The Swerve (42 page)

 

19
Witt,
In the Footstep
s, p. 308.

 

20
Symonds,
Renaissance in Italy
, pp. 80–81.

 

21
“Just imagine,” Niccoli wrote to the fiscal officials near the end of his life, “what sort of tax my poor goods can bear, with all the debts and pressing expenses I have. Which is why, begging your humanity and clemency, I pray that it will please you to treat me in such a way that current taxes will not force me in my old age to die far from my birthplace, where I have spent all I had.” Quoted in Martines,
Social World
, p. 116.

 

22
Alberti,
The Family in Renaissance Florence
(
Libri della Famiglia
), trans. Renée Neu Watkins (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969), 2:98. It is sometimes claimed that this vision of companionate marriage was only introduced by Protestantism, but there is considerable evidence of its existence much earlier.

 

23
Origo,
Merchant of Prato
, p. 179.

 

24
Vespasiano da Bisticci,
The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of the Illustrious Men of the XV Century
, trans. William George and Emily Waters (London: Routledge, 1926), p. 402.

 

25
“One day, when Nicolao was leaving his house, he saw a boy who had around his neck a chalcedony engraved with a figure by the hand of Polycleitus, a beautiful work. He enquired of the boy his father’s name, and having learnt this, sent to ask him if he would sell the stone; the father readily consented, like one who neither knew what it was nor valued it. Nicolao sent him five florins in exchange, and the good man to whom it had belonged deemed that he had paid him more than double its value”—Ibid., p. 399. In this case at least, the expenditure proved a very good investment: “There was in Florence in the time of Pope Eugenius a certain Maestro Luigi, the Patriarch, who took great interest in such things as these, and he sent word to Nicolao, asking if he might see the chalcedony. Nicolao sent it to him, and it pleased him so greatly that he kept it, and sent to Nicolao two hundred golden ducats, and he urged him so much that Nicolao, not being a rich man, let him have it. After the death of this Patriarch it passed to Pope Paul, and then to Lorenzo de’ Medici,” ibid., p. 399. For a remarkable tracking of the movements through time of a single ancient cameo, see Luca Giuliani,
Ein Geschenk für den Kaiser: Das Geheimnis des grossen Kameo
(Munich: Beck, 2010).

 

26
In reality, Niccoli’s vision exceeded his means: he died massively in debt. But the debt was canceled by his friend Cosimo de’ Medici, in exchange for the right to dispose of the collection. Half of the manuscripts went to the new Library of S. Marco, where they were housed in Michelozzi’s magnificent structure; the other half formed the core of the city’s great Laurentian Library. Though he was responsible for its creation, the idea of the public library was not Niccoli’s alone. It had been called for by Salutati. Cf. Berthold L. Ullman and Philip A. Stadter,
The Public Library of Renaissance Florence: Niccolò Niccoli, Cosimo de’ Medici, and the Library of San Marco
(Padua: Antenore, 1972), p. 6.

 

27
Cino Rinuccini,
Invettiva contro a cierti calunniatori di Dante e di messer Francesco Petrarcha and di messer Giovanni Boccacio
, cited in Witt,
In the Footsteps
, p. 270. See Ronald Witt, “Cino
Rinuccini’s
Risponsiva alla Invetirra di Messer Antonio Lusco
,”
Renaissance Quarterly
23 (1970), pp. 133–49.

 

28
Bruni,
Dialogus
1, in Martines,
Social World
, p. 235.

 

29
Ibid.

 

30
Martines,
Social World
, p. 241.

 

31
Vespasiano Memoirs
, p. 353.

 

32
Martines,
Social World
, p. 265.

 

CHAPTER SIX: IN THE LIE FACTORY

 

1
See Poggio to Niccoli, February 12, 1421: “For I am not one of those perfect men, who are commanded to abandon father and mother and sell everything and give to the poor; that power belonged to very few people and only long ago, in an earlier age”—Gordan,
Two Renaissance Book Hunters
, p. 49.

 

2
William Shepherd,
Life of Poggio Bracciolini
(Liverpool: Longman et al., 1837), p. 185.

 

3
Gordan,
Two Renaissance Book Hunters
, p. 58.

 

4
Peter Partner,
The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 115.

 

5
Lapo da Castiglionchio,
On the Excellence and Dignity of the Roman Court
, in Christopher Celenza,
Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia: Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger’s De curiae commodis
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 111.

 

6
Ibid., p. 127.

 

7
Ibid., p. 155.

 

8
Ibid., p. 205.

 

9
See Celenza,
Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia
, pp. 25–26.

 

10
Ibid., p. 177.

 

11
Poggio,
The Facetiae, or Jocose Tales of Poggio
, 2 vols. (Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1879), Conclusion, p. 231. (References are to the volume in this Paris edition and to the number of the tale.) The
manuscript
of the
Facetiae
did not appear until 1457, two years before Poggio’s death, but Poggio represents the stories as circulating among the scriptors and secretaries many years earlier. Cf. Lionello Sozzi, “Le ‘Facezie’ e la loro fortuna Europea,” in
Poggio Bracciolini 1380–1980: Nel VI centenario della nascità
(Florence: Sansoni, 1982), pp. 235–59.

 

12
Ibid., 1:16.

 

13
Ibid., 1:50.

 

14
Ibid., 1:5, 1:45, 1:123, 2:133.

 

15
Ibid., 2:161.

 

16
Jesús Martínez de Bujanda,
Index des Livres Interdits
, 11 vols. (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Centre d’études de la Renaissance; Geneva: Droz; Montreal: Médiaspaul, 1984–2002), 11 (Rome):33.

 

17
Poggio,
Facetiae
, 1:23.

 

18
Ibid., 1:113.

 

19
Ibid., 2:187.

 

20
John Monfasani,
George of Trebizond
:
A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic
(Leiden: Brill, 1976), p. 110.

 

21
Symonds,
The Revival of Learning
(New York: C. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960), p. 176. “In the fifteenth century scholarship was all-absorbing,” p. 177.

 

22
“Aspira ad virtutem recta, non hac tortuosa ac fallaci via; fac, ut mens conveniat verbis, opera sint ostentationi similia; enitere ut spiritus paupertas vestium paupertatem excedat, tunc fugies simulatoris crimen; tunc tibit et reliquis proderis vera virtute. Sed dum te quantunvis hominem humilem et abiectum videro Curiam frequentatem, non solum hypocritam, sed pessimum hypocritam iudicabo.” (17: p. 97). Poggio Bracciolini,
Opera omnia
, 4 vols. (Turin: Erasmo, 1964–69).

 

23
Gordan,
Two Renaissance Book Hunters
, pp. 156, 158.

 

24
Ibid., p. 54.

 

25
Ibid., p. 75.

 

26
Ibid., p. 66.

 

27
Ibid., p. 68.

 

28
Ibid., pp. 22–24.

 

29
Ibid., p. 146.

 

30
Ibid.

 

31
Ibid., p. 148.

 

32
Ibid., p. 164.

 

33
Ibid., p. 166.

 

34
Ibid., p. 173.

 

35
Ibid., p. 150.

 

36
The precise date of Poggio’s appointment as apostolic secretary to John XXIII is unclear. In 1411 he was listed as the pope’s scriptor and close associate (
familiaris
). But a papal bull of June 1, 1412, is signed by Poggio as
Secretarius
(as is a later bull, dating from the time of the General Council of Constance), and Poggio referred to himself during this period as
Poggius Secretarius apostolicus
. Cf. Walser,
Poggius Florentinus: Leben und Werke
, p. 25, n4.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN: A PIT TO CATCH FOXES

 

1
For much of the fourteenth century the popes had resided at Avignon; only in 1377 did the French-born Gregory XI, supposedly inspired by the stirring words of St. Catherine of Siena, return the papal court to Rome. When Gregory died the next year, crowds of Romans, fearing that a new French pope would almost certainly be drawn back to the civilized pleasures and security of Avignon, encircled the conclave of cardinals and noisily demanded the election of an Italian. The Neapolitan Bartolomeo Prignano was duly elected and assumed the title Urban VI. Five months later the French faction of cardinals, claiming that they had been coerced by a howling mob and that the election was therefore invalid, held a new conclave in which they elected Robert of Geneva, who settled in Avignon and called himself Clement VII. There were now two rival popes.

The French faction had chosen a hard man for a hard time: Robert of Geneva had distinguished himself the year before, when as papal legate in charge of a company of Breton soldiers, he promised a complete amnesty to the rebellious citizens of Cesena if they would open
their
gates to him. When the gates were opened, he ordered a general massacre. “Kill them all,” he was heard shouting. Urban VI, for his part, raised money to hire mercenaries, busied himself with the fantastically complicated alliances and betrayals of Italian politics, enriched his family, narrowly escaped traps set for him, ordered the torture and execution of his enemies, and repeatedly fled from and reentered Rome. Urban declared his French rival the antipope; Robert declared Urban the anti-Christ. The sordid details do not directly concern us—by the time Poggio came on the scene, both Robert of Geneva and Urban VI were dead and had been replaced by other equally problematical contenders for the papal see.

 

2
See Poggio’s melancholy observation in
De varietate fortunae
: “Survey the … hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens”—Quoted in Edward Gibbon,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, 6 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1910), 6:617.

 

3
Ibid., 6:302. Gibbon uses this passage as the climax of his vast
magnum opus
, the summary articulation of the disaster that had befallen Rome.

 

4
Eustace J. Kitts,
In the Days of the Councils: A Sketch of the Life and Times of Baldassare Cossa (Afterward Pope John the Twenty-Third)
(London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1908), p. 152.

 

5
Ibid., pp. 163–64.

 

6
Ulrich Richental,
Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–1418
(“Richental’s Chronicle of the Council of Constance”), in
The Council of Constance: The Unification of the Church
, ed. John Hine Mundy and Kennerly M. Woody, trans. Louise Ropes Loomis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 84–199.

 

7
See, e.g., Remigio Sabbadini,
Le Scoperte dei Codici Latini e Greci ne Secoli XIV e XV
(Florence: Sansoni, 1905), 1:76–77.

 

8
“Richental’s Chronicle,” p. 190.

 

9
“Some have said that a great crowd of persons were executed for robbery, murder, and other crimes, but that is not the truth. I could not learn from our magistrates at Constance that more than twenty-two had been put to death for any such cause”—“Richental’s Chronicle,” p. 157.

 

10
Ibid., pp. 91, 100.

 

11
Quoted in Gordon Leff,
Heresy, Philosophy and Religion in the Medieval West
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), p 122.

 

12
Kitts,
In the Days of the Councils
, p. 335.

 

13
“Richental’s Chronicle,” p. 114.

 

14
Ibid., p. 116.

 

15
This is Richental’s account. Another contemporary observer, Guillaume Fillastre, has a different version of the event: “the Pope, realizing his situation, left the city by river during the night between Wednesday and Thursday, March 21, after midnight, under escort provided by Frederick, duke of Austria”—in
The Council of Constance
, p. 222.