3. Character of the Movement

A very clear view of the Humanistic movement may be gained from the writings of the biographer and beneficiary of Leo X., Paul Giovio (Jovius). In his Elogia (Antwerp, 1557) he presents a gallery of literary scholars, beginning with Dante, and including Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bruni, Poggo, Beccadelli (the pornographic poet), Valla, Filelfo, Platina, the Greeks Emanuel Chrysoloras, Cardinal Bessarion, Trapezuntius the Cretan, Theodorus Gaza, Argyropulos, Chalcondylas, Musurus of Crete, and Lascaris; also Lorenzo de' Medici, Ermolao Barbaro, Politian, Pico di Mirandula, and even Savonarola. But Savonarola's attacks on Pope Alexander VI., father of Cesare and Lucrezia, are treated as treason and felony. The Platonic academy of Ficinus at Florence had certainly no power to regenerate the political and moral corruption of its patron Lorenzo. Bibienna, the favorite of Leo X., was witty at banquets; at Leo's court this cardinal produced his lascivious comedy, "Colandra," because Terence was too grave. Even Thomas More and Reuchlin are included. Among the latter's academic friends were the anonymous composers of the satiric Epistole obscurorum virorum (q.v.)--the flail of the new learning swung against the old. The Italian Humanists were not concerned in the reformatory movements of the fifteenth century. They drifted into a palpable paganism or semipaganism, curiously illustrated in the verse, e.g., of Politian, especially his Greek verse, and of him even the lax Giovio writes: "he was a man of unseemly morals." They all more or less emphasized "vera virtus" by which they meant "true excellence," the self-wrought development of human faculties and powers. Still they knew how to maintain friendly relations with those higher clerics who had resources with which to patronize the new learning. They often accepted clerical preferment, as did Giovio, who became bishop of Nocera. Often the Latin verse of their youth proved very awkward when they entered upon their benefices. All were more interested "in viewing the early monuments of sensual enjoyment" than in study of the New Testament. As they greatly exceeded the corruption of the clergy in their own conduct, they could not take any practical interest in any spiritual or theological reformation. In all the correspondence of Filelfo, extending from 1428 to 1462, there is but once or twice a slight (deistic) utterance of spiritual concern, when, in the siege of Milan by Francesco Sforza, 1449, the ducal city endured terrible sufferings. Jacob Burckhardt (Die Cultur der Renaissance, § vi., Basel, 1860) says of the Humanists that they were demoralized by their reproduction of Latin verse. But why did they delve in Ovid, Catullus, and the like with steady predilection? At best a mild deism or pantheism may be perceived in their more serious writings. Greek, on the whole, was a rare attainment among them, reproductive ostentation limited most of them to Latin.