Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:43:07.961Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Book Four of Castiglione's Courtier: Climax or Afterthought?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Lawrence V. Ryan
Lawrence V. Ryan*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access

Extract

In his description of life at the courts of Italian princes during the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt looks upon the ideal cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglione as an embodiment of the self-possessed and self-centered individualism of the period. The courtier, he asserts, ‘was regarded by the civilization of that age as its choicest flower; and the court existed for him rather than he for the court'. As a consequence of his assumption, Burckhardt could discern no. unity between the earlier and the later portions of Castiglione's work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 19 , 1972 , pp. 156 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (New York, 1954), p- 287.

2 Cian, , Un illustre nunzio pontificio del Rinascimento Baldassar Castiglione, (Vatican City, 1951); Loos, Baldassare Castigliones “Libro del Cortegiano“: Studien zur Tugendauffassung des Cinquecento, Analecta Romanica, II (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1955)Google Scholar; Lipking, , ‘The Dialectic of 77 Cortegiano’, PMLA, LXXXI (1966), 355–362 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazzeo, , Renaissance and Revolution: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century English Literature (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Op. cit., p. 137. As early as 1900, however, Sir Walter Raleigh had found nothing ‘inapposite’ in Bembo's discourse: ‘It is in reality in perfect keeping, and even essential to the scheme’ (Introduction to The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby, London, 1900, p. lxviii). Still, Raleigh did not explain why the Platonism upon which ‘we stumble unexpectedly’ in Book Four is an appropriate conclusion to the work as a whole.

4 ‘Castiglione and the Nicomachean Ethics’, PMLA, LVIII (1943), 310, 311. Cian, in his beautifully annotated edition of Il Cortegiano, (Florence, 1894), had already documented a number of passages in which the work is indebted to the ancient moralists and, especially in Book Four, to Aristotle for its ethical and political doctrine. Leo Strauss also recognized that in delineating the ideal courtier Castiglione had kept ‘fundamentally to the groundwork of Aristotle's Ethics’ (The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, Its Basis and Genesis, Oxford, 1936, pp. 45-46, 51—53).

5 See Menut's conclusions, pp. 319-321.

6 Op. cit., pp. 120-130, 190, 206.

7 See Ghinassi's ‘L'ultimo revisore del “Cortegiano“’, Studi di filohgia italiana. XXII (1963), 217-264; ‘Fasi dell'elaborazione del “Cortegiano“’, ibid., xxv (1967), 155-196; and his edition of La seconda redazione del “Cortegiano” di Baldassare Castiglione, (Florence, 1968). Ghinassi is preparing a definitive critical edition of II libro del Cortegiano.

8 Ghinassi, ‘Fasi dell'elaborazione’, p. 190. Among North Italian treatises written in defense of women around 1500, Ghinassi cites (p. 174) three in particular: the De laudibus mulierum of Bartolomeo Gogio, Agostino Strozzi's Defensione delle donne, and Mario Equicola's Perigynaecon. For further comment on traces of this characteristic remaining in Book Three of Castiglione's final version, see Cian's edition (1894), p. 267, n. 22.

9 In his earlier role Ottaviano, especially in Books One and Two, frequently disparages women (see Seconda redazione, pp. 12, 40, 56, 64, 121, 151, and, passim, 172-180).

10 Ghinassi, ‘Fasi dell'elaborazione’, p. 159.

11 Ibid., pp. 159-160.

12 For example, by Strauss, pp. 147-148.

13 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis, 1962)Google Scholar, i.ii. 1094a. All quotations are from this edition.

14 N. Eth., x.vii. II77a-b; compare Pol., vn.xiii.i333a. In the N. Eth. Aristotle underscores his point that contemplation is the end, political activity the means, with the following analogy: ‘Still, practical wisdom has no authority over theoretical wisdom or the better part of our soul any more than the art of medicine has authority over health. [Just as medicine does not use health but makes the provisions to secure it, so] practical wisdom does not use theoretical wisdom but makes the provisions to secure it. It issues commands to attain it, but it does not issue them to wisdom itself (vi.xiii.il45a).

15 Aristotle, , Politics, trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library (London; Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar, 1.1.1253a. All quotations are from this edition.

16 Castiglione, Baldesar, Il Cortegiano, ed. Bruno Maier (Torino, 1955)Google Scholar, Bk. IV, Sect. 5, p. 451. All quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from this edition and will be cited hereafter by book and section number only.

17 rv.31. The matter appears to be derived from Pol., rv.vii.1294b. It is also found in Cicero, De re publico, I.xxix.45, but this treatise was almost certainly not known to Castiglione. That he had the antique Roman model in mind is quite likely, for in MS. Ashb. 409, f. PI5V, the word ‘populo’ was originally ‘Republica’. It is also worth noting that in rv.21, where the final version calls the third of the ‘three right kinds of rule’ in Aristotle's system Tamministrazione populare’, the second redaction has it labeled ‘la republica’, a term which suggests Aristotle's , or mixed constitution, rather than , (p. 206). Like a number of other changes in the Ashburnham manuscript, this one demonstrates the author's concern for precision in the ethical and poUtical terminology of his dialogues.

18 N. Eth., X.ix.ll8oa-b; Pol, vn.xiii,1333a. Compare Cortegiano, IV.7-8, 24. In MS. Ashb. 409, Castiglione for the first time inserts the phrase ‘quei costumi Tyrannici' among the vices of rulers of ‘mal volere’ (f. Pior) and also, to emphasize the ills of tyranny, expands this section with details from Pol, v.ix.

19 IV.34. Loos, arguing that ‘Nur dem Fürsten wird die vita contemplativa in begrenzter Sinngebung empfohlen’, fails to recognize here the firm grasp of Aristotelian doctrine concerning the contemplative life and the ends of society. He assumes that in The Courtier the vita contemplativa is no more than a preparation for the prince to rule with judgment and that, since the courtier's instruction is meant only for the ruler, everyone else is left with nothing but the vita activa (pp. 87-88).

20 IV.17. Castiglione is following the distinction made in N. Eth., VII.ix.1151b-1152a.

21 Seconda redazione, pp. 190-231.

22 Of some fifty passages cited by Maier in his edition as either drawn from or probably echoing the N. Eth. or the Pol., forty are located in the final book, mainly, as might be expected, in Ottaviano's speech on the end of courtiership. Although the number of citations of the Aristotelian moral corpus observed by Cian is somewhat smaller, in his edition the proportions are similar.

23 IV.8. Seconda redazione, p. 204; MS. Ashb. 409, f. 013r.

24 Seconda redazione, p. 227.

25 IV.29. Compare N. Eth, I.xiii.1102a-n.i.ll03b; Pol, vn.xiii.i334b. Either Castiglione in revising, or the scribe in copying, at first omitted a crucial phrase. Originally MS. Ashb. 409 read, ‘la virtù intellettiva si fa con la consuetudine’ (f. P14V). Before publication the obvious error was corrected: ‘la virtù intellettiva si fa perfetta con la dottrina: cosi la morale si fa con la consuetudine’.

26 Seconda redazione, p. 210.

27 IV.24. MS. Ashb. 409, f. P10v-P11r.

28 For example, Cortegiano, II.29; 1.4. Compare N. Eth., rx.x.1170b-1171a; VIII.i.1155a, xi.1161a.

29 II.22. MS. Ashb. 409, f. FI2V.

30 Seconda redazione, p. 229.

31 The anecdote in the Life tells of the boy Alexander's receiving the Persian ambassadors and astounding them with learned questions about the strength and tactics of the Great King's armies (Seconda redazione, p. 230).

32 rv.38. MS. Ashb. 409, f. Q5v.

33 n.3. MS. Ashb. 409, f. BI2V.

34 MS. Ashb. 409, f. o6r.

35 Seconda redazione, p. 5.

36 Also typical of this eclecticism is the view expressed by Louis le Roy, a sixteenthcentury translator of the Politics into French. Since, he reasons, Plato's ‘practical measures' in the Republic and the Laws (such as community of wives, children, and goods) had been universally rejected as ‘too too straunge and impossible’, and since Aristotle had not been sufficiently ‘carefull of religion … therefore it shall be verie requisite to read both Plato and Aristotle, that wee may learne of the one the things that pertaine to God and godlinesse (I meane next unto the holy Scriptures:) and of the other the things that belong to the governing of men and mens affaires’ ('Of Government and of the Most Renowmed Lawmakers’, prefixed to J.D.’s English rendering of le Roy's translation of Aristotles Politiques, or Discourses of Government, London, 1598, f. ciir).

37 Cian, Un illustre nunzio pontificio, p. 179.

38 Seconda redazione, pp. 310, 314.

39 MS. Ashb. 409, marginal addition on f. B5r.

40 Seconda redazione, p. 20. In the final version Terpandro, having no other apparent function in the dialogues, disappears.

41 1.4. Compare Seconda redazione, p. 8.

42 1.52-55. The scene is basically unaltered from Seconda redazione, pp. 70-84.

43 II.13. The slur on ‘vecchi’ in love too is little changed from the second redaction (pp. 95-97). The idea of the ridiculousness of senex amans is commonplace, but even here the influence of Aristotle seems to be operating. First of all, Castiglione cites from Pol, VIII.vi, the mappropriateness of playing upon those musical instruments ‘che Minerva refiutò ed Alcibiade’. More significantly, in the second reaction Federico objects to the 'vechio canuto e sanza denti’ singing among the ladies ‘ad alta testa’ (p. 96). The phrase glances at Pol., VIII.vii.1342b, where Aristotle says that older men are not capable of singing well ‘the highly strung harmonies ( )’. In MS. Ashb. 409 the phrase ‘ad alta testa’ is deleted, perhaps to generalize the idea, that is, it is always unbecoming for old men to sing among the ladies. come corte alcuna, per grande che ella sia, non po aver ornamento o splendore in sé, né allegria senza donne, né cortegiano alcun esser aggraziato, piacevole o ardito, né far mai opera leggiadra di cavalleria, se non mosso dalla pratica e da U'amore e piacer di donne, così ancora il ragionar del cortegiano è sempre imperfettissimo, se le donne, interponendovisi, non danno lor parte di quella grazia, con la quale fanno perfetta ed adornano la cortegiania. (III.3)

44 Seconda redazione, pp. 178-181.

45 The lingering traces of Ottaviano's misogyny should not be overstressed. While seemingly a discrepancy in his final characterization, he is provided by Giuliano's ‘overpraising' of women with a motive for completing the portrait of the ideal gentleman (III.76-77). Besides, when he joins the company on the fourth evening, he protests that his comments of the preceding night had been meant, not to detract anything from the court lady, but to emphasize that much more still remained to be said about the perfection of the courtier (IV.3).

46 III. 12-13. These last compliments already appear in the second redaction, but several other revisions in the third book, most importantly a rendering coherent in III.4-15 of the final manuscript what is earlier scattered and unemphatic, serves to highlight their seriousness. The changes also turn the discussion more directly toward the idea that women can participate in the divine love to be described by Bembo and hence in contemplation, noblest of human activities.

47 Loc. cit. Such a division of intellectual activities occurs in N. Eth., vi.iv.iv-vii, and is common in medieval and renaissance prefaces to translations of and commentaries on Aristotle's moral writings.

48 In the final version, for example, he adds to Cesare's words about the strong resistance even ‘una tenera e delicata giovane’ will often put up against a masculine assault on her virtue, the clause ‘ché molte sonosi trovate, le quali hanno eletto la morte piu presto che perder l'onestà (III.46).

49 Seconda redazione, pp. 311-315.

50 Ibid., p. 294.

51 Ibid., p. 18m. Mario Rossi, regarding the final dawn scene as a bit of humanist elegance and Neoplatonic idealism out of place in a work that is ‘salottesco’ (a game of the salon), dismisses the verbal revisions as merely stylistic (Baldassar Castiglione la sua personalià la sua prosa, Bari, 1946, pp. 74-83). But Rita Falke has also recognized the symbolical importance of the conclusion as a glimpse of that image of the Beautiful about which Bembo has been discoursing (’ “Furor Platonicus” als Kompositionselement im Cortegiano’, Romantisches Jahrbuch; x [1959], 115).

52 1.4. Although the words are deleted in the final manuscript, in earlier versions Castiglione speaks in the same passage of his time in the court of Urbino as ‘il fior della vita mia, et a quella memoria mi pensarei fare somma ingiuria, se più ardissi sperare una minima scintilla di piacere che a quelli fosse simile’ (Seconda redazione, p. 8.)

53 N. Eth., rv.viii.1128a. Compare Cortegiano, 1.34; II.45-46. A passage similar to that in the N. Eth. occurs in Aristotle's Rhetoric, m.xviii. 1419b, and Castiglione's beloved Cicero also argues the necessity of wit and the ability to jest in the ideal statesman (De officiis, l.xxix.103-104; De oratore, II.liv.2i7-lxxi.289).

54 N. Eth., rv.iii.n24b. Compare Cortegiano, II.8-10.

55 Cian, Un illustre nunzio pontificio, pp. 132-134. See Castiglione's letter to Vittoria Colonna from Madrid, 21 March 1525, concerning the transcription of his work for her benefit (Il Cortegiano, ed. Maier, p. 627).

56 Perhaps the best expression of the reciprocity between the vita activa and the vita comtemplativa is that of St. Gregory the Great: 'But we must know that just as it is the right order of living to pass from the active life to the contemplative, so usually it is useful for the mind to turn back from the contemplative to the active, that by the very fact that the contemplative has inflamed the mind, the active may be more perfectly held. Therefore the active life ought to pass us on to the contemplative, and yet sometimes the contemplative, by that which we have inwardly seen with the mind, ought better to call us back to the active. Thus Jacob after the embrace of Rachel returned to that of Lia, because after the sight of the Beginning the laborious life of good works is not to be wholly given up’ (Horn, in Ezech. II.ii.II). 'It is by an active life perfectly carried out that one passes to the freedom of the contemplative life. And very often such an one is able to pass to the contemplative life, and yet not give up the active life, so that he who has arrived at contemplation does not abandon the activity of good works whereby he is able to be of use to others’ (Horn, in Ezech. I.iii.II, 12; quoted by Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, New York, 1923, pp. 216, 231-232). Gregory's words call to mind the career of that active founder of convents, the mystic St. Teresa of Avila, and also the episode in which Spenser's Red Crosse Knight, after having had a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem in the House of Holinesse, is informed by the old man Contemplation that he must return to serve Glorianna in Cleopolis, ‘for earthly frame, The fairest peece that eie beholden can’, before he may gain repose in the 'blessed end’ for man which is the everlasting city (Faerie Queene, l.x.59-61).