[180] An interesting survey of this wider kind has been attempted by U.A. Canello for the whole sixteenth century in his Storia della Lett. It. nel Secolo XVI. (Milano: Vallardi, 1880). He tries to demonstrate that, in the sphere of private life, Italian society gradually refined the brutal lusts of the Middle Ages, and passed through fornication to a true conception of woman as man's companion in the family. The theme is bold; and the author seems to have based it upon too slight acquaintance with the real conditions of the Middle Ages.
[181] Galluzzi, in his Storia del Granducato di Toscana, vol. iv. p. 34, estimates the murders committed in Florence alone during the eighteen months which followed the death of Cosimo I., at 186.
[182] In drawing up these paragraphs I am greatly indebted to a vigorous passage by Signor Salvatore Bonghi in his Storia di Lucrezia Buonvisi, pp. 7-9, of which I have made free use, translating his words when they served my purpose, and interpolating such further details as might render the picture more complete.
[183] The lax indulgence accorded by the Jesuit casuists to every kind of homicide appears in the extracts from those writers collected in Artes Jesuiticae (Salisburgi, 1703, pp. 75-83). Tamburinus went so far as to hold that if a man mixed poison for his enemy, and a friend came in and drank it up before his eyes, he was not bound to warn his friend, nor was he guilty of his friend's death (Ib. p. 135, Art. 651).
[184] See Salvatore Bonghi, op. cit. p. 159.
[185] Bonghi, op. cit. p. 159, note.
[186] In support of this assertion I translate a letter addressed (Milan, September 15, 1622) by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo to the Prioress of the Convent of S. Margherita at Monza (Dandolo, Signora di Monza, p. 132). 'Experience of similar cases has shown how dangerous to your holy state is the vicinity of soldiers, owing to the correspondence which young and idle soldiers continually try to entertain with monasteries, sometimes even under fair and honorable pretexts.... Wherefore we have heard with much displeasure that in those places of our diocese where there are convents of nuns and congregations of virgins, ordinary lodgings for the soldiery have been established, called lonely houses (case erme), where they are suffered or obliged to dwell through long periods.' The Bishop commands the Prioress to admit no soldier, on any plea of piety, devotion or family relationship, into her convent; to receive no servant or emissary of a soldier; to forbid special services being performed in the chapel at the instance of a soldier; and, finally, to institute a more rigorous system of watch and ward than had been formerly practiced.
[187] In Venice, for example, they were called Monachini. But the name varied in various provinces.
[188] The following abstract of the history of Virginia Maria de Leyva is based on Dandolo's Signora di Monza (Milano, 1855). Readers of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, and of Rosini's tiresome novel, La Signora di Monza, will be already familiar with her in romance under the name of Gertrude.
[189] Carlo Borromeo found it necessary to suppress the Umiliati. But he left the female establishment of S. Margherita untouched.
[190] In ecclesiastical affairs the diocese of Milan exercised jurisdiction over that of Bergamo, although Bergamo was subject in civil affairs to Venice. This makes the matter more puzzling.
[191] Storia di Lucrezia Buonvisi, by Salvatore Bonghi, Lucca, 1864. This is an admirably written historical monograph, based on accurate studies and wide researches, containing a mine of valuable information for a student of those times.
[192] Campanelia, who was tortured in this way at Naples, says that on one occasion a pound and a half of his flesh was macerated, and ten pounds of his blood shed. 'Perduravi horis quadraginta, funiculis arctissimis ossa usque secantibus ligatus, pendens manibus retro contortis de fune super acutissimum lignum qui (?) carnis sextertium (?) in posterioribus mihi devoravit et decem sanguinis libras tellus ebibit.' Preface to Atheismus Triumphatus.
[193] I may here allude to a portrait in our National Gallery of a Lucchese Arnolfini and his wife, painted by Van Eyck.
[194] Here again I have very closely followed the text of Signor Bonghi's monograph, pp. 112-115.
[195] It appears that violent passion for a person was commonly attributed at that epoch to enchantment. See above, the confession of the Lady of Monza, p. 320.
[196] Francesco Cenci e la sua Famiglia. Per A. Bertolotti, Firenze, 1877.
[197] He was afterwards forced, in 1590, to disgorge a second sum of 25,000 crowns.
[198] Prospero Farinaccio, the advocate of Cenci's murderers, was himself tried for this crime (Bertolotti, op. cit. p. 104). The curious story of the Spanish soldiers alluded to above will be found in Mutinelli, Stor. Arc. vol. i. p. 121. See the same work of Mutinelli, vol. i. p. 48, for a similar prosecution in Rome 1566; and vol. iv. p. 152 for another involving some hundred people of condition at Milan in 1679. Compare what Sarpi says about the Florentine merchants and Roman cinedi in his Letters, date 1609, vol. i. p. 288. For the manners of the Neapolitans, Vita di D. Pietro di Toledo (Arch. Stor. It., vol. ix. p. 23). The most scandalous example of such vice in high quarters was given by Pietro de'Medici, one of Duke Cosimo's sons. Galluzzi, vol. v. p. 174, and Litta's pedigree of the Medici. The Bandi Lucchesi, ed. S. Bonghi, Bologna, 1863, pp. 377 381, treats the subject in full; and it has been discussed by Canello, op. cit. pp. 20-23. The Artes Jesuiticae, op. cit. Articles 62, 120, illustrate casuistry on the topic.
[199] De Stendhal's MS. authority says she was sixteen, Shelley's that she was twenty.
[200] De Stendhal's MS. describes how Giacomo was torn by pincers; Shelley's says that this part of the sentence was remitted.
[201] The author of De Stendhal's MS. professes to have known the old Cenci, and gives a definite description of his personal appearance.
[202] Litta supplies the facts related above.
[203] This fratricide, concurring with the matricide of S. Croce, contributed to the rigor with which the Cenci parricide was punished in that year of Roman crimes.
[204] The White Devil, a tragedy by John Webster, London, 1612; De Stendhal's Chroniques et Nouvelles, Vittoria Accoramboni, Paris 1855; Vittoria Accoramboni, D. Gnoli, Firenze, 1870; Italian Byways, by J.A. Symonds, London, 1883. The greater part of follows above is extracted from my Italian Byways.
[205] I find a Felice Peretti mentioned in the will of Giacomo Cenci condemned in 1597. But this was after the death of this Peretti, whom I shall continue to call Francesco.
[206] The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair. At the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom. Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano's orders a few years afterwards.
[207] 'La Duchesse de Palliano,' in Chroniques et Nouvelles, De Stendhal (Henri Beyle).
[208] This touch shows what were then considered the accomplishments of a noble woman.
[209] It was a street-brawl, in which the Cardinal Monte played an indecent part, that finally aroused the anger of Paul IV. De Stendhal's MS. shifts the chief blame on to the shoulders of Cardinal Caraffa, who indeed appears to have been in the habit of keeping bad company.
[210] Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 64.
[211] Ib. vol. ii. p. 162.
[212] Ib. vol. i. p. 343.
[213] I Guarini, Famiglia Nobile Ferrarese (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1870), pp. 83-87.
[214] In addition to the victims of his vengeance who perished by the poignard, he publicly executed in Florence forty-two political offenders.
[215] See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. pp.54-56, for Antonio's reception into the Order.
[216] I refer, of course, to Galluzzi's Storia del Gran Ducato, vol. iv. pp. 241-244. Botta's Storia d'Italia, Book xiv., and Litta's Famiglie Celebri under the pedigree of Medici.
[217] See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iii. p, 25, and Botta, op. cit. Book xii.
[218] See above, p. 381.
[219] Litta may be consulted for details; also Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. v. p. 174.
[220] It maybe worth mentioning that Virginio Orsini, Bracciano's son and heir, married Donna Flavia, grand niece of Sixtus V., and consequently related to the man his father murdered in order to possess Vittoria Accoramboni. See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 72.
[221] See above, pp. 361-369.
[222] Galluzzi, vol. iii. p. 5, says that she died of a putrid fever. Litta again inclines to the probability of poison. But this must counted among the doubtful cases.
[223] See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iv. pp. 195-197, for the account of a transaction which throws curious light upon the customs of the age. It was only stipulated that the trial should not take place upon a Friday. Otherwise, the highest ecclesiastics gave it their full approval.
[224] I have told the stories in this chapter as dryly as I could. Yet it would be interesting to analyze the fascination they exercised over our Elizabethan playwrights, some of whose Italian tragedies handle the material with penetrative imagination. For the English mode of interpreting southern passions see my Italian Byways, pp. 142 et seq., and a brilliant essay in Vernon Lee's Euphorion.
[225] For the Italian text see Lorenzino de'Medici, Daelli, Milano, 1862. The above is borrowed from my Italian Byways.
[226] So far as I can discover, the only church of San Spirito in Venice was a building on the island of San Spirito, erected by Sansavino, which belonged to the Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was suppressed in 1656. Its plate and the fine pictures which Titian painted there were transferred at that date to S. M. della Salute. I cannot help inferring that either Bibboni's memory failed him, or that his words were wrongly understood by printer or amanuensis. If for S. Spirito, we substitute S. Stefano, the account would be intelligible.
[227] The text is published, from Florentine Archives, in Gnoli's Vittoria Accoramboni, pp. 404-414.
[228] See Rawdon Brown's Calendar of State Papers, vol. iv.
[229] See Botta, Book IV., for the story of Lodovico's intrigues at Siena.
[230] This letter is dated February 16, 1546.
[231] See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 167, for the pillage of Lucera by Pacchiarotto.
[232] Sarpi's History of the Uscocchi may be consulted for this singular episode in the Iliad of human savagery. See Mutinelli, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 182, on the case of the son and heir of the Duke of Termoli joining them; and ibid. p. 180 on the existence of pirates at Capri.
[233] Mutinelli, Annali Urbani di Venezia, pp. 470-483,549-550.
[234] Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. i. p. 310-340, and vol. xiv. pp. 30-65.
[235] It is worth mentioning that Ripamonte calculates the mortality from plague in Milan in 1524 at 140,000.
[236] Mutinelli, op. cit. vol. in. pp. 229-233. Botta has given an account of this plague in the twenty-sixth book of his History.
[237] Mutinelli, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 287-307.
[238] See Mutinelli, op. cit. p. 241 and p. 289. We hear of the same belief at Milan in 1576, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 311-315.
[239] Ibid. p. 309. See also vol. iii. p. 254 for a similar narration.
[240] Mutinelli, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 51-65.
[241] Cantù's Ragionamenti sulla Storia Lombarda del Secolo XVII. Milano, 1832. The trial may also be read in Mutinelli, Storm Arcana, vol. iv. pp. 175-201. Mutinelli inclines to believe in the Untori. So do many grave historians, including Nani and Botta. See Cantù, Storia degli Italiani, Milano, 1876, vol. ii. p. 215.
[242] Mr. Ruskin has somewhere maintained that the decline of Venice was not due to this cause, but to fornication. He should read the record given by Mutinelli (Diari Urbani, p. 157), of Venetian fornication in 1340, at the time when the Ducal Palace was being covered with its sculpture. The public prostitutes were reckoned then at 11,654. Adulteries, rapes, infanticides were matters of daily occurrence. Yet the Renaissance had not begun, and the expansion of Venice, which roused the envious hostility of Europe, had yet to happen.
[243] Dandolo's Streghe Tirolesi, and Cantù's work on the Diocese of Como show how much Subalpine Italy had in common in Northern Europe in this matter.
[244] See Rassegna Settimanale, September 18, 1881.
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
THE CATHOLIC REACTION
In Two Parts
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
E invecchiando intristisce'
PART II
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1887 AUTHOR'S EDITION
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
INDEX
FOOTNOTES
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAPTER VII
TORQUATO TASSO
Tasso's Relation to his Age—Balbi on that Period—The Life of Bernardo Tasso—Torquato's Boyhood—Sorrento, Naples, Rome, Urbino—His first Glimpse of the Court—Student Life at Padua and Bologna—The Rinaldo—Dialogues on Epic Poetry—Enters the Service of Cardinal d'Este—The Court of Ferrara—Alfonso II. and the Princesses—Problem of Tasso's Love—Goes to France with Cardinal d'Este—Enters the Service of Duke Alfonso—The Aminta—Tasso at Urbino—Return to Ferrara—Revision of the Gerusalemme—Jealousies at Court—Tasso's Sense of His own Importance—Plans a Change from Ferrara to Florence—First Symptoms of Mental Disorder—Persecutions of the Ferrarese Courtiers—Tasso confined as a Semi-madman—Goes with Duke Alfonso to Belriguardo—Flies in Disguise from Ferrara to Sorrento—Returns to Court Life at Ferrara—Problem of his Madness—Flies again—Mantua, Venice, Urbino, Turin—Returns once more to Ferrara—Alfonso's Third Marriage—Tasso's Discontent—Imprisoned for Seven Years in the Madhouse of S. Anna—Character of Tasso—Character of Duke Alfonso—Nature of the Poet's Malady—His Course of Life in Prison—Released at the Intercession of Vincenzo Gonzaga—Goes to Mantua—The Torrismondo—An Odyssey of Nine Years—Death at Sant Onofrio in Rome—Constantini's Sonnet
CHAPTER VIII
THE "GERUSALEMME LIBERATA"
Problem of Creating Heroic Poetry—The Preface to Tasso's Rinaldo—Subject of Rinaldo—Blending of Romantic Motives with Heroic Style—Imitation of Virgil—Melody and Sentiment—Choice of Theme for the Gerusalemme—It becomes a Romantic Poem after all—Tancredi the real Hero—Nobility of Tone—Virgilian Imitation—Borrowings from Dante—Involved Diction—Employment of Sonorous Polysyllabic Words—Quality of Religious Emotion in this Poem—Rhetoric—Similes—The Grand Style of Pathos—Verbal Music—The Chant d'Amour—Armida—Tasso's Favorite Phrase, Un non so che—His Power over Melody and Tender Feeling—Critique of Tasso's Later Poems—General Survey of his Character
CHAPTER IX
GIORDANO BRUNO
Scientific Bias of the Italians checked by Catholic Revival—Boyhood of Bruno—Enters Order of S. Dominic at Naples—Early Accusations of Heresy—Escapes to Rome—Teaches the Sphere at Noli—Visits Venice—At Geneva—At Toulouse—At Paris—His Intercourse with Henri III.—Visits England—The French Ambassador in London—Oxford—Bruno's Literary Work in England—Returns to Paris—Journeys into Germany—Wittenberg, Helmstädt, Frankfort—Invitation to Venice from Giovanni Mocenigo—His Life in Venice—Mocenigo denounces him to the Inquisition—His Trial at Venice—Removal to Rome—Death by Burning in 1600—Bruno's Relation to the Thought of his Age and to the Thought of Modern Europe—Outlines of his Philosophy
CHAPTER X
FRA PAOLO SARPI
Sarpi's Position in the History of Venice—Parents and Boyhood—Entrance into the Order of the Servites—His Personal Qualities—Achievements as a Scholar and a Man of Science—His Life among the Servites—In Bad Odor at Rome—Paul V. places Venice under Interdict—Sarpi elected Theologian and Counselor of the Republic—His Polemical Writings—Views on Church and State—The Interdict Removed—Roman Vengeance—Sarpi attacked by Bravi—His Wounds, Illness, Recovery—Subsequent History of the Assassins—Further Attempts on Sarpi's Life—Sarpi's Political and Historical Works—History of the Council of Trent—Sarpi's Attitude towards Protestantism His Judgment of the Jesuits—Sarpi's Death—The Christian Stoic
CHAPTER XI
GUARINI, MARINO, CHIABRERA, TASSONI
Dearth of Great Men—Guarini a Link between Tasso and the Seventeenth Century—His Biography—The Pastor Fido—Qualities of Guarini as Poet—Marino the Dictator of Letters—His Riotous Youth at Naples—Life at Rome, Turin, Paris—Publishes the Adone—The Epic of Voluptuousness—Character and Action of Adonis—Marino's Hypocrisy—Sentimental Sweetness—Brutal Violence—Violation of Artistic Taste—Great Powers of the Poet—Structure of the Adone—Musical Fluency—Marinism—Marino's Patriotic Verses—Contrast between Chiabrera and Marino—An Aspirant after Pindar—Chiabrera's Biography—His Court Life—Efforts of Poets in the Seventeenth Century to attain to Novelty—Chiabrera's Failure—Tassoni's Life—His Thirst to Innovate—Origin of the Secchia Rapita—Mock-Heroic Poetiy—The Plot of this Poem—Its Peculiar Humor—Irony and Satire—Novelty of the Species—Lyrical Interbreathings—Sustained Contrast of Parody and Pathos—The Poet Testi
CHAPTER XII
PALESTRINA AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN MUSIC
Italy in Renaissance produces no National School of Music—Flemish Composers in Rome—Singers and Orchestra—The Chaotic, Indecency of this Contrapuntal Style—Palestrina's Birth and Early History—Decrees of the Tridentine Council upon Church Music—The Mass of Pope Marcello—Palestrina Satisfies the Cardinals with his New Style of Sacred Music—Pius IV. and his Partiality for Music—Palestrina and Filippo Neri—His Motetts—The Song of Solomon set to Melody—Palestrina, the Saviour of Music—The Founder of the Modern Style—Florentine Essays in the Oratorio
CHAPTER XIII
THE BOLOGNESE SCHOOL OF PAINTERS
Decline of Plastic Art—Dates of the Eclectic Masters—The Mannerists—Baroccio—Reaction started by Lodovico Caracci—His Cousins Annibale and Agostino—Their Studies—Their Academy at Bologna—Their Artistic Aims—Dionysius Calvaert—Guido Reni—The Man and his Art—Domenichino—Ruskin's Criticism—Relation of Domenichino to the Piety of his Age—Caravaggio and the Realists—Ribera—Lo Spagna—Guercino—His Qualities as Colorist—His Terribleness—Private Life—Digression upon Criticism—Reasons why the Bolognese Painters, are justly now Neglected
CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION
The Main Events of European History—Italy in the Renaissance—Germany and Reformation—Catholic Reaction—Its Antagonism to Renaissance and Reformation—Profound Identity of Renaissance and Reformation—Place of Italy in European Civilization—Want of Sympathy between Latin and Teutonic Races—Relation of Rome to Italy—Macaulay on the Roman Church—On Protestantism—Early Decline of Renaissance Enthusiasms—Italy's Present and Future
INDEX
FOOTNOTES
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
CHAPTER VII
TORQUATO TASSO
Tasso's Relation to his Age—Balbi on that Period—The Life of Bernardo Tasso—Torquato's Boyhood—Sorrento, Naples, Rome, Urbino—His first Glimpse of the Court—Student Life at Padua and Bologna—The Rinaldo—Dialogues on Epic Poetry—Enters the Service of Cardinal d'Este—The Court of Ferrara—Alfonso II. and the Princesses—Problem of Tasso's Love—Goes to France with Cardinal d'Este—Enters the Service of Duke Alfonso—The Aminta—Tasso at Urbino—Return to Ferrara—Revision of the Gerusalemme—Jealousies at Court—Tasso's Sense of His own Importance—Plans a Change from Ferrara to Florence—First Symptoms of Mental Disorder—Persecutions of the Ferrarese Courtiers—Tasso confined as a Semi-madman—Goes with Duke Alfonso to Belriguardo—Flies in Disguise from Ferrara to Sorrento—Returns to Court Life at Ferrara—Problem of his madness—Flies again—Mantua, Venice, Urbino, Turin—Returns once more to Ferrara—Alfonso's Third Marriage—Tasso's Discontent—Imprisoned for Seven years in the madhouse of S. Anna—Character of Tasso—Character of Duke Alfonso—Nature of the Poet's Malady—His Course of Life in Prison—Released at the Intercession of Vincenzo Gonzaga—Goes to Mantua—The Torrismondo—An Odyssey of nine Years—Death at Sant Onofrio in Rome—Constantini's Sonnet.
It was under the conditions which have been set forth in the foregoing chapters that the greatest literary genius of his years in Europe, the poet who ranks among the four first of Italy, was educated, rose to eminence, and suffered. The political changes introduced in 1530, the tendencies of the Catholic Revival, the terrorism of the Inquisition, and the educational energy of the Jesuits had, each and all, their manifest effect in molding Tasso's character. He represents that period when the culture of the Renaissance was being superseded, when the caries of court-service was eating into the bone and marrow of Italian life, when earlier forms of art were tending to decay, or were passing into the new form of music. Tasso was at once the representative poet of his age and the representative martyr of his age. He was the latter, though this may seem paradoxical, in even a stricter sense than Bruno. Bruno, coming into violent collision with the prejudices of the century, expiated his antagonism by a cruel death. Tasso, yielding to those influences, lingered out a life of irresolute misery. His nature was such, that the very conditions which shaped it sufficed to enfeeble, envenom, and finally reduce it to a pitiable ruin.
Some memorable words of Cesare Balbi may serve as introduction to a sketch of Tasso's life. 'If that can be called felicity which gives to the people peace without activity; to nobles rank without power; to princes undisturbed authority within their States without true independence or full sovereignty; to literary men and artists numerous occasions for writing, painting, making statues, and erecting edifices with the applause of contemporaries but the ridicule of posterity; to the whole nation ease without dignity and facilities for sinking tranquilly into corruption; then no period of her history was so felicitous for Italy as the 140 years which followed the peace of Cateau-Cambrèsis. Invasions ceased: her foreign lord saved Italy from intermeddling rivals. Internal struggles ceased: her foreign lord removed their causes and curbed national ambitions. Popular revolutions ceased: her foreign lord bitted and bridled the population of her provinces. Of bravi, highwaymen, vulgar acts of vengeance, tragedies among nobles and princes, we find indeed abundance; but these affected the mass of the people to no serious extent. The Italians enjoyed life, indulged in the sweets of leisure, the sweets of vice, the sweets of making love and dangling after women. From the camp and the council-chamber, where they had formerly been bred, the nobles passed into petty courts and moldered in a multitude of little capitals. Men bearing historic names, insensible of their own degradation, bowed the neck gladly, groveled in beatitude. Deprived of power, they consoled themselves with privileges, patented favors, impertinences vented on the common people. The princes amused themselves by debasing the old aristocracy to the mire, depreciating their honors by the creations of new titles, multiplying frivolous concessions, adding class to class of idle and servile dependents on their personal bounty. In one word, the paradise of mediocrities came into being.'
Tasso was born before the beginning of this epoch. But he lived into the last decade of the sixteenth century. In every fiber of his character he felt the influences of Italian decadence, even while he reacted against them. His misfortunes resulted in great measure from his not having wholly discarded the traditions of the Renaissance, though his temperament and acquired habits made him in many points sympathetic to the Counter-Reformation. At the same time, he was not a mediocrity, but the last of an illustrious race of nobly gifted men of genius. Therefore he never patiently submitted to the humiliating conditions which his own conception of the Court, the Prince, the Church, and the Italian gentleman logically involved at that period. He could not be contented with the paradise of mediocrities described by Balbi. Yet he had not strength to live outside its pale. It was the pathos of his situation that he persisted in idealizing this paradise, and expected to find in it a paradise of exceptional natures. This it could not be. No one turns Circe's pigsty into a Parnassus. If Tasso had possessed force of character enough to rend the trammels of convention and to live his own life in a self-constructed sphere, he might still have been unfortunate. Nature condemned him to suffering. But from the study of his history we then had risen invigorated by the contemplation of heroism, instead of quitting it, as now we do, with pity, but with pity tempered by a slight contempt.
Bernardo, the father of Torquato Tasso, drew noble blood from both his parents. The Tassi claimed to be a branch of that ancient Guelf house of Delia Torre, lords of Milan, who were all but extirpated by the Visconti in the fourteenth century. A remnant established themselves in mountain strongholds between Bergamo and Como, and afterwards took rank among the more distinguished families of the former city. Manso affirms that Bernardo's mother was a daughter of those Venetian Cornari who gave a queen to Cyprus.[1] He was born at Venice in the year 1493; and, since he died in 1568, his life covered the whole period of national glory, humiliation, and attempted reconstruction which began with the invasion of Charles VIII. and ended with the closing of the Council of Trent. Born in the pontificate of Alexander VI., he witnessed the reigns of Julius II., Leo X., Clement VII., Paul IV., Pius IV., and died in that of Pius V.
All the illustrious works of Italian art and letters were produced while he was moving in the society of princes and scholars. He saw the Renaissance in its splendor and decline. He watched the growth, progress, and final triumph of the Catholic Revival. Having stated that the curve of his existence led upward from a Borgia and down to a Ghislieri Vicar of Christ, the merest tyro in Italian history knows what vicissitudes it spanned.
Though the Tassi were so noble, Bernardo owned no wealth. He was left an orphan at an early age under the care of his uncle, Bishop of Recanati. But in 1520 the poignard of an assassin cut short this guardian's life; and, at the age of seventeen, he was thrown upon the world. After studying at Padua, where he enjoyed the patronage of Bembo, and laid foundations for his future fame as poet, Bernardo entered the service of the Modenese Rangoni in the capacity of secretary. Thus began the long career of servitude to princes, of which he frequently complained, but which only ended with his death.[2] The affairs of his first patrons took him to Paris at the time when a marriage was arranged between Renée of France and Ercole d'Este. He obtained the post of secretary to this princess, and having taken leave of the Rangoni, he next established himself at Ferrara. Only for three years, however; for in 1532 reasons of which we are ignorant, but which may have been connected with the heretical sympathies of Renée, induced him to resign his post. Shortly after this date, we find him attached to the person of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, one of the chief feudatories and quasi-independent vassals of the Crown of Naples. In the quality of secretary he attended this patron through the campaign of Tunis in 1535, and accompanied him on all his diplomatic expeditions.
The Prince of Salerno treated him more as an honored friend and confidential adviser than as a paid official. His income was good, and leisure was allowed him for the prosecution of his literary studies. In this flourishing state of his affairs, Bernardo contracted an alliance with Porzia de'Rossi, a lady of a noble house, which came originally from Pistoja, but had been established for some generations in Naples. She was connected by descent or marriage with the houses of Gambacorti, Caracciolo, and Caraffa. Their first child, Cornelia, was born about the year 1537. Their second, Torquato, saw the light in March 1544 at Sorrento, where his father had been living some months previously and working at his poem, the Amadigi.
At the time of Torquato's birth Bernardo was away from home, in Lombardy, France, and Flanders, traveling on missions from his Prince. However, he returned to Sorrento for a short while in 1545, and then again was forced to leave his family. Married at the mature age of forty-three, Bernardo was affectionately attached to his young wife, and proud of his children. But the exigencies of a courtier's life debarred him from enjoying the domestic happiness for which his sober and gentle nature would have fitted him. In 1547 the events happened which ruined him for life, separated him for ever from Porzia, drove him into indigent exile, and marred the prospects of his children. In that year, the Spanish Viceroy, Don Pietro Toledo, attempted to introduce the Inquisition, on its Spanish basis, into Naples. The population resented this exercise of authority with the fury of despair, rightly judging that the last remnants of their liberty would be devoured by the foul monster of the Holy Office. They besought the Prince of Salerno to intercede for them with his master, Charles V., whom he had served loyally up to this time, and who might therefore be inclined to yield to his expostulations. The Prince doubted much whether it would be prudent to accept the mission of intercessor. He had two counsellors, Bernardo Tasso and Vincenzo Martelli. The latter, who was an astute Florentine, advised him to undertake nothing so perilous as interposition between the Viceroy and the people. Tasso, on the contrary, exhorted him to sacrifice personal interest, honors, and glory, for the duty which he owed his country. The Prince chose the course which Tasso recommended. Charles V. disgraced him, and he fled from Naples to France, adopting openly the cause of his imperial sovereign's enemies. He was immediately declared a rebel, with confiscation of his fiefs and property. Bernardo and his infant son were included in the sentence. After twenty-two years of service, Bernardo now found himself obliged to choose between disloyalty to his Prince or a disastrous exile. He took the latter course, and followed Ferrante Sanseverino to Paris. But Bernardo Tasso, though proving himself a man of honor in this severe trial, was not of the stuff of Shakespeare's Kent; and when the Prince of Salerno suspended payment of his salary he took leave of that master. Some differences arising from the discomforts and irritations of both exiles had early intervened between them. Tasso was miserably poor. 'I have to stay in bed,' he writes, 'to mend my hose; and if it were not for the old arras I brought with me from home, I should not know how to cover my nakedness.'[3] Besides this he suffered grievously in the separation from his wife, who was detained at Naples by her relatives—'brothers who, instead of being brothers, are deadly foes, cruel wild beasts rather than men; a mother who is no mother but a fell enemy, a fury from hell rather than a woman.'[4] His wretchedness attained its climax when Porzia died suddenly on February 3, 1556. Bernardo suspected that her family had poisoned her; and this may well have been. His son Torquato, meanwhile had joined him in Rome; but Porzia's brothers refused to surrender his daughter Cornelia, whom they married to a Sorrentine gentleman, Marzio Sersale, much to Bernardo's disgust, for Sersale was apparently of inferior blood. They also withheld Porzia's dowry and the jointure settled on her by Bernardo—property of considerable value which neither he nor Torquato were subsequently able to recover.
In this desperate condition of affairs, without friends or credit, but conscious of his noble birth and true to honor, the unhappy poet bethought him of the Church. If he could obtain a benefice, he would take orders. But the King of France and Margaret of Valois, on whose patronage he relied, turned him a deaf ear; and when war broke out between Paul IV. and Spain, he felt it prudent to leave Rome. It was at this epoch that Bernardo entered the service of Guidubaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, with whom he remained until 1563, when he accepted the post of secretary from Guglielmo, Duke of Mantua. He died in 1569 at Ostiglia, so poor that his son could scarcely collect money enough to bury him after selling his effects. Manso says that a couple of door-curtains, embroidered with the arms of Tasso and De'Rossi, passed on this occasion into the wardrobe of the Gonzaghi. Thus it seems that the needy nobleman had preserved a scrap of his heraldic trophies till the last, although he had to patch his one pain of breeches in bed at Rome. It may be added, as characteristic of Bernardo's misfortunes, that even the plain marble sarcophagus, inscribed with the words Ossa Bernardi Tassi which Duke Guglielmo erected to his memory in S. Egidio at Mantua, was removed in compliance with a papal edict ordering that monuments at a certain height above the ground should be destroyed to save the dignity of neighboring altars!
Such were the events of Bernardo Tasso's life. I have dwelt upon them in detail, since they foreshadow and illustrate the miseries of his more famous son. In character and physical qualities Torquato inherited no little from his father. Bernardo was handsome, well-grown, conscious of his double dignity as a nobleman and poet. From the rules of honor, as he understood them, he deviated in no important point of conduct. Yet the life of courts made him an incorrigible dangler after princely favors. The Amadigi, upon which he set such store, was first planned and dedicated to Charles V., then altered to suit Henri II. of France, and finally adapted to the flattery of Philip II., according as its author's interests with the Prince of Salerno and the Duke of Urbino varied. No substantial reward accrued to him, however, from its publication. His compliments wasted their sweetness on the dull ears of the despot of Madrid. In misfortune Bernardo sank to neither crime nor baseness, even when he had no clothes to put upon his back. Yet he took the world to witness of his woes, as though his person ought to have been sacred from calamities of common manhood. A similar dependent spirit was manifested in his action as a man of letters. Before publishing the Amadigi he submitted it to private criticism, with the inevitable result of obtaining feigned praises and malevolent strictures. Irresolution lay at the root of his treatment of Torquato. While groaning under the collar of courtly servitude, he determined that the youth should study law. While reckoning how little his own literary fame had helped him, he resolved that his son should adopt a lucrative profession. Yet no sooner had Torquato composed his Rinaldo, than the fond parent had it printed, and immediately procured a place for him in the train of the Cardinal Luigi d'Este. It is singular that the young man, witnessing the wretchedness of his father's life, should not have shunned a like career of gilded misery and famous indigence. But Torquato was born to reproduce Bernardo's qualities in their feebleness and respectability, to outshine him in genius, and to outstrip him in the celebrity of his misfortunes.
In the absence of his father little Torquato grew up with his mother and sister at Sorrento under the care of a good man, Giovanni Angeluzzo who gave him the first rudiments of education. He was a precocious infant, grave in manners, quick at learning, free from the ordinary naughtinesses of childhood. Manso reports that he began to speak at six months, and that from the first he formed syllables with precision. His mother Porzia appears to have been a woman of much grace and sweetness, but timid and incapable of fighting the hard battle of the world. A certain shade of melancholy fell across the boy's path even in these earliest years, for Porzia, as we have seen, met with cruel treatment from her relatives, and her only support, Bernardo, was far away in exile. In 1552 she removed with her children to Naples, where Torquato was sent at once to the school which the Jesuits had opened there in the preceding year. These astute instructors soon perceived that they had no ordinary boy to deal with. They did their best to stimulate his mental faculties and to exalt his religious sentiments; so that he learned Greek and Latin before the age of ten, and was in the habit of communicating at the altar with transports of pious ecstasy in his ninth year.[5] The child recited speeches and poems in public, and received an elementary training in the arts of composition. He was in fact the infant prodigy of those plausible Fathers, the prize specimen of their educational method. As might have been expected, this forcing system overtaxed his nerves. He rose daily before daybreak to attack his books, and when the nights were long he went to morning school attended by a servant carrying torches.
Without seeking to press unduly on these circumstances, we may fairly assume that Torquato's character received a permanent impression from the fever of study and the premature pietism excited in him by the Jesuits in Naples. His servile attitude toward speculative thought, that anxious dependence upon ecclesiastical authority, that scrupulous mistrust of his own mental faculties, that pretense of solving problems by accumulated citations instead of going to the root of the matter, whereby his philosophical writings are rendered nugatory, may with probability be traced to the mechanical and interested system of the Jesuits. He was their pupil for three years, after which he joined his father in Rome. There he seems to have passed at once into a healthier atmosphere. Bernardo, though a sound Catholic, was no bigot; and he had the good sense to choose an able master for his son—'a man of profound learning, possessed of both the ancient languages, whose method of teaching is the finest and most time-saving that has yet been tried; a gentleman withal, with nothing of the pedant in him.'[6] The boy was lucky also in the companion of his studies, a cousin, Cristoforo Tasso, who had come from Bergamo to profit by the tutor's care.
The young Tasso's home cannot, however, have been a cheerful one. The elderly hidalgo sitting up in bed to darn a single pair of hose, the absent mother pining for her husband and tormented by her savage brother's avarice, environed the precocious child of ten with sad presentiments. That melancholy temperament which he inherited from Bernardo was nourished by the half-concealed mysteriously-haunting troubles of his parents. And when Porzia died suddenly, in 1556, we can hardly doubt that the father broke out before his son into some such expressions of ungovernable grief as he openly expressed in the letter to Amerigo Sanse verino.[7] Is it possible, then, thought Torquato, that the mother from whose tender kisses and streaming tears I was severed but one year ago,[8] has died of poison—poisoned by my uncles? Sinking into the consciousness of a child so sensitive by nature and so early toned to sadness, this terrible suspicion of a secret death by poison incorporated itself with the very essence of his melancholy humor, and lurked within him to flash forth in madness at a future period of life. That he was well acquainted with the doleful situation of his family is proved by his first extant letter. Addressed to the noble lady Vittoria Colonna on behalf of Bernardo and his sister, this is a remarkable composition for a boy of twelve.[9] His poor father, he says, is on the point of dying of despair, oppressed by the malignity of fortune and the rapacity of impious men. His uncle is bent on marrying Cornelia to some needy gentleman, in order to secure her mother's estate for himself. 'The grief, illustrious lady, of the loss of property is great, but that of blood is crushing. This poor old man has naught but my sister and myself; and now that fortune has deprived him of wealth and of the wife he loved like his own soul, he cannot bear that that man's avarice should rob him of his beloved daughter, with whom he hoped to end in rest these last years of his failing age. In Naples we have no friends; for my father's disaster makes every one shy of us: our relatives are our enemies. Cornelia is kept in the house of my uncle's kinsman Giangiacopo Coscia, where no one is allowed to speak to her or give her letters.'
In the midst of these afflictions, which already tuned the future poet's utterance to a note of plaintive pathos and ingenuous appeal for aid, Torquato's studies were continued on a sounder plan and in a healthier spirit than at Naples. The perennial consolation of his troubled life, that delight in literature which made him able to anticipate the lines of Goethe—