cannot be said. The somewhat solemn nature of Mussatus can be recognised in the tone of his history of Henry VII.
321
Franc. Petrarca, Posteritati, or Ad Posteros, at the beginning of the editions of his works, or the only letter of Book xviii. of the Epp. Seniles; also in Fracassetti, Petr. Epistolæ Familiares, 1859, i. 1-11. Some modern critics of Petrarch’s vanity would hardly have shown as much kindness and frankness had they been in his place.
322
Opera, ed. 1581, p. 177: ‘De celebritate nominis importuna.’ Fame among the mass of people was specially offensive to him. Epp. Fam. i. 337, 340. In Petrarch, as in many humanists of the older generation, we can observe the conflict between the desire for glory and the claims of Christian humility.
323
‘De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ’ in the editions of the works. Often printed separately, e.g. Bern, 1600. Compare Petrarch’s famous dialogue, ‘De Contemptu Mundi’ or ‘De Conflictu Curarum Suarum,’ in which the interlocutor Augustinus blames the love of fame as a damnable fault.
324
Epp. Fam. lib. xviii. (ed. Fracassetti) 2. A measure of Petrarch’s fame is given a hundred years later by the assertion of Blondus (Italia Illustrata, p. 416) that hardly even a learned man would know anything of Robert the Good if Petrarch had not spoken of him so often and so kindly.
325
It is to be noted that even Charles IV., perhaps influenced by Petrarch, speaks in a letter to the historian Marignola of fame as the object of every striving man. H. Friedjung, Kaiser Karl IV. und sein Antheil am geistigen Leben seiner Zeit, Vienna, 1876, p. 221.
326
Epist. Seniles, xiii. 3, to Giovanni Aretino, Sept. 9, 1370.
327
Filippo Villani, Vite, p. 19
328
Both together in the epitaph on Boccaccio: ‘Nacqui in Firenze al Pozzo Toscanelli; Di fuor sepolto a Certaldo giaccio,’ &c. Comp. Op. Volg. di Boccaccio, xvi. 44.
329
Mich. Savonarola, De Laudibus Patavii, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1157. Arquà remained from thenceforth the object of special veneration (comp. Ettore Conte Macola, I Codici di Arquà, Padua, 1874), and was the scene of great solemnities at the fifth centenary of Petrarch’s death. His dwelling is said to have been lately given to the city of Padua by the last owner, Cardinal Silvestri.
330
The decree of 1396 and its grounds in Gaye, Carteggio, i. 123.
331
Reumont, Lorenzo de’ Medici, ii. 180.
332
Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 39.
333
Franco Sacchetti, nov. 121.
334
The former in the well-known sarcophagus near San Lorenzo, the latter over a door in the Palazzo della Ragione. For details as to their discovery in 1413, see Misson, Voyage en Italie, vol. i., and Michele Savonarola, col. 1157.
335
Vita di Dante, l. c. How came the body of Cassius from Philippi back to Parma?
336
‘Nobilitatis fastu’ and ‘sub obtentu religionis,’ says Pius II. (Comment. x. p. 473). The new sort of fame must have been inconvenient to those who were accustomed to the old.
That Carlo Malatesta caused the statue of Virgil to be pulled down and thrown into the Mincio, and this, as he alleged, from anger at the veneration paid to it by the people of Mantua, is a well-authenticated fact, specially attested by an invective written in 1397 by P. P. Vergerio against C. M., De dirutâ Statuâ Virgilii P. P. V. eloquentissimi Oratoris Epistola ex Tugurio Blondi sub Apolline, ed. by Marco Mantova Benavides (publ. certainly before 1560 at Padua). From this work it is clear that till then the statue had not been set up again. Did this happen in consequence of the invective? Bartholomæus Facius (De Vir. Ill. p. 9 sqq. in the Life of P. P. V. 1456) says it did, ‘Carolum Malatestam invectus Virgilii statua, quam ille Mantuæ in foro everterat, quoniam gentilis fuerat, ut ibidem restitueretur, effecit;’ but his evidence stands alone. It is true that, so far as we know, there are no contemporary chronicles for the history of Mantua at that period (Platina, Hist. Mant. in Murat. xx. contains nothing about the matter), but later historians are agreed that the statue was not restored. See for evidence, Prendilacqua, Vita di Vitt. da Feltre, written soon after 1446 (ed. 1871, p. 78), where the destruction but not the restoration of the statue is spoken of, and the work of Ant. Possevini, jun. (Gonzaga, Mantua, 1628), where, p. 486, the pulling down of the statue, the murmurings and violent opposition of the people, and the promise given in consequence by the prince that he would restore it, are all mentioned, with the addition: ‘Nec tamen restitutus est Virgilius.’ Further, on March 17, 1499, Jacopo d’Hatry writes to Isabella of Este, that he has spoken with Pontano about a plan of the princess to raise a statue to Virgil at Mantua, and that Pontano cried out with delight that Vergerio, if he were alive, would be even more pleased ‘che non se attristò quando el Conte Carola Malatesta persuase abuttare la statua di Virgilio nel flume.’ The writer then goes on to speak of the manner of setting it up, of the inscription ‘P. Virgilius Mantuanus’ and ‘Isabella Marchionissa Mantuæ restituit,’ and suggests that Andrea Mantegna would be the right man to be charged with the work. Mantegna did in fact make the drawings for it. (The drawing and the letter in question are given in Baschet, Recherches de documents d’art et d’histoire dans les Archives de Mantoue; documents inédits concernant la personne et les œuvres d’Andrea Mantegna, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xx. (1866) 478-492, esp. 486 sqq.) It is clear from this letter that Carlo Malatesta did not have the statue restored. In Comparetti’s work on Virgil in the Middle Ages, the story is told after Burckhardt, but without authorities. Dr. Geiger, on the authority of Professor Paul of Berlin, distinguishes between C. Cassius Longinus and Cassius Parmensis, the poet, both among the assassins of Cæsar.
337
Comp. Keyssler’s Neueste Reisen, p. 1016.
338
The elder was notoriously a native of Verona.
339
This is the tone of the remarkable work, De Laudibus Papiæ, in Murat. xx., dating from the fourteenth century—much municipal pride, but no idea of personal fame.
340
De Laudibus Patavii, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1138 sqq. Only three cities, in his opinion—could be compared with Padua—Florence, Venice and Rome.
341
‘Nam et veteres nostri tales aut divos aut æternâ memoriâ dignos non immerito prædicabant, quum virtus summa sanctitatis sit consocia et pari ematur pretio.’ What follows is most characteristic: ‘Hos itaque meo facili judicio æternos facio.’
342
Similar ideas occur in many contemporary writers. Codrus Urceus, Sermo xiii. (Opp. 1506, fol. xxxviii. b), speaking of Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who was both a scholar and a warrior, ‘Cognoscens artem militarem esse quidem excellentem, sed literas multo certe excellentiores.’
343
What follows immediately is not, as the editor remarks (Murat. xxiv col. 1059, note), from the pen of Mich. Savonarola.
344
Petrarch, in the ‘Triumph’ here quoted, only dwells on characters of antiquity, and in his collection, De Rebus Memorandis, has little to say of contemporaries. In the Casus Virorum Illustrium of Boccaccio (among the men a number of women, besides Philippa Catinensis treated of at the end, are included, and even the goddess Juno is described), only the close of the eighth book and the last book—the ninth—deal with non-classical times. Boccaccio’s remarkable work, De Claris Mulieribus, treats also almost exclusively
cannot be said. The somewhat solemn nature of Mussatus can be recognised in the tone of his history of Henry VII.
