passion for the sake of spiritual isola­ tion. Strong emotional impulses and a thirst for fame and power were discovered to be among the indispensable moti­ vations of great achievement in politics and culture. After a long stay in Florence, Pier Paolo Vergcrio, in his De Itigenuis Moribus et Liberalibus Studiis Adulescentiae of 1402, 7 made the first attempt to formulate a psychology of adoles­ cence that would allow room in pedagogy and moral teach­ ings for youthful desires and that excess of "heat and blood" which makes the adolescent break all barriers and which is the source of his achievements and mistakes, of his elan and ide­ alism as well as his arrogance and lack of moderation. Without ambition and the desire for fame—the emotions that urge the mind on to greatness—no education, Vergerio insisted, would have the power to fire the youthful mind and raise it beyond sensual desire and a materialistic outlook on life. A frank defense of anger, that strong emotion which the Stoic orientation of Trecento humanists had unreservedly condemned as an impediment to reason, is common in hu­ manistic discussions after 1400. How could devotion and bravery be possible in the active life without the welling up of justifiable wrath, asked Leonardo Brum during the 1420s in an argument against the doctrinaire rationalism he claimed to be at the core not only of Trecento philosophy but of all Stoic " F o r t h e d a t e , s e e Crisis, 2 d e d . , 4 9 4

I. A N A N A T O M Y

and ascctic teaching. Woe to him, B r u n i exclaimed, w h o " n e i ther feels pain nor starts up in anger when his homeland, parents, or children . . . are humiliated." In defiance o f the Stoic glorification o f the rational, he insisted that "excitement and violent emotion are sometimes useful and certainly appropriate."" M a n y o f the Florentine citizen-humanists agreed. M a t teo Palmieri observed that a g o o d part o f a fighter's courage comes f r o m violent anger, and as late as the 1480s C r i s t o f o r o Landino w r o t e that nature puts the emotion o f anger into the soul o f brave men not in order to shut out the light o f reason but to serve the g r o w t h o f bravery, j u s t as the grindstone serves the blade in need o f honing. 9 A provocative and widely shared discovery o f the first Quattroccnto decades was that no moral strength or human greatness can develop without the help o f passion. A h u m a n istic chancery official at the Curia, Francesco da Fiano, w h o lived in R o m e at the beginning o f the century, is o f interest to us in this connection because he had the benefit o f friendly contacts with m a n y humanists o f the rising y o u n g e r generation, a m o n g them the Florentine B r u n i . ' ° In his f e w surviving w o r k s , Francesco da Fiano s h o w s that he k n e w h o w to make g o o d use o f the n e w p s y c h o l o g y in defending or criticizing the poets and writers o f the past. T h i s curial humanist dared to suggest that although the C h u r c h Fathers had thought differently and Augustine in his City of God had condemned man's desire f o r w o r l d l y glory as a vice and sin, " w e are all dragged toward the desire f o r glory by hooks, so to speak, f i r m l y embedded in our h u m a n i t y " (quia omnes in cupiditatem k

" I u v a n t e n i m i n t e r d u n i et certe decent s t i m u l i q u i d e m et m o t u s a n i n n v e -

hementiores sophische

." ( H . B a r o n , e d . , Leonardo

Sclmften,

* P a l m i e r i , I'tta Civile

dedicatory copy, Bibl

See lutcirogatio, quo tempore

Scliriften,

Corsimana ( R o m e ) cod.

78; n o w ed. M a r i a T e r e s a Liaci ( F l o r e n c e , 1 9 7 0 ) , 108

p a r i s o n to a g r i n d s t o n e , see C i c e r o Acad. delicet

Hitinanisiisch-philo-

( a u t o g r a p h ) , f o l . 3 3 , e d i z i o n e c n t i c a , 75!" C r i s t o f o r o

L a n d i n o , De I 'era Sobihtate, 433, fol

Brum Aretino,

34).

ad Franciscum fuerit

Ovidnn

Prior.

de Fiano,

per Leon

, in Brum,

179.

30

F o r the c o m -

11.135. AreUnmn

traiisnuna,

vi-

Hitniamstucli-philoiophische

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

glorie quodam, ut sic dixeritn, humanitatis unco pertrahimur)\ God and nature have themselves given us our passions and "what­ ever else is human." Even the Church Fathers would not have written their great works "if they had not been fired by ardent longing for praise and glory among men" and "if passionate love for a writer's fame had not cajoled them into it." No Pompey or Marius would have rushed victoriously through vast lands, no Hannibal would have scaled the steep Alps, scarcely accessible even to the bird's flight, if these labors had "not been sweet to their glory-seeking hearts.""

Ill At this point in the evolution of Renaissance thought, the citystate of Florence assumed a unique role. Florentine citizens, who were accustomed to seeing an intimate connection be­ tween the literary and artistic rise of their city on the one hand and its political and economic growth on the other, began to speculate about the psychological forces propelling the histor­ ical development of the Florentine people and about the de­ pendence of Florentine culture on the changing vitality of the body politic. In 1436 Leonardo Bruni, in his widely read bi­ ographies of Dante and Petrarch, pointed out for the first time, and with remarkable persuasiveness, the correlation ex­ isting between political and cultural conditions in the various stages of Rome's development. Both the Respublica Romana and Roman literature, Bruni argued, were at their height in the time of Cicero, and it was true later as well that "literature and the study of the Latin language developed in parallel with the vicissitudes of the Roman state." For "when the Roman " Francesco d a Fiano, Contra oblocutores ct detractores poetarum, C o d . Vat O t t o b o n . lat. 1438, fol. I44f; n o w e d . by I g i n o T a u , " c o n appendice di d o c u m e n t i biografici" ( R o m e , Edizioni d i Storia e Letteratura 1 1964), 76(. W r i t ­ ten b e f o r e O c t o b e r 1404, because the recipient o f t h e dedication, called C a r dmalis B o n o m e n s i s , is t h e later Innocent VII, elected 17 O c t o b e r , consecrated 11 November 1404

Novati's notation in vol. 4 of EpisloUmo di Cohiccw Salu-

laii, 171, w h i c h w o u l d s u g g e s t 1405-1406, is t h u s deceptive

I

AN ANATOMY

people lost their freedom under the rule of the emperors, . . . their talent for scholarship and literary creativity came to an end, together with the flowering of the Roman state." So long as the state was in decline no true culture could flourish in It­ aly. Only after political freedom was regained by the expul­ sion of the Lombards did the Italian communes begin "to rise again politically and bring back life to studies," until a new age of maturity was once again reached with the appearance of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 12 Before long, the sociopolitical causation of cultural growth was extended to the fine arts as well. Their flowering came to be ascribed widely to the creative force of republican liberty. With its incorporation in some of the most important writings on Florentine Renaissance artists—Antonio Manetti's Life of Brunelleschi, the writings of Leon Battista Alberti, and later Gelli's collection of biographies of artists' 5 —this assumption was even disseminated beyond humanistic circles. Together with the theory that republican life and a thriving literature were intertwined, it became a permanent element of historical philosophy. A conviction that human nature must not be repressed lay behind all these theories. In Florence it was easily transferred from the field of psychology and pedagogy to an explanation of historical growth. Why had Florence been able to advance so proudly beyond other Italian states? Because it was politi­ cally free, answered the citizens of the last great Italian com­ mune which could boast that it had never fallen for any length of time under the rule of a tyrant or of a restricted aristocracy. There was an intimate connection, they argued, between free­ dom and creativity. When Bruni in his oration of 1428 (pat­ terned after Thucydides' Funeral Oration of Pericles) glorified liberty as the root of Florence's political and cultural great­ ness, he claimed that the source of the city's vitality and sucIJ

Brum, Htimamstisch-philosophische Schnften, 6 4 f

" S e e W . R e h m , Der Untergang Ronn 1 in abendhnd\sthen Denken ( L e i p z i g , 1930), 68 a n d Jl

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

cess was the opportunity it offered citizens to rise to high po­ sitions in public life and to make full use of their talents. "For when men are given the hope of attaining honor in the state, they take courage and raise themselves to a higher plane; if this hope is lost, they grow lazy and stagnate. Since such hope and opportunity are held out in our commonwealth, we need not be surprised that talent and diligence excel here in the highest degree."' 4 Did not, then, the same explanation apply to Florence's pri­ macy in the arts and humanistic studies? Whenever man breaks the chains of tradition, Palmieri explained; whenever he has the courage not to bind himself, as did men in most centuries and as do the artisans in the guilds, who follow the lead of previous generations; whenever he has the will to ad­ vance freely and steadily and make new discoveries, golden ages of culture arise. This happened in Antiquity and was be­ ginning to happen again in Florence. Before the Florentine artist Giotto, painting was dead (la pittura morta), because men were satisfied with what their fathers had done and made no attempt to improve art. Art reached a highpoint after Giotto, and so did literature and the liberal arts (Icttere e Iiberali studi). For eight hundred years, said Palmieri, they were sterile and almost forgotten, until "our Leonardo Bruni" reestablished humanistic studies. "He who has been given a talent should therefore thank God for having been born in this period, when the noble arts of the mind [I'eccellenti arti d'ingegiio] are in greater flower than they have been for a thousand years." 1 s Such is the Florentines' evaluation of their own age. The word 14

"Atque haec honorum adipiscendorum facultas potestasque libero po-

p u l o , h a e c a s s e q u e n d i p r o p o s i t a m i r a b i l e q u a n t u m valet a d m g e n i a c i v i u m excitanda. Ostensa emm honoris spe, erigunt sese homines atque attollunt; p r a e c l u s a v e r o i n e r t e s d e s i d u n t ; u t i n c i v i t a t c n o s t r a c u m sit e a s p e s f a c u l t a s q u e p r o p o s i t a , m i n i m e sit a d m i r a n d u m e t i n g e n i a e t m d u s t r i a m p l u r i m u m e m i n e r e " (Oratio in Fuiiere Jolmiiins Stroz:ae, m Stephanus Baluzius, Miscellanea, ed

M a n s i , v o l . 4 [ L u c c a , 1764], j f . ) T h i s political c r e e d o f B r u m ' s w a s a l ­

r e a d y r e f e r r e d t o i n E s s a y O n e , n o t e 5. " P a l m i e r i , Vila Civile ( a u t o g r a p h ) , f o l 1 7 - 1 8 ; e d i z i o n e critica (1982), 44f.

1 AN ANATOMY

"Renaissance" ( rinascere I'arti pcrduti) appears here for the first time with the historical meaning we still attach to it.

IV This new conception of freedom and its effect on human vi­ tality and creativity, which gave Florentines a clearer under­ standing of their own time, proved equally effective as a key to the past. Had not freedom and active citizenship been at the root of what was great in Antiquity, just as they were in the present? When he tried to explain Rome's triumph over other ancient states, Petrarch had eventually fallen back on the me­ dieval belief that the imperial Roman monarchy was loftier than any mere product of human action. It had seemed to him that the transcendent, God-willed Roman Empire was subject to the general causality of history only in that it would not always be at its height. Like everything human it would reach a peak and then decline, for even Roman virtus depended on the laws governing human affairs. But at the same time Rome was different. Its universal empire could never entirely disap­ pear. It would eventually have to rise again if the order im­ posed by God upon the events of history was to prevail. For Bruni in the early fifteenth century, the Roman conquest which had so long dazzled the eyes of posterity lost the aura of a suprahistorical phenomenon. For the first time Roman history was seen entirely as the work of an historical agent: the Roman people, with its rising and waning power to shape po­ litical and cultural conditions throughout the world. This new historical perception is formulated in the intro­ ductory book of Bruni's Histories of the Florentine People: "Un­ der consuls, dictators [appointed for a fixed time], and mili­ tary tribunes, the officials of a free people," the Roman Empire "in fact and in name" came mto being through the strength "of a single city-state." As a product of history, it had to decay when the energy of the people who had created it began to decline. History shows that its degeneration was

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

rooted in the transformation of the RespubIica Romana into the authoritarian imperial monarchy. Although the emperors ex­ tended the outer boundaries of the Empire, internally they de­ stroyed the civic spirit that had created it. "The decline of the Roman Empire [the declinatio Romani imperii —this expression, which finally parts with the medieval belief that the Empire is eternal, occurs here for the first time] must, therefore, have occurred at the moment when Rome forfeited her liberty and became subservient to emperors." For with the rise of auto­ cratic monarchy, the psychological climate nccessanly changed; during the centuries when the courtier replaced the Catonian champion of freedom, the courageous honesty of the age of the Scipios disappeared. Both physically and psy­ chologically, the less valuable elements of society were fa­ vored. Terrible proscriptions decimated the traditional cham­ pions of the virtus Romana. "Thus strength gradually ebbed away, and for want of citizens the sunken power of the state began to pass into the hands of foreigners.""' Later in his life, in his biographies of Dante and Petrarch, Bruni was to trace in detail this decline of Roman—and soon even Italic—elements and the advance of foreign blood to the imperial throne itself. "In the end there was almost no one left who could master Latin culture [the Iettere latine ] with any de­ gree of refinement." 1 7 That, Bruni emphasizes, was the true end of Roman history. Afterwards, its bearer, the Roman peo­ ple, no longer existed either in body or in spirit. The German empire of the Middle Ages, as well as the powerless, demor­ alized townspeople of postclassical Rome, represented some­ thing historically different, despite the fact that they contin­ ued to bear the old Roman name. When, after a thousand years, Italy finally rose to eminence again, it was not because "Itaque paulatim evanescerc vires et prolapsa maiestas mterirc caepit, ac dcficientibus civibus, a d e x t e r n o s d e f c r n " ( B r u m , Hislonac Floretititn Popuh, Lib. l, ed. Santini, Rer. Ital. S S . Ed. S . . vol. 19, pt. 3 |Bologna, 1926], 15, see also pp. 14 and 22). B r u m , Humamstiseli-plulosoplusclie Schriften, 6 5

I. AN ANATOMY

ancient Rome or her empire had revived but because of the free Italian communes, which, having been given room to ex­ pand by the expulsion of the Lombards, brought a new polit­ ical and cultural vigor to the Italian peninsula.' 8 Such was the first attempt to formulate a history of Rome and Italy in which an historical entity—the ancient Roman people—replaced Roma Aeterna. Of course, before the medie­ val belief in the suprahistorical role of Rome could finally die, the rise of the Roman state had to be viewed as a natural his­ torical phenomenon within the framework of the power bal­ ance of the ancient states; but even this final step was taken with Bruni's efforts to reconstruct the genesis of the Floren­ tine republic in Roman times. To achieve world rule, Bruni reflected in his Histories, the Respublica Romana had to draw together the strength of Italy. This centralization by force, however, also represented an irreparable loss, because it oblit­ erated all local and regional independence outside of Rome and thus destroyed the very forces the Florentines considered essential for political health and the flourishing of culture. In the early days of Italian history—as Bruni described this process—the map of Italy was covered with city-states filled with vitality. This showed itself most impressively in the cul­ tural and political flowering of Etruria, whose city-states had special significance for the Florentines because they were the first great historical creation of the Tuscan race. The rise of Rome brought with it the merciless annihilation of this mul­ tiplicity. "Just as tall trees stand in the way of young plants that spring up near them and prevent them from growing, Rome dominated its surroundings and no longer permitted the ascent of other cities in Italy. Even cities that had formerly been great lost their strength and declined under the repressive dominance of Rome. For how could any city still grow in power? Without sovereignty they could no longer enlarge their territories, or even wage war. Their officials no longer had adequate jurisdiction, for their authority was sharply re'* I b i d . , a n d B r u m ,

Hhlortae, η a n d 2 j f

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

stricted and even within its narrow limits was subordinate to that of the Roman authorities." In the same way, Rome's eco­ nomic development led to the concentration of growth in one place. "And so, by attracting every outstanding man born in Italy, Rome drained the other Italian cities of their strength."' 9 With these conclusions a new way of thinking historically, of understanding history in causal, organic terms, has under­ mined, if not yet formally attacked, the medieval idea of Roma Aeterna as an instrument of God. An indispensable prerequisite of this new, secular approach was the optimistic psychology of the early Quattrocento. As we have seen, humanists had come to recognize that a nagging ambition for distinction and a yearning for the free develop­ ment of naturally given capabilities were the forces at work in creative minds. In Brum's conception of Roman history, this psychological discovery was applied to the struggle of the city-states for independence. According to Brum, without a place in the sun, without freedom to develop their energies, without opportunity for the ambitious to enter upon signifi­ cant careers, peoples as well as individuals languish and wither, like plants striving vainly toward the sun. "It is na­ ture's gift to mortals," said Brum in his Histories, "that when a path to greatness and honor is open, men raise themselves more easily to a higher plane; when they are deprived of this hope, they grow lazy and stagnate. Thus, when rule [in Italy] passed to the Romans, and people [outside Rome] could no longer attain to public honors or occupy themselves with mat­ ters of great import, the Etruscan virtus languished, overcome much more by leisure and inaction than by the sword of the enemy." 20 "Ita [Roma] quidquid cgregium per Italiam nascebatur ad se trahens, alias civitates exhauriebat" (Brum, Hislornw, 7) -° "Est enim hoc mortahbus natura msitum. ut via ad amphtudmem h o norcsque exposita, facilius se attollant praeclusa vero, mertes desideant Tunc igitur impcrio ad Romanos traducto, c u m neque honores capessere, nequc maioribus in rebus versan liceret, etrusca virtus omnino conseiuut longe plus inerti o t i o quam hostili ferro depressa" (ibid., 13).

I. A N A N A T O M Y

V Machiavclli inherited this causal and psychological approach. As we know today, Brum's Histories served him at many points as a guide for his Istorie Florentine, and he shared (at least in its essentials) Brum's conception of the abundant vitality of Italy in pre-Roman times and the repression of this vitality by the ascendancy of Rome. The picture of Rome's role in the strug­ gle of the Italian city-states set forth by Brum must have been in Machiavelli's mind 2 1 when he concluded that history is an unending process of growth and decay, and when he formu­ lated the principle that "since all mortal things are in constant motion and cannot remain stable, they must either rise or fall." 22 Like the Florentine humanists of the early Quattro­ cento, Machiavelli held the antithesis of Dante's medieval be­ lief that "the world needs a single monarch" and that "the evil lies in the multiplicity of states"; for like Bruni he reasoned that it is precisely the multiplicity of autonomous, competing states that creates historical vitality. "Where there are many states," he wrote, "many capable men are produced; where there are few states, few are produced" and there is corre­ spondingly little virtu. 2 3 Yet Machiavelli's view of man and history did not include the entire legacy of Bruni's age. Even before Machiavelli, the optimism of the first Quattrocento generations, with their un­ questioning belief in the positive value of the unrestrained growth of man's full nature, with all its passions, had widely turned to disappointment. Just as Botticelli's spiritualized art followed upon the earthy style of Donatello, so in the days of 21

A s w a s s u g g e s t e d by P. J o a c h i m s e n , in vol. ι o f his Geschichrsaufftissuiig

and Geschichlsdueibung in Deutschland unter dem Hinfluss des Humaiiismus, 224, and E . Santim 1 in L

Brum Arelino e i suoi Hisl. Flor Popnli Lihn XII, u 8 f f ,

both published 111 1910 " Machiavelli, Diseorsi, 1 6 and 11 preface. 21

" E s t igitur nionarchia necessaria mundo. . . . Malum autem pluralitas

principatuum, unus e r g o p n n c e p s " (Dante, Monarehia, 1 10). "Conviene pertanto che, dove e assai potestadi, vi surga assai valenti uomini; dove nc e poche, pochi" (Machiavelli, Arte della Guerra, toward the end o f B o o k 11, in S. Bertelli's edition [Milan, 1961), 393)

N E W W A Y S OF T H I N K I N G

Florentine Neoplatonism a more dualistic view of human nature succeeded the early Renaissance confidence in the beneficial effect of vigorous emotions. The classic witness of this reaction is Cristoforo Landino, whose dialogues, the Camaldulensian Disputations, arrive at the reluctant conclusion that although noble spirits come to maturity only when they are driven by strong passion, that passion contains a latent danger which especially threatens the best minds. "It is easy for the man w h o has allowed higher things to enter his soul to disdain sensual pleasures. Even wealth . . . is soon held in contempt by a noble soul. But the desire for political honor, public position, and power to rule ensnares even a lofty mind, because these goals appear to have within themselves something great and outstanding. . . . Without doubt nature has so made us that we constantly long to be first in all things. . . . Yet if this natural desire is not restrained by clear reason, it drags us toward ambition and unjust power, . . . until we lose even our humanity and are changed into passion-drunk monsters." 2 4 T o describe this eternally thorny road of the soul in psychological terms was one of the tasks of Landino's work. B y explaining how passion and great aspiration drive men to great deeds, it continued the humanistic tradition; by pointing out how easily a noble impetus degenerates into selfishness, it began a trend that went beyond early Humanism. The moral i4

" F a c i l e est e n i m c o n t e m n e r e voluptates ei, qui l a m m a i o r a m e n t e c o n c e -

pit: divitiae v e r o etsi s p e c i e m m a x i m o r u m b o n o r u m a p r i n c i p i o n o b i s o s t e n dant, p o s t r e m o t a m e n ab excellenti a m m o n e g l i g u n t u r . A t v e r o h o n o r e s , m a g i s t r a t u s et i m p e r i a , q u o n i a m excellens q u o d d a m et e m i n e n s in se c o n t i nere v i d e n t u r , specie d e c o r i atque m a g n i f i c i a n i m u m etiam c x c e l s u m d e c i piunt. nibus

. . E s t e n i m natura n o b i s m d i t u m . ut s e m p e r s u p e n o r e s m rebus o m cvadere

cupiamus,

cedere

autem

aut

succumbere

turpissimum

p u t e m u s . Q u a e q u i d e m naturalis cupiditas, nisi recta ratione t e m p e r e t u r , in a m b i t i o n e m ac p o s t r e m o in t y r a n n i d e m n o s raptt, m qua multa a d v e r s u s h u m a m t a t e m crudelia, taetra n e f a n a q u e c o m m i t t i m u s et, c u m natura ipsa, nisi d e p r a v a t a f u e r i t , ad m a g n a m m i t a t e m e n g a t n o s , ad s u p e r b i a m et d o m i n a t u m o m n i a r a p i m u s . H i n c f r a u d e s , h m c caedes. hinc reliqua inmania flagitia m s u r g u n t . Q u i b u s rebus i p s a m h u m a n i t a t e m e x u t i in truculentissima c o n v e r t i m u r " ( C r i s t o f o r o L a n d i n o , Disputatwnes

Camalduleiises

Lib.

monstra Tertms

( P a n s : J e a n Petit, 1 5 1 1 ] , f o l L v f.; Peter L o h e ed [Florence, 1980), 1 5 5 I " ) .

39

1 AN A N A T O M Y

ambiguity inherent in the drive for power was fully exposed here for the first time. "What incited the Spartans and Athenians, o f a]] the Greeks, to annex a large part of Asia to their domain?" Landino asked in the Disputations. "What persuaded Hannibal to extend his grasp toward R o m e , the center of the world, after Spain and Gaul had been subdued? What drove our own [leaders in ancient Italy] Sulla, Marius, Caesar, P o m pey, Octavian, and Anthony, to such fury that they filled the world with the blood of citizens? What else but mad greed for glory? . . . Only one w h o is himself evil can call these people good. Yet is it not true that even the best members of human society, those w h o were most willing to give their lives for their state, went to their deaths with open eyes, driven not only by love of their homeland but also by a thirst for glory that made them accept death more willingly? Could anyone be naive enough to believe that the Athenian Themistocles, during the sea battle at Salamis; Epaminondas, in his triumph over the Lacedaemonians; or the Spartan Leonidas, in the heroic battle at Thermopylae, never thought of their reputation? I, at any rate, am convinced that neither Brutus . . . nor Scaevola . . . nor the Decii . . . nor the innumerable others w h o put the freedom of their homeland before their own lives considered the reputation they would leave to posterity to be uni m p o r t a n t . " " These wise but rather sad observations recall " " Q u i d a p u d G r a e c o s , S p a r t a n o s aut A t h e m e n s c s e x c i t a v i t , ut m a g n a m A s i a c p a r t e m s u o i m p c r i o a d i u n g e r e n t ? q u i d H a n m b a l i suasit, ut H i s p a n n s G a l l n s q a e subactis R o m a m o r b i s caput peteret? q u i d a p u d n o s t r o s L . S y l l a m prius ac C . M a n u m , d e i n d e luliurn C a e s a r e m C n . q u e P o m p e i u m ac p o s t r e m o O c t a v i u m et M . A n t o m u m c o f u r o r e accendit, ut civiJi s a n g u i n e cuncta r e p l e r e n t u r ? nisi m s a n a q u a e d a m f a m a e cupiditas. .

A t n e m o , m o d o ipse

m a l u s n o n sit, h u i u s c c m o d i v i r o s b o n o s d i x e n t . S e d q u i d , si o p t i m i q u o q u e in h o m i n u m societate viri ac p r o re p u b l i c a e m o r i p r o m p t i s s i m i praeter id, q u o d patriae caritate 111 m a n i f e s t i s s i m a m m o r t e m ruebant, g l o m e

quoque

cupiditate e x t r e m u m c a s u m a e q u i o r e a m m o f e r e b a n t ? Q u i s e m m sibi p e r s u adeat aut T h c m i s t o c l e m A t h e m e n s e m in navali p r o e l i o a p u d S a l a n n n a g e s t o aut E p a m i n o n d a m m ea v i c t o r i a , qua d e L a c e d a e m o n n s potitus est. aut S p a r t a n u m L c o n i d a m in T h e r m o p y l i s v i n l i t e r p u g n a n t e m nihil d e g l o r i a c o g i tasse 5 E g o e m m n e q u e B r u t u m s m g u l a n c e r t a m m e a d v e r s u s regis e x u l i s f i lium

concurrentem

neque

Scaevolam

tanta

ammi

constantia

dexteram

e x u r c n t e m n e q u e D e c i o s silos in c o n f c r t i s s i m o s liostes irruentes n e q u e m n u -

40

N E W WAYS O F T H I N K I N G

Francesco da Fiano's audacious faith in glory at the beginning of the century. From the early Quattrocento delight in the dis­ covery that strong emotions can be a spur to moral conduct, the road had led to an understanding of how egotistic tend­ encies are bound to dilute the ethical purity of political aims. This was already understood when Machiavelli began to formulate his views of history and historical change. Re­ sponding to the political conditions of his time, he, too, con­ cluded that the psychological optimism of the early Quattro­ cento was due to the naivete of writers who had failed to perceive the evil in man's psyche. This was the reason for his critical assessment of Bruni. He himself believed in an active, productive virtu only for those few great founders and rulers of states whose natural vices of greed, self-interest, and desire for power are excused because they are linked to a political mission. In Machiavelli's eyes, the large majority of men be­ long to the indolent masses and are filled with petty instincts and capable of achieving virtu only under the coercion exerted by the state and the law. 26 In the Discorsi the assumption that people do what is right only if they are driven to it by necessity is frequently repeated. In the period about 1500, it was held that great individuals alone, not ordinary men, have creative power. As Machiavelli sees it, the architect of a state is like the artist who shapes the stone; it is he who gives form to the people, the defective raw material that often resists the efforts of the leader. The focus of Machiavelli's writings, in consequence, alter­ nates between discussions of strategems to be applied by the head of a state and explorations of patterns discernible in the psychological reaction and conduct of a people. There exists, accordingly, a twofold neccssita: the coercion exerted by the activities of a prince or leader, and that exerted by the natural process of historical growth and decay. It is with this dichot­ omy in mind that Machiavelli approaches the historical past. merabiles alios, qui patriae libertatcm suae vitae praetulerunt, famam, quarn de se posteritati relictun essent, nihili unquam fecisse arbitror" (ibid [Paris. Jean Petit, 1511), fol. c x x i m f ; Peter Lohe ed., 228). 2 6 Cf. E W. Mayer, MadiiavelUs Geschuhtsauffassunf;, 4

1. AN A N A T O M Y

His interest no longer lies in the reconstruction of Italy's dis­ tinctive history of change from an age of city-state liberty to one of imperial centralization and finally, in the Middle Ages, back again to one of civic freedom and independent states. Al­ though he adopted all these elements from early-Quattro­ cento Humanism, the focus of his study is different. For Machiavelli, history is a process determined by the rules in­ herent in the uniformity of human nature, but it nevertheless offers the statesman a raw material that can be modified, even though the natural trend of change from rise to decay will eventually reassert itself. This outlook on history explains why only certain aspects of the original humanistic conception arc carried on in Machiavelli's work: the emphasis on the bond between virtu and necessita and the basic view of relations between states—in­ cluding Rome and its empire—as a struggle for survival which must be judged in terms of natural cause and effect. However, the other mark of early Quattrocento thought, the optimistic faith in the free and autonomous development of human ener­ gies—in individuals as well as in the body politic—has disap­ peared. Where Leonardo Bruni sees virtu emerging from the struggle for independence and from political liberty, Machiavelli's world is shaped by a few great individuals who alone are capable of slowing down the blind race of history through its predestined cycles. The earlier interpretation of human af­ fairs in the light of a psychology of noble passion has been followed by a systematic, scientific observation of the laws of history in the service of rulers and their politics, 27 The "separation of [Machiavelh's] virtu into original and derivative"— i.e., into the "inborn and creative" virtue of the great founders of states on the one hand, and on the other that of the masses, which is based merely "on organization, not on a gift of nature"—was first postulated by Meinecke, Idee der Staatsrason, ch. i, esp 40f. According to what I wrote in this essay in 1932, this distinction is basic for our understanding of Machiavelh's relationship to the humanistic psychology of the early Quattrocento. 1 would now say that although this is not entirely wrong, much more of early Quattrocento civic Humanism remained alive m Machiavelli See the introductory note to this essay regarding my changed understanding of him.

THREE

The Changed Perspective of the Past in Brum's Histories of the Florentine People*

T

I

H E ultimate evidence that a new way of historical thinking developed in Florence soon after 1400 is pro­ vided by Leonardo Bruni's Historiarum Florentini Popnli Libri XII. This first humanistic history of an Italian city em­ bodies the civic Humanism of early Quattrocento Florence like no other literary product of the time. The work was be­ gun in 1415. The first nine books were officially presented to the Signoria in 1429 and 1439, and at Bruni's public funeral in 1444 the civic authorities paid the deceased author the highest honor by laying the work ceremoniously on his breast.' This public recognition does not mean that the Historiae had * Essays T h r e e a n d Four, o n B r u n i ' s m o d e r n i t y as an historical thinker, were o u t l i n e d d u r i n g t h e 1930s a n d p u t i n t o the f o r m in w h i c h t h e y n o w a p p e a r at t h e C e n t e r f o r Advanced S t u d y in t h e Behavioral Sciences in S t a n ­ ford, California, w h e r e I held a fellowship in 1967-1968 B o t h essays are i n ­ tended t o a d d detail a n d precision t o t h e picture o f B r u m a d u m b r a t e d m Essay T w o . N e i t h e r T h r e e n o r F o u r has previously appeared in print. 1

It s h o u l d b e stated a t this p o i n t that 1 a m disregarding t h e question o f h o w

m a n y o f t h e ideas i n t h e Histonae Florentitn Populi o f 1415-1444 w h i c h w e are going to analyze were contained in a rudimentary form in Bruni's Laudatio Florentmae Urbis o f 1403-1404. T h e Laudatw has been widely discussed m t h e last decades, ever since it w a s discovered that this p a m p h l e t is far m o r e t h a n a m e r e p r o d u c t o f rhetoric. T h e r e is n o need t o take u p t h e p r o b l e m s connected with the Laudatio in the present book, since I have dealt with them in the Crisis a n d in t h e c h a p t e r " I m i t a t i o n , Rhetoric, a n d Q u a t t r o c e n t o T h o u g h t 111 B r u ­ m ' s Laudatio" m m y b o o k From Petrarch to Leonardo Brum (1968). A n i n f o r m ­ ative s u r v e y o f m a n y recent contributions t o Laudatio scholarship is f o u n d in H M G o l d b r u n n e r ' s " L a u d a t i o U r b i s Z u neueren U n t e r s u c h u n g e n liber d a s humanistische Stadtelob," Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bihliotheken 63 (1983): 313-28.

I

AN ANATOMY

been commissioned by the government. In contrast to the many histories of Italian cities and states later written in the pay of governments or princes, the Histories of the Florentine People was neither a work of propaganda nor a product shaped by any kind of censorship; it was the independent creation of a humanist and citizen who from his youth had dreamed of becoming the Livy of Florence. But from the moment the book appeared, its wholly original conception of history be­ came the model for Florentine thinking in the Renaissance. After the completion of the first six books in 1429, no other historical work was so generally read, acknowledged, cited, and imitated in Renaissance Florence. Every Florentine who afterwards reflected on history was significantly indebted to it. It goes without saying that the great chroniclers of the pre­ vious century, especially the three Villani—Giovanni, Matteo, and Filippo—continued to be read. But although they re­ mained an inexhaustible stimulus for the historical and epic imagination, the Historiae Florentini Populi was the model for historiographical writing well into the times of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. 2 It not only taught the humanistic form of historical presentation and initiated the criticism of medieval legends (in this respect, too, the influence of the Historiae was without parallel) but was the source of the outlook on univer­ sal history that distinguished Florence from the rest of Italy in the fifteenth century and allowed it to set the direction in Hu­ manism. This is true especially of Brum's ideas regarding the historical role of political freedom and power, and his new periodization and accentuation of the history of Rome, the Ital­ ian Middle Ages, and Florence itself. The idea of treating the history of Florence as a modern counterpart to Rome took shape in Bruni's mind under the influence of earlier chronicle writing. The concept of an ana2

A s h a s b e e n a c k n o w l e d g e d b y E d u a r d F u e t e r , Gescltichtc der tieueren His-

toriographie (Munich, i y i 1), and E n c Cochrane, Historians and Histoiio^raphy in the Italhin Renaissance (Chicago, i g S i ) , u ' h o both begin their w o r k s w i t h B r u m a n d m a k e h i s influence t h e c o r e o f t h e s u b s e q u e n t d e v e l o p m e n t o f h i s ­ toriography.

A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

loguc to Rome had been of no basic importance for humanists of the fourteenth century. Before 1400, the humanistic atti­ tude toward ancient Rome had been too closely bound with the belief, or hope, that the Urbs Aetcrna—that is, the Imperium Romanum—had not yet played out its role and that sooner or later it would experience a revival together with the return of Latin letters. Petrarch's faith in a political rebirth of Rome was dimmed for only a short while, after Cola di Rienzo's attempt to restore some aspects of the hegemony of ancient Rome had failed. At the same time, Petrarch's direct involvement in the struggles of the north Italian states as an envoy and publicist (during the 1350s) led him to view some of the modern Italian city-states as counterparts to Rome; but his thinking followed this course only as long as he was actively in touch with the contemporary politics of the Italian states. With this short­ lived exception, his prevailing sentiment was hope for a polit­ ical survival of Roma Aeterna. In other words, Bruni's work—the history of a city other than Rome—tended more in the direction of the Florentine chroniclers than of Petrarch's historical ideas; but it changed rather than continued that direction. In the introductory book of the Historiae, as a background to the subsequent history of the Florentine state, Bruni draws a brief but truly remarkable outline of the founding of Florence within the framework of the general development of Italy from the RespubUca Romana to the Imperinm Romanian. Criticism of the monarchical ab­ solutism that replaced the Roman republic in Caesar's time is perhaps the most striking feature of this background sketch, but it is merely one aspect of the story Brum tells. If republi­ can value judgments serve him as a key to the history of Italy from Antiquity onwards, it is because for him the struggle between liberty and monarchical power not only expresses a political rivalry between republic and monarchy but involves all aspects of historical life. To Bruni's way of thinking, the internal tendencies of a government correspond to its external relations. In the history of Italy as a whole, he finds a crucial antagonism between the coercive power of states bent on

I. AN ANATOMY

building empires on the one hand and the creation of political virtus and the cultural energy characteristic of smaller states on the other (in particular, the many city-states that enabled citi­ zens to participate in public affairs and thereby molded the conduct and outlook of city-state policies). This new turn of historical interest was the result of expe­ riences of the time around 1400, which saw the clash between surviving city-state liberty and the expanding despotism of the great monarchies of northern and southern Italy. In Bru­ m's judgment, as was already implied in his Laudatio Florentinae Urbis and was fully stated in the Historiae Florentini Populi, it was precisely the contest between rising great powers and smaller states, often republics, that afforded a new view of the rise and fall of ancient Rome. Of course, one has to become familiar not only with the striking prelude of the first book but with Bruni's entire history in order to place the sig­ nificance of this change in perspective. Suddenly, fundamental phenomena of interstate life that had previously been subor­ dinated to the historical theology of the "Sacrum Imperium" could be approached with sympathetic understanding and given a causal explanation. Existent assessments of Florentine historiography, it seems to me, have not yet paid enough at­ tention to these forward-looking aspects of Bruni's work, al­ though the recent intensive study of many of his technical achievements has led to growing appreciation of him as an his­ torical scholar and writer. 3 ' 1 am thinking here of E. Santini, Leonardo Brum Aretino e 1 suoi "Historiarum Florentim Populi Libri XII", reprinted from Annali delta R Scuola Normale Supenore di Pisa 22 (1910); B. L. Ullman, "Leonardo Brum and Humanistic Historiography," in his Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Rome, 1955), D. J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiogra­ phy; R Fubim, "Osservaziom sugh Historiarum Florentini Populi Libri XII di Leonardo Brum," in vol I of Sttidi dt Storia Medievak e Moderna per Ernesto Sestan (Florence, 1980), 403-48; and my Crisis of the Harly Italian Renaissance, especially the sections entitled "Republicanism versus Dante's Glorification of Caesar," "A Vindication of the Roman Republic in Leonardo Bruni's Ear-

A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

II I have already said that ancient Rome, whose rise and fall seemed comparable to the vicissitudes of some of the medieval Italian cities, had often served in prehumanistic times as a model for citizens in central and northern Italy. In 1087, a poet had commemorated a Pisan naval expedition to northern Africa in a Latin song evoking the memory of Rome's triumph over Carthage: I am going to write the history of the famous Pisans, and revive the memory of the ancient Romans: For Pisa only carries on the admirable glory which Rome once achieved by vanquishing Carthage. 4 Two centuries later, after the fall of the Hohenstaufen, when Florence began to excel in the eyes of contemporaries, an in­ scription on the new palazzo del podesta, the Bargello, referred to Florence as a "second Rome." Some feeling of this sort probably prevailed in every aspir­ ing Italian city, but in Florence the historical parallel had a broader sweep. There it went beyond mere political reminis­ cence: Florence seemed to be a modern counterpart to Rome even in the birth of its new literary culture. Fifty years after the Bargello inscription was composed, Florence possessed a divinus poeta who could bear comparison with the Roman Vir­ gil. It was then, too, that several magnificent Florentine chronicles were begun whose narratives were not remotely hcst Works," and "The Thesis of the Foundation of Florence bv Republican Rome" (2d ed., 48-64). 4

"Inclytorum Pisanorum scnpturus historiam, / antiquorum Romanorum

renovo memoriam: / nam extendit modo Pisa laudem admirabilem, / quam o l i m r e c e p i t R o m a v i n c e n d o C a r t h a g i n e m " T h e e n t i r e s o n g o f t r i u m p h is found in Fedor Schneider's Funjundzu'trnzig Lilvimschi' weltluhe Rhytlwiai V I his X l J a h r h u n d e r t ( R o m e , 1 9 2 5 ) , 3 4 - 4 2

I. AN ANATOMY

matched by those of other Italian cities; they were the forerun­ ners of Florence's later preeminence in humanistic historiog­ raphy. Giovanni Villani conceived the idea of writing his chronicle of Florence during his pilgrimage to Rome in the year of jubilee, 1300, amidst the ruins of ancient Rome. Re­ flecting on how his own city might one day lie in ruins as an­ cient Rome did now, he resolved to immortalize its deeds while it was still on the rise, just as Livy and Sallust had writ­ ten the history of Rome when it was at its peak. Several dec­ ades later, his nephew Filippo Villani initiated a kind of cul­ tural history with his collection of biographies of famous Florentines. This work was initially conceived as a separate biography of the poet Dante. To his own surprise, Filippo be­ came aware that Florence possessed not only one great poet but a whole group of living and dead poetae, including Pe­ trarch, Boccaccio, Zanobi da Strada, and Claudianus, the last classical poet, who in the fourteenth century was considered to have been a Florentine. Rome, instead, had been able to claim only four famous poetae of Roman origin and few lead­ ing men in the ars dicendi. Filled with patriotic pride, Filippo Villani enlarged his biography of Dante, undertaking the hith­ erto unheard-of task of compiling a comprehensive presenta­ tion of the Florentine poets, to which he added characteriza­ tions of other famous Florentines as well/ Bruni's humanistic history of Florence belongs to this line of late medieval historiography. His dual contribution was a deeper understanding of ancient Italy and a more acutely de­ veloped comparison between Rome and Florence. The result was a method of discussion that has occasionally reminded Bruni's readers of Machiavelli's Discorsi sulla Prima Deca eii Tito Livio. The relationship of Bruni's work to earlier Flor­ entine city-chronicle writing and its divergence from human­ istic writings outside Florence is illustrated by the fact that as late as the fifteenth century, non-Florentine humanists still 1

T h a t i s , F i l i p p o V i l l a i n ' s Liber de cwuale Floirnliae famous at'tbus, e d .

G. C Gallctti (Florence, 1X47)

A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE

carried on Petrarch's conception of R o m e and rejected the Florentine claim that the city on the A r n o was a counterpart and heir to the ancient city. N o less a humanist than Lorenzo Valla protested vehemently against the Florentine interpretation, i n f o r m i n g the Florentines that the R o m a n people were still alive and needed no heir. " T h e R o m a n people of w h o m / speak," Bruni responded, "have long been dead and buried. T h e motley multitude which now resides in R o m e is not a sovereign people but a subservient crowd. We are indeed talking about the legacy o f a dead, not a living [people]." 6 T h e Florentine claim was eventually accepted by humanists elsewhere in Italy, even in R o m e . In his Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades—the first humanistic history of the Middle A g e s — F l a v i o Biondo, w h o was born in the States of the C h u r c h and became a R o m a n in the course of his life, developed what had been intimated by Bruni in his Historiae. Rather than taking the survival, or even revival, of eternal R o m e as his primary theme, he followed Bruni and wrote (as his title indicates) a history of the development of new centers of political life: the reappearance of numerous cities and states, especially in medieval Italy. Moreover, the idea of a rivalry with R o m e , which had been steadily developing in Florentine chronicles since the time of Giovanni Villain, involved considerably m o r e than a partisan point of v i e w that the Florentines sought to elaborate at the expense of R o m e . Behind F o r V a l l a ' a attack, see L . B a r o z z i and R

S a b b a d i m , Stndi sul Paiioniuta

e

a is found 111 Aldo Bernardo's Petrarch, Sapw, and the 'Africa' (Baltimore, 1962). 113-21

I

AN ANATOMY

inspired dream, belongs most particularly, according to Macrobius' concluding remarks, "to that group of men who both mold their lives according to the precepts of philosophy and support their commonwealths with deeds of valor." That is why, in the Soniitiiiin Scipionis, the younger Africanus "is charged with upholding the highest standards of both modes oflife." In this fashion, some of Cicero's Roman ideas were carried down to the Middle Ages among the often uncongenial reflec­ tions of a Neoplatonic writer. During the twelfth and thir­ teenth centuries, when the Scholastics were creating a power­ ful synthesis of religion and the politico-social sphere, one of the major sources of inspiration was Macrobius' political modification of the Neoplatonic flight from life.'- Finally, to­ ward the end of the Middle Ages, humanistic readers began to sense the true Ciceronian attitude behind Macrobius' com­ mentary and to free the Roman core from its Neoplatonic shell. Within the Christian sector of the late Roman world, the last heir to the Ciceronian spirit was the lonely figure of Boethius, the Roman consul and statesman at the court of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. One hundred years after Macrobius. we find an echo of Cicero's civic attitude in Boethius' philosoph­ ical work. "Although the cares of my consular office prevent me from devoting my entire attention to those studies, it seems to me a sort of public service to instruct my fellow cit­ izens in the products of reasoned investigation." Boethius wrote. "Nor shall I deserve ill of my country in this attempt. In ages long past, other cities transferred to our state the lord­ ship and sovereignty of the world; I am glad to assume the remaining task of educating our present society in the spirit ot Greek philosophy. Wherefore this is verily a part of my con­ sular duty, since it has always been a Roman habit to take - Scc H van Lieshout. "La Theorie Plotimenne de la vertu Essai sur la genese d ' u n article d e la s o m m e theologique d e Saint T h o m a s " (diss , U n i ­ versity o f Fribourg. 1926), 124ft"

IO4

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

everything in the world that is beautiful or praiseworthy and add to its lustre by imitation." By that time a profound metamorphosis of the Ciceronian heritage had taken place in the literature of the Church Fa­ thers." A transformed Cicero is found in St. Ambrose's ad­ aptation of the De Officiis for the use of the clergy. This Chris­ tian recasting of Cicero's final guide to morals and conduct is a deliberate effort to extenuate the strongly civic tenor of Cic­ ero's teachings. Written in the second half of the fourth cen­ tury, the De Officiis Ministronim (On the Duties of the Clergy), no longer gives preeminence to the political and social virtues. In direct conflict with Cicero's evaluation, sapientia-pnidentia is now made superior to all the virtues of the active life. Yet, even in this revision by a father of the Church, a number of original Ciceronian features have survived the changed times. Since Ambrose was, perhaps more than any other patristic writer, a Roman at heart, traces of Cicero's Roman patriotism and civic outlook can be detected in his guidebook for priests. One of these traces is the symbol Cicero created when he de­ fined the otiiiin of Scipio. The Ciceronian characterization of true leisure as a means of regenerating man's energy and inner strength found a response in Ambrose. It seemed kindred in spirit to the Christian teaching that solitude should increase one's usefulness to one's fellow men. Like Cicero, Ambrose contrasted an otium leading to ceaseless activity of the spirit with the despicable leisure of men "who distract their minds " Among earlier Church Fathers, Cicero had had a fuller and more direct impact, as one learns by consulting Lactantius' works of around 300. I want t o i l l u s t r a t e t h i s w i t h o n e q u o t a t i o n . " S a p i e n t i a e n i m n i s i 111 a l i q u o a c t u t u e n t quo vim suam excrceat, mams et falsa est recteque Tullius civiles viros, qui rem pubhcam gubernent, qui urbes aut novas constituant aut constitutas aequitate tueantur, qui salutem libertatemque civium vel boms legibus vel salubribus consihis vel iudicns gravibus conservent, philosophiae doctoribus p r a e f c r t " ( L a c t a n t i u s D w i n a e I n s t i t u t i o n s III 1 6 , 2). As for the above quotation from Boethius (trom his Latin translation ot In Categories AtHloteIis), the English text is that given by Edward Kennard Rand, bounders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge. Mass., 1928). 1 58, though with some modifications.

I. AN A N A T O M Y

from activity in order to indulge m idleness and recreation." But eager to surpass the pagan world. Ambrose declared that it was in fact not Scipio but Moses and the prophets who had first advocated a leisure of true activity. Even while they appeared to be alone and idle, they were listening to the voice of God and thus gaining strength to accomplish feats beyond human power. 14 Ambrose was the first of the recorded readers of the De Officiis to find inspiration for the Christian concept of active devotion to the faith in Scipio's tireless "activity" of mind in solitude. In Carolmgian times, the abbot Paschasius Radbertus gave the by then familiar Roman aphorism a place in one of the fundamental texts of medieval theology: If, Paschasius wrote in his Commentary on St. Matthew, the pagan Scipio was never less idle than when he was at leisure, because he used his otium to think about the exigencies of his iiegotia, "how much less should we, who have been subjected to heavenly discipline. grow weary m our otium of meditating on divine matters." To whom, he asked, were Scipio's words more suitable and necessary than to monks living in the uninterrupted otium of the monastery? 1 " The result was an ideal in which monastic dedication to contemplation and scholarly devotion to an industrious life of study were linked."' When we come to Petrarch. we shall find that this train of medieval thought was still relevant. As the Middle Ages advanced, however, almost all vestiges of Cicero's civic outlook on life were lost. Until the twelfth century, Cicero was usually viewed as if he himself had been a monastic scholar—a recluse who taught contempt for mar1

De Off

• Expos EpistoLw

Mm

in l ( M i g n c . Pjtuilogui

111 Mjttlhieum.

K.uohm

Aeri.

Scipio p a r a d o x m Expo*

L111 ki,

e della lorina dell' oncsia vita

I II

delta dilezume

di Dio, e del pios-

I AN A N A T O M Y

The revival of Cicero as a Roman philosopher had thus already begun by the middle of the thirteenth century, when scholastic learning reached its zenith. We have a record of the textbooks used at the time for the baccalaureate examination in the arts faculty of Paris. 26 "Moral philosophy" was divided into two sections. For the study of man's inner life and moral self-education. Aristotle's Ethics served as text. But in the area where "the human soul lives in bono aliorum." that is, in social ethics. Cicero's Dc Officiis was the prescribed guide along with practical study of the Leges et Decreta.1' The literary work of St. Thomas Aquinas reflects and builds upon this educational plan. In his Commentary on the Sentences as well as in his Summa Theologiae, the chapters dealing respectively with the importance of contemplation and of the active life cite only the Cicero of the De Officiis as champion of the nta activa, just as Judge Albertano's book had done a few decades before. Cicero's claim that institia should be placed at the head of all the virtues and that there is no excuse for disdaining a public or military career puts him m disagreement with the other authorities acknowledged by St. Thomas. But anxious to establish a gradation among competing values, Thomas, the great scholar and theologian, does not consider Cicero's lonely championship of the active life a counterweight to the traditional values. The Ciceronian challenge still has a place m the hierarchy of thirteenth-century scholastic D i s c o v e r e d b\ M . G r a b m a n n 111 a manuscript of the Aiclnro Jt Aufon.

see M

G r a b m a n n . vol 2 o f h i s Mittchltalnhc?

- ' " T h e famiharitv

dc Li Coro/nt

Gastcslcbcn

(1936),

with C i c e r o ' s writings was a)read\ impressive in the

t w e l f t h centurv A list ot authors r e c o m m e n d e d to students, and attributed to the E n g l i s h scholar A l e x a n d e r N e c k h a m ( 1 1 5 - - 1 2 1 - ) . proposed for C i c e r o Dc O f j / o i i . Tuiiiil.mjc j i i i n j , Dc Ofticus.

Disputjtioiics,

Dc Amiciti,i. Dc Scucauic,

and Dc X J I H I J Dconim

R

Dc /-,?to, A11-

R . B o l g a r . Classical

Heritage

i N e w Y o r k . 1964). i y S . r e m a r k s m reference to this list " T h e conclusion is inescapable that the contemporaries o f Abelard knew far m o r e about the classical literature than did the contemporaries o f A l c u m " O11 Dc Oflints m m e dieval u n n ersities. see also R M :193s'

Martin. 111 Raw

360

112

d' Histonc

kcch'sMstique ? 1

M E M O R Y OF C I C E R O ' S C I V I C S P I R I T

thought, but it is a subordinate one. A definitive gradation had already been achieved, Thomas decided, by Sts. Augustine and G r e g o r y the Great; by Aristotle, who conceded first place to the bios theoretikos

in his Ethics;

and by M a c r o b i u s ,

who

combined Cicero's view with Neoplatonic teachings, leaving room for a certain "measure of escape from human affairs." 2 8 The famous Ciceronian maxim from the Somnium Scipionis— nothing is more agreeable to God than the "concilia coctusque hominum iure sociati quae civitates appcllantur"—thus loses its civic significance. Its form is taken over, but its meaning is changed by the alteration of the passage to read: no sacrifice is more agreeable to G o d than the "regimen animarum"; that is, the care taken by the Church in its spiritual rule over human souls. 29

V But gradualism did not endure when the pendulum swung back to a strong enthusiasm for Antiquity, an enthusiasm comparable to that which the twelfth-century renaissance had shown for certain ancient authors. What happened to the thirteen th-century hierarchy of values when Cicero again became the object of intense interest and sympathy? In the second half of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century, the civic world of the Italian city-states found a permanent place in intellectual life, and the Roman statesman-philosopher was inCoinm

in Sent.,

ILL, dist. 35, q. 1. art. 4: Sniniim 1'heol

It is true that the situation is c o m p l i c a t e d

In Coinm

, 1 - 2 , q 6 1 , art. 5 11/ Sent , loc cit . St

T h o m a s ascribes the q u o t e d s a v i n g to G r e g o r i u s M a g n u s , Honitl

Super

H:ecli

,

x i l , but the o n l y relevant sentence f o u n d there, " N u l l u m q u i p p e o m -

m p o t e n t i D e o tale est s a c r i f i c i u m , quale est zclus a n i m a r u m " ( M i g n e , PL 76. 9 3 2 ) . d o c s n o t s h o w any direct relationship to the w o r d s o f the Somnium pionn

S11-

T h e t e r m " r e g i m e n a n i m a r u m " d o e s o c c u r , t h o u g h 111 a d i f f e r e n t c o n -

t e x t , at the b e g i n n i n g o f G r e g o r y ' s Liber Residue

Pastonihpars

1. cap

1

(My

t h a n k s g o to G i l e s C o n s t a b l e f o r this d i s c o v e r y . ) O n e w o u l d t h e r e f o r e c o n clude that w h e n T h o m a s cited G r e g o r y f r o m m e m o r y , he also r e m e m b e r e d , p e r h a p s u n c o n s c i o u s l y , the striking phrase m the S011111111111

113

Sctptoim

1

AN ANATOMY

creasingly accepted as a teacher of civic conduct, and even came to be revered. By that time the Tuscan cities had succeeded those of Lombardy as the foremost representatives of city-state freedom in Italy, since Lombardy had already fallen prey to tyranny, and there is no lack of revealing information about Tuscan civic thought. About 1300 that information still comes largely from the clergy, in particular from friars residing in urban monasteries. Among them, two Dominicans—the Florentine Remigio de' Girolami and Tolomeo of Lucca, former disciples of Aquinas and highly respected in the Tuscan city-states in Dante's day—allow us to trace in detail how devotion to the community was preached from pulpits and how it influenced contemporary writings on politics and history. The primary sourcc for these Dominicans remained the Aristotelian Ethics, which was understood better than ever before in the sur­ roundings of the Italian commune, the counterpart in so many respects of the ancient city-state. But Cicero now began to be recognized along with Aristotle as the most effective guide to civic obligations. When Tolomeo of Lucca asked why God had allowed the pagan Romans of Antiquity to build their world empire, he concluded that more than any other people they had been guided by amor patriae. Love of one's country is "the most meritorious of all virtues," he insisted, because "zeal for the common good" tends toward the same end as the divine command to love one's neighbor as oneself. Like God's commandment, therefore, the call of the patria admits of no exception. "This is why Tullius [Cicero] says in reference to the respublica, that nothing which prevents you from answer­ ing the summons of your country must be permitted to stand in your way." In the De Officiis, Tolomeo pointed out, "the respubliea is considered the most gratifying and most valuable of all human associations," because Cicero says that love of relatives and friends, and of anything else, "is encompassed by the love of one's patria."'° ' " l n d c Cbt q u o d T u l l n i s d i c i t d e r e p u b l i c a , q u o d n u l l a c a u s a i n t e r v e m r e

M E M O R Y OF C I C E R O ' S C I V I C SPIRIT

T h u s , in these urban circles Cicero's civic doctrines at last regained a profound ethical value, and an important aspect of the historical Cicero again became visible. In an a n o n y m o u s Italian biography o f Cicero, probably written not long after 1 3 0 0 , " w e can observe how much more had been learned by that time about Cicero's personality than the meager information found in Vincent de Beauvais' encyclopedia. A l t h o u g h the details o f Cicero's political career were still u n k n o w n , m this early fourteenth-century biography he is clearly a R o m a n statesman as well as an author. " E v e n though Cicero devoted himself so wholeheartedly to administrative affairs and the protection of the republic," says the anonymous admiring biographer, and even though he was such a busy lawyer "that it is almost impossible to believe human strength could suffice for all his labors, he was also filled . . . with the greatest desire to study and write. It seems a wonder that he could be so enormously active in both these spheres." This nascent awareness of Cicero the R o m a n citizen was bound to result in conflict when it encountered the existing medieval preconceptions. It was forced to the surface by the d e b e t , u n d e p r o p r i a patria d e n e g e t u r " " D e h o c a u t e m a m o r e patriae dicit T u l l i u s in lib. De ojfic

[the r e f e r e n c e is to 1 57, see n o t e 3 , a b o v e ] q u o d ' o m -

n i u m s o c i c t a t u m nulla est g r a t i o r , nulla c a r i o r . q u a m ea q u a e c u m r e p u b h c a p e r s e v e r a t . U m c u i q u e e m m n o s t r u m carl sunt p a r e n t e s , c a n sunt l i b e n , c a n sunt p r o p m q u i ac f a m i h a r e s , sed o m n i u m p r o p m q u i t a t e s patria sua charitate c o m p l e x a est.' " T h u s T o l o m e o o f L u c c a , a b o u t 1 3 0 2 , in the De Regunme ciptun (by T h o m a s A q u i n a s u p to L i b L i b . ill, ch. 4

11. ch

Prm-

4, but c o n t i n u e d by T o l o m e o ) ,

A s a c o n v e n i e n t i n t r o d u c t i o n to the c h a r a c t e r o f R e m i g i o d e '

G i r o l a m i ' s w o r k , cf. D . R . L e s m c k . 111 Speculum g i o ' s a d m i r a t i o n o f C i c e r o , see C h a r l e s T ican Philosophical

Society

" T h e Hpythoma

104 (i960)

de Vita,

Gestis,

57 ( 1 9 8 2 ) : g2gf;

D a v i s in the Proceedings

for R e m i of the

Amer-

66sf Scientie

Prestantia

Ciccroms

in the f a -

m o u s C i c e r o c o d e x in T r o v e s f r o m P e t r a r c h ' s l i b r a r y , partly p r i n t e d in P N o l h a c , Petrarquc (p

et riiumamsme,

2d ed. ( 1 9 0 7 ) . v o l

1. pp

de

227ft". D e N o l h a c

2 3 1 ) g i v e s r e a s o n s w h y the b i o g r a p h y c a n n o t h a v e been w r i t t e n by P e -

trarch h i m s e l f 111 his y o u t h b u t m u s t be the w o r k o f a w r i t e r o f the e a r l y fourteenth century

E

N o r d e n , 111 v o l

2 ot Die antike

Kinistprosa.

4th ed

( 1 9 0 9 ) . 7 3 8 f , a g r e e s w i t h these c o n c l u s i o n s and e n l a r g e s u p o n the b i o g r a p h y ' s p r o b a b l e Italian o r i g i n .

115

I

AN ANATOMY

inner struggles of Petrarch, who was heir to the outlook formed in the Italian city-states and to many older medieval traditions. Born and bred in exile, he was descended from a family of Florentine citizens, and during the first half of his humanistic career he preferred an extended sojourn in south­ ern France—in papal Avignon, where he took lower orders, and m the isolated Alpine valley of Vaucluse—to the life of a citizen in Florence. During his early years in Avignon he came in contact with both the Franciscan spiritual movement and the monastic literature of earlier generations. In him the con­ tradictions between monastic persuasions and the reviving memory of Cicero the Roman statesman attained the intensity of a battle. The struggle grew all the fiercer because, in his search for ancient authors and manuscripts, Petrarch discov­ ered a key to a deeper knowledge of Cicero's personality, a key unknown in preceding centuries: his intimate Letters to Aniens. When Petrarch made this discovery in 134$ in the cathedral library in Verona, he came face to face with the historical Cic­ ero for the first time. He saw a Roman who had given up his offices only under the compulsion of Caesar's victory, a citi­ zen who avidly followed political events from his rural retreat and, after the murder of Caesar, returned to the confusion of the civil war and to his rum. The semi-clergyman and hermit of the Vaucluse was horrified by this discovery. He wrote a letter full of accusation, as strange as it is moving, to the shade of Cicero m Hades. "Why did you involve yourself in so many useless quarrels and forsake the calm so becoming to your age, your position, and the tenor of your life?" he reproached his fallen idol. "What false splendor of glory drove you . . . to a death unworthy of a sage? . . . Oh, how much more fitting would it have been had you, philosopher that you were, grown old m rural surroundings . . . meditating upon eternal life and not upon this trifling existence here below! . . . Oh, would that you had never aspired to the consul's insignia or to triumphs!"' 2 ·- " Q u a i n b i t o t c o n t c n t i o m b u s ct p r o r s u m n i c h i l p r o f i i t u r i s s i m u l u n b u s I 16

M E M O R Y OF C I C E R O ' S C I V I C S P I R I T

However much Petrarch admired Cicero's eloquence, his precepts for a cultivated life, and his independence from d o g matism, superstition, and the errors of polytheism, Cicero's civic bent o f mind was to him nothing but an offense against the monastic values which, at least in the 1340s, Petrarch was neither willing nor able to abandon. In the humanistic works written in the solitude of the Vaucluse. he stressed the contrast between the vanity of Cicero's political passions and the fruitfulness of his all-too-brief withdrawals from politics. Cicero appears in Petrarch's Rcrwn Manorandarum Libri and even more in his De Vita Solitaria as the historic example of a citizen w h o became an involuntary witness to the superiority of solitude. Petrarch insists that almost all of Cicero's literary works were written in the solitude gloriosa of his later years. "It was solitude that caused this man's mind to unfold; moreover— this is the strange and wonderful thing—it was a solitude obnoxious to him. What, one may ask, would it not have accomplished if he had desired it? H o w much should we not long for that which brings such great benefit even to one w h o is unwilling to endure i t ? " " T h e Cicero w h o m Petrarch admired was Scipio's follower voluisti? U b i et ctati et p r o f e s s i o n ! et f o r t u n e tue c o n v e n i e n s o t i u m reliquisti? Q u i s te falsus g l o r i c s p l e n d o r .

ad i n d i g i i a n i p h i l o s o p h o m o r t e m rapuit?

. . A h q u a n t o satius fuerat p h i l o s o p h o p r e s e r t i m in t r a n q u i l l o rure scnuisse, de p e r p c t u a ilia,

.

n o n de hac lam e x i g u a vita c o g i t a n t e m . n u l l o s h a b u i s s e

fasces, nullis t r i u m p h i s m h i a s s e " (Petrarch, bp Petrarca. Le Fannhan,

ed

Fx 111 x x i v 3. in F r a n c e s c o

V i t t o r i o R o s s i , vol 4. pp 226t )

" " A c c e n d i t e r g o viri llhus i n g e n i u m s o h t u d o et, q u o d m i r a b e r i s , o d i o s a , q u i d putas, o p t a n d a est q u e vel n o l e n t i b u s t a n t u m p r o d e s t ' " ( D e I 'ua ed. M a r t c l l o t t i , in Francesco Petnma riim Maiwrandimmi

Libit,

Sohmini,

Piosc [ M i l a n , 1 9 5 5 I . 5 3 6 - 3 8 ) . I11 the Re-

Petrarch had w r i t t e n " B u t w h a t ucgoiium.

I ask, can

be c o m p a r e d w i t h the otmut o f that m a n | C i c e r o | , w h a t social life w i t h his solitude? H o w e v e r g r i e v o u s l y he h i m s e l f m i g h t b e w a i l the r u m o f his

puma.

it w a s the s a m e event that c a u s e d the m o n u m e n t s o f C i c e r o ' s d i v i n e g e n i u s to reach all n a t i o n s " (Raitm 19431. 5

ManouindiVum

Libn,

ed

Billano\ich

[Florence.

" S o d q u o d l i e g o t i u m , q u e s o . c u m llhus otio. q u e trequentia c u m

llhus s o h t u d m e c o n f e r e n d a est? Q u a m licet ipse c a s u m patrie n n s e r a t u s g r a viter defleat, m d e tanieti ad o n i n e s p o p u l o s p e r \ e n t u r a d i v i m ingenii 1110111nienta

fluxerunt")

117

I. A N

ANATOMY

in the praise of true otium. Like earlier medieval writers, he adopted St. Jerome's and Theophrastus' description of the "wise man" as one for w h o m solitude means escape from women, marriage, and communal life. But (also following and developing medieval practice) it is the Scipio of the De Offiais of w h o m Petrarch is most fond. Indeed, in his De Vita Sohtana he calls Scipio the "standard-bearer" (sign ifer) of a humanistic otium. because tor him. too. the highest aim of leisure is intense intellectual activity. Scipio's paradox, set down in the De Officiis. is a recurrent theme in the De I 'ita. His words make clear, says Petrarch, what he himself (Petrarch) meant bv solitude. He did not mean relaxation or idleness but the concentration ot all mental faculties to a higher degree than was possible amid the distractions of civic life. " T h e body may take its holidays, but the mind must not rest in otium longer than is necessary to restore its energy." True otium, says Petrarch, is "not inactive and useless but makes use of solitude in service to others"—service rendered by literary activity.- 4 In certain respects, this was both the highpoint of Cicero's medieval influence and the beginning of a development reaching beyond medieval tradition. In his De Otio Religioso Petrarch interpreted literary solitude and monastic seclusion from one and the same psychological angle. A quiet, comfortable life, free from anxiety, he said, is as harmful to a solitary man as it is to a man of the world. Struggle and exertion are necessary to test the powers of every human being. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire is lasting proof of the dangers of peace and quietude. When Rome no longer had to struggle tor its existence, carefree security and thirst for pleasure and luxury destroyed the energy of the Roman people. ! < In referring to Roman history as proof of the necessity of inner struggle. Petrarch reveals the subtle connection between - Rei

Mem . 4.

Di I'iij

Sohr.m.i. ed M a r t e l l o t t i . 5 5 0 - 5 8 . Eputolae

Seniles

11. > • Di Oris Rihoicso.

ed G

R o t o n d i d y s S K 20. m Opuj

1 Basel. 1 5 8 1 ) . 3 0 1 .

O n the c o n s e q u e n c e s tor the h u m a n i s t i c and R e n a i s s a n c e \ie\\ o f historx. see T w o . pp

251

118

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

his conception o f active leisure and his idea o f the civic world o f Rome. Here as elsewhere he is still on medieval ground; but the seeds he has let drop only await a propitious w i n d to carry them to more fertile soil. Petrarch rejected a life o f active involvement in communal and family affairs, but he praised intellectual activity in otium more highly than had anyone since Roman times. When this praise finally gained the appro­ bation o f active citizens, the t i m e was at hand for a full return t o ancient R o m a n values. At that point, the s l o w process o f medieval change became a rapid transformation. T h e o l d conception o f the Renaissance as a relatively s u d d e n break w i t h medieval tradition was n o t altogether w r o n g , as w e shall see i n o t h e r contexts as w T ell.' 6 B u t it was w r o n g i n ­ sofar as that break was dated t o o early. A true upheaval in i n ­ tellectual life d i d indeed take place, b u t n o t until t h e e n d o f t h e fourteenth century; n o t until Petrarch's h u m a n i s m was finally transplanted t o civic surroundings—first and f o r e m o s t in Florence.

VI Coluccio Salutati, Petrarch's admirer and an ardent Florentine patriot (chancellor o f Florence f r o m 1375 t o 1406), was the first o f t h e citizen-humanists. In his y o u t h Salutati had i n ­ tended t o reply t o Petrarch's idealization o f the solitary life w i t h a b o o k t o b e entitled De 1 Ίία Assoaabili et Operativa. This work was never published, but Salutati's sympathy with the Roman civic spirit soon showed itself on another occasion. Just as Petrarch had unexpectedly found himself face to face w i t h t h e real C i c e r o t h a n k s to his d i s c o v e r y o f the Epistolae ad Atticnm, s o Cicero was revealed to Salutati in 1392 by the dis­ covery o f t h e Epistolae Familiares. B u t whereas Petrarch's ini­ tial j o y h a d quickly turned t o disappointment, the Florentine chancellor h o n o r e d those very Ciceronian traits which P e ­ trarch h a d considered u n w o r t h y o f a philosopher. H e admired ' Especially m Essa\ Seven, p p 1 Nyt

ii9

and Essav Nine, ρ 226

I. A N A N A T O M Y

Cicero's role in political life, his participation in the civil wars, and his thirst for political renown. Had Cicero not said that no one ought to remain a private individual when civic liberty is at stake? Salutan understood him well. He justified Cicero's actions during the civil wars bv pointing out that, according to the .Wxtei .4rriuit' of Gellius. Solon had decreed m Athens that a citizen who continued to lead a private life in times of civil unrest should be considered unfaithful to his city and expelled. 1 " Cicero had thus not been oblivious to the duties of a "wise man" when he took part in He had acted as a the struggle for the liberty of the respublua. true philosopher and as a Roman citizen, like Brutus and Cassius. neither of whom thought it permissible to retire into solitude while the world was in flames. A few years later, one of Salutati's disciples. Pier Paolo Vergeno. wrote a reply, in Cicero's name, to Petrarch's letter of accusation to Cicero m Hades. It was the true voice of a Roman citizen that spoke " f r o m the Elysian fields." "Why did you forsake the calm so becoming to your age. your position, and the tenor of your life?" Petrarch had indignantly asked his master. " T h e nature of my ottwn. my age. position, and lot." Yergerio makes Cicero reply, "required me to live my life in the midst of activity." Philosophy and culture. Vergeno's Cicero insists, "were not meant to serve my own self-gratifying leisure but to be used for the benefit of the community. It has always seemed to me that the most mature and best philoso" Ep

Mil - • n y ; . m vol. ; of"Salutati's Epi>u->!.mc. ed N o v a t i . 3S9. Ep

; and 4 both b e t w e e n n y ; and 1394). 111 vol

3 of tvi.'iclmc.

ix

i s l a n d 50

' T o understand the b a c k g r o u n d of Salutati's thinking, w e should recall the f o l l o w i n g episode W h e n , about 1 3 — . one o f the l e a d m c Florentine patricians of Salutati's generation, the j u r i s t L a p o da C a s t i g h o n c h i o the Elder, c o m p o s e d a b o o k of paternal instruction tor his son. he referred m the introduction to C i c e r o - M a c r o b i u s ' "sentenza'

111 the .sYn;>in

letteie dt Batbato.

no. 95. C a r d

Keiimi A

It,t/n,11 inn, M

Quinni,

( 1 7 4 3 ) . A p p e n d i x . 110 50 F o r C i c e r o ' s w o r d i n g

101 abo\e

124

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

to its climax. Soon after 1400, Florentines of the old stamp began to complain that the younger generation was using Cic­ ero's De Officiis to defend the thesis that "happiness and virtue are bound up with political position and reputation." In the eyes of their elders, these younger men were forgetting the philosophic truth that the "perfect life" is one of contempla­ tion and peace of mind. 47 But such protests were of no avail. By the 1430s Matteo Palmieri, Bruni's closest follower among the citizen-humanists, was to re-create the civic attitude of the De Officiis in its entirety. As St. Ambrose had done at the be­ ginning of the Middle Ages when he composed a De O fficiis for use by the clergy (De Offteiis Ministrorum), Palmieri pro­ duced an adaptation of the Ciceronian work tailored to the needs of his own century. This Quattrocento version was en­ titled Vita Civile (Civie LiJe). It would require too much space to trace in detail the res­ toration in Palmieri's book of the Ciceronian faith in action and communal values. In brief, he maintains that virtue in the full sense cannot be attained in solitude. It "will never become perfect unless it is challenged; loyalty is recognized not in those who carry no burden but in those to whom great mat­ ters are entrusted." 4 " Palmieri's concluding chapter, as we have seen in another context, 49 is profoundly impressive, for it combines the vision of the Somnium Seipionis with the doc­ trines of the De Offieiis. He transfers Scipio's dream from Ro­ man to Florentine conditions. In place of the younger Scipio 4~

C i n o R i n u c c i m , Itwettiva cotitro a aerti calunniaton dt Dante

Petrarcae

. Boccaci, m A W c s s c l o f s k y . Il Paradiso degh Alberti ( B o l o g n a , 1 8 6 7 ) , v o l i, pt. 2, app 17, ρ 3 14. For more details, see Essay Six, ρ 137. Fuller d i s c u s s i o n s o f t h e V u a Civile w i l l b e f o u n d in E s s a y s S i x a n d N i n e . More recently, a useful epitome of the work has been provided by August B u c k ' s "Palmieri als Reprasentant des Florentmer B u r g e r h u m a n i s m u s . " Archiv Jhr Kiilturgeschichte 4 7 (1965), reprinted 111 B u c k ' s D i e huniamstische Tradi­ tion in der R o m a n i a ( B a d F I o m b u r g ν d H , ry6X), 2 5 3 - 7 0 T h e first u o r d s o f t h e Kifa C i v i l e , in w h i c h P a l m i e r i d e s c r i b e s t h e ideal u n i o n o f a c i v i c a n d s t u ­ dious life, almost literally repeat, without acknowledging it, the introductory w o r d s o f t h e D e Oratore. *'> S e e E s s a y O n e , p p 2 1 f

I

AN ANATOMY

Africanus, Dante (who as the wanderer through heaven and hell is best qualified to report on the rewards of souls after death and thus on the ultimate values of life) receives a mes­ sage from the hereafter. It reaches him on the battlefield of Campaldmo, on the day of one of the greatest Florentine vic­ tories. This message is nothing but the Ciceronian teaching from the Soimiinm Scipiotiis. "1 saw in heaven [says Dante's fallen friend, returned to life for one short hour] the souls of all the citizens who had ruled their states justly, and among them I recognized Fabricius, Curius, Fabius Maximus, Scipio, Metellus, and many others who for the sake of their country forgot themselves and their possessions." They taught that "no human work is more valuable than concern for the wel­ fare of the patria, the maintenance of the citta, and the preser­ vation of unity and harmony m a rightly ordered community." i o From the libraries and studies where Cicero's dialogues were read and adapted to Florentine needs, we step out into the Piazza della Signoria, the center of Florence's political life. There, in 1427, the capitano del popolo—a Roman, Stefano Porcari, as we know—delivered an oration before the public au­ thorities. The capitano was always a citizen from another city, who occupied his high office for a limited period; neverthe­ less, Forcari can serve as a spokesman for Florence, because by his own admission his ideas were deeply indebted to his present environment. His speech was full of admiration for the state, the prosperity, and the public spirit of Florence. In such surroundings, said the capitano del popolo, a citizen ought to feel that he owes his happiness and his intellectual and ma­ terial possessions entirely to the community. Even in solitude no good citizen should forget his duty to be grateful. Porcari recalled the example of Scipio Africanus Maior, quoting the paradox of Scipio's tireless activity m leisure as it was handed down by Cicero. In his speech, all the medieval, monastic modifications of Scipio's words arc forgotten. The fifteenthΓ1Ι11

Cii'ilr, ed Gino Bclloni (Florence, iyK2), 20iff., 208

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

century humanist interprets Cicero as follows: Scipio's saying means that in the silence of his solitude "he was wont to think of the incomparable and glorious gifts he had received from the commonwealth. He thus spurred on his energies in order to deserve those gifts by his deeds and persistent efforts." 5 ' This uncompromisingly civic interpretation not only went in the direction that Cicero the Roman statesman had indi­ cated, it actually went beyond the ideas expressed in the De Officiis. Anyone acquainted with the long historical process we have been reviewing cannot but recognize the advent of an age which was more akin to that of ancient Rome than all the centuries of the Middle Ages. Petrarch's conception of a Scipio discovering after his victories that philosophical studies in solitude have equal or even higher rank for the noble mind than victories and honors, lost its power in the fifteenth cen­ tury. When it was not interpreted as the paradigmatic story of a citizen returning to his civic duties with renewed strength after a pause for lonely, studious concentration," the old sym­ bol of Scipio's flight into solitude was abandoned altogether in favor of the ideal of a civic culture without need for bookish or contemplative retreat after periods of action but rather thriving amid the activities of daily life. It was Pier Paolo Vergerio who first directed this challenge against the Ciceronian idea of Scipio's "leisure." In Vergerio's De lngenuis Moribus et Liberahbus Studiis Adolescentiae (the first comprehensive outline of humanistic pedagogy, written in " E d i t e d ( b u t a t t r i b u t e d t o a w r o n g a u t h o r ) i n Prose del gtovane Biionaeeorso da M o n t e m a g n o ( 1 8 7 4 ) , 1 8

On Porcari's authorship, see G

Zaccagnim, in

S m d i di Lclteratiira Itahana 1 (1899). 339ff. I n a n o t h e r s p e e c h o n t h e p i a z z a , P o r c a n a l s o c i t e d m e x t e n s o t h e d i c t u m f r o m t h e Soiiiiumii S a p i o i n s t h a t a special place in heaven awaits those who have acted for their states, because to God nothing is "acceptius quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati. q u a e c i v i t a t e s a p p e l l a n t u r " (Prose d e l g t o v a n e . 9 3 ) . " S e e G u a n n o d a V e r o n a (Ep. 6 8 1 . b e f o r e 1 4 4 1 . i n Epistolarw. e d . S a b b a dini, vol

2 , p . 272): w h e n S c i p i o a n d L a e h u s s o u g h t r e l a x a t i o n i n t h e c o u n ­

tryside, "nec ut laborem fugerent et mertiae sese dederent eos id factitasse constat, sed ut recentiores et ad novum laborem mstauratiores se redderent otiabantur "

I. AN ANATOMY

1402 after an extended sojourn in Florence), the otium of Scipio is cited as an example not to be followed by ordinary men. After a life of exceptional exertion, Scipio Africanus, a man of unique virtue, could retreat into solitude at an advanced age, "yet he who . . . knows how to maintain his solitude amid the turbulence of crowds, his inner calm in the midst of action, does not seem to me to be of lesser worth." Vergerio's advice was to preserve one's natural elasticity within the framework of daily life by gymnastic exercises, hunting, and fishing. If this were done, a retreat into solitude would prove superflu­ ous. The symbol of Scipio, renewing his energy in loneliness, was replaced by that of Cato; for Cato, wrote Vergerio, de­ voted himself to his studies in the midst of public affairs. He learned to study in the curia while the senate was assembling. In this way he made himself fit not only for giving practical advice in questions of the moment but for laying down polit­ ical principles that would benefit his patria for all time/' What was this fifteenth-century

humanistic ideal but the old

doctrine voiced by the orator Marcus Crassus in Cicero's De Oratorc? "What cannot be learned quickly," Crassus had said, "will never be learned at all." S 4 A citizen should therefore not withdraw from civic duties to scholarly isolation, it was as­ serted in the De Oratore. His fellow citizens should never feel that he was devoting himself to study. In 1421 a complete text of the De Oratore was discovered in the cathedral library of Lodi in northern Italy. From then on Crassus' words, which like many others had been missing from the manuscripts known to the Middle Ages, were read "Unde nimirum et in rem praescntem, ct m omne tempus saluberrima p a t riae consilia d i c t a b a t " ( D e liigeiuns Moribus, e d . A G n e s o t t o , in A l 11 e M e Iiioiie delta R A c c a d di P a d o v a 3 4 ( 1 9 1 8 ] . 1 1 9 a n d 1 4 2 ) . F o r C i c e r o 011 C a t o , see ρ

101 above. Concerning the date of the De Ingeniiis Monbus, sec my

C r i s i s , 2 d e d . , 4 9 4 , 11 2 0 ". .

lit. nisi quod quisque cito potuerit, numquam ommno possit per-

d i s c e r e " ( D e O r a t o r e i n 2 2 8 2 - 8 3 , ^ 9 ) . F o r C i c e r o 011 C r a s s u s , s e c n o t e 6 0 b e ­ low

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

anew. ^ The rediscovery of the complete Dc Oralorv not only gave rise to the development of new principles in the peda­ gogy of the Renaissance but also helped lead to a historical reinterpretation of Dante: Cicero, whose strength lay in his power to evoke the great figures of Roman history, taught Florentine citizens how to contemplate the greatest figure of their own past. Seen in the light of Ciceronian concepts and presented in Ciceronian terms, Dante came to symbolize for the Florentines the highest values in a citizen's IifeZ ft To the fourteenth century Dante had been a philosopher aloof from the ordinary world. The chronicler Giovanni Villani" had written that he was "presumptuous and reserved because of his learning, careless of graces as philosophers are," and "not very good at conversing with the unlearned.Boc­ caccio, moreover, had reproached the Florentine poet for not having kept to the retired life of a philosopher. In his biogra­ phy of Dante, Boccaccio described Dante's misfortunes as those of a philosopher who forgot in the civic atmosphere of Florence "what obstacles to a studious life women arc" and that philosophy cannot be at home in a mind made restless by political ambition. Thus Dante had lost his intellectual peace through marriage and had entered the maelstrom of domestic and public cares/ 9 The strong revival of civic ideals in fifteenth-century Flor­ ence led Leonardo Brum to reconstruct Dante's political ca" Paragraphs 18-109 of the third book of the De Oratore were unknown during the Middle Ages See R. Sabbadim, Le scopertc dei codici Iattni 1·grcci ne' iccol 1 X J l ' e X V , vol 1 (1905). 100 and 218 As already sketched briefly in Essav O n e . pp. ujf. Giovanni Villain on Dante, in his Cronaca, Lib

IX,

p. 136

That Villain's view reflects a typical attitude in the Florence of his time is confirmed by what Trecento writers tell us about Dante's friend, the learned poet Guido Cavalcanti, w h o in Compagm's chronicle is called a "giovane gen­ tile, cortese, ardito, ma sdegnoso e sohtario e mletito alio studio [my emphasis]", in Boccaccio's Decamerone, novella vi. y. Cavalcanti appears as "molto astratto dagli uomim." Boccaccio's reproaches against Dante are found 111 his Trattatello in laude di Dante, as well as 111 his Compendio delta online, vita, eostiiim e H n d u d 1 Dante

1

AN ANATOMY

rccr and his part in the citizen army during the battle of Campaldino. Brum's Vita di Dante (written in 1436) not only stressed these aspects of Dante's life but pointed out that the poet had also had a wife and children, like any true citizen. The greatest philosophers—Aristotle, Cicero, Cato, Seneca, and Varro—wrote Bruni in his Vita, had been heads of fami­ lies and had served their states. Petrarch had lived for himself. Dante's life could teach citizens that true intellectual work need not lead to idle solitude. After the battle of Campaldino Dante "applied himself to his studies with greater zeal than ever; yet he did not neglect intercourse with his fellow citi­ zens. And it was a marvelous thing that although Dante stud­ ied continuously, nobody would have got the impression that he was studying." f , ° "And here," said Brum, "1 would like to rectify the mistake of many ignorant people. They believe that no one is a student who does not bury himself in solitude and leisure. Among the stay-at-homes, withdrawn from human society, I have never seen one who could count to three. A lofty and distinguished mind does not need such fetters. On the contrary, the right conclusion is that whatever does not find expression at once will never do so." 6 1 Thus, in creating a new image of Dante, Bruni brought back the ideas, and even some of the words, of the De Oratore, not merely by imitating a literary model but by extending and transforming them under the influence of the naive yet pow­ erful self-confidence of fifteenth-century Florence. These reinforced Ciceronian notions about the proper conduct of "· Wc recall that Cicero had reported about Marcus Crassus that he "does not give others the impression that he is studying when he is pursuing his philosophic studies," and that he himself (Cicero) "had been studying philos­ ophy most earnestly at the very time when 1 seemed to be doing so least." For Ciccro, sec ρ ιοί above "E era cosa nnracolosa, che, studiando continovamente, a niuna persona sarcbbe paruto, che egli studiasse

.

Anzi e vera conclusione e ccrtissima,

che quello, che 11011 appara tosto, non appara mai" (Brum's Le Vite di Danle e (Λ Petrarca y in Brum, Humamstisch-plulosoplusche Schrtfteti, $}f.)

!3D

MEMORY OF CICERO'S CIVIC SPIRIT

citizens would henceforth subtly influence the Florentines whenever they considered their great men. When Poliziano wrote to Piero de' Medici about the qualifications that had made Cosimo great, he praised him not only for never being idle and for doing countless things, but especially for being able to give others the impression that he had "nothing to do." 6 2

VII Not long after Poliziano drew this picture of Cosimo de' Medici, the civic strain in Florentine thought began to weaken under the impact of rising Neoplatonism. During the period in which Marsilio Ficino was the leading philosopher of Flor­ ence, the attitude toward Cicero as the acknowledged standard-bearer of Roman values began to change in intellectual circles. In Cristoforo Landino's Canialdulensiati Disputations, a work with strong Neoplatonic overtones written in the mid14705, a life of philosophic contemplation is again prized over involvement in the vita actwa politica. In comparing the two ways of life, Landino concludes that Cicero's achievements are exemplary by either standard but that the different results ob­ tained in his labors allow us to make a choice. For one cannot deny that humanity is most indebted to Cicero not for his stand against Catilina or Anthony, or for his efforts to restore liberty to his fellow citizens, but for the intellectual work which he performed while living "far from political affairs, entirely preoccupied with important inquiries. . . . The dif­ ference between his outstanding actions and his inspired re­ search, then, is evident: With the first he helped only one state, with the latter he has given instruction to all who can read Latm. By his prudent counsel he managed to ward off '·- " N o n ccssat . . . e t c u m t a r n m u l t a s res agat, deesse t a m c n v i d e t u r q u o d a g a t " (in a l e t t e r p u b l i s h e d in A n g e l o F a b r o m ' s Magm Cosmi Mcduci IΊla, vol 2 [Pisa, 1788), 251).

I. A N A N A T O M Y

momentary dangers; but what he wrote as a result of his meditations and inquiries is relevant to all ages." 6 ' In Landmo's eyes—and probably in the eyes of many m e m bers of Ficino's circle—Cicero's life teaches us "that those w h o spend their time in action arc certainly useful, but only to contemporaries or at most for a short dine. Those, however, who bring to light the hidden nature of things will always be useful. Deeds do not outlive their authors, but thoughts live on through the centuries; they are immortal and have the flavor of eternity." 64 What is remarkable in this reaction of a late Quattrocento Florentine writer is his failure to ask whether Cicero's experiences as an active statesman and citizen did not condition the Roman's thinking and give his writing its peculiar strength and depth. It is as if Landino were talking about two different people. For the first time, a serious regression threatened the long historical progress that had been made toward a fuller grasp of human nature as it reacts to the challenges of life. Neoplatonism, a constant clement of Renaissance thought from that time on, never wholly dominated the Florentine or broader Italian scene. Indeed, the generation of Machiavelli reacted violently against the Neoplatonic depreciation of the '" " A t v i d e , q u i d inter illas p r a e c l a r i s s i m a s actiones et has d i v i n a s spcculationes intersit 1 Illis e n i m uni civitati p r o f u i t . his v e r o o m n i b u s , qui latme n o runt, praecepta t n b u i t , illis, quae consilio et prudentia egit, m a x i m a quae tunc u r g e b a n t p e n c u l a p r o p u l s a v i t , q u a e a u t e m m v e s t i g a n d o litteris m a n d a v i t , in o m n e t e m p u s p r o s p i c i u n t , ut 11011 m o d o praesentibus et qui tunc vivebant c o n s u l e r e t , sed et us, qui hactenus per tot lam saecula f u e r u n t , et lis, qui p o s t hac f u t u r i erunt, ad bene b e a t e q u e v i v e n d u m praecepta r e h q u e r i t " {Quaista Iiitemazionalc delle Seienze Sociah e Discipline Aiisiliarie ( ' 9 3 O 5 7 4 f t · '. O . Schilling, Die Staats- mid Soziallehre Thomas von Aquinos, ed. (Munich,

1930), 26iff

and

26yf

39 2d

I. A N A N A T O M Y

the Stoic doctrine that neither temporal goods nor misfortune should have any essential meaning for a true sage. Moreover, Christian belief in the harmony of a divinely created world provided Thomas with a standard f o r j u d g i n g the relationship o f the spirit to material things. In accordance with the Peripatetics (Aquinas states in his Summa Theologiae), Augustine teaches that for human beings, w h o consist of body as well as mind, material possessions can be real goods—though of "verv little value" compared with spiritual goods.' In his day the attitude of lay citizens was hardly different from that of St. Thomas. One of the oldest literary expressions of the Italian civic spirit was the Libro . . . delta Dilezione d'Iddio,

c del Prossimo,

e delta Forma dell'Onesta

I 'ita, w r i t t e n in

1238 bv ludge Albertano da Brescia (already known to us as an early follower of Cicero's vita activa philosophy 4 ), a writer for w h o m the problems of civic wealth and civic instincts still overshadowed strong Franciscan inclinations. This early thirtcenth-century north Italian citizen made the same assumptions Aquinas would make a few decades later in his Summa Theologize. The enjoyment of riches is permitted by God, he says. "Surely, according to the commandments of G o d and his saints, you can rightly acquire and possess riches. For we find many saints w h o had much and [even] great wealth, among them the holy J o b . And in the Gospels one reads of Joseph of Anmathea, w h o was a gentleman, rich and just, and a disciplc of G o d . " The civicjurist concludes: " S o you are allowed to acquire and possess riches, though you must not put your heart into them." A man may even love his possessions if he has acquired them through care and labor and if he possesses A g a i n s t the S t o i c d o c t r i n e " n u l l u m m a l u m posse accidere sapienti S e d h o c i r r a t i o n a b i h t e r dicitur. C u m e m m h o m o sit ex anuria et c o r p o r e c o m p o s i t u s . id q u o d c o n t e r r ad v i t a m c o r p o r i s c o n s e r v a n d a m a l i q u o d h o m i n i s est

11011 t a m e n m a x i m u m .

" (Summa

Thcol . la nae q

bonum

59 art. 3);

against the S t o i c s , " q u i p o n c b a n t b o n a t e m p o r a h a n o n esse h o m i n i s b o n a . " both A u g u s t i n e and the Peripatetics can be q u o t e d . A q u i n a s said (ibid , 11a nae q

1 2 5 art 4) - See E s s a \ Five. p. 1 11

160

POVERTY AND WEALTH

PETRARCH

his treasures rather than being possessed by them. But if riches are to be loved, all the more worthy of love arc the arts by which possessions are obtained. Love these arts and teach them to your children so that they may help themselves if you become poor or they meet with misfortune. Such is the ex­ plicit advice given by this layman of the early thirteenth century. < In the sccond half of the century, however, the general di­ rection of opinion finally turned toward the sweeping de­ mands inherent in the ideal of Franciscan poverty. This ideal had originally seemed to set a standard only for religious or­ ders and sometimes for other ecclesiastical circles. But now that chivalry had ceased to be the determining factor in Italian medieval life, it began a victorious procession through all ranks of society. While bitter controversies concerning the right of the mendicant orders and other church members to corporate possession of worldly goods engrossed religious au­ thorities right up to the pope, lay associations ("Tcrtiarics," adjunct to the regular orders of the Franciscan Friars and Poor Clares) were formed, especially in urban society, whose aim was to realize the ideal of Franciscan poverty outside the walls of religious houses. Among the orders of friars, the Spiritual Franciscans emerged as the most rigorous defenders of pov­ erty, repudiating all compromises agreed to by earlier reli­ gious movements. Finally, a heretical and even revolutionary sect, the "Fraticelli," demanded that not only the order but all segments of the Church should submit to the rule of absolute poverty. Meanwhile, within large segments of the population 1

Albertano's treatise, written m Latin, was soon circulated in at least three

distinct forms of "volgarizzamento," evidence that it was a typical and widely influential work. 1 have used the "volgarizzamento fatto nel 126X da Andrea da Grosseto," ed. F. Selmi (Bologna, 1X73), in the Collezione di opere inedite ο rare dei primi tre secoli della lingua, especially the chapters "Come tu del acquistare c conservare Ie ricchezze" and "Come si debono amare Ie ricchezze " O n the personality of Albertano and his versatile services for Brescia, see the article by P Guerrini 111 vol. 1 of the D i ^ i o n a r i o biogralito dcgli I i a h a n i (Rome, i960) l6l

I. AN ANATOMY

of the Italian communes, the Franciscan ideal came to be seen as the remedy for an age growing ever more affluent and com­ mercialized. Under its influence, though within a Christian framework, the doctrines of ancient Stoicism were revived in intellectual circles (which included most early poets and writ­ ers in the expanding urban world of Italy). These doctrines taught that a life of poverty is necessary for a wise man's in­ dependence of mind—a recrudescence of the school of thought so emphatically rejected by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae. In the generation before Dante, an early encyclopedia of knowledge for lay citizens—the Tresor, primarily a compila­ tion of scholastic knowledge, written about 126$ by the Flor­ entine chancery notary and diplomat Brunetto Latini—re­ vived the distrust of riches shown by medieval Stoics before the full rise of Scholasticism in the thirteenth century. While Thomas' followers held to the Peripatetic approval of wealth, 6 the Florentine layman Latini copied almost verbatim from a work of the twelfth century—the Moralium Dogma Philosophorum—a section in which selected passages from Cicero, Sen­ eca, Horace, and Juvenal appear to demonstrate that all riches are a danger to virtue. Money brings nothing but trouble, the Tresor says, and fills mankind with a greed that has brought many to ruin. "Diogenes was richer in his poverty than Alex­ ander in his greatness," as Latini quotes Cicero. In his quota­ tions from Juvenal, Latini, like the Morahum Dogma, stresses those satires which describe the rich man as devoured by ab­ ject fear of thieves while "he who has no possessions marches past the thieves singing." 7 The same negative attitude toward wealth appears in Guit'• For Egidio Romano, cf. his De regimme prtnapum, Lib. 11, pt. 3, chs. 5ff., for the attitude of Antonino of Florence, see B Jarrett, Sr Antonnw and Me­ diaeval Economics (London, 1914), 59f. " Tresor, Livre n, pt. 2, ch. 100; m Giamboni's vernacular adaptation, the Tesoro, Lib. vn, ch. 70. This agrees almost literally with the section "De peculio, thesauro, ornatu," 111 the Morahum Dogma Plulosophorum, ed. J Holmberg (Uppsala, 1929), 59-64

POVERTY AND WEALTH: PETRARCH

tone d'Arezzo, the poet most widely read before Dante in the patrician society of the central Italian towns. He was the first to circulate artfully composed letters in the Tuscan vernacular, one of which, largely a compilation of quotations from avail­ able sources, stresses the general accord of ancient Stoics and Christian writers in their warnings against riches. Written to a friend who had lost a large sum of money, this noteworthy letter of consolation—more or less coeval with Latini's ency­ clopedia—commiserates with the addressee's despair, but not because of the loss itself, which should be regarded rather as an occasion for joy (matcra gioiosa). For, an inexhaustible num­ ber of pagan authorities, among them Seneca, Cicero, and even allegedly Aristotle, and many biblical and later Christian writings, demonstrate that he who loses his property is rid of one of the primary sources of avarice, since wealth never makes a man content with his lot; rather, the greater the riches, the more desperate the toiling for ever greater wealth. Our Lord teaches that "ncssuno puo servire Dio e moneta." As Seneca says, "avarizia non se sazia, ma cresce cupidita," and St. Paul, "radice di tutto male e avarizia." The really poor per­ son, therefore, Guittone insists, is not the one who owns little but the one who owns much and yearns for more. 8 About 1300 this line of thought was not foreign even to Dante. To be sure, as a follower of Thomas Aquinas, the poet never loses sight of Aristotle; yet in his half-Franciscan, halfStoic enmity toward riches, he reveals the great change in sen­ timent that has taken place among the citizens of the Italian communes after the generation of Aquinas. In the "Paradiso" of the Divina Commedia, the simple old days of Florence are contrasted with the materialistic present, its restlessness and covetousness; St. Francis is praised with affectionate warmth, and in many passages curses are uttered against the wealth of * C f . M a r t i ' s critical text o f G u i t t o n e ' s letter, in La prosa del duecenio, e d . C . S e g r e a n d M Marti, La Letteratura Itahana: S t o n a e Testi. vol. 3 (1959), 37-52, e s p . 3 7 - 4 1

I. A N A N A T O M Y

the Church. 9 In the Cotwivio the poet attacks a definition of nobility attributed to Emperor Frederic II, along with the A r istotelian notion the emperor had tried to modify. Frederic was reported to have said that nobility is based on a combination of good breeding ( a n t i q u i botii mores) and inherited divitiae—a variation of the Aristotelian statement that virtus and old wealth combine to create nobility. Dante objected to the part played by wealth in both definitions. Criticizing the emperor's dictum, he asserted that nobility can have its origin only in virtus. The picture of true uobilitd shown in Dante's Comnvio is therefore, like Latini's view in the Tresor, founded on the Stoic precept that riches cannot contribute to "nobility" because they fill us with an insatiable lust for possessions and at the same time with a constant fear of losing what we have. 1 0 In all of this, the leading minds of the Italian Trecento were propelled as well as limited by an intellectual current of largely religious inspiration." Christian spirituality and Franciscan renunciation of worldly goods seemed to combine with an in" Paradise,

canto x v : C a c c i a g u i d a ' s g l o r i f i c a t i o n o f ancient F l o r e n c e m c o n -

trast to its current c o n d i t i o n , canto x i : praise o f St. Francis 10

Coiwii'io.

trattato i v . deals w i t h the i n f e r i o r i t y o f all riches; capitoli i v . 8

and 1 0 . contain p o l e m i c s against A r i s t o t l e and Frederic II; capitolo iv. b o r r o w s literally f r o m B o e t h i u s " S i quantas rapidas flatibus mcitus . .

12, Hu-

m a n u m miseras haud ideo g e n u s cesset flere q u e r e l a s " (Cotisol . L i b 11. metr. 11). and also b o r r o w s f r o m C i c e r o ' s Paradoxa

1 6 " N u m q u a m mehercule ego

n e q u e pecunias i s t o r u m n e q u e tecta m a g n i f i e s neque o p e s . .

111 b o m s rebus

aut e x p e t e n d i s esse d u x i , q u i p p e q u u m v i d e r e m h o m i n e s rebus c i r c u m f l u e n t e s ea t a m e n desiderare m a x i m e . q u i b u s abundarent. N e q u e e m m e x p l e t u r u n q u a m nec satiatur cupiditatis sitis. n e q u e s o l u m ea qui habent h b i d m e augendi cruciantur. sed etiam amittendi m e t u . " " F o r the influence o f the p h i l o s o p h y o f p o v e r t y on the citizens o f Florence u p to the s e c o n d half o f the f o u r t e e n t h century, c o m p a r e the w e l l - k n o w n letters o f the n o t a r y L a p o M a z z e i (characteristic quotations in A . F a n f a m . Le origmt dello spinto capitalistic

in Italia [ M i l a n . 1 9 3 ? ] . 1 3 9 . 1 4 1 ) and the state-

m e n t s in B o c c a c c i o ' s c o n s o l a t o r y letter to the exile M P i n o de' R o s s i (111 B o c c a c c i o ' s Lettae,

ed

praise ot paupertas

C o r a z z i m (Florence. 1 8 7 7 ] . 7 8 f ) . and in his speech in

( B o c c a c c i o , De Casibus

I'trcnim

Illustrium

1. 15). as well as

D e Casibus III. 1. " P a u p e r t a t i s et F o r t u n a e C e r t a m e n . " and ch. 1 7 , "In D i v i t i a s et S t o h d a m V u l g i O p i m o n e m . "

164

POVERTY AND WEALTH

PETRARCH

herent tendency of the Stoic mentality to assure the sage's in­ dependence from the vagaries of fortune. Even before Pe­ trarch began his work, this alliance had become firmly established in the surroundings in which his mind was formed. Our best witness is no less than the head of the Italian Guelphs, King Robert of Naples, whom Petrarch had looked up to in his earlier years as a friend and as the sponsor in 1341 of his coronation as poet on the Roman Capitol. The treatise De Paupertate Evangelica, written in Robert's entourage as early as about 1320, possibly by Robert's chancellor, and which favored the claims of the Spiritual Franciscans, may give us some idea of the context and form in which the allpervading interest of the century in paupertas must have reached Petrarch.' 2 The argument of the treatise begins with an assertion that contempt for wealth and treasure was not unknown to pagan authors and to many a great man in Antiquity. After this has been illustrated, the discussion turns to the precepts of the Bi­ ble and of Christian writers and, with that, to the real purpose of the treatise: the theological scrutiny of evangelical and men­ dicant poverty. From the viewpoint of humanistic erudition, there is little new in this discussion of the meaning of Francis­ can poverty. What it does show us is that the Franciscan view of life forms the background to this Stoic evaluation of pau­ pertas. Although the author of the Neapolitan pamphlet was evidently unacquainted with Sallust and Livy (soon to be the humanists' major guides to the legendary poverty of early Rome), his sources, which were those commonly available to medieval writers—three moral treatises by Seneca and a few examples of ancient conduct taken from Valerius Maximus"—were thought sufficient to prove that the FranPrinted in G B. Siragusa, L'mgegno, 11 sapere e gl'uiteiidmientt di Roberto d'Angid (Palermo, 1891), Appendix, pp xvif It was written between 13 19 and 1324 (cf. W. Cioetz, Koing Robeil von .Xeapel |Tubmgcn, 1910], 28), prob­ ably 1320 to 1322 (cf. S. Brettle, "Em Traktat Roberts von Neapel 'De evangelica paupertate,' " in Feslgabe fiir H Finke [Munster 1 W., 1925),204) " Piur's assertion (which 1 accepted in the first version ot this essay) that

I65

I. AN ANATOMY

ciscan faith in poverty was paralleled m Antiquity by the con­ victions of men engaged in a righteous secular life. In Valerius Maximus, the author of De Paupcrtate Evangelica tells us, we hnd a sympathetic picture of the early Roman statesman C. Fabricius. who could not be corrupted by gold and silver and stands as an example of those many ancient leaders "who scorned riches and were aroused almost to the point of indig­ nation by the thought of possessing them." In Greece (also ac­ cording to Valerius Maximus) Democntus and Socrates taught that compromises in the possession of wealth would not suffice; that it is indeed difficult to have divitias et virtutes in one's house at the same time. Finally. Diogenes—the sage who drank from no cup but the hollow of his own hand and who gave a proud reply to Alexander (too famous to need quoting) when he was offered a gift from Alexander's vast riches—shows in all his conduct how it is possible for man to live in such a way that "nothing can be torn from him" by Fortuna. and how the loss of all material possessions would only make his life "less impeded." Thus, writes the author of the Neapolitan pamphlet, the common assumption that secu­ rity can be expected from affluence is wrong: men frequently perish precisely because they have great wealth, whereas pov­ erty can be counted on to bring security and happiness.' 4 No other document gives us as striking a picture of the al­ liance between the religious and classicistic ideals of paupertas in the first decades of the Trecento. This alliance was to last for a century, until the first decades of the Quattrocento, when a completely different outlook on life and human nature came into existence. This does not mean, however, that ideas remained frozen tor a century. To an attentive observer the beginnings of a new way of thinking are unmistakable from the middle of the Trecento onward. But they clearly betrayed the treatise refers to Liv\ and "enumerates a long series of examples of pov­ e r t y f r o m t h e g r e a t t i m e o f R o m a n h i s t o r y " i s m i s l e a d i n g (a s i n g l e e x a m p l e is m e n t i o n e d , a s n o t e d m t h e t e x t a b o v e ) S e e P P i u r . Pcrnm,i< ' B i t c h o h m · S a mcii ( H a l l e a . S . . 1 9 2 5 ) . 7 0 Dc Pjupatjtc Hi\>iifcluj. ed. Siragusa. xv-xvm

l66

POVERTY AND WEALTH: PETRARCH

their origination in a period of transition and did not imme­ diately yield lasting results. This will not come as a surprise to those who have followed the uncertain course of the memory of Cicero and of the philosophy of the active life during the Florentine Trecento. There arc two methods for collecting and evaluating the Trecento evidence of ideas concerning poverty. One is to re­ construct the progress of the greatest and most independent intellect of the period, Petrarch. The other is to trace the vicis­ situdes of paupertas ideology in the hands of Florentines and other Tuscan citizens during the later Trecento. We need to explore both of these avenues.

II There was little in the world of Petrarch's formative years to make him reject the accepted high evaluation of paupertas. After spending his boyhood and early adult years in the sur­ roundings of papal Avignon, in exile from his ancestral Flor­ entine home, he found a retreat from 1337 onward in the se­ cluded valley of the Vaucluse in the French foothills of the Alps. For a decade and a half it provided him with a refuge for his writing, which he took up in the Vauclusc each time he returned from journeys to the outside world. From the first he viewed this frugal and idyllic existence in the midst of na­ ture, where he felt his creative powers as a poet and writer nourished, as a scmiclaustral escape from the suspected perils of the world of material riches. In one of his letters from the Vaucluse, he states that he feels himself to be a Stoic and not a Peripatetic because, he says, he is aware of the unhappiness of everyone who seeks the good things of life not merely in virtus but also in the gifts of Fortuna. Once riches are admitted and prized, everything in our existence becomes uncertain, and true happiness is no longer possible. 15 At that time, Petrarch l s P e t r a r c h , Hp. Fain. I H 6 . E v e n i f t h i s l e t t e r is a s l a t e a s 1 3 5 1 - 1 3 5 2 , a s B i l Ianovich and Rico have made probable (sec Franciseo Rico, Lcctam del Seere-

I. A N A N A T O M Y

thought the Stoic contempt for those possessions which are subject to the whim of fortune was pervasive and self-evident, and he was inclined to find it in all the classical authors he esteemed, even when they took into account—as Cicero does in his De Finibus Bouorwn et Malorum (known to Petrarch since 1343)—the Aristotelian view that riches are an " a i d " to the exercise of active virtues. 1 6 In those years, when Petrarch occasionally describes his studious life amid the beauties of the Alpine scenery as a happy inediocritas equally far from oppressive poverty and overabundant riches, he immediately adds that if there were no middle road he would judge that even bitter poverty is preferable to the glitter of wealth, because it leads to greater calm and independence of mind.'*" The key feature of all Petrarch's depictions of his little paradise is the assumption that his life there is good because it represents the state of panpertas. "If you wish to be healthy, live like someone w h o is poor. . . . If you wish to chase away gout, chase away sumptuousness: if you wish to remove evil, drive away wealth!" 1 ^ In an early description of his life in the Vaucluse. he talks about the frugality and rural simplicity of his days spent in walking over the hills with pen and paper in hand. The only companions in his solitude are his dear friends mm [ P a d u a . I9~4). 52. n. 32). it still e x p r e s s e s Petrarch's t h i n k i n g d u r i n g his stav in the V a u c l u s e and cannot he o f an even later date I a m u s i n g P e t r a r c h ' s Rmnluta

m V i t t o r i o R o s s i ' s edition m the E d i z i o n e N a z i o n a l e delle o p e r c di

F r a n c e s c o Petrarca. vols. 1 0 - 1 3 ( F l o r e n c e .

1933-1942).

" " S i s e n t e n t i a m e x t o r q u e s . absit a m e n o n m o d o s u m m u m s e d — q u o n i a m et m hac o p i m o n e stoicus q u a m p e r \ pateticus

esse n i a h m — n e a l i q u o d

q u i d e m b o n u m m d i v i t n s aut in v o l u p t a t e r e p o n e r e " [bp

bam

III 6)

The

letter then c o n d e m n s a sort o f " f e h o t a s . ad q u a m n o n m o d o f o r m a c o r p o r i s et p r o s p e n o r v a h t u d o sed divitiae etiam a d m i t t u n t u r seu p o t i u s e x i g u n t u r . " as b e i n g " m m i s t u r u m msidiis e x p o s i t a . n n m s d e m q u e sohcita s e m p e r ac trepida. q u o m c h i l est a felicitate r e m o t i u s . " F u r t h e r o n . Petrarch r e m a r k s that o t h e r s m a \ think w h a t thev please but f o r his part he w o u l d refer to C i c e r o ' s b o o k Dt Finibus.

" q u e m c u m legeris. n e s c i o an q u i c q u a m vel a u r i b u s vel m -

g e m o r e h c t u m sit q u o d r e q u i r e n d u m putent " " bp

f.Jm

1 3 50s. as G " bp

f.mi

ILL 14

M o s t o f the letters M B o o k III are n o later than the e a r h

Billancn ich has show 11 III

13.

168

POVERTY AND WEALTH

PETRARCH

of many ccnturies ago, the ancient authors, because friends of flesh and blood arc repelled by his coarse food and rustic dwelling. This picture is drawn entirely from the perspective of the material modesty of the Stoic sage. It begins with Pe­ trarch's affirmation that he now lives in harmony with pov­ erty—a "golden poverty," not a sordid or oppressive one, to be sure. He would not want to own any inherited wealth or landed estate, except for his little garden plot, because posses­ sions are merely chains to the mind and the cause of all evil. As long as Fortuna does not grudge him his tiny house with its beloved books, he will be well satisfied. The emphasis in this depiction of his life is clearly on its distance from wealth; to characterize it, he even uses the word egestas, which signi­ fies indigence, want, and unmistakable poverty. 19 The interruption of Petrarch's solitary existence by his cor­ onation as poet on the Roman Capitol (1341) and the impres­ sions of a subsequent journey through Italy did not shake this firm belief in the value of poverty and self-sufficiency. Hardly had he returned to his rural refuge when he was again extol­ ling poverty, in the Trecento manner, as the true way to a spir­ itual existence. Many people praise paupertas yet strive for wealth, he writes, and consequently they arouse suspicion of their love of poverty. Admittedly, such love is a special "gift of God" and is "understood by very few people"; no wonder, he observes, that those who find great examples of poverty in early Roman history, such as could help them to suppress their avarice and cupidity, quickly forget what they have read. Yet these Roman examples are in harmony with Christ's own sacra et humilis paupertas and with the pious example of the Apostles, who wandered through the world hungry and poorly clothed. They are also in agreement with the words of Solomon and St. Paul, which tell us that "when we have what ". .

absit mams / gloria, nil cupio, contenta est vita paratis / Hoc pri-

mum placitis mecum concordat egestas / aurca federibus, 11011 sordida nec gravis hospes. / Si libct, cxigui fines michi servct agelli / angustamque d o mum et dulces Fortuna libellos, cetera secum habeat 133«)·

" ( h p Melr 1 6,

I. AN ANATOMY

we need to feed and cover ourselves we ought to be content." 2 0 In concept and tone, this line of reasoning is not dissimilar from that of the early tract De Evangelica Paupcrtate, written at the court of King Robert of Naples. It is no exaggeration to say that the linkage of classical and Christian values persisted in Petrarch's thinking as long as the Vaucluse served as his home and refuge. In his De Vita Solitaria, the literary monument to that penod (composed in 1346). he includes a chapter intended as a warning against the admission of any kind of acquisitive spirit into the life of soli­ tude. It is not easy to decide how much of the argument of­ fered there is the product of humanistic psychology and how much the expression of a spiritual, Franciscan concern. "Peo­ ple will come," Petrarch writes in this chapter, "who will show us the way to great riches. But this is nothing more than the teaching of avarice. . . . To someone occupied with such thoughts let us say, 'Consider, rather, how to escape from the desire for riches.' " ; i The same convictions prevail in most of the letters describing Petrarch's life of solitude after each re­ turn to the Vaucluse. To the very end of his sojourn in the valley, he believes that the absence of avarice is the secret of his happy existence there. Whv should he try to acquire more than is necessary to pay for a modest shelter, food, and the cost of his library? To do so would be avaricious, and "avarice is insatiable. . . . Avarice is a constant thirst: it devours every­ thing; it is bottomless. The cupidity of man requires no exter­ nal penalties"; he will pay for it even if he docs not suffer ma­ terial loss. For by bringing restlessness into man's life, cupidity is "its own punishment." This is the soundest wis­ dom, although it is "hateful to most men."— - Ep Fain V I 3 ( M a y 134.2). - -i De I ua Sohratia. in Francesco Pctrarca. Prose, e d G u i d o M a r t e l l o t n c t a l . . La L e t t e r a t u r a l t a h a n a . S t o n a e T e s t i . v o l 7 ( M i l a n . 1955). 5 7 2 a n d 5 7 0 . - E p F a i n X V I 3 ( 2 8 M a r c h 1353) T h e t r a n s l a t i o n is b y E m e s t H . W i l k i n s . i n Petrarch at I ancluse Letters 111 I eise and Piose ( C h i c a g o . 1958). A n o t h e r t e s t u n o n v t h a t P e t r a r c h felt h i m s e l f t o b e f a r r e m o v e d f r o m avarice m t h e v e a r s b e t o r e 1 3 5 3 is E p

Fain VIII 4 (in i t s m i s s i v e v e r s i o n o f M a y 1 3 4 9 ) . m w h i c h I70

POVERTY AND WEALTH

PETRARCH

Yet even during the years shaped by his experiences in the Vaucluse, we see the first signs of a change in attitude when­ ever he comes in contact with Italian life. In the autumn of 1343 he was sent to Naples on a papal errand, and on his return he interrupted his journey in Parma at the invitation of the ruling family of the Da Correggio, with whom he had already spent about eight happy months after his Roman coronation two years before. This time he settled in Parma until 1345, and in 1348-1350 he returned there once more from the Vaucluse. During these two long Parmesan sojourns, he built a home for himself in the city. In 1346 he had received a well-endowed canonry in Parma (he had taken the lower orders), and this sinecure, to his way of thinking, put him beyond the reach of real paupertas. From 1348 onward, additional prebends in northern Italy gradually raised his economic level to one of moderate affluence. He had set one foot at least on new ground, and if my sup­ position that the milieu in which he lived always had a decisive effect on him is correct, his growing attachment to an Italian tyrant court must have affected his Vaucluse philosophy of simplicity and paupertas. The keen insights into his own nature found in some of his epistolae metricae allow us to trace his feel­ ings at the very time when he was building his comfortable and beautiful new house, strikingly different from his simple dwelling in the Vaucluse (even his food became more refined in such surroundings, he tells us). Now he did not refrain from using expensive materials to construct it. Once, while it was going up, he found himself dreaming of the still more precious marbles glittering in mountain quarries, and sud­ denly he was reminded of man's fragility and those famous small, modest houses of Cato and other early Romans. He felt ashamed of his new undertaking, but then he saw in his mind's eye the proud towers of ancient cities reaching into the clouds and challenging the skies. So "I scorned all little estates, h e d e c l a r e d " Q u o d a d m e a t t m e t , c u p i d i t a t i b u s metam fixi" ( e m p h a s i s a d d e d ] . Rico, Lcctura, 168, n. 154, has drawn attention to this statement.

1 AN ANATOMY

and my fickle mind wandered along tortuous paths without end. . . . From those peregrinations it returned, ready to ad­ mire modesty and fly into passionate hatred of pomp and splendor. Thus starkly contrasting views of my life endlessly alternate with one another. . . and it seems to me that 1 am in the midst of tempestuous floods."-' In the same Parmesan environment, after the Black Death had come to an end in 1349. he conceived a plan to establish a common household with three surviving friends (a plan that foundered only because one of the selected participants met with a tragic accident). In his letter of invitation, he compared the advantages ot settling with his companions in his new house in Parma to those of living m the Vaucluse. His grateful recollections of his sohtaria quies in the Vaucluse. he wrote, would never die. and if men could live on meadow flowers and pure streams alone, like anmtae felices, his wish would be to return to the Vaucluse with his friends. If it were put in its proper perspective, his Alpine solitude might be a welcome antidote when they became sick of too many urban pleasures, but 111 the long run the lonely valley was a place for "summer days" and not for the necessities of life. Human nature de­ mands more than meadows and streams. Even when occupied with philosophy and poetry, man has needs that cannot be ig­ nored. " 'Man's nature is not ot itself sufficient for the exercise of contemplation.' Aristotle says. "Our body must also be healthy, and nourishment and other necessities must be pro­ vided.' " ; 4 By the time Petrarch revised this letter for inclusion in the book edition of his Epistolac Fainihares. a few years later, Hp Men 11 18 This quotation probably dates from the Parma period of 1348-1350. because the phrase "now tnendh Fortuna" (in the introductory verses) seems to point to the time after he received the benefice of 1346 The alternative would be that Azzo da Correggio had helped him out 111 13431345. but such a gift would hardlv have caused Petrarch to talk of a change in fortune. From the standpoint ot the questions we are asking, it does not make much difference m which Parmesan period the house was built and the poet­ ical epistle w ntten Hp Kim V I i i 3 (1349). preserved m its missive version and printed b\ Rossi, vol -. pp 194-203. esp iy~-99 The reference is to Hth jd Stc x.8 9.

P O V E R T Y A N D WEALTH. P E T R A R C H

he had become more fully aware of the humanistic motive behind this agreement with Aristotle, and he added to his avowal of the Peripatetic point of view the explanation that "the vulgar crowd, to be sure, believes that philosophers and poets are unfeeling and made of stone; but they are made of flesh, they retain their humanitas. . . ." So he was eager to choose for his home with his friends not the Vaucluse, with its solitude and poverty, but "Italy's pleasant, flourishing cities."2

F o r instance in lip

Sen

( C a m b r i d g e . M a s s . 1959). irt?t. \ I " and vi S. to w h i c h 1 have alread\

attention in notes 32 and 3 3 . a b o v e

180

drawn

POVERTY AND WEALTH PETRARCH

poverty had been for Petrarch what it was for many, if not most, late-medieval Italian writers: a philosophical and spirit­ ual dogma that gave a sense of direction but also narrowed the intellectual horizon. It is characteristic of those writers that they read more Stoic and semi-Christian opinions into their favorite ancient authors than were actually there. One of the most significant points on which the ancients and Christians were supposed to agree was paupertas\ there seemed to be no doubt that it was appropriate for both ancient and Christian sages to praise poverty and scorn wealth. At the same time it could be insisted—and Petrarch did so from the very begin­ ning—that voluntary poverty did not need to be sordid or ab­ ject, and that riches were not evil in themselves but only a potential source of evil because they created insatiable avarice. After leaving the provincial isolation of the Vaucluse, Petrarch became more aware of the ambivalence of the ancients regard­ ing poverty and wealth. Hence he was now prepared at times to reappraise moral and spiritual problems created by faith in paupertas. In the late 1350s and the 1360s, Petrarch clearly recognized that Cicero and Seneca had not made unqualified protests against the wise man's possession of divitiac. "Seneca's opin­ ion, which rephrases that of Cicero," Petrarch remarked in this period, "is that augmentation of a person's means, pro­ vided it does not injure or harm anyone, is permissible even for a philosopher who wants to respect the limits of the good and the dutiful." 37 As is shown by his correspondence, Pe­ trarch was able with his quickened understanding to discover new dimensions in familiar historical examples. Diogenes is famous for his poverty, he wrote in 1362, yet Democritus' reputation has not suffered because of his wealth. The Virgil who grew rich from Augustus' gifts was no worse than he had been as a penniless exile. As a result, a subtle rivalry began in " Audisne scntcnnam Ciccroms Seneeae verbis expressam, ut opum amphficatio, noil imuriosa nec nocua, bono et ofhcioso viro ac Philosopho etiam sit permissa" ( H p . Sen. Ii 2 ot 1362, O p e r a [1581], 757)

l8l

I. A N A N A T O M Y

Petrarch's mind between the t w o sets of values. Objections to overrating the worth o f poverty for the sage occasionally led him to put limitations on strict Franciscan standards. He maintained that St. A m b r o s e and St. Gregory, great scholars and ecclesiastical leaders w h o accepted divitiae atque honores, stood side by side with and were no less holy than St. Francis, the man of humility and poverty. N o t even Pope Sylvester, he said, was less holy a priest after receiving Constantine's donation than he had been " w h e n he lived, poorly and shabbily clothed, in mountain w o o d s and caves." T h o u g h Sylvester's acceptance o f the emperor's gift may have spelled misfortune for the Church in later centuries—this was the great complaint o f the Trecento Spirituales—he remained a holy man o f great renown. 5 * Eventually Petrarch vowed that if the medwcritas he aimed f o r was unobtainable and he was forced to choose between the t w o extremes, he would choose wealth over sordid poverty and unsatisfied needs, for the latter are bearable only for those w h o follow a life of poverty in the name of Christ. 39 " " N e q u e \ e r o . tametsi r e r u m l a b c n t i u m c o n t e m p t o r e s lure o p t i m o laudentur. l d c i r c o v i t u p e r a n d i sunt qui n e c e s s a n i s usibus lllas q u a e r u n t m o d o id caveant. ne habendi s t u d i o lustitiam, m o d e s t i a m . pietatem v e r e c u n d i a m q u e posthabeant

Q u a n q u a m e n i m D i o g e n e s C \ m c u s . e f f r a c t o ad f o n t e m vase

l i g n e o . naturali p o c u l o contentus et versanti d o m o habitans clarus sit. nihilo t a m e n o b s c u r i o r aut D e m o c r i t u s inter divitias multas. aut e x nostris d u o illi. q u i b u s e x p r o b a n opes n o v i m u s . C i c e r o et A n n e u s " " S e d m a g i s ad n o s t r o s ut v e n i a n i . an ne ideo q u o d Francisci c l a n s s i m a sit paupertas atque humilitas. divitiae atque h o n o r e s A m b r o s n aut G r e g o r n m i n u s clan sunt- Q u o r u m alter o p u l e n t i s s i m a e urbis E p i s c o p u s . alter E p i s c o p o r u m o m n i u m p n n c e p s erat." " N ' u n q u i d e r g o aut V i r g i l i u s , m u l t o a u r o ditatus a C a e s a r c . fuit o b s c u r i o r q u a m d u m rure p n m o d e p u l s u s e x u l atque m o p s R o m a m peteretr A u t S v l v e s ter i m m e n s o C o n s t a n t i m m u n e r e m i n u s sanctus. q u a m d u m pauper, n u d u s in n e m o r i b u s ac cavernis m o n t i u m habitaret? N o c u i t s u c c e s s o n b u s suis f o r sitan ea largitas n o c e b i t q u e . sibi ml penitus abstulit sancntatis aut g l o r i a e " (ibid ) - " D e m u m ne s e m p e r p h i l o s o p h c m u r 111 n u b i b u s . sed e latebns c r u m pentes a h q u a n d o nos et m t e l h g e r e v a l e a m u s . et intelligi de se q u i d e m alu ut libet. apud m e o p t i m u s vitae m o d u s est m c d i o c n t a s H i n c si c o g a r ad e x t r e m a deriectere. m a h m certe dives esse q u a m pauper, de paupertate l o q u o r anxia ac d e f o r n n . q u a m tnstis indigentia et l u n d a e p r a e m u n t [premunt?) sordes

Nam

ut paupertate. si t'acihs atque hotiesta contigerit. nihil est dulcius. sic ultima

POVERTY AND WEALTH: PETRARCH

Here the point of conscious differentiation between the role of poverty in a life devoted to religion and the meaning of poverty for the life of a layman or humanist philosopher seems to have been reached. The latter, Petrarch argues, should judge poverty as philosophers have long proposed: wealth should be praised or disapproved not as a doctrine but as a human condition "neither to be fervidly desired nor arro­ gantly disdained." 40 Even during his years in Arqua, when Pe­ trarch described his life-long aversion to divitiae in his Letter to Posterity, he avoided calling poverty a standard that ought to be followed; he expressly stated that he had embraced it out of natural inclination, not on principle: "I have always had ex­ treme contempt for wealth. Not that I had no desire for riches, but I hated the anxiety and toil that are invariably connected with them. . . . Nothing displeases me more than display, for not only is it bad in itself and contrary to humility, but it is troublesome and distracting." 4 ' The best definition of the component added m Petrarch's later years to his attitude toward paupertas might be: an in­ creased aversion to dogmatism, and therefore a diminished dependence on Franciscan and Stoic tenets. The aversion is noticeable in Petrarch's now more frequent leaning toward Peripatetic views. "Let us forget those high-sounding words" (that is, those of the Stoic dogmatists), he writes on one oc­ casion, "and talk instead like other people, especially since those [Stoic precepts] are neither generally accepted nor in ac­ cordance with good sense, and because there is an opposing philosophical school under Aristotle's leadership that loudly ml molestius egestate, unam cxcipio. quae propter Christi nomen assumpta e s s e t " ( i b i d ). 4 " P o s t r e m o h a c c n o d i h u i u s r e s o l u t i o b r c v i s sit. d m t i a s n e c a r d e n t i u s a p petendas nec msolentius respuendas eas denique nec laudandas nec vituper a n d a s q u i d e m , s e d . u t s p e n t i b u s placet, i n t e r i n d i t t e r e n t i a n u m e r a n d a s . I d e m plane de paupertate censeo, huius autem atque illarum usum laude seu vitup e n o d i g n u m e s s e " (ibid , 7 5 7 t ) " F o r t h e d a t e o f t h e s e late i n s e r t i o n s in t h e Laici to Posterity, s e e W i l k m s , Later Years. 268, a n d P G R i c c f s n o t e in hraiuesco Pettarca. Prose. 11611

I. A N A N A T O M Y

disagrees with them." 4 2 A distaste for doctrinaire obstinacy influences Petrarch's preference on another occasion as well, when he explains his dislike for extremes. Even though D i ogenes in his poverty may have been happier than Alexander, he writes, he would rather propose as a model of true " m o d eration" the philosopher Xenocrates, w h o when rich King Alexander offered him fifty talents accepted thirty minas in order to avoid disappointing the messengers and the appearance of an intentional affront to the king. 4 ' Petrarch's reactions are even more interesting on occasions when his references to the established doctrine of the superiority o f poverty are replaced by realistic psychological observations. For example, we have his response to the complaint that his affluent life in Milan has made him lose interest m the company of his poorer companions. Quite the contrary, he answers: he would always prefer to associate with people w h o are not wealthy. This claim is not substantiated in the customary Trecento way; that is, by assigning the highest value to poverty and stressing the unanimous agreement on this score among classical and Christian writers. Rather, Petrarch points to his own disdain for rich people w h o m he had admired when they were poor. " N o t because wealth must be scorned on principle," he says, " o r because paupertas is something 42

Hp. Fain

41

Hp

Petrarch's

x x m 1 2 (6), o f 1 3 5 9 - 1 3 6 0 .

Sen. XIII 1 3 , Opera ( 1 5 X 1 ) , 9 2 7 . F o r the date 1 3 7 1 - 1 3 7 2 , see W i l k i n s , Correspondence,

106

W h e t h e r the ascription to S o c r a t e s instead o f

X e n o c r a t e s in Fracassetti's Italian translation o f the Seniles

(vol

2, p. 320)

p o i n t s to a m i s t a k e m a d e b y P e t r a r c h is i m p o s s i b l e to d e t e r m i n e 111 the a b s e n c e o f a critical edition o f the Seniles.

Opera

( 1 5 8 1 ) has X e n o c r a t e s

Hp

Sen

XIII

1 3 is also interesting b e c a u s e it c o n f i r m s that Petrarch r e m a i n e d l o y a l to his ideal o f m o d e r a t e w e a l t h to the end o f his life

" S a t o l g i t u r et c o m p e r t u m

h a b e , n i h i l o m a g i s m e m a g n i s o p e r i b u s g a v i s u r u m q u a m honesta p a u p e r t a s a n i m u m quietaret, h u n c m e d i o c r i t a s 11011 q u i e t a b i t " Ea v e r o m i h i s e m p e r atf u i t , u n d e u s q u e ad h o c t e m p u s sat liberaliter VIM." T h e best e x a m p l e , he s a y s , is the o n e " c o n t i n e n t i s s i n n X e n o c r a t i s , qui de q u m q u a g i n t a talentis, q u a e sibi m d e m i s e r a t A l e x a n d e r , ne d o n u m r e g i u m spernere v i d e r e t u r ac n u n c i o s c o n tristaret,

triginta m i n a s t a n t u m ,

magni muneris exiguam

| c c p i t ' l " ( O p e r a [ 1 5 8 1 ] , 927).

184

partem,

coepit

P O V E R T Y AND WEALTH: PETRARCH

more pleasing . . . but because long observation has taught me that for many people adversity is a school for virtue and prosperity a school for vice." 4 4 O n the other hand, as late as in De Remediis

Utriusque

Fortunae,

c o m p o s e d b e t w e e n the m i d -

13505 and m i d - i 3 6 o s , he explains that one should not j u m p to the conclusion that wealth should be shunned because so many are defeated by its inherent perils. " F o r just as being enamored of wealth is the sign of a petty mind, he w h o abhors wealth shows that he is insecure, that he has little confidence in himself and fears he may succumb to the lure of gold." 4 < This indicates the same tendency to free himself from self-deception that w e observed in Petrarch's insistence during his Milanese years that "i f it is a sign of imbecility to avidly desire riches, the inability to live with them denotes an enervated mind." 4 '' T h e consequence of his years spent in Milan was thus a mode of thinking marked by a decidedly psychological approach to ethical values and a deliberate effort to reject prejudice—a combination one seeks in vain in the recluse of the Vaucluse.

IV M a y w e conclude f r o m all this that Petrarch anticipated some of the insights of the Quattrocento humanists; that, looking at it f r o m the other end, humanists a generation or two after him developed essentially the values and standards that he had seen f r o m afar? At first glance this seems indeed to be the obvious conclusion. 4 7 One is inclined to argue that Petrarch was ahead 44

Hp. ham

41

" U t a m a r e e n i m pusilli a m m i , sic pati n o n p o s s e a u r i i n i l n h r n n est p a -

x x 8, o f 1 3 5 9 .

r u m q u c sibi f i d e n t i s a t q u e a u r o s u c c u m b e r e m e t u e n t i s " ( D e Rcmedits see K l a u s H e i t m a n n , Fortima ( C o l o g n e , 1958), 186, n 4,1 4

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