Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 14

492, tells a story which ill.u.s.trates these relations between Vittorino and the Marquis. Cf., too, p. 494.]

The numerous biographers of Vittorino have transmitted many details in ill.u.s.tration of his method of teaching. He used to read the cla.s.sic authors aloud, prefixing biographical notices by way of introduction, and explaining the matter, as well as the language of his text, as he proceeded. Sometimes he made his pupils read, correcting their p.r.o.nunciation, and obliging them to mark the meaning by emphasis. He relied much on learning by heart and repet.i.tion, as the surest means of forming a good style. Gifted with a finer instinct for language than the majority of his contemporaries, he was careful that his pupils should distinguish between different types of literary excellence, not confounding Cicero with Seneca or Virgil with Lucan, but striving to appreciate the special qualities of each. With a view to the acquisition of pure principles of taste, he confined them at first to Virgil and Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes. These four authors he regarded as the supreme masters of expression. Ovid was too luxuriant, Juvenal too coa.r.s.e, to serve as guides for tiros. Horace and Persius among the satirists, Terence among the comic poets, might be safely studied. In spite of Seneca's weight as a philosophic essayist, Vittorino censured the affectations of his rhetoric; and while he praised the beauty of the Latin elegists, he judged them ill-suited for the training of the young. Criticism of this kind, though it may sound to us obvious and superficial, was extremely rare in the fifteenth century, when scholars were too apt to neglect differences of style in ancient authors, and to ignore the ethics of their works. The refinement which distinguished Vittorino, made him prefer the graces of a chastened manner to the sounding phrases of emphatic declamation. His pupils were taught to see that they had something to say first, and then to say it with simplicity and elegance.

This purity of taste was no mere matter of aesthetic sensibility with Vittorino. Habits which brutalise the mind or debase the body, however sanctioned by the usage of the times, met with little toleration in his presence. Swearing, obscene language, vulgar joking, and angry altercation were severely punished. Personal morality and the observance of religious exercises he exacted from his pupils. Lying was a heinous offence. Those who proved intractable upon these points were excluded from his school. Of the rest Vespasiano writes with emphasis that 'his house was a sanctuary of manners, deeds, and words.'[293]

[Footnote 293: P. 492.]

Concerning the n.o.ble Italian youths who were educated with the Gonzaga family at Mantua, enough has been said in another place.[294] Appended to Rosmini's copious biography will be found, by those who are curious to read such details, the notices of forty more or less distinguished pupils.[295] Beside the two sons of Gian Francesco Gonzaga already mentioned, Vittorino educated three other children of his master--Gianlucido, Alessandro, and Cecilia.[296] Wholly dedicated to the cares of teaching, and more anxious to survive in the good fame of his scholars than to secure the immortality of literature, Vittorino bequeathed no writings to posterity. He lived to a hale and hearty old age; and when he died, in 1446, it was found that the ill.u.s.trious scholar, after enjoying for so many years the liberality of his princely patron, had not acc.u.mulated enough money to pay for his own funeral. Whatever he possessed, he spent in charity during his lifetime, trusting to the kindness of his friends to bury him when dead. Few lives of which there is any record in history, are so perfectly praiseworthy as Vittorino's; few men have more n.o.bly realised the idea of living for the highest objects of their age; few have succeeded in keeping themselves so wholly unspotted by the vices of the world around them.

[Footnote 294: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 138.]

[Footnote 295: Pp. 249-476.]

[Footnote 296: See Rosmini, p. 183, and Vespasiano, p. 493, for the record of her virtues, her learning, and her refusal to wed the infamous Oddo da Montefeltro.]

By the patronage extended to Vittorino da Feltre the Court of Mantua took rank among the high schools of humanism in Italy. Ferrara won a similar distinction through the liberality of the House of Este. What has already been said about Milan applies, however, in a less degree to Ferrara. The arts and letters, though they flourished with exceeding brilliance beneath the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Ta.s.so, were but accessories to a splendid and voluptuous Court life.

Literature was little better than an exotic, cultivated for its rarity and beauty by the princes of the Este family.

The golden age of culture at Ferrara began in 1402, when Niccolo III.

reopened the university. Twenty-seven years later Guarino da Verona made it one of the five chief seats of Southern learning. The life of this eminent scholar in many points resembles that of Filelfo, though their characters were very different. Guarino was born of respectable parents at Verona in 1370. He studied Latin in the school of Giovanni da Ravenna, and while still a lad of eighteen travelled to Constantinople at the cost of a n.o.ble Venetian, Paolo Zane, in order to learn Greek. After a residence of five years in Greece he returned to Venice, and began to lecture to crowded audiences.[297] Like all the humanists, he seems to have preferred temporary to permanent engagements--pa.s.sing from Venice to Verona, from Trent to Padua, from Bologna to Florence, and everywhere acquiring that substantial reputation as a teacher to which he owed the invitation of Niccolo d'Este in 1429. He was now a man of nearly sixty, master of the two languages, and well acquainted with the method of instruction. The Marquis of Ferrara engaged him as tutor to his illegitimate son Lionello, heir apparent to his throne. For seven years Guarino devoted himself wholly to the education of this youth, who pa.s.sed for one of the best scholars of his age. Granting that the reputation for learning was lightly conferred on princes by their literary parasites, it seems certain that Lionello derived more than a mere smattering in culture from his tutor. Amid the pleasures of the chase, to which he was pa.s.sionately devoted, and the distractions of the gayest Court in Italy, he found time to correspond on topics of scholars.h.i.+p with Poggio, Filelfo, Decembrio, and Frances...o...b..rbaro. His conversation turned habitually upon the fas.h.i.+onable themes of antique ethics, and his favourite companions were men of polite education. It is no wonder that the humanists, who saw in him a future Augustus, deplored his early death with unfeigned sorrow, though we, who can only judge him by the general standard of his family, may be permitted to reserve our opinion. The profile portrait of Lionello, now preserved in the National Gallery, does not, at any rate, prepossess us very strongly in his favour.

[Footnote 297: See his Life by Rosmini, p. 11, for his brilliant reception at Venice.]

Guarino, like his friend Vittorino, was celebrated for the method of his teaching and for the exact order of his discipline.[298] Students flocked from all the cities of Italy to his lecture-room; for, as soon as his tutorial engagements with the prince permitted, he received a public appointment as professor of eloquence from the Ferrarese Consiglio de' Savi. In this post he laboured for many years, maintaining his reputation as a student and filling the universities of Italy with his pupils. A sentence describing his manner of life in extreme old age might be used to ill.u.s.trate the enthusiasm which sustained the vital energy of scholars in that generation:--'His memory is marvellous, and his habit of reading is so indefatigable, that he scarcely takes the time to eat, to sleep, or to go abroad; and yet his limbs and senses have the vigour of youth.[299] Guarino was one of the few humanists whose moral character won equal respect with his learning. When he died at the age of ninety, the father of six boys and seven girls by his wife Taddea Cendrata of Verona, it was possible to say with truth that he had realised the ideal of a temperate scholar's life. Yet this incomparable teacher of youth undertook the defence of Beccadelli's obscene verses: this anchorite of humanism penned virulent invectives with the worst of his contemporaries.[300] Such contrasts were common enough in the fifteenth century.

[Footnote 298: See the details collected by Rosmini, _Vita di Guarino_, pp. 79-87.]

[Footnote 299: Timoteo Maffei, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib.

iii. cap. 5, 8.]

[Footnote 300: He carried on literary feuds with Niccolo de' Niccoli, Poggio, Filelfo, and Georgios Trapezuntios.]

The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be omitted in connection with Ferrara. Born in 1369 at Noto in Sicily, he lived to a great age, and died in 1459. He too travelled in early youth to Constantinople, and returned, laden with MSS. and learning, to profess the humanities in Italy. His life forms, therefore, a close parallel with that of both Guarino and Filelfo. Aurispa, however, was gifted with a less unresting temper than Filelfo; nor did he achieve the same professorial success as Guarino. In his school at Ferrara he enjoyed the calmer pleasures of a student's life, 'devoted,' as Filelfo phrased it, 'to the placid Muses.'[301]

[Footnote 301: 'Placidis Aurispa Camoenis Deditus,' _Sat._, dec. i.

hec. 5. Valla, _Antid. in Pogium_, p. 7, describes him as 'virum suavissimum et ab omni contentione remotissimum.']

To give an account of all the minor Courts, where humanism flourished under the patronage of petty princes, would be tedious and unprofitable. It is enough to notice that the universities, in this age of indefatigable energy, kept forming scholars, eager to make their way as secretaries and tutors, while the n.o.bles competed for the honour and the profit to be derived from the service of ill.u.s.trious wits and ready pens. The seeds of cla.s.sic culture were thus sown in every little city that could boast its castle. Carpi, for example, was preparing the ground where Aldus and Musurus flourished. At Forli the Ordelaffi, doomed to extinction at no distant period, gave protection to Codrus Urceus.[302] Mirandola was growing fit to be the birthplace of the mighty Pico. Alessandro and Costanzo Sforza were adorning their lords.h.i.+p of Pesaro with a library that rivalled those of Rome and Florence.[303] In the fortress of Rimini, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta conversed with men of learning whenever his intrigues and his military duties gave him leisure. The desperate and G.o.dless tyrant, whose pa.s.sions bordered upon madness, and whose name was a byeword for all the vices that disgrace humanity, curbed his temper before petty witlings like Porcellio, and carved a record of his burning love for learning on the temple raised to celebrate his fame in Rimini. To the same pa.s.sion for scholars.h.i.+p in his brother, Malatesta Novello, the tiny burgh of Cesena owed the foundation of a library, not only well supplied with books, but endowed with a yearly income of 300 golden florins for its maintenance. The money spent on scholars.h.i.+p at these minor Courts was gained, for the most part, in military service--the wealth of Florentine and Venetian citizens, of Milanese despots, and ambitious Popes flowing through the hands of professional war-captains into the pockets of booksellers and students. It consequently happened that the impulse given at this time to learning in the lesser cities was but temporary. With the fall of the Malatesti and the Sforza family, for instance, erudition died at Rimini and Pesaro.

[Footnote 302: Cf. Tiraboschi, vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 58.]

[Footnote 303: Vespasiano, pp. 113-117, gives an interesting account of these lettered and warlike princes.]

This might have been the case at Urbino also, if the House of Montefeltro had not succeeded, by wise conduct and prudent marriages, in resisting the encroachments of the Church, and transmitting its duchy to the Della Rovere family. As it was, Urbino retained for three generations the stamp of culture and refinement impressed upon it by the good Duke Frederick. Of his famous library, Vespasiano, who was employed in its formation, has given us minute and interesting details.[304] During more than fourteen years the Duke kept thirty or forty copyists continually employed in transcribing Greek and Latin MSS. Not only the cla.s.sics in both languages, but the ecclesiastical and mediaeval authors, the Italian poets, and the works of contemporary humanists found a place in his collection. The cost of the whole was estimated at considerably over 30,000 ducats. Each volume was bound in crimson, with silver clasps; the leaves were of vellum, exquisitely adorned with miniatures; nor could you find a printed book in the whole library, for the Duke would have been ashamed to own one.

Vespasiano's admiration for these delicately finished MSS. and the contempt he expresses for the new art of printing are highly characteristic.[305] Enough has been already said by me elsewhere about Federigo da Montefeltro and his patronage of learning.[306] The Queen's collection at Windsor contains a curious picture, attributed to Melozza da Forli, of which I may be allowed to speak in this place, since it possesses more than usual interest for the student of humanism at the Italian Courts. In a large rectangular hall, lighted from above by windows in a dome, the Duke of Urbino is seated, wearing the robes and badges of the Garter, and resting his left hand on a folio. His son Guidobaldo, a boy of about eleven years of age, or little more, stands at the Duke's knee, dressed in yellow damask trimmed with pearls. Behind them, on a raised bench with a desk before it, sit three men, one attired in the red suit of a prelate, the second in black ecclesiastical attire, and the third in secular costume. At a door, opening on a pa.s.sage, stand servants and lesser courtiers. The whole company are listening attentively to a grey-haired, black-robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit opposite to the Duke and his son. A large book, bound in crimson, with silver clasps is open on the desk before him; and by the movement of his mouth it is clear that he is reading aloud pa.s.sages from some cla.s.sical or ecclesiastical author, and explaining them for the benefit of his ill.u.s.trious audience. To identify the scholar and the three men behind Federigo would not be impossible, if the exact date of this curious work could be ascertained; for they are clearly portraits. I like to fancy that in the layman we may perhaps recognise the excellent Vespasiano. Such conjectures are, however, hazardous; meanwhile the picture has intrinsic value as the unique representation, so far as I know, of a scene of frequent occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a part of every day's occupation.

[Footnote 304: See pp. 94-99.]

[Footnote 305: P. 99.]

[Footnote 306: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 136-142.]

This is the proper place to speak of Vespasiano da Bisticci, on whose 'Lives of Ill.u.s.trious Men' I have had occasion to draw so copiously.

Peculiar interest attaches to him as the last of mediaeval scribes, and at the same time the first of modern booksellers.[307] Besides being the agent of Cosimo de' Medici, Nicholas V., and Frederick of Urbino, Vespasiano supplied the foreign markets, sending MSS. by order to Hungary, Portugal, Germany, and England. The extent of his trade rendered him the largest employer of copyists in Europe at the moment when this industry was about to be superseded, and when scholars were already inquiring for news about the art that saved expense and shortened the labour of the student.[308] Vespasiano, who was born in 1421 at Florence, lived until 1498; so that after having helped to form the three greatest collections of MSS. in Italy, he witnessed the triumph of printing, and might have even handled the Musaeus issued from the Aldine Press in 1493. Vespasiano was no mere tradesman. His knowledge of the books he sold was accurate; continual study enabled him to overlook the copyists, and to vouch for the exact.i.tude of their transcripts.[309] At the same time his occupation brought him into close intimacy with the chief scholars of the age, so that the new culture reached him by conversation and familiar correspondence. As a biographer Vespasiano possessed rare merit. Personally acquainted with the men of whom he wrote, he drew their characters with praiseworthy succinctness and simplicity. There is no panegyrical emphasis, no calumnious innuendo, in his sketches. It may even be said that they suffer from reservation of opinion and suppression of facts.

Vespasiano's hatred of vice and love of virtue were so genuine that, in his eagerness to honour men of letters and their patrons, he softened down harsh outlines and pa.s.sed over all that is condemnable in silence. He was less anxious to paint character in the style of Tacitus or Guicciardini, than to relate what he knew about the progress of learning in his age. The ethical intention in his work is obvious. The qualities he loves to celebrate are piety, chast.i.ty, generosity, devotion to the cause of liberal culture, and high-souled patriotism. Of the vices that added a lurid l.u.s.tre to the age in which he lived, of the political rancours that divided the cities into hostile parties, and of the imperfections in the characters of eminent men, we hear nothing from Vespasiano. It is pleasant to conclude this chapter with an expression of grat.i.tude to a man so blameless in his life, so charitable in his judgments, and so trustworthy in his record of contemporary history.

[Footnote 307: In the register of his death he is described as Vespasiano, Cartolaro.]

[Footnote 308: See Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 201. 'I have made up my mind to buy some of those codices they are now making without any trouble, and without the pen, but with certain so-called types, and which seem to be the work of a skilled and exact scribe.

Tell me, then, at what price are sold the _Natural History_ of Pliny, the three Decades of Livy, and Aulus Gellius.' Letter to Nicodemo Tranchedino, sent from Siena to Rome, dated July 25, 1470.]

[Footnote 309: See this pa.s.sage from a panegyric quoted by Angelo Mai:--'Tu profecto in hoc nostro deteriori saeculo hebraicae, graecae atque latinae linguarum, omnium voluminum dignorum memoratu not.i.tiam, eorumque auctores memoriae tradidisti.'--_Vite di Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_, preface, p. xxiii.]

CHAPTER VI

THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Improvement in Taste and Criticism -- Coteries and Academies -- Revival of Italian Literature -- Printing -- Florence, the Capital of Learning -- Lorenzo de' Medici and his Circle -- Public Policy of Lorenzo -- Literary Patronage -- Variety of his Gifts -- Meetings of the Platonic Society -- Marsilio Ficino -- His Education for Platonic Studies -- Translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists -- Harmony between Plato and Christianity -- Giovanni Pico -- His First Appearance in Florence -- His Theses proposed at Rome -- Censure of the Church -- His Study of the Cabbala -- Large Conception of Learning -- Occult Science -- Cristoforo Landino -- Professor of Fine Literature -- Virgilian Studies -- Camaldolese Disputations -- Leo Battista Alberti -- His Versatility -- Bartolommeo Scala -- Obscure Origin -- Chancellor of Florence -- Angelo Poliziano -- Early Life -- Translation of Homer -- The 'Homericus Juvenis' -- True Genius in Poliziano -- Command of Latin and Greek -- Resuscitation of Antiquity in his own Person -- His Professorial Work -- The 'Miscellanea' -- Relation to Medici -- Roman Scholars.h.i.+p in this Period -- Pius II. -- Pomponius Laetus -- His Academy and Mode of Life -- Persecution under Paul II. -- Humanism at Naples -- Ponta.n.u.s -- His Academy -- His Writings -- Academies established in all Towns of Italy -- Introduction of Printing -- Sweynheim and Pannartz -- The Early Venetian Press -- Florence -- Cennini -- Alopa's Homer -- Change in Scholars.h.i.+p effected by Printing -- The Life of Aldo Manuzio -- The Princely House of Pio at Carpi -- Greek Books before Aldo -- The Aldine Press at Venice -- History of its Activity -- Aldo and Erasmus -- Aldo and the Greek Refugees -- Aldo's Death -- His family and Successors -- The Neacademia -- The Salvation of Greek Literature.

In the four preceding chapters I have sketched the rise and progress of Italian humanism with more minuteness than need be now employed upon the history of its further development. By the scholars of the first and second period the whole domain of ancient literature was reconquered; the cla.s.sics were restored in their integrity to the modern world. Petrarch first inflamed the enthusiasm without which so great a work could not have been accomplished, his immediate successors mastered the Greek language, and explored every province of antiquity. Much still remained, however, to be achieved by a new generation of students: for as yet criticism was but in its cradle; the graces of style were but little understood; indiscriminate erudition pa.s.sed for scholars.h.i.+p, and crude verbiage for eloquence.

The humanists of the third age, still burning with the zeal that animated Petrarch, and profiting by the labours of their predecessors, ascended to a higher level of culture. It is their glory to have purified the coa.r.s.e and tumid style of mediaeval Latinists, to have introduced the methods of comparative and aesthetic criticism, and to have distinguished the characteristics of the authors and the periods they studied.

The salient features of this third age of humanism may be briefly stated. Having done their work by sowing the seeds of culture broadcast, the vagrant professors of the second period begin to disappear, and the republic of letters tends to crystallise round men of eminence in coteries and learned circles. This, therefore, is the age of the academies. Secondly, it is noticeable that Italian literature, almost totally abandoned in the first fervour of enthusiasm for antiquity, now receives nearly as much attention as the cla.s.sics. Since the revival of Italian in the golden age of the Renaissance will form the subject of my final volume, the names of Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano at Florence, of Boiardo at Ferrara, and of Sannazzaro at Naples may here suffice to indicate the points of contact between scholars.h.i.+p and the national literature. A century had been employed in the acquisition of humanistic culture; when acquired, it bore fruit, not only in more elegant scholars.h.i.+p, but also in new forms of poetry and prose for the people. A third marked feature of the period is the establishment of the printing press. The energy wherewith in little more than fifty years the texts of the cla.s.sic authors were rendered indestructible by accident or time, and placed within the reach of students throughout Europe, demands particular attention in this chapter.

Florence is still the capital of learning. The most brilliant humanists, gathered round the person of Lorenzo de' Medici, give laws to the rest of Italy, determining by their tastes and studies the tone of intellectual society. Lorenzo is himself in so deep and true a sense the master spirit of this circle, that to describe his position in the republic will hardly be considered a digression.

Before his death in 1464 Cosimo de' Medici had succeeded in rendering his family necessary to the State of Florence. Though thwarted by ambitious rivals and hampered by the intrigues of the party he had formed to rule the commonwealth, Cosimo contrived so to complicate the public finances with his own banking business, and so to bind the leading burghers to himself by various obligations, that, while he in no way affected the style of a despot, Florence belonged to his house more surely than Bologna to the Bentivogli. For the continuation of this authority, based on intrigue and cemented by corruption, it was absolutely needful that the spirit of Cosimo should survive in his successors. A single false move, by unmasking the tyranny so carefully veiled, by offending the republican vanities of the Florentines, or by employing force where everything had hitherto been gained by craft, would at this epoch have destroyed the prospects of the Medicean family. So true it is that the history of this age in Italy is not the history of commonwealths so much as the history of individualities, of men. The principles reduced to rule by Machiavelli in his essay on the Prince may be studied in the lives of fifteenth-century adventurers, who, like Cesare Borgia, discerned the necessity of using violence for special ends, or, like the Medici, perceived that sovereignty could be better grasped by a hand gloved with velvet than mailed in steel.

The Medici of both branches displayed through eight successive generations, in their general line of policy, in the disasters that attended their divergence from it, and in the means they used to rehabilitate their influence, the action of what Balzac calls _l'homme politique_, with striking clearness to the philosophic student.

Both the son and grandson of Cosimo well understood the part they had to play, and played it so ably that even the errors of the younger Piero, the genius of Savonarola, and the failure of the elder Medicean line were insufficient to check the gradual subjugation of the commonwealth he had initiated. Lorenzo's father, Piero, called by the Florentines _Il Gottoso_, suffered much from ill-health, and was unable to take the lead in politics.[310] Yet the powers entrusted to his father were confirmed for him. The elections remained in the hands of the Medicean party, and the _balia_ appointed in their favour continued to control the State. The dangerous conspiracy against Piero's life, engaged in by Luca Pitti and Diotisalvi Neroni, proved that his enemies regarded the chief of the Medici as the leader of the republic. It was due to the prudent action of the young Lorenzo that this conspiracy failed; and the Medici were even strengthened by the downfall of their foes. From the tone of the congratulations addressed on this occasion by the ruling powers of Italy to Piero and Lorenzo, we may conclude that they were already reckoned as princes outside Florence, though they still maintained a burgherlike simplicity of life within the city walls.

[Footnote 310: It may be useful to add a skeleton pedigree of the Medici in this place:--

Cosimo, Pater Patriae | Piero, Il Gottoso | +-------------------+ | | Lorenzo Giuliano | | +------------+ Giulio, Clement VII.

| | Piero, Giovanni, the exile Leo X.]

In the marriage of his son Lorenzo to Clarice degli Orsini, of the princely Roman house, Piero gave signs of a departure from the cautious policy of Cosimo. Foreign alliances were regarded with suspicion by the Florentines, and Pandolfini's advice to his sons, that they should avoid familiarity with territorial magnates, exactly represented the spirit of the republic.[311] In like manner, the education of both Lorenzo and Giuliano, their intercourse with royal guests, and the prominent places a.s.signed them on occasions of ceremony, indicated an advance toward despotism. It was concordant with the manners of the age that one family should play the part of host for the republic. The discharge of this duty by the Medici aroused no jealousy among the burghers; yet it enabled the ambitious house to place themselves in an unique position, and, while seeming to remain mere citizens, to take a step in the direction of sovereignty.

[Footnote 311: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 190.]

On the death of Piero, in 1469, the chief men of the Medicean party waited upon Lorenzo, and, after offering their condolences, besought him to succeed his father in the presidency of the State. The feeling prevailed among the leaders of the city that it was impossible, under the existing conditions of Italian politics, to carry on the commonwealth without a t.i.tular head. Lorenzo, then in his twenty-second year, entered thus upon the political career in the course of which he not only maintained a balance of power in Italy, but also remodelled the internal government of Florence in the interests of his family, and further strengthened their position by establis.h.i.+ng connections with the Papal See. While bending all the faculties of his powerful and subtle intellect to the one end of consolidating a tyranny, Lorenzo was far too wise to a.s.sume the bearing of a despot. He conversed familiarly with the citizens, encouraged artists and scholars to address him on terms of equality, and was careful to adopt no t.i.tles. His personal temperament made the task of being in effect a sovereign, while he acted like a citizen, comparatively easy, his chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which he laboured, like his grandfather Cosimo, of governing through a party composed of men distinguished by birth and ability, and powerful by wealth and connections. To keep this party in good temper, to flatter its members with the show of influence, and to gain their concurrence for the alterations he introduced into the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. By creating a body of clients, bound to himself by diverse interests and obligations, he succeeded in bridling the Medicean party and excluding from offices of trust all dangerous and disaffected persons. The goodwill of the city at large was secured by the prosperity at home and peace abroad which marked the last fourteen years of his administration, while the splendour of his foreign alliances contributed in no small measure to his popularity. The Florentines were proud of a citizen who brought them into the first rank of Italian Powers, and who refrained from a.s.suming the style of sovereign. Thus Lorenzo solved the most difficult of political problems--that of using a close oligarchy for the maintenance of despotism in a free and jealous commonwealth. None of his rivals retained power enough to withhold the sceptre from his sons when they should seek to grasp it.

The roots of the Medici clung to no one part of Florence in particular. They seemed superficial; yet they crept beneath the ground in all directions. Intertwined as they were with every interest both public and private in the city, to cut them out implied the excision of some vital member. This was the secret of their power in the next generation, when, banished and reduced to b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, the Medici returned from two exiles, survived the perils of the siege and Alessandro's murder, and finally a.s.sumed the Ducal crown in the person of the last scion of their younger branch. The policy, so persistently pursued for generations, so powerfully applied by Lorenzo, might be compared to the attack of an octopus, which fastens on its victim by a mult.i.tude of tiny tentacles, and waits till he is drained of strength before it shoots its beak into a vital spot.

In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici to fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his personal expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve his fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the public purse. This was the real object of the const.i.tutional revolution of 1480, whereby his Privy Council a.s.sumed the active functions of the State. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the management of men, the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous year of 1494.