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."