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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comHistory of the Christian Church: Vol. 6, Ch. 08, § 061-063
Subjects in this Topic:
Chapter VIII. The Renaissance
61. Literature of the Renaissance
For an extended list of literature, see Voigt: Wiederbelebung des elam. Alterthums, II. 517-529, bringing it down to 1881, and Pastor: Gesch. der P'e4pste, I., pp. xxxii-lxiii, III., pp. xlii-lxix. Also this vol., pp. 400 sqq. Geiger adds Lit. notices to his Renaissance und Humanismus, pp. 564 sqq. The edd. of most of the Humanists are given in the footnotes. - M. Whitcomb: A Lit. Source-Book of the Ital. Renaiss., Phila., 1898, pp. 118.
Genl. Works. - *G. Tiraboschi, a Jesuit and librarian of the duke of Modena, d. 1794: Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 18 vols., Modena, 1771-1782; 9 vols., Roma, 1782-1785; 16 vols., Milan, 1822-1826. Vol. V. of the Roman ed. treats of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio. - Heeren: Gesch. d. class. Lit., etc., 2 vols., G'f6tting., 1797-1802. - Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo De’ Medici and Life and Pontificate of Leo X. - J. Ch. L. Sismondi, d. 1842: Hist. des R'e9publiques Itat., Paris, 1807-1818, 5th ed., 10 vols., 1840-1844. Engl. trsl., Lond., 1832, and Hist. de la renaiss. de la libert'e9 en Italie, 2 vols., 1832. - J. Michelet, d. 1874: Renaissance, the 7th vol. of his Hist. de France, Paris, 1867. - *J. Burckhardt, Prof. in Basel, d. 1897: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, Basel, 1860; 3rd ed. by L. Geiger, 1878. 9th ed., 1904. A series of philosophico-historical sketches on the six aspects of the Italian Renaissance, namely, the new conception of the state, the development of the individual, the revival of classic antiquity, the discovery of the world and of man, the new formation of society and the transformation of morals and religion. Engl. trsl. by Middlemore from the 3rd ed., 2 vols., Lond., 1878, 1 vol., 1890. Also his Cicerone; Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Itat., 4th ed. by Bode, Leipz., 1879; 9th ed., 2 vols., 1907. - *G. Voigt: Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus, 1859; 2 vols., 3rd ed., 1893. - T. D. Woolsey, Pres. of Yale Col., d. 1889: The Revival of Letters in the 14th and 15th Centuries. A series of valuable articles in the line of Voigt’s first ed., in the New Englander for 1864 and 1865. - M. Monnier: La Renaiss. de Dante 'e0 Luther, Paris, 1884. Crowned by the French Acad. - *P. Villari: Nic. Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, 3 vols., Flor., 1877-1882; Engl. trsl. by the author’s wife, 4 vol., Lond., 1878-1883. An introd. chap. on the Renaiss. New ed., 2 vols. 1891. - J. A. Symonds: Renaissance in Italy, Lond., 1877 sqq.; 2d, cheaper ed., 7 vols., 1888. Part I., The Age of the Despots; Part II., The Revival of Learning; Part III., The Fine Arts; Part IV., Ital. Literature, 2 vols.; Part V., The Cath. Reaction, 2 vols. The most complete Engl. work on the subject and based upon the original sources, but somewhat repetitious. Also his Life of Michelangelo, etc. See below. - G. Koerting: Gesch. der Lit. Italiens im Zeitalter der Renaiss., Leipz., Vol. I., 1878, Petrarca; Vol. II., 1880, Boccaccio; Vol. III., 1884, the forerunners and founders of the Renaissance. - *L. Geiger, Prof. in Berlin: Renaissance u. Humanismus in Ital. und Deutschland, Berlin, 1882, 2nd ed., 1899. Part of Oncken’s Allg. Gesch. - Mrs. Oliphant: The Makers of Florence, Lond., 1888. Sketches of Dante, Giotto, Savonarola, Michelangelo. - P. Schaff: The Renaissance, N. Y., 1891, pp. 182. - *Gregorovius: Hist. of the City of Rome, vols. vi-viii. - *Pastor: Gesch. d. P'e4pste, especially vols. I. 3-63; III. 3-172. - Creighton: Hist. of the Papacy. - P. and H. van Dyke: The Age of the Renascence, 1377-1527, N. Y., 1897. - K. Brandi: D. Renaiss. in Florenz u. Rom 2nd ed., Leipz., 1900. - W. S. Lilly: Renaiss. Types, Lond., 1901. - E. Steinmann: Rom u. d. Renaiss., von Nik. V. - Leo X., 2nd ed., Leipz., 1902. *John Owen: The Skeptics of the Ital. Renaiss., Lond., 1893. - J. Klaczko: Rome and the Renaiss., trsl. by Dennie, N. Y., 1903. - P. van Dyke: Aretino, Th. Cromwell and Maximilian I, N. Y., 1905. - L. Schmidt: D. Renaiss. in Briefen v. Dichtern, K'fcnstlern, Staatsm'e4nnern u. Frauen. - J. S. Sandys - Hist. of Class. Scholarship, 3 vols. - A. Baudrillart: The Cath. Ch., the Renais. and Protestantism, Lond., 1908. - Imbart de la Tour: L’'e9glise cathol: la crise et la renaiss., Paris, 1909.
For 'a763. - For Dante. Best Italian text of the Div. Commedia is by Witte. The ed. of Fraticelli, Flor., 1881, to used In this vol. See also Toynbee’s text, Lond., 1900. The latest and best Ital. commentaries by Scartazzini, Leipz., 3 vols., 1874-1894, 3rd, small ed., 1899, P. G. Campi, Turin, 1890 sqq., and W. W. Vernon, based on Benvenuto da Imola, 2 vols., Lond., 1897, - Engl. trsll. of Dante’s Div. Com.: In verse by Rev. H. F. Cary, 1805, etc., amended ed. by O. Kuhns, N. Y., 1897. - J. C. Wright, Lond., 1843, etc.; Longfellow, 3 vols., 1867, etc.; E. H. Plumptre, 2 vols., Lond., 1887 sqq.; T. W. Parsons, Bost, 1896. - H. K. Haselfoot, Lond., 1899. - M. R Vincent, N. Y., 1904. - In prose: J. A. Carlyle Lond., 1848, etc.; W. S. Dugdale, Purgatorio, Lond., 1883. - A. J. Butler, Lond., 1894. - G. C. Norton, Boston, 1892, new ed., 1901. - P. H. Wicksteed, Lond., 1901 sqq. - H. P. Tozer, Lond., 1904. - *G. A. Scartazzini, a native of the Grisons, Reformed minister: Prolegomeni della Div. Com., etc., Leipz., 1890. Engl. trsl. A Companion to Dante, by A. J. Butler, Lond., 1893; Dante Handbuch, etc., Engl. trsl. Hdbook. to Dante, etc., by T. Davidson, Bost., 1887. - E. A. Fay: Concordance to the Div. Com., Cambr., Mass., 1880. - P. Schaff: Dante and the Div. Com., in Literature and Poetry, 1890, pp. 279-429, with list of Dante lit, pp. 328-337. - Tozer: Engl. Concordance on Dante’s Div. Com., Oxf., 1907. - *E. Moore: Studies in Dante, 3 vols., Lond., 1896-1903. - Lives of Dante: Dante and his Early Biographers, being a r'e9sum'e9 by E. Moore of five, Lond., 1880. A trsl. of Boccaccio’s and Bruni’s Lives, by Wicksteed, Hull, 1898. - F. X. Kraus, Berl., 1897. - P. Villari: The First Two Centt. of Florent. Hist. The Republic, and Parties at the Time of Dante. Engl. trsl. by L. Villari. - *Witte: Essays on Dante, trsl. by Lawrence and Wicksteed. - Essays on Dante by *R. W. Church, 1888, and *Lowell. - M. F. Rossetti: Shadow of Dante, Edin., 1884. - Owen: Skeptics of the Ital. Renaiss. - J. A. Symonds: Introd. to the Study of Dante, Lond., 1893. - D. G. C. Rossetti: Dante and Ital. Poets preceding him, 1100-1300, Boston, 1893. - C. A. Dinsmore: The Teachings of Dante, Bost., 1901. - C.E. Laughlin: Stories of Authors’ Loves, Phila., 1902. - A. H. Strong: Dante, in Great Poets and their Theol., Phila., 1897, pp. 105-155. - Art. Dante with Lit. in the Schaff-Herzog, III. 853 sqq. by M. R. Vincent.
For Petrarca: Opera omnia, Venice, 1503; Basel, 1554, 1581. - Epistolae ed. in Lat. and Ital. by Fracasetti, Flor., 1859-1870, in several vols. The Canzoniere or Rime in Vita e Morte di Mad. Laura often separately edited by Marsand, Leopardi, Carducci and others, and in all collections of the Ital. classics. - Sonnets, Triumphs and other Poems, with a Life by T. Campbell Lond., 1889-1890. - Lives by Blanc, Halle, 1844. - M'e9zi'e8res, Paris, 1868, 2d ed., 1873. - Geiger, Leipz., 1874, - Koerting, Leipz., 1878, pp. 722. - Mary A. Ward, Bost., 1891. - F. Horridge, 1897. - *J. H. Robinson and R. W. Rolfe, N. Y., 1898. - L. O. Kuhns, Great Poets of Italy, 1904. - E. J. Mills: Secret of Petr., 1904. - R. de Nolhac: Petr. and the Art World, 1907.
For Boccaccio: Opere volgari, ed. by Moutier, 17 vols., Flor., 1827-1834, Le Lettere edite ed inedite, trsl. by Fr. Corragini, Flor., 1877. - Lives of Boccaccio by Manetti, Baldelli, Landau, Koerting, Leipz., 1880. Geiger: Renaissance, pp. 448-474. - *Owen: Skeptics, etc., pp. 128-147. - N. H. Dole: Boccaccio and the Novella in A Teacher of Dante, etc., N. Y., 1908.
For 'a764. - For Lives of the popes, see pp. 401-403. Lives of Cosimo de’ Medici by Fabroni, Pisa, 1789; K. D. Ewart, Lond., 1899; and of Lorenzo by Fabroni, 2 vols., Pisa, 1784; Roscoe; von Reumont; B. Buser Leipz., 1879;Castelnau, 2 vols., Paris, 1879. - Vaughan: The Medici Popes, 1908. - G. F. Young: The Medici, 1400-1743, Lond., 1909. - Lor. de’ Medici: Opere, 4 vols., Flor., 1825, Poesie, ed. by Carducci, Flor., 1859. - E. L. S. Horsburgh: Lor. the Magnificent, Lond., 1909.
For 'a766. - G. Vasari, pupil of Michelangelo, d. 1574; Lives of the More Celebrated Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1550; best ed. by Milanesi, 9 vols., Flor., 1878-1885. Small ed., 1889. Engl. trsl., new ed., 1878, 5 vols. in Bohn’s Library. Vasari is the basis of most works in this department. - Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith and sculptor at Florence, d. 1570: Vita scritta da lui medesimo. An autobiog. giving a lively picture of the life of an Ital. artist of that period. German trsl. by Goethe; Engl. trsll. by Roscoe and Symonds, Lond., 1890. - A. Luigi Lanza, d. 1810: The Hist. of Painting in Italy, from the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to 1800. Trsl. by T. Roscoe, 3 vols., Lond., 1852. - W. L'fcbke: Hist. of Sculpture, Engl. trsl. by Bunnett, 2 vols., 1872; Outlines of the Hist. of Art, ed. by R. Sturgis, 2 vols., N. Y., 1904. - J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle: Hist. of Painting in Italy, etc., to the 16th Cent., Lond., 1864-1867, ed. by Douglass, Lond., 3 vols., 1903-1908. - Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake: Hist. of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art. - Mrs. Jameson: Legends of the Madonna as repres. in the Fine Arts; Sacr. and Leg. Art; Legends of the Monastis Orders as expressed in the Fine Arts. - H. Taine: Lectures on Art, Paris, 1865 sq. - 1st series: The Philos. of Art. 2nd series: Art in Italy, etc. Trsl. by Durand, N. Y., 1875. - A. Woltmann and K. Woermann: Hist. of Anc., Early Christian and Med. Painting. Trsl. by Colvin, Lond., 1880, iIIus. - E. M'fcntz: Hist. de l’Art pendant la Renaiss., 5 vols., Paris, 1889-1905. The first 3 vols. are devoted to Italy, the 4th to France, the 5th to other countries. Les Antiquit'e9s de la ville de Rom, 1300-1600, Paris, 1886. - Histt. of Archit. by Ferguson and R. Sturgis. - C. H. Moore: Character of Renaiss. Archit., N. Y., 1905. - R. Lanciani: Golden Days of the Renaiss. in Rome, 1906. - A. K. Porter: Med. Archit. Its Origin and Development, 2 vols., N. Y., 1909. - Lives of Michelangelo by *H. Grimm, 2 vols., Berl., 1860, 5th ed., 1879. Engl. trsl. by Bunnett, 12th ed., 2 vols., Bost., 1882; A. Sprenger: Raffaele u. Michelangelo, 2nd ed., 1883; C. Clement, Lond., 1883; J. A. Symonds, 2 vols., N. Y., 1892; F. Horridge, 1897; C. Holroyd, 1903. - Lives of Raphael by Ruland, Lond., 1870; L'fcbke, Dresden, 1881; M'fcntz, trsl. by Armstrong, 1888; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 2 vols., Lond., 1882-1888; Minghetti, Ger. ed., Breslau, 1887; *H. Grimm trsl. by S. H. Adams, Bost, 1888; Knackfuss, trsl. by Dodgson, N. Y., 1899.
For 'a7'a768, 69. - K. Hagen: Deutschland literarische und religioese Verh'e4ltnisse im Reformations-Zeitalter, Erlang., 1841-1844, 38 vols., 2d ed., Frankf., 1868. - T. Janssen-Pastor: Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, 18th ed., I. 77-166, II. Comp. his alphab. list of books, I., pp. xxxi-lv. - Geiger: Renaiss. u. Humanismus, pp. 323-580. - Zarncke: D. deutschen Universit'e4ten im MA., Leip., 1857. - Paulsen: Germ. Universities, etc., trsl. by Perry, Lond., 1895. - G. Kaufmann: Gesch. d. deutschen Universit'e4ten, 2 vols., Stuttg., 1888-1896. - For monographs on the universities, see Lit. in Rashdall and Schmid, pp. 51-54.
For Reuchlin: Briefwechsel, ed. L. Geiger, T'fcbing., 1875. Monographs on Reuchlin by Mayerhof, Berl., 1830; Lamay, Pforzheim, 1855; Geiger, Leipz., 1871; A. Horawitz, Vienna, 1877. - On Reuchlin’s conflict with the Dominicans of Cologne and Hutten’s part in it, see Strauss: U. von Hutten, pp. 132-164; B'f6cking, II. 55-156. - N. Paulus: D. deutschen Dominikaner im Kampfe mit Luther, Freib., 1903, p. 94 sqq., 119 sqq. - Janssen, II. 40 sqq.
For Erasmus: Opera, ed. B. Rhenanus, 9 vols., Basel,1540, by Le Clerc, 10 vols., Leyden, 1703-1706. - Epistolae, ed. Allen, Oxf., 1906. In Engl. trsl. by *F. M. Nichols, 2 vols., Lond., 1901-1904. In Engl. trsl., Praise of Folly, Lond., 1876. Colloquies, Lond., 1724, new ed., 2 vols., 1878. Enchiridion, Lond., 1905. - Bibl. Erasmania, 5 vols, Ghent, 1897-1907 sqq. Lives of Erasmus, by H. Durand de Laur: Er. pr'e9curseur et initiateur de l’esprit mod., 2 vols., Paris, 1872. - *R. B. Drummond, 2 vols., Lond., 1873. - *F. Seebohm: The Oxf. Reformers, Lond., 1887, etc. - Amiel, Paris, 1889. - J. A. Froude, 1896. - *E Emerton, N. Y., 1899. - A. B. Pennington, Lond., 1875, 1901. - E. F. H. Capey, Lond., 1903. - *J. A. Faulkner, Cin’ti, 1907. - A. Richter: Erasmienstudien, Dresden, 1901. - Geiger, 526 sqq. - Janssen, II. 1-24.
For general education: Rashdall Universities, II., pp. 211-285 - K. A. Schmid: Gesch. d. Erziehung, Stuttg., 1892, II. 51-126. - J. M'fcller: Quellenschriften zur Gesch. d. deutschsprachl. Unterrichts his zur Mitte d. 16. Jahrh., Gotha, 1882.
For Ulrich von Hutten: E. B'f6cking: Ulrichi Hutteni opp., 7 vols., Leipz., 1859-1870. - S. Szamatolski: Huttens deutsche Schriften, 1891. - D. F. Strauss, author of the Life of Jesus: U. von Hutten, 3vols., Leipz., 1858, 1 vol., 1871, Engl. trsl., Lond., 1874. Also Gespr'e4che von U. von Hut., the Epp. obscurorum virorum in German, Leipz., 1860. - J. Deckert: Ul. v. Hutten’s Leben u. Wirken, Vienna, 1901.
For 'a770. - Imbart de la Tour, Prof. at Bordeaux: L’'e9glise catholique: la crise et la renaissance, Paris, 1909, being vol. II. of Les origines de la r'e9forme, vol. I., La France moderne, 1905. To be completed in 4 vols. - Schmid: Gesch. d. Erziehung, II., 40 sqq. - H. M. Baird: Hist. of the Huguenots, I. 1-164. - Bonet Maury, art. Faber In Herzog, V. 715 sqq. - Works on the Univ. of Paris and French Lit.; H. van Laun: Hist. of French Lit., 3 vols. in one, N. Y., 1895, pp. 259-296. - The Histt. of France by Martin and Guizot.
For 'a771. - F. Seebohm: The Oxford Reformers, Colet, Erasmus, More, Lond., 1887. - Colet’s writings ed. with trsl. and notes by Lupton, 5 vols., Lond., 1867-1876. - Lives of Colet, by S. Knight, 1823. - J. H. Lupton: Life of Dean Colet, Lond., 1887, new ed., 1908. - Artt. in Dict. Natl. Biogr., Colet, Fisher, etc. - Histt. of Engl. by Lingard and Green. - Histt. of the Engl. Ch. by Gairdner and by Capes. - Ward-Waller: Cambr. Hist. of Engl. Lit., vol. III., Cambr., 1909. - H. Morley: Engl. Writers, vol. VII., 1891. - Mullinger: Hist. of Univ. of Cambridge. - For edd. of Sir Thos. More’s Works, see Dict. Natl. Biogr., XXXVIII., 445 sqq. - Lives of More by Roper, written in Mary Tudor’s reign, publ. Paris, 1626, Stapleton, Douay, 1588; E. More, a grandson, 1627; T. E. Bridgett, Rom. Cath., 2nd ed., 1892: W. H. Hutton, 1895. - W. S. Lilly: Renaiss. Types, 1901, III., Erasmus, IV., More. - L. Einstein: The Ital. Renaiss. in England. - a.d. Innes: Ten Tudor Statesmen, Lond., 1906. More is treated pp. 76-111. - A. F. Leach: Engl. Schools at the Reformation, Lond., 1896. - Eng. Works of Bp. J. Fisher, ed. Major, Lond., 1876. - Life of Fisher, by Bridgett, 1888.
62. The Intellectual Awakening
The discussions, which issued in the Reformatory councils and which those councils fostered, were a worthy expression of an awakening freedom of thought in the effort to secure relief from ecclesiastical abuses. The movement, to which the name Renaissance has been given, was a larger and far more successful effort, achieving freedom from the intellectual bondage to which the individual man had been subjected by the theology and hierarchy of the Church. The intelligence of Italy, and indeed of Western Europe as a whole, had grown weary of the monastic ideal of life, and the one-sided purpose of the scholastic systems to exalt heavenly concerns by ignoring or degrading things terrestrial. The Renaissance insisted upon the rights of the life that now is, and dignified the total sphere for which man’s intellect and his esthetic and social tastes by nature fit him. It sought to give just recognition to man as the proprietor of the earth. It substituted the enlightened observer for the monk; the citizen for the contemplative recluse. It honored human sympathies more than conventual visions and dexterous theological dialectics. It substituted observation for metaphysics. It held forth the achievements of history. It called man to admire his own creations, the masterpieces of classical literature and the monuments of art. It bade him explore the works of nature and delight himself in their excellency. How different from the apparent or real indifference to the beauties of the natural world as shown, for example, by the monk, St. Bernard, was the attitude of Leon Battista Alberti, d. 1472, who bore testimony that the sight of a lovely landscape had more than once made him well of sickness.
In the narrower sense, the Renaissance may be confined to the recovery of the culture of Greece and Rome and the revival of polite literature and art, and it is sometimes designated the Revival of Letters. After having been taught for centuries that the literature of classic antiquity was full of snares and dangers for a Christian public, men opened their eyes and revelled with childlike delight in the discovery of ancient authors and history. Virgil sang again the Aeneid, Homer the Iliad and Odyssey. Cicero once more delivered his orations and Plato taught his philosophy. It was indeed an intellectual and artistic new birth that burst forth in Italy, a regeneration, as the word Renaissance means. But it was more. It was a revolt against monastic asceticism and scholasticism, the systems which cramped the free flow of bodily enthusiasm and intellectual inquiry. It called man from morbid self-mortifications as the most fitting discipline of mortal existence here below, and offered him the satisfaction of all the elements of his nature as his proper pursuit.
Beginning in Italy, this new enthusiasm spread north to Germany and extended as far as Scotland. North of the Alps, it was known as Humanism and its representatives as Humanists, the words being taken from literae humanae, or humaniores, that is, humane studies, the studies which develop the man as the proprietor of this visible sphere. In the wider sense, it comprehends the revival of literature and art, the development of rational criticism, the transition from feudalism to a new order of social organization, the elevation of the modern languages of Europe as vehicles for the highest thought, the emancipation of intelligence, and the expansion of human interests, the invention of the printing-press, the discoveries of navigation and the exploration of America and the East, and the definition of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, - in one word, all the progressive developments of the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, developments which have since been the concern of modern civilization.
The most discriminating characterization of this remarkable movement came from the pen of Michelet, who defined it as the discovery of the world and man. In this twofold aspect, Burckhardt, its leading historian for Italy, has treated the Renaissance with deep philosophical insight.
The period of the Renaissance lasts from the beginning of the 14th to the middle of the 16th century, from Roger Bacon, d. 1294, and Dante, d. 1321, to Raphael, d. 1520, and Michelangelo, d. 1564, Reuchlin, d. 1522, and Erasmus, d. 1536. For more than a century it proceeded in Italy without the patronage of the Church. Later, from the pontificate of Nicolas V. to the Medicean popes, Leo X. and Clement VII., it was fostered by the papal court. For this reason the last popes of the Middle Ages are known as the Renaissance popes. The movement in the courts may be divided into three periods: the age of the great Italian literati, Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, the age from 1400-1460, when the interest in classic literature predominated, and the age from 1460-1540, when the pursuit of the fine arts was the predominant feature. The first age contributed immortal works to literature. In the second, Plato and the other classics were translated and sedulously studied. In the last, the fine arts and architecture offered their array of genius in, Italy.
To some writers it has occurred to go back as far as Frederick II. for the beginnings of the movement. That sovereign embodied in himself a varied culture and a versatility of intellect rare in any age. With authorship and a knowledge of a number of languages, he combined enlightened ideas in regard to government and legislation, the patronage of higher education and the arts. For the varied interests of his mind, he has been called the first modern man. However, the literary activity of his court ceased at his death. Italy was not without its poets in the 13th century, but it is with the imposing figure of Dante that the revival of culture is to be dated. That a Renaissance should have been needed is a startling fact in the history of human development and demands explanation. The ban, which had been placed by the Church upon the study of the classic authors of antiquity and ancient institutions, palsied polite research and reading for a thousand years. Even before Jerome, whose mind had been disciplined in the study of the classics, at last pronounced them unfit for the eye of a Christian, Tertullian’s attitude was not favorable. Cassian followed Jerome; and Alcuin, the chief scholar of the 9th century, turned away from Virgil as a collection of lying fables. At the close of the 10th century, a pope reprimanded Arnulf of Orleans by reminding him that Peter was unacquainted with Plato, Virgil and Terence, and that God had been pleased to choose as His agents, not philosophers and rhetoricians, but rustics and unlettered men. In deference to such authorities the dutiful churchman turned from the closed pages of the old Romans and Greeks. Only did a selected author like Terence have here and there in a convent a clandestine though eager reader.
In the 12th century, it seemed as if a new era in literature was impending, as if the old learning was about to flourish again. The works of Aristotle became more fully known through the translations of the Arabs. Schools were started in which classic authors were read. Abaelard turned to Virgil as a prophet. The Roman law was discovered and explained at Bologna and other seats of learning. John of Salisbury, Grosseteste, Peter of Blois and other writers freely quoted from Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Ovid and other Latin authors. But the head of Western Christendom discerned in this movement a grave menace to theology and religion, and was quick to blight the new shoot with his curse, and in its early statutes, forced by the pope, the University of Paris excluded the literature of Rome from its curriculum.
But this arbitrary violence could not forever hold the mind of Europe in bonds. The satisfaction its intelligence was seeking, it did not find in the subtle discussions of the Schoolmen or the dismal pictures of the monastics. When the new movement burst forth, it burst forth in Italy, that beautiful country, the heir of Roman traditions. The glories of Italy’s past in history and in literature blazed forth again as after a long eclipse, and the cult of the beautiful, for which the Italian is born, came once more into free exercise. In spite of invasion after invasion the land remained Italian. Lombards, Goths, Normans had occupied it, but the invaders were romanized much more than the Italians were teutonized. The feudal system and Gothic architecture found no congenial soil south of the Alps. In the new era, it seemed natural that the poets and orators of old Italy should speak again in the land which they had witnessed as the mistress of all nations. The literature and law of Greece and Rome again became the educators of the Latin and also of the Teutonic races, preparing them to receive the seeds of modern civilization.
The tap-root of the Renaissance was individualism as opposed to sacerdotal authority. Its enfranchising process manifested itself in Roger Bacon, whose mind turned away from the rabbinical subtleties of the Schoolmen to the secrets of natural science and the discoveries of the earth reported by Rubruquis or suggested by his own reflection, and more fully in Dante, Marsiglius of Padua and Wyclif, who resisted the traditional authority of the papacy. It was active in the discussions of the Reformatory councils. And it received a strong impetus in the administration of the Lombard cities which gloried in their independence. With their authority the imperial policy of Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. had clashed. Partly owing to the loose hold of the empire and partly owing to the papal policy, which found its selfish interests subserved better by free contending states and republics than by a unified kingdom of Italy under a single temporal head, these independent municipalities took such deep root that they withstood for nearly a thousand years the unifying process which, in the case of France, Great Britain and Spain, resulted in the consolidation of strong kingdoms soon after the era of the Crusades closed. Upon an oligarchical or a democratic basis, despots and soldiers of fortune secured control of their Italian states by force of innate ability. Individualism pushed aside the claims of birth, and it so happened in the 14th and 15th centuries that the heads of these states were as frequently men of illegitimate birth as of legitimate descent. In our change-loving Italy, wrote Pius II., “where nothing is permanent and no old dynasty exists, servants easily rise to be kings.”
It was in the free republic of Florence, where individualism found the widest sphere for self-assertion, that the Renaissance took earliest root and brought forth its finest products. That municipality, which had more of the modern spirit of change and progress than any other medieval organism, invited and found satisfaction in novel and brilliant works of power, whether they were in the domain of government or of letters or even of religion, as under the spell of Savonarola. There Dante and Lionardo da Vinci were born, and there Machiavelli exploited his theories of the state and Michelangelo wrought. The Medici gave favor to all forms of enterprise that might bring glory to the city. After Nicolas V. ascended the papal throne, Rome vied with its northern neighbor as a centre of the arts and culture. The new tastes and pursuits also found a home in Ferrara, Urbino, Naples, Milan and Mantua.
Glorious the achievement of the Renaissance was, but it was the last movement of European significance in which Italy and the popes took the lead. Had the current of esthetic and intellectual enthusiasm joined itself to a stream of religious regeneration, Italy might have kept in advance of other nations, but she produced no safe prophets. No Reformer arose to lead her away from dead religious forms to living springs of spiritual life, from ceremonies and relics to the New Testament.
In spreading north to Germany, Holland and England, the movement took on a more serious aspect. There it produced no poets or artists of the first rank, but in Reuchlin and Erasmus it had scholars whose erudition not only attracted the attention of their own but benefited succeeding generations and contributed directly to the Reformation. South of the Alps, culture was the concern of a special class and took on the form of a diversion, though it is true all classes must have looked with admiration upon the works of art that were being produced.
It was, then, the mission of the Renaissance to start the spirit of free inquiry, to certify to the mind its dignity, to expand the horizon to the faculties of man as a citizen of the world, to recover from the dust of ages the literary treasures and monuments of ancient Greece and Rome, to inaugurate a style of fresh description, based on observation, in opposition to the dialectic circumlocution of the scholastic philosophy, to call forth the laity and to direct attention to the value of natural morality and the natural relationships of man with man. To the monk beauty was a snare, woman a temptation, pleasure a sin, the world vanity of vanities. The Humanist taught that the present life is worth living. The Renaissance breathed a cosmopolitan spirit and fostered universal sympathies. In the spirit of some of the yearnings of the later Roman authors, Dante exclaimed again, “My home is the world.”
63. Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio
Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio represent the birth and glory of Italian literature and ushered in the new literary and artistic age. Petrarca and Boccaccio belong chiefly to the department of literary culture; Dante equally to it and the realm of religious thought and composition. The period covered by their lives extends over more than a hundred years, from Dante’s birth in 1265 to Boccaccio’s death, 1375.
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, the first of Italian and the greatest of medieval poets, has given us in his Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy, conceived in 1300, a poetic view of the moral universe under the aspect of eternity, - sub specie aeternitatis. Born in Florence, he read under his teacher Brunetto Latini, whom in later years he praised, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and other Latin authors. In the heated conflict of parties, going on in his native city, he at first took the side of the Guelfs as against the Ghibellines, who were in favor of the imperial r'e9gime in Italy. In 1300, he was elected one of the priori or chief magistrates, approved the severe measures then employed towards political opponents and, after a brief tenure of office, was exiled. The decree of exile threatened to burn him alive if he ventured to return to the city. After wandering about, going to Paris and perhaps further west, he settled down in Ravenna, where he died and where his ashes still lie. After his death, Florence accorded the highest honors to his memory. Her request for his body was refused by Ravenna, but she created a chair for the exposition of the Divine Comedy, with Boccaccio as its first occupant, and erected to her distinguished son an imposing monument in the church of Santa Croce and a statue on the square in front. In 1865, all Italy joined Florence in celebrating the 6th centenary of the poet’s birth. Never has study been given to Dante’s great poem as a work of art by wider circles and with more enthusiasm than to-day, and it will continue to serve as a prophetic voice of divine judgment and mercy as long as religious feeling seeks expression.
Dante was a layman, married and had seven children. An epoch in his life was his meeting, as a boy of nine years, with Beatrice, who was a few months younger than himself, at a festival given in her father’s house, where she was tenderly called, as Boccaccio says, Bice. The vision of Beatrice - for there is no record that they exchanged words - entered and filled Dante’s soul with an effluence of purity and benignity which cleared away all evil thoughts. After an interval of nine years he saw her a second time, and then not again till, in his poetic dream, he met her in paradise. Beatrice married and died at 24, 1290.
With this vision, the new life began for Dante, the vita nuova which he describes in the book of that name. Beatrice’s features illuminated his path and her pure spirit was his guide. At the first meeting, so the poet says, “she appeared to me clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, garlanded and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age.” The love then begotten, says Charles Eliot Norton, “lasted from Dante’s boyhood to his death, keeping his heart fresh, spite of the scorchings of disappointment, with the springs of perpetual solace.” The last glimpse the poet gives of her was as he saw her at the side of Rachel in the highest region of heaven.
The third in order, underneath her, lo!
Rachel with Beatrice. - Par., xxxii. 6.
Had Dante written only the tract against the temporal power of the papacy, the De monarchia, his name would have been restricted to a place in the list of the pamphleteers of the 14th century. His Divine Comedy exalts him to the eminence of the foremost poetic interpreter of the medieval world. This immortal poem is a mirror of medieval Christianity and civilization and, at the same time, a work of universal significance and perennial interest. It sums up the religious concepts of the Middle Ages and introduces the free critical spirit of the modern world. It is Dante’s autobiography and reflects his own experiences: -
All the pains by me depicted, woes and tortures, void of pity,
On this earth I have encountered - found them all in Florence City.
It brings into view the society of medieval Italy, a long array of its personages, many of whom had only a local and transient interest. At the same time, the Comedy is the spiritual biography of man as man wherever he is found, in the three conditions of sin, repentance and salvation. It describes a pilgrimage to the world of spirits beyond this life, from the dark forest of temptation, through the depths of despair in hell, up the terraces of purification in purgatory, to the realms of bliss. Through the first two regions the poet’s guide is Virgil, the representative of natural reason, and through the heavenly spaces, Beatrice, the type of divine wisdom and love. The Inferno reflects sin and misery; the Purgatorio, penitence and hope; the Paradiso, holiness and happiness. The first repels by its horrors and laments; the second moves by its penitential tears and prayers; the third enraptures by its purity and peace. Purgatory is an intermediate state, constantly passing away, but heaven and hell will last forever. Hell is hopeless darkness and despair; heaven culminates in the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity, beyond which nothing higher can be conceived by man or angel. Here are depicted the extremes of terror and rapture, of darkness and light, of the judgment and the love of God. In paradise, the saints are represented as forming a spotless white rose, whose cup is a lake of light, surrounded by innocent children praising God. This sublime conception was probably suggested by the rose-windows of Gothic cathedrals, or by the fact that the Virgin Mary was called a rose by St. Bernard and other medieval divines and poets.
Following the geocentric cosmology of the Ptolemaic system, the poet located hell within the earth, purgatory in the southern hemisphere, and heaven in the starry firmament. Hell is a yawning cavity, widest at the top and consisting of ten circles. Purgatory is a mountain up which souls ascend. The heavenly realm consists of nine circles, culminating in the empyrean where the pure divine essence dwells.
Among these regions of the spiritual and future world, Dante distributes the best-known characters of his and of former generations. He spares neither Guelf nor Ghibelline, neither pope nor emperor, and gives to all their due. He adapts the punishment to the nature of the sin, the reward to the measure of virtue, and shows an amazing ingenuity and fertility of imagination in establishing the correspondence of outward condition to moral character. Thus the cowards and indifferentists in the vestibule of the Inferno are driven by a whirling flag and stung by wasps and flies. The licentious are hurried by tempestuous winds in total darkness, with carnal lust still burning, but never gratified.
The infernal hurricane, that never rests
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine,
Whirling them round; and smiting, it molests them;
It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them.
- Inferno, V. 31-43.
The gluttonous lie on the ground, exposed to showers of hail and foul water; blasphemers supine upon a plain of burning sand, while sparks of fire, like flakes of snow in the Alps, slowly and constantly descend upon their bodies. The wrathful are forever tearing one another.
And I, who stood intent upon beholding,
Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,
All of them naked and with angry look.
They smote each other not alone with hands,
But with the head and with the breast and feet
Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.
- Inferno, VII. 100 sqq.
The simonists, who sell religion for money and turn the temple of God into a den of thieves, are thrust into holes, head downwards, with their feet protruding and tormented with flames. The arch-heretics are held in red-hot tombs, and tyrants in a stream of boiling blood, shot at by the centaurs whenever they attempt to rise. The traitors are immersed in a lake of ice with Satan, the arch-traitor and the embodiment of selfishness, malignity and turpitude. Their very tears turn to ice, symbol of utter hardness, and Satan is forever consuming in his three mouths the three arch-traitors, Judas, Brutus and Cassius. Milton represents Satan as the archangel who even in hell exalts himself and in pride exclaims, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” and the poet leaves the mind of the reader disturbed by a feeling of admiration for Lucifer’s untamed ambition and superhuman power. Dante’s Satan awakens disgust and horror, and the inscription over the entrance to hell makes the reader shudder: -
Through me ye enter the abode of woe;
Through me to endless sorrow are brought;
Through me amid the souls accurst ye go.
********
All hope abandon - ye who enter here!
Per me si va nella citt'e0 dolente;
Per me si va nell’ eterno dolore;
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
********
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate.
Passing out from the domain of gloom and dole, Virgil leads the poet to purgatory, where the dawn of day breaks. This realm, as has been said, comes nearer to our common life than hell or paradise. Hope dwells here. Song, not wailing, is heard. A ship appears, moved by an angel and filled with spirits, singing the hymn of redemption. Cato approaches and urges the guide and Dante to wash themselves on the shore from all remainders of hell and to hurry on. In purgatory, they pass through seven stages, which correspond to the seven mortal sins, the two lowest, pride and envy, the highest, wantonness and luxury. All the penitents have stamped on their foreheads seven P’s, - the first letter of the word peccata, sins, - which are effaced only one by one, as they pass from stage to stage, “enclasped with scorching fire,” until they are delivered through penal fire from all stain. A similar correspondence exists between sin and punishments as in the Inferno, but with the opposite effect, for here sins are repented of and forgiven, and the woes are disciplinary until “the wound that healeth last is medicined.” Thus the proud, in the first and lowest terrace, are compelled to totter under huge weights, that they may learn humility. The indolent, in the fourth terrace, are exercised by constant and rapid walking. The avaricious and prodigal, with hands and feet tied together, lie with their faces in the dust, weeping and wailing. The gluttons suffer hunger and thirst that they may be taught temperance. The licentious wander about in flames that their sensual passions may be consumed away.
Arriving at paradise, the Roman poet can go no further, and Beatrice takes his place as Dante’s guide. The spirits are distributed in glory according to their different grades of perfection. Here are passed in review theologians, martyrs, crusaders, righteous princes and judges, monks and contemplative mystics. In the 9th heaven Beatrice leaves the poet to take her place at the side of Rachel, after having introduced him to St. Bernard. Dante looks again and sees Mary and Eve and Sarah,
'85 and the gleaner-maid
Meek ancestress of him, who sang the songs
Of sore repentance in his sorrowful mood;
Gabriel, Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, Peter, St. Augustine and other saints. Then he is led by the devout mystic to Mary, who, in answer to his prayer, shows him the Deity in the empyrean, but what he saw was not for words to utter. Alike are all the saints in enjoying the same reward of the beatific vision.
Dante was in full harmony with the orthodox faith of his age, and followed closely the teachings of Thomas Aquinas’ great book of divinity. He accepted all the distinctive tenets of medieval Catholicism - purgatory, the worship of Mary, the intercession of saints, the efficacy of papal indulgences and the divine institution of the papacy. He paid deep homage to the monastic life and accords exalted place to Benedict, St. Francis and Dominic. But he cast aside all traditions in dealing freely with the successors of Peter in the Apostolic see. Here, too, he was under the direction of the beloved Beatrice. The evils in the Church he traced to her temporal power and he condemned to everlasting punishment Anastasius II. for heresy, Nicolas III., Boniface VIII. and Clement V. for simony, Coelestine V. for cowardice in abdicating the pontifical office, and a squad of other popes for avarice.
Following the theology of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he put into hell the whole heathen world except two solitary figures, Cato of Utica, who sacrificed life for liberty and keeps watch at the foot of purgatory, and the just emperor, Trajan, who, 500 years after his death, was believed to have been prayed out of hell by Pope Gregory I. To the region of the Inferno, also, though on the outer confines of it, a place is assigned to infants who die in infancy without being baptized, whether the offspring of Christian or heathen parents. Theirs is no conscious pain, but they remain forever without the vision of the blessed. In the same vicinity the worthies of the old dispensation were detained until Christ descended after his crucifixion and gave them release. There, John the Baptist had been kept for two years after his pains of martyrdom, Par. xxxii. 25. In the upper regions of the hopeless Inferno a tolerably comfortable place is also accorded to the noble heathen poets, philosophers, statesmen and warriors, while unfaithful Christians are punished in the lower circles according to the degrees of their guilt. The heathen, who followed the light of nature, suffer sorrow without pain. As Virgil says: -
In the right manner they adored not God.
For such defects, and not for other guilt,
Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on, in desire.
Dante began his poem in Latin and was blamed by Giovanni del Virgilio, a teacher of Latin literature in Bologna, because he abandoned the language of old Rome for the vulgar dialect of Tuscany. Poggio also lamented this course. But the poet defended himself in his unfinished book, Eloquence in the Vernacular, De vulgari eloquio, and, by writing the Commedia, the Vita nuova, the Convivio and his sonnets in his native Florentine tongue, he became the father of Italian literature and opened the paths of culture to the laity. Within three years of the poet’s death, commentaries began to be written on the Divina Commedia, as by Graziuolo de’ Bambagliolo, 1324, and within 100 years chairs were founded for its exposition at Florence, Venice, Bologna and Pisa.
A second service which Dante rendered in his poem to the coming culture was in bringing antiquity once more into the foreground and treating pagan and Christian elements side by side, though not as of the same value, and interweaving mythological fables with biblical history, classical with Christian reminiscences. By this tolerance he showed himself a man of the new age, while he still held firmly to the medieval theology.
Dante’s abiding merit, however, was his inspiring portrayal of the holiness and love of God. Sin, the perversion of the will, is punished with sin continuing in the future world and pain. Salvation is through the “Lamb of God who takes away our sins and suffered and died that we might live.” This poem, like a mighty sermon, now depresses, now enraptures the soul, or, to use the lines of the most poetic of his translators, Longfellow,
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
What soft compassion glows.
Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374, was the most cultured man of his time. His Italian sonnets and songs are masterpieces of Italian poetic diction, but he thought lightly of them and hoped to be remembered by his Latin writings. He was an enthusiast for the literature of antiquity and gave a great impulse to its study. His parents, exiled from Florence, removed to Avignon, then the seat of the papacy, which remained Francesco’s residence till 1333. He was ordained to the priesthood but without an inward call. He enjoyed several ecclesiastical benefices as prior, canon and archdeacon, which provided for his support without burdening him with duties. He courted and enjoyed the favor of princes, popes and prelates. He abused the papal residence on the Rhone as the Babylon of the West, urged the popes to return to Rome and hailed Cola da Rienzo as an apostle of national liberty. His writings contain outbursts of patriotism but, on the other hand, the author seems to contradict himself in being quick to accept the hospitality of the Italian despots of Mantua, Padua, Rimini and Ferrara, and the viconti of Milan. In 1350, he formed a friendship with Boccaccio which remained warm until his death.
In spite of his priestly vows, Petrarca lived with concubines and had at least two illegitimate children, Giovanni and Francesca, the stain of whose birth was removed by papal bulls. In riper years, and more especially after his pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year, 1350, he broke away from the slavery of sin. “I now hate that pestilence,” he wrote to Boccaccio, “infinitely more than I loved it once, so that in turning over the thought of it in my mind, I feel shame and horror. Jesus Christ, my liberator, knows that I say the truth, he to whom I often prayed with tears, who has given to me his hand in pity and helped me up to himself.” He took great delight in the Confessions of St. Augustine, a copy of which he carried about with him.
In his De contemptu mundi, - the Contempt of the World, written in 1343, Petrarca confesses as his greatest fault the love of glory and the desire for the immortality of his name. This, the besetting sin of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Humanists inherited. It became with them a ruling passion. They found it in Cicero, the most read of all the Latin classics. Dante strove after the poet’s laurel and often returned to the theme of fame as a motive of action - lo grand disio della eccelenza. Petrarca, after much seeking on his own part, was offered the poet’s crown by the University of Paris and the Roman senate. He took it from the latter, and was crowned on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, April 8, 1341, Robert, king of Sicily, being present on the occasion. This he regarded as the proudest moment of his life, the excelling glory of his career. In ostentatious piety the poet carried his crown to St. Peter’s, where he laid it on the altar of the Apostle.
Petrarca has been called the first modern scholar and man of letters, the inaugurator of the Italian Renaissance. Unlike Dante, he despised scholastic and mystic learning and went further back to the well of pagan antiquity. He studied antiquity, not as a philologist or antiquarian, but as a man of taste. He admired the Greek and Roman authors for their eloquence, grace and finish of style. Cicero and Virgil were his idols, the fathers of eloquence, the eyes of the Latin language. He turned to Plato. He made a distinction between the religion of the New Testament as interpreted by Augustine and as interpreted by the Schoolmen. Petrarca also opened the period of search and discovery of ancient books and works of art. He spared no pains to secure old manuscripts. In 1345, he found several of Cicero’s letters at Verona, and also a portion of Quintilian which had been unknown since the 10th century. A copy of Homer he kept with care, though be could not read its contents. All the Greek he knew was a few rudiments learned from a faithless Calabrian, Barlaam. He was the first to collect a private library and had 200 volumes. His first thought in passing old convents was to hunt up books. He accumulated old coins and medals and advocated the preservation of ancient monumenta. He seems also to have outlined the first medieval map of Italy.
Few authors have more fully enjoyed the benefit of their labors than Petrarca. He received daily letters of praise from all parts of Italy, from France, Germany and England. He expressed his satisfaction that the emperor of Byzantium knew him through his writings. Charles IV. invited him three times to Germany that he might listen to his eloquence and learn from him lessons of wisdom; and Pope Gregory XI. on hearing of his death, ordered good copies of all his books. The next generation honored him, not as the singer of Laura, the wife of another, whose beauty and loveliness he praised in passionate verse, but as the scholar and sage.
The name of Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375, the third of the triumvirate of the Italian luminaries of the 14th century, has also a distinct place in the transition from the Middle Ages to the age of the Renaissance. With his two great predecessors he was closely linked, with Dante as his biographer, with Petrarca as his warm friend. It was given to him to be the founder of easy and elegant Italian prose. The world has had few writers who can equal him in realistic narration. There is ground for the saying that Dante is admired, Petrarca praised, Boccaccio read. He also wrote poetry, but it does not constitute his claim to distinction.
Certaldo, twenty miles from Florence, was probably Boccaccio’s birthplace. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine father and a Parisian mother. After spending six years in business and giving six to the law, - the whole period being looked upon by him later as lost time, - he devoted himself to literature. Several years he spent at the court of Naples, where he fell in love with Maria, the married daughter of King Robert, who yielded her honor to his advances. Later, he represented her passion for him in L’amorosa Fiammetta. Thus the three great Italian literati commemorate the love of women who were bound in matrimony to others, but there is a wide gulf between the inspiring passion of Dante for Beatrice and Boccaccio’s sensual love. Boccaccio was an unmarried layman and freely indulged in irregular love. His three children of unknown mothers died before him.
In his old age he passed, like Petrarca, through a certain conversion, and, with a preacher’s fervor, warned others against the vanity, luxury and seductive arts of women. He would fain have blotted out the immoralities of his writings when it was too late. The conversion was brought about by a Carthusian monk who called upon him at Certaldo. Upon the basis of another monk’s vision, he threatened Boccaccio with speedy death, if he did not abandon his godless writing. Terrified with the prospect, he determined to renounce the pen and give himself up to penance. Petrarca, on hearing of his state of mind, wrote to him to accept what was good in the monk’s advice, but not to abandon studies which he pronounced the nutriment of a healthy mind.
In zeal for the ancient classics, Boccaccio vied with his contemporary. Many of them he copied with his own hand, and bequeathed them to his father-confessor in trust for the Augustinian convent of the Holy Spirit in Florence. He learned the elements of Greek and employed a Greek of Calabria, Leontius Pilatus, to make a literal translation of the Iliad and Odyssey for learners. An insight into his interest in books is given to us in his account of a visit to Monte Casino. On asking to see the library, a monk took him to a dusty room without a door to it, and with grass growing in its windows. Many of the manuscripts were mutilated. The monks, as his guide told him, were in the habit of tearing out leaves to be used by the children as psalters or to be sold to women for amulets for their arms.
In 1373, the signoria of Florence appointed him to the lectureship on the Divina Commedia, with a salary of 100 guldens gold. He had gotten only as far as the 17th canto of the Inferno when he was overtaken by death.
Boccaccio’s Latin works are mostly compilations from ancient mythology - De genealogia deorum - and biography, and also treat the subject of geography - De montium, silvarum, lacuum et marium nominibus. In his De claris mulieribus, he gave the biographies of 104 distinguished women, including Eve, the fictitious popess, Johanna, and Queen Johanna of Naples, who was still living. His most popular work is the Decamerone, the Ten Days’ Book - which in later years he would have destroyed or purged of its immoral and frivolous elements. It is his poetry in prose and may be called a Commedia Humana, as contrasted with Dante’s Commedia Divina. It contains 100 stories, told by ten young persons, seven ladies and three men of Florence, during the pestilence of 1348. After listening to a description of the horrors of the plague, the reader is transferred to a beautiful garden, several miles from the city, where the members of the company, amid laughter and tears, relate the stories which range from moral tales to indecent love intrigues. One of the well-known stories is of the Jew, Abraham, who, refusing to comply with the appeals to turn Christian, went to Rome to study the question for himself. Finding the priestly morals most corrupt, cardinals with concubines and revelling in riches and luxury, he concluded Christianity must have a divine origin, or it would not have survived when the centre of Christendom was so rotten, and he offered himself for baptism. The Decamerone reveals a low state of morals among priests and monks as well as laymen and women. It derides marriage, the confessional, the hypocrisy of monkery and the worship of relics. The employment of wit and raillery against ecclesiastical institutions was a new element in literature, and Boccaccio wrote in a language the people understood. No wonder that the Council of Trent condemned the work for its immoralities, and still more for its anticlerical and antimonastic ridicule; but it could not prevent its circulation. A curious expurgated edition, authorized by the pope, appeared in Florence in 1573, which retained the indecencies, the impure personages, but substituted laymen for the priests and monks, thus saving the honor of the Church.
Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio led the way to a recognition of the worth of man’s natural endowment by depicting the passions of his heart. To them also it belonged to have an ardent love for nature and to reproduce it in description. Thus Petrarca described the mountains and the gulfs of the sea as well as Rome, Naples and other Italian places where he loved to be. His description of his delight in ascending a mountain near Vaucluse, it has been suggested, was the first of its kind in literature. In these respects, the appreciation of man and the world, they stood at the opening of the new era.