Erasmus, who, in his Ciceronianus (1523), singles him out as a typical Ciceronian'. Leo's posthumous fame as a patron of learning has been partly enhanced by the phrase of Erasmus, who marked the transition from Julius II to Leo X in the words :-'an age worse than that of iron was suddenly transformed into an age of gold". Leo's 'golden days' have been celebrated in Pope's Essay on Criticism; and, when Leo died, his tomb was strewn with verses lamenting the passing away of the 'golden age”. Leo's successor, Adrian VI (1522-3), cared little for classical literature or Greek art. In the presence of an Adrian VI envoy from Venice, after glancing for a moment at the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvedere, he turned away, and said with a sigh:-'They are the idols of the ancients". The pontificate of the second Medicean Pope, Clement VII (1523-34), saw a brief revival of learning. Piero Valeriano of Belluno (1477-1558), who had lived Clement VII Valeriano in Rome since 1509, and had been a favourite of Leo X, and a friend of that multifarious scholar, Cardinal Egidius Canisius of Viterbo, was now recalled from Naples, and appointed professor of Eloquence. His fame as an antiquarian, as a critic of Virgil, and as a successful imitator of Horace and Propertius, is eclipsed by his thrilling account of the calamities that befell the scholars of his time. The greatest of these calamities was the Sack of Rome by the Spanish and German troops of Charles V in the month of May, 15277. In that overwhelming catastrophe many an artist and many a scholar perished, or suffered grievous losses, or passed into exile. The learned recluse, who had aided Raphael in the study of Vitruvius, died a miserable death in a hospital; the literary critic of the 1 p. 82 f, ed. 1621. Cp. Jovius, no. 67 (portrait on p. 127, and in Bullart's Académie, ii (1682) 156); Sabbadini, Ciceronianismo, 52–60; Gregorovius, viii 361f; Harvard Lectures, 160 f. 2 Ep. 174. 3 Gregorovius, viii 432. 4 Negri in Lettere di Principi, i 113 (Venice, 1581); cp. Valeriano, ii 34. 5 Gregorovius, viii 341 f. 6 Portrait (in fur cloak, with strong face and fine eyes) in Philippus Galleus, Effigies, ii (Antwerp, 1577) 36. 7 Creighton, vi 339–344, and Diaries quoted ib. 381-3, 418–437. Latin poets of that age, Lilio Giraldi, had to lament the loss of all his books; the writer of the eulogies of learned men, Paolo Giovio, was bereft of his only copy of part of the first decade of his great History of Rome, while the head of the Roman Academy saw most of his fine collection of Mss and antiquities dispersed and destroyed. Valeriano was absent from Rome during this appalling calamity, but on his return he found in the strange adventures of those who had lingered in the doomed city, much of the material for his work on the misfortunes of scholars'1. Giovio, at the close of his brief biographies, bids a sad farewell to the scholars of his own nation. The Germans, he laments, 'have robbed exhausted Greece and slumbering Italy of the ornaments of peace, of learning, and of the flower of the arts'. Yet this 'hostile age' has left us something of our ancient heritage'. 'If, after the almost utter loss of liberty, we may still glory in anything, we may boast that we hold the citadel of imperishable eloquence.' Every citizen of Rome must 'guard this post, in order that under the banner of Bembo and Sadoleto, we may heroically defend the remnant of the great bequest of our forefathers". Immediately after the great disaster, men were saying on all sides that the light of the world had perished. Sadoleto, who had left for his bishopric in the South of France, wrote to the head of the Roman Academy recalling those happy meetings that had now been broken up by the cruel fate of Rome3. He himself received a letter from Bembo, who had withdrawn to Padua, exhorting him to bury their common misfortunes in a life of study; and another from Erasmus, saying that this terrible event had affected the whole earth; for Rome was not only the fortress of the Christian religion, the instructress of noble minds, but also the mother of the nations; her fall was not the fall of the city, but of the world5. 1 De literatorum infelicitate, Venice, 1620; cp. Roscoe's Leo X, c. 21; Gregorovius viii 334, 357, 651; Symonds, ii 443 f. 2 Elogia, ad fin.; Gregorovius, viii 350. 3 Sadoleto, Epp. i 106. Cp. Gregorovius, viii 654 f. 4 Bembo, Epp. Fam. iii 24. 5 Erasmus, Ep. 988. BOOK II. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Videmus Latinam eruditionem, quamvis impendiosam, citra Graecismum mancam esse ac dimidiatam. Apud nos enim rivuli vix quidam sunt et lacunculae lutulentae; apud illos fontes purissimi et flumina aurum volventia. ERASMUS, Ep. 149 ed. Allen, 1906; (Paris, 1501). Capessite ergo sana studia...; veteres Latinos colite, Graeca amplexamini, sine quibus Latina tractari nequeunt. Ea pro omnium litterarum usu ingenium alent mitius, atque elegantius undequaque reddent. MELANCHTHON, De Corrigendis Adulescentiae Linguae Graecae osoribus ita responsum volo, omnem elegantem doctrinam, omnem cognitionem dignam hominis ingenui studio, uno verbo, quicquid usquam est politiorum disciplinarum, nullis aliis, quam Graecorum libris ac literis, contineri. MURETUS, Or. II iv (Rome, 1573). |