Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

modeled a hundred Madonnas; in literature by opening their homes and

their smiles to poets and scholars. There were innumerable satires

on women, as in every age; but for every bitter or sarcastic line

there were litanies of devotion and praise. The Italian Renaissance,

like the French Enlightenment, was bisexual; women moved into every

sphere of life; men ceased to be coarse and crude, and were molded

to finer manners and speech; and civilization, with all its laxity and

violence, took on a grace and refinement such as it had not known in

Europe for a thousand years.

VI. THE HOME

-

The rising refinement showed itself in the form and life of the

home. While the dwellings of the populace remained as before-

unadorned whitewashed stucco or plaster walls, flagstone floors, an

inner court usually with a well, and around the court one or two

stories of rooms furnished with the simple necessaries of life- the

palaces of the nobles and nouveaux riches took on a splendor and

luxury again recalling Imperial Rome. The wealth that in the Middle

Ages had been concentrated on the cathedral now poured itself out into

mansions equipped with such furniture, conveniences, delicacies, and

ornaments as could hardly be found, north of the Alps, in the seats of

princes and kings. The Villa Chigi and the Palazzo Massimi, both

designed by Baldassare Peruzzi, enclosed a labyrinth of rooms, each

ornate with columns and pilasters, or fretted cornice, or gilded

coffered ceiling, or paintings on vault and walls, or sculptured

chimney pieces, or stucco carvings and arabesques, or floors of marble

or tile. Every mansion had elegant beds, tables, chairs, chests, and

cabinets built for a century and cut to please the eye; its massive

credences or buffets were loaded with silver plate and fancy

pottery; it had soft and comfortable beds, fine carpets and handsome

drapes, and linen abundant, enduring, and perfumed. Great fireplaces

warmed the rooms, and lamps, torches, or chandeliers lighted them. All

that was lacking in these palaces was children.

For family limitation rises as the means for supporting children

mount. The Church and the Scriptures bade men increase and multiply,

but comfort counseled infertility. Even in the countryside, where

children were economic assets, families of six children were rare;

in the city, where children were liabilities, families were small- the

richer the smaller- and many homes had no children at all. `052064

What lovely children Italian families could have appears in the

bambini and putti of the artists, the cantorie of Donatello

and Luca della Robbia, and such sculptural portraits as The Young St.

John of Antonio Rossellino in the Washington National Gallery. The

solidarity of the family, the mutual loyalty and love of parents and

children, stand out all the more attractively amid the moral looseness

of the times.

The family was still an economic, moral, and geographical unit.

Usually the debts of one defaulting member were paid by the rest- a

marked exception to the individualism of the age. Rarely did any

member marry or leave the state without the family's consent. Servants

were freeborn freespoken members of the family. Paternal authority was

supreme, and was obeyed in all crises; but normally the mother ruled

the household. Maternal love was as fond in the princesses as in the

paupers. Beatrice d'Este writes about her baby boy to her sister

Isabella: "I often wish that you could be here to see him, as I am

quite sure that you would never be able to stop petting and kissing

him." `052065 Most families of the middle class kept a register of

births, marriages, deaths, and interesting events, interspersed here

and there with intimate comments. In one such family record Giovanni

Rucellai (ancestor of the dramatist of the same name) wrote, toward

the end of his life (c. 1460), these proud words of a Florentine:

-

I thank God that he has created me a rational and immortal being; in

a Christian country; close to Rome, the center of the Christian faith;

in Italy, the noblest country in Christendom; and in Florence, the

most beautiful city of the whole world.... I thank Our Lord for an

excellent mother, who, though only in her twentieth year at the time

of my father's death, refused all offers of marriage, and devoted

herself wholly to her children; and also for an equally excellent

wife, who loved me truly, and cared most faithfully for both household

and children; who was spared to me for many years, and whose death has

been the greatest loss that ever has or could have befallen me.

Recalling all these innumerable favors and benefits, I now in my old

age desire to detach myself from all earthly things in order to devote

my whole soul to giving praise and thanks to Thee, my Lord, the living

source of my being. `052066

-

Two men, who were perhaps one, wrote, about 1436, treatises on the

family and its governance. Agnolo Pandolfini was probably the author

of an eloquent Trattato del governo della famiglia; Leon Battista

Alberti, soon afterward, composed a Trattato della famiglia, whose

third book, "Economico," is so largely similar to the earlier treatise

that some have thought the two works were different forms of one essay

by Alberti. Perhaps they are both genuine, so alike because they

both based themselves upon Xenophon's Oeconomicus. Pandolfini's

performance is the better. Like the Rucellai, he was a man of means,

serving Florence as diplomat, and contributing generously to public

causes. He wrote his treatise toward the end of a long life, and

cast it into the form of a dialogue with his three sons. They ask

him should they seek public office; he advises against it, as

necessitating acts of dishonesty, cruelty, and theft, and as

exposing one to suspicion, envy, and abuse. The sources of a man's

happiness lie not in public office or fame, but in his wife and

children, his economic success, his good repute, and his friends. A

man should marry a wife sufficiently younger than himself to submit to

his instruction and molding; and he should teach her, in the early

years of their marriage, the obligations of motherhood and the arts of

household management. A prosperous life comes from the economical

and orderly use of health, talent, time, and money: of health

through continence, exercise, and a moderate diet; of talent through

study and the formation of honest character by religion and example;

of time through shunning idleness; and of money through a careful

accounting and balancing of income, expenditure, and savings. The wise

man will invest first of all in a farm or estate, so arranged as to

provide him and his family not only with a country residence, but with

corn, wine, oil, fowl, wood, and as many as possible of the other

necessaries of life. It is well also to have a house in the city, so

that the children may use the educational facilities there, and

learn some of the industrial arts. `052067 But the family should spend

as much of the year as possible in the villa and the country:

-

While every other possession causes work and danger, fear and

disappointment, the villa brings a great and honorable advantage;

the villa is always true and kind.... In spring the green trees and

the song of the birds will make you joyful and hopeful; in autumn a

moderate exertion will bring forth a hundredfold; all through the year

melancholy will be banished from you. The villa is the spot where good

and honest men love to congregate.... Hasten thither, and fly from the

pride of the rich, and the dishonor of evil men. `052068

-

To which one Giovanni Campano answered for a million million

peasants: "Had I not been born a rustic, I should readily have been

touched with pleasure" by these descriptions of rural happiness;

however, having been a farmer, "what to you are delights are to me a

bore." `052069

VII. PUBLIC MORALITY

-

Pandolfini was right in at least one judgment- that commercial and

public morality was the least attractive side of Renaissance life.

Then, as now, success, not virtue, was the standard by which men

were judged; even the righteous Pandolfino prays for wealth rather

than for immortal life. Then, as now, men itched for money, and

stretched their consciences to grasp it. Kings and princes betrayed

their allies, and broke their most solemn pledges, at the call of

gold. Artists were no better: many of them took advance payments,

failed to finish or begin the work, but kept the money just the

same. The papal court itself gave a high example of money lust; hear

again the greatest historian of the papacy:

-

A deep-rooted corruption had taken possession of nearly all the

officials of the Curia.... The inordinate number of gratuities and

exactions had passed all bounds. Moreover, on all sides deeds were

dishonestly manipulated, and even falsified, by the officials. No

wonder that there arose from all parts of Christendom the loudest

complaints about the corruption and financial extortions of the

papal officials. It was even said that in Rome everything had its

price. `052070

-

The Church still condemned all taking of interest as usury.

Preachers inveighed against it; cities- Piacenza, for example-

sometimes forbade it under pain of exclusion from the sacraments and

from Christian burial. But the lending of money at interest went on,

because such loans were indispensable in an expanding commercial and

industrial economy. Laws were passed prohibiting a higher rate than

twenty per cent, but we hear of cases where thirty per cent was

charged. Christians competed with Jews in moneylending, and the town

council of Verona complained that the Christians exacted harder

terms than the Jews; `052071 public resentment, however, fell

chiefly upon the Jews, and occasionally led to outbreaks of

antisemitic violence. The Franciscans met the problem for the most

helpless borrowers by establishing, through gifts and legacies, monti

di pieta, funds (literally heaps) of charity, from which they made

loans to the needy, at first without interest. The first of these

was organized at Orvieto in 1463; soon every major city had one. Their

growth involved expenditures of administration; and the Fifth

Lateran Council (1515) granted the Franciscans the right to charge for

each loan an amount necessary to cover the costs of management.

Instructed by this experience, some theologians of the sixteenth

century allowed a moderate interest on loans. `052072 Through the

competition of the monti di pieta, and probably more through the

increasing competence and rivalry of the professional bankers, the

rate of interest fell rapidly during the sixteenth century.

Industry became more ruthless with its size, and with the

disappearance of a personal relationship between employer and

employed. Under feudalism the serf had enjoyed certain rights along

with his burdensome dues: in sickness, economic depression, war, and

old age his lord was expected to take care of him. In the cities of

Italy the guilds performed something of this function for the better

class of labor; but in general the "free" laborer was free to starve

when he could find no work. When he found it he had to take it on

the employer's terms, and these were hard. Every invention and

improvement in production and finance added to profits, rarely to

wages. Businessmen were as severe with one another as with their

employees; we hear of their many tricks in competition, their

deceptive contracts, their innumerable frauds; `052073 when they

co-operated it was to ruin their competitors in another town. However,

there were instances of a fine sense of honor among many Italian

merchants; and the Italian financiers had the best reputation in

Europe for integrity. `052074

Social morality was a blend of violence and chastity. In the

correspondence of the times we find many evidences of a tender and

kindly spirit; and the Italians could not compete with the Spaniards

in ferocity, or with the French soldiery in wholesale butchery. Yet no

nation in Europe could match the endless merciless slander that

swept around all prominent persons in Rome; and who but the Italians

of the Renaissance could have called Aretino divine? Private

violence flourished. Family feuds were refreshed by the breakdown of

custom and belief, and the inadequate administration of the laws;

men took vengeance into their own hands, and families murdered one

another for generations. At Ferrara, as late as 1537, dueling to the

death was legal and practised; even boys were allowed to fight each

other with knives in these legal lists. `052075 The strife of

parties was bitterer than anywhere else in Europe. Crimes of

violence were innumerable. Assassins could be bought almost as cheaply

as indulgences. The palaces of Roman nobles swarmed with bravi,

thugs ready to kill at a nod from their lords. Everyone had a

dagger, and brewers of poison found many customers; at last the people

of Rome could hardly believe in the natural death of any man of

prominence or wealth. Important personages required that all food or

drink served to them should first be tasted by another in their

presence. Strange stories were told in Rome of a venenum

atterminatum, a poison that took effect only after an interval long

enough to cover up the trail of the poisoner. A man had to live on the

alert in those days; any evening, if he left the house, he might be

ambushed and robbed, and be lucky not to be killed; even in church

he was not safe; and on the highways he had to be ready for

brigands. The Renaissance mind, living amid these dangers, had to be

as sharp as an assassin's blade.

Sometimes cruelty was collective and contagious. At Arezzo, in 1502,

a riot broke out against an oppressive Florentine commission; hundreds

of Florentines in Arezzo were slain in the streets; whole families

were wiped out. One victim was stripped naked and hanged, and a

lighted torch was thrust between his buttocks; whereupon the jolly

crowd nicknamed the corpse il sodomita. `052076 Tales of violence,

cruelty and lust were as popular as superstition. The court of

Ferrara, brilliant with poetry and art, was ghastly with princely

crimes and royal punishments. The irresponsibility of despots like the

Visconti and the Malatestas provided a model and stimulus for the

amateur violence of the people.

The morals of war worsened with time. In the early days of the

Renaissance almost all battles were modest engagements of mercenaries,

who fought without frenzy and knew when to stop; victory was judged

won as soon as a few men had fallen; and a live ransomable prisoner

was worth more than a dead enemy. As the condottieri became more

powerful, and armies larger and more costly, troops were allowed to

plunder captured cities in lieu of regular pay; resistance to

plunder led to the massacre of the inhabitants, and ferocity grew at

the smell of the blood it shed. Even so, the cruelty of the Italians

in war was far exceeded by the invading Spanish and French. When the

French took Capua in 1501, says Guicciardini, they "committed great

slaughter... and women of all ranks and qualities, even such as were

consecrated to the service of God... fell a sacrifice to their lust or

avarice; many of these poor creatures were afterwards sold at Rome for

a small price,"- `052077 apparently to Christians. The enslavement

of prisoners of war increased as the wars of the Renaissance

progressed.

There were instances of fine loyalty of man to man, of citizen to

state; but by and large the development of cunning put a premium on

deceit. Generals sold themselves to the highest bidder, and then, in

mid-campaign, negotiated with the enemy for a higher price.

Governments too changed sides in the middle of a war, and allies

became foes by the scratch of a pen. Princes and popes violated

safe-conducts given by them; `052078 governments consented to the

secret assassination of their enemies in other states. `052079

Traitors could be found in any city or camp: instance Bernardino del

Corte, who sold Lodovico's Castello to France; the Swiss and

Italians who betrayed Lodovico to the French; Francesco Maria della

Rovere, who kept his papal troops from going to the rescue of the pope

in 1527; Malatesta Baglioni, who sold out Florence in 1530.... As

religious belief declined, the notion of right and wrong was replaced,

in many minds, by that of practicality; and as governments seldom

enjoyed the authority of legitimation by time, the habit of

obedience to law lapsed, and custom had to be supplanted by force.

Against the tyranny of governments the only recourse was tyrannicide.

Corruption ran through every department of administration. In

Siena the bureau of finance had finally to be put into the hands of

a saintly monk, since everybody else had embezzled. Except in

Venice, the courts were notoriously venal. One of Sacchetti's

stories tells of a judge who was bribed with the gift of an ox; but

the opponent sent the judge a cow and a calf, and won his

case. `052080 Justice was expensive; the poor had to get along without

it, and found it cheaper to kill than to litigate. Law itself was

making some progress, but chiefly in theory. At Padua and Bologna,

Pisa and Perugia, there were famous jurists- Cino da Pistoia, Bartolus

of Sassoferrato, Baldo degli Ubaldi- whose reinterpretation of Roman

law dominated jurisprudence for two centuries. Nautical and commercial

law expanded as foreign trade increased. Giovanni da Legnano opened

a path for Grotius with a Tractatus de bello (1360), the earliest

known work on the laws of war.

But the practice of law was less excellent than its theory. Though

police protection of life and property was taking form, especially

in Florence, it could not keep abreast of crime. Lawyers abounded.

Torture continued to be used in the examination of witnesses as well

as of the accused. Punishments were barbarous. In Bologna a convict

might be suspended in a cage from one of the leaning towers, and

left to fester in the sun; `052081 in Siena a condemned man was slowly

torn to pieces with red-hot pincers while bound to a cart slowly

moving through the streets; `052082 in Milan, under Petrarch's host

Giovanni Visconti, prisoners were subjected to piecemeal

mutilation. `052083 Early in the sixteenth century the custom began of

condemning prisoners to pull the heavy oars of galleys; so the ships

of Julius II were manned by galley slaves chained by the leg. `052084

Against these barbarities we may place the high development of

organized charity. Every man who made a will left a sum to be

distributed among the poor of his parish. Since beggars were

numberless, some churches provided the equivalent of modern "soup

kitchens"; so the church of Santa Maria in Campo Santo, at Rome, fed

thirteen beggars daily, and two thousand on Mondays and

Fridays. `052085 Hospitals, lazarettos, asylums for incurables, for

the poor, for orphans, for destitute pilgrims, for reformed

prostitutes, were numerous in Renaissance as in medieval Italy.

Pistoia and Viterbo were celebrated for the scope of their

charities. At Mantua Lodovico Gonzaga established the Ospedale

Maggiore for the care of the poor and infirm, and gave it three

thousand ducats a year of governmental funds. `052086 At Venice a

society known as the Pellegrini, including in its membership Titian

and the two Sansovini, provided mutual aid to its members, dowered

poor girls, and practised other charities. Florence in 1500 had

seventy-three civic organizations devoted to works of charity. The

Confraternita della Misericordia, founded in 1244 but allowed to

decay, was restored in 1475; its members were laymen who visited the

sick, practised other charities, and earned the love of the people

by their courageous attendance upon victims of the plague; their

silent black-robed processions are still among the most impressive

sights of Florence. `052087 Venice had a similar Confraternita di

San Rocco; Rome had a Sodality of the Dolorosa, now 504 years old; and

Cardinal Giulio de' Medici founded in 1519 the Confraternita della

Carita to take care of poor persons above the mendicant class, and

to provide decent burial for the destitute. The private charity of

unrecorded millions lent some mitigation to the struggle of man

against man, nature, and death.

VIII. MANNERS AND AMUSEMENTS

-

Amid violence and dishonesty, and the boisterous life of

university students, and the rough humor and kindliness of peasant and

proletaire, good manners grew as one of the arts of the Renaissance.

Italy now led Europe in personal and social hygiene, dress, table

manners, cooking, conversation, and recreations; and in all of these

except dress Florence claimed to lead Italy. Florence patriotically

mourned the filth of other cities, and Italians made Tedesco,

German, a synonym for coarseness of language and life. `052088 The old

Roman habit of frequent bathing continued in the educated classes; the

well-to-do displayed their finery and "took the waters" at various

spas, and drank sulphurous streams as an annual penance to purge

digestive sins. Male dress was as ornate as female, except for

jewelry: tight sleeves and colored hose, and such wondrous baggy

bonnets as Raphael caught on Castiglione. Hose ran up the legs to

the loins, splitting men into prancing absurdities; but above the hips

a man could be elegant in velvet tunic and silk frills and ruffles

of lace; even gloves and shoes sported wisps of lace. At a

tournament given by Lorenzo de' Medici his brother Giuliano wore

garments costing 8000 ducats. `052089

A revolution in table manners came in the fifteenth century with the

increasing substitution of a fork for the fingers in carrying food

to the mouth. Thomas Coryat, touring Italy about 1600, was struck by

the novel custom, "which," he wrote, "is not used in any other country

that I saw in my travels"; and he shared in introducing the idea

into England. `052090 Knives, forks, and spoons were of brass,

sometimes of silver- which was lent out to neighbors preparing

banquets. Meals were modest except on such outstanding occasions or at

state functions; then excess was compulsory. Spices- pepper, cloves,

nutmeg, cinnamon, juniper, ginger, etc.- were used in abundance to

flavor food and stimulate thirst; hence every host offered his

guests a variety of wines. The reign of garlic in Italy can be

traced back to 1548, but doubtless had begun long before. There was

very little drunkenness or gluttony; the Italians of the

Renaissance, like the later French, were gourmets, not gourmands. When

men ate apart from the women of their families they might invite a

courtesan or two, as Aretino did when he entertained Titian. More

careful people would grace the meal with music, poetic improvisations,

and educated conversation.

The art of conversation- bel parlare - to speak with

intelligence, urbanity, courtesy, clarity, and wit- was reinvented

by the Renaissance. Greece and Rome had known it, and here and there

in medieval Italy- as at the courts of Frederick II and Innocent

III- it had been kept precariously alive. Now in Lorenzo's Florence,

in Elisabetta's Urbino, in Leo's Rome, it flourished again: nobles and

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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