Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 35

APPENDIX III.

_On Palmieri's "Citta di Vita."_ (_To ill.u.s.trate Part I. p. 171._)

In the first part of this sketch of Italian literary history (_Renaissance in Italy_, vol. iv. p. 171, note 2) I promised, if possible, to give some further notice of Palmieri's poem ent.i.tled the _Citta di Vita_. This promise I was unable to fulfill in the proper place. But while my book was going through the press, I obtained the necessary materials for such a study of Palmieri's work through the courtesy of a Florentine scholar, Signor A. Gherardi, who sent me extracts from a MS. existing in the Laurentian Library. This MS., which is an illuminated parchment codex, contains, besides the poem, the commentary of Lionardo Dati, with his Life of the author and two of his letters addressed to Palmieri. Whether or not the codex is an autograph, remains uncertain. But it has this singular interest, that Matteo Palmieri himself presented it to the Art of the Notaries in Florence, sealed and under the express condition that it should not be opened so long as he lived imprisoned in his body--"ut non aperiatur dum in suo religatus corpusculo vivat." After his death, the Republic decreed a public funeral to their honored magistrate and servant; and the MS. in question was placed upon his breast in the church of S.

Pier Maggiore, where he was interred in the family chapel of the Palmieri. Alamanno Rinuccini p.r.o.nounced the panegyrical oration on this occasion; and in his speech he alluded to "this bulky volume which lies upon his breast, a poem in _terza rima_, called by him the City of Life."

It would appear, from the circ.u.mstance of the volume having been presented under seal to the Art of the Notaries, that Palmieri, while wis.h.i.+ng to secure the safety of his poem, was aware of its liability to censure. What he may have dreaded, happened after his decease; for his opinions were condemned as heretical, and the picture Botticelli painted for him in ill.u.s.tration of his views, was removed from its place in the Palmieri Chapel of S. Pier Maggiore. This picture is now in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton.

The MS. of the _Citta di Vita_ pa.s.sed from the Art of the Notaries into the Laurentian Library. Since the biographical notices from the pen of Palmieri's friend, Lionardo Dati, which this MS. contains, form our most trustworthy source of information about the poet's life, it may be well to preface the account of his poem with an abstract of their contents. Matteo Palmieri was a member of an honorable Florentine family. Born in 1405, he received his first education in grammar from Sozomeno of Pistoja. Afterwards he studied Greek and Latin letters in the schools of Carlo Aretino and Ambrogio Traversari.

In early manhood he entered public life, and pa.s.sed through the various Florentine magistracies to the dignity of Gonfalonier of Justice. The Signory employed him upon emba.s.sies to Calixtus III., Frederick III., Alfonso the Magnanimous and Paul II. Matteo devoted his leisure to study and composition. The treatise _Della Vita Civile_, which he wrote in Italian, was a work of his adolescence.

Then followed, in Latin, a Life of Niccol Acciaiolo, a narrative of the successful war with Pisa, and a Universal History, which was subsequently continued by Mattia Palmieri--a Pisan, who, though he bore the same name, was in no wise related to our author. The _Citta di Vita_ was a work of his mature age. He died probably in 1478.

Matteo told Lionardo Dati that on the first of August, 1451, while he was living at Pescia as Governor of the Val di Nievole, he dreamed that his dead friend Cipriano Rucellai appeared to him, and invited him to the yearly festival which was celebrated on that day in a monastery, called Il Paradiso, near Florence. In his dream, Matteo accompanied the ghost of Cipriano, conversing on the way about the state of spirits after death--where they dwell, and how they are permitted to revisit their living friends. Cipriano, moreover, revealed to him weighty matters concerning the nature of the human soul. He told him how G.o.d first made angels in innumerable hosts.

These angels separated into three companies. The one band followed Lucifer, when he rebelled. The second held with Michael and abode firm in their allegiance. The third decided neither for G.o.d nor for the Devil. After Lucifer's defeat, these angels of the third cla.s.s were relegated to the Elysian fields, which extend at all points over the extreme periphery of the highest sphere; and G.o.d, wis.h.i.+ng to give them a final chance of determining for good or evil, ordained that they should, one by one, be sent to dwell in human bodies. There, attended by a good and a bad spirit, they have the choice of lives, and after their death in the body, are drafted into the trains of Lucifer or Michael according to their conduct. Having communicated this doctrine, Cipriano vanished from his friend's sight with these words upon his lips:

Misero ad noi quanto mal segno Rizoron quelli che si fer ribelli Per porre in aquilon loco piu degno.

Palmieri forgot or neglected the import of his dream until the year 1455, when he was at Alfonso's Court in Naples. There Cipriano appeared to him again, rebuked him for his carelessness, and bade him write a poem in _terza rima_, after Dante's method, on the subject of their former discourse. He also recommended him three books, which would a.s.sist him in the labor. When Palmieri returned to Florence, he obtained these helps and set about the composition of his poem. It must have been completed in 1464; for in this year Dati received a copy, which he styled _opus paene divinum_, and began to annotate. In 1466 Dati wrote again to Palmieri, thanking him for an emended copy of the work, which the author had sent him from Florence to Rome.

Palmieri's own letter accompanying the gift, refers to the poem as already published. This proves (as would, indeed, appear from the t.i.tle given him by Ficino of _Poeta Theologicus_) that, whatever may have been his dread of a prosecution for heresy, he had at least divulged the _Citta di Vita_ to the learned.

The poem consists of three books, divided, like Dante's _Commedia_, into one hundred Cantos; but the extra Canto has by Palmieri been a.s.signed to the last instead of the first Cantica. The t.i.tle _Citta di Vita_ was given to it, because Palmieri designed to bring the universe into consideration under the aspect of spiritual existence. The universe, as he conceived it, is the burgh in which all souls live.

His object was to show how free-will is innate in men, who have the choice of good and evil, of salvation or perdition, in this life. The origin of evil he relegates to that prehistoric moment of Lucifer's revolt, when the third cla.s.s of angels refused to side with either G.o.d or Devil. In the first book, then, he describes how these angels are transmitted from the Elysian fields to earth, in order that they may become men, and in their mortal body be forced to exercise their faculty of election. In the second book he treats of the way of perdition. In the third book he deals with the way of salvation.

Following Dante's precedent in the choice of Virgil, he takes the Sibyl for his guide upon the beginning of this visionary journey.

The heretical portions of the _Citta di Vita_ are Cantos v. ix. x. xi.

of the first Cantica. These deal with the original creation of angelic essences, and with the transit of the indeterminate angels to our earth. Regarding the universe from the Ptolemaic point of view, Palmieri conceives that these angels, who inhabit the Elysian fields beyond the utmost verge of the stellar spheres, proceed on their earthward journey through the several planets, till they reach our globe, which is the center of the whole. On their way, they gradually submit to animal impressions and prepare themselves for incarnation, according to that conception which made the human soul itself in a certain sense corporeal. It is here that Palmieri adjusts the theory of planetary influences to his theory of free will. For he supposes that the angels a.s.similate the qualities of the planetary spheres as they pa.s.s through them, being attracted by curiosity to one planet rather than another. At the same time they undergo the action of the three superior elements, which fits them for their final reception into an earthly habitation. After this wise he ingeniously combined his theories of the Creation, the Fall, and Free-will, with Averroistic doctrines of intermediate intelligences and speculations collected from Platonistic writings.

The path of the descending angels is, to quote the words of Dati, "in a straight line beneath the first point of Cancer to the cave of earth, in which line there are ten gates, for each of the planets to wit, and for the three super-terrestrial elements each his gate. The whole of this vast body of the universe is by our poet called the City of Life, forasmuch as in this universe all creatures live. And this journey of the souls from Elysium to their bodies is performed in one year." It will be observed that Palmieri affected the precision of his master Dante. Having thus conducted the soul to earth, he is no less definite in his description of the two ways, which severally lead to d.a.m.nation and salvation. In the second Cantica, he employs the s.p.a.ce of a whole year compressed into one night, in pa.s.sing through the eighteen mansions of the pa.s.sions of the flesh, fortune and the mind.

For this journey he has the guidance of an evil spirit. Afterwards, in the third Cantica, he employs the same s.p.a.ce of one year compressed into a single day, in traversing the twelve mansions of civil virtue and purgation, through which the soul arrives at beatific life. In this voyage he is guided by a good angel. It is not necessary to enter further into the calculations whereby Palmieri adjusts the chronology and cosmography of his vision to the Ptolemaic theory of the universe.

Though the material of the poem is thus curious, and the structure thus ingenious, it does not rise in style above the level of the works of Frezzi and Uberti (see above vol. iv. chap. 3). In order to give the reader a specimen of its composition, I will extract a pa.s.sage from Cantica I. Canto v., which concerns the Divine Being and the Creation of Angels:

Sopra ogn'altro potere e questo tale, che come e' vuole in tutto pu giovare, sanza potenza di voler far male.

Tal carita volendo ad altri dare la gloria in se, (?) di se stesso G.o.deva, degn co' cieli ancor la terra fare.

Et perche cosa far non si poteva che eterno bene in ciel sempre G.o.desse, se sempre quel G.o.der non intendeva; Intelligenza bisogn facesse con lume di ragione et immortale, ad chi l'eterno ben tutto si desse.

Creatura fe per questo rationale, l'angelo et l'huomo acci che 'l somme bene G.o.dessono intendendo quel che e' vale.

Da 'ntenderlo et amar di ragion vene volerlo possedere, et con let.i.tia per sempre usar sanza timor di pene.

Ad questo Idio cre la gran militia del celestiale exercitio et felice, che 'n parte cadde per la sua malitia.