"They hung to Rome like a plague"; death of a man whose philosophy "became a self-portrait"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XVII

Even when peace is negotiated between Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, the lawless troops, demanding back pay, will not leave Rome.

"Famine and pest had followed the sack . . . the armies were rapidly depleted [by disease, desertion, feuds, hunger] but the survivors were tenacious and clung to Rome like the plague."

From his safe perch in Venice, Aretino launches caustic slavos against the Pope and his advisors.

The Pope is evacuated by the Emperor to Orvieto, which is where he receives the famous embassy from Henry VIII seeking to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Castiglione dies shortly after success of his efforts to reconcile the Pope and the Emperor; at the point where his service to others has finally been rewarded by his elevation to Bishop. Thus, poetically perhaps, Castiglione lives only so long as he is serving the ambitions of others.

Though it began as a portrait of others, "The Courtier" finally became a self-portrait of its author. After believing so determinedly in others, Roeder concludes, Castiglione was at last forced by his book's publication to believe in himself.

"'The Courtier,' so long in maturing and so often remoulded, underwent one more transformation in his mind and emerged with a new value and its last moral meaning. It was his religion."

Roeder reports that in later years the Emperor Charles is said to have kept three books by his bedside: Machiavelli's "The Prince," Castiglione's "The Courtier," and the Bible.


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