24 Jan. Downloaded from Gian Matteo Giberti, Papal Politician' and Catholic Reformer. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ PART I. IAN MATTEO GIBEETI, bishop of Verona, scholar and G stylist, patron of men of letters, ambassador, confidential adviser of a pope during a critical period in the history of the papacy and of Italy, bishop and reformer, is one of those men who were famous in their own generation but who have been forgotten by posterity. The veil of oblivion has fallen so closely round him that the historical reader knows him only through a few brief at University of California, San Diego on June 13, 2015 references in Tiraboschi, Eanke, and Gregorovius. Yet it may be not without interest to try to lift that veil and see the man as he appeared to his contemporaries. The father of Gian Matteo Giberti belonged to an ancient and wealthy Genoese family,1 and had probably led a stirring and adventurous life, for he was first captain of the Genoese galleys and afterwards entered the service of Julius II and Leo X. Of the bishop's mother we know nothing but the fact that Franco Giberti met her during a visit to Palermo, and that Gian Matteo was born there out of wedlock in 1495.1 We do not even know of what race she came, and the population of Palermo, in common with the rest of Sicily, was very mixed and included many GreekB. We imagine that she was a woman with a strong bent for religion, since the boy lived with her till his twelfth year, and even as a boy was noted for a rare earnestness. Palermo was an archbishopric and the seat of a university, so that the early years of Gian Matteo were spent in an intellectual atmosphere. It was not, however, till about twenty years after Giberti had left bis native city that the famous mathematician Maurolico, like himself a native of Sicily, became professor at the university. According to Ballerini, Giberti's industrious and scholarly biographer, the boy was called to Rome by his father about 1518.* On the other hand Oldoino in his 'Athenaeum 1 Ballerini, Vita Giberti, cop. i. p. 1 (Verona, 1788). • The diploma of Cardinal Medici, quoted by Ballerini, proves this (Vita Gibtrli, cap. 1. p. 2). « Cap. L p. 2. 1903 GIAN MATTEO GIBERTI 25 Liguaticum' says that he was educated at Palermo until his twelfth year. Whether Giberti went to Borne in his twelfth year, and continued his education there, as Tiraboschi states, or was educated at some other university between the dates of 1607 and 1513,1 have not been able to ascertain. TTia education, wherever carried on, would seem to have been the best obtainable at the time, and was evidently public and not private in its nature, for both Adam Fumanus, who delivered Giberti's funeral oration, and Pier Downloaded from Francesco Zini in his ' Type of a Good Bishop' mention that he was cultured in the letters of Greece and Borne, and had gone very successfully through the curriculum of almost all the sciences in the best Italian academies. This could mean a good deal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It recalls to our minds not only http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ the encyclopedic knowledge and real inventive genius of scientific and mathematical men like Fracastoro and Maurolico, but the vast acquaintance with ancient authorities, inscriptions, and the results of excavation shown by men like Beatus Bhenanus in his great work on German history. These men were all contemporaries of Giberti. Mongitore tells us that Giberti's course of study included mathematics, and not only the graver subjects but lighter ones also, for he adds to the list Tuscan literature, and we must suppose that at University of California, San Diego on June 13, 2015 this meant Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and also the Latin poets. We know that he was himself the author of some ' Epigrammata Pastoralia.' Moreover the interest that he took in later years in the choir of his cathedral church would seem to show that he had a taste for music.4 He was evidently an apt pupil: sensim ad magna doctrinae incrementa adolevit, interque aetatis suae peritittimos nomen coUegit." The date of Giberti's birth is just after that invasion of Naples by Charles VIII which precipitated the long rivalry of France and Spain for the possession of Italy, a rivalry in which the papacy, with Giberti as its instrument, was to play so large a part. When, either in 1507 or 1513, the boy was summoned by bis father to Bome, he threw himself with ardour into the study of letters, and probably even more now into the graver studies of philosophy and theology. It must have been at this time that he acquired his knowledge of the Greek and Latin fathers, for he can have had little leisure afterwards in his busy life; and he seems also to have acquired a knowledge of the canon law. The Boman gymnasium, founded by Eugenius IV, had been greatly improved by the efforts of Alexander VI; ° but it was * He shows love for muslo in a letter to Vittoria Colonna (Carteggb di Viltoria Colonna, Turin, 1889). • Ughellus, Italia Sacra, v. 068 (Venice, 1720). ' Alexander VI gave it new buildings, and summoned distinguished men to be professors there (Tiraboschi, Star. Utt. <T Italia, torn. vii. pi. i. p. 90 [Modena, 1778]). 2G 01AN MATTEO G1BERTI Jan. dragging on a languid existence when Leo X in March 1513 as- cended the papal throne, for the revenues set apart by Alexander VI for the salaries of the professors had been diverted to warlike uses during the troubled pontificate of Julius II. One of the first cares of the new pope was to revive it. He reformed its statutes,' added new chairs, and did all he could to attract distinguished professors to Rome. The year after hiB accession there were nearly a hundred professors there, and lectures were given in theology, canon and civil law, philosophy, medicine, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, Downloaded from and even botany and the morphology of plants. Leo founded a Greek academy on the Esquiline, which he placed under the direc- tion of Lascarifl. ItB nucleus consisted of ten Greek youths whom he commissioned Marcus Musunis to invite over from Constan- tinople. Leo also set up a Greek printing press in Borne, which in http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ 1517 printed for the first time the ' Scholia' on Homer. The pope's Greek printing presB was, however, not the first to be established in Borne, for that in the palace of Agostino Ghigi bad printed the works of Pindar two years before.8 It was, therefore, in the golden age for scholars in Borne * that Giberti was growing to manhood. The old Roman Academy, founded by Pomponius Laetus, never quite destroyed by the perse- at University of California, San Diego on June 13, 2015 cutions of Paul II, had started into vigorous life again under Julius II. Fedro Inghirami, writing from Borne, December 1506, to Andrea Umiliato, another Academician, describes these literary reunions, with their jokes and their election of a literary dictator. There is a still better description of them in a letter of Sadoleto, written from Carpentras in 1527 to Angelo Colocci, at whose house the society's meetings had often been held. He recalls the con- vivial meetings they had been wont to hold, in the old days when their age made them more inclined to gaiety of spirit, sometimes in Colocci's suburban gardens, sometimes in his own gardens on the Quirinal, in the Circus Maximus or on the banks of the Tiber. At other times they had met at the house of some patron of letters, and after a friendly meal, seasoned not BO much by dainty dishes as by wit, they had listened to the recitation of a new poem or oration on a learned subject.10 Moreover these todaUtci della $cra, which must have formed such a powerful stimulus to talented youth, did not concern themselves only with serious researches. Its members sharpened their wits with merry jests and humorous poems and many a friendly rally on personal peculiarities.11 Some • Tiraboschi, Star. UU. d' Italia, torn. -rii. pt. L p. 99. ' See Bananti, Storiadelf Univtrsitddegli Studj di Roma, vol. il. (Rome, 1804). for the names of the professors in the different subjects and for Leo's boanty to famous men. Lilius Oregorios Giraldus vru an inmate of the Vatican under Leo. ' Paolo Giovio, Lc ViU di Leon X el £ Adnano Sato (ed. Florence, 1649), p. 292- '• Sadoleto, Epist. lib. v. p. 188 (Lugduni, 1554). :I See Tlrabo»chi, torn. vii. pt i. p. 114. 1908 GIAN MATTEO GIBERT1 27 of the members were men immersed in the cares of diplomacy, snch as Leo's two secretaries, Bembo and Sadoleto, to whom these sodaUta deUa sera were almost their sole form of relaxation. The reluctant Giberti too was soon called away by his father from his pleasant life of study,1* which was leading him to wish to devote himself to a religious life, to enter the household of Giulio de* Medici, who had been raised to the cardinalate in 1518. The cardinal seems to have treated him with the kindness he would Downloaded from have shown to a son or nephew, and to have felt for him a sincere affection.11 Lite Sadoleto ten years earlier Giberti was fortunate in securing a patron distinguished for purity of life and patronage of learning, but the relationship of his patron to Leo X obliged him to mix far more in publio affairs than Sadoleto had done in the http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ house of Cardinal Olivier Caraffa, and he was soon employed on important diplomatic business.