The 16th Century: the Renaissance

The 16th Century: the Renaissance

Bembo's New Standard
 

When a linguistic unification is achieved, political consolidation often follows. But the Italians, who were on the whole, whether willingly or not, divided by foreign powers who extended their political influence throughout the peninsula, would or could not settle their differences and the feuds between powerful local families usually ended in violence. Feelings ran high even between jealous siblings whom enemies knew how to pit against one other. 

Because of such partisanism, even linguistic consolidation could not achieved without difficulties, on account of the same rivalries that divided the courts politically. Though scholars like Castiglione and Trissino, quoting Dante, defended the dignity of the language spoken at court, claiming that a national standard should be the equal sum of regional varieties rather than predominantly Florentine and praised the dignity of Italian. 

Castiglione and Trissino's school was aptly called the Courtisan Tradition and is explained in the former's masterpiece, Il Cortegiano (1528), soon to be followed by Giangiorgio Trissino's Castellano (1529) which supported Castiglione's theories. 

The theory earned a certain reputation, but regional jealousies could hardly lead to a consensus. A compromise between dialects was all but impossible as each prince pretended to impose his own over the others, while the Florentines, given their literary tradition would not accept 'corruptions' from the outside. 

And yet not not a few Italians felt a common language was necessary, not least merchants who had to compile glossaries of different dialects even for minor business trips within Italy. Hoping to reach a solution, Machiavelli defended the rural or vernacular Florentine as opposed to the high standard of Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. 

Machiavelli's Rural Florentine: the Municipal Tradition 

Italian seems to develop after the success of purist view, (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio'a literary language should be the canon). Such party is probably responsible for the coinage of many new words of classical origin while those from dialect (spoken Florentine) sometimes take new meanings.

Machiavelli's position is openly municipal: he puts more value in the colloquial Florentine spoken at his time and excludes any literary or archaic language from the past. In the appendix to his Clizia, one of his comedies, he expounds his ideas in an imaginary conversation between him and Dante. 

Here, il Sommo Poeta is made to sound like a snob and hypocrite, since machiavelli accuses him of having perverted the beautiful florentine vernacular into an artificial literary language without giving proper credit and praised to that spoken language which he also used and appreciated. 

Machiavelli's views emerge from his lifetime experiences of international ambassadors sent on several missions to several European powers, and his contact with intellectuals and politicians but also ordinary people with whom he spent  his most important moments of his life, first inside, and after the exile, outside Florence. 

The attitude of the renaissance man is as pragmatic in language as in politics, which in his opinion was the key to everything, and only italy's unification would solve the age-old question of which standard to choose, and make sure that everyone would conform to it. 

No providence ruled the world, and fortune was no longer the minister of God, as dante said, but a capricious whore who understood nothing but force: when Machiavelli talks about the eternal dilemma of virtue and fortune in his Prince he says that 

...la fortuna è donna; ed è necessario, volendola tenere sotto, batterla e urtarla. E si vede che si lascia più vincere da questi, che da quelli che freddamente procedono. 

E però sempre, come donna, è amica de' giovani, perché sono meno respettivi, più feroci, e con più audacia la comandano. ... 

tr.

...luck is female; and if you want to keep her under your yoke, you have to beat her. See how she is more easily conquered by these [men who treat her badly], than by those who treat her gently. 

And yet, being female, she seeks the company of young males, because they are tougher with her, more driven by passion, so that they master her more boldly. (The Prince, chap.XXV) 

The Renaissance redescovers the original Latin meaning of virtù (ability), ignored in the Middle Ages: virtù here menas the capacity to carry something to effect, whatever the means. In the above passage, feroce, "fierce" also regains its old Latin meaning of: 'impulsive, impetuous'. 
Ferocia is not necessarily evil: it is what we call "aggressive action", a self-preserving drive.

Machiavelli had an extensive knowledge of the classics and Roman History, and especially Titus Livius who largely inspired his Prince, a work in which he, based on the study of Roman History, explained his vision for unifying Italy: based on such convictions he epeatedly exorted Prince Borgia 'Vantentino' to carry out the unification process. Assassination was a small price compared to what was at stake, italy's future. 

Machiavelli's love for Latin loans must not lead us to think he was a something like a bookworm or a theorist. His attitude was similar to Lorenzo's love for blends of popular and scholarly terms: he was a practical man who wanted to hear this language spoken by Italians from all walks of life, not just the erudite, and continuously 'abused' his own language, eager as he was to experiment with it. 

His Italian standard should, most of all, be able to reach into the heart of the layman. As a Florentine Machiavelli was continually exposed to his dialect in which he was raised, and loved it, with a sympathy for the one spoken in the countryside rathern than the city. 

Remembering his native land and the simple people he befriended, he never forgot his native dialect. Could a volgare illustre contain the technical terms a worker needed for his daily chores? It could and it should, but it did not because Italian writers often looked to 'urbane' Florentine as the only basis for the Italian language. 

Surprisingly, this conviction was even more rooted in other Italian states than in Florence. Machiavelli appreciated the spontaneity of the rural language, both powerful and down-to-earth. He loved the countryside and did not mind going out on long walks hunting or fishing with friends or simply mixing with locals to play cards and drink wine and enjoying the occasional tavern brawl: 

Io mi sto in villa (...) ho insino a qui uccellato a' tordi di mia mano. Levàvomi innanzi dì, impaniavo, andavone oltre con un fascio di gabbie addosso, che parevo el Geta quando e' tornava dal porto con i libri di amphitrione: pigliavo almeno dua, al più sei tordi. E così stetti tutto settembre (...) Partitomi del bosco, io me ne vo a una fonte (...). Trasferiscomi poi in sulla strada, nell'osteria: parlo con quelli che passono, domando delle nuove de' paesi loro, intendo varie cose e noto varii gusti e diverse fantasie d'uomini. Viene in questo mentre l'ora del desinare; dove con la mia brigata mi mangio di quelli cibi che questa mia povera villa e pàululo patrimonio comporta. Mangiato che ho, ritorno nell'osteria. Quivi è l'oste, per l'ordinario, un beccaio, un mugnaio, due fornaciai. Con questi m'ingaglioffo per tutto dì, giocando a cricca, a trich-trach, e dove poi nascono mille contese e infiniti dispetti di parole iniuriose; e il più delle volte si combatte un quattrino, e siamo sentiti non di manco, gridare da San Casciano. Così, rinvolto intra questi pidocchi, traggo el cervello da muffa (...) (italics mine) 

tr.:

I live in the countryside (...) so far I've been hunting thrushes with my own hands. I used to get up before dawn, set the lime for the birds, going past the traps with such a bunch of cages on my back as to look like Getas when he came back from the port with Amphitrio's books on his back: and I usually caught a minimum of two , six thrushes at best. This was my life througout September (...). As I leave from the wood I walk to a spring (...). Then I get to the road and reach a tavern: I speak with passers-by, ask them for news, from where they come from, hear many novelties and make a note of those diverse tastes and different types of men. As I do that, it is lunch time already: now, surrounded by my friends I eat what food can be had in this poor countryside with what little money I can spare. After lunch, I head back to the tavern. Here I usually meet the host, a butcher, a miller and two bakers, and I have quarrels with them all day, playing three-of-a-kind, backgammon: and now when we get into endless fights and backbitings without no four-letter-words to spare; most of the time we fight for a pence, and we are heard shouting a long way from San Casciano. This way, soaking in that trash, I save my brain from rusting (...) 
(Letter dfrom Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori in Rome) 

The passage refers to his exile in San Casciano, not far from Florence, where he retreated after being imprisoned and tortured by the Medicis after their return. Machiavelli had been employed as ambassador and cousellor by the these princes of Florence, but after the French had dethroned them he had also collaborated with the short-lived republic. 

When the Medicis returned, he offered his services to them, but they no longer trusted him. He was imprisoned, tortured and when released, was still unwelcome in the city, and had to go into exile. He hoped his friend Francesco Vettori among others might put in a good word for him so he could return to work for the Medicis. But they would no longer employ him. This devastated him more than anything in the world, and he ended his life haunted by regrets and the bitterness for not being able to serve his beloved Florence ever, again. 

It is likely a polite person like Bembo would not have appreciated some of the words I have in Machiavelli's passage: he was the kind of man who, when faced with choosing between 'get' and 'acquire' would have invariably crossed out the former on your paper and reproached you for using that, and never forgive you for using Scottish over British English. 

A few hundred miles from Florence, in the aristocratic Republic of Venice, the perception of Italian might change dramatically, and Bembo's pedantic views could hardly inspire a collection of sonnets like Petrarch's: at best, his excellent knowledge of literature might produce perfect but sterile imitations, and this is precisely what he did. 

Purists like Bembo admired Petrarch for the unique purity of his language: terse without being banal, beautiful and rich without using the four-letter words or those popular expressions that Dante and Boccaccio alternated to their polite, refined, and even complex sentences. Their virtue ws the ability to span between both sides of the sprectrum: but Bembo considered it a flaw, a weakness, and was looking for an artificial uniformity. 

In effect, even Dante was able to switch register though the model Italian he presents in his de Divina Eloquentia largely ignores his 'oversights' used to inveigh against the corrupted politicians and clergy who sentenced him and his friends to death, eventually forcing him into an exile which left him destitute and obliged to appeal to the compassion of princes like Cangrande della Scala. 

Bembo appreciated Boccaccio for inventing Italian prose, but, even more than Dante, Boccaccio has the ability of being direct and hitting on taboo subjects as eroticism, sex, brutal murders while still keeping an elegant, clear style, and this was what embarassed Bembo and his friends. Only Petrarch was fail-safe in every respect, Bembo's admiration for him was unconditional. 

Venice and the Purists 

Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), a Venetian who lived long in the Florence of Lorenzo Il Magnifico, represented the purist's view, not least, as we said, because he was from outside Florence. Like many Italians had made icons of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: no language outside their books could be called Italian.

Bembo wanted to protect Florence's literary language from such contaminations as those 'suffered' at the hands of Venetian, but would not hear of any modern Florentine as well. The establishment of standard Italian marked, in fact, the birth of Florentine as a dialect of the Italian language, but one that had rusted in the books for to hundred years. 

In his Prose della volgar lingua (1525), a fictional dialogue (in three books) supposed to have taken place in Venice, in the home of his brother Carlo Bembo, Pietro tells a brief history of the Italian language, praising Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio as models for all Italians (first book). 

He then proceeeds to analyse excerpts and poems from the three writers (second book); in the last he elaborates the ideal rules for an Italian grammar. He believes that only the Florentine language in its 'golden age' written by those authors could be the basis for a standard: his preference goes to Petrarch, followed by Boccaccio and Dante. 

Because of its perfection, their Italian would be unchangeable through time because no other future author could ever make better literature than these. Bembo's uncompromising view was also prompted by his fears about the increasing influence of his own dialect, Venetian, which was becoming more important given the great political power of the Republic of Venice in the 1500s. 

Ludovico Ariosto was one of Bembo's adimirers and his principles are reflected in his works. Besides writing the Orlando Furioso, a long narrative poem vaguely inspired by the deeds of the Chanson de Roland, he also wrote several comedies for the court of Ferrara. 
"He was the first in our literature to write commedie in vernacular modeled on those by Plautus and Terentius, and the first in the history of theatre to devise and build a self-sufficient scene", says Manacorda, reminding us of some of his greatest comedies: Cassaria, Suppositi,

Negromante, Lena and Studenti. 

The opinions of most Renaissance writers, though varied, fell within one spectrum. All of them agree on establishing norms that must generate a kind of 'ideal' language, from Machiavelli's municipal, to Castiglione's koinè of court vernaculars to Benbo's 1300s literary tradition, and despite their differences, a national will eventually be arrived at in this century. 

In the research for the perfect language, it is easy to feel the classical aura that surrounds the ideal cities painted and partly realised by the princes and their architects inspired by Vitruvius. Also, Utopians are widely acclaimed, whether their ideal is political (Thomas More) or architectural (Leon Battista Alberti) especially at a time where Plato's Repubblica enthralls politicians and philosophers. 

Perfection is what every man must aim for: Castiglione's Cortegiano must learn how to paint, play good music, sing melodiously, write poetry, dress according to a canon, even his behavior can be flawless if the reader will follow his precepts. But the real world was far from perfect, attempts to unified Italy failed, wars devasted the peninsula and the sack of Rome by Charles V's Landsnechts spread black death in Italy (1527). 

Paradoxically, all renaissance writers, as transpires from Machiavelli's letter, live in both worlds: the real one during the day, made of feudal strife, war, and famine, and an ideal one in their libraries, somehow combining both. They lived in real cities but dreamed of virtual cities, they were making a brand new world of technological marvels but admired unconditionally the classical world.

There was a strange connivence between magic and science in the most brilliant scientists, and it was much easier to be burned at the stake for sorcery than it was in the middle ages (only Galilei will explain with precision what science is and what it is not in the following century). 
Despite the paradox, harmony is what intellectuals believe in. For this they looked at Imperial Rome and especially the Age of Augustus and the great poets of that time (Orace, Virgil). 

The Outsider: Pietro Aretino 

For all the attempts to legislate over the Italian language, there was one loud voice outside the choir, a true rebel who did not subscribe to any of the ideas of the Renaissance scholars and widely anticipated many Baroque authors with his love of linguistic eccess, the use of personal neologisms and other caprices. 

Pietro Aretino may be considered Bembo's poetic nemesis: he became famous on account of his erotic poems and Tracts (Sonetti Lussuriosi, 1526, Ragionamenti or Sei Giornate, 1534-6). His realistic vein of the Sonnets bordering on porn looks like a parody of Bembo's Canzoniere (inspired by the pious Petrarch), while in his Sei Giornate (1534-6) an old woman teaches a young girl how to become a prostitute. 

His mercilessly satiric verse addressed to Kings and Princes, and his friendship with Cosimo I of Florence and his influential father earned him respect and was looked in awe even in Venice, home of Bembo himself. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent him quite a few gifts only to be spared his ironic verse which Aretino used to mail to the courts without notice for the unique pleasure of embarassing them. 

However, it would be unfair to say that his literary success was due to his political influence and blackmail. Aretino's poetry and drama is powerful and shows remarkable skill and versatility in all genres: contrary to the trend of his own age, he opposed a literature that tried to imitate the classics, and only trusted his own instinct. 

He rejected tradition in the name of originality whether that be or not be at the expense of decorum and religion. His phrase is already baroque in his irregular turns and twists, hyperboles, and use of extravagant language. 

Bembo's Radical Solution 

Pietro Bembo's plan was not just about Florentine purism: he intended to perfect the language through Latin and Greek calques. His uncompromising stand may seem radical, but as such it could evade the stumbling block of the partisan feuds over dialect imports. 

His views eventually prevailed, leading to an established standard sooner than it might be hoped for. He also modeled the Italian period on Cicero, whose work is one of the best examples of literary latin free from popular influence. 

Bembo's choice reflects a timeless, static view of language, whose virtue lies in its ability to resist change, not to adapt to it. Such stability is possible, says Bembo, when a language is built on the works of the greatest, immortal authors. 

According to his theory, the linguistic influence of Dante will continue to be felt, since his Commedia will always be read, and in a sense, will always be modern. 
Corruption and change are the whim of popular language, which is not dependent on written sources, he said. Such is the also position endorsed by Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. 
The Power of the Aldine Press 

Though Manutius' printing press was sensitive to this issue, commercial interest, especially in the Republic of Venice, pushed in different directions. 

The Aldine Press printed as much as 80% of texts in Italian, but the rest of its efforts were spent on printing Latin and Greek classics with authoritative commmentaries and philological notes by eminent such scholars as Erasmus. Manutius, Bembo, the humanists working at the Aldine Press brought their favorite classic literature to bear on the linguistic debate about the Italian language. 

The Florentines were well aware that their language had changed since Dante had started to pen down his Commedia, and how damaging it was to try freeze it into some ideal, static model. But it was the Venetians who printed most of the books, and merchants from Tuscany could either print fewer copies of the greatest works and had to content themselves with more popular books that could be sold easily. 

Indeed, it was difficult for people not born and raised in Florence to grasp the beauty and richness of popular Florentine, which might be used for comedy, burlesque poetry, satire or simply reproduce the colorful accents of present-day life. But the economic power of Venice) had the upper hand. 

The rediscovery of Latin led at least to the introduction of more words into spoken Italian; from there they passed into other European languages, sometimes via French, sometimes they came staight from Italy. 

We have seen how Lat. machina had evolved from the meaning of 'machine' into it. macina (mill). Now the original word machina was reintroduced in its original sense of 'machine' by restoring the old H. Also, an unprecedented number of scientific terms were coined, most of those related to medicine date to the 1500s. 

Manutius, Bembo and 'new' coins from Latin 

This new 'Latinisation' received a strong impulse from the introduction of the press since scholars like Bembo and Erasmus collaborated with Manuzio to print the critical editions of a large number of Greek and Latin classics.

Aldo Manuzio was not just a printer, he was also an accomplished philologist who worked with Bembo. He prepared a special edition of Petrarch's songs from an original manuscript, that bore Petrarch's initials. More Latin words introduced by the press were: assioma, [en. axiom] circonflesso [en. circumflex ], circospezione [en. circumspection], clinica [en. clinic], comparabile [en. comparable], congenito [en. congenitus], dialetto [en. dialect], ecatombe [en.hecatomb], eccentrico [en. eccentric], peninsola [en. peninsula], omonimo [en. homonym], preferire [en. prefer], scenografia [en. scenography], trilingue [en. trilingual], utero [en. uterus] 

Italian terms coined from Vitruvius 

Almost all of the words used in architecture were taken from Vitruvius, as scenografia [see above list], simmetria [symmetry] or vestibolo [en. vestibule]. 

The same applied to maths and astronomy. Most of the new words passed into English when humanists like Giovanni Florio moved to England to teach Italian or Latin to the local aristocracy. 

A certain interest of Elizabethan England in the italian language transpires in some of his major works, such as the First Fruites (1578), The Second Fruites (1591) (two famous Italian grammars) and one English-Italian dictionary called A Worlde of Wordes (1598). As an enthusiast of renaissance drama, Queen Elizabeth I appreciated the Italian Renaissance and apparently spoke Italian flawlessly. 

The literary contribution of Italian dramatists and comedians to the Elizabethan Theatre (many Italian companies were in London in the 1590s and may have provided another channel for Italian and Latin loans) was essential. 

Spelling Problems 

While many of the new words survive in their original Latin or Greek form in English, a language that has no trouble pronouncing consonant clusters as -pt-, -ct- or -x-, in Italy such letters had to be assimilated to /tt/ or /ss/, /s/. Compare it. azione with English 'action', or It. essempio (later, esempio) with English 'example'.

However, many Italian writers kept swingin beteen forms for two more centuries (however, purists preferred the latin consonants clusters, and keeping the Hs in words like homo, honesto). Other spelling disagreements would persist, concerning for example, the use of ss instead of s. 

Though the Italian was mostly influenced by Florentine, differences between Florence's model, and the Northern and Southern varieties were still sensible even to scholars. The end of the century sees the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca by Lionardo Salviati (1583) to protect the purist standards propounded by Bembo. 

But as in politics, the struggles would continue in th bickering over terms adapted from vernacular and the 'lower' arts and crafts, an issue on which the Crusca was even less prone to concessions than bembo himself.

The 15th Century

The 15th century: Humanism

A renewed interest in the Classics 

Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio became literary icons in the 15th century: they were widely imitated, but no great literary work in Italian did appear, and it looked like the young volgare illustre was going to get old before coming of age. 
Paradoxically, this happened because classical studies were encouraged by the very authors who were turning Florentine into a national language: enriching Italian by drawing on Latin eventually drew more attention to the latter language as the object of scholarly, rather than practical, pursuits. 

Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio's intention was to re-descover Latin to advantage Italian, not diminish it, but in the 1400s the birth of modern philology encouraged scholars to devote most of their attention to rescue ancient texts from oblivion and even reconstruct works that had been partially lost. 

A decreased interest in the Italian language. 

Until the first half of the century, the prevailing attitude was one of using the vernacular for municipal decrees and non-fiction, that is, to exclude it from literature or at least from the literature that counted. Dante's praise of Italian as "illustre", destined to the courts was being disregarded. 

As an instance of this trend, Bruni reminds us of Burchiello (1404-1449) who wrote rhyme verging on mere wordplay in a style "replete with popular expressions akin to dialect", in which the intent to ridicule Florentine as the language of the illitterate is evident. 

Though Leon Battista Alberti (1404 -1472), architect, educator and philologist, wrote the first Italian grammar basing it on current usage, the fact that such a work was only for private use and not given out for publication is another telling sign of the new times. 

However,  reconstructing texts on scientific grounds, as can be seen from the work of scholars like Lorenzo Valla, was revolutionary at a time where every truth was based on tradition: Valla anticipated the techniques of modern linguistics with outstanding results. 

In 1442, Valla proved conclusively that the Act of Donation of the Vatican State by emperor Constantine was a forgery amde by church prelates dating to the 8th century to legitimate the Church's temporal power. Valla's expertise allowed him to discriminate between styles, handwritings, terminology, usage of Latin from different periods. 

His new discovery stirred a sensation among Christians and scholars and seemed to point the way to the more revolutionary discoveries of the next century. The importance of Valla's paper was also symbolic: to many it seemed to prove there was no realm that reason could not probe and that reason alone should be the yardstick against which anything could and should be measured. 

Mass exodus from Costantinople 

The study of ancient texts had thus become a lay science, being applied to fields that until then had relied on the sole dogmas of religious authority as summed up in the writings of the fathers of the Church, particulary St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. 

The next big step towards the Renaissance was made in 1453, when many Greek and Jewish scholars left Greece as it was being ransacked by the Turks. These exiles brought with them a number of ancient manuscripts to Florence, thus saving them from sure destruction: precious documents no one had ever seen in centuries. 

Their arrival spurred an unprecedented wave of studies that actually may be considered the beginning of the Italian Pre-Renaissance period (humanism), that age of intense studies that will be applied in practice to the great masterpieces of the Itlian Renaissance from the early 16th century. 

Therefore it appears that during humanism, the meticulous tendency to study, classify and assimilate the classics prevails over poetic and artistic creativeness, which will prevail in the 1500s, which is by definition creative and bold in experimenting (Renaissance or Rinascimento means re-birth). 

Once the documents gathered in the late 1400s circulated though the press, they inspired poets, architects and painters to translated that wealth of knowledge into their own work. 

The Press: Gutenberg 

Indeed, little would have been achieved without Gutenberg's invention of the printing press with movable types (probably 1450, his Bible is from 1455). This was a sort of water-mill connected to leaden types that printed words at unprecedented speed and therefore much lower costs. 

The Bible was entirely translated into German from the Latin edition of Vulgata so that a larger number of lesser educated people could read and practice their German without incurring in the prohibitive expenses of attending schools. 

However, it would take the work of later humanists to make a translation of the Christian Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek sources. 

Aldus Manutius and the pocket book 

Scholars soon realized the potential of the press: Erasmus offered his expertise to Aldo Manuzio in Venice who in 1494 printed many classics, whether in Greek, Latin, or Italian. Using octavos, he introduced the first pocket books: this way culture became cheap and portable, so that traveling merchants could, for example, stuff their favorite reads in the pockets of their saddles and enjoy them on their long journeys. 

This was a great service to the Italian language and its great classics which were known and translated throughout Europe. Once books were readily available, reading become fun. When Paolo or Aldo hired a shipbuilder to write a technical book on the subject, he was asked to describe his techniques in data. 

When other shipbuilders bought the book and saw flaws in the techniques, they often offered their solution to a specific problem, and Manutius could improve the manual thanks to his readers feedback. Before the invention of the pocket book,  new ideas might take decades to get out of Italy. Thanks to Manutius, it just took a few years for information to travel thousands of miles across the continent. 

The first press censorship 

We can only make assumptions on how an 'Authorized Italian Version' of the Bible might have helped learn and establish an standard Italian or spread literacy among the less priviledged, especially using Manutius' octavos. Unfortunately all printed Bibles in Catholic countries would be seized and burnt and their owners might follow their destiny. 

It was up to lay literature to instruct Italians in the new standard, above all the Divina Commedia and the works by Petrarch (Canzoniere) and Boccaccio (Decameron), considered the linguistic canon par exellence. 

Florence under Lorenzo il Magnifico 

By that time the Medicis ruled Florence, and the city had extended its influence to a number of near cities and was becoming a signoria, a small princedom. A similar process was taking place in other Italian city-states. Ferrara, where Ludovico Ariosto made his fortune, was ruled by the Estensi family, and the Republic of Venice, the city of the Aldine Press was became redoubtable European power. 

The Medicis, who controlled much of Tuscany, widely encouraged the growth of the Florentine language by funding research, poetic and artistic production. "The revaluation of the vernacular was the work of intellectuals who, though continuing to use Latin as a general basis and keeping faith to their classic curriculum did not turn their back to the living language", says Bruni. 

Such revaluation started under Lorenzo il Magnifico, Prince of Florence, a learned man who was also a talented poet. Working with Angelo Poliziano, he wrote an anthology of the Florentine Literature for the son of the King of Naples, prefaced by a letter which went down in history as an important piece of literary criticism. 

As a poet, he also wrote a few great works, such as "Il trionfo di Bacco e Arianna", celebrating the joys of the carnival: the initial words, which make up the refrain of the song, seem remarkably prophetic in the light of his untimely death only a few years later:  

Com'è bella giovinezza che si fugge tuttavia, 
chi vuol esser lieto sia, 
di doman non c'è certezza.

tr.

How beautiful is youth that escapes us in spite of all, 
He that wishes to, be happy! 
We don't know about tomorrow. 

This poem dates to 1490, only four years from his death, but no one like Lorenzo could feel the uncerainty in the existence of the Italian Renaissance man, so enlightened and yet so vulnerable to political whim  (his brother had been killed in his own palace by the plot by the Pazzi family (1478). 

Lorenzo, patron of the arts 

Like many great writers who wanted to make Florentine into a true spoken language, Lorenzo did not mind mixing popular expressions with scholarly terms: they are terse and yet studiously written, and perhaps this is the reason why his poems can stir emotion in the heart of modern readers. 

The popes, though with less success, tried to compete with Florence, but this time the Center-North was to keep the edge. It was Lorenzo il Magnifico who encouraged more research and experiment in the direction of spoken Italian. 

And it was in under Lorenzo that Leonardo studied and produced his early masterpieces. The first was probably the giant copper ball on top of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, in which he welded the empty halves of the brazen sphere using 'burning-mirrors', or sun-powered laser beam. 

It was in this Florence that Michelangelo Buonarroti became famous, though he was to accomplish his masterpiece painting at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. And it was also here that Machiavelli revolutionized the study of politics by studying the history and military tactics of Ancient Rome, while Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino disclosed the wonders of Plato to the world. 

Renewed interest in Plato 

On the whole, Plato became for the Renaissance what Aristotle had been for the middle ages: neoplatonism was particular attractive for its less dogmatic, but more romantic inclination. Such change of view implied a distaste for the old eduactional system since it meant comforming to the fathers of the church who had supported the old (Ptolemaic) earth-centered view of the universe. 

However, Aristotle's impact on the Renaissance is not negligeable in other respects, mostly in the Classical Theatre, it was at this point that his Poetics were brought to light after it had been lost for centuries. Aristotle's classification also influenced the theory of literary genres. 

But it seems only natural that a passionate philosopher like Plato who praised love as the driving force of the universe and nature as the benevolent, sensual goddess must have inspired so many intellectuals to look to the future with optimism and investigate the world without fear. 

Lorenzo's attempts to unify Italy 

Lorenzo il Magnifico can be credited with bringing as much wisdom to humanities as in politics. At that time, Italy was torn by political factions, often backed by the French and the Spaniards. His attempt to make Italy one unified, independent nation by balancing one against the other, though the ruses of diplomacy rather than force came to an end when he died in 1492. 

Only two years later Charles VIII the French king would march from the alps to Naples without one Italian prince raising a hand to stop him. When Charles VIII retired, he carried back with him invaluable works of Italian art which, though unfortunately depleting Italy of many of its greatest treasures, brought the spirit of the Renaissance to France, from where it would spread to England and other European countries. 

The new wave of studies made a sensation in the European continent. Most words loaned from Italian date indeed to the Renaissance, and much European literature was inspired by French translations or adaptations of Italian works. 

The arrival of the French in Florence had caused an upheaval that had forced the Medicis to exile, while the Florentines had proclaimed Florence a republic. Only a couple of years after one friar from Ferrara, Girolamo Savonarola inflamed the people of Florence condemning many of the excessive liberal practices endorsed by those princes and their protegées, accused of fostering libertinism, sodomy and satanism. His sermons reached into the hearts of many Florentines. 

The new Republic of Florence became under him a fundamentalist state where every freedom was suppressed, and 'suspects' were tortured and burned at the stake. It seemed the clock had been turned back to the early middle ages: but this age of terror was short-lived as the Pope excommunicated Savonarola and had him burnt at the stake too (1498).  The Republic would stay in power for a few decades until the Medicis came back to power in 1527.

The 14th Century

The 14th century: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio

Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio

Although the Sicilians actually created a standard, it remained confined to the higher classes, and remained a literary language, to be used within the narrow confines of the courts and the priviledge of poets and scholars. Its potential remained untapped, but it was also short-lived - about thirty years. When Manfredi, Frederick's illeggittimate son  succeeded his father as King of Sicily (1258-1266) the school exprerienced a gradual decline, until it was despersed when Mandredi, after refusing to retreat in spite of overwhelming enemy forces, launched himself into Charles d'Anjou's army. He was killed on the spot on February 26, 1266.

It was as much the end of Frederick's dream, as that of a unique experiment in the history of language. But one that was destined to be remembered for centuries. The poems of the Sicilians traveled to Tuscany and from there to the rest of Italy. Their fame survived it into the work of Guittone d'Arezzo and, later, Dante (1265-1321) who understood the importance of a modern, flexible standard which both the layman and the poet could use. This idea posessed him to write a treatise, De Vulgari Eloquentia, (1304-5) in which he expounded his ideas.

Intended as a small summa on the Italian language and literature, Dante had planned to divide it into an introduction (what is now chapter 1), and several books, one on poetry, another (probably) on prose, a third on middle style (mezzano, or comic), and it's likely that the fourth shoud deal with the low, popular Italian. It is impossible to make further assumptions on what was going to follow. 

After being brought to light by Dante's sons and Boccaccio, it was forgotten until the 16th century and even believed apocryphal until Jacopo Corbinelli published one of the extant 5 manucripts in Paris (1577). Its redescovery in Italy was destined to bear on the discussion of linguists that eventually led to the final establishment of a national standard with the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca.  

That the book is written in Latin must not mislead us as to the modernity of its content: actually, it was aimed primarily at those influential intellectuals and princes who regarded Latin as linguistically (and morally) superior and therefore refused to read anything vernacular, at least concerning such important subject as language and poetry. Many of the ideas contained in DVE had already been anticipated in Dante's Convivio, where he had admitted that the Italian language will "shine as a new light, a new sun, which will rise where the old one [Latin] had set, will enlighten those who live in darkenss because of the old sun that shines no longer" (Conv. I, xiii, 12)

If Latin was the language of those who were noble by birth, Italian, like Dolce Stil Novo must be the language of those who were noble at heart, a language for all. Dante's argument that true nobility is not inherited but must be proven by one's deeds reflects the modern, pragmatic views of the new, self-made men of Florence. 

While the Convivio was more focused on poetry and language in general, DVE is focused on the Italian language, and although Dante praises the stability of Latin against that of modern languages, he understands that the Italian language still needed to develop a norm, a grammar, that could standardise it and that there were yet few poets who had provided a body of text detached from the local thradition in which they belonged. 

Only a handful of poets have really written good Italian poetry: Guido Guinizzelli, Cino da Pistoia, Guido Cavalcanti and "his friend" (Dante himself). Stability is scarcely appreciated today, when dozens of words and phrases are rise and fall each day, in the age of massive advertising, television and the internet. 

For such a chamaleontic age as ours, tradition and immutabity sounds like something bad: we get news updates and software upgrades, car models are recalled and even the articles we keep in our homes are quick-lived, from furniture to toothbrushes.

However for a man living in the middle ages, ravaged by contnuous invasions, famine, wars, when the city you lived in could change hands several times in your lifetime, stability was a rare good, and it is not surpising that if something could resist the wear and tear of century, it must be inbued with some divine virtue. 

Old became synonymous with perfection and that explain why Languages like Latin, Greek or Jewish were the perfect languages. But from Convivio and DVE Dante detatches himself from the idea, being convinced that there is in fact no immutable language and that when one appears to be so, it is only because our lifespan is too short for us to realise such changes that, if microscopic in a lifetime, become macroscopic over a number of generations. 

Undoubtedly there are languages who are more irregular and changeable, while others are more stable, but this is not due to any divine quality: Dante attributed to the langue d'oc a great stability because many goofd poets had left outstanding works capable of standing the text of time. In other words, they had been so admired that certain traits of their poetry and language had resisted innovation. 

At this point Dante asked himself if this would not be the case of Italian if it could accumulate a similar poetic tradition in the future. And what is the purpose of his "booklet" if not that of inviting more Italian poets to join in this new tradition writing songs in Italian whose weight would eventually create a tradition and therefore a grammar capable of unifying the language and standardising it?    
The prestige of Latin was still high: it was the language of science and the teaching language of universities, but the language of everyday life had to be another. In De Divina Eloquentia, Dante anticipates the scholars' objections on the Italian vernacular, proposing that the new standard be enriched by Latin and Greek words adapted ad hoc.   

The Italian language might be as good as Latin, though, only if scholars and poets would contribute to its growth with woks of art and that is what he and his disciples attempted to do with the songs and sonnets of Dolce Stil Novo. Guido Cavalcanti was, in Dante's own words, the most talented of the group, writing a poetry as rich in philosophical and moral consideration as in simple, sensuous, impressionistic observation of women and love.  

The import of new Latin words, would not antagonize the classicl language: instead, it should encourage more people to study it. Because Latin is Italy's parent language, Latin words can be painlessly converted into Italian ones, and it is possible for anyone to do so by just replacing the suffix of the Latin nominative with that of the ablative (a, e, o according to the original declension). The latin grammar was also a model for verbs, and the tenses are in fact quite faithful to the Latin. 

The enormous success of Dante's school of Dolce Stil Novo, whose corpus was also a test to check how the new language might be received, prompted him to aim higher, to the sophisticated language structure of the Divina Commedia, where Stil Novo is not denied but included in his philosophical and moral quest for salvation. 

Its enormous success proved him right, and the legacy was inherited by Boccaccio who in his public lectures on the Commedia made Dante's work truly immortal and his language a cannon to which all great future writers would conform.   

The Four Virtues of the Italian Language

After a short and generic survey into the European languages, in which Dante clearly defines the boundaries between Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages, he divides the vernaculars of roumania into lingue d'oc, d'oil, del sì (Italian dialects). He then tries a further subdivision: Western Italy (west of the Appennini), and Eastern (east). To the former belong the following regions: western Apulia, Latium, the duchy of Spoleto, Tuscany and the Genoese marquee, Sicily and Sardinia, while the latter includes part of Apulia, Marche, Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli and Istria. 

However, because of the absence of local standards and the mutual influence between these territories he cautions us into assuming that these are separate languages, and that one may fond sensible variation when moving from town to town. Since such languages enjoy little or local tradition they had, in Dante's eyes, no defined grammar or usage rules. His search for a dialect on which to base a future literary tradition founders on the rocks of a babelic sea of micro-languages: against such lingusitic division he cannot even boast the Tuscans, whom Dante says that " having lost the few wits they had left on account of their madness, claim for themselves the monolpoly of volgare illustre" (I, xiii). 

He shows admiration for the Sicilians, whose language "seems to deserve a higher praise than the others, because all the Italian poets write in their own language can be dubbed " 'Sicilian' " (I, xii) and the Bolognese, qualifies as the the most beautiful, its harmony being due to the fact it partakes in equal measure of the harsh masculine quality from Veneto and the feminine accent from Forlì: on the other hand, Bologna was home to his university and great masters who like Guinizzelli had started Dolce Stil Novo, a poetry whose language, like that of the Sicilians sixty years before, were starting a poetry that transcended regional languages and was building a grammar based on the example of the geat Latin classics. 

Dante would wish the new Italian language to be a koinè emerging from the sum of all the italian dialects, but realises that the political divisions made anything like what had happened in Sicily impossible. Rather, the Italians could lean on the example of some good poets once that a literary tradition consolitated. This only might generate one peninsular language capable of transcending all. 

Such a language must be illustre, being inspired to the most 'illustrious' tradition of past men of letters (Dante explicitly refers to the great men of the classical word, such as Seneca or Numa Pompilius, but), cardinale, because every other dialect must tend to to it, as a door (the dialects) turns around its hinges (it. cardini), aulico because "if we Italians had our King's castle, it [=the Italian language] would belong in the court", and curiale because governed by solid rules as those by which the courts are governed. 

However, there should be three levels of italian, each corrisponding to a virtue: salus (self-preservation), amor (love), virtus (virtue). While salus was common to animals and humans alike, it was the lowest kind of volgare illustre, in which we might include war songs (epics), the second was nobler, its subject being amor cortese, or the fin'amor of the troubadours, and the third was moral and phiolosophical (about the spirit and human reason, above eartly 'passions' and 'instincts' of animals and plant, the exclusinve gift of God to man. 

Below this volgare illustre Italian stood two lower levels, namely volgare mezzano (middle, or "comic" as opposed to volgare illustre, or "high"), and low (or 'humble', typical of popular ballads). On the contrary, the song was the highest poetic form and as such only suitable to volgare illustre, the only one capable of treating tragedy, the highest form of literature.
For all the styles, however, Dante called for a fixed spelling, an established grammar and pronunciation to which all other Italian states should conform to make the Italian language a reality. 

An angel fallen from Heaven: Dolce Stil Novo 

Dolce Stil Novo was actually the touchstone against which Dante tested his literary and linguistic theories before engaging in the Commedia. 
Guido Guinizzelli had provided the first manifesto in his song Al cor gentil , followed by a collection of poems, but it was up to Dante's Vita Nuova (a collection of philosophical sonnets followed by prose comments) to perfect what Guinizzelli had only started. Guinizzelli, like Guittone, had been both fascinated by the Sicilians' idea of a platonic woman liberated from the realistic vein of Troubadour poetry. 

Dolce Stil Novo refused to paint the usual ingenerous portrait of the fair sex as the cause of humanity's sins: the woman here is a madonna, a redeemer who comes to earth to convert her lover: a woman's love, when pure, is the gateway that leads man to divine love. 
Such platonic, angelic view of woman was probably the consequence of the new social role acquired by women in Dante's liberal Florence, reflecting the views of the new middle-class and the fact that women had become a consistent part of the reading public. 
But let us test these theories against a known sonnet in Dante's Vita Nova, called 'Tanto Gentile': 

Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare 
la donna mia quand'ella altrui saluta, 
ch'ogne lingua deven tremando muta, 
e li occhi no l'ardiscono di guardare. 
Ella si va, sentendosi laudare, 
benignamente d'umiltà vestuta; 
e par che sia una cosa venuta 
da cielo in terra a miracol mostrare. 
Mostrasi sì piacente a chi la mira, 
che dà per li occhi una dolcezza al core, 
che 'ntender no la può chi no la prova; 
e par che da la sua labbia si mova 
un spirito soave pien d'amore, 
che va dicendo all'anima: sospira 
So kind and honest looks 
My lady when she greets strangers 
That every tongue hushes and quivers 
And people's eyes do not dare look at her 

She walks past, hearing people praise her, 
Simply clad in humility 
And she looks like something come down 
From heaven to hearth to show a miracle. 
She looks so lovely to those who watch her 
That her eyes send some sweetness to the heart 
But cannot be understood if not been felt inside 
And it looks as if from her lips departed 
A gentle spirit full of love 
That invites to the soul to sigh. 

The ladies in the poems of Dolce Stil Novo are usually mindful of the Holy Virgin: they are surrounded by a golden aura that enflames man with pure love, a passion that elevates him both in the torments (Guido cavalcanti) and the joys (Dante) it inspires. 

Guido Cavalcanti's life was particularly tainted with hardships (separation from his beloved due to an exile, and disease) and Guido himself explains his passion using averroistic (is the spirit made of atoms, he asked hmself) theories, but Dante and his contemporaries generally emphasised the divine nature of woman, capable by divine gift of inspiring and redempting man from sin. 

With Dante, such redemptive value extends beyond the grave: Beatrice's influence becomes even stronger after her death. Here Christian mysticism and platonic love blend to evoke a powerful figure that transcends humanity. (Platonism would be further developed by Petrarch, who perfected the sonnet and widely anticipated romantic sensibility.) The songs and sonnets of Vita Nuova (the title itself hints to spiritual salvation) are dedicated to Beatrice herself. 

Unfortunately we know little about her life, except that her real name was Bice Portinari. Dante seems to have fallen for her when they meet in their childhood, when he was nine. Later, she ended up marrying another man, but died in her early twenties. 

At that point Dante was seized by despair, and was losing his faith, so Beatrice returned in his dreams to confort him. In the Commedia she will also be at his side, leading him through Purgatory into Heaven. (Virgilio, who could not receive the blessing of true faith in its own time, must leave Dante him at the end of hell.) 

Dante's Commedia is not just religious poetry. It is a historical, social and literary survey of Italy, present and past with its most eminent politicians, princes, popes and poets. Out of respect of classical and theological tradition, this gallery of live portraits includes mythological characters like Minos and Lucifer painted with remarkable realism, Paolo and Francesca, the unhappy lovers murdered by Francesca's husband, Brunetto Latini, author of that medieval encyclopedia of knowledge, The Trésor, and Sordello da Goito, a known troubadour poet. 

Dante met many of the real characters in the Commedia, and tried honestly to portray them in all their virtues and flaws rather than just praising or condemning them altogether. His attitude is by no means moralistic: he has a psychologist's eye, glossing over, for example, Brunetto Latini's sodomy to praise his many merits - he had been his mentor and a great scholar. 

Not only is the Commedia one of the greatest literary and linguistic accomplishments, it is also a powerful historical account of Dante's times. 

The Legacy of Dante's Italian 

After Dante's death Commedia became almost as popular as the Bible itself, its words and language entered common usage, including a few clichés as 'Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse', "The culprit was the book and the one who wrote it", to refer to the occasion in which a couple fall in love for the first time. 

Also well-known is the proverb 'non ti curar di lor ma guarda e passa' (do not mind them but look and move on) or the verses 'foste non fatti per viver come bruti / ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.' when speaking of Ulysses sailing to the end of the world ("You have not been made to live like brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge"), which a pedantic teacher may use to remind his pupils of their chores. 

Petrarch 

Francis Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) was profoundly inspired by Dolce Stil Novo and his Canzoniere is as much a tribute to his beloved Laura, as it is the Vita Nuova by the Sommo Poeta. 

He draws on Dante's songs and sonnets, sometimes using the same interlocking rhymes or terza rima in his sonnets. But Petrarch went much beyond imitation: he developed the sonnet form to the highest perfection: he made the language simple and terse, added powerful imagery, and introduced the enjambement, allowing a single sentence to space beyond the end- rhyme. 
His looser use of metre in his songs paved the way for the free verse of modernists. His desperate love for Laura, never returned, and the inconsolable regret after her death show a sensibility that goes well beyond literary convention and into his own personal life, as such it will only be found much later in the Romantics. 

The remarkable modernity and down-earthedness of the language enflamed by the sincerity of his passion are a treat both to the scholar and the average reader and are nothing short than exraordinary: 

XC 

Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi 
che 'n mille dolci nodi gli avolgea, 
e 'l vago lume oltra misura ardea 
di quei begli occhi, ch'or ne son sí scarsi; 
e 'l viso di pietosi color farsi, 
non so se vero o falso, mi parea: 
i' che l'ésca amorosa al petto avea 
qual meraviglia se di súbito arsi? 
Non era l'andar suo cosa mortale, 
ma d'angelica forma; et le parole 
sonavan altro, che pur voce humana. 
Uno spirto celeste, un vivo sole 
fu quel ch'i' vidi: et se non fosse 
or tale, piagha per allentar d'arco non sana. 

Petrarch watches Laura as she walks past him, her long golden hair caressed by the wind, her eyes burning with desire, her cheeks flushing as her eyes meet his. Now he has fallen for her, he has eaten the esca amorosa, her love bait, and is seized by the agonizing fear that she will not return his love. Laura looks and speaks like an angel, is brighter than sun, and his torment never ends. 

But, alas, Francesco suddenly wakes up from the dreams, many years have passed from that moment, and those eyes burning with love shine no more. And yet, the memory of those moments spent together is so alive that that passion still consumes him like a torch. 
Structure: 2 stanzas: an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines): ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. The sestet can also rhyme: CDCDCD (the intertlocking rhymes used by Dante) or otherwise though never ending with a rhyming couplet. 

Petrarch's Legacy 

This is the sonnet Wyatt imported in the 1500s, later to adapted to English by the Earl of Surrey in the form popularised by Shakespeare. Remarkably for the middle ages, when precious few works are signed, Petrarch inaugurated the first truly autobiographical literature, and the Romantics will use in their novels. However, such personal reflections are balanced by considerations about mankind, nature and the universe. 

Petrarch's language largely benefitted from his classical studies which occupied most of his life: he was an accomplished humanist well ahead of his times. Boccaccio was profoundly inspired by his poetry and was in many ways his spiritual son. 

Giovanni Boccaccio 

Petrarch's heritage was passed on to Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), his favorite disciple, though he went down in history for story-telling than poetry. 
In fact it was with Boccaccio that the short, or novella, until then considered low literature, acquired the status of a literary genre, paving the way for the novel. Boccaccio also created a standard Italian prose on which written and polite Italian would be modeled in the centuries to come. 

His Decamerone, one-hundred tales told in ten days by a group of fictional characters gathered together to escape the black plague of 1348, was widely imitated, as in the Trecentonovelle by Franco Sacchetti (1330-1400), and later, Matteo Bandello (1485-1561) in his Novelle, one of which inspiring Brooke's Romeo and Juliet. While Marguerite of Navarre's Heptameron was one of most famous examples abroad during the Renaissance. 

Many prose-writers tried to imitate Boccaccio but no one could ever equal his skill. Boccaccio introduced a "modern Tuscan lexicon, enchiched, when necessary by imports from dialects", says Giuliano Manacorda, remarking that the phrase is "abundant without being excessive", with "wit that puts life into it". "Such language makes Boccaccio the true beginner of Italian prose fiction". 

In Manacorda's words, this is "a prose that can be called realistic because of the competence and sometimes the strict attention to minute details with which he looks at and describes the world he imagines and that matches the one of his own experience." 

Such flexibility in the use of language was also inspired by Boccaccio's use of many different registers (from high to low, from colloquial and even vulgar to extremely literarate) according to the kind of tale he was going to narrate (comic, tragic, historical, biographical) and the the characters of his tales, from the sardonic account of Bergamino (see above), to the tragic tale of Elisabetta who dies after her brothers dig up the head of her lover she had hidden in a vase of basil.