The Book of the Courtier
CHARLES VIII OF FRANCE
1470-1498
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Reduced from Alinari’s photograph (no. 2749) of the anonymous bronze
bust in the National Museum at Florence. See note 388.
Note 187 page 121. Bibbiena’s reputation as a wit was well established,
while Canossa seems also to have deserved the same epithet, if we may
judge from a story that has been preserved of him. The count had at Rome
a fine collection of silver plate, including a flagon with a lid in the
form of a tiger. A friend having borrowed this flagon and kept it for
two months, returned it only on demand and with the request that the
count lend him a certain salt-cellar, which had a crab for a cover.
Ludovico sent word that if the tiger, which is the swiftest of beasts,
had been two months coming home, the crab, being slower than all others,
would by the same rule be absent for years, and that on this account he
was unwilling to let it go.
Note 188 page 122. The allusion is of course to Bibbiena’s early
baldness.
Note 189 page 122. Cardinal GALEOTTO DELLA ROVERE, (born about 1477;
died 1508), was the favourite nephew of Julius II, being a son of the
pope’s sister Luchina by her first husband Gianfrancesco Franciotti, a
patrician of Lucca. Like all his mother’s other children, he was adopted
as of the della Rovere name. Having been made Bishop of Lucca, he was
created a cardinal on his uncle’s election as pope, appointed pontifical
vice-chancellor, and soon given a great number of benefices. Generous
and amiable, and a patron of artists and authors, he was much beloved at
the court of Urbino, as is shown by several documents, among which is a
letter by Emilia Pia mentioning two sonnets of his, in one of which
(written the day before his last illness) he foretold his early death.
Note 190 page 123. GIACOMO SANSECONDO, a noted musician who flourished
between the years 1493 and 1522 at the courts of Milan, Mantua, Ferrara,
Urbino and Rome, where he attained a wide celebrity in the pontificate
of Leo X. He seems to have ended his days in adversity, in some degree
relieved by his friend Castiglione, whose letters contain several
affectionate mentions of him.
Note 191 page 124. DEMOCRITUS, (_flor._ 400 B.C.), was the atomistic
philosopher of Abdera in Thrace. He possessed an ample fortune, and his
cheerful disposition led him to look on the bright and humourous side of
things, a fact taken by later writers to mean that he laughed at the
follies of mankind.
Note 192 page 125. The phrase ‘served her in love’ and the conventional
relation that it denoted, were drawn from mediæval life and literature
north of the Alps, and with some changes survived in Italy during the
Renaissance, until the _cavalier servente_ became in the 18th century a
recognized institution. Attendance upon the lady at church was a
characteristic feature of the cavalier’s service.
Note 193 page 126. PIUS III, Francesco Todeschini, (born 1439; died
1503), was a native of Siena and a nephew of the illustrious Æneas
Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II). The suddenness of his predecessor
Alexander VI's death took the sacred college by surprise, and they
unanimously elected their weakest member as pope. His short pontificate
of twenty-six days was filled with disturbances, and he was believed to
have died from poison.
Note 194 page 126. ANTONIO AGNELLO, (died after 1527), belonged to one
of the most noted families of Mantua, and seems to have been the son of
Giulio Agnello and Margarita Crema. Besides being an able man of affairs
(employed by the Palæologus rulers of Montferrat), he was a graceful
poet, and became the friend of Bembo and Castiglione.
Note 195 page 126. The poet CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS, (born about 87
B.C.), was a native of Verona and a friend of Cæsar and Cicero. His
extant works include one hundred and sixteen poems, lyric, epigrammatic,
elegiac, etc. His 69th Ode is a dialogue between the author and a door.
Note 196 page 127. Pope NICHOLAS V, Tommaso Parentucelli, (born 1398;
died 1455), was a native of Pisa, whence his family were exiled in his
infancy. Although his father died when he was nine years old, and in
spite of great poverty, he contrived to study at the University of
Bologna. Later he served as tutor in the Albizzi and Strozzi families at
Florence, thus earning enough money to return and take his theological
degree at Bologna. He then entered the service of the archbishop of the
latter city, whom he accompanied to Florence, and there became a friend
of Cosimo de' Medici and a member of the literary society of the place.
In 1443 he was made Bishop of Bologna, and four years later was elected
pope, an elevation that he owed solely to his reputation for learning
and to the comparatively small esteem in which the office was then held.
The humanists were delighted at the election of one of their own number.
As pope, he devoted his revenues to maintaining a splendid court, to the
rebuilding of the fortifications and palaces of Rome, and to the
enrichment of scholars. During his pontificate the city became a
work-shop of erudition. He founded the Vatican Library, for which he
collected five thousand volumes, and the list prepared by him for Cosimo
de' Medici to use in beginning the Library of San Marco, was followed
also by Duke Federico of Urbino. He was a small, ugly man.
_Nihil Papa Valet_, ‘the Pope is good for nothing.’
Note 197 page 127. I.e., in the second tale of the Eighth Day.
Note 198 page 127. Calandrino is an unfortunate and very amusing
character appearing in the third and sixth tales of the Eighth Day and
in the fifth tale of the Ninth Day.
Note 199 page 128. Niccolò Campani, called STRASCINO, (born 1478; died
between 1522 and 1533), was an excellent actor of Sienese rustic
comedies and farces, and the author of verses and of a Lament that was
very popular in the 16th century. He frequented the court of Leo X, and
several of Castiglione’s letters (1521) tell of efforts to secure the
actor’s services for the Marquess of Mantua, and of furnishing him with
twenty-five ducats, a horse, and a papal pass, for the purpose.
Note 200 page 128. ‘This place,’ i.e., Urbino.
Enlarged from a coloured cast of a medal, in the King’s Library at the
British Museum, by Andrea Guazzalotti (1435-1495). See Armand’s _Les
Médailleurs Italiens_, i, 49, no. 6.
Note 201 page 129. The reader will hardly need to be reminded that the
great Roman orator was often spoken of as Tullius or Tully rather than
as Cicero.
Note 202 page 129. When THE COURTIER was expurgated by Antonio
Ciccarelli in 1584 (see LIST OF EDITIONS), Dante’s name was here
substituted for that of St. Paul. The word _becco_ (rendered ‘he-goat’)
has long been used by the Italians as a term of jocose reproach applied
to a man whose wife is unfaithful.
Note 203 page 129. Duke ERCOLE I D'ESTE, (born 1431; died 1505), was the
legitimate son of Duke Niccolò III and Rizzarda di Saluzzo. Bred at the
Neapolitan court, he became Duke of Ferrara on the death of his
half-brother Borso (see note 149) in 1471. In 1473 he married Eleanora
of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples. Among the six children of
this union were: Isabella, who became Marchioness of Mantua (see note
397); Beatrice, who became Duchess of Milan (see note 398); Alfonso, who
married Lucrezia Borgia and succeeded his father as duke; and the
Cardinal Ippolito already mentioned (see note 64). Although his reign
was far from peaceful, his court was noted for its luxury and for the
brilliancy of art and letters with which it was adorned. He was an
especial patron of the theatre, no less than five comedies of Plautus
being performed during the wedding festivities of his son Alfonso in
1502. On the other hand, he maintained relations with Savonarola, who
was a native of Ferrara.
Note 204 page 130. Castellina was a small walled town in the Chianti
hills, which was held as a Florentine outpost against Siena. The siege
referred to in the text took place in 1478, when the place capitulated
to the Neapolitan and papal troops after holding out for forty days.
Duke of Calabria was the title regularly borne by the heir of each
Aragonese king of Naples. The personage here meant must have been
Alfonso the Younger (see note 31).
Note 205 page 130. While the meaning is not free from doubt, the point
of the story seems to lie in the absurdity of the Florentine’s supposing
that after being discharged from a cannon, a projectile would retain any
poison previously applied to it.
Note 206 page 130. It will be remembered that Bembo was a Venetian,
while Bibbiena’s birthplace was a Florentine town.
Note 207 page 130. This war lasted from 1494 to 1509, and proved ruinous
to both sides. Castiglione’s use of the past tense in speaking of it
here doubtless arose from the fact that he was writing several years
after the date that he assigns to the dialogues.
Note 208 page 131. Pistoia and Prato were two small cities which lay to
the north-west of Florence and were subject to its rule. Modern issues
of “fiat” money are but a slight modification of the method proposed by
the worthy Florentine.
Note 209 page 131. Bucentaur was the name of the state galley of the
Venetian Republic, used (among other occasions) in the symbolic ceremony
of wedding the Adriatic, which was enjoined upon the Venetians by
Alexander III (pope 1159-1181) to commemorate their victory over the
fleet of Frederick Barbarossa. On each Ascension Day a ring was dropped
from the Bucentaur into the Adriatic, with the words, “we espouse thee,
sea, in token of true and lasting dominion.” The vessel bore the image
of a centaur as figure-head. Of the last of several successive
Bucentaurs (demolished in 1824), a few fragments are preserved in the
Arsenal at Venice. In the 15th and 16th centuries the name was applied
to state vessels of ceremony elsewhere. By some the word is supposed to
be derived from the Greek βοῦς (ox) and κένταυρος (centaur); by others
it is regarded as a corruption of the Latin _ducentorum_ (of two hundred
oars), or of the Italian _buzino d’oro_ (golden bark).
Enlarged from a photograph, courteously furnished by the Director of the
Municipal Art Museum at Milan, of a small anonymous bas-relief
belonging to the Taverna collection. See Armand’s _Les Médailleurs
Italiens_, ii, 226, no. 11.
Note 210 page 133. This tale, not unworthy of Munchausen, may have been
suggested to Castiglione by a passage in one of the minor works of
Plutarch, who relates that Antiphanes (a friend of Plato) said that “he
visited a certain city where words froze as soon as spoken, by reason of
the great cold; and later, sounds uttered in winter melted in the spring
and were heard by the inhabitants.” Although Plutarch represents the
story as told in illustration of the way in which “those who came as
young men to listen to Plato’s talk, understood it only long afterwards,
when they had grown old,” it is worth noting that an Antiphanes, of
Berga in Thrace, is known as a writer on the marvellous and incredible.
Note 211 page 133. Vasco da Gama rounded the southern extremity of
Africa and reached India nine years before the date of the Courtier
dialogues.
Note 212 page 133. This must have been Emanuel I, who was King of
Portugal from 1495 until his death in 1521, and who promoted the
expeditions of da Gama and other Portuguese navigators.
Note 213 page 134. Taffety was a very light soft silk fabric. There is
extant a letter of Bembo’s (1541), in which the aged cardinal orders two
cushions filled with swan’s down and covered with crimson taffety. The
word is said to be derived from the Persian _taftah_ (twisted, woven).