and universal value, and in so far as it is that, altogether foreign, as we know, to the mind of antiquity, and an intrinsic continuation of the ' ecclesiastical ' and 1 spiritual ' history which appeared with Christianity? The conception of spiritual value had without doubt become changed or enriched, for it contained within itself more than a thousand years of mental experiences, thoughts, and actions. But while it thus grew more rich, it preserved its original character, and constituted the religion of the new times, with its priests and martyrs,. its polemic and its apologetic, its intolerance (it destroyed THE RENAISSANCE 231 or allowed to perish the monuments of the Middle Ages and condemned its writers to oblivion), and some- times even imitated the forms of its worship (Navagaro used to burn a copy of Martial every year as a holocaust to pure Latinity). And since humanity, philosophy, science, literature, and especially art, politics, activity in all its forms, now fill that conception of value which the Middle Ages had placed in Christian religious faith alone, histories or outlines of histories continue to appear as the outcome of these determinations, which were certainly new in respect to medieval literature, but were not less new in respect to Graeco-Roman literature, where there was nothing to compare to them, or only treatises composed in an empirical and extrinsic manner. The new histories of values presented them- selves timidly, imitating in certain respects the few ancient examples, but they gave evidence of a fervour, an intelligence, an afflatus, which led to a hope for that increase and development wanting to their predecessors, which, instead of developing, had gradually become more superficial and finally disappeared again into vagueness. Suffice it to mention as representative of them all Vasari's Lives of the Painters, which are con- nected with the meditations and the researches upon art contained in so many treatises, dialogues, and letters of Italians, and are here and there shot through with flashes such as never shone in antiquity. The same may be said of treatises on poetry and rhetoric, and of the judgments which they contain as to poetry and of the new history of poetry, then being attempted with more or less successful results. The * state ' too, which forms the object of the meditations of Machiavelli, is not the simple state of antiquity, city or empire, but is almost the national state felt as something divine, 232 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY to which even the salvation of the soul must be sacrificed — that is to say, as the institution in which the true salva- tion of the soul is to be found. Even the pagan virtue which he and others opposed to Christian virtue is very different from the pure Graeco-Roman disposition of mind. At that time a start was also made in the direction of investigating the theory of rights, of political forms, of myths and beliefs, of philosophical systems, to-day in full flower. And since that same conscious- ness which had produced humanism had also widened the boundaries of the known world, and had sought for and found people of whom the Bible preserved no record and of whom the Graeco-Roman writers knew nothing, there appeared at that time a literature relating to savages and to the indigenous civilizations of America (and also of distant Asia, which had been better explored), from which arose the first notions as to the primitive forms of human life. Thus were widened the spiritual boundaries of humanity at the same time as the material. We are not alone in perceiving the illusion of the * return to antiquity,' for the men of the Renaissance were not slow in doing this. Not every one was content to suit himself to the humanistic literary type. Some, like Machiavelli, threw away that cloak, too ample in its folds and in its train, preferring to it the shorter modern dress. Protests against pedantry and imita- tion are indeed frequently to be heard during the course of the century. Philosophers rebelled against Aristotle (first against the medieval and then against the ancient Aristotle), and appeals were made to truth, which is superior both to Plato and to Aristotle; men of letters advocated the new * classes,' and artists re- peated that the great masters were * nature ' and the * idea/ One feels in the air that the time is not far THE RENAISSANCE 233 distant when the question, " Who are the true ancients? " — that is to say, " Who are the intellectually expert and mature? " — will be answered with, " We are "; the symbol of antiquity will be broken and there will be found within it the reality which is human thought, ever new in its manifestations. Such an answer may possibly be slow in becoming clear and certain as an object of common conviction, though it will eventually become so, and now suffices to explain the true quality of that return to antiquity, by preventing the taking of the symbol for the thing symbolized.
This symbolical covering, cause of prejudices and mis- understandings, which enfolded the whole of humanism, was not the sole vice from which the historiography of the Renaissance suffered. We do not, of course, speak here of the bias with which all histories were variously affected, according as they were written by men of letters who were also courtiers and supported the interests of their masters, or official historians of aristocratic and conservative states like Venice, or men taking one or the other side in the conflicts within the same state, such as the ottimani (or aristocratic) and the popular party of Florence, or upholders of opposed religious beliefs, such as the group of reformed divines of Magde- burg and Baronio. We do not speak here of the historians who became story-writers (they sometimes take to history, like Bandello), or of those who collected information with a view to exciting curiosity and creating scandal. These are things that belong to all periods, and are not sufficient to qualify a particular historio- graphical age. But if we examine only that which is or wished to be historical thought, the historiography of the Renaissance suffered from two other defects, each of which it had inherited from one of its progenitors, 234 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY antiquity and the Middle Ages. And above all there came to it from antiquity the humanistic-abstract or pragmatical conception, as it is called, which inclines to explain facts by the individual in his singularity and in his atomism, or by means of abstract political forms, and the like. For Machiavelli, the prince is not only the ideal but the criterion that he adopts for the ex- planation of events. He does not only appear in his treatises and political opuscules, but in the Florentine Histories, where we meet with him at the very beginning — after the terrible imaginative description of the con- dition of Italy in the fifth century — in the great figure of Theodoric, by whose ' virtue ' and ' goodness ' not only Rome and Italy, but all the other parts of the Western empire, " arose free from the continual scourgings which they had supported for so many years from so many invasions, and became again happy and well-ordered communities/ ' The same figure re- appears in many different forms in the course of the centuries described in those histories. Finally, at the end of the description of the social struggles of Florence, we read that " this city had reached such a point that it could be easily adapted to any form of government by a wise lazv-giver" In like manner, the History of Italy by Guicciardini begins with the description of the happiness of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century, "acquired at various times and preserved for many reasons,,, not the least of which was "the industry and genius of Lorenzo de* Medici," who "strove in every way so to balance Italian affairs that they should not incline more in one direction than another." He had allies in Ferdinand of Aragon and Ludovic the Moor, " partly for the same and partly for other reasons," and the Venetians were held in check by all three of them.
THE RENAISSANCE 235 This perfect system of equilibrium was broken by the deaths of Lorenzo, of Ferdinand, and of the Pope. All historians of this period express themselves in the same way, and although a lively consciousness of the spiritual values of humanity was in process of formation, as has been seen, yet these were spoken of as though they depended upon the will and the intelligence of individuals who were their masters, not the contrary. In the history of painting, for example, the ' prince ' for Vasari is Giotto, "who, although born among in- expert artisans, alone revived painting and reduced it to such a form as might be described as good.,, Bio- graphies are also constantly individualistic, for they never succeed in perfectly uniting the individual with the work which he creates and which in turn creates him.
The idea of chance or fortune persisted alongside the pragmatic conception, its ancient companion. Machiavelli assigns the course of events half to fortune and half to human prudence, and although the accent falls here upon prudence, the acknowledgment of the one does not abolish the force of the other, so mysteri- ous and transcendent. Guicciardini attacks those who, while attributing everything to prudence and virtue, exclude " the power of fortune,' ' because we see that human affairs " receive at all times great impulsions from fortuitous events, which it is not within the power of man either to foresee or to escape, and although the care and understanding of man may moderate many things, nevertheless that alone does not suffice, but good fortune is also necessary." It is true that here and there there seems to appear another conception in Machia- velli, that of the strength and logic of things, but it is only a fleeting shadow. It is also a shadow for 236 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Guicciardini, when he adds that even if we wish to attribute everything to prudence and virtue, " we must at least admit that it is necessary to fall upon or be born in times when the virtues or qualities for which you value yourself are esteemed.' ' Guicciardini remains perplexed as to one point only, as though he had caught a glimpse of something that is neither caprice of the individual nor contingency of fortune: " When I con- sider to what accidents and dangers of illness, of chance, of violence, of infinite sorts, is exposed the life of man, the concurrence of how many things is needful that the harvest of the year should be good, nothing surprises me more than to see an old man or a good harvest." But even here we do not get beyond uncertainty, which in this case manifests itself as astonishment. With the renewal of the idea of fortune, even to a partial extent, with the restitution of the cult of this pagan divinity, not only does the God of Christianity disappear, but also the idea of rationality, of finality, of develop- ment, affirmed during the medieval period. The ancient Oriental idea of the circle in human affairs returns; it dominated all the historians of the Renaissance, and above all Machiavelli. History is an alternation of lives and deaths, of goods and ills, of happiness and misery, of splendour and decadence. Vasari under- stands the history of painting in the same way as that of all the arts, which, "like human bodies, have their birth, their growth, their old age, and their death." He is solicitous of preserving in his book the memory of the artistic capacity of his time, lest the art of painting, " either owing to the neglect of men or to the malignity of the ages or to decree of heaven (which does not appear to wish to maintain things here below for long in the same state), should encounter the same disorder and THE RENAISSANCE 237 ruin " as befell it in the Middle Ages. Bodin, while criticizing and rejecting the scheme of the four monarchies, and demonstrating the fallaciousness of the assertion that gold deteriorates into copper, or even into clay, and celebrating the splendour of letters, of commerce, of the geographical discoveries of his age, does not, however, conclude in favour of progress, but of the circle, blaming those who find everything inferior in antiquity, cum^ teterna quadam lege natura^ conversio omnium rerum velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aqua vitia virtutibuS) ignoratio scientta^ turpe honesto consequens si^ ac tenebra luci. The sad, bitter, pessimistic tone which we observe among ancient historians, which sometimes bursts forth into the tragic, is also often to be met with among the historians of the Renaissance, for they saw perish many things that were very dear to them, and were constrained to tremble for those which they still enjoyed, or at least to fear for them by antici- pation, certain that sooner or later they would yield their place to their contraries.
And since history thus conceived does not represent progress but a circle, and is not directed by the historical law of development, but by the natural law of the circle, which gives it regularity and uniformity, it follows that the historiography of the Renaissance, like the Graeco-Roman, has its end outside itself, and affords nothing but material suitable for exhortations toward the useful and the good, for various forms of pleasure or as ornament for abstract truths. Historians and theorists of history are all in agreement as to this, with the exception of such eccentrics as Patrizzi, who expressed doubts as to the utility of knowing what had happened and as to the truth itself of narratives, but ended by contradicting himself and also laying 238 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY down an extrinsic end. " Each one of us can find, both on his own account and on that of the public weal, many useful documents in the knowledge of these so different and so important examples,' ' writes Guicci- ardini in the proem to his History of Italy. "Hence will clearly appear, as the result of innumerable examples, the instability of things human, how harmful they are often wont to be to themselves, but ever to the people, the ill-conceived counsels of those who rule, when, having only before their eyes either vain errors or present cupidities, they are not mindful of the frequent variations of fortune, and converting the power that has been granted them for the common weal into an injury to others, they become the authors of new perturbations, either as the result of lack of prudence or of too much ambition.' ' And Bodin holds that non solum pr<esentia commode explicantur, sed etiam futura colliguntur, certissimaque rerum expeten- darum ac fugiendarum pracepta constantur, from historical narratives. Campanella thinks that history should be composed ut sit scientiarum fundamentum sufficiens; Vossius formulates the definition that was destined to appear for centuries in treatises: cognitio singularium^ quorum memoriam conservari utile sit ad bene beateque vivendum. Historical knowledge there- fore seemed at that time to be the lowest and easiest form of knowledge (and this view has been held down to our own days); to such an extent that Bodin, in addition to the utilitas and the oblectatio, also recog- nized to history facilitas, so great a facility uty sine ullius artis adjumento, ipsa per sese ab omnibus intelligatur. When truth had been placed outside historical narrative, all the historians of the Renaissance, like their Greek and Roman predecessors, practised, and all the theorists THE RENAISSANCE 239 (from Pontanus in the Actius to Vossius in the Ars historicd) defended, the use of more or less imaginary orations and exhortations, not only as the result of bowing to ancient example, but through their own convictions. Eventually M. de la Popeliniere, in his Histoire des histoires, avec Videe de Vhistoire decom- pile (1599), where he inculcates in turn historical exactitude and sincerity with such warm eloquence, suddenly turns round to defend imaginary harangues et concionsy for this fine reason, that what is necessary is ' truth ' and not * the words ' in which it is expressed! The truth of history was thus not history, but oratory and political science; and if the historians of the Renaissance were hardly ever able to exercise oratory (for which the political constitution of the time allowed little scope), all or nearly all were authors of treatises upon political science, differently inspired as compared with those of the Middle Ages, which had ethical and religious thought behind them, resuming and advancing the speculations of Aristotle and of ancient political writers. In like manner, treatises on historical art, unknown to the Middle Ages, but which rapidly multiplied in the Renaissance (see a great number of them in the Penus artis historic* of 1579), resumed and fertilized the researches of Graeco-Roman theorists. It is to be expected that the historiography of this period should represent some of the defects of medieval historiography in another form, owing to its character of reaction already mentioned and to the new divinity that it had raised up upon the altars in place of the ancient divinity, humanity. The Renaissance every- where reveals its effort to oppose the one term to the other, and since scholasticism had sought the things of God and of the soul, it wished to restrict itself to the 24o HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY things of nature. We find Guicciardini and a chorus of others describing the investigations of philosophers and theologians and " of all those who write things above nature or such as are not seen " as c madnesses '; and because scholasticism had defined science in the Aristotelian manner as de universalibus^ Campanella opposed to this definition his Scientia est de singularibus. In like manner its men of letters, prejudiced in favour of Latin, at first refused to recognize the new languages that had been formed during the Middle Ages, as well as medieval literature and poetry; its jurists rejected the feudal in favour of the Roman legal code, its politicians representative forms in favour of absolute lordship and monarchy. It was then that first appeared the con- ception of the Middle Ages as a whole, opposed to another whole, formed of the ancient and the ancient- modern, into which the Middle Ages were inserted like an irksome and painful wedge. The word ' medieval ' was certainly late in appearing as an official designation, employed in the divisions and titles of histories (toward the end of the seventeenth century, as it would seem, in the manuals of Cellario); previously it had only just occurred here and there; but the thought contained in it had been in the air for some time — that is to say, in the soul of everybody — eked out with other words, such as ' barbarous ' or 1 Gothic ' ages, and Vasari expresses it by means of the distinction between ancient and ' old,' calling those things ancient which occurred before the existence of Con- stantine, of Corinth, of Athens, of Rome, and of other very famous cities built up to the time of Nero, of the Vespasians, of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus, and * old ' those " which had their origin from St Silvester onward.' ' In any case, the distinction was THE RENAISSANCE 241 clear: on the one hand most brilliant light, on the other dense darkness. After Constantine, writes the same Vasari, " every sort of virtue " was lost, " beauti- ful " souls and " lofty " intellects became corrupted into " most ugly " and " basest," and the fervent zeal of the new religion did infinite damage to the arts. This means neither more nor less than that dualism^ one of the capital traits of the Middle Ages, was retained, although differently determined, for now the god was (although not openly acknowledged) antiquity, art, science, Greek and Roman life, and its adversary, the reprobate and rebel, was the Middle Age, ' Gothic ' temples, theology and philosophy bristling with diffi- culties, the clumsy and cruel customs of that age. But just because the respective functions of the two terms were merely inverted, their opposition remained, and if Christianity did not succeed in understanding Paganism and in recognizing its father, so the Renaissance failed to recognize itself as the son of the Middle Ages, and did not understand the positive and durable value of the period that was closing. For this reason, both ages destroyed or allowed to disappear the monuments of the previous age. This was certainly far less the case with the Renaissance, which expressed itself less violently and was deeply imbued with the thought of the Middle Ages, and, owing to the idea of humanity, had an obscure feeling of the importance of its predecessor. So much was this the case that the school of learned men and philologists already mentioned was formed at that time, with the view of investigating medieval antiquities. But the learned are the learned — that is to say, they do not take an active part in the struggles of their time, though busied with the collection and arrangement of its 242 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY chronicles and remains, which they often judge in accordance with the vulgar opinion of their own time, so that it is quite customary to find them despising the subject of their labours, declaring that the poet whom they are studying has no value, or that the period to which they are consecrating their entire life is ugly and displeasing. It needed much to free the flame of intelligence from the heaps of medieval anti- quities accumulated for centuries by the learned, and the Middle Ages were abhorred during the Renaissance, even when they were investigated. The drama of love and hatred was not dissimilar in its forms, nor less bitterly dualistic, although vastly more interesting, than that which was then being played out between Catholics and Protestants. The latter called the Pope Antichrist, and the primacy of the Roman Church mysterium iniquitatis, and compiled a catalogue testium veritatis of those who had opposed that iniquity even while it prevailed. The Catholics returned the com- pliment with remarks about Luther and the Reforma- tion, and composed catalogues of heretics, Satan's witnesses. But this strife was a relic of the past, and would have ended by becoming gradually attenuated and dispersed; whereas the other was an element of the future, and could only be conquered by long effort and a new conception of the loftiest character.