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Pietro Aretino, the Scourge of Princes Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/pietroaretinoscoOOhutt Yt/ V " PIETRO ARETINO PIETRO ARETINO The Scourge of Princes By EDWARD HUTTON WiM a Portrait afttr Titian CONSTABLE & CO LTD LONDON : BOMBAY : SYDNEY 1922 Printed in Great Britain at Tkt MayAotuir Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. TO MY FRIEND NORMAN DOUGLAS NOTE My various debts to previous writers on the subject of this work are duly acknowledged in the notes throughout the book, but I wish here especially to mention Comm. Alessandro Luzio, of Mantua, to whom every writer upon Pietro Aretino owes so much, my friend Professor Cesare Foligno, of Oxford, who has generously given time and thought to reading the proofs, and my friend Comm. Biagi, of Florence, who obtained for me more than one rare opuscolo. INTRODUCTION ARETINE. The name is infamous. Why ? -^ ^ Was the man really the monster he is universally represented to have been from his time to our own ? His legend, as the French say, would seem to affirm it. There we read of one who was born in a hospital, the son of a courtesan, and boasted of it ; who was without name, without family, without friends and protectors, without education ; who at thirteen years of age robbed his mother and fled to Perugia ; who at eighteen fled from Perugia to Rome, where he robbed his master, Agostino Chigi, and presently appeared as the creature of Cardinal de' Medici, whom he supported with an infinite wealth of libel, calumny and the most vile and shameless abuse of his rivals for the Papacy, after the death of Leo X ; who was kicked out of Rome for writing the notorious Sonetti Lussuriosi for Raimondi's infamous engravings ; who wandered as a vagabond over Italy, a black- mailer and a beggar ; who became a friar in A 2 X ; X PIETRO ARETINO Ravenna, but whom even the Capuchins were obliged to vomit ; who fled to Venice and in the freedom of that great RepubHc lived Hke a prince on begging and threatening letters ; who kept a harem and worse in his palace on the Grand Canal, for no vice was a stranger to him and no calumny too out- rageous ; who hung a picture of the Virgin in his house and said it was a portrait of his mother and thus declared himself to be Antichrist; who was the spy of Italy's worst enemies, Charles V and Francis I, and who died as a dog dies without a thought of repentance in the midst of a howl of blasphemy and laughter over whose grave was written : Qui giace 1' Aretin poeta tosco, Che disse mal d' ognun, fuor che di Dio, Scusandosi col dir, non lo conosco. Was Aretino really the monster this legend portrays, or is he now to be whitewashed : with the discovery of new documents, on better evidence than our forefathers possessed to be at any rate excused with Alexander VI and Lucrezia Borgia or acquitted altogether with Machiavelli ? No. Modern scholarship should propose itself no such task in regard to Aretino. The INTRODUCTION xi man was a monster : a monster certainly, only not a magician. To listen to some of his biographers one might think he owed his success to sorcery or magic. But the truth is that nothing was further from him than enchantment. He was a monster, it is true : to deny that is to belittle him ; but above all he was a man of his day, perhaps the most free and complete expression of the age in which he lived —the sixteenth century. That, and his enormous ability, together with the fact that he founded the modern Press and used the hitherto unsuspected weapon of publicity with an incomparable appreciation of its power, are his chief claims upon our notice. Something evil and corrupt had entered into the civilisation of all Europe at this time, and not least of Italy. The Middle Age which had held out to humanity so great a promise, had in some inexplicable way and for some inexplicable reason failed, failed in endurance and in life. The fifteenth century had been full of disaster almost everywhere save only in Venice, and even Venice could not escape the spiritual disaster which that century made apparent. For with the sixteenth century we are face to face with the spiritual break-up of ; xii PIETRO ARETINO Europe and European society. Something evil, depraved, venal and mean appears. The pen is bought and sold, futile praise and blame are purchased by popes, kings and prelates, and we see a monster appear, a monster of genius blackmailing and blackmailing success- fully every authority, every power. That monster was Aretino, and he was at home in Venice and in Venice passed no inconsiderable portion of his days. For the Venice of the sixteenth century was a promised land for such as he. A city of wealthy merchants, an aristocratic oligarchy fast degenerating into plutocracy, in which snobs abounded as well as scholars, Venice was then the greatest inde- pendent metropolis in Europe, insolent, and artistic, the great asylum for exiles, for the proscribed, the chance poor scholar, the per- verted and the corrupt. For she could offer to all of them alike this great gift : liberty. And it is in the letters of the very type and paragon of all these together that we find perhaps the best picture of the city at this time —in the letters of Aretino who, vile as he was, was yet a man of genius ; scoundrel though he was, was yet full of humanity brutal though he was, was yet full of pity and love for the miserable, the unfortunate, the INTRODUCTION xiii poor; ignoble though he was, was yet able to dominate the Italy of his time ; whom Francis I honoured, Charles V spoke with familiarity, and Ariosto surnamed il divino. Here in Venice he was the friend of Titian, the correspondent of Michelangelo. Here in Venice he lived like a prince, though he had nothing solid under his feet; he was as insolent as a con- dottiere, though he had rendered no service; he was the most famous man in the city, though his record was merely infamous. An epoch had appeared which was an anarchy, in which everything was questioned, everything doubtful ; in which anything might happen and anything might be thought to be true; an epoch without principles and without authority : in which a charlatan of genius might do anything, might destroy the unity of Europe or the spiritual and philosophical basis upon which Europe stood, by one multiple weapon—calumny. This age—the age of Luther and the revolt of the barbarian—is in itself admirably summed up and expressed by Aretino. He, too, re- fused authority and tradition and appealed only to private judgment. As a writer this is his value, in this resides his originahty. '' I am a free man," he boasts. " I do not need xiv PIETRO ARETINO to copy Petrarca or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, without artifice I go to work and earn my living, my well-being and my fame. What do I need more? With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper I mock myself of the universe." It is because Aretino is a man of genius, and because he sums up and expresses that disastrous age of anarchy, its complete moral disorder and collapse, its delight in insulting and disregarding the past, its repudiation of every ancient authority and tradition, that he is worth studying. And if we add to this that he contrived a weapon for his own ends which has in our own day come to be more powerful than any established government or elected parliament or hereditary monarchy—publicity, the Press—there is more than sufficient excuse for this book. Aretino's virtues as a writer are to be dis- cussed there ; but we ought to note that, great as these virtues are, they are always those of a journalist, never those of a man of letters. His great strength is his spontaneity,—the ability to write what is in his head almost without a INTRODUCTION xv second thought. This is the very life of his plays and the soul of his letters. If we find something more thoughtful in the Ragio- namenti it is but an illusion, those curious dialogues are the first effort of " reaUsm " in European letters ; and had the great paper he in fact conducted ever really existed, would have taken their place as the feuilletons along with his letters which are the leading articles, his religious works which are the articles for Sunday, and his verses whose only virtue is that they comment without scruple and in the most lively and unrestrained fashion upon the events of the day. In the face and the voice of Aretino we see the face and hear the voice of that virile, mean and irresponsible age in which Europe foundered, and, perhaps finally, broke up as an entity. It is an ignoble face for all its intelligence, it is an uncertain voice for all its assurance. For Aretino lacked and sought his whole life long what the world has lacked and sought ever since his day —security. Nevertheless, his qualities must not be obscured by their defects. He had very special qualities. His mind was not profound or distinguished, nor was his nature elevated or noble ; but it was, though brutal, energetic xvi PIETRO ARETINO and ardent, and his work remains perhaps the most significant and certainly the nearest to Hfe of any Itahan writer of his day.
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