Giraldi, Hecatomithi, vi. nov. 1 (ed. 1565, fol. 223 a).
101
Vasari, xii. 166, Vita di Michelangelo.
102
As early as 1446 the members of the House of Gonzaga followed the corpse of Vittorino da Feltre.
103
Capitolo 19, and in the Opere Minore, ed. Lemonnier, vol. i. p. 425, entitled Elegia 17. Doubtless the cause of this death (above, p. 46) was unknown to the young poet, then 19 years old.
104
The novels in the Hecatomithi of Giraldi relating to the House of Este are to be found, with one exception (i. nov. 8), in the 6th book, dedicated to Francesco of Este, Marchese della Massa, at the beginning of the second part of the whole work, which is inscribed to Alfonso II. ‘the fifth Duke of Ferrara.’ The 10th book, too, is specially dedicated to him, but none of the novels refer to him personally, and only one to his predecessor Hercules I.; the rest to Hercules I. ‘the second Duke,’ and Alfonso I. ‘the third Duke of Ferrara.’ But the stories told of these princes are for the most part not love tales. One of them (i. nov. 8) tells of the failure of an attempt made by the King of Naples to induce Hercules of Este to deprive Borso of the government of Ferrara; another (vi. nov. 10) describes Ercole’s high-spirited treatment of conspirators. The two novels that treat of Alfonso I. (vi. nov. 2, 4), in the latter of which he only plays a subordinate part, are also, as the title of the book shows and as the dedication to the above-named Francesco explains more fully, accounts of ‘atti di cortesía’ towards knights and prisoners, but not towards women, and only the two remaining tales are love-stories. They are of such a kind as can be told during the lifetime of the prince; they set forth his nobleness and generosity, his virtue and self-restraint. Only one of them (vi. nov. 1) refers to Hercules I., who was dead long before the novels were compiled, and only one to the Hercules II. then alive (b. 1508, d. 1568) son of Lucrezia Borgia, husband of Renata, of whom the poet says: ‘Il giovane, che non meno ha benigno l’animo, che cortese l’aspetto, come già il vedemmo in Roma, nel tempo, ch’egli, in vece del padre, venne à Papa Hadriano.’ The tale about him is briefly as follows:—Lucilla, the beautiful daughter of a poor but noble widow, loves Nicandro, but cannot marry him, as the lover’s father forbids him to wed a portionless maiden. Hercules, who sees the girl and is captivated by her beauty, finds his way, through the connivance of her mother, into her bedchamber, but is so touched by her beseeching appeal that he respects her innocence, and, giving her a dowry, enables her to marry Nicandro.
In Bandello, ii. nov. 8 and 9 refer to Alessandro Medici, 26 to Mary of Aragon, iii. 26, iv. 13 to Galeazzo Sforza, iii. 36, 37 to Henry VIII. of England, ii. 27 to the German Emperor Maximilian. The emperor, ‘whose natural goodness and more than imperial generosity are praised by all writers,’ while chasing a stag is separated from his followers, loses his way, and at last emerging from the wood, enquires the way from a countryman. The latter, busied with lading wood, begs the emperor, whom he does not know, to help him, and receives willing assistance. While still at work, Maximilian is rejoined, and, in spite of his signs to the contrary, respectfully saluted by his followers, and thus recognised by the peasant, who implores forgiveness for the freedom he has unwittingly taken. The emperor raises the kneeling suppliant, gives him presents, appoints him as his attendant, and confers upon him distinguished privileges. The narrator concludes: ‘Dimostrò Cesare nello smontar da cavallo e con allegra ciera aiutar il bisognoso contadino, una indicibile e degna d’ogni lode humanità, e in sollevarlo con danari e privilegii dalla sua faticosa vita, aperse il suo veramente animo Cesareo’ (ii. 415). A story in the Hecatomithi (viii. nov. 5) also treats of Maximilian. It is the same tale which has acquired a world-wide celebrity through Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (for its diffusion see Kirchhof’s Wendunmuth, ed. Oesterley, bd. v. s. 152 sqq.), and the scene of which is transferred by Giraldi to Innsbruck. Maximilian is the hero, and here too receives the highest eulogies. After being first called ‘Massimiliano il Grande,’ he is designated as one ‘che fu raro esempio di cortesia, di magnanimità, e di singolare giustizia.’
105
In the Deliciæ Poet. Italorum (1608), ii. pp. 455 sqq.: ad Alfonsum ducem Calabriæ. (Yet I do not believe that the above remark fairly applies to this poem, which clearly expresses the joys which Alfonso has with Drusula, and describes the sensations of the happy lover, who in his transports thinks that the gods themselves must envy him.—L.G.).
106
Mentioned as early as 1367, in the Polistore, in Murat. xxiv. col. 848, in reference to Niccolò the Elder, who makes twelve persons knights in honour of the twelve Apostles.
107
Burigozzo, in the Archiv. Stor. iii. p. 432.
108
Discorsi, i. 17, on Milan after the death of Filippo Visconti.
109
De Incert. et Vanitate Scientiar. cap. 55.
110
Prato, Archiv. Stor. iii. p. 241.
111
De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, l. ii. cap. 15.
112
Discorsi, iii. 6; comp. Storie Fiorent. l. viii. The description of conspiracies has been a favourite theme of Italian writers from a very remote period. Luitprand (of Cremona, Mon. Germ., ss. iii. 264-363) gives us a few, which are more circumstantial than those of any other contemporary writer of the tenth century; in the eleventh the deliverance of Messina from the Saracens, accomplished by calling in Norman Roger (Baluz. Miscell. i. p. 184), gives occasion to a characteristic narrative of this kind (1060); we need hardly speak of the dramatic colouring given to the stories of the Sicilian Vespers (1282). The same tendency is well known in the Greek writers.
113
Corio, fol. 333. For what follows, ibid. fol. 305, 422 sqq. 440.
114
So in the quotations from Gallus, in Sismondi, xi. 93. For the whole subject see Reumont, Lorenzo dei Medici, pp. 387-97, especially 396.
115
Corio, fol. 422. Allegretto, Diari Sanesi, in Murat. xxiii. col. 777. See above, p. 41.
116
The enthusiasm with which the Florentine Alamanno Rinuccini (b. 1419) speaks in his Ricordi (ed. by G. Aiazzi, Florence, 1840) of murderers and their deeds is very remarkable. For a contemporary, though not Italian, apology for tyrannicide, see Kervyn de Lettenhove, Jean sans Peur et l’Apologie du Tyrannicide, in the Bulletin de l’Académie de Bruxelles, xi. (1861), pp. 558-71. A century later opinion in Italy had changed altogether. See the condemnation of Lampugnani’s deed in Egnatius, De Exemplis Ill. Vir., Ven. fol. 99 b; comp. also 318 b.
Petr. Crinitus, also (De honestâ disciplinâ, Paris, 1510, fol. 134 b), writes a poem De virtute Jo. Andr. Lamponiani tyrannicidæ, in which Lampugnani’s deed is highly praised, and he himself is represented as a worthy companion of Brutus.
Comp. also the Latin poem: Bonini Mombritii poetæ Mediol. trenodiæ in funere illustrissimi D. Gal. Marie Sfor (2 Books—Milan, 1504), edited by Ascalon Vallis (sic), who in his dedication to the jurist Jac. Balsamus praises the poet and names other poems equally worthy to be printed. In this work, in which Megæra and Mars, Calliope and the poet, appear as interlocutors, the assassin—not Lampugnano, but a man from a humble family of artisans—is severely blamed, and he with his fellow conspirators are treated as ordinary criminals; they are charged with high treason on account of a projected alliance with Charles of Burgundy. No less than ten prognostics of the death of Duke Galeazzo are enumerated. The murder of the Prince, and the punishment of the assassin are vividly described; the close consists of pious consolations addressed
id="n98">