The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Jacob Burckhardt
oath in the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio. ‘Then,’ says Olgiati, ‘in a remote corner I raised my eyes before the picture of the patron saint, and implored his help for ourselves and for all his people.’ The heavenly protector of the city was called on to bless the undertaking, as was afterwards St. Stephen, in whose church it was fulfilled. Many of their comrades were now informed of the plot, nightly meetings were held in the house of Lampugnani, and the conspirators practised for the murder with the sheaths of their daggers. The attempt was successful, but Lampugnani was killed on the spot by the attendants of the duke; the others were captured: Visconti was penitent, but Olgiati through all his tortures maintained that the deed was an acceptable offering to God, and exclaimed while the executioner was breaking his ribs, ‘Courage, Girolamo! thou wilt long be remembered; death is bitter, but glory is eternal.’116
But however idealistic the object and purpose of such conspiracies may appear, the manner in which they were conducted betrays the influence of that worst of all conspirators, Catiline—a man in whose thoughts freedom had no place whatever. The annals of Siena tells us expressly that the conspirators were students of Sallust, and the fact is indirectly confirmed by the confession of Olgiati.117 Elsewhere, too, we meet with the name of Catiline, and a more attractive pattern of the conspirator, apart from the end he followed, could hardly be discovered.
Among the Florentines, whenever they got rid of, or tried to get rid of, the Medici, tyrannicide was a practice universally accepted and approved. After the flight of the Medici in 1494, the bronze group of Donatello118—Judith with the dead Holofernes—was taken from their collection and placed before the Palazzo della Signoria, on the spot where the ‘David’ of Michael Angelo now stands, with the inscription, ‘Exemplum salutis publicæ cives posuere 1495.’119 No example was more popular than that of the younger Brutus, who, in Dante,120 lies with Cassius and Judas Iscariot in the lowest pit of hell, because of his treason to the empire. Pietro Paolo Boscoli, whose plot against Guiliano, Giovanni, and Guilio Medici failed (1513), was an enthusiastic admirer of Brutus, and in order to follow his steps, only waited to find a Cassius. Such a partner he met with in Agostino Capponi. His last utterances in prison121—a striking evidence of the religious feeling of the time—show with what an effort he rid his mind of these classical imaginations, in order to die like a Christian. A friend and the confessor both had to assure him that St. Thomas Aquinas condemned conspirators absolutely; but the confessor afterwards admitted to the same friend that St. Thomas drew a distinction and permitted conspiracies against a tyrant who had forced himself on a people against their will. After Lorenzino Medici had murdered the Duke Alessandro (1537), and then escaped, an apology for the deed appeared,122 which is probably his own work, and certainly composed in his interest, and in which he praises tyrannicide as an act of the highest merit; on the supposition that Alessandro was a legitimate Medici, and, therefore, related to him, if only distantly, he boldly compares himself with Timoleon, who slew his brother for his country’s sake. Others, on the same occasion, made use of the comparison with Brutus, and that Michael Angelo himself, even late in life, was not unfriendly to ideas of this kind, may be inferred from his bust of Brutus in the Uffizi. He left it unfinished, like nearly all his works, but certainly not because the murder of Cæsar was repugnant to his feeling, as the couplet beneath declares.
A popular radicalism in the form in which it is opposed to the monarchies of later times, is not to be found in the despotic states of the Renaissance. Each individual protested inwardly against despotism, but was rather disposed to make tolerable or profitable terms with it, than to combine with others for its destruction. Things must have been as bad as at Camerino, Fabriano, or Rimini (p. 28), before the citizens united to destroy or expel the ruling house. They knew in most cases only too well that this would but mean a change of masters. The star of the Republics was certainly on the decline.
CHAPTER VII.
THE REPUBLICS: VENICE AND FLORENCE
THE Italian municipalities had, in earlier days, given signal proof of that force which transforms the city into the state. It remained only that these cities should combine in a great confederation; and this idea was constantly recurring to Italian statesmen, whatever differences of form it might from time to time display. In fact, during the struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great and formidable leagues actually were formed by the cities; and Sismondi (ii. 174) is of opinion that the time of the final armaments of the Lombard confederation against Barbarossa was the moment when a universal Italian league was possible. But the more powerful states had already developed characteristic features which made any such scheme impracticable. In their commercial dealings they shrank from no measures, however extreme, which might damage their competitors; they held their weaker neighbours in a condition of helpless dependence—in short, they each fancied they could get on by themselves without the assistance of the rest, and thus paved the way for future usurpation. The usurper was forthcoming when long conflicts between the nobility and the people, and between the different factions of the nobility, had awakened the desire for a strong government, and when bands of mercenaries ready and willing to sell their aid to the highest bidder had superseded the general levy of the citizens which party leaders now found unsuited to their purposes.123 The tyrants destroyed the freedom of most of the cities; here and there they were expelled, but not thoroughly, or only for a short time; and they were always restored, since the inward conditions were favourable to them, and the opposing forces were exhausted.
Among the cities which maintained their independence are two of deep significance for the history of the human race: Florence, the city of incessant movement, which has left us a record of the thoughts and aspirations of each and all who, for three centuries, took part in this movement, and Venice, the city of apparent stagnation and of political secrecy. No contrast can be imagined stronger than that which is offered us by these two, and neither can be compared to anything else which the world has hitherto produced.
Venice recognised itself from the first as a strange and mysterious creation—the fruits of a higher power than human ingenuity. The solemn foundation of the city was the subject of a legend. On March 25, 413, at mid-day the emigrants from Padua laid the first stone at the Rialto, that they might have a sacred, inviolable asylum amid the devastations of the barbarians. Later writers attributed to the founders the presentiment of the future greatness of the city; M. Antonio Sabellico, who has celebrated the event in the dignified flow of his hexameters, makes the priest, who completes the act of consecration, cry to heaven, ‘When we hereafter attempt great things, grant us prosperity! Now we kneel before a poor altar; but if our vows are not made in vain, a hundred temples, O God, of gold and marble shall arise to Thee.’124 The island city at the end of the fifteenth century was the jewel-casket of the world. It is so described by the same Sabellico,125 with its ancient cupolas, its leaning towers, its inlaid marble façades, its compressed splendour, where the richest decoration did not hinder the practical employment of every corner of space. He takes us to the crowded Piazza before S. Giacometto at the Rialto, where the business of the world is transacted, not amid shouting and confusion, but with the subdued hum of many voices; where in the porticos round the square126 and in those of the adjoining streets sit hundreds of money-changers and goldsmiths, with endless rows of shops and warehouses above their heads. He describes the great Fondaco of the Germans beyond the bridge, where their goods and their dwellings lay, and before which their ships are drawn up side by side in the canal; higher up is a whole fleet laden with wine and oil, and parallel with it, on the shore swarming with porters, are the vaults of the merchants; then from the Rialto to the square of St. Mark come the inns and the perfumers’ cabinets. So he conducts the reader from one quarter of the city to another till he comes at last to the two hospitals which were among those institutions of public utility nowhere so numerous as at Venice. Care for the people, in peace as well as in war, was
The enthusiasm with which the Florentine Alamanno Rinuccini (b. 1419) speaks in his
Petr. Crinitus, also (
Comp. also the Latin poem:
‘Con studiare el Catalinario,’ says Allegretto. Comp. (in Corio) a sentence like the following in the desposition of Olgiati: ‘Quisque nostrum magis socios potissime et infinitos alios sollicitare, infestare, alter alteri benevolos se facere cœpit. Aliquid aliquibus parum donare: simul magis noctu edere, bibere, vigilare, nostra omnia bona polliceri,’ etc.
Vasari, iii. 251, note to
It now has been removed to a newly constructed building.
Related by a hearer, Luca della Robbia,
First printed in 1723, as appendix to Varchi’s History, then in Roscoe,
‘Genethliacum Venetæ urbis,’ in the
‘De Venetæ urbis apparatu panagiricum carmen quod oraculum inscribitur.’
The whole quarter was altered in the reconstructions of the sixteenth century.