by Linda Proud
‘The library?’ I asked, for it is of course the library that binds us more tightly than any other service I have done.
‘It is safe, thanks to you.’
‘No, to you, my Lord.’
‘When Giulio and I are back in Rome, when this business is resolved and Giulio is also a Cardinal, contact us. Whatever you desire that we can give, it will be yours.’
I returned to the inn and found it quiet. Erasmus was sitting reading. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Out for a walk.’
‘What, to Paris and back?’
He did not ask what I had been doing for so many hours, and I did not tell him. I left him to his assumption that I had taken a melancholy and very long stroll with ghosts of the past.
‘You missed a wonderful entertainment: the girls sang and danced for us. Why do you avoid them?’ he asked.
‘They are a distraction and a temptation.’
‘Temptation. You? Ha! I believe even Jezebel or Salome would fail to seduce you.’ With that, he went back to his book.
70
INTIMIDATION
1493
I DEVISED MANY IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PRINTING PROCESS, all with an eye to beauty, all to be kept to myself until the time was right. Since most of these innovations were in letter spacing, it had been necessary to learn how to compose text. I had everything changed about so that I could work left-handed and then practised hard until my hand could fly from case to stick and back again without my thinking about it, leaving my mind free to concentrate on spelling things correctly backwards, and, sometimes, to dream about how I would do things differently if and when I had my own press.
I was by the door one day, swinging my arms about like a windmill to relieve the muscles, when there was a crash and splinters of wood and shards of alabaster raining down on us. Printers bellowed in shock and pain. My wooden stool lay in pieces beneath a great stone that had been hurled through the window. I ran outside to see who had done this thing but amongst the crowd gathering there was no one who knew, or would say, who the culprit was. When I re-entered the shop I found men stooping over the stone on which was written, For the heretics.
‘I have had other warnings,’ Miscomini confessed. ‘I’ve been told not to publish the Plotinus.’
‘Who by?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Anonymous letters.’ He went among the presses to see if any equipment had been damaged or printing ruined. Apart from some bloodied sheets, and the cuts and wounds on the men that proved superficial, no serious damage had been done. But the men met together and decided between them that the printed sheets of the Plotinus should be destroyed. Miscomini called their bluff, knowing that they could not find jobs elsewhere. But he did announce his intention – and posted up notices to this effect – that, henceforth, should any work of a holy, Christian nature come his way, it would always be put first.
Almost immediately, as if on a signal, tracts began to arrive from the Dominicans – broadsheets announcing Savonarola’s next sermon or lecture series, pamphlets on the Holy Life and Prayer. Miscomini interrupted the printing of the Plotinus to turn these small jobs around within the day. Such was his apparent ardour that the Dominicans were soon giving him all their printing work.
Miscomini did his accounts and found that a great upturn in his fortunes had come as a consequence of putting religion before the New Learning. This impressed him and made him thoughtful. Before long he changed his place of worship from the local Badia to the more distant San Marco.
I have no reason to suppose that the stone-thrower had been a friar, but we were not attacked again, even though, in fits and starts, we completed the Plotinus and published it.
Miscomini put more effort into Savonarola’s tracts than a man with an easy conscience would have done. With my help, he made them quite handsome, using a good Roman type and including woodcuts either of holy scenes or of the Frate himself in the pulpit. The paper was somewhat coarse as is common with publications intended to be cheap, but the typeface and the woodcuts elevated these pamphlets. Miscomini was not going to undergo a conversion without bestowing on Savonarola some antique grace. The pamphlets therefore, perhaps unintentionally on the part of their author, gave the impression that Savonarola was a hybrid of old religion and new learning.
Whenever I looked over a page I was composing, reading it backwards, I got the impression of an author in an ecstasy of piety, calling upon me to meditate upon the wounds of Christ. Why do those who claim to love God scold others? There is nothing loving in the tone of it. I dismissed the writings of Savonarola as hypocrisy, but Miscomini gave me a tract to proof-read that was on prayer. Now it is just as necessary for the proof-reader to divorce himself from meaning as the compositor. The only men in a print- ing house who may read the meaning of words is the publisher himself and the editor. So I began to read through in an efficient and mechanical manner, but the words got the better of me. This pamphlet was good, so good that I checked with Miscomini that it was indeed by Savonarola and we hadn’t mixed up manuscripts.
He who prays must address God as though he were in His presence; inasmuch as the Lord is everywhere, in every place, in every man, and especially in the soul of the just.
That could have been written by Ficino.
Therefore let us not seek God on earth, nor in heaven, nor elsewhere; rather let us seek Him in our own heart, as the prophet says, “I will hearken unto that which the Lord shall say in me.” In prayer a man may take heed to his words, and this is a wholly material thing; he may take heed to the sense of his words, and this is rather study than prayer; finally, he may fix his thoughts on God, and this is the only true prayer. We must consider neither the words nor the sentences, but lift our soul above our self, and almost lose self in the thought of God. This state once attained, the believer forgets the world and worldly desires, and has, as it were, a foreshadowing of heavenly bliss.
Had this been written by Pico I would not have been surprised. But this man of the Church? The tract ended, Wherefore we are come to declare to the world that outward worship must give way to inward, and that ceremonies are naught, save as a means of stirring the spirit. I had not previously realised how deep Savonarola’s understanding was, and I folded up a printed copy of the pamphlet and tucked it in my belt to show it to Ficino later. Could Pico be right after all? Was Savonarola the man we had been waiting for to renovate the Church?
Whether from the example of il capo Miscomini, or for some other reason, the bawdy jokes and tall tales with which the men had usually entertained each other during their breaks gave way quite suddenly to more serious conversation. They began to report to each other sermons they had heard from the various preachers. This was not just a feature of our shop: it was happening throughout the city. Everywhere the earthy Tuscan artisan with his sarcastic nature and practical common sense was transforming into a God-fearing and honest labourer. Oh, strange metamorphosis!
71
FICINO FINDS HIMSELF IN AN ENGLISHMAN
1493
WHEN FICINO LECTURED ON PLOTINUS AT THE UNIVERSITY, he concentrated on the language of the philosopher, keen to avoid any implication that he shared Plotinus’s beliefs, especially when he spoke of the gods, the gods within us. No, we had to look at Plotinus in the context of his times. We were all building up such defences, unable now to speak out boldly, loud and free. ‘I am not a poet,’ claimed Poliziano. ‘I am not a Platonist,’ said Ficino. I never thought to hear such words.
The lecture theatre was full, the questions lively. Men tried to lead Ficino out, coaxing him to say more about what he had found in Plotinus, and less ambiguously, but Ficino resisted, saying only that it was an interesting theory that we have the heavens within us.
‘It is a useful metaphor for human passions to say that when we are angry then Mars is dominant, or when we are wise, Jupiter. The astrologers speak in such terms. It do
es not make us pagans.’
One man, an Englishman by his accent, pressed the point. ‘Is it possible to believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ and the pagan gods simultaneously?’
‘It is not a question of belief. This is a lecture on language and theology. It is useful for us to give names to the stew of emotions, to separate them out and identify them. It is useful, also, to ascribe these passions to the planets. It frees us from their dominion and gives us the means to detach ourselves. Our fate may be signified by the stars, but it is not caused by them.’
‘Have you not recently condemned astrology?’ the Englishman asked. Clear-complexioned, with honest eyes and a firm chin, he reminded me of Ermolao Barbaro.
‘False astrology, yes, that which binds men in slavery to the stars, which considers the stars all-powerful and, worse, malign. But man has the power to transcend the stars.’ Ficino’s voice was rising, going up a note, out of the rhetorical and into the poetic mode. He was about to get carried away, about to pronounce the truth lyrically, as dictated by his Muse, in a ringing, sing-song voice. Angelo cleared his throat loudly and Ficino came back to himself, glancing round the hall. Looking for black cowls. ‘Plotinus himself condemns this kind of astrology,’ he said, as if in conclusion.
More questions came, but Ficino raised his hands and called the assembly to a close with a prayer.
When I came out of the lecture hall and into the piazza San Marco, I found Ficino surrounded by a press of students and Angelo waiting to introduce the Englishman to him. His name? Why, it was our John Colet. On his way to Rome, he had stopped in Florence to meet Poliziano, the tutor of his friends Grocyn and Linacre. As he met my gaze I saw – what did I see? Nothing feigned. A simple, open soul. He was about twenty-five years old with a very English face, solemn and respectful. He was shy with Poliziano and merely conveyed his admiration for his work and his teaching methods; it was a rare accomplishment, he said, for any Englishman to acquire Greek, and he would acquire it for himself if he could. He said he intended to learn from Grocyn on his return to London. With Ficino, however, once he was introduced, he was less on guard and anxious to speak to the man whose lecture, for all its ambivalence, had fired Colet with an interest in Plato and Plotinus.
Aware that Colet was more in tune with Ficino than with himself, but happy to play the host, Poliziano invited them both to dine with him, ‘You may ask your questions openly in my house,’ he explained to Colet. ‘And get frank answers, eh, Marsilio?’
‘Thank you for coming to my rescue in there,’ said Ficino. ‘It is so difficult to be both circumspect and honest. Truth disdains danger.’
‘All the martyrs know it to be so.’
‘What danger?’ Colet asked.
Angelo glanced at the monastery across the square. ‘We will discuss it later. But not here. Certainly not here.’ He led the way across the piazza to the Via Larga and the casino in the garden of Monna Clarice.
That evening, on which we were also joined by Pico della Mirandola, the conversation flowed without check. We discussed the gods and the angels, the One and the Multiplicity, Ficino trying to answer John’s questions as to whether it is possible to be both Christian and Platonist without conflict or contradiction. His devotion to philosophy he communicated to Colet. He spoke of Pythagoras in reverential tones, and of the transmigration of souls. ‘Heaven, hell and purgatory – these are true enough, but not the whole story. They describe only what lies between lives. For the soul that fails to return to God must come back to earth.’ Colet’s English eyes grew huge. Pico took over the conversation, and confirmed what Ficino said by reference to Jewish wisdom and Cabala. Candlelight reflected in Colet’s eyes but was not the source of the radiance that shone from them. Physical light seemed dim in the glory of his quickening spirit.
‘I have heard much from my friends Grocyn and Linacre, but it is garbled. All I have really been able to understand is their enthusiasm, but not what it is they are enthusiastic about. They grow exasperated and tell me to read Plato myself, which I intend to do. But first I had to find out why I should.’
‘Had you come a year ago, you would probably have heard a garbled account from me,’ said Ficino, ‘because then I had the luxury of wandering in my thoughts, collecting nectar from many flowers and rarely returning to the hive. But now… Now we live in a city where philosophy is unprotected. When time is limited, our thoughts are more focussed.’
‘Why are you cautious about the monastery of San Marco? I heard Fra Girolamo’s sermon in the Piazza della Signoria two days ago. The square was full – why, there must have been ten thousand people there! I was most struck by him, what I could understand, since he speaks in Italian and not in Latin. Sincerity transcends language, however, and I could understand the quality of the man.’
‘He is returning Florence to the certainties of the past,’ said Ficino. ‘For fifty years or more we have been moderately free of heaven and hell, have been free to search the ancients for knowledge of an afterlife that is not terrifying in its prospect, and we have found it in the philosophy of the Platonists. But with the advent of Savonarola, our Christianity is being purified and made practical. Who would argue with that? I believe he speaks the truth and has the power that we so desperately need of regenerating the faith.’
‘He is the antichrist,’ said Poliziano.
‘Our Angelo bases his beliefs on instinct,’ Pico explained. ‘Because Savonarola condemns poetry, he sees no good in him at all. But there is good there, and it is my work to persuade the Friar to a philosophical interpretation of the faith. For faith alone, without reason, is a bird with one wing.’
‘And you are succeeding,’ said Ficino, ‘as you must, for if you do not succeed Savonarola will close the Academy down.’
We each shuddered at that.
‘The faith,’ said Ficino, ‘the faith alone, which calls on men to abandon even their own judgement on what is true and false, has held our civilisation in thrall for hundreds of years. What do we get from it but an evil, greedy, rapacious, self-serving papacy we are not allowed to criticise without threat of excommunication or trial for heresy? We must go forward and cannot allow Savonarola to pitch us back. He needs to understand that philosophy – holy philosophy, not that dry grit of the scholastics – must attend faith, so that reasonable men may love God through reason. At the moment we are divided within ourselves, one part Christian, the other Platonist. These two must be married and become one. It can be done, I know it can be done, and it is my hope that in Savonarola we have found the man who can do it. But if we have not, then we are lost and the work must continue elsewhere, in other countries – such as your own.’
‘This is what I have sought my life long,’ said Colet. ‘I would have studied theology except that I could see nothing to be gained by rehearsing the sterile arguments of the scholastics. Theo-logy: it should be about the Word of God, not about the contrary opinions of men. So I have studied literature, but all the time feeling at odds with myself, as if my studies are a form of self- indulgence that will count against me on Judgement Day. Please, show me the way to harmony within.’
We remained in conversation until dawn, Ficino speaking to Colet of the secret teachings of the Platonists, Pico of the Cabala, Poliziano of the poets, each imparting to him that which is kept from the common people, things which I may not put down in writing. For in Colet we recognised the true spirit of enquiry. He thrilled to our vision to change what is wrong. But he did not share our confidence.
‘I am merely a bachelor of arts,’ he said. ‘What can I do in the field of philosophy or theology?’ He resembled so closely our beloved Ermolao Barbaro, his features neat and beautifully drawn, his mouth determined. Angelo smiled at him. ‘You love language, so use language. Give the people the gospels in their own tongue, without learned commentary. Let the truth speak through you.’
Colet, now at ease with Poliziano, gazed at him in
gratitude. As dawn came, he rose reluctantly, saying he was to leave for Rome within the hour. Ficino embraced him. Despite the difference in their years, this was not the embrace of tutor and student or master and disciple. Ficino embraced Colet as an equal, as his chosen one. A spark passed between them, the fire transmitted, the torch passed on. Hotze la’or – the truth was published.
72
THE ACADEMY OF SAN MARCO
1493
IN THE SUMMER I WAS LAID OFF BY MISCOMINI. WITH THE shop closing for July and August, I was free until the autumn. Poliziano invited me to stay with him and Maria at the Villa Bruscoli but I declined. I had enough money to feed myself for two months and decided to spend the time with what I love most: books.
A slab of sunlight from the cloister window fell into the library of San Marco, burnishing the floor and making the interior and its grey pillared aisles seem dim. Once inside, however, the eyes soon adjusted to the gentler light coming in from high windows. Row upon row of high-backed pews, each adjoined to a long and steeply sloping desk, filled the bays of the aisles. The narrow space between desk and bench penned the scholars in rows and kept their backs straight.
The theology desks were crowded while those dedicated to Greek and Roman authors were all but empty. Everyone seemed to have lost their taste for poetry and philosophy. I walked slowly past the empty rows. It seemed we were entering a new dark age, where the ancient works would be kept by monks who did not read them, where the only attention they received was from worms and beetles. I wanted to sit down at the Homer desk and read the first manuscript of the Iliad that had been brought into Florence, but to do so would be to draw attention to myself and raise sanctimonious eyebrows. I went instead to the philosophy section, where a few men at least were reading. Old Landino was there, muttering to himself earnestly, his wits threatened by too much study. Whiskers stood out on his unshaved chin, for there is no time for visits to the barber when you are seventy years old and have not yet read the whole of Aristotle. Choosing a seat at random, I sat and breathed the library in, my soul expanding with the scent of leather and parchment.