by Linda Proud
‘I have not yet formulated it. Why do you look at me that way, as if the fate of Girolamo Savonarola hangs on my opinion?’
‘You have something to say and I would like to know what it is.’
‘So would I! But some thoughts are like truffles that hide deep below the surface. You can only smell them. But I know, deep down inside me, I know something is wrong with that man.’
‘You dislike him because of his views on poetry, that is all,’ said Pico.
‘It is more than that,’ Angelo insisted. ‘I feel possessed of understanding I am unable to communicate to the rest of you. Or to myself.’
‘So what am I to do about him?’ Lorenzo asked.
‘If he could just stop prophesying,’ said Bernardo Rucellai, ‘we would have no objection.’
‘Go and tell him so, but do not say I sent you. Speak on behalf of the city.’
Thus five men of the Platonic Academy, including Rucellai and Francesco Valori, went to San Marco to tell Savonarola – most diplomatically – to change his tone. Savonarola met them in the sacristy of San Marco and made them welcome. But when they began to say what they had to say, he rose from his chair and cut them short – ‘Like a sword brought down hard on a cake,’ Bernardo Rucellai reported. Savonarola said, ‘I realise who has sent you, that these are not your own words you are speaking. Go and tell Lorenzo de’ Medici to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons and spares not the princes of the earth.’
When Valori hinted that Savonarola might be banished to another city, he replied, ‘I have no fear of banishment from this earthly city. The new doctrine shall triumph, and the old shall fall.’
Here he glared at them, and Rucellai said he felt himself burning up in that fulmination.
‘Though I be a stranger,’ Savonarola boomed in a voice that bounced off the vaulted ceiling, ‘and Lorenzo the first citizen of Florence, I shall stay and he will depart!’
It was a voice that brooked no argument. It was a prophecy. It was a prediction. God had spoken. Valori’s innards trembled, his bowels loosened.
The friar’s voice lowered but did not soften. Like a man possessed, they said, he told them details of the state of Florence and Italy that they did not know themselves. And as they stood before him, these amazed leading citizens, they grew ashen at his words.
‘Great changes are about to befall Italy. I tell you, within twelve months we will see the death of Pope Innocent, King Ferrante of Naples, and of Lorenzo himself.’
When the five men reported back to Lorenzo, they were not the same five that had been sent out. Valori, indeed, could hardly speak and thereafter came infrequently to meetings of the Academy, while he was often seen at San Marco. Savonarola was gathering his disciples.
49
THE WAY OF ART
1491
ONE HOT AFTERNOON IN EARLY SUMMER, WHEN EVERYONE else was resting, I found Angelo at his desk composing an introduction to his forthcoming course on Ovid. These prefaces he wrote in verse, taking more trouble over them, I suspect, than any other professor in the world. Usually he did not wish to be disturbed, but on this day he looked up with a face transfigured, all its usual heaviness gone and in its place lightness and joy.
‘A man’s craft,’ he said, ‘is his route to God. To love what you do, and to serve it with all your might and power, knowing that your beloved and your God are One – it is all.’ He was clearly speaking from the experience of the moment. ‘There is no need for all this mortification of the flesh or purification of the spirit. The way to kill base desire is to replace it with the desire for something finer. The way home is not by guilt but by love. Love is all. Listen to the Franciscans, Tommaso, and not the Dominicans.’
Unable to speak, I went outside, closed the door softly and leant against the wall. What he had said was true. I ached at the beauty of it; I bent double in misery. Once I had known this truth from my own experience, once writing letters on a page had been a play of light as the sun on water. Not always, but sometimes, enough times to know that what I seek is right here. How I envied Angelo! With a deep breath I drew myself up to full height and strode to my room. Enough of this wallowing – it was time to slough it all off. I made ready my desk, prepared a sheet of parchment with pounce, cut a new quill. I chose a short text and clipped it to the reader. It was time to reunite with my art, to transcend my disability – which anyway Thomas Linacre, the student physician who was in those days staying with us, said not to exist. Then let it not exist! I dipped the nib in the ink pot, dabbed off the surplus, put the nib on the paper.
Charity faileth not … The pen dropped from my hand, splashed on to the desk sending a fine spray of ink over the parchment. I had felt nothing as a warning. When men say, ‘you are losing your grip’, they know not how literal this may be. One moment the pen is between your fingers, then it is not – the only sensation, a fizzing numbness that comes in the manner of an afterthought.
And so – I was sundered from my God forever, and any hope of true happiness. The misery found a new depth. Mind, heart, spirit – all three were pulled down into Hades. Yes, I designed the lettering for Filippino’s frescos, the names of virtues that would appear, amongst all the visual trickery and illusions of that chapel, as if carved in stone, but it was another man who painted them on the wall, who felt the brush in contact with the plaster.
50
DIVINATION BY CARDS
1491
THERE WERE THREE ENGLISHMEN STAYING WITH US, studying Greek with the professor. Grocyn, the eldest and like a father to the other two, wanted to learn Greek solely for the purpose of reading scripture. It was young William Lily and Thomas Linacre who thrilled to the ancient lyre of poetry. Poliziano, who also had students from Portugal and Hungary, lavished time and attention on the foreigners, believing that, in his small villa on Fiesole, he could change the world for the better by ‘civilizing the barbarians’. For some reason he had most hope in the English, and certainly this influenced my decision when looking for a new land in which to live, although it was Ficino who sent me and Colet who drew me.
When our three inglesi departed for home, Angelo and Pico travelled with them as far as Bologna and then went on to Venice. Lorenzo – who, since Savonarola’s death prediction, was going about without a walking stick, saying he had never felt so well – had heard of the discovery in Venice of a codex of Archimedes and he sent Poliziano and Pico there to read it. Without doubt they also had a secret mission, which was to repair relations between Ermolao Barbaro and his native city. Lorenzo, as ever, was weaving peace. While the two were away, Maria stayed with her sister-in-law in the city and I remained alone at the Villa Bruscoli.
When Angelo asked me to look after his property and affairs, he said it was ‘in case the French come’. It was only half a jest. In those years the French were beginning to replace the Turks in our nightmares of apocalyptic doom. You can read why in the histories which my fellow countrymen are busy writing. Suffice here to say that France had a claim on the Kingdom of Naples, and the young Duke of Milan, more or less usurped by his uncle, had been promised the support of Naples in regaining his dukedom. That’s it, in a nutshell. As soon as young Charles VIII was old enough to govern, Ludovico il Moro, the usurper, invited him to assert his right to the throne of Naples. No one, least of all the councillors of the French court, expected Charles to do so, but the Kingdom of Naples covers all of Italy south of Rome and with it comes the title ‘King of Jerusalem’, and that rather appealed to the dwarfish, misshapen boy-king who, they said, spent all his days in dreams of knightly valour and holy crusades. If the rumours about his nature were true – and nothing I had seen in him myself particularly contradicted them – he was sufficiently misguided to consider the venture. And so the direction of our fear changed, swinging away from the infidel Turks – who had been quiet since the death of Sultan Mehemmed – and towards our Christian neighbour
s. The French, said the prophets and the astrologers, were on their way.
‘And I don’t want them in my house,’ said Angelo Poliziano.
I did not like the loneliness and, to keep myself busy, I turned to arranging Angelo’s papers. It was something he had often asked me to do, should I ever have the time. I had it now and began to sort them into languages: Greek, Latin and Italian. I read as I sorted, in particular his jottings towards a new Miscellanea, his second collection of notes on ancient texts which sought to answer questions and right wrongs. For example, he wrote that the name ‘Strotocles’ in the first book of Cicero’s De Officiis, was a misreading of ‘noster Cocles.’ A small wrong put right, perhaps, but one could almost hear the ancients cheering as the accumulated cobwebs of ignorance were swept off their works. His first Miscellanea, a collection of a hundred chapters published three years previously, had made him famous throughout Italy.
Just before he left for Venice, Poliziano had received a visit from yet another would-be disciple, that Michele Marullus I had met in Rome. But the young Greek caught him on a bad day and every charming thing he said struck Angelo as mere sycophancy.
‘And so,’ said Marullus at the end of the uncomfortable interview, ‘here are my own poems. I would be very grateful for your opinion.’
‘God’s blood!’ Poliziano exploded. ‘Just because I have read every book ever written, does it mean I have to read every book being written? All this mediocre, maundering stuff that lands on my desk, obliterating my own work. Do you think I have nothing better to do? Give my opinion? You can have my opinion. It’s almost certain to be clumsy, contrived or mawkish – probably all three.’
Marullus stood there blinking rapidly, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. The student of literature, lest we had forgotten, was also a mercenary soldier. He glared at Poliziano, as if weighing up the consequences of killing him on the spot.
‘The professor is tired,’ I said, stepping between them. ‘He’s been up half the night, trying to finish something before he leaves for Venice. He did not mean what he said. If you knew what rubbish men present to him, you would understand. He hasn’t seen your work, does not know how good it is.’
Mollified, Marullus began to breathe more normally. He bowed as if his neck were in a brace and left.
‘Angelo,’ I said, alarmed, ‘you have made an enemy of one of the stratioti.’
‘Oh, I suppose he’s going to take off my head and carry it around the city on his lance.’
‘Metaphorically speaking, yes, he is.’
*
If Angelo Poliziano had not really read every book available to man in Greek and Latin, he had certainly read more than anyone else alive, and by reading his Miscellanea you shared the fruits of his studies. So this second collection, which by this time had reached about twenty chapters, held me captive. The author acted as guide to the labyrinths of knowledge, holding up a rush-light to one idea after another, as if they were paintings on a wall in a dark chapel, and I walked with him in confidence as Dante did with Virgil. It was all details, you might say. Questions such as whether crocodile dung was really used for cosmetics in ancient Egypt are hardly vital for the spiritual well-being of Man. But Angelo believed that, by shedding light on the microcosm one might come to know the macrocosm better. He said that, the laws of Creation being universal, you can see them at work in the worm-cast as well as in the stars.
He wanted to equip us for an adventure into the future, our sense of right and wrong, true and false, sharpened to a cutting edge by the application of reason. Savonarola wanted to shut the gates across the path of human progress and restore the Age of Faith. He believed that men, prone as they are to evil and wickedness, must be shepherded by the Church; Poliziano believed that Man could walk alone and make his own decisions, providing he was well-read and well-educated.
I sat on fences and believed in both.
I came upon a set of cards, each one bearing a Hebrew letter, to be used like tarrochi cards. Giovanni Pico had introduced Angelo to divination, finding answers to questions by the art of sortes, in which the Bible or other work of scripture, or the poetry of Homer and Virgil, are opened at random while the question is held in mind. It is an art which is peculiarly effective. Pico said that by such means angels communicate with us. But he said that the art was not to be used for predicting the future, for the future lies with God; it was for the examination of the soul. When I came across this pack in my tidying, naturally I was tempted to try it. I was after all of Etruscan blood and the son of ancient augurs, but natural superstition and my solitude prevented it. I did not want to summon angels only to be successful and have no one to whom I could run screaming. So I was good – or cowardly – and put the tempting cards aside.
The windows were open, the still air humming with bees and hawkmoths. Drawn out to the garden, I filled Maria’s bird bath with water and sat by a rosebush to inhale its scent. The beauty made me melancholy; sitting with my nose in a handful of crushed rose petals I dwelt on Elena. The dormant pain stirred, then roared up from the depths, the yawning depths, and I jumped to my feet. Activity. I must be at work. Must be doing something. I had become a man for whom leisure was torment.
There had been no sudden gust of wind, not so much as a breeze, but when I returned to the study, Angelo’s papers were strewn across the floor. Puzzled, I began to collect them up. The second Miscellenea was held together in quires, but another work on separate sheets had become scattered. As I put it together, I saw that it was Angelo’s Account of the Conspiracy of the Pazzi. He had written this directly after the dreadful events of April, 1478, when our beloved Giuliano had been stabbed to death in the Duomo. Just holding the Account made me tremble as if sitting in a chill draught, for it brought my brother Antonio to mind, and my part in his capture and death. So I was not about to read the Account again, but only put it back in order. It was as I picked up the pages that I saw the spilled cards. Whatever strange draught had come, it had thrown the Hebrew pack over the floor. Some were face up, others face down. The up-turned letters were hay, vav, tsade, aleph, lamed, aleph, vav, resh, spelling Hotze la’or, which I interpreted as ‘publish’. Publish? I jumped back in fright. What was the meaning of this? To what did it refer? Terrified of angels, I dashed from the house.
Maria was on the path. I did not see her until I was up against her. Maria, warm, real, here. If I took hold of her, it was relief, it was safety and security. She returned my embrace, flooding me with her life. No shade, but a living woman. I said nothing of what had happened, other than that I had suddenly felt as spooked as a horse.
‘You should not stay here alone. If a man is to keep good company, he is ill-advised to keep his own.’
I smiled. ‘That’s true enough. What brings you here?’
‘I have no idea. A whim. A feeling that something was amiss. I woke up with it this morning and could not shake it off.’
We dined together on what food there was in the pantry, some cheese and ham and fresh salad leaves that Maria had picked in the lane on her way. It was the kind of day for honesty. Maria said I was wasting my life, footling about doing odd jobs for her brother and whoever else had a florin to spare. I was rootless and without direction. Then I told her what had happened before she arrived, that I believed I had just been given direction by angels.
‘And what direction is that?’
‘It’s something I have been struggling with for a year or more, the knowledge of what I should be doing opposed by my not wanting to do it. It was there, spelt out in the cards.’
‘Publish?’
‘I have a dud hand. I can no longer be a scribe of fine works, just a left-handed secretary. But I could be a printer.’
Maria stared at me, her face mirroring my own horror. ‘You? A printer?’
‘Well, printer’s assistant to begin with. I need the training. But then if I could get the
money from Lorenzo…’
‘But Tommaso, no one rants against printing as loud as you.’
‘I’ve been struggling for some time and have not dared to talk about it in case it made it real. But here it is now, out in the open and confessed to you, Maria mia. Aldo Manuzio, the tutor of Pico’s nephews, is setting up a press in Venice.’ I gave her a letter that had arrived from Angelo the day before, in which he enthused about Aldo and his plans to print Greek texts. ‘To avoid errors, Aldo intends to employ editors. Now that’s something I am qualified for.’
Maria’s face changed suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘A bit of bone in the ham.’ She picked it out of her mouth, wiped her hands on a napkin and cleared her throat. ‘So, you are leaving us for Venice?’
‘That’s the major part of the struggle.’
‘There are printers here in Florence. Could you not get your training from them?’
Women! How come they see light while we poor men grope in fog? I picked up her hand and kissed it. I meant nothing by it it was a simple show of affection – but to my surprise her face was suffused with a blushing smile.
Paris, July 31st, 1506
Erasmus has just come in, spluttering about printers and the mess that is being made of his translations. He wants me to go with him and read the proofs coming off the press. ‘I have told Bade that I have with me a companion who has worked with Aldus Manutius. He is cowed, Tommaso, cowed. He dreads you. Come now.’
‘Which do you want?’ I asked irritably, not wishing to be disturbed. ‘The book I am writing for you or my editorial skills?’
‘Both. Bring your book with you. There are frequent pauses in the process. Too frequent. Bring your work with you.’
Clyfton intercepted him on the way out, demanding to know when we shall be continuing with our journey.
‘That man is a very horsefly!’ exclaimed Erasmus, as he strode through the streets to Bade’s printing house.