The Book of the Courtier
for the hideous cruelties that he had perpetrated. His wife was Ippolita
Maria, daughter of the first Sforza duke of Milan; while his daughter
Isabella’s marriage to Giangaleazzo Sforza, the rightful duke, and the
usurpation of the latter’s uncle Ludovico “il Moro” (see note 302),
became the immediate cause of the first French invasion of Italy by
Charles VIII.
Note 32 page 10. FERDINAND II of Naples, (born 1469; died childless
1496), made a gallant but vain stand against the French, and retired to
Ischia with his youthful wife-aunt Joanna. When Charles VIII evacuated
Naples after a stay of only fifty days, Ferdinand was soon able, with
the help of his cousin Ferdinand the Catholic’s famous general Consalvo
de Cordova, to regain his dominions, but died a few weeks later. He
seems to have had no lack of courage; by his mere presence he once
overawed a mob at Naples, and he was beloved by the nation in spite of
the odious tyranny of his father and grandfather.
Note 33 page 10. Pope ALEXANDER VI, (born 1431; died 1503), was
Roderigo, the son of Giuffredo (or Alfonso) Lenzuoli and Juana (or
Isabella) Borgia, a sister of Pope Calixtus III, by whom the youth was
adopted and whose surname he assumed. He was elected pope in 1492
through bribery, and while striving to increase the temporal power of
the Church, directed his chief efforts towards the establishment of a
great hereditary dominion for his family. Of his five children, two
(Cesare and Lucrezia) played important parts in his plan. In 1495 he
joined the league which forced Charles VIII to retire from Italy,
although it had been partly at his instigation that the French invaded
the peninsula. In 1498 Savonarola was burned at Florence by his orders.
In 1501 he instituted the ecclesiastical censorship of books. He is
believed to have died from accidentally taking a poison designed by him
for a rich cardinal whose possessions he wished to seize. His private
life was disgraced by orgies, of which the details are unfit for
repetition. His contemporary Machiavelli says: “His entire occupation,
his only thought, was deception, and he always found victims. Never was
there a man with more effrontery in assertion, more ready to add oaths
to his promises, or to break them.” While Sismondi terms him “the most
odious, the most publicly scandalous, and the most wicked of all the
miscreants who ever misused sacred authority to outrage and degrade
mankind.”
From Alinari’s photograph (no. 11305) of an anonymous bronze bust in the
National Museum at Naples.
Note 34 page 10. Pope JULIUS II, (born 1443; died 1513), was Giuliano,
the second son of Raffaele della Rovere (only brother of Pope Sixtus IV)
and Teodora Menerola. Made a cardinal soon after his uncle’s election,
he was loaded with sees and offices, including the legateship of Picene
and Avignon, which latter occasioned his prolonged absence from Italy
and afforded him an escape from the wiles of his inveterate enemy
Alexander VI. The outrages with which Alexander sought to punish his
sturdy opposition to the scandals of the Borgian court, aroused in him a
fierceness of spirit that was alien to the seeming mildness of his early
character and became the bane of his own pontificate. His younger
brother Giovanni married a sister of Duke Guidobaldo, a union that
cemented the friendship between the two families and furnished the Duchy
of Urbino an heir in the person of Francesco Maria della Rovere. When
Julius engaged Michelangelo to design his tomb, the old basilica of St.
Peter’s was found too small to contain it, whereupon the pontiff is said
to have decreed that a new church be built to receive it, and blessed
the laying of the first stone shortly before setting out on his campaign
against Bologna in 1506. In 1508 he formed the League of Cambray for the
recovery of certain papal fiefs appropriated by Venice at the time of
Cesare Borgia’s downfall, and in 1511 the so-called Holy League for the
expulsion of the French from Italy. Italian unity was the unavowed but
real goal at which his policy aimed.
Although a munificent patron of art and letters, Julius was frugal and
severe,—a man of action rather than a scholar or theologian. In giving
Michelangelo directions for the huge bronze statue at Bologna, he said:
“Put a sword in my hand; of letters I know nothing.” Another of his
reported sayings is: “If we are not ourselves pious, why should we
prevent others from being so?”
Note 35 page 10. Although unexpressed in the original, the word
‘learned’ seems necessary to complete the obvious meaning of the
passage.
From his tutor Odasio of Padua, we learn that in his boyhood Guidobaldo
was even for the time exceptionally fond of study. He could repeat whole
treatises by heart ten years after reading them, and never forgot what
he resolved to retain. Besides his classical attainments, he appreciated
the Italian poets, and showed peculiar aptitude for philosophy and
history.
Note 36 page 10. The Italian _piacevolezza_ conveys somewhat the same
suggestion of humour which the word ‘pleasantness’ carried with it to
the English of Elizabeth’s time, and which still survives in our
‘pleasantry.’
Note 37 page 11. EMILIA PIA, (died 1528), was the youngest daughter of
Marco Pio, one of the lords of Carpi. Her brother Giberto married a
natural daughter of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (see note 64), while her
cousin Alberto Pio (1475-1530) was the pupil and became the patron and
financial supporter of the scholar-printer Aldus Manutius. In 1487 she
was married very young to the studious Count Antonio di Montefeltro (a
natural half-brother of Duke Guidobaldo), who left her a widow in 1500.
She resided at Urbino and became the trusted and inseparable companion
of the Duchess Elisabetta, whom she accompanied on journeys and in
exile, ever faithful in misfortune and sorrow. In the duchess’s
testament she was named as legatee and executrix. She seems to have died
without the sacraments of the Church, while discussing passages of the
newly published COURTIER with Count Ludovico Canossa. The part taken by
her in these dialogues evinces the charm of her winning manners as well
as her possession of a variety of knowledge and graceful accomplishment
rare even in that age of womanly genius. Always ready to lead or second
the learned and sportive pastimes by which the court circle of Urbino
gave zest to their intercourse and polish to their wit, she was of
infinite service to the duchess, whose own acquirements were of a less
brilliant kind.
Note 38 page 11. It may be doubted whether the duchess’s influence
always availed to secure what we should now regard as decorous behaviour
at her court, and in an earlier draft of THE COURTIER Castiglione
allowed himself a freedom, not to say licence, of expression singularly
in contrast with the general tone of the version published.
Note 39 page 12. The duchess and her husband were expelled from their
dominions by Cesare Borgia in 1502, and again in 1516 she was compelled
to leave Urbino for a longer time, when Leo X seized the duchy for his
nephew Lorenzo de' Medici. Her conduct on these occasions showed rare
fortitude and dignity.
Note 40 page 12. These devices, so much in vogue during the 16th century
in Italy, were the “inventions” which Giovio (a contemporary writer upon
the subject) says “the great lords and noble cavaliers of our time like
to wear on their armour, caparisons and banners, to signify a part of
their generous thoughts.” They consisted of a figure or picture, and a
motto nearly always in Latin. The fashion is said to have been copied
from the French at the time of the invasions of Charles VIII and Louis
XII.
Note 41 page 12. FEDERICO FREGOSO, (born 1480; died 1541), was a younger
brother of Ottaviano (see note 11), and was educated for holy orders
under the direction of his uncle Duke Guidobaldo, at whose court he also
perfected himself in worldly accomplishments. In 1507 Julius II made him
Archbishop of Salerno, in the kingdom of Naples, but, owing to his
supposed French sympathies, he was not allowed to enjoy this benefice,
and the next year was put in charge of the bishopric of Gubbio. In the
same year he was sent by Julius with the latter’s physician to attend
Duke Guidobaldo’s death-bed, but arrived too late. During the nine years
that followed his brother’s election as Doge of Genoa (1513), he by
turns commanded the army of the Republic, led her fleet against the
Barbary pirates (whom he routed in their own harbours), and represented
her at the papal court. During the Spanish siege of Genoa in 1522, he
escaped to France, was warmly received by Francis I, and made Abbot of
St. Bénigne at Dijon, where he devoted himself to theological study. In
1528 he returned to Italy and was appointed to the see of Gubbio. His
piety and zeal for the welfare of his flock won for him the title of
“father to the poor and refuge of the distressed.” In 1539 he was made a
cardinal, and two years later died at Gubbio, being succeeded in that
see by his friend Bembo. After his death, a discourse of his on prayer
happening to be reprinted together with a work by Luther, he was for a
time erroneously supposed to have been heretical. He was a profound
student of Hebrew, and an appreciative collector of Provençal poetry.
His own writings are chiefly doctrinal, and his reputation rests rather
upon his friends’ praise of his wit, gentleness, personal
accomplishments and learning, than upon the present value of his extant
works.
Note 42 page 12. PIETRO BEMBO, (born at Venice 1470; died at Rome 1547),
was the son of a noble Venetian, Bernardo Bembo (a man of much
cultivation, who paid for the restoration of Dante’s tomb at Ravenna),
and Elena Marcella. Having received his early education at Florence,
where his father was Venetian ambassador, he studied Greek at Messina
under Lascaris (a native of Hellas, whose grammar of that tongue was the
first Greek book ever printed, 1476), and philosophy at Padua and
Ferrara, where his father was Venetian envoy and introduced him to the
Este court. Here he became acquainted with Lucrezia Borgia, who had
recently wedded Duke Ercole’s son Alfonso, and to whom he dedicated his
dialogues on love, _Gli Asolani_. By some writers indeed he is said to
have been her lover, but the report is hardly confirmed by the character
of the letters exchanged between the two, 1503-1516. Having been
entertained at Urbino in 1505, he spent the larger part of the next six
years at that court, where he profited by the fine library, delighted in
many congenial spirits, and became the close friend of Giuliano de'
Medici, who took him to Rome in 1512 and recommended him to the future
pope, Leo X. On attaining the tiara, Leo at once appointed him and his
friend Sadoleto (see note 242) papal secretaries, an office for which
his learning and courtly accomplishments well fitted him. His laxity of
morals and his paganism were no disqualification in the eyes of the
pope, whom he served also in several diplomatic missions, and from whom
he received benefices and pensions sufficient to enrich him for life. In
1518 his friend Castiglione sent him the MS. of THE COURTIER, requesting
him to “take the trouble ... to read it either wholly or in part,” and
to give his opinion of it. Ten years later, when the book was printed,
it was Bembo to whom the proofs were sent for correction, the author
being absent in Spain. Even before the death of Leo X in 1521, Bembo had
entered upon a life of literary retirement at Padua, where his library
and art collection, as well as the learned society that he drew about
him, rendered his house famous. Nor was it less esteemed by reason of