and Hans Memling in Flanders. Erasmus, welcomed in courts and capitals for his skeptical wit, was the Voltaire of his time. Sir Thomas More, toward the end of the sixty years, published
Utopia
, while Machiavelli, his opposite spirit in Italy, took a darker view of humanity in
The Prince
. Above all in Italy art and literature were honored as the supreme human achievement and, in being honored, produced an extraordinary fecundity of talent from Leonardo to Michelangelo to Titian and a host of others second only to the greatest. Literature was ornamented by Machiavelli’s works, by Francesco Guicciardini’s great
History of Italy
, by the comedies and satires of Pietro Aretino, by Ariosto’s extravagantly admired epic poem
Orlando Furioso
on the struggle between Christians and Moslems, by Castiglione’s
Book of the Courtier
.
Strangely, the efflorescence in culture reflected no comparable surge in human behavior but rather an astonishing debasement. Partly, this was owed to the absence in Italy of central authority in a monarch, which left the five major regions—Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples and the Papal States—plus the minor city-states like Mantua, Ferrara and the rest, in unrestrained and unending mutual conflict. Since the title to power of the ruling princes had originated in the degree of violence the founders had been ready to exercise, the measures they took to maintain or extend their sway were similarly uninhibited. Seizures, poison plots, treachery, murder and fratricide, imprisonment and torture were everyday methods employed without compunction.
To understand the popes we must look at the princes. When the subjects of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, ruler of Milan, murdered him in a church for his vices and oppressions, his brother, Ludovico il Moro, threw the heir, his nephew, into prison and seized the rule of Milan for himself. When the Pazzi family of Florence, antagonists of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, could endure the frustrations of their hatred no longer, they plotted to murder him and his handsome brother Giuliano during High Mass in the cathedral. The signal was to be the bell marking the elevation of the Host, and at this most solemn moment of the service, the swords of the attackers flashed. Giuliano was killed but Lorenzo alertly saved himself by his long sword and survived to direct a revenge of utter annihilation upon the Pazzi and their partisans. Assassinations were frequently planned to take place in churches, where the victim was less likely to be surrounded by an armed guard.
Most unpleasant of all were the kings of the Aragon house who ruled Naples. Ferrante (Ferdinand I), unscrupulous, ferocious, cynical and vindictive, concentrated all his efforts until his death in 1494 on the destruction of his opponents and in this process initiated more harm to Italy through internecine war than any other prince. His son and successor, Alfonso II, a brutal profligate, was described by the contemporary French historian Comines as “the cruelest, worst, most vicious and base man ever seen.” Like others of his kind he openly avowed his contempt for religion. The condottieri on whom the princes’ power rested shared the sentiment. As mercenaries, who fought for money, not loyalty, they were “full of contempt for all sacred things … caring nothing whether or not they died under the ban of the Church.”
Rulers’ habits could not fail of emulation by their subjects. The case of a physician and surgeon of the hospital of St. John Lateran, all the more grisly for being reported in the unemotional monotone of John Burchard, master of ceremonies of the papal court, whose dailyrecord is the indispensable source, reveals Renaissance life in Rome. He “left the hospital every day early in the morning in a short tunic and with a cross bow and shot everyone who crossed his path and pocketed his money.” He collaborated with the hospital’s confessor, who named to him the patients who
Utopia
, while Machiavelli, his opposite spirit in Italy, took a darker view of humanity in
The Prince
. Above all in Italy art and literature were honored as the supreme human achievement and, in being honored, produced an extraordinary fecundity of talent from Leonardo to Michelangelo to Titian and a host of others second only to the greatest. Literature was ornamented by Machiavelli’s works, by Francesco Guicciardini’s great
History of Italy
, by the comedies and satires of Pietro Aretino, by Ariosto’s extravagantly admired epic poem
Orlando Furioso
on the struggle between Christians and Moslems, by Castiglione’s
Book of the Courtier
.
Strangely, the efflorescence in culture reflected no comparable surge in human behavior but rather an astonishing debasement. Partly, this was owed to the absence in Italy of central authority in a monarch, which left the five major regions—Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples and the Papal States—plus the minor city-states like Mantua, Ferrara and the rest, in unrestrained and unending mutual conflict. Since the title to power of the ruling princes had originated in the degree of violence the founders had been ready to exercise, the measures they took to maintain or extend their sway were similarly uninhibited. Seizures, poison plots, treachery, murder and fratricide, imprisonment and torture were everyday methods employed without compunction.
To understand the popes we must look at the princes. When the subjects of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, ruler of Milan, murdered him in a church for his vices and oppressions, his brother, Ludovico il Moro, threw the heir, his nephew, into prison and seized the rule of Milan for himself. When the Pazzi family of Florence, antagonists of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, could endure the frustrations of their hatred no longer, they plotted to murder him and his handsome brother Giuliano during High Mass in the cathedral. The signal was to be the bell marking the elevation of the Host, and at this most solemn moment of the service, the swords of the attackers flashed. Giuliano was killed but Lorenzo alertly saved himself by his long sword and survived to direct a revenge of utter annihilation upon the Pazzi and their partisans. Assassinations were frequently planned to take place in churches, where the victim was less likely to be surrounded by an armed guard.
Most unpleasant of all were the kings of the Aragon house who ruled Naples. Ferrante (Ferdinand I), unscrupulous, ferocious, cynical and vindictive, concentrated all his efforts until his death in 1494 on the destruction of his opponents and in this process initiated more harm to Italy through internecine war than any other prince. His son and successor, Alfonso II, a brutal profligate, was described by the contemporary French historian Comines as “the cruelest, worst, most vicious and base man ever seen.” Like others of his kind he openly avowed his contempt for religion. The condottieri on whom the princes’ power rested shared the sentiment. As mercenaries, who fought for money, not loyalty, they were “full of contempt for all sacred things … caring nothing whether or not they died under the ban of the Church.”
Rulers’ habits could not fail of emulation by their subjects. The case of a physician and surgeon of the hospital of St. John Lateran, all the more grisly for being reported in the unemotional monotone of John Burchard, master of ceremonies of the papal court, whose dailyrecord is the indispensable source, reveals Renaissance life in Rome. He “left the hospital every day early in the morning in a short tunic and with a cross bow and shot everyone who crossed his path and pocketed his money.” He collaborated with the hospital’s confessor, who named to him the patients who
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