The Paideia of Humanism

One of our underlying themes is the continuity between medieval chivalry and Renaissance civic service within both republican communes and seigniorial courts. We shall find a first example in a widely circulating French text by Jean Miélot, derived from a free interpretation in Latin by Giovanni Aurispa (ca. 1376–1459) of an ancient story recorded in the Latin Livy and the Greek Lucian. This text superimposed the chivalrous mold over classical heroes in an underworld debate among Hannibal, Alexander, and Scipio Africanus, who argued before Minos about which of them had most excelled “by his knightly deeds.” It is a striking case of our themes coming together despite their being identifiable with apparently incompatible mentalities. It is also an eloquent example of the way stories and texts can be bent to timely use in different cultural climates. Contrary to Lucian's text, where Alexander and Hannibal won first and second places for military glory, in Aurispa's and Miélot's renderings Minos ruled in favor of Scipio because his achievements were inspired not by a search for personal honor and glory but by the will to maintain the dignity of the Roman name. In other words, at the same time that Miélot presented Scipio as a chivalrous hero, his preface stressed the point, also made by Aurispa, that Scipio acted out of duty to the fatherland.^[1] While tracing this intriguing text incorrectly, M. Keen (235) finds “a back-handed dig here at the

quest for vainglory, which had inspired Hannibal and Alexander and had been their ultimate undoing, and which the critics constantly identified as one of the besetting sins of knighthood. The general moral is clear, and its emphasis is on the value of public service, whose aim is to uphold not the fame of an individual, but the honor and fortune of a people.” In sum, we could hardly find a better example of civic humanism at work within the legacy of chivalric ideology.^[2]

Aurispa brought Lucian's dialogues and many other Greek manuscripts to Italy from Constantinople. In his free rendering of the competition between the three generals before Minos (1425–1427) he gave the story a completely new twist by introducing into it the humanistic principle that true virtue consists of service to the public good (mostly indicated with the term patria, rendered in Miélot's version as chose publique ). Miélot's version, executed for Philip the Good in 1449–1450, was usually transmitted under the title “Débat entre trois chevalereux princes,” which carried a strong Burgundian flavor. The often accompanying translation of Buonaccorso's text was entitled, in turn, Controversie de noblesse. (The French version of Llull's Ordre de chevalerie also accompanied those two texts in B.R. MS. 10493–10497 of Brussels.)

What deserves all our attention is that the virtues of Aurispa's and Miélot's Scipio are not theological but cardinal (mainly prudence and fortitude), hence secular, and we have noted that this shift already characterized the medieval tradition of curiality on the supporting ground of its Ciceronian component (see my chap. 2). Aurispa identified this ethical strain with humanitas, rendered by Miélot with vertus— chivalric virtues which thus became equivalent to the humanistic ideal of service to the fatherland (la chose publique ).^[3]

We could trace our steps even further back and find continuity and implicit alliance between curialitas and humanism, starting with Petrarca and his immediate predecessors. Petrarca's idea of education and Vittorino da Feltre's pedagogical practice were closer to the image of the early medieval teacher of curiality and courtliness than to that of the scholastic dialectician.^[4] For, even more than the ascetic monastic circles, the courtly ethic's sternest enemies were the thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury dialecticians who remained the target of most humanists' arrows down to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Those dialecticians had replaced a concern for humaneness and affability with an unswerving quest for pure truth. The Battle of the Seven Arts had

started in mid-twelfth century France on the level of psychological and ethical habits affecting personal careers as much as on that of methods of teaching, learning, and thinking.

I have noted the contrast between the cult of personal greatness, establishing patterns of imitation on the ground of the teacher's charisma, and a desire to prove one's point in purely scientific terms.^[5] Stephen of Novara, the Italian master called to Würzburg by Otto the Great, saw his authority challenged when his brilliant pupil, Wolfgang of Regensburg, promised a commentary on Martianus Capella that would outdo his teacher's critical powers. Such a breach of etiquette was to be repeated in other clamorous incidents, as when, in 1028, the Lombard grammarian Benedict of Chiusa appeared in Limoges and without any regard for his hosts' sensitivities proceeded to dispute their belief that their patron St. Martial had been an apostle. Then again, and most sensationally, in mid-twelfth century Abelard criticized the expertise of his teachers, Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux, after having brashly offended the monks of St. Denis by challenging the true identity of their patron saint. This was not the way the pupils of curialitas were supposed to behave toward their teachers, who were unprepared for the philosophical principle “amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.” The avenues to worldly success were, instead, respect, obedience, deference, and diplomatic tactfulness. Abelard, for one, paid dearly for his love of truth above human respect. He never would have risen into a bishopric or a high court. His letter to his son Astrolabe concerning his idea of a correct relationship between teacher and pupil tells much about the new mentality.^[6]

No matter how boldly innovative, the early humanistic schools of Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua and Guarino Veronese at Ferrara were still the kind of court schools that trained young knights and sons of princes. They contributed to bringing the ideals of courtly education to fruition. Despite Petrarca's and, among genuine educators of the youth, Vittorino's religious motivations, the new culture was, like that of the medieval knight, generally world-oriented. It sought to refine mind and manners for the secular ends of achieving honor at court and wealth in society, skill in chancery administration, and eloquence in public oratory, including the notarial art. It managed to endow the mind with high humane values even while it fitted its possessors with the credentials for the ruling élite in the city power structure. For such training, ethics was the central and almost exclusive branch of philosophy, and literature the foundation of value and effective communication. Many hu-

manists were at the same time men of action and men of learning, active and occasionally leading citizens of city states, like their proclaimed models from ancient Athens and Rome. True enough, while the chivalric knight had represented the sublimated ideal of medieval clerics and noblemen, the new burgher tried to see himself as a reincarnation of the ancient hero. Yet the goal was similar: to become a civic-minded leader. Pietro Paolo Vergerio's De ingenuis moribus (ca. 1402) addressed this type of humanist as a whole man, scholar and citizen when, citing Aristotle, it warned that “the man who surrenders himself completely to the charm of letters or speculative thought may become self-centered and useless as a citizen or prince.”

Humanistic education ideally aimed at a coupling of eloquence with civic and moral virtues. The actual school practice emphasized the grammatical, rhetorical, and philological aspects of reading the auctores; the extant manuals and commentaries do not generally reflect an equal concern with the formation of moral and social character.^[7] In a way, the curial, courtly, and chivalric literature we have been considering embodied such concern more concretely than the statements and exercises of humanistic persuasion. It can be assumed that, as in the best tradition of the medieval royal chapels and cathedral schools, much of the practical impact on students was taking place in the form of the teacher's direct influence by charisma and communication.

At the same time the more worldly side of both medieval and Renaissance educational training, to wit, the rhetorical curriculum (including the ars dictandi ), was directed at what looked like useful preparation for the art of the practicing lawyer. “The critical figures in the origins of humanism,” Lauro Martines reminds us, “were lawyers and notaries, the most literate members of lay society and among its most active in public affairs.” Just as Brunetto Latini had been a notary in Florence, “nearly the whole school of Paduan pre-humanists hailed from the administrative-legal profession,” and the two early leading figures, Lovato Lovati (ca. 1237–1309) and Albertino Mussato (1261–1329), were notaries as well as politicians.^[8] The value of rhetoric was stressed not only in special treatises on the art, but also in humanistic political tracts, like the Re repubblica by T. L. Frulovisi (ca. 1400–1480), who held eloquence basic for all members of the city government, including the prince. In his De institutione reipublicae the Sienese Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1413–1494) reiterated this notion, stressing the government agent's need to persuade others to action. The study of history, especially ancient heroic history, was similarly urged as magistra vitae,

a guide to action as an essential part of humanistic education, as in Leonardo Bruni's De studiis et litteris (ca. 1405). Ancient historians were valued as a repository of eloquence as well as practical wisdom.

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century Peter Ramus produced a large number of school manuals, particularly successful in France, England, and Germany, that contributed to a more practical orientation of educational methods in the sense of pursuing socially attractive positions rather than simply scholarly and intellectual sophistication. But medieval and early humanistic education had been typically concerned with what was regarded as “formation of the mind” rather than with the imparting of directly useful skills: the Trivium Arts were eminently formal rather than professional. This included, to a large extent, rhetorical training, whose relevance to the purpose of forming the lawyer and public man was limited to the development of the “power of persuasion.”

Civic humanism had a counterpart in what one historian has labeled as “courtly humanism” and another one as “subdital humanism,” with reference to the use of the renovated classical ethos to support, praise, and illustrate the new seigniorial rulers.^[9] Indeed, humanists could be courtiers, too, and their fashionable panegyrical displays distilled a heady brew of old and new ideals that applied some of the features of the medieval knight and courtier to the new uses of the modern warrior statesman. A most successful funeral oration by the Venetian patrician Leonardo Giustinian for the Venetian leader and general Carlo Zeno (1418, at least sixty-four manuscript copies and six printed editions are extant) praised Zeno as a model captain, even more excellent than the Athenian Themistocles, for having been victorious not by force of arms but through the humanistic virtues of authority, humanity, clemency, affability, civility, and eloquence (auctoritas, humanitas, clementia, affabilitas, comitas, eloquentia ). The Ciceronian matrix, put to a new use, had helped to transform the image of the chivalric leader and refined courtier into that of the modern condottiero in the garb of a humanistic orator.^[10] But the widespread enthusiasm for learning that characterized the Renaissance also provided new channels to the aristocrats who had lost the opportunity to achieve power by force of the sword. They became refined courtiers.^[11]

If the humanists' public was basically the new oligarchic bourgeoisie in the republican cities and the new aristocracy in the princely signories, it is interesting to see the old topoi of liberality and avarice turned to new purposes and adapted to new social uses.^[12] Informed by a taste for

democratic values, Poggio Bracciolini's De avaritia (1428) and De infelicitate principum (1440) both indicted the powerful for their greed and praised them for their patronization of public causes, artists, and humanists.^[13] In the dialogue De avaritia Poggio attributed to his character, Antonio Loschi, the bourgeois thesis that avarice could be a source of temperance and happiness in the wise use of fortune. It was a sign of mercantile appreciation for industriousness and thrift—the economic sides of fortitude and prudence.

Humanistic treatises on the nobility and dignity of man invariably emphasized virtue against birth as the true root of nobility, as eloquently argued in Lapo da Castiglionchio il Vecchio's (d. 1390) famous letter to his son Bernardo (1377–1378),^[14] Coluccio Salutati's (1331–1406) Tractatus de nobilitate legum et medicinae of 1399/1340, and then, most unequivocally, Buonaccorso da Montemagno il Giovane's (d. 1429) influential tract De nobilitate (1429). This philosophical idea, based on ancient, mostly Stoic speculation, had received the powerful support of Dante's Convivio, which reflected a point of view developed by the new poetic schools for reasons that had to do with the use of courtly love in an alien social setting. When they had to cope with current realities, both Lapo, a jurist of the old landed nobility, and Coluccio, known for his shifting sense of political values, recognized nobility by descent or by holding public office—as did Bartolo da Sassoferrato, translated by Lapo in the first part of his letter.

In Poggio's De nobilitate (1440) the interlocutor Niccolò Niccoli defined nobility as personal virtue, identical to a wise use of assets instead of the simple possession of them, and found only the exercise of virtue a convincing trademark of nobility. His opponent Lorenzo de' Medici objected that a virtue without social purpose is useless and sterile.^[15] By vividly examining the behavior of noblemen in different Italian and foreign regions, the dialogue elicited the resentful reaction of some Venetian erudites. Poggio gave more currency to the established distinction that wealth entitles us only to be called “rich,” not “noble.” Replying to Poggio in 1449, Leonardo Chiensi founded nobility in sapientia and virtute.^[16] Platina also rejected the equation of nobility and riches (De vera nobilitate, 1471–1478; 1540 ed., p. 43). In book 2 of L. B. Alberti's Dell famiglia we read a hymn to mercatura within a eulogy of wealth as reward not for love or force, but industriousness: noble and great achievements are grounded in strenuous and risky work carried out with liberality and magnificence. Writing in the shadow of a princely court, Guarino Veronese's son Battista Guarino (De ordine do-

cendi et studendi, 1457) declared that only those who could write elegant Latin verse were well educated. This was obviously beyond the reach of the average burgher, busy with other things, but close enough to the training of such refined courtiers as Castiglione, a Latin poet of note.

The best-known texts of this humanistic genre, namely Giannozzo Manetti's (1396–1459) De dignitate et excellentia hominis (1452) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's (1463–1494) Oratio de hominis dignitate (1486), were more concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of the humanistic view of man's inner dignity than with the specific social context I am pursuing here. Similarly, Cristoforo Landino's De vera nobilitate (after 1481) repeated what had become standard humanistic motifs, without Manetti's freshness and Pico's philosophical sweep. At the end of the century, in an Epistola de nobilitate, Antonio De Ferrariis, known as Il Galateo (1444–1516), once again submitted an equation of nobility with rationality: “nobiles sunt  . . . qui vere philosophantur” (Colucci edition, pp. 140–411). This general theme had been carried on eloquently by P. P. Vergerio, Bartolomeo Fazio, Giannozzo Manetti, Flavio Biondo, Giovanni (Gioviano) Pontano, and the great Pico. The De principe liber (1468) of Pontano (1426–1503), a humanist statesman particularly well versed in court life, was a manual of advice to a young prince. Others of his numerous moral tracts dealt with specific qualities of the public man.^[17] His De sermone raised the quality of facetudo, the facetia of medieval memory, to the status of a trademark of the good speaker, namely the one who pleases and avoids offense by clothing his moral judgments in a humorous garb: this distinguishes the man of court from the rustic.^[18] In a different vein, Sannazzaro's Arcadia (1480–1496, published 1501, 1504), a successful work fraught with enormous potential for later imitation in many literatures, introduced shepherds and shepherdesses as a counterpart to the Neapolitan court. This model remained the groundwork for generations of pastoral novels, including Honoré d'Urfé's Astrée (1607–1628).

Even on the level of pure poetry, texts that we admire as distillations of the humanistic revival of ancient forms and themes might also, at the same time, respond to solicitations from chivalric customs of medieval origin. Poliziano's poetic masterpiece, the Stanze per la giostra del Magnifico Giuliano, was occasioned by the 1475 tournament in which the burghers' scion Giuliano de' Medici joined in a noble knightly sport to celebrate a diplomatic achievement by his illustrious brother Lorenzo.^[19]