The Rise of the Medici Family and the Age of Cosimo in Florence

The Historical Scene and the Context of the Renaissance

Italians called this age of maturity the Rinascita, meaning rebirth, because they saw it as the victorious resurrection of the spirit of classical Roman culture after a thousand years of barbarian domination. The classical world had been destroyed by the invasions of the Germans and the Huns in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. Gothic art, with its unstable architecture and strange ornamentation, and with sculpture that was rough, disproportionate, lifeless, and expressive of gloomy prophets and saved saints, had repeated the invasion. Now, thanks to the passage of time, the bearded Goths and the “long-bearded” Lombards had been absorbed into the dominant Italian blood, and, thanks to the architectural tradition of Vitruvius and the instructive ruins of the Roman Forum, the classical column and architrave would once again adorn temples and magnificent palaces, while, thanks to Petrarch and hundreds of other Italian scholars, the recovered classical works would revive Italian literature with the simple and precise prose of Cicero and the gentle melody of Virgil’s verse. The sun of the Italian spirit was breaking through the clouds of the northern lands, and men and women were gradually freeing themselves from the prison of medieval fear; people worshipped beauty in all its forms and filled space with the joy of resurrection. Italy was regaining its youth.

Material and Social Factors of the Renaissance

Factors other than the revival of ancient cultural traditions also played a role. Money obtained from commerce, banking, and investment accumulated, and its surplus was spent on the purchase of works of art. The inclination toward worldly matters arose with the emergence of the middle class. The spread of universities, the more realistic turn of minds through the study of law, and the broadening of ideas through wider acquaintance with the world were also effective. The educated Italian, who now questioned the dogmatic beliefs of the Church and no longer feared the fires of hell, freed himself from rational and moral bonds and allowed his liberated senses to enjoy without shame the various manifestations of beauty in women and men and in art; and this newly found freedom turned him, before moral chaos, disintegrating individualism, and national subjugation led him to ruin, into a creative human being during one astonishing century (1434–1534). The distance between these two orders was the Renaissance.

Why Florence Became the Center of the Renaissance

Northern Italy was the first place to experience this awakening from its winter sleep. In northern Italy the old Roman world had never been completely destroyed; its cities had preserved their ancient structure and were now reviving Roman law. Classical art still survived in Rome, Verona, Mantua, and Padua. The temple of Agrippa, though fourteen hundred years old, was still standing and used for worship, and in the Forum one could still seem to hear the voices of Cicero and Caesar arguing about the fate of Catiline. Latin was still a living language, and Italian was merely one of its melodious dialects. The gods, myths, and customs of the pagan age still survived in popular memory or under Christian forms. Italy lay in the middle of the Mediterranean countries and commanded this classical sphere of civilization and commerce. Northern Italy was more civilized and industrialized than any other region of Europe except Flanders. It had never undergone a full feudalism but had managed to subject the nobility to the cities and the merchant class. Northern Italy was the gateway of trade between the rest of Italy and trans-Alpine Europe, and also between western Europe and the Levant; industry and commerce had made this corner of Italy the richest region in the Christian world. Its adventurous merchants were present everywhere, from the fairs of France to the remotest ports of the Black Sea. Accustomed to dealing with Greeks, Arabs, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, they had become more flexible in their dogmas and had spread a tolerance of other creeds among the educated classes of Italy that in nineteenth-century Europe would arise from extensive contact with foreign religions. Nevertheless, even after irreligion triumphed in Italy, commercial interest joined with tradition, spirit, and national pride to keep Italy Catholic. Papal revenues flowed into Rome from thousands of streams in dozens of Christian lands, and papal wealth overflowed throughout Italy. The Church rewarded the loyalty of the Italians with gentle indulgence toward carnal sins and with tolerance and mildness (before the Council of Trent, 1545) toward heretical philosophers who refrained from undermining the faith of the people. Thus Italy, in wealth, art, and thought, was a century ahead of the rest of Europe, so that in the sixteenth century, when the Renaissance was fading in Italy, it was just beginning to flower in France, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Spain. The Renaissance was not a period of time but a way of life and thought that spread from Italy to all of Europe through commerce, war, and ideas.

Material Foundations of Florence

Florence in the fifteenth century was a city-state that ruled not only over Florence itself but (with interruptions) over Prato, Pistoia, Pisa, Volterra, Cortona, Arezzo, and the surrounding agricultural lands. The peasants were not serfs but a mass of small landowners and many tenant farmers who lived in simple stone and cement houses resembling those of modern peasants and elected their own village officials to manage local affairs. Machiavelli did not consider it beneath his dignity to mingle and converse and play with these brave peasants of the fields, orchards, and vineyards. But the city’s rulers supervised the selling prices of goods and, to appease the turbulent proletariat, kept the prices of food products so low that they could not satisfy the peasants; thus the mournful song of the ancient conflict between city and countryside was added to the chorus of hatred rising from the warring factions within the city.

The population of the city itself in 1343, according to Villani, was about 91,500. Although no equally reliable estimate of the city’s inhabitants in the later years of the Renaissance is available, it can be assumed from the growth of commerce and the expansion of industry that the population had greatly increased. About one fourth of the inhabitants were industrial workers; the wool industry alone employed thirty thousand men and women in two hundred textile workshops in the thirteenth century. By 1300 Florence had reached the capitalist stage of large-scale investment, centralized supply of materials and machinery, systematic division of labor, and production control by capitalists. In 1407 the manufacture of a woolen garment passed through thirty different processes, each performed by a specialized worker.

Guilds and Political Structure

Bankers, merchants, manufacturers, craftsmen, and skilled workers were organized in guilds. Among the Florentine guilds seven were called the Greater Arts (Arti Maggiori) comprising cloth manufacturers, wool manufacturers, silk manufacturers, fur merchants, bankers, physicians and apothecaries, and the mixed guild of merchants, judges, and notaries. Fourteen other guilds of Florence, called the Lesser Arts (Arti Minori), included tailors, hosiers, butchers, bakers, wine merchants, shoemakers, saddlers, armorers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, carpenters, innkeepers, masons and stonecutters, and another group that gathered various craftsmen such as oil merchants, pork butchers, and rope makers. Every voter had to belong to one of these guilds, and the nobility, who had been deprived of the vote by a bourgeois revolution in 1282, joined the guilds to regain that right. Below these twenty-one guilds were seventy-two unions of voteless workers; below them were thousands of day laborers who lived in absolute poverty and had no right to organize. Below or—when their masters were more compassionate—above them were a few slaves. Members of the Greater Arts were politically the Popolo Grasso (the fat people); the rest of the population formed the Popolo Minuto (the little people). The political history of Florence, like that of modern states, was first the victory of the merchant class over the old landowning nobility (1293), and then the struggles of the working class to seize political power.

In 1345 Cinto Brandini and nine others were condemned to death for organizing poor wool workers, and employers brought in foreign workers to break the labor unions. In 1368 the “little people” revolted but were suppressed. Ten years later the tumult of the Ciompi (wool-carders’ revolt) enabled the working class to take control of society for a dizzying moment. The wool-carders, led by a barefooted worker named Michele di Lando, stormed the Palazzo Vecchio, dissolved the city council, and proclaimed the establishment of a proletarian government (1378). Laws against union organization were repealed, the lower guilds received the vote, debtors were given twelve years to pay their debts, and the interest rate was lowered to lighten the burden on the indebted class. The merchant and professional leaders fought back by closing their workshops and forcing landowners to cut off food supplies to the city. The revolutionaries split into two factions: an aristocracy of skilled craftsmen and a “left wing” with communist ideas. Finally the conservatives, bringing sturdy men from the countryside and arming them, overthrew the divided workers’ government and restored the merchant class to power (1382).

The victorious bourgeoisie revised the constitution to consolidate its victory. The Signoria or city council of the Signori (elders) consisted of eight Priori delle Arti (guild priors) chosen by lot from bags containing the names of eligible persons. The council members themselves elected a Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (standard-bearer of justice) or chief executive. Of these eight members, four had to be chosen from the leaders of the Greater Arts, although these Arti Maggiori comprised a very small minority of the city’s adult male population. The same proportion applied in the election of the advisory Consiglio del Popolo (People’s Council); here the Popolo meant only the members of the twenty-one guilds. Members of the Consiglio del Comune (Community Council) were also chosen from all the guilds, but their function was merely to assemble when summoned by the city council and to vote “yes” or “no” on the leaders’ proposals. In rare cases the city leaders, by ringing the great bell of the Palazzo Vecchio, summoned a Parlamento or assembly of all voters to the Piazza della Signoria. Usually such a general assembly elected a Balìa or “reform commission,” gave it extraordinary powers for a fixed period, and then dissolved itself.

It was the generous mistake of nineteenth-century historians to credit Florence before the Medici with a degree of democracy that even that paradise of plutocracy never enjoyed. The subject cities, though they had many geniuses of their own and were proud of their heritage, had not even a spokesman in the Florentine council that ruled them. In Florence only 3,200 men had the vote, and in both city councils the representatives of the merchant class held such a majority that opposition was rarely offered. To the upper classes it was self-evident that the illiterate masses could not form deep or reliable judgments on the interests of the community in internal crises or external affairs. The people of Florence loved liberty; but to the poor this liberty meant nothing more than the freedom to obey Florentine masters, and to the wealthy it meant nothing more than the freedom of themselves to rule the city and its possessions without interference from emperors or popes or feudal lords.

Cosimo de’ Medici: Father of the Fatherland

The Albizzi family maintained supremacy in the government, with intervals, from 1381 to 1434 and courageously supported the wealthy class against the poor. The Medici family can be traced back to 1201, when Chiarissimo de’ Medici was a member of the Community Council. Averardo de’ Medici, Cosimo’s great-grandfather, amassed a huge fortune for the family through bold commerce and shrewd financial judgment and was elected Gonfaloniere of the city in 1314. Averardo’s brother’s grandson, Salvestro de’ Medici, who was himself Gonfaloniere of Florence in 1378, gained popularity for his family by supporting the demands of the poor rebels. Salvestro’s brother’s grandson, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, who was Gonfaloniere in 1421, increased his family’s popularity still further by supporting a graduated income tax (catasto) of half a percent on income—itself calculated as equivalent to seven percent of total capital—although he himself suffered heavy losses (1427). The wealthy, who had previously paid a poll tax equal to that of the poor, conceived a hatred for the Medici.

Giovanni di Bicci died in 1428 and left to his son Cosimo a good name and the largest capital in Tuscany—179,221 florins (about 4,480,525 dollars?). Cosimo was then thirty-nine years old and well able to manage the various and widespread branches of the business house. Its operations were not limited to banking but included the management of vast estates, the production of woolen and silk goods, and the trade in many commodities that linked Russia with Spain, Scotland with Syria, and Islam with Christendom. While busy building churches in Florence, Cosimo did not consider it sinful to conclude commercial treaties and exchange costly gifts with Turkish sultans. His firm had specialized in importing low-bulk but high-value goods from the East—such as spices, almonds, and sugar—and sold these and other wares in several European ports.

Cosimo administered all these affairs calmly and skillfully and also found time for political activity. As a member of the Dieci or “Council of Ten for War,” he led Florence to victory against Lucca and, as banker, advanced huge loans to the government to finance the war. His popularity aroused the jealousy of other powerful men. In 1433 Rinaldo degli Albizzi attacked him on the charge that he was plotting to overthrow the republican government and seize dictatorial power. Rinaldo managed to persuade Bernardo Guadagni, then Gonfaloniere of the city, to issue an order for Cosimo’s arrest. Cosimo surrendered and was imprisoned in the Palazzo Vecchio. Since Rinaldo with his armed retainers dominated the Parlamento in the Piazza della Signoria, Cosimo’s execution seemed certain. But Cosimo succeeded in getting a thousand ducats (about 25,000 dollars) to Rinaldo, and Rinaldo suddenly became merciful and agreed that Cosimo, together with his children and chief supporters, should be exiled from Florence for ten years. Cosimo settled in Venice, where his modesty and wealth won him many friends. Before long the Venetian government set to work using its influence to obtain permission for his return. The Signoria elected in 1434 was favorable to him and revoked his sentence of exile. Cosimo returned in triumph, and Rinaldo and his sons fled the city.

The Parlamento elected a Balìa and gave it extraordinary powers. After three short terms of office Cosimo withdrew from all political positions and said that “being elected to office is often harmful to the body and injurious to the soul.” Since his enemies had left the city, his friends easily controlled the government. The loans he made to influential families forcibly secured their support; his gifts to the clergy won their eager assistance, and his unprecedentedly generous donations to the people easily reconciled the citizens to his rule. The people of Florence had learned that their republican constitution did not protect them against the wealthy nobility; the failure of the Ciompi revolt had driven that lesson into popular memory. If the people had to choose between the Albizzi, who supported the rich, and the Medici, who supported the middle and lower classes, they had little hesitation. A people weary of the oppression of the wealthy and tired of factional strife welcomed dictatorial governments in Florence (1434), Perugia (1389), Bologna (1401), Siena (1477), and Rome (1347–1922). Villani says: “The Medici maintained their supremacy in the name of liberty and with the help of the Popolo and the Popolaccio.”

Cosimo exercised his power with prudent moderation, occasionally mixed with violence. When his supporters suspected that Baldaccio d’Anghiari was plotting to end Cosimo’s power, they threw him from a sufficiently high window to make sure of his end, and Cosimo made no protest. One of Cosimo’s favorite sayings was that “states are not ruled with paternosters.” Instead of the previous fixed tax Cosimo imposed a graduated tax on private capital and was accused of using this tax to reward his friends and discourage his enemies. The total of taxes collected in the first twenty years of Cosimo’s power amounted to 4,875,000 florins (about 121,875,000 dollars); and those who refused to pay were simply sent to prison. Many of the city’s nobles left and resumed the rural life of medieval lords. Cosimo accepted their departure with equanimity and said that with a few yards of red cloth new nobles could be made.

The people of Florence smiled approval, for they saw that these revenues were spent entirely on the country and on the beautification of Florence; moreover Cosimo himself had contributed 400,000 florins (about 10,000,000 dollars?) for public and charitable works; this sum was almost twice what he left to his heirs. Cosimo worked tirelessly until the age of seventy-five in the management of both his private estates and public affairs. When Edward IV, King of England, asked him for a considerable loan, Cosimo, ignoring the previous defaults of Edward III, granted the request, and the king repaid the debt with gold coins and political support. Tommaso Parentucelli, Bishop of Bologna, fell into financial difficulties and asked Cosimo for help. Cosimo helped him too; and when Parentucelli became pope as Nicholas V, the management of all papal finances was entrusted to Cosimo. To keep the various threads of his activities from becoming entangled, Cosimo, like an American millionaire, rose early and was almost always present at his place of business. At home he occupied himself with grafting trees and tending vines. He dressed simply, ate and drank in moderation, and (after siring an illegitimate son by a serving woman) led a calm and orderly family life. Those who entered his house were astonished at the contrast between the simple family table and the extravagant banquets he gave for foreign delegations in the interest of peace and friendship. Cosimo was usually an affectionate, gentle, forgiving, and calm man, and at the same time famous for his sharp wit. He was open-handed with the poor, paid the taxes of needy friends, and concealed his charity in the same modest charm with which he concealed his political power. Botticelli, Pontormo, and Benozzo Gozzoli have portrayed his characteristics: a man of medium height, with an olive complexion, gray hair brushed back, a long thin nose, and a dignified and kindly face expressive of keen intelligence and calm power.

Cosimo’s foreign policy was devoted to the preservation and organization of peace. Having come to power after a series of ruinous conflicts, he knew how greatly real or imminent war hindered commercial progress. When the Visconti government in Milan collapsed in the confusion following the death of Filippo Maria, and the threat that Venice would seize the Duchy of Milan and extend its dominion over all northern Italy to the gates of Florence became serious, Cosimo sent help to Francesco Sforza to consolidate his rule in Milan and to check the advance of Venice. When Venice and Naples united against Florence, Cosimo called in the huge loans he had made to the citizens of those states and thereby forced them to make peace with Florence. Thereafter the alliance of Florence and Milan against Venice and Naples created so balanced a balance of power that neither side dared risk beginning a war. This balance-of-power policy, which Cosimo perfected and Lorenzo continued, kept Italy at peace from 1450 to 1492, during which time the Italian cities accumulated enough wealth to finance the early Renaissance.

It was Italy’s and humanity’s good fortune that Cosimo was as devoted to literature, learning, philosophy, and art as he was to money and power. Cosimo was a learned and cultivated man; he knew Latin well and was acquainted with Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic; he had so broad a mind and so large a heart that he valued the work of all artists—Fra Angelico’s piety and painting, Fra Filippo Lippi’s amusing roguery, Ghiberti’s classical style in relief, Donatello’s bold originality in sculpture, Brunelleschi’s majestic churches, Michelozzo’s restrained power in architecture, Gemistus Pletho’s pagan Platonic wisdom, Pico’s and Ficino’s mystical Platonic wisdom, Alberti’s elegance, Poggio’s scholarly vulgarity, and Niccolò de’ Niccoli’s extraordinary devotion to sacred books—all these enjoyed his generous help. Cosimo brought Joannes Argyropoulos to Florence to teach the youth of the city the language and literature of ancient Greece, and he himself spent twelve years studying classical Greek and Latin literature under Ficino. He spent large sums on the purchase of classical texts, so that often the most precious cargoes of his freighters coming from Greece to Alexandria were manuscripts. When Niccolò de’ Niccoli had spent all his possessions on the purchase of ancient manuscripts, Cosimo opened an unlimited credit for him at the Medici bank and supported him until the end of his life. For copying manuscripts that could not be bought he employed forty-five scribes and placed them under the supervision of a book-loving dealer named Vespasiano da Bisticci. Cosimo placed all these “precious drops” in the rooms of the monastery of San Marco, in the Fiesole convent, or in his own private library. Niccoli on his death (1437) left eight hundred manuscripts worth 6,000 florins (about 150,000 dollars?) together with many debts, and named sixteen persons as trustees to decide the fate of the books; Cosimo offered to take the books in exchange for paying all his debts. The offer was accepted and Cosimo divided the collection between the library of San Marco and his own private library. The use of these books was free and open to teachers and students. Varchi, the Florentine historian, with patriotic exaggeration writes: “If Greek literature was not completely lost from memory—which would have been a misfortune for humanity—and if Latin texts survived—which is also an infinite benefit to the people—this is owed by Italy, and indeed the whole world, only to the wisdom and energy of the Medici family.”

Of course the valuable work of reviving ancient culture had begun in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by translators, also by Arab commentators, and by Petrarch and Boccaccio; scholars and bibliophiles like Salutati, Traversari, Bruni, and Valla had continued it before Cosimo; and men like Niccoli, Poggio, Filelfo, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Naples, and hundreds of Cosimo’s contemporaries—even his exiled rival, Palla Strozzi—had carried it forward independently. But if in our judgment we consider not only Cosimo Pater Patriae but also his descendants—Lorenzo il Magnifico, Leo X, and Clement VII—we must admit that in all recorded human history no family can be found that equals the Medici in the support of learning and art.

The Humanists and the Classical Revival

The humanists captivated the minds of the Italians, turned their thought from religion to philosophy and from heaven to earth, and revealed to a wondering generation the intellectual and artistic riches of the pagan age. These men, mad for knowledge, were already called humanists by the time of Ariosto, because they called the study of classical culture humanitas or litterae humaniores (more human literature—not in the sense of more humane literature, but literature more concerned with the world of men). The most suitable subject of study was now man himself with all his inner capacities and physical beauty, with all the pleasures and pains of the senses and emotions, and with all the fragile glory of his intellect; and these points were treated with the same abundance and perfection that had been displayed in the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome. That was humanism.

Almost all the surviving ancient Latin works, and many classical Greek works that survive today, were more or less accessible to medieval scholars; and the thirteenth century was acquainted with the ideas of the great pagan philosophers. But this century had almost completely forgotten Greek poetry; and many ancient works that we now admire had remained unnoticed in the corners of monastery and church libraries. It was mostly in these forgotten corners that Petrarch and his successors found the “lost” classical works. Petrarch called them “noble prisoners in the clutches of barbarian jailers.” Boccaccio, on a visit to Monte Cassino, was astonished to find priceless manuscripts moldering in dust or being torn to pieces to make charms and spells. Poggio, while attending the Council of Constance, found the manuscript of Quintilian’s Institutions in a filthy dungeon of the monastery of St. Gall and, as he unrolled the scrolls, felt that the old teacher was stretching out his hands and begging to be freed from the “barbarians”—the Italian friends of culture, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, called the conquerors who had come from beyond the Alps “barbarians.” Poggio single-handedly, heedless of snow and winter cold, rescued the works of Lucretius, Columella, Frontinus, Vitruvius, Valerius Flaccus, Tertullian, Plautus, Petronius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and several great speeches of Cicero from these graves. Coluccio Salutati discovered Cicero’s letters to his friends in Vercelli (1389). Gerardo Landriani found Cicero’s treatises on rhetoric in Lodi (1422). Ambrogio Traversari succeeded in rescuing Cornelius Nepos from the prison of oblivion in Padua (1434). The treatises Agricola, Germania, and the Dialogues of Tacitus were found in Germany (1455). The first six books of Tacitus’ Annals and a complete manuscript of the letters of the younger Pliny were discovered in the monastery of Corvey (1508) and became the most precious treasure of Leo X.

In the half century before the fall of Constantinople several humanists traveled or studied in Greece. One of them, Giovanni Aurispa, brought back two hundred and thirty-eight manuscripts to Italy, including the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles; another, Francesco Filelfo, rescued the books of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Aristotle, and seven plays of Euripides from the danger of destruction in Constantinople (1427). When these literary discoverers returned to Italy with their finds, they were welcomed like victorious generals, and princes and prelates paid high prices for a share of this booty. The fall of Constantinople led to the loss of many classical works whose locations Byzantine writers had mentioned in the city’s libraries. Nevertheless, thousands of copies of these works were saved, and most of them were brought to Italy; to this day the best manuscripts of classical Greek works are still in Italy. For three centuries, from the age of Petrarch to the time of Tasso, people collected manuscripts with a passion equal to the enthusiasm of stamp collectors. Niccolò de’ Niccoli spent more than he possessed on the purchase of books. Andreolo de’ Ochis was ready to sacrifice his house, his wife, and his life to add to his library; Poggio suffered whenever he saw people spending money on anything but books.

A revolutionary activity in the emendation of these works followed. The texts that were found were examined, collated, corrected, and interpreted in a cultural struggle among scholars from Lorenzo Valla in Naples to Sir Thomas More in London. Since these researches in many cases required knowledge of Greek, Italy—and later France, England, and Germany—invited teachers to give instruction in Greek. Aurispa and Filelfo learned the language in Greece itself. After Manuel Chrysoloras came to Italy as Byzantine ambassador (1397), the University of Florence persuaded him to join its faculty as professor of Greek language and literature. Among his pupils were Poggio, Palla Strozzi, Marsuppini, and Bruni. Leonardo Bruni, who was studying law, abandoned law on Chrysoloras’s encouragement and took up the study of Greek. Bruni says: “I was so captivated by his teaching that my dreams at night were filled with the things I had learned from him during the day.” Who today can imagine that learning Greek grammar was once itself a romantic adventure?

In 1439 at the Council of Florence the Greeks met the Italians. The lessons they learned from each other in language had far wider results than their laborious negotiations on theology. Here Gemistus Pletho delivered his famous lectures and ended the dominance of Aristotelian theory in European philosophy, raising Plato almost to divine rank. After the council ended, Joannes Bessarion, who had attended as Bishop of Nicaea, remained in Italy and devoted part of his time to teaching Greek. The fever of Greek study spread to other cities: Bessarion in Rome, Theodorus Gaza in Mantua and Ferrara (1444) and Rome (1451), Demetrius Chalcondyles in Perugia (1450) and Padua, Florence, and Milan (c. 1492–1511), and Joannes Argyropoulos in Padua (1441) and Florence (1456–1471) and Rome (1471–1486) taught Greek. All these had come to Italy before the fall of Constantinople (1453); thus that event played only a small role in the transfer of Greek from Byzantium to Italy; but the gradual siege of Constantinople by the Turks after 1356 encouraged Greek scholars to turn to the West. One scholar who fled around the time of the fall of the imperial capital was Constantine Lascaris, who taught Greek in Milan (1460–1465), Naples, and Messina (1466–1501). The first book printed in Greek in Renaissance Italy was Lascaris’s Greek grammar.

Despite all these scholars and their eager pupils active in Italy, the classical literary and philosophical works of Greece were soon translated into Latin; these translations surpassed in maturity, accuracy, and correctness those made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Guarino translated parts of Strabo and Plutarch into Latin; Traversari translated the works of Diogenes Laërtius; Valla translated Herodotus, Thucydides, and Homer’s Iliad; Perotti translated Polybius; and Ficino translated Plato and Plotinus. Plato’s works above all captivated and enchanted the humanists. They were charmed by Plato’s fluent and graceful style; they found in his dialogues a drama livelier, more eloquent, and fresher than all the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. The humanists envied and admired the freedom of the Greeks of Socrates’ time who could discuss the most sensitive religious and political questions freely; they thought that in Plato’s philosophy—which Plotinus’ ideas had also cast in a shadow of mystery—they had found a kind of mystical philosophy with which they could remain in Christianity—Christianity in which they no longer believed but whose love they had never abandoned. Cosimo, excited by the eloquence of Gemistus Pletho and the enthusiasm of his pupils in Florence, founded the Platonic Academy for the study of Plato’s works (1445) and, with his generous help, induced Marsilio Ficino to devote half his life to translating and interpreting Plato’s works. Now the scholastic school, after four hundred years, was losing its dominance over Western philosophy; and dialogue and treatise replaced the scholastic disputatio as the form for presenting philosophical questions, and Plato’s animating spirit began to breathe like a vital force into the growing body of European thought.

But as Italy recovered more and more of its classical heritage, the humanists’ attachment to Greece was overshadowed by their pride in Roman literature and art. They revived Latin as the vehicle of their own literature; Latinized their names and gave a Roman coloring to the terms of everyday life and Christian worship: they called God Jupiter, divine providence Fatum, the saints Divi, the nuns Vestals, and the pope Pontifex Maximus. In prose they imitated the style of Cicero, and in verse the style of Virgil and Horace, and some of them, like Filelfo, Valla, and Poliziano, achieved a classical level of eloquence. Thus the Renaissance, in the course of its growth, returned from Greek to Latin and from Athens to Rome; it seemed as if time had gone back fifteen centuries and the age of Cicero and Horace, Ovid and Seneca had been reborn. Style acquired greater importance than subject and meaning, and form triumphed over content; and the eloquence of the orators of past days once again echoed in the halls of princely palaces and literary circles. Perhaps it would have been better if the humanists had used Italian; but they regarded Italian comedy and the Canzoniere as a corrupt and degenerate Latin (which they almost were) and regretted that Dante had chosen the native language and dialect. As punishment for this thought the humanists lost contact with living literary sources; the people left the reading of their works to the nobility and preferred to study the humorous novels of Sacchetti and Bandello or the exciting chivalric and love romances translated or adapted from French. Nevertheless, this brief wonder at the dying language and “immortal” Latin literature helped Italian writers to recover genuine architecture, sculpture, and music and to create laws of taste and expression that raised the Italian language and dialect to literary rank and provided art with purpose and standard. In history too it was the humanists who, with meticulous and precise study of sources, orderly and clear arrangement of material, giving life and humanity to the past through the fusion of biography with history, and elevating their narratives to a philosophical level by clarifying causes, processes, and effects, and by studying the laws and lessons of history, put an end to the confused and uncritical medieval chronicles.

The humanist movement spread throughout Italy, but before the Medici reached the papacy its leaders were mostly Florentine citizens and scholars. Coluccio Salutati, who became secretary or chancellor (Cancellarius) of the city council in 1375, became the bridge linking Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Cosimo through his acquaintance and friendship with all three. The decrees issued in his elegant style were models of classical Latin handwriting and left an example that the authorities of Venice, Milan, and Rome tried to imitate; Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, said that Salutati with the eloquence of his style had done him more harm than a whole troop of mercenary soldiers. Niccolò de’ Niccoli’s reputation as an authority on Latin style was equal to his fame as a collector of manuscripts. Bruni called him the “inspector of the Latin language,” and like other writers he sent his works to Niccoli for correction before publication. Niccoli had filled his house with classical works, statues, manuscripts, vases, coins, and ancient jewels. He avoided marriage lest it separate him from his books, but found time to steal his brother’s mistress from his bed. His library was open to all interested persons, and he encouraged the youth of Florence to study literature rather than luxury. When he saw a wealthy young man wasting his time in idleness he asked him: “What is your aim in life?” The young man replied frankly: “Pleasure.” “But what will become of you when your youth is over?” The young man understood the point and under his guidance took up study.

Leonardo Bruni, secretary to four popes and later chancellor of the city council of Florence (1427–1444), translated many of Plato’s dialogues with such eloquence that for the first time the full splendor of Plato’s style was completely revealed to the Italians. He also wrote a history of Florence in Latin, for which the republic of Florence exempted him and his children from taxes; his speeches were considered equal to those of Pericles. When he died the authorities of Florence ordered a public funeral in the ancient manner; he was buried in Santa Croce with a copy of his history of Florence placed on his breast, and Bernardo Rossellino designed a magnificent and dignified tomb for him. Carlo Marsuppini, who like Bruni was born in Arezzo and succeeded him as chancellor of the Florentine council, astonished his age by memorizing half the classical literature of Greece and Rome. There is hardly an ancient writer from whom Marsuppini did not quote in his speech on his appointment as professor of literature at the University of Florence. He cherished classical pagan culture so highly that he sometimes thought he was asked to turn away from Christianity. Nevertheless he held the post of papal secretary in Rome for a time; although it was said that he died without the rites of the Church, he too was buried in a splendid tomb designed by Desiderio da Settignano in Santa Croce (1453), together with a grandiloquent oration delivered by Giannozzo Manetti. Manetti, who read this funeral oration over the head of an unbeliever, was a man as pious as he was learned. For nine whole years he rarely left his house and garden and devoted all his time to the study of classical literature and the learning of Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. When he was sent as ambassador to Rome, Naples, Venice, and Genoa, he charmed everyone and, with his culture, liberality, and sincerity, won friendships that were valuable to the government of Florence.

All these men, except Salutati, were members of the circle that met in Cosimo’s city palace or country villa and, during Cosimo’s period of power, provided leadership for the cultural movement. Another friend of Cosimo, who was no less devoted to the love of learning than Cosimo himself, was Ambrogio Traversari, head of the Camaldolese order who lived in a cell in the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Florence. He had complete mastery of language and literature and suffered pangs of conscience because of his attachment to classical works. He refrained from quoting classical authors in his writings, but the influence he had received from them was clearly visible in his Latin style, whose purity of diction could astonish even the famous Gregories. Cosimo, who knew how to reconcile classical culture as well as vast wealth with Christianity, enjoyed visiting him. Niccoli, Marsuppini, Bruni, and others had made his cell their literary meeting place.

The most industrious and troublesome of the Italian humanists was Poggio Bracciolini. Born into a poor family near Arezzo (1380), he studied in Florence, learned Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras, earned his living by copying manuscripts, won Salutati’s affection, and at the age of twenty-four was appointed secretary to the papal chancery in Rome. He served the papal court for half a century without ever receiving the slightest clerical rank, but he wore clerical dress. The papal court, valuing his learning and activity, sent him on several missions abroad. Taking advantage of these opportunities, whenever possible he collected classical manuscripts; and since he was the pope’s secretary he easily gained access to the literary treasures of the libraries of the monasteries of St. Gall, Langres, Weingarten, and Reichenau, which were jealously guarded or carelessly left to rot in neglect; his harvests were so rich that Bruni and other humanists considered his discoveries epoch-making. When Poggio returned to Rome he wrote strong letters in defense of the Church’s dogmas for Pope Martin V, yet in private gatherings with other papal employees he laughed at Christian beliefs. He wrote letters and dialogues in lively but not always elegant Latin in which he mocked the impurity of the clergy while he himself, as far as his means allowed, did not shrink from such practices. When Cardinal Sant’Angelo reproached him for having children—which was not fitting for a cleric—and for having a mistress—which was not fitting for a layman—Poggio replied with his usual audacity: “I have children as is customary among laymen, and a mistress as is the ancient custom of all clerics.” At the age of fifty-five he abandoned the mistress who had borne him fourteen children and married an eighteen-year-old girl. Meanwhile, by collecting coins, inscriptions, and ancient statues, and by describing the remains of ancient Rome in precise scholarly language, he almost founded modern archaeology. He accompanied Pope Eugenius IV to the Council of Florence, quarreled with Francesco Filelfo, and between them exchanged coarse and indecent words mixed with accusations of theft, irreligion, and sodomy. When he returned to Rome he served Pope Nicholas V the humanist with special devotion. At the age of seventy he composed his famous Book of Facetiae, a collection of stories, satires, and ribald sayings. When Lorenzo Valla joined the papal chancery Poggio attacked him with a fresh series of invectives and accused him of theft, forgery, treason, heresy, drunkenness, and moral corruption. Valla replied by mocking Poggio’s Latin and pointing out his grammatical and terminological errors and called him a senile madman who should be ignored. No one except the person directly attacked took these literary outbursts seriously; the articles he wrote were merely for display and rivalry in Latin prose. In one of them Poggio rightly claimed that he wanted to show how the classical Latin language could express the newest ideas and the most private feelings. He was so skilled in the art of sharp remarks that Vespasiano said: “The whole world fears him.” His pen, like that of another Aretine after him [Aretino], became an instrument of blackmail. When Alfonso, King of Naples, delayed in acknowledging receipt of Poggio’s Latin translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, which Poggio had presented to him, this sensitive humanist declared that with a good pen one could stab any king, and Alfonso hastily sent him five hundred ducats to silence his tongue. After seventy years of indulging his sensual appetites and impulses Poggio wrote a treatise On the Wretched Condition of Man and observed that the miseries of life outweigh its pleasures, and like Solon concluded that the happiest men are those who escape being born. Poggio returned to Florence at the age of seventy-two and was immediately appointed chancellor of the city council and finally its head. Poggio expressed his gratitude by writing a history of Florence in the manner of his predecessors—a description of political conditions, wars, and imaginary speeches. When he finally died at the age of seventy-nine (1459) the other humanists breathed a sigh of relief. Poggio too was buried in Santa Croce, and his statue, made by Donatello, was placed on the exterior of the chapel; and in 1560, when changes were made in the church’s decoration, it was mistakenly transferred inside the cathedral as the statue of one of the twelve apostles.

It is clear that Christianity, both in theology and in morality, had lost its hold on most of the Italian humanists. Only a few of them—Traversari, Bruni, and Manetti in Florence; Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua; Guarino da Verona in Ferrara; and Flavio Biondo in Rome—remained steadfast in their faith. But for many others the inspiration of Greek culture, which had survived a thousand years completely independent of Judaism and Christianity in literature, philosophy, and art, dealt a mortal blow to their belief in Pauline theology or the theory of nulla salus extra ecclesiam—“outside the Church there is absolutely no salvation.” Socrates and Plato themselves rose before them to the rank of unofficial saints; and the succession of Greek philosophers seemed to them superior to the Greek and Latin Church Fathers; the prose of Plato and Cicero made even cardinals ashamed of the Greek of the New Testament and the Latin of St. Jerome’s translation; the glory of the Roman Empire seemed more genuine than the isolation mixed with cowardice of devout Christians in monastery cells; the freedom of thought and action of the Greeks of the age of Pericles and Augustus aroused the envy of many humanists to such an extent that it undermined their heartfelt belief in the Christian principles of humility, attachment to the other world, and piety; they wondered why they should surrender their body, mind, and soul to the command of churchmen who themselves now joyfully turned to worldliness. For these humanists the fifteen centuries between Constantine and Dante seemed a tragic error and a deviation from the right path; the charming legends of the Virgin and the saints faded from their memories to make room in their minds for Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Horace’s bisexual odes; the majestic churches now seemed “barbaric” to them, and their lifeless statues no longer had any appeal for eyes that had seen the Apollo Belvedere and for fingers that had touched it.

Thus the humanists in general behaved as if Christianity were a myth adapted to the moral and imaginative needs of the common people, but which those with free minds should not take seriously. In their public speeches the humanists defended Christianity, openly showed themselves bound to the