Aretino: "the miraculous monster of mankind"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XVIII (final)

The Renaissance wanes in the loss of Italy's dream of cultural supremacy: "sapped of religious faith, politically disrupted, dominated by the barbarian, Italy was demoralized; and the deepening despair of its society was manifest, like a phosphorescence of decay, in its lust for fame."

Roeder presents his fourth "lawgiver," Aretino, as a prophet of art ("the lust of the eye was the first revelation of his gospel") and, it would seem, media culture and consumerism -- Aretino forms a partnership with the painter Titian, marketing his work to noble patrons.

"The real religion of Italy," Roeder writes, "the impulse with which the Renaissance had been laboring all along, was the deathless passion of art."

Ushering in the modern (even postmodern) age, Aretino was adept at "persuading the world to accept him at his own valuation." In turn he assayed the value of others: "he created and controled public opinion; he dispensed censure and honor and made and unmade reputations."

Roeder continues: "He was the lawgiver of the vainglory of life. . . . Though his reputation rested on nothing more solid than puff, he lived on it."

More consumerism. Aretino "composed a whole series of epistles to the Venetians in praise of the table, spending hours of delicious gustation in the recollection and anticipation of food."

A random Roederism: "Life was a puzzle to those who lived it and a pattern to those who watched it."

Aretino considers himself "a miraculous monster of mankind" and sees his enormous appetites as a testament to the glories of God's creation.

He sees Christ as in all things benevolent and forgiving: "Christ, so far as we know, in His humanity, left no prisons nor wheels nor ropes nor flames to torture those who, if they have misread His laws, confess their error. He punishes with mercy all those who cry."

His self-image so closely tied to his robust nature, Aretino dreads the arrival of old age even more than most men: "No. A thousand times no -- against the dread advances of age Aretino mustered all his animal spirits and shook his whole body in vigorous denial."

Aretino's achievement: "Of all the ideals for which men had lived and suffered and died he had made a mockery and a farce; he had voided every creed and discredited every code; his work was done. He had accomplished his mission. He had destroyed all the superiorities of man to nature."

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"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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The industry of destruction; death of "a sheep in wolf's clothing"

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

Aretino is alternately panygerist and critic and given to exceeding his boundaries -- the polar opposite to Castiglione who revels in boundaries.
Running afoul of the Pope and nearly dragging his current patron, Federico. Gonzaga, into that ditch, Aretino finds himself an outcast from the courts of the powerful.

Embracing that role, Aretino styles himself as "the Truth Teller, born to strip men of their pretences; and of all their pretences, the most transparent were their pretensions to honor, truth, loyalty, courage. Princes, like parasites, knew no law but self-interest and he was their Scourge."

Aretino takes refuge in Venice, "the liberal asylum of the outcast, the expatriate, the freethinker."

With the Spanish Imperial armies surging into Italy, Federico worries about the future of his principality: "he was in the position -- the lofty position of the weathervane -- to scan the map of Italy and discern the drift of the morrow."

Roeder describes the new sack of Rome by murderous, plundering Spanish and German troops: "day after day the industry of destruction progressed . . . the city was divided into districts and the harrow passed over it slowly, exhaustively.

Amorality, then as now, of the banking and legal professions: "To meet the needs of the army, banks reopened and notaries reappeared, drafting inventories, registering bills of ransom, cashing notes of exchange, and storing loot. Like maggots on a charnel pile, they digested the disaster." Extortion becomes an industry, torture a pastime of idling troops.

German troops engage in a daily revelry of sacrilidge, tormenting priests, staging mock masses, and proclaiming Luther the pope.

Looking out over the devastation and rapine from his refuge at Castel Saint Angelo (with "slaughtered innocents lying moth-like below its walls") the Pope "as a cat licks itself, wept himself clean."

On Machiavelli's death, Roeder concludes he was "a sheep in wolf's clothing," that however unscrupulous his principles, his integrity was "flagrant" and his patriotism unstinting.

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The rise of satire

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

Leo's favorite pastime is hunting. Roeder describes one five week fit of venery that involved a cavalvade of 2000 hunters, traveling to far-flung Papal preserves, pursuing an array of beasts including red deer, wolves, hares, hosts, stags, and hedgehogs.

Leo plays cards with abandon: "he played cards briskly, promptly paying his losses and flinging his winnings over his shoulder."

Roeder introduces the satirist Aretino whose anonymous lampoons give him great influence over the affairs of the Vatican. Recognizing satire and gossip as the lifeblood of the Vatican, Castiglione sees the low-born Aretino's dominance of that form as a portent of further social decay.

Machiavelli finally advances within the Medici ranks not because of his political theory but due to his satire -- the success of his play "The Mandrake."

Pope Leo dies and Cardinals are assembled to elect successor, with both Medici and Gonzagan heirs vying.

Election drags on for so long, that one Cardinal dies in the process and rations for electors are reduced to one meal a day and then to just bread and water in order to hasten their deliberations.

Astoundingly, the new Pope, Adrian VI, is Flemish and a reformer who lives in a small corner of the Vatican with a single housekeeper. Aretino rails against his pedantry. Rome's economy, dependent on Papal largesse, collapses.

Adrian lives only a short time and, after another long conclave, a new Medici Pope is elected: Clement VII.


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Castiglione: "Life compressed into a sheaf of shining pages"

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

Castiglione's "The Courtier" a testament to his formative years at the peaceful, enlightened court of Urbino. Roeder calls it a "theory of the leisure class."

His goal is to bring the principles of the now dissolved court of Urbino -- conviviality, conciliation, adaptability, self-discipline, humanity -- into practice in the tumultuous world of Rome and Italian society in general.

Manners "the convivial form of morals . . . elementary and unchanging." but even as he writes "The Courtier," Castiglione can see the futility, the belatedness of his tribute.

Upon completion of "The Courtier," Roeder has Castiglione reflect "there it lay, the substance of his life, compressed into a little sheaf of shining pages."

Having experienced too early the "hardening world of pleasure and intrigue," the once charming boy favorite of Julius, Federico Gonzaga has coarsened into a surly, lustful, and perhaps murderous youth. Isabelle d'Este places him under Castiglione's tutelage.

The Medici Pope Leo senses the spirit of the time and it is not religion (Savaranola) or politics (Machiavelli) but rather art. Thus "swarms of artists, scholars, poets" flocked to Rome to take advantage of his prodigality.

Leo is not drawn to the strife of Michaelangelo, prefering instead the graceful facility of Rafael. Leo: "in art he loved ease and charm; life was strenuous enough, and much too harsh."

After Lorenzo d'Medici's death, his uncle Pope Leo tries to reconcile with the previously ousted Gonzaga clan: "he applied on every occasion the emollient salves of his softest phrases to the sore spot . . . The mere mention of the name of Gonzaga set his mouth flowing with unctious saliva."

The loyal Castiglione then sent as an emissary to Rome to negotiate on behalf of the Gonzaga.

Castiglione writes from the court of the inconstant, calculating Pope: "this is the house of change and variation and it is difficult to discover its secrets."

Negotiating with Leo, Charles V of Spain, recently made Holy Roman Emperor, uses suppression or support of the Lutherans as a bargaining chip.

Leo's indecisiveness: "he vacillated like a delicate instrument, vibrating nervously to every atmospheric disturbance."

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The Prince: "A code of cultured savagery"

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

Florence is besieged by Julius' Spanish allies and the Republic falls, bringing the return of the previously deposed Medici. Upon Julius's death, Giovanni Medici is named Pope (taking the name Leo X) and Florence is once again ascendent.

Machiavelli's connection to the former Republican government of Florence places him under suspicion and he is arrested. At first, he cannot believe he can so quickly be disgraced -- "January does not vex me, provided February favors me." But he is falsely implicated in a plot, imprisoned, and tortured.

Machiavelli's friends arrange for his freedom and he goes into exile. There, impoverished, he consorts by day with rural tradesmen -- a butcher, a miller and two furnace makers -- but at night figuratively dons "royal and Curial robes" and mentally enters the world high politics, the world of The Prince.

The Prince, Roeder suggests, is in one sense Machiavelli's application for employment by the Medici, specifically Giuliano Medici who seeks to parlay his brother's Papacy into a state much as Caesare Borgia attempted. In line with this, The Prince is also an attempt to rehabilitate the memory of Caesare Borgia and his campaign to create a powerful state from Italy's patchwork of squabbling, divided city states. Ironically, Giuliano will be more influenced by Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, which is being written at the same time in another corner of Italy.

Roeder suggests that, in the end, The Prince "unwittingly confirms Savanarola," replacing the Friar's religious faith with a faith in the State and thus equally vulnerable to the liberatory spirit of the era. It is, thus, backwards looking, doomed to failure and "a melancholy work."

"For the salvation of Italy [Machiavelli] prescribed a code of cultured savagery, which was too primitive to be sucessfully practiced by a race which, for better or for worse, had outgrown barbarism."

"For how long does the world overlook the inoffensive?"

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

In his military campaign to reclaim Perugia and Bologna for the Holy See, Julius II brings virtually the entire College of Cardinals with him as part of his baggage train.

When Castiglione returns to Urbino after his mission to England, he sees the vulnerability of that kingdom of ease and joy: "it needed so little to dispell that idyllic world -- a mere breath of struggle . . . how long does the world overlook the inoffensive?"

In order to free her husband from Venetian prison, the cultured Isabelle d'Este reluctantly agrees to send her beloved 10 year-old son and heir, Federico, to live with the Pope as a sign of good faith and parole.

Isabella's husband, Duke Francesco Gonzaga is "a virile nonentity" who spends most of his time with his dogs. "His animal coarseness, his primitive vanity . . . were a perpetual provocation to the civilized woman he had married."

Isabelle's ambition for her son Federico, on the other hand, is for him to be "a humane and enlightened Prince." Federico was Isabella's "living image, with his silken hair, his innocent eyes, his tender and manly nature; at eight he was already singing Virgilian hexameters at her knee, in a thin, high childish treble." His father, Duke Francesco, had grumbled at this cultured heir, threatening ineffectually "to take the boy over and make a man of him."

In addition to the demand for parole, Isabella sees the advantage of removing sweet Federico from Duke Francisco's influence. When the Duke is released from the Venetian prison, she sends Federico to the Vatican, accompanied by "tutors, a major domo, a lutist" and a collection of holy relics.

Wittingly or not (Julian II is widely rumored to be more than fond of young boys and his obsession with Michaelangelo's art further suggests his appreciation of the male form), Isabella's dispatch of the angelic, 10 year-old Federico to Rome has the result of taming the martial Pope; Julian become Federico's (and, thus, Isabella d'Este's) "hostage" to good behavior rather than the other way around.

Castiglione: Scion of an abolished world

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

Roeder introduces the third of his major Renaissance Italian "law givers" -- Castiglione. As Savanarola was situated as one who rises through his ability to speak and Machiavelli as one who sees, so Castiglione is presented as one who listens.

The nobly born Castiglione part of "a small and antiquated class, which the new age was rapidly outmoding . . . its roots lay in an abolished world and its traditional employments -- military, diplomatic, ecclesiastical -- had deteriorated with the rise of the new mercantile civilization of the Renaissance."

Roeder suggests that the aristocratic and religious mentalities share essential traits: both rely on discipline and discrimination and on the repression of what is new and vital. As religion has morals, so the aristocracy has manners.

Castiglione finds a haven in the remote mountain city state of Urbino, which had been seized by Cesare Borgia as part of his land grab, but then restored to its Duke Guidobaldo upon the ascension of Julius II.

Guidobaldo and his wife Elizabetta make of Urbino an "isolated, irresponsible" enclave of art, mirth, and joy, drawing to that city refugee and dispossessed nobles. Guidobaldo and Elizabetta's Urbino "the expression of an urbane, mellow, and balanced spirit, of an exquisite mean which only a ripe culture could produce."

"Honesty in pawn to necessity"

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

The Borgia Pope dies and his body swells to enormous proportions: "the cheeks were enormous, the nose had doubled, the tongue clogged his mouth, the skin was black." All this gives rise to rumors of poisoning as his body is unceremoniously crammed into a coffin.

Caesare caught fever at same dinner and lies deathly ill. He survives his father and -- as his power base is the Vatican armies -- is relieved when choice for the next Pope is elderly and ailing, a caretaker. He reigns for 26 days.

Though scrupulously honest, Cardinal della Rovere makes a bargain with Caesare Borgia in order to amass votes to become Pope (Julius II). "They had compromised him, but his honesty had only been in pawn to necessity."

Julius almost immediately turns on Caesare, who quickly crumbles and goes penniless into exile. His eclipse as rapid as Savaronarola's; more ignomunious if less violent. At one point, in effort to stave-off exile, Cesare tries to reconcile with Duke of Urbino, who is visiting with Julius in Rome; when Guidobaldo refuses to admit him, Cesare sneaks in through secret Vatican passageway and prostrates himself, asking forgiveness, before the appalled noble.

Just as the Friar could not rule from soulcraft alone, so the Condotteri could not succeed by physical might alone.


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The Borgia Papacy

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

Vatican scandals under the Borgias include myth of the "chestnut supper" at which it is rumored "50 naked courtesans and valets groveled on the floor -- gamboling for chestnuts and copulating at the feet of the Holy Father.

Cesare Borgia creates a power base from his command of the Vatican armies during his father's Papacy.  Machiavelli sees in the Borgias' reputation for sexual appetite an expression of their political vitality.

Caesare Borgia is effective both in the field and in negotiations; he "had the grace of a bullfighter and the practiced unction of a churchman" and "for all his muscular bearing, he might have seemed dapper."

The mercenary Vitellozzo Vitelli plots against his captain Caesare: "moody with syphylis, he nursed a sullen venereal anger and roused other malcontents."

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Machiavelli: open eyed and close mouthed

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

The young Machiavelli begins his first government job just weeks after Savonarola's burning. Described by Roeder as "open-eyed, close-mouthed . . . his only handicap was the originality of his mind"

Italian city states in this time do not have citizen soliders; warfare carried out by freelance militias (condotta) or mercenaries.

From fiasco of Pisan Wars, Machiavelli concludes that force requires faith (such as Savanarola inspired) to succeed. He sees Savaranola as both astute and a simpleton.

Regarding the impressionable nature of the populace, Caesare Borgia perceives: "in the political arena the glamor of crime, the reputation of mystery, swiftness, and ruthlessness was an immense asset."

Machiavelli sees a force of nature at work in Cesare Borgia's deployment of raw power in securing himself a state in Romagna.

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The burning of Savanarola

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

Savanarola sternly criticized by Vatican as an "innovator" and abandoned by his political partisans in Florence. Roeder concludes that "the great theocratic experiment had failed . . . He had demonstrated exhaustively the sterility of Christianity either as a system of statecraft or a way of practical life."

Roeder avers that "the Roman tradition had been broken by two calamities, the barbarian invasions and the effeminizing influence of Christianity." Latter calls to mind that Savaronola, in Roeder's account, entered monastery out of failed romance and disgust over the masculine behavioral norms of his fellow students."

Roeder relates Machiavelli's witnessing of Savanarola's last sermons. Suggests that while Machiavelli sees clearly everything on the surface, he fails to understand Savanarola's inspiration, his sincere belief in his rightness. Machiavelli's insights are purely cerebral; he is blind to the spiritual.

On failure of Savanarola's trial and torture to reveal any motives for his pronouncements other than sincere belief, Roeder writes that "the Renaissance was trying the Middle Ages."

Savanarola hanged and burned in the Piazza -- with children casting stones at his corpse -- sharing the fate of so many "vanities" burned during his ascent.

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The burning of the vanities

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

The burning of the vanities: "amid billowing crowds of smoke, the great pyramid of vainglories collected by [Savaronarola's] children. -- lewd pictures and books, lutes, cards, mirrors, and trinkets -- crumbled on the piazza, filling the nostrils of the godly with the acrid satisfaction of sic gloria."

Savanarola picks-up the intensity of his attack on the corruption of Rome and the church: "O whore of a Church, you have shown your foulness to the whole world, and your stench rises to Heaven."

Savanarola's intransigence: "the Friar was governed by a logic deeper than reason. Intoxicated with conviction, stimulated by struggle . . . His inveterate habit of simplifying every problem, reducing it to the simple black and white of right and wrong, had at last developed into an obsession."

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"The virus of power"

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

In expelling French from Italy, Venetians enlist the mercenary Stradiouts: "the savage, head-hunting Albanian cavalry who had been promised a gold coin and a kiss from the lips of their commander for every French head."

In power vacuum following French invasion and expulsion, Savaranola grasps political power: "the virus of power had entered his veins and in its most insidious form, as an inalienable responsibility."

Another Maoist (or Taliban) resonance in Savaronarola's program of organizing Florentine youth into squads of moral enforcement teams as part of his campaign to suppress Carnival.

Savaronarola's young moral enforcers even more active during Lent: "they attacked the pastry sellers, they remonstrated with richly-dressed women, and when the remonstrance failed, stripped them of their veils and vanities."

Here the resonance is with Hitler's Nazi youth or Stalin's Communist Youth Brigades: "with the zeal of converts and the ardor of minors, they spied on and reported the sins of their parents" and patrolled the taverns and streets, causing dice games to break-up.


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Savanarola as Mao

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

Election of licentious, greedy, but politically astute Roderigo Borgia as Pope: "a large bovine man, he weighed two hundred pounds worth of stability and order."

Savaranola heightens the level of his prophecy of godly retribution, the emblem of which becomes an arm and sword reaching down from the clouds with the words: "the sword of the Lord, swift over the earth and sudden."

Savaranola's reform of his convent of San Marco resonant of Mao's cultural revolution: a stamping out of property and individuality achieved by inciting the zeal of the youngest followers followed by a period of relaxed stringency and a fascination with pageantry (including one in which a young boy is dressed-up as the Virgin and adored by the chanting monks).

Also thought of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson post-9/11 and Katrina in Savanarola's gleefull greeting of the murdurous French invasion of Italy as act of personal vindication and godly retribution: "Lo the sword is come, the prophecies are verified, the scourging has begun . . . the time of singing and dancing is over; now is the time to weep your sins with torrents of tears."


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From mystagogue to demagogue

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

Roeder describes Savaronarola's transformation from scourge of the clergy to social critic -- "from mystigogue to demagogue" -- and, thus threat to Lorenzo di Medici's "invisible dictatorship."

The Medici acquire political power to protect their fortune, perceiving that: "wealth without power is insecure"

Lorenzo believes that "man is moved by self-interest" and thus, for him, Savaronarola is "a moral anomaly."

Lorenzo "lived by flair, by shrewdness, always alert to the promptings of life, improvising his conduct with every occasion, consistent to nothing but continual variety."

Lorenzo practically stalks Savaronarola, trying to bring him into his orbit. Only on his deathbed does Lorenzo succeed, but the intractable monk places conditions on hearing his confession. Upon Savaranola delivering the last, that he restore the freedom of Florence, Lorenzo "stares at him incredulously" then "slowly rolls over and dies."

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"He craved it with a hungry and connubial ardor"

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

Savonarola, known for raging against clerical excess, recruited to preach in Florence by the effete intellectual Pico del Mirandola, who seeks a form of revenge against the church hierarchy for its cracking down on his Humanist intellectual projects.

Preaching to a large crowd of Florentines: "With the voice of the whirlwind he launched his prediction of the imminent scourging of the church . . . The words poured from him like a rhetorical haemorrage, anguish galvanized all his powers, and in a rush of invective, expostilation, threats, and appeals, he pressed and kneaded the multitude until the sluggish mass began to quicken and stir.

As Savonarola's crowds grow, he becomes addicted to oratory: "he craved it with a hungry and connubial ardor."

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"A Stagnant Replica of the Real World"

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

Spurned by his first love and finding the world a place where "all vices are lauded and all virtues derided," the wealthy youth Savonarola seeks the "slow immersion into death" of the cloister.

Instead he finds "a small stagnant replica of the real world without," rife with politics, self-indulgence, and careerism. "The entire edifice was rotten with a ramifying network of decay. He saw the issue with the absolute insight of innocent youth, and it affected him like a personal injury."

Roeder later describes resentment of Savonarola by a young sonnambulist monk who ("mischievous as a monkey") plays pranks in his pretended unconscious ramblings and claims religious visions. He becomes jealous when Savonarola, who had dismissed the younger monk's visions, begins to report his own far more stern prophesies.

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