then of ninety-seven women of antiquity, and seven of the Middle ages, beginning with Pope Joan and ending with Queen Johanna of Naples. And so at a much later time in the
of Ralph. Volaterranus. In the work
of the Augustinian Jacobus Bergomensis (printed 1497, but probably published earlier) antiquity and legend hold the chief place, but there are still some valuable biographies of Italian women. There are one or two lives of contemporary women by Vespasiano da Bisticci (
iv. i. pp. 430 sqq.). In Scardeonius (
vi. iii. col. 405 sqq.,) only famous Paduan women are mentioned. First comes a legend or tradition from the time of the fall of the empire, then tragical stories of the party struggles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; then notices of several heroic women; then the foundress of nunneries, the political woman, the female doctor, the mother of many and distinguished sons, the learned woman, the peasant girl who dies defending her chastity; then the cultivated beauty of the sixteenth century, on whom everybody writes sonnets; and lastly, the female novelist and poet at Padua. A century later the woman-professor would have been added to these. For the famous woman of the House of Este, see Ariosto,
345
Bartolommeo Facio and Paolo Cortese. B. F. De Viris Illustribus Liber, was first published by L. Mehus (Florence, 1745). The book was begun by the author (known by other historical works, and resident at the court of Alfonso of Naples) after he had finished the history of that king (1455), and ended, as references to the struggles of Hungary and the writer’s ignorance of the elevation of Æneas Silvius to the cardinalate show, in 1456. (See, nevertheless, Wahlen, Laurentii Vallæ Opuscula Tria, Vienna, 1869, p. 67, note 1.) It is never quoted by contemporaries, and seldom by later writers. The author wishes in this book to describe the famous men, ‘ætatis memoriæque nostræ,’ and consequently only mentions such as were born in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and were still living in, or had died shortly before, the middle of the fifteenth. He chiefly limits himself to Italians, except in the case of artists or princes, among the latter of whom he includes the Emperor Sigismund and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg; and in arranging the various biographies he neither follows chronological order nor the distinction which the subject of each attained, but puts them down ‘ut quisque mihi occurrerit,’ intending to treat in a second part of those whom he might have left out in the first. He divides the famous men into nine classes, nearly all of them prefaced by remarks on their distinctive qualities: 1. Poets; 2. Orators; 3. Jurists; 4. Physicians (with a few philosophers and theologians, as an appendix); 5. Painters; 6. Sculptors; 7. Eminent citizens; 8. Generals; 9. Princes and kings. Among the latter he treats with special fulness and care of Pope Nicholas V. and King Alfonso of Naples. In general he gives only short and mostly eulogistic biographies, confined in the case of princes and soldiers to the list of their deeds, and of artists and writers to the enumeration of their works. No attempt is made at a detailed description or criticism of these; only with regard to a few works of art which he had himself seen he writes more fully. Nor is any attempt made at an estimate of individuals; his heroes either receive a few general words of praise, or must be satisfied with the mere mention of their names. Of himself the author says next to nothing. He states only that Guarino was his teacher, that Manetti wrote a book on a subject which he himself had treated, that Bracellius was his countryman, and that the painter Pisano of Verona was known to him (pp. 17, 18, 19, 48; but says nothing in speaking of Laurentius Valla of his own violent quarrels with this scholar. On the other hand, he does not fail to express his piety and his hatred to the Turks (p. 64), to relieve his Italian patriotism by calling the Swiss barbarians (p. 60), and to say of P. P. Vergerius, ‘dignus qui totam in Italia vitam scribens exegisset’ (p. 9).
Of all celebrities he evidently sets most store by the scholars, and among these by the ‘oratores,’ to whom he devotes nearly a third of his book. He nevertheless has great respect for the jurists, and shows a special fondness for the physicians, among whom he well distinguishes the theoretical from the practical, relating the successful diagnoses and operations of the latter. That he treats of theologians and philosophers in connection with the physicians, is as curious as that he should put the painters immediately after the physicians, although, as he says, they are most allied to the poets. In spite of his reverence for learning, which shows itself in the praise given to the princes who patronised it, he is too much of a courtier not to register the tokens of princely favour received by the scholars he speaks of, and to characterise the princes in the introduction to the chapters devoted to them as those who ‘veluti corpus membra, ita omnia genera quæ supra memoravimus, regunt ac tuentur.’
The style of the book is simple and unadorned, and the matter of it full of instruction, notwithstanding its brevity. It is a pity that Facius did not enter more fully into the personal relations and circumstances of the men whom he described, and did not add to the list of their writings some notice of the contents and the value of them.
The work of Paolo Cortese (b. 1645, d. 1510), De Hominibus Doctis Dialogus (first ed. Florence, 1734), is much more limited in its character. This work, written about 1490, since it mentions Antonius Geraldinus as dead, who died in 1488, and was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who died in 1492, is distinguished from that of Facius, written a generation earlier, not only by the exclusion of all who are not learned men, but by various inward and outward characteristics. First by the form, which is that of a dialogue between the author and his two companions, Alexander Farnese and Antonius, and by the digressions and unequal treatment of the various characters caused thereby; and secondly by the manner of the treatment itself. While Facius only speaks of the men of his own time, Cortese treats only of the dead, and in part of those long dead, by which he enlarges his circle more than he narrows it by exclusion of the living; while Facius merely chronicles works and deeds, as if they were unknown, Cortese criticises the literary activity of his heroes as if the reader were already familiar with it. This criticism is shaped by the humanistic estimate of eloquence, according to which no man could be considered of importance unless he had achieved something remarkable in eloquence, i.e. in the classical, Ciceronian treatment of the Latin language. On this principle Dante and Petrarch are only moderately praised, and are blamed for having diverted so much of their powers from Latin to Italian; Guarino is described as one who had beheld perfect eloquence at least through a cloud; Lionardo Aretino as one who had offered his contemporaries ‘aliquid splendidius;’ and Enea Silvio as he ‘in quo primum apparuit mutati sæculi signum.’ This point of view prevailed over all others; never perhaps was it held so one-sidedly as by Cortese. To get a notion of his way of thinking we have only to hear his remarks on a predecessor, also the compiler of a great biographical collection, Sicco Polentone: ‘Ejus sunt viginti ad filium libri scripti de claris scriptoribus, utiles admodum qui jam fere ab omnibus legi sent desiti. Est enim in judicando parum acer, nec servit aurium voluptati quum tractat res ab aliis ante tractatas; sed hoc ferendum. Illud certe molestum est, dum alienis verbis sententiisque scripta infarcit et explet sua; ex quo nascitur maxime vitiosum scribendi genus, quum modo lenis et candidus, modo durus et asper apparcat, et sic in toto genere tanquam in unum agrum plura inter se inimicissima sparsa semina.’
All are not treated with so much detail; most are disposed of in a few brief sentences; some are merely named without a word being added. Much is nevertheless to be learned from his judgments, though we may not be able always to agree with them. We cannot here discuss him more fully, especially as many of his most characteristic remarks have been already made use of; on the whole, they give us a clear picture of the way in which a later time, outwardly more developed, looked down with critical scorn upon an earlier age, inwardly perhaps richer, but externally less perfect.
Facius, the author of the first-mentioned biographical work, is spoken of, but not his book. Like Facius, Cortese is the humble courtier, looking on Lorenzo de’ Medici as Facius looked on Alfonso of Naples; like him, he is a patriot who only praises foreign excellence unwillingly and because he must; adding the assurance that he does not wish to oppose his own country (p. 48, speaking of Janus Pannonius).
Information as to Cortese has been collected by Bernardus Paperinius, the editor of his work; we may add that his Latin translation of the novel of L. B. Alberti, Hippolytus and Dejanira, is printed for the first time in the Opere di L. B. A. vol. iii. pp. 439-463.
then of ninety-seven women of antiquity, and seven of the Middle ages, beginning with Pope Joan and ending with Queen Johanna of Naples. And so at a much later time in the 