De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) by Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

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DE ORBE NOVO

The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera

Translated from the Latin with Notes and Introduction

By Francis Augustus MacNutt

In Two Volumes

Volume One

1912

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE FIRST DECADE

THE SECOND DECADE

THE THIRD DECADE

ILLUSTRATIONS

CARDINAL ASCANIO SFORZA From the Medallion by Luini, in the Museum at
Milan. Photo by Anderson, Rome.

LEO X. From an Old Copper Print. (No longer in the book.)

DE ORBE NOVO

INTRODUCTION

I

Distant a few miles from the southern extremity of Lago Maggiore, the
castle-crowned heights of Anghera and Arona face one another from
opposite sides of the lake, separated by a narrow stretch of blue
water. Though bearing the name of the former burgh, it was in
Arona[1], where his family also possessed a property, that Pietro
Martire d'Anghera first saw the light, in the year 1457[2]. He was not
averse to reminding his friends of the nobility of his family, whose
origin he confidently traced to the Counts of Anghera, a somewhat
fabulous dynasty, the glories of whose mythical domination in Northern
Italy are preserved in local legends and have not remained entirely
unnoticed by sober history. What name his family bore is unknown; the
statement that it was a branch of the Sereni, originally made by Celso
Rosini and repeated by later writers, being devoid of foundation. Ties
of relationship, which seem to have united his immediate forebears
with the illustrious family of Trivulzio and possibly also with that
of Borromeo, furnished him with sounder justification for some pride
of ancestry than did the remoter gestes of the apocryphal Counts of
Anghera.[3]

[Note 1: Ranke, in his _Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber_,
and Rawdon Brown, in his _Calendar of State Papers relating to
England, preserved in the Archives of Venice_, mention Anghera, or
Anghiera, as the name is also written, as his birthplace. Earlier
Italian writers such as Piccinelli (_Ateneo de' Letterati Milanesi_)
and Giammatteo Toscano (_Peplus Ital_) are perhaps responsible
for this error, which passages in the _Opus Epistolarum_, that
inexplicably escaped their notice, expose. In a letter addressed to
Fajardo occurs the following explicit statement: "..._cum me utero
mater gestaret sic volente patre, Aronam, ubi plaeraque illis erant
praedia domusque ... ibi me mater dederat orbi_." Letters 388, 630, and
794 contain equally positive assertions.]

[Note 2: Mazzuchelli (_Gli Scrittori d'Italia_, p. 773) states
that Peter Martyr was born in 1455, and he has been followed by the
Florentine Tiraboschi (_Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. vii.)
and later historians, including even Hermann Schumacher in his
masterly work, _Petrus Martyr der Geschichtsschreiber des Weltmeeres_.
Nicolai Antonio (_Bibliotheca Hispana nova_, app. to vol. ii) is alone
in giving the date as 1559. Ciampi, amongst modern Italian authorities
(_Le Fonti Storiche del Rinascimento_) and Heidenheimer (_Petrus
Martyr Anglerius und sein Opus Epistolarum_) after carefully
investigating the conflicting data, show from Peter Martyr's own
writings that he was born on February 2, 1457. Three different
passages are in agreement on this point. In Ep. 627 written in 1518
and referring to his embassy to the Sultan of Egypt upon which he
set out in the autumn of 1501, occurs the following: ..._quatuor et
quadraginta tunc annos agebam, octo decem superadditi vires illas
hebetarunt_. Again in Ep. 1497: _Ego extra annum ad habitis tuis
litteris quadragesimum_; and finally in the dedication of the Eighth
Decade to Clement VII.: _Septuagesimus quippe annus aetatis, cui nonae
quartae Februarii anni millesimi quingentesimi vigesimi sexti proxime
ruentis dabunt initium, sua mihi spongea memoriam ita confrigando
delevit, ut vix e calamo sit lapsa periodus, quando quid egerimsi quis
interrogaverit, nescire me profitebor. De Orbe Novo_., p. 567. Ed.
Paris, 1587. Despite the elucidation of this point, it is noteworthy
that Prof. Paul Gaffarel both in his admirable French translation of
the _Opus Epistolarum_ (1897) and in his _Lettres de Pierre Martyr
d'Anghiera_ (1885) should still cite the chronology of Mazzuchelli and
Tiraboschi.]

[Note 3: The Visconti, and after them the Sforza, bore the title
of Conte d'Anghera, or Anghiera, as the name is also spelled.
Lodovico il Moro restored to the place the rank of city, which it
had lost, and of which it was again deprived when Lodovico went into
captivity.]

The cult of the Dominican of Verona, murdered by the Waldensians in
1252 and later canonised under the title of St. Peter Martyr, was
fervent and widespread in Lombardy in the fifteenth century. Milan
possessed his bones, entombed in a chapel of Sant' Eustorgio decorated
by Michelozzi. Under the patronage and name of Peter Martyr, the child
of the Anghera was baptised and, since his family name fell into
oblivion, _Martyr_ has replaced it. Mention of his kinsmen is
infrequent in his voluminous writings, though there is evidence that
he furthered the careers of two younger brothers when the opportunity
offered. For Giorgio he solicited and obtained from Lodovico Sforza,
in 1487, the important post of governor of Monza. For Giambattista he
procured from the Spanish sovereigns a recommendation which enabled
him to enter the service of the Venetian Republic, under whose
standard he campaigned with Nicola Orsini, Count of Pitigliano.
Giambattista died in Brescia in 1516, leaving a wife and four
daughters. A nephew, Gian Antonio, whose name occurs in several of his
uncle's letters is described by the latter as _licet ex transverso
natus_; he served under Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and finally, despite
his bar sinister, married a daughter of Francesco, of the illustrious
Milanese family of Pepoli.[4]

[Note 4: Peter Martyr's will gave to his only surviving brother,
Giorgio, his share of the family estate, but on condition that he
should receive Giambattista's daughter, Laura, in his family and
provide for her: _emponiendola en todas las buenas costumbres y
crianza que hija de tal padre merece_ (_Coll. de Documentos ineditos
para la Hist, de Espana_, tom. xxxix., pp. 397). Another of
Giambattista's daughters, Lucrezia, who was a nun, received one
hundred ducats by her uncle's will.]

Concerning his earlier years and his education Peter Martyr is silent,
nor does he anywhere mention under whose direction he began his
studies. In the education deemed necessary for young men of his
quality, the exercises of chivalry and the recreations of the
troubadour found equal place, and such was doubtless the training he
received. He spent some years at the ducal court of Milan, but there
is no indication that he frequented the schools of such famous
Hellenists as Francesco Filelfo who, in 1471, was there lecturing
on the Politics of Aristotle, and of Constantine Lascaris whom the
reigning duke, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, commissioned to compile a Greek
grammar for the use of his daughter. In later years, when he found
his chief delight and highest distinction in intercourse with men of
letters, Peter Martyr would hardly have neglected to mention such
precious early associations had they existed.

The fortunes of the family of Anghera were the reverse of opulent at
that period of its history, and the sons obtained careers under the
patronage of Count Giovanni Borromeo. The times were troublous in
Lombardy. The assassination, in 1476, of Gian Galeazzo was followed
by commotions and unrest little conducive to the cultivation of the
humanities, and which provoked an exodus of humanists and their
disciples. Many sought refuge from the turbulence prevailing in the
north, in the more pacific atmosphere of Rome, where a numerous colony
of Lombards was consequently formed. The following year Peter Martyr,
being then twenty years of age, joined his compatriots in their
congenial exile. His rank and personal qualities, as well as the
protection accorded him by Giovanni Arcimboldo, Archbishop of Milan,
and Ascanio Sforza, brother of the Duke, Lodovico il Moro, assured him
a cordial welcome. For a youth devoid of pretensions to humanistic
culture, he penetrated with singular ease and rapidity into the
innermost academic circle, over which reigned the most amiable of
modern pagans, Pomponius Laetus.

It was the age of the Academies. During the Ecumenical Council of
Florence, Giovanni de' Medici, fired with enthusiasm for the study
of Platonic philosophy, brilliantly expounded by the learned Greek,
Gemisto, conceived the plan of promoting the revival of classical
learning by the formation of an academy, in imitation of that founded
by the immortal Plato. Under such lofty patronage, this genial
conception, so entirely in consonance with the intellectual tendencies
of the age, attracted to its support every Florentine who aspired to
a reputation for culture, at a time when culture was fashionable. The
Greek Cardinal, Bessarion, whom Eugene IV. had raised to the purple at
the close of the Council, carried the Medicean novelty to Rome, where
he formed a notable circle, in which the flower of Hellenic and Latin
culture was represented. Besides this group, characterised by a
theological tincture alien to the neo-pagan spirit in flimsily
disguised revolt against Christian dogma and morality, Pomponius Laetus
and Platina founded the Roman Academy--an institution destined to
world-wide celebrity. Pomponius Laetus, an unrecognised bastard of the
noble house of Sanseverini, was professor of eloquence in Rome. Great
amongst the humanists, in him the very spirit of ancient Hellas seemed
revived. What to many was but the fad or fashionable craze of the
hour, was to him the all-important and absorbing purpose of living. He
dwelt aloof in poverty; shunning the ante-chambers and tables of the
great, he and kindred souls communed with their disciples in the
shades of his grove of classic laurels. He was indifferent alike to
princely and to popular favour, passionately consecrating his efforts
to the revival and preservation of such classics as had survived the
destructive era known as the Dark Ages. Denied a name of his own,
he adopted a Latin one to his liking, thus from necessity setting a
fashion his imitators followed from affectation. When approached in
the days of his fame by the Sanseverini with proposals to recognise
him as a kinsman, he answered with a proud and laconic refusal.[5] The
Academy, formed of super-men infected with pagan ideals, contemptuous
of scholastic learning and impatient of the restraints of Christian
morality, did not long escape the suspicions of the orthodox;
suspicions only too well warranted and inevitably productive of
antagonism ending in condemnation.[6]

[Note 5: His refusal was in the following curt form: _Pomponius
Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis, salutem. Quod petitis fieri non
potest.--Valete_. Consult Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura
Italiana_, vol. vii., cap. v.; Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom
in Mittelalter_; Burkhardt, _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien_,
and Voigt in his _Wiederlebung des Klassischen Alterthums_.]

[Note 6: Sabellicus, in a letter to Antonio Morosini (_Liber
Epistolarum_, xi., p. 459) wrote thus of Pomponius Laetus: ..._fuit
ab initio contemptor religionis, sed ingravesciente aetate coepit res
ipsa, ut mibi dicitur curae esse. In Crispo et Livio reposint quaedam;
et si nemo religiosius timidiusques tractavit veterum scripta ...
Graeca ... vix attingit_. While to a restricted number, humanism stood
for intellectual emancipation, to the many it meant the rejection of
the moral restraints on conduct imposed by the law of the Church,
and a revival of the vices that flourished in the decadent epochs of
Greece and Rome.]

From trifles, as they may seem to us at this distance of time, hostile
ingenuity wove the web destined to enmesh the incautious Academicians.
The adoption of fanciful Latin appellations--in itself a sufficiently
innocent conceit--was construed into a demonstration of revolt against
established Christian usage, almost savouring of contempt for the
canonised saints of the Church.

Pomponius Laetus was nameless, and hence free to adopt whatever name he
chose; his associates and admiring disciples paid him the homage of
imitation, proud to associate themselves, by means of this pedantic
fancy, with him they called master. The Florentine, Buonacorsi, took
the name of Callimachus Experiens; the Roman, Marco, masqueraded as
Asclepiades; two Venetian brothers gladly exchanged honest, vulgar
Piscina for the signature of Marsus, while another, Marino, adopted
that of Glaucus.

If the neo-pagans were harmless and playful merely, their opponents
were dangerously in earnest. In 1468 a grave charge of conspiracy
against the Pope's life and of organising a schism led to the arrest
of Pomponius and Platina, some of the more wary members of the
compromised fraternity saving themselves by timely flight.

Imprisonment in Castel Sant' Angelo and even the use of torture--mild,
doubtless--failing to extract incriminating admissions from the
accused, both prisoners were unconditionally released. If the Pope
felt serious alarm, his fears seem to have been easily allayed, for
Pomponius was permitted to resume his public lectures undisturbed, but
the Roman Academy had received a check, from which it did not recover
during the remainder of the pontificate of Paul II. With the accession
of Sixtus IV., the cloud of disfavour that still hung obscuringly
over its glories was lifted. Encouraged by the Pope and frequented by
distinguished members of the Curia, its era of greatness dawned in
splendour.

The assault upon the Church by the humanists, which resulted in the
partial capture of Latin Christianity, was ably directed. Although
the renascence of learning did not take its rise in Rome, where the
intellectual movement and enthusiasm imported from Florence flourished
but fitfully, according to the various humours of the successive
pontiffs, the papal capital drew within its walls eminent scholars
from all the states of the Italian peninsula. Rome was the world-city,
a centre from which radiated honours, distinctions, and fortune. Gifts
of oratory, facility in debate, ability in the conduct of diplomatic
negotiations, a masterly style in Latin composition, and even
perfection in penmanship, were all marketable accomplishments, for
which Rome was the highest bidder. If classical learning and the
graces of literature received but intermittent encouragement from the
sovereign pontiffs, both the secular interests of their government and
the vindication of the Church's dogmatic teaching afforded the most
profitable exercise for talents which sceptical humanists sold, as
readily as did the condottieri their swords--to the best paymaster,
regardless of their personal convictions. There consequently came into
existence in Rome a new _ceto_ or class, equally removed from the
nobles of feudal traditions and the ecclesiastics of the Curia, yet
mingling with both. Literary style and the art of Latin composition,
sedulously cultivated by these brilliant intellectual nomads, shed an
undoubted lustre on the Roman chancery, giving it a stamp it has
never entirely lost. They fought battles and scored victories for an
orthodoxy they derided. They defended the Church's temporalities from
the encroachments of covetous princes. Their influence on morals was
frankly pagan. Expatriated and emancipated from all laws save those
dictated by their own tastes and inclinations, these men were genially
rebellious against the restraints and discipline imposed by the
evangelical law. From the Franciscan virtues of chastity, poverty, and
obedience, preached by the _Poverello_ of Assisi, they turned with
aversion to laud the antipodal trinity of lust, license, and luxury.
The mysticism of medieval Christianity was repugnant to their
materialism, and the symbolism of its art, expressed under rigid,
graceless forms, offended eyes that craved beauty of line and beauty
of colour. They ignored or condemned any ulterior purpose of art as a
teaching medium for spiritual truths. To such men, a satire of Juvenal
was more precious than an epistle of St. Paul; dogma, they demolished
with epigrams, the philosophy of the schoolmen was a standing joke,
and a passage from Plato or Horace outweighed the definitions of an
Ecumenical Council.

The toleration extended to these heterodox scholars seems to have
been unlimited,--perhaps it was not in some instances unmixed with
contempt, for, though they lampooned the clergy of all grades, not
sparing even the Pope himself, their writings, even when not free from
positive scurrility, were allowed the freest circulation. In all
that pertained to personal conduct and morality, they directed their
exclusive efforts to assimilating classical standards of the
decadent periods, ignoring the austere virtues of civic probity,
self-restraint, and frugality, that characterised the best society of
Greek and Rome in their florescence. These same men lived on terms
of close intimacy with princes of the Church, on whose bounty they
throve, and by degrees numbers of them even entered the ranks of the
clergy, some with minor and others with holy orders. To their labours,
the world owes the recovery of the classic literature of Greece and
Rome from oblivion, while the invention and rapid adoption of the
printing-press rendered these precious texts forever indestructible
and accessible.

Into this brilliant, dissolute world of intellectual activity, Peter
Martyr entered, and through it he passed unscathed, emerging with his
Christian faith intact and his orthodoxy untainted. He gathered the
gold of classical learning, rejecting its dross; his morals were
above reproach and calumny never touched his reputation. Respected,
appreciated, and, most of all, beloved by his contemporaries, his
writings enriched the intellectual heritage of posterity with
inexhaustible treasures of original information concerning the great
events of the memorable epoch it was his privilege to illustrate.

General culture being widely diffused, the pedantic imitations of
antiquity applauded by the preceding generation ceased to confer
distinction. Latin still held its supremacy but the Italian language,
no longer reputed vulgar, was coming more and more into favour as a
vehicle for the expression of original thought. Had he remained in
Italy Martyr might well have used it, but his removal to Spain imposed
Latin as the language of his voluminous compositions.

Four years after his arrival in Rome, a Milanese noble, Bartolomeo
Scandiano, who later went as nuncio to Spain, invited Peter Martyr
to pass the summer months in his villa at Rieti, in company with the
Bishop of Viterbo. In the fifteenth letter of the _Opus Epistolarum_
he recalls the impressions and recollections of that memorable visit,
in the following terms: "Do you remember, Scandiano, with what
enthusiasm we dedicated our days to poetical composition? Then did I
first appreciate the importance of association with the learned and to
what degree the mind of youth is elevated in the amiable society of
serious men: then, for the first time, I ventured to think myself a
man and to hope that I might become somebody." The summer of 1481 may,
therefore, be held to mark his intellectual awakening and the birth of
his definite ambitions. Endowed by nature with the qualities necessary
to success, intimate association with men of eminent culture inspired
him with the determination to emulate them, and from this ideal he
never deflected. The remaining six years of his life in Rome were
devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, and in the art of deciphering
inscriptions and the geography of the ancients he acquired singular
proficiency.

During the pontificate of Innocent VIII., Francesco Negro, a Milanese
by birth, was governor of Rome and him Peter Martyr served as
secretary; a service which, for some reason, necessitated several
months' residence in Perugia. His relations with Ascanio Sforza,
created cardinal in 1484, continued to be close, and at one period he
may have held some position in the cardinal's household or in that
of Cardinal Giovanni Arcimboldo, Archbishop of Milan, though it is
nowhere made clear precisely what, while some authorities incline to
number him merely among the assiduous courtiers of these dignitaries
from his native Lombardy.

The fame of his scholarship had meanwhile raised him from the position
of disciple to a place amongst the masters of learning, and in his
turn he saw gathering about him a group of admirers and adulators.
Besides Pomponius Laetus, his intimates of this period were Theodore of
Pavia and Peter Marsus, the less celebrated of the Venetian brothers.
He stood in the relation of preceptor or mentor to Alonso Carillo,
Bishop of Pamplona, and to Jorge da Costa, Archbishop of Braga, two
personages of rank, who did but follow the prevailing fashion that
decreed the presence of a humanist scholar to be an indispensable
appendage in the households of the great. He read and commented the
classics to his exalted patrons, was the arbiter of taste, their
friend, the companion of their cultured leisure, and their confidant.
Replying to the praises of his disciples, couched in extravagant
language, he administered a mild rebuke, recalling them to moderation
in the expression of their sentiments: "These are not the lessons you
received from me when I explained to you the satire of the divine
Juvenal; on the contrary, you have learned that nothing more shames a
free man than adulation."[7]

[Note 7: Epist. x. _Non haec a me profecto, quam ambobus Juvenalis
aliguando divinam illam, quae proxima est a secunda, satiram aperirem,
sed adulatione nihil esse ingenuo foedius dedicistis_.]

The year 1486 was signalised in Rome by the arrival of an embassy from
Ferdinand and Isabella to make the usual oath of obedience on behalf
of the Catholic sovereigns of Castille and Leon to their spiritual
over-lord, the Pope. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Count of Tendilla, a son
of the noble house of Mendoza, whose cardinal was termed throughout
Europe _tertius rex_, was the ambassador charged with this mission.[8]
Tendilla shone in a family in which intellectual brilliancy was a
heritage, the accomplishments of its members adding distinction to a
house of origin and descent exceptionally illustrious. Whether in the
house of his compatriot, the Bishop of Pamplona, or elsewhere, the
ambassador made the acquaintance of Peter Martyr and evidently fell
under the charm of his noble character and uncommon talents. The
duties of his embassy, and possibly his own good pleasure, detained
Tendilla in Rome from September 13, 1486, until August 29th of the
following year, and, as his stay drew to its close, he pressingly
invited the Italian scholar to return with him to Spain, an invitation
which neither the remonstrances nor supplications of his friends
in Rome availed to persuade him to refuse. No one could more
advantageously introduce a foreigner at the Court of Spain than
Tendilla. What prospects he held out or what arguments he used to
induce Martyr to quit Rome and Italy, we do not know; apparently
little persuasion was required. A true child of his times, Peter
Martyr was prepared to accept his intellectual heritage wherever he
found it. From the obscure parental village of Arona, his steps first
led him to the ducal court of Milan, which served as a stepping-stone
from which he advanced into the wider world of Rome. The papal capital
knew him first as a disciple, then as a master, but the doubt whether
he was satisfied to wait upon laggard pontifical favours is certainly
permissible. He had made warm friendships, had enjoyed the intimacy of
the great, and the congenial companionship of kindred spirits, but his
talents had secured no permanent or lucrative recognition from the
Sovereign Pontiff. The announcement of his resolution to accompany
the ambassador to Spain caused consternation amongst his friends
who opposed, by every argument they could muster, a decision they
considered displayed both ingratitude and indifferent judgment.
Nothing availed to change the decision he had taken and, since to each
one he answered as he deemed expedient, and as each answer differed
from the other, it is not easy to fix upon the particular reason which
prompted him to seek his fortune in Spain.

[Note 8: From Burchard's _Diarium_, 1483-1506, and from the
_Chronicle_ of Pulgar we learn that Antonio Geraldini and Juan de
Medina, the latter afterwards Bishop of Astorga, accompanied the
embassy.]

To Ascanio Sforza, who spared neither entreaties nor reproaches to
detain him, assuring him that during his lifetime his merits should
not lack recognition, Martyr replied that the disturbed state of
Italy, which he apprehended would grow worse, discouraged him; adding
that he was urged on by an ardent desire to see the world and to make
acquaintance with other lands. To Peter Marsus, he declared he felt
impelled to join in the crusade against the Moors. Spain was the seat
of this holy war, and the Catholic sovereigns, who had accomplished
the unity of the Christian states of the Iberian peninsula, were
liberal in their offers of honours and recompense to foreigners of
distinction whom they sought to draw to their court and camp. Spain
may well have seemed a virgin and promising field, in which his
talents might find a more generous recognition than Rome had awarded
them. Upon his arrival there, he showed himself no mean courtier when
he declared to the Queen that his sole reason for coming was to behold
the most celebrated woman in the world--herself. Perhaps the sincerest
expression of his feelings is that contained in a letter to Carillo.
(Ep. 86. 1490): _Formosum est cuique, quod maxime placet: id si cum
patria minime quis se sperat habiturum, tanta est hujusce rei vis, ut
extra patriam quaeritet patria ipsius oblitus. Ego quam vos deservistis
adivi quia quod mihi pulchrum suaveque videbatur in ea invenire
speravi_. The divine restlessness, the _Wanderlust_ had seized him,
and to its fascination he yielded. The opportunity offered by Tendilla
was too tempting to be resisted. Summing up the remonstrances and
reproaches of his various friends, he declared that he held himself to
deserve rather their envy than their commiseration, since amidst
the many learned men in Italy he felt himself obscure and useless,
counting himself indeed as _passerunculus inter accipitres, pygmeolus
inter gigantes_.

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