of individuality. On the ‘Vite’ of Filippo Villani, see below.
294
Trattato del Governo della Famiglia forms a part of the work: La Cura della Famiglia (Opere Volg. di Leon Batt. Alberti, publ. da Anicio Bonucci, Flor. 1844, vol. ii.). See there vol. i. pp. xxx.-xl., vol. ii. pp. xxxv. sqq. and vol. v. pp. 1-127. Formerly the work was generally, as in the text, attributed to Agnolo Pandolfini (d. 1446; see on him Vesp. Fiorent., pp. 291 and 379); the recent investigations of Fr. Palermo (Florence 1871), have shown Alberti to be the author. The work is quoted from the ed. Torino, Pomba, 1828.
295
Trattato, p. 65 sqq.
296
Jov. Pontanus, De Fortitudine, l. ii. cap. 4, ‘De tolerando Exilio,’ Seventy years later, Cardanus (De Vitâ Propriâ, cap. 32) could ask bitterly: ‘Quid est patria nisi consensus tyrannorum minutorum ad opprimendos imbelles timidos et qui plerumque sunt innoxii?’
297
De Vulgari Eloquio, lib. i. cap. 6. On the ideal Italian language, cap. 17. The spiritual unity of cultivated men, cap. 18. On home-sickness, comp. the famous passages, Purg. viii. 1 sqq., and Parad. xxv. 1 sqq.
298
Dantis Alligherii Epistolae, ed. Carolus Witte, p. 65.
299
Ghiberti, Secondo Commentario, cap. xv. (Vasari ed Lemonnier, i. p. xxix.).
300
Codri Urcei Vita, at the end of his works, first pub. Bologna 1502. This certainly comes near the old saying: ‘ubi bene, ibi patria.’ C. U. was not called after the place of his birth, but after Forli, where he lived long; see Malagola, Codro Urceo, Bologna, 1877, cap. v. and app. xi. The abundance of neutral intellectual pleasure, which is independent of local circumstances, and of which the educated Italians became more and more capable, rendered exile more tolerable to them. Cosmopolitanism is further a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered, and men feel no longer at home in the old. We see it among the Greeks after the Peloponnesian war; Plato, as Niebuhr says, was not a good citizen, and Xenophon was a bad one; Diogenes went so far as to proclaim homelessness a pleasure, and calls himself, Laertius tells us, ἁπολις. Here another remarkable work may be mentioned. Petrus Alcyonius in his book: Medices Legatus de Exilio lib. duo, Ven. 1522 (printed in Mencken, Analecta de Calam. Literatorum, Leipzig, 1707, pp. 1-250) devotes to the subject of exile a long and prolix discussion. He tries logically and historically to refute the three reasons for which banishment is held to be an evil, viz. 1. Because the exile must live away from his fatherland. 2. Because he loses the honours given him at home. 3. Because he must do without his friends and relatives; and comes finally to the conclusion that banishment is not an evil. His dissertation culminates in the words, ‘Sapientissimus quisque omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducit. Atque etiam illam veram sibi esse patriam arbitratur quæ se perigrinantem exciperit, quæ pudorem, probitatem, virtutem colit, quæ optima studia, liberales disciplinas amplectitur, quæ etiam facit ut peregrini omnes honesto otio teneant statum et famam dignitatis suæ.’
301
This awakening of personality is also shown in the great stress laid on the independent growth of character, in the claim to shape the spiritual life for oneself, apart from parents and ancestors. Boccaccio (De Cas. Vir. Ill. Paris, s. a. fol. xxix. b) points out that Socrates came of uneducated, Euripides and Demosthenes of unknown, parents, and exclaims: ‘Quasi animos a gignentibus habeamus!’
302
Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 16.
303
The angels which he drew on tablets at the anniversary of the death of Beatrice (Vita Nuova, p. 61) may have been more than the work of a dilettante. Lion. Aretino says he drew ‘egregiamente,’ and was a great lover of music.
304
For this and what follows, see esp. Vespasiano Fiorentino, an authority of the first order for Florentine culture in the fifteenth century Comp. pp. 359, 379, 401, etc. See, also, the charming and instructive Vita Jannoctii Manetti (b. 1396), by Naldus Naldius, in Murat. xx. pp. 529-608.
305
What follows is taken, e.g., from Perticari’s account of Pandolfo Collenuccio, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi iii. pp. 197 sqq., and from the Opere del Conte Perticari, Mil. 1823, vol. ii.
306
For what follows compare Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, Stuttg. 1868, esp. p. 41 sqq., and A. Springer, Abhandlungen zur neueren Kunstgeschichte, Bonn, 1867, pp. 69-102. A new biography of Alberti is in course of preparation by Hub. Janitschek.
307
In Murat. xxv. col. 295 sqq., with the Italian translation in the Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti, vol. i. pp. lxxxix-cix, where the conjecture is made and shown to be probable that this ‘Vita’ is by Alberti himself. See, further, Vasari, iv. 52 sqq. Mariano Socini, if we can believe what we read of him in Æn. Sylvius (Opera, p. 622, Epist. 112) was a universal dilettante, and at the same time a master in several subjects.
308
Similar attempts, especially an attempt at a flying-machine, had been made about 880 by the Andalusian Abul Abbas Kasim ibn Firnas. Comp. Gyangos, The History of the Muhammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1840), i. 148 sqq. and 425-7; extracts in Hammer, Literaturgesch. der Araber, i. Introd. p. li.
309
Quidquid ingenio esset hominum cum quadam effectum elegantia, id prope divinum ducebat.
310
This is the book (comp. p. 185, note 2) of which one part, often printed alone, long passed for a work of Pandolfini.
311
In his work, De Re Ædificatoria, l. viii. cap. i., there is a definition of a beautiful road: ‘Si modo mare, modo montes, modo lacum fluentem fontesve, modo aridam rupem aut planitiem, modo nemus vallemque exhibebit.’
312
One writer among many: Blondus, Roma Triumphans, l. v. pp. 117 sqq., where the definitions of glory are collected from the ancients, and the desire of it is expressly allowed to the Christian. Cicero’s work, De Gloria, which Petrarch claimed to own, was stolen from him by his teacher Convenevole, and has never since been seen. Alberti, in a youthful composition when he was only twenty years of age, praises the desire of fame. Opere, vol. i. pp. cxxvii-clxvi.
313
Paradiso, xxv. at the beginning: ‘Se mai continga,’ &c. See above, p. 133, note 2. Comp. Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 49. ‘Vaghissimo fu e d’onore e di pompa, e per avventura più che alla sua inclita virtù non si sarebbe richiesto.’
314
De Vulgari Eloquio, l. i. cap. i. and esp. De Monarchia, l. i. cap. i., where he wishes to set forth the idea of monarchy not only in order to be useful to the world but also ‘ut palmam tanti bravii primus in meam gloriam adipiscar.’
315
Convito, ed. Venezia, 1529, fol. 5 and 6.
316
Paradiso, vi. 112 sqq.
317
E.g. Inferno, vi. 89; xiii. 53; xvi. 85; xxxi. 127.
318
Purgatorio, v. 70, 87, 133; vi. 26; viii. 71; xi. 31; xiii. 147.
319
Purgatorio, xi. 85-117. Besides ‘gloria’ we here find close together ‘grido, fama, rumore, nominanza, onore’ all different names for the same thing. Boccaccio wrote, as he admits in his letter to Joh. Pizinga (Op. Volg. xvi. 30 sqq.) ‘perpetuandi nominis desiderio’.
of individuality. On the ‘Vite’ of Filippo Villani, see below.
