The Book of the Courtier

Note 216 page 136. An earlier version of this passage reads: “And of this kind was what Rinaldo in the Morgante said to the Giant: ‘Where do you hang your spectacles?’” The Morgante Maggiore is a serio-burlesque romantic poem by Luigi Pulci (1431-1487), introducing, among other characters of mediæval romance, Rinaldo, his cousin Orlando, and the giant Morgante.

Note 217 page 136.Galeotto Marzi da Narni, (born about 1427; died about 1490), a singular example of the adventurer-humanist, studied at the universities of Padua and Bologna, and taught at the latter place. He twice visited the court of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, for whom he wrote a book on jests. He was something of an astrologer and also the author of a work on chiromancy. Being accused of heresy, he was imprisoned at Venice in 1477, and condemned to make public recantation in the Piazzetta with a crown of devils on his head. He is said to have been learned and witty. The story given in the text became almost proverbial.

Note 218 page 136. The present form (bisticcio) of bischisso (rendered ‘playing on words’) has a meaning somewhat different from that indicated in the text,—being the term applied to a succession of words the similarity of whose sound renders them difficult to pronounce, e.g., “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

Note 219 page 136. At this time the general use of family names was comparatively recent, and their form was somewhat variable. Thus, such surnames as Pio and Fregoso were treated as still being, what they doubtless originally were, merely personal epithets, and so were given the feminine form (Pia, Fregosa) when applied to women. The adjective pia means dutiful, pious, kind, while impia or empia of course means the reverse.

Note 221 page 136.Geronimo Donato, (born 1457; died 1511), was a native of Venice, where he held many public offices, besides being sent abroad as ambassador of the Republic, especially to the courts of Alexander VI and Julius II. He also enjoyed no small fame as a cultivator of science, art and letters (particularly Greek and theology). The incident narrated in the text occurred during his embassy to Alexander, to whom on another occasion he made a far wittier retort. Being jestingly asked by the pope where Venice got its right of lordship over the Adriatic, he answered: “Let your Holiness show me the title deed to the Patrimony of St. Peter, and on the back of it will be found inscribed the grant to the Venetians of their dominion over the Adriatic.”

Note 222 page 136. In the Roman Church a “station” (stasione) is a church where indulgences are granted at certain seasons. In earlier times such churches were visited in solemn procession, which afterwards came to be regarded as an opportunity for social recreation. The word is used also to designate the indulgences earned by visiting, on appointed days, many churches founded by popes.

Note 225 page 136.Marcantonio della Torre belonged to an ancient noble family of Verona, was a famous anatomist, and is said to have included Leonardo da Vinci among his pupils. He died at the age of thirty, and was highly praised for his learning. His father Geronimo lectured on medicine at Padua.

Note 228 page 137.Proto da Lucca was one of the most famous buffoons who enlivened the pontifical court at the beginning of the 16th century. If, as seems probable, the incident in question occurred in January 1506 (when Bernardino Lei died and was succeeded by Antonio da Castriani as Bishop of Cagli, a town near Urbino), the pope in question must have been Julius II, to whom the epithet ‘very grave’ would be entirely appropriate.

Note 229 page 138. The play is upon the word ‘office’ in its two meanings of post or employment, and breviary or prayer-book. In the latter sense, the ‘full office’ contained the psalms, lessons, etc.,—while the ‘Madonna’s office’ was much abbreviated.

Note 230 page 138.Giovanni Calfurnio, (born 1443; died 1503), was a gentle and laborious humanist, born at or near Bergamo, but long resident at Padua, where he held the chair of rhetoric. His chief work consisted in correcting and commenting upon the texts of Latin poets. The ‘another man at Padua’ was probably Raffaele Regio (a fellow professor with Calfurnio), who publicly ridiculed his colleague as the son of a charcoal-burner. Calfurnio seems to have published very little; on his death he bequeathed his library to the church of San Giovanni in Verdara, from which his tomb and portrait relief have recently been removed to a cloister of the monastery of St. Antony at Padua.

Note 231 page 138. Tommaso Inghirami, “Fedra,” (born 1470; died 1516), was a native patrician of Volterra (a town about midway between Pisa and Siena), being the son of Paolo Inghirami and Lucrezia Barlettani. Having passed his early boyhood at Florence, he removed to Rome in 1483, where he played the part of Phædra in Seneca’s tragedy Hippolytus (upon which Racine founded his Phèdre) with such success that the name clung to him for life. The play being interrupted by an accident to the scenery, he filled the interval by improvising Latin verses for the entertainment of the audience. The performance took place in the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, which was afterwards converted into the fortress known as the Castle of St. Angelo. Tommaso was employed by Alexander VI in diplomatic affairs, crowned poet by the Emperor Maximilian I, and made a canon of the Lateran and of the Vatican. He seems to have been connected with the Vatican Library as early as 1505, and became its prefect. Although Erasmus called him the Cicero of his time, his fame now rests rather on his portrait in the Pitti Gallery at Florence, than on his works.

Note 232 page 138.Camillo Paleotto was a brother of the Annibal Paleotto already mentioned (see note 214). On his father’s death in 1498, he went to Rome, where he became the friend of Federico Fregoso, Bembo and Castiglione. He taught rhetoric at Bologna and was Chancellor of the Senate there. There also he is said to have died in 1530, although a letter of Bembo’s speaks of him in 1518 as then already dead.

Note 233 page 138.Antonio Porcaro, or Porzio, belonged to a noble Roman family, and was a brother of the Camillo Porcaro mentioned in The Courtier (at page 140). He had also a twin brother Valerio, whom he so closely resembled that the two were often mistaken, one for the other, as Bibbiena says in the preface to his Calandra,—the plot of which is founded upon a similar resemblance. Little more is known of Antonio than that he suffered some grievous wrong from Alexander VI.

Note 234 page 138. Regarding Giantommaso Galeotto, Cian furnishes no information. The Spanish annotator, Fabié, adds Marcio (Marzio) to his name,—thus apparently treating him as identical with the Galeotto da Narni mentioned above at page 136,—and says that he “died, by reason of his great corpulence, from a fall from his horse, being in the train of Charles VIII of France, when the latter entered Milan.” As “My lord Prefect” was only four years old when Charles entered Milan in 1494, this identification seems clearly erroneous.

Note 235 page 139.Filippo Beroaldo, (born 1472; died 1518), belonged to a noble Bolognese family. Having been one of his famous uncle Filippo the elder’s most brilliant pupils in the classics, he was at the age of twenty-six made professor of literature at Bologna, and afterwards at Rome. In 1511 he successfully defended Duke Francesco Maria of Urbino against the charge of murdering Cardinal Alidosi. Instead of seeking to extenuate the deed, as done in heat and under strong provocation, he boldly justified it on the ground that his client was the instrument chosen by the Almighty to rid the world of a monster of wickedness, and eloquently appealed to the tribunal to spare a hero whose promise of future usefulness was precious to Italy. Beroaldo was secretary to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, and on the latter’s election as pope, he was made Provost of the Roman Academy, while at Inghirami’s death he was made Librarian of the Vatican, as a reward for editing the recently discovered first five books of Tacitus’s Annals. He died at Rome, partly (it is said) from vexation at not being paid the stipend of his office. Bembo wrote his epitaph. Although he was celebrated for erudition and eloquence rather than for authorship, he left three books of odes, and one of epigrams,—in Latin.

Note 238 page 139.Diego de Chignones, (died 1512), was a Spanish cavalier, of whom Branthôme writes as follows: “This Great Captain had for lieutenant, with a company of one hundred men-at-arms, Don Diego de Quignones, who supported him in his combats and victories, and was truly a good and brave lieutenant to him. After the Great Captain’s death, he had sole command of his company of an hundred men-at-arms, as he well deserved to have. He commanded it at the battle of Ravenna, where he died like a brave and valiant captain. And if all had behaved as he did (say the old Spaniards), the victory that the French won there would have cost them dearer than it did, although it cost them dear.”

Note 239 page 139. Don Gonzalvo Hernand y Aguilar, better known as Consalvo de Cordoba, or The Great Captain, (born 1443; died 1515), was a native of Montilla, near Cordova, and belonged to an ancient family of Spanish grandees. His father’s name was Pietro, and his mother’s was Elvira Errea. Bred to war in early youth and knighted on the field of battle at the age of sixteen, he followed the fortunes of Ferdinand the Catholic, and took an active part in the conquest of Granada. In 1494 he was sent to Italy to aid Ferdinand II of Naples against Charles VIII, won a long succession of victories over the French, and was finally made Constable and Viceroy of Naples. Later, Ferdinand the Catholic, listening to slanderous reports regarding him, deprived him of office, and in 1507 recalled him to Spain, where he died in disgrace. His good qualities were much admired by Castiglione, who had fought against him, but his fame was not unstained by acts of cruelty and bad faith, which (it is fair to say) were common at the time and seem to have been committed only against his master’s foes. Giorgione is said to have painted his portrait at Venice, and a life of him by Paolo Giovio was published at Florence in 1552.

Note 242 page 139.Giacomo Sadoleto, (born 1477; died 1547), was a native of Modena and the son of a noted jurist, Giovanni Sadoleto. He studied Latin at Ferrara and Greek at Rome, where he settled in the pontificate of Alexander VI and acquired a great reputation for learning. Leo X appointed him a secretary at the same time with Bembo, (who shared with him the name of being the best Latinist of the day), and soon made him Bishop of Carpentras, a town fifteen miles north-east of Avignon. He was secretary also to Clement VII, to whom he boldly declared that the sack of Rome (1527) was inflicted by God as a punishment for human wickedness. Paul III created him a cardinal in 1536. A sincerely pious man, he was conscious of the evils of the Church and did not escape suspicion of heresy. He was a close friend of Vittoria Colonna, and the Roman Academy often met at his house on the Quirinal. Besides Latin poems (one of which, on the newly discovered Laocoön group, made him famous), his works include commentaries on the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans, and a Latin exhortation to the princes and people of Germany against Lutheran heresies. Although far from rich, he was very charitable, especially in providing young men of his flock with the means of education.

Note 243 page 139.Ludovico da San Bonifacio is identified by Cian as a Paduan, who held the offices of prothonotary and private chamberlain under Leo X, successfully disputed with Bembo the possession of a canonry at Padua in 1514, was sent to different courts by Leo, and died at Padua in 1545.

Ercole Rangone, (died 1572), belonged to an illustrious family of Modena, and achieved some note as a soldier and diplomatist, having commanded the Florentine forces in 1529, and served as Ferrarese ambassador to France, Spain and Germany. He was esteemed by Castiglione, of whose wife Ippolita Torello he seems to have been a kinsman.

Note 245 page 140.Palla degli Strozzi, (born 1372; died 1462), was a wealthy and cultivated Florentine patrician. Having honourably filled high offices of state, he was banished by Cosimo de' Medici in 1434 for ten years to Padua. Himself an enthusiastic scholar and patron of classical studies, he caused many Greek MSS. to be brought into Italy (including works of Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch), and was the first Italian to collect books for the express purpose of founding a public library, in the execution of which design he was prevented by his exile from anticipating Cosimo. He employed learned Greeks to read to him, and was instrumental in inducing Chrysoloras to teach at Florence,—an engagement regarded by Symonds as having secured the future of Hellenic study in Europe. The story narrated of him in the text is elsewhere told of an exile belonging to the Albizzi family.

Note 246 page 140.Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriæ, (born 1389; died 1464), was a Florentine banker, statesman and patron of literature and art. In his father Giovanni’s house of business he cultivated the rare faculty for finance that he afterwards employed in public administration and private commerce. He inherited his father’s vast fortune in 1429, and made it a practice to lend money to needy citizens and at the same time to involve the affairs of Florence with his own,—thus not only attaching individuals to his interests, but rendering it difficult to control state expenditures apart from his own bank. He understood also how to use his money without exciting jealousy, and while he spent large sums on public works, he declined the architect Brunelleschi’s plans for a residence more befitting a prince than a citizen. He was an early riser, and temperate and simple in his life. While ruling Florence with despotic power, he seemed intent on the routine of his counting-house, and put forward other men to execute his political schemes. Despite occasional checks, he so firmly established the influence of his family as the real rulers of Florence that they were not permanently expelled until the nineteenth century. Much of his power was due to sympathy with the intellectual movement of the age, and although he was not a Greek scholar, he had a solid education, and collected MSS., gems, coins and inscriptions, employing his commercial agents in the work. During a year of exile, he built a library at Venice, and later he built one at Florence and another at Fiesole.