Jacob Burckhardt - The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

Petrarca, Epistolæ Seniles , lib. xiv. 1, to Francesco di Carrara (Nov. 28, 1373). The letter is sometimes printed separately with the title, ‘De Republica optime administranda,’ e.g. Bern, 1602.

It is not till a hundred years later that the princess is spoken of as the mother of the people. Comp. Hieron. Crivelli’s funeral oration on Bianca Maria Visconti, in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum , xxv. col. 429. It was by way of parody of this phrase that a sister of Sixtus IV. is called in Jac Volateranus (Murat., xxiii. col. 109) ‘mater ecclesiæ.’

With the parenthetical request, in reference to a previous conversation, that the prince would again forbid the keeping of pigs in the streets of Padua, as the sight of them was unpleasing, especially for strangers, and apt to frighten the horses.

Petrarca, Rerum Memorandar. , lib. iii. 2, 66.—Matteo I. Visconti and Guido della Torre, then ruling in Milan, are the persons referred to.

Matteo Villani, v. 81: the secret murder of Matteo II. (Maffiolo) Visconti by his brother.

Filippo Villani, Istorie , xi. 101. Petrarch speaks in the same tone of the tyrants dressed out ‘like altars at a festival.’—The triumphal procession of Castracane at Lucca is described minutely in his life by Tegrimo, in Murat., xi., col, 1340.

De Vulgari Eloqui , i. c. 12: … ‘qui non heroico more, sed plebeo sequuntur superbiam.’

This we find first in the fifteenth century, but their representations are certainly based on the beliefs of earlier times: L. B. Alberti, De re ædif. , v. 3.—Franc. di Giorgio, ‘Trattato,’ in Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, iii. 121.

Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 61.

Matteo Villani, vi. 1.

The Paduan passport office about the middle of the fourteenth century is referred to by Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 117, in the words, ‘quelli delle bullete.’ In the last ten years of the reign of Frederick II., when the strictest control was exercised on the personal conduct of his subjects, this system must have been very highly developed.

Corio, Storia di Milano , fol. 247 sqq. Recent Italian writers have observed that the Visconti have still to find a historian who, keeping the just mean between the exaggerated praises of contemporaries ( e.g. Petrarch) and the violent denunciations of later political (Guelph) opponents, will pronounce a final judgment upon them.

E.g. of Paolo Giovio: Elogia Virorum bellicâ virtute illustrium , Basel, 1575, p. 85, in the life of Bernabò. Giangal. ( Vita , pp. 86 sqq.) is for Giovio ‘post Theodoricum omnium præstantissimus.’ Comp. also Jovius, Vitæ xii. Vicecomitum Mediolani principum , Paris, 1549. pp. 165 sqq.

Corio, fol. 272, 285.

Cagnola, in the Archiv. Stor. , iii. p. 23.

So Corio, fol. 286, and Poggio, Hist. Florent. iv. in Murat. xx. col 290.—Cagnola (loc. cit.) speaks of his designs on the imperial crown. See too the sonnet in Trucchi, Poesie Ital. ined. , ii. p. 118:

Corio, fol. 301 and sqq. Comp. Ammian. Marcellin., xxix. 3.

So Paul. Jovius, Elogia , pp. 88-92, Jo. Maria Philippus.

De Gingins, Dépêches des Ambassadeurs Milanais , Paris and Geneva 1858, ii. pp. 200 sqq. (N. 213). Comp. ii. 3 (N. 144) and ii. 212 sqq. (N. 218).

Paul. Jovius, Elogia , pp. 156 sqq. Carolus, Burg. dux.

This compound of force and intellect is called by Macchiavelli Virtù , and is quite compatible with scelleratezza . E.g. Discorsi , i. 10. in speaking of Sep. Severus.

On this point Franc. Vettori, Arch. Stor. vi. p. 29. 3 sqq.: ‘The investiture at the hands of a man who lives in Germany, and has nothing of the Roman Emperor about him but the empty name, cannot turn a scoundrel into the real lord of a city.’

M. Villani, iv. 38, 39, 44, 56, 74, 76, 92; v. 1, 2, 14-16, 21, 22, 36, 51, 54. It is only fair to consider that dislike of the Visconti may have led to worse representations than the facts justified. Charles IV. is once (iv. 74) highly praised by Villani.

It was an Italian, Fazio degli Uberti ( Dittamondo , l. vi. cap. 5—about 1360) who recommended to Charles IV. a crusade to the Holy Land. The passage is one of the best in this poem, and in other respects characteristic. The poet is dismissed from the Holy Sepulchre by an insolent Turk:

Some eight years earlier, about 1352, Petrarch had written (to Charles IV., Epist. Fam. , lib. xii. ep. 1, ed. Fracassetti, vol. ii. p. 160): ‘Simpliciter igitur et aperte … pro maturando negotio terræ sanctæ … oro tuo egentem auxilio quam primum invisere velis Ausoniam.’

See for details Vespasiano Fiorent. ed. Mai, Specilegium Romanum , vol. i. p. 54. Comp. 150 and Panormita, De Dictis et Factis Alfonsi , lib. iv. nro. 4.

Diario Ferrarese , in Murat. xxiv. col. 217 sqq.

‘Haveria voluto scortigare la brigata.’ Giov. Maria Filelfo, then staying at Bergamo, wrote a violent satire ‘in vulgus equitum auro notatorum.’ See his biography in Favre, Mélanges d’Histoire littéraire , 1856, i. p. 10.

Annales Estenses , in Murat. xx. col. 41.

Poggii, Hist. Florent. pop. l. vii. in Murat. col. 381. This view is in accordance with the anti-monarchical sentiments of many of the humanists of that day. Comp. the evidence given by Bezold, ‘Lehre von der Volkssouverainität während des Mittelalters,’ Hist. Ztschr. bd. 36, s. 365.

Some years later the Venetian Lionardo Giustiniani blames the word ‘imperator’ as unclassical and therefore unbecoming the German emperor, and calls the Germans barbarians, on account of their ignorance of the language and manners of antiquity. The cause of the Germans was defended by the humanist H. Bebel. See L. Geiger, in the Allgem. Deutsche Biogr. ii. 196.