I do not know
how Margaret L. King’s, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance was
received when it first appeared in 1986, but it was a real eye opener for me 25
years later. I originally looked into it for the profiles in the last section
of her study of all the ninety-two humanists that she found in Venice in the
fifteenth century.*
Ninety-two was
not a capricious or arbitrary number. Although a literary scholar, King’s
methodology resembled that of a trained sociologist. She studied the three generations of fifteenth century
Venetian humanists and developed specific criteria for inclusion in the group.
Speaking of her study, she wrote,
It has not
argued that Venetian humanism mimicked humanism elsewhere, but that a
particular society will generate a characteristic form of any intellectual
movement. It…has spoken of ninety-two concrete personalities named by plausible
guidelines as members of the humanist circle. It has not simply asserted that
social origin affected the behavior and production of intellectuals engaged in
humanism, but has pointed to documented cases of such influence. It has not put
faith in conclusions drawn from the reading of a few works but has tested them
in many drawn from the whole of humanist production. (245)
She found a
remarkable unanimity through the three generations; the first born between
1370-1400, the second from 1400-1430, and the third from 1430-1460. In the first place, the great majority
(64 of 92) were patricians.
Not only are
the patricians the largest social group among the society of Venetian
humanists. They also come overwhelmingly from the most privileged sector of
that class. (277)
It is hard not
to stress the importance of this finding. Although titles of nobility had never
been permitted in the Venetian republic, the Venetian patriciate was the most
exclusive class of nobility in all of Europe. Except for one exception in the fourteenth century no new members or families were ever admitted to
this class. Unlike England where the King could grant titles, the Venetian Doge
or government had no such power.
As a result of
this patrician involvement Venetian humanism developed along quite different
lines than elsewhere. King’s first chapter is titled “Unanimitas,” and it
develops three distinct and characteristic traits of Venetian humanism. In the
first place, practically every fifteenth century humanist was involved either
directly or indirectly in service to the State. Many of the patricians, of
course, held some of the highest offices in the Republic, and even the
non-patricians either served the patricians or were employed by the government
as secretaries. Not only did they work for the state but their writings also
reflect a concern to glorify and perpetuate the Serenissima.
Secondly, in
the fifteenth century there was no philosophical disagreement. The
Aristotelianism propounded in the nearby University of Padua reigned supreme. Even
though Venice had conquered Padua, intellectually Padua had conquered Venice.
Aristotelian
political, metaphysical thought provided, in brief, legitimation for Venice’s
highly stratified, rigid, and authoritarian society. The humanists, who in
large measure profited from that social order, happily wedded their humanism to
that philosophical vision. (184)
After a
thorough examination of seven major humanist works, as well as a host of minor
ones, King found no hint of Neo-Platonism throughout the fifteenth century.
Thirdly, she
did not find any hint of secularism or deviation from religious orthodoxy. What
she writes about the second generation applied to the others.
At the same
time, they defended orthodoxy, religious and philosophical, respected the
authority of the church, feared and respected outsiders, feared and condemned
immorality. This conservative component of Venetian humanism coexisted with its
other main purpose: the celebration of Venice. (230)
King cites
many individual examples of Venetian piety and orthodoxy and concludes with
this summary.
Concerned,
even anxious, about the welfare of their souls and of their city, these
humanists selected from the writings of antiquity not those values which
displaced, but those which complimented a traditional piety. (37)
Not only did
these humanists compose and copy many religious works, but sometimes their
devotion could see strange meanings in some of the ancient pagan texts they
studied. In his Concordance of Poetry, Philosophy and Theology Giovanni
Caldiera found moral or spiritual analogues in many ancient myths.
Where Paris,
asked to judge among three goddesses, awards the golden apple to Venus,
Caldiera sees the apostle Paul presented with the three theological virtues,
choosing love…Jove’s seduction of Leda, wife of King Tyndar, is seen as
Christ’s wresting of the holy church of God from its union with the Old Law.
(114)
To summarize,
there was no conflict between faith and reason in fifteenth century Venetian
patrician humanist circles. Christianity and Aristotelian philosophy
went hand in hand in support of the Venetian state and its hierarchical class
system. King notes one historian’s very apt comparison of Florence and Venice.
Florence is Athens and Venice is Sparta.
Initially, I
wondered why King confined her study to the three generations of fifteenth
century scholars. Didn’t humanism flourish and grow right into the next
century? It could be that she had more than enough material here, and that she
planned future studies. However, it soon became clear that she believed that a
striking development took place in the fourth generation of humanists, those
born between 1460 and 1490. At the very outset of what we call the High
Renaissance, Venetian humanism developed offshoots that would challenge and
weaken the old unanimity.
King’s
statistical analysis showed a swelling of the ranks at the dawn of the sixteenth century caused in large part by the remarkable growth of the printing industry
in Venice.
Humanists and
related members of Venice’s intellectual circles born in the generation
immediately following the third of our core group…are multitudinous; for the
ranks of humanist circles are swelled by amateurs, patrons, collectors,
printers’ assistants editors, translators, teachers of all kinds in the last
decade of the century. (270)
Much of this
activity centered on the press opened by Aldo Manutius after his arrival in
Venice in 1491. It quickly became a center for humanist activity.
Around him and
his assistants flocked the humanists of Venice, pedagogues and secretaries,
university professors and physicians, young or leisured noblemen. (238)
The synthesis
of humanism and the values of the Venetian aristocracy was weakened by this
development as scholars focused more on their texts and translations. For many
of them involvement in the affairs of the Republic was replaced by a sterile
philological pedantry.
Nor was that
movement fully successful; it lacked not energy but a moral dimension. There
seemed to be embedded in the intellectual movement of those dissectors and
correctors of words no broad conception of the world, of society, of the place
and depths and stature of the human being. Though they produced useful
work…their zeal was sterile. Their words, bloodless, do not live. (236)
Other
humanists began to drop out in order to find personal religious and
philosophical fulfillment. Venice was not immune to the great religious reform
movement that was sweeping over Europe in the fifteenth century decades before
the Protestant Reformation.
King tells the
tragic story of Ermolao Barbaro, a humanist from one of the most prominent
patrician families, who was ostracized for accepting a bishopric from the Pope
that the Signoria wanted for its own candidate. Barbaro was not interested in
being a prince of the Church but defied his city because he believed that as a
Bishop he would be free to lead a quiet life of study and contemplation.
Another
scholar wrote a treatise advocating celibacy, not for religious reasons but as
a means of detaching oneself from the cares of the world. A wife and children
meant a family, and a family inevitably in Venice involved participation in the
political and economic life of the City. How could someone be free to study and
learn with such concerns?
Some dropped
out for purely religious concerns. The most striking example is that of Tommaso
Giustiniani who, like the rich young man in the Bible, gave up all his
possessions, including his art collection, to live as a hermit in a
Camoldolensian monastery.
In her
concluding chapter, King describes the decline of Venetian humanism and the
coincident rise of its artistic renaissance.
Thus patrician
humanism survived into the sixteenth century, marked by its peculiarly Venetian
balance of the universal vision and local civic responsibility, and by its
expression of the themes of unanimitas
fundamental to the city’s myth. Yet it constituted but one tendency of sixteenth-century
humanism, which included, as well, the technical and routinized culture of the
philologists and encyclopedists, the mediocre classicism of teachers and
secretaries, the book talk and trading generated by the presses. And it
constituted but one strand of Venice’s intellectual culture…and neither the
primary nor most characteristic one. For the foci of Venice’s culture in the
sixteenth century, and perhaps the true glories of her Renaissance, were not in
humanism at all, but in vernacular literature and the arts. (242)
In King’s
analysis Venetian patricians who came to maturity around 1500 did not share the
outlook of their fathers.
They shed at
the same time other restraints operative in Quattrocentro humanism. The
sensuality prohibited by humanist arbiters of taste exploded into view. A
diversity of themes and sentiments appeared that had not been possible within
the contours of humanist culture neatly dictated by the assumptions of
scholastic philosophy and Christian orthodoxy….In a parallel development, the
visual arts at about this time abandoned the conservative canons of form
followed strictly during most of the fifteenth century and embraced the
language of color. (243)
One of the
prominent humanists profiled by King was Marco Aurelio, the father of Niccolo
Aurelio, who would succeed his father in the Venetian secretariat and go on to
become Grand Chancellor, the highest rank that a non-patrician could hold. Niccolo’s coat of arms can be seen on Titian’s famous “Sacred and
Profane Love,” a striking example of the Venetian language of color. ###
*All quotes are from Margaret L. King, "Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance," Princeton, 1986. Page numbers in parentheses.
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