The Book of the Courtier

Note 21 page 7. “Courtiership” is a sadly awkward rendering of the Italian cortegiania, which implies not only courtesy and courtliness, but all the many other qualities and accomplishments essential to the perfect Courtier or (what in Castiglione’s time was the same) the perfect Gentleman.

Note 23 page 8. The first of the four dialogues is represented as having been held on the evening of the day after the close of a certain visit paid by Pope Julius II to Urbino on his return from a successful campaign against Bologna. This visit is known to have lasted from 3 March to 7 March 1507. Castiglione returned from England as early as 5 March, on which date he wrote to his mother from Urbino: “We have had his Holiness here for two days.” It seems probable that this fictitious prolongation of his absence in England was simply a graceful excuse for not himself appearing in the dialogues.

Note 24 page 8. There were a fief and Count of Montefeltro as early as 1154, and his son was made Count of Urbino in 1216, from which time their male descendants ruled over a gradually increased territory until 1508, when the duchy passed to the female line. The name Montefeltro is said to have originated in that of a temple to Jupiter Feretrius, which in Roman times occupied the summit of the crag afterwards known as San Leo, in the Duchy of Urbino.

Note 26 page 9.“Duke Federico” di Montefeltro, (born 1422; died 1482), was a natural son of Count Guidantonio di Montefeltro, as appears from the act of legitimation issued by Pope Martin V and also from his father’s testament, by virtue whereof (as well as by the choice of the people) he succeeded his half-brother Count Oddantonio in 1444. In his boyhood he resided fifteen months as a hostage at Venice. Later he studied the theory and practice of war at the Mantuan court, and was trained in the humanities by the famous Vittorino da Feltre. In 1437 he married Gentile Brancaleone, who died childless in 1457. Nearly the whole of his life was spent in military service, as paid ally, now of one prince, now of another. In this capacity he became not only the most noted commander of his time, but always displayed perfect and exceptional fidelity to the causes that he undertook. In 1450 he lost an eye and suffered a fracture of the nose in a tournament; contemporary portraits represent his features in profile. In 1454 he began the construction of the great palace at Urbino. In 1460, at the suggestion of Francesco Sforza (whom he had aided to become Duke of Milan), he married the latter’s accomplished niece Battista Sforza, who bore him seven daughters and one son, Guidobaldo. In 1474 he was made Duke of Urbino and appointed Captain General of the Church by Pope Sixtus IV, and was unanimously elected a Knight of the Garter. He died of fever contracted during military operations in the malarial country near Ferrara.

The vast sums spent by him on public buildings, art objects and books, and upon the maintenance of his splendid household, were not extorted from his subjects, but were received from foreign states in return for war service. Thus at the close of his life he drew a yearly stipend equivalent to about £330,000.

It is not easy to draw a picture of his character that shall seem unflattered. Vespasiano, who by years of labour collected his famous library for him, says that his “establishment was conducted with the regularity of a religious fraternity, rather than like a military household. Gambling and profanity were unknown, and singular decorum of language was observed, whilst many noble youths, sent there to learn good manners and military discipline, were reared under the most exemplary tuition. He regarded his subjects as his children, and was at all times accessible to hear them personally state their petitions, being careful to give answers without unnecessary delay. He walked freely about the streets, entering their shops and workrooms, and enquiring into their circumstances with paternal interest.... In summer he was in the saddle at dawn, and rode three or four miles into the country with half-a-dozen of his court ... reaching home again when others were just up. After mass, he went into an open garden and gave audience to all comers until breakfast-time. When at table, he listened to the Latin historians, chiefly Livy, except in Lent, when some religious book was read, anyone being free to enter the hall and speak with him then. His fare was plain and substantial, denying himself sweet dishes and wine, except drinks of pomegranates, cherries, apples, or other fruits. After dinner and supper, an able judge of appeal stated in Latin the causes brought before him, on which the duke gave judgment in that language;...

When his mid-day meal was finished, if no one appeared to ask audience, he retired to his closet and transacted private business, or listened to reading until evening approached, when he generally walked out, giving patient ear to all who accosted him in the streets. He then occasionally visited ... a meadow belonging to the Franciscans, where thirty or forty of the youths brought up in his court stripped their doublets, and played at throwing the bar, or at wrestling, or ball. This was a fine sight, which the duke much enjoyed, encouraging the lads, and listening freely to all until supper-time. When that and the audiences were over, he repaired to a private apartment with his principal courtiers, whom, after some familiar talk, he would dismiss to bed, taxing them with their sluggish indulgence of a morning.”

Note 27 page 9. In a Greek epigram written in a book borrowed from Duke Guidobaldo, Poliziano (see note 105) praises the lender as the worthy son of a father who never suffered defeat, ἀνικήτοιο πατρὸς γονόν. History shows that this phrase was a rhetorical exaggeration, but it became almost proverbial.

Note 28 page 9. Although long since despoiled of its treasures, the palace is still one of the architectural monuments of Italy. Many writers have described its magnificence,—some of the fullest accounts being those by Bernardino Baldi (1553-1617); Fr. Arnold (Der Herzogliche Palast von Urbino; Leipsic: 1857); J. A. Symonds (“Italian Byways;” London: 1883; pp. 129-155); Charles Blanc (Histoire de la Renaissance Artistique en Italie; Paris: 1894; ii, 87-90); and Egidio Calzini (Urbino e i Suoi Monumenti; Florence: 1899; pp. 9-46). Baldi’s description will be found reprinted as an appendix to Rigutini’s (1889 and 1892) editions of The Courtier.

For more than fourteen years Duke Federico employed from thirty to forty copyists in transcribing Greek and Latin MSS. Not only the classics, but ecclesiastical and mediæval authors, as well as the Italian poets and humanists were represented in his library, which contained 792 MSS. Ultimately the collection was sent to Rome, where it forms part of the Vatican Library.

Note 31 page 10.Alfonso II of Naples, (born 1448; died 1495), was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and Isabelle de Clermont. As Duke of Calabria, commanding the papal forces, he defeated the Florentine league in 1479, and in 1481 drove the Turks out of southern Italy. On his father’s death in 1494, he succeeded to the crown of Naples; but having rendered himself obnoxious to his subjects, he abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand just before the arrival of Charles VIII of France, and took refuge in a Sicilian convent, where he soon died, tortured by remorse 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.”

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?”

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 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 the presence, at its head, of an avowed mistress (Morosina), who bore him several children. After her death, he devoted himself to theology, entered holy orders, reluctantly accepted a cardinal’s hat in 1539, and in 1541 succeeded his friend Fregoso in the bishopric of Gubbio, to which was added that of Bergamo. His death was occasioned by a fall from his horse, and he was buried at Rome in the Minerva church, between his patrons Leo X and Clement VII. His works are noteworthy less for their substance than for the refining influence exerted by their form. He is said to have subjected all his writings to sixteen (some say forty) separate revisions, and a legend survives to the effect that he advised a young cleric (Sadoleto) to avoid reading the Epistles of St.

Paul, lest they might mar the youth’s style. His numerous private and official letters have preserved many valuable facts and furnish interesting illustration of contemporary manners and character. Humboldt praises him as the first Italian author to write attractive descriptions of natural scenery, and cites especially his dialogue on Mt. Ætna.

Head enlarged from a photograph, specially made by Alinari, of a part of the fresco, “Leo X's Entry into Florence,” in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). See Milanesi’s edition of Vasari’s Opere, viii, 142. The chief facts of his life are given in note 242, at page 369 of this volume.

Note 43 page 12.Cesare Gonzaga, (born about 1475; died 1512), was a native of Mantua, being descended from a younger branch of the ruling family of that city, and a cousin of Castiglione, with whom he maintained a close friendship. His father’s name was Giampietro, and he had a brother Luigi. Having received a courtly and martial education at Milan, and after spending some time with his relatives at Mantua, he entered the service of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. In 1504 he shared Castiglione’s lodgings after their return from a campaign against Cesare Borgia’s strongholds in Romagna, and in the carnival of 1506 they together recited Castiglione’s eclogue Tirsi, in the authorship of which he is by some credited with a part. A graceful canzonet, preserved in Atanagi’s Rime Scelte, attests his skill in versification. On Guidobaldo’s death in 1508, the two friends remained in the service of the new duke, Francesco Maria. In 1511 Cesare fought bravely against the French at Mirandola, and the next year took part in the reduction of Bologna, where he soon died of an acute fever. Little more is known of him, beyond the fact that he was a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, that Leo X sent him on a mission to Charles V of Spain, and that he was among the many friends of the famous Isabella d'Este (see note 397).

Note 44 page 12. Count Ludovico da Canossa, (born 1476; died 1532), belonged to a noble Veronese family (still honourably extant), and was a close friend of Castiglione and a cousin of the latter’s mother. His boyhood was passed at Mantua, and his happiest years at Urbino, where he was received in 1496. In the pontificate of Julius II he went to Rome, and was made Bishop of Tricarico, in southern Italy, 1511. Under Leo X he was entrusted with several embassies, one of which (1514) was to England to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis XII, and another (1515) was to the new French king, Francis I, at whose court he continued to reside, and through whose influence he was made Bishop of Bayeux in 1516. In 1526 and 1527 he served as French ambassador to Venice. His ability and zeal as a diplomatist are shown not only by the importance of the posts that he held, but by his numerous letters that have been preserved. At the time of his friend Bibbiena’s death in 1520, Canossa remarked that it was a fixed belief among the French that every man of rank who died in Italy was poisoned.

Note 45 page 12.Gaspar Pallavicino, (born 1486; died 1511), was a descendant of the marquesses of Cortemaggiore, near Piacenza. He appears in The Courtier as the youthful woman-hater of the company, and was a friend of Castiglione and Bembo. For an interesting discussion of his rôle in the dialogues, see Miss Scott’s paper, cited above (page 316).