Part 73

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.

POPE NICHOLAS V TOMMASO PARENTUCELLI 1398-1455 ]

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).

GIROLAMO DONATO 1457-1511 ]

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). Taft is the name of a town in central Persia.