R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Leo X should not, however, be identified merely with that phase of humanism, brilliant, indeed, yet already decadent, which was mirrored in his Court. He was also, beyond doubt, a man animated by a strong and genuine desire to promote intellectual culture, not only in the form of elegant accomplishment, but also in that of solid learning. Of this he gave several proofs. The Roman University (the “Sapienza”) had hitherto been inferior, as a school of humanism, tosome others in Italy. It had never rivalled Florence, and it could not now compete with Ferrara. Leo, in the first year of his pontificate (1513), made a serious effort to improve it; and it was not his fault if that effort had little permanent success. He remodelled the statutes of the University; created some new chairs; enlarged the emoluments ,of those which existed; and induced some scholars of eminence to join the staff. Another way in which he showed his earnest sympathy with learning was by his encouragement of Greek studies. More than forty years before this, editions of Latin classics had begun to issue from the Roman press. But Rome had hitherto lagged behind in the printing of Greek. The first Greek book printed at Rome was a Pindar, published in 1515 by Zacharias Calliergi, a Cretan, who had helped to bring out the Etymologicum Magnum at Venice in 1499. A Greek printing press was now established in Rome by Leo. He also instituted the “Gymnasium Caballini Montis,” where lectures were given by Aldo’s former assistant, the eminent Cretan scholar Marcus Musurus, and also by the veteran John Lascaris. This was perhaps the last considerable effort made in Italy to arrest the incipient decline of Greek studies.

A permanent interest attaches to the profession of faith in humanism left on record by Leo X. When, in 1515, the first six books of the Annals of Tacitus appeared in the editio princeps of Filippo Beroaldo the younger, the Pope conferred upon the editor a privilege for the sale and reprinting of the book. In the brief which granted this privilege, and which was prefixed to the edition, Leo expressed his estimate of the New Learning. “We have been accustomed,” he says, “even from our early years, to think that nothing more excellent or more useful has been given by the Creator to mankind, if we except only the knowledge and true worship of Himself, than these studies, which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life, but are applicable and useful to every particular situation; in adversity consolatory, in prosperity pleasing and honourable; insomuch that without them we should be deprived of all the grace of life and all the polish of social intercourse.” He then observes that “the security and extension of these studies” seem to depend chiefly on two things,—”the number of men of learning, and the ample supply of excellent authors.” As to the first, it has always been his earnest desire to encourage men of letters; and as to the acquisition of books, he rejoices when an opportunity is thus afforded him of thus “promoting the advantage of mankind.” The best spirit of Italian humanism finds a noble expression in these words, written by one who, both as Giovanni de’ Medici and as Leo X, had proved the sincerity of his devotion to the interests of letters. That sympathy was interwoven with his personal character and temperament; it scarcely needed to be strengthened by the great traditions of his house. We may doubt whether he was conscious that the Classical Renaissance had so decidedly passed its zenith: certainly he can have had no presage of what was to happen a few years after his death.

The capture of Rome by the imperialist troops in 1527 broke up that Roman world of literature and art which, as viewed by the men who were under its spell, had rivalled the age of Pericles or of Augustus. Valeriano, who knew the city both before and after that fatal year, has described, in his dialogue De Literatorum Infelicitate, the horror and completeness of the catastrophe. When he asked for the men of letters whom he remembered at Rome, he learned that many of them had perished by the sword, by torture, or by disease. Others had escaped only to end their days in penury and suffering. But some fine scholars were still left in Italy. Petrus Victorius (1499-1584), who taught at his native Florence from 1538 onwards, showed much acuteness in his Variae Lectiones. His labours included some good work for the Attic tragedians, Aristotle, and Cicero. Lombardy was now the part of Italy in which classical culture found its chief refuge. At Ferrara humanism was represented especially by Lilius Gyraldus (1479-1552), whose His-toria Poetarum (1545) was one of the earliest books on the history of classical literature. Robortellus (1516-67), a sound Hellenist, who taught at Pavia and elsewhere, edited Aeschylus and Callimachus; while by his treatise De Arte sive Rat tone Corrigenda Antiquos Llbros he ranks among the founders of textual criticism. Ever since the days of Politian, the cultivation of Latin verse writing had been popular. Along with much that was mediocre or bad, some admirable work in this kind was produced. Andrea Navagero, of Venice, who died in 1529, might be instanced as a Latin scholar who wrote verse in a really classical taste, untainted by the coarseness which was then too common. A few years after the sack of Rome, Marcantonio Flaminio, of Imola, dedicated to his patron, Alessandro Farnese, a collection of verses by scholars belonging to Venice, Modena, Verona, Mantua, and other North-Italian towns. The condition of Italy at this time was utterly miserable. But Flaminio’s elegant verse breathes only a scholar’s exultation. “Happy, too happy, are our days, which have given birth to a Catullus, a Tibullus, a Horace, and a Virgil of their own! Who would have thought that, after the darkness of so many centuries, and the dire disasters of Italy, so many lights could have arisen within the narrow region beyond the Po?” Such words, written in such days, have an unconscious pathos. They are significant of Italy’s patient fidelity to the ideals of the Renaissance, as well as of the price which she paid for it. And now at last the tide was about to turn. The power of the Roman Church, strenuously engaged in combating the Reformation, became adverse also to the aims and the spirit of the New Learning. In 1530 Clement VII and Charles V made their compact at Bologna. Spain, supported by the papacy, effected the pacification of Italy. So far as Italy was concerned, the humanistic movement was now arrested, and a reaction had begun. Writing about 1540, Paulus Jovius lamented that scholarship had migrated from Italy to Germany. His complaint was somewhat premature; but such a process had indeed set in. The most learned Italian of the next generation, Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607), the author of Annales Ecclesiastici, was unacquainted with Greek. The work accomplished by the Italian Renaissance claims the lasting gratitude of mankind. In the interval between the time of Petrarch and that of Leo X, a space of about a hundred and seventy years, ardent and unceasing labours bridged the gulf between the medieval and the modern world. Latin, the universal language, was purged from barbarism. Latin literature was brought back into the full light of intelligent study. Greek was restored to the West. After centuries of intellectual poverty, men entered once more into possession of the poetry and the eloquence, the wisdom and the wit, bequeathed by ancient Greece and Rome. The period of this revival was one in which the general tone of morality was low; and cynicism, bred partly of abuses in the Church, had wellnigh paralysed the restraining power of religion. Some of the humanists were pagans, not as Seneca was, but as Petronius Arbiter; and, far from suffering in public esteem, enjoyed the applause of princes and prelates. Not a little that was odious or shameful occasionally marked their conduct and disfigured their writings. But it is hardly needful to observe that such exponents of humanism were in no way representative of its essence, or even of its inevitable conditions in a corrupt age. Among the foremost Italian scholars were many exemplars of worthy life and noble character, men whose enthusiasm for letters was joined to moral qualities which compel respect and admiration. And no transient phase of fashionable paganism could mar the distinctive merits of the Italian Renaissance, or affect its permanent results. Italian humanism restored good standards of style in prose and verse, thereby benefiting not classical studies alone, but modern literature as well; it did much for erudition, and prepared the ground for more; it founded literary education of a liberal type; it had a wide outlook, and taught men to regard classical antiquity as a whole, a fruitful stage in the»history of human development. Lastly, it achieved a result even larger than its work for scholarship, by diffusing a new spirit, the foe of obscurantism, the ally of all forces that make for light, for the advancement of knowledge, and for reasonable freedom.