FIGURE 6. De quattuor hominum gradibus, woodcut illustration from Carolus Bovillus, Le Livre du Sage, p. 56.
Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater; quaequisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia, planta fiet. Si sensualia, obrutescet. Si rationalia, caeleste evadet animal. Si intellectualia, angelus erit et Dei filius.
(The Father bestowed on man when he was born the seed of every kind and the germ of every way of life. Every one of these a man cultivates will mature and bear its fruit in him. If vegetative, he will be a plant. If sensual, he will become a brute. If rational, he will turn out to be a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God.)173
Taegio’s scheme, which is composed of being, life, sense, and intellect, combines the first three of Bovillus’s levels with Pico’s highest level, making the state of contemplation man’s chief end and his link with the divine. In La Villa (p. 4) Taegio called attention to his affinity with Pico by asking, rhetorically, “Don’t you know that the intellect is a divine thing, and that man is the link in the chain that binds mortal things with the divine?” The resemblance between Taegio’s “chain” and Bovillus’s shows that Taegio was familiar with the De sapiente. The fact that Taegio made the highest level of existence mankind’s link with the divine strongly suggests that he was influenced by Pico directly, through a reading of the Oratio de dignitate hominis, as well as indirectly, through Bovillus.
Taegio was also influenced by Pomponazzi, the great Aristotelian rival of Ficino. While most of the fifteenth-century humanists, including the Florentines of Ficino’s Academy, embraced Platonism, “the organized intellectual life of the universities remained loyal to the Aristotelian tradition.”174 In northern Italy, the center of that life was the University of Padua, where Pomponazzi lectured from 1488 to 1509.175 Pomponazzi compared the “whole human race to a single body composed of different members,” in which all parts, while specialized, have some things in common. Pomponazzi said, in De immortalitate animae, that “all men … must share in three intellects: the theoretical, the practical or operative, and the productive,” and that “the universal end of the human race is to participate relatively in the speculative and the productive intellects but perfectly in the practical.”176 Taegio alluded to this passage of De immortalitate animae in La Villa (p. 13) where he said, speaking through Vitauro, “As long as that intellect you call practical inquires into what is truly just, honorable, and useful, it is speculative, but when one applies it to actions and to particular things, it becomes practical.” Later in his dialogue, Taegio made an oblique reference to another treatise by Pomponazzi. In De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis, sive de incantationibus Pomponazzi sought to transform astrology into a rational science by explaining all so-called miraculous effects in terms of either ordinary natural causes, or natural forces not ordinarily experienced, or the influence of the observable motions of stars and planets. Pomponazzi’s phrase “Sed haec est consuetudo vulgi, ascribere daemonibus vel angelisquorum causas non cognoscunt” (But this is the custom of the common people: to ascribe to demons or to angels causes they don’t understand)177 is echoed by Vitauro’s line in La Villa (p. 55) “There are many things held by common folk to be miracles which are nevertheless natural.” Pomponazzi completed De incantationibus in 1520, but it was not published until it was printed in Basel in 1556, three years before La Villa was published in Milan.
Taegio’s intellectual debts to Pomponazzi, Bovillus, Pico, and Ficino are apparent in his specific references to particular philosophical statements of theirs, and generally in his elevation of the contemplative life. Taegio’s endorsement of contemplation over action in La Villa is subordinated to his argument for the superiority of life in villa over city life.
The Relationship Between Leisure and Intellectual Activity: Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Petrarch
Taegio introduced his argument for the villa as the ideal setting for the life of a true gentleman with the following statement in the words of Vitauro (La Villa, p. 2): “I tell you that in villa I enjoy principally the honorable leisure of that literature that agrees with my nature.” A key to understanding Taegio’s notion of the purpose of the villa lies in the meaning of his expression honorato ocio (honorable leisure). Ocio is the sixteenth-century Italian equivalent of the Latin word otium, which was a translation of the Greek word skole. Otium is usually rendered in English as “leisure,” skole as “repose.” It is especially useful, in connection with a discussion of the idea of villa life, to look at otium in relation to its opposite, negotium, formed by prefixing the negative particle nec to otium. Negotium, which can be translated “business,” “occupation,” or “employment,” indicates a lack of otium, and therefore otium can be construed as something positive in itself. In Latin texts, otium was almost never used merely in the sense of time off from work, what we might call “spare time.”178 Nor was otium generally considered something to be enjoyed passively. On the contrary, it was frequently associated with intellectual activity.
The history of “honorable leisure” encompasses changing attitudes toward the relationship between leisure and intellectual activity, and the relative merits of action and contemplation. In La Villa, Taegio cited four of the most important sources of our knowledge of these attitudes: Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Petrarch. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined skole as both a characteristic of the contemplative life and a prerequisite for happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness “consists in” contemplation, which is the highest form of activity and the only activity desired for its own sake.179 The activity of the intellect, which Aristotle said also “consists in” contemplation, is the stuff of which human happiness is made, partly because it is characterized by skole.180
For Cicero and Seneca, otium was a means toward what was for them the noblest of ends, service to the state. By linking otium and statesmanship, Cicero and Seneca radically altered the meaning of Aristotle’s skole. For these ancient Roman philosopher-statesmen, otium conveyed not so much repose as retreat from negotium, and they found its justification in intellectual activity. In its Ciceronian sense, otium itself was an activity, and one that was always comprehended in the context of its complement, political activity. Where Cicero, in De officiis, quoted Cato saying that Scipio Africanus claimed to be “numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset” (never less idle than when he was at leisure, and never less lonely than when he was alone), he was associating otium with the work of thinking and writing. In his Tusculan Disputations, where he said he wanted to elevate Roman philosophy to the level set by the Greeks, so that “si occupati profuimus aliquid civibus nostris, prosimus etiam, si possumus, otiosi” (if I have been of service to my countrymen while actively engaged [in politics], I may also, if I can, be of service to them in my leisure), Cicero was justifying otium in terms of its value to the Republic as a complement to political activity.181 Cicero expressed his delight in so dignifying otium when he asked, “Quid est enim dulcius otio litterato?” (What is sweeter than leisure devoted to literature)?”182
Otium litteratum was the only tolerable kind of leisure for Seneca, who said, in his Epistles, that “otium sine litteris mors est, et hominis vivi sepultura” (leisure without literature is death, and a tomb for the living man).183 For Seneca, literary study justified leisure because contemplatio (contemplation) was the activity that made otium a form of service to the state. In De otio, Seneca wrote that “hoc nempe ab homine exigitur, ut prosit hominibus” (this of course is required of a man, that he benefit his fellow man), and he went on to describe the attitude that could enable one to serve
