The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Jacob Burckhardt

house and land, his wife and himself, to add to the stores of his library.

      We have, further, a good deal of information as to the way in which manuscripts and libraries were multiplied.444 The purchase of an ancient manuscript, which contained a rare, or the only complete, or the only existing text of an old writer, was naturally a lucky accident of which we need take no further account. Among the professional copyists those who understood Greek took the highest place, and it was they especially who bore the honourable name of ‘scrittori.’ Their number was always limited, and the pay they received very large.445 The rest, simply called ‘copisti,’ were partly mere clerks who made their living by such work, partly schoolmasters and needy men of learning, who desired an addition to their income, partly monks, or even nuns, who regarded the pursuit as a work pleasing to God. In the early stages of the Renaissance the professional copyists were few and untrustworthy; their ignorant and dilatory ways were bitterly complained of by Petrarch. In the fifteenth century they were more numerous, and brought more knowledge to their calling, but in accuracy of work they never attained the conscientious precision of the old monks. They seem to have done their work in a sulky and perfunctory fashion, seldom putting their signatures at the foot of the codices, and showed no traces of that cheerful humour, or of that proud consciousness of a beneficent activity, which often surprises us in the French and German manuscripts of the same period. This is more curious, as the copyists at Rome in the time of Nicholas V. were mostly Germans or Frenchmen446—‘barbarians’ as the Italian humanists called them, probably men who were in search of favours at the papal court, and who kept themselves alive meanwhile by this means. When Cosimo de’ Medici was in a hurry to form a library for his favourite foundation, the Badia below Fiesole, he sent for Vespasiano, and received from him the advice to give up all thoughts of purchasing books, since those which were worth getting could not be had easily, but rather to make use of the copyists; whereupon Cosimo bargained to pay him so much a day, and Vespasiano, with forty-five writers under him, delivered 200 volumes in twenty-two months.447

      1

      History of Architecture, by Franz Kugler. (The first half of the fourth volume, containing the ‘Architecture and Decoration of the Italian Renaissance,’ is by the Author.)

      2

      Macchiavelli, Discorsi, 1. i. c. 12. ‘E la cagione, che la Italia non sia in quel medesimo termine, ne habbia anch’ ella ò una republica ò un prencipe che la governi, è solamente la Chiesa; perchè havendovi habitato e tenuto imperio temporale non è stata si potente ne di tal virtè, che l’habbia potuto occupare il restante d’Italia e farsene prencipe.’

      3

      The rulers and their dependents were together called ‘lo stato,’ and this name afterwards acquired the meaning of the collective existence of a territory.

      4

      C. Winckelmann, De Regni Siculi Administratione qualis fuerit regnante Friderico II., Berlin. 1859. A. del Vecchio, La legislazione di Federico II. imperatore. Turin, 1874. Frederick II. has been fully and thoroughly discussed by Winckelmann and Schirrmacher.

      5

      Baumann, Staatslehre des Thomas von Aquino. Leipzig, 1873, esp. pp. 136 sqq.

      6

      Cento Novelle Antiche, ed. 1525. For Frederick, Nov. 2, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 53, 59, 90, 100; for Ezzelino, Nov. 31, and esp. 84.

      7

      Scardeonius, De Urbis Patav. Antiqu. in Grævius, Thesaurus, vi. iii. p

1

History of Architecture, by Franz Kugler. (The first half of the fourth volume, containing the ‘Architecture and Decoration of the Italian Renaissance,’ is by the Author.)

2

Macchiavelli, Discorsi, 1. i. c. 12. ‘E la cagione, che la Italia non sia in quel medesimo termine, ne habbia anch’ ella ò una republica ò un prencipe che la governi, è solamente la Chiesa; perchè havendovi habitato e tenuto imperio temporale non è stata si potente ne di tal virtè, che l’habbia potuto occupare il restante d’Italia e farsene prencipe.’

3

The rulers and their dependents were together called ‘lo stato,’ and this name afterwards acquired the meaning of the collective existence of a territory.

4

C. Winckelmann, De Regni Siculi Administratione qualis fuerit regnante Friderico II., Berlin. 1859. A. del Vecchio, La legislazione di Federico II. imperatore. Turin, 1874. Frederick II. has been fully and thoroughly discussed by Winckelmann and Schirrmacher.

5

Baumann, Staatslehre des Thomas von Aquino. Leipzig, 1873, esp. pp. 136 sqq.

6

Cento Novelle Antiche, ed. 1525. For Frederick, Nov. 2, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 53, 59, 90, 100; for Ezzelino, Nov. 31, and esp. 84.

7

Scardeonius, De Urbis Patav. Antiqu. in Grævius, Thesaurus, vi. iii. p. 259.

8

Sismondi, Hist. de Rép. Italiennes, iv. p. 420; viii. pp. 1 sqq.

9

Franco Sacchetti, Novelle (61, 62).

10

Dante, it is true, is said to have lost the favour of this prince, which impostors knew how to keep. See the important account in Petrarch, De Rerum Memorandarum, lib. ii. 3, 46.

11

Petrarca, Epistolæ Seniles, lib. xiv. 1, to Francesco di Carrara (Nov. 28, 1373). The letter is sometimes printed separately with the title, ‘De Republica optime administranda,’ e.g. Bern, 1602.

12

It is not till a hundred years later that the princess is spoken of as the mother of the people. Comp. Hieron. Crivelli’s funeral oration on Bianca Maria Visconti, in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, xxv. col. 429. It was by way of parody of this phrase that a sister of Sixtus IV. is called in Jac Volateranus (Murat., xxiii. col. 109) ‘mater ecclesiæ.’

13

With the parenthetical request, in reference to a previous conversation, that the prince would again forbid the keeping of pigs in the streets of Padua, as the sight of them was unpleasing, especially for strangers, and apt to frighten the horses.

14

Petrarca, Rerum Memorandar., lib. iii. 2, 66.—Matteo I. Visconti and Guido della Torre, then ruling in Milan, are the persons referred to.

15

Matteo

444

For what follows and in part for what has gone before, see W. Wattenbach, Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, 2nd. ed. Leipzig, 1875, pp. 392 sqq., 405 sqq., 505. Comp. also the poem, De Officio Scribæ, of Phil. Beroaldus, who, however, is rather speaking of the public scrivener.

445

When Piero de’ Medici, at the death of Matthias Corvinus, the book-loving King of Hungary, declared that the ‘scrittori’ must now lower their charges, since they would otherwise find no further employment (Scil. except in Italy), he can only have meant the Greek copyists, as the caligraphists, to whom one might be tempted to refer his words, continued to be numerous throughout all Italy. Fabroni, Laurent. Magn. Adnot. 156 Comp. Adnot. 154.

446

Gaye, Carteggio, i. p. 164. A letter of the year 1455 under Calixtus III. The famous miniature Bible of Urbino is written by a Frenchman, a workman of Vespasiano’s. See D’Agincourt, La Peinture, tab. 78. On German copyists in Italy, see further G. Campori, Artisti Italiani e Stranieri negli Stati Estensi, Modena, 1855, p. 277, and Giornale di Erudizione Artistica, vol. ii. pp. 360 sqq. Wattenbach, Schriftwesen, 411, note 5. For German printers, see below.

447

Vespas. Fior. p. 335.