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ISBN 0-315-74805-2
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AB5TRACT
RE5UMÉ
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"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
l Introduction 1
--
Bibliography 25~
, - " "
1
1
(
INTRODUCTION
theater have increasingly been employed in the social sciences. Thus for
instance, several pages of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
are devoted to "Dramatism"-described as an approach to social inquiry based
on a theatrical model.l In fact, throughoui the social sciences, theatrical
r:n0clels and language have been put to a variety of different uses. 2 But
1Kenneth Burke, "Oramatism," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968 00.
2Among the relevant works arc: Robert Abelson, "Psychological status of the script concept,"
American Psychologist 36 (1981): 715-29; George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); Ralph Turner, "Role-taking, Role Standpoint,
and Reference-group Behavior," American Journal of Sociology 61 (1956): 316-28; Dennis
Brisset and Charles Edgley, OOs., Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook (Chicago:
Aldine, 1975); Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (N.Y.: Prentice-Hall, 1945); Arnold
Buss and Stephen Briggs, "Orama and the self in social interaclion,"Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 47 (1984): 1310-24; Abner Cohen, The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorations
in the Dramaturgy of Power in a Modern African Society (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981); James Combs and Michael Mansfield, oos., Drama in Life: The Uses of
Communication in SoCiety (N.Y.: Hastings House, 1976); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The
~'~\éTheatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); A.
2
;1
Paul Hare, Social Interactions as Drama: Applications [rom Conf/iet Resolution (Beverly
Hills, Sage Press, 1985); Stanford Lyman and Marvin Scott, The Drama of Sociat Reality
(N.Y.: OJ,ford University Press, 1975); Sheldon Messinger with Harold Dampson and Robert
Towne, "Life as Theater: Some notes on the dramaturgie approach to social reality,"
Sociometry 25 (1962): 98-110; Theodore Sarbin, "Role Theory," Handbook of Social
Psychology, cd. Gardner Lindzey (Cambridge Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1954): 223-58; Vietor
Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (lthaca: Cornell
University Press, 1!!74); for a more complete bibliography of this material'see especially A.
Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blumenbcrg, cds., Dramaturgical Analysis of Sodal Interaction
(N.Y.: Praeger Publishers, 1988). For discussion of "theatricality" as a concert, see Elizabeth
Burns, Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Sodal Life (N.Y.: Harper
& Row, 1972). " \"
1Quoted in Erving Goffman, The Presentati~~"ôrSC!fin",Ever:lday Life (Garden City, N.Y:
Doubleday, 1959) 19. ", c '
3
'. \
4lbid.
SIbid.
6/bid, 116.
7The Presenta/ion of Self in Everyday Life, 244-8. Goffman's discussion is not actually framed
in terms of "modulatcd" or "unmodulatcd" behavior, but rather in terms of "front" and
"backstage." Unfol'lunately, Goffman is not aItogether dear or consistent as to what he means
by this dislinction. At limes he sccms to dislinguish pcrformcd behavior from ils natural and
untheatrical counterpart, a.~jri'the following sentence: ''Throughout Western society"there
tends to be one informai 01 backstage language of behavior, and another language of bellavior
for occasio'}s when a performance is bcing presentcd"(128). But at other limes, "backstage"
appcars to refernotto an unpcrformcd manner ofbcing, but simplya less formai sort of
performance. Goffman's own uncertainty here is suggestcd by the fact that he describes
:'-:'
4
less hesitant to judge on this matter. For instance, David Riesman and his
collaborators in The Lanely Crowd attempt to associate an "other-directed"
character with modern western societies. 1 According to Riesman, this
increasingly prevalent personality is characterized by an "exceptional
sensitivity to the actions and wishes of others."2 A similar assessment is
made by Daniel Lerner, who writes concerning "empathy," \'.hich he
describes as the "capacity to see oneself in the other fellow's sitl1ation."3 Like
Riesman, Lerner also takes this "empathy" to be particularly pronounced in
his own modern society:
backstage behavior as unperfonned, but puts that word between quotation marks (32). Further
evidence of uncertainty or confusion is given by his remark in this same work that, "Ali the
world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in whieh it isn't are not easy to specify"
(72). Despile Goffman's re!uctance to state any clear tendency in modern western patterns of
socializing in the passage referred to above, Peter Manning suggests that Goffman is concemed
with, and critica! of, an erosion of traditional forrns of civility-however he does not support
this claim very strongly. See his "The Decline of Civility: a comment on Erving Goffman's
sociology," Canadian Reuiew of Sociology and Anthropology 13 (976): 13-25.
1David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd, ~bridged edition
with the 1961 and 1969 prefaces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950) 15:8. One crilicism
whieh has been made against Riesman is that he overeslimates the novelty of other-
directedness. Seymour Martin Lipset stresses the similarilies between Riesman's analysis and
those of 19th century observers of America, such as Tocqueville, Martineau, and Bryce.
However, he concedes lhat as the transformation from a collection of small rural communiles
where people had independentlivelihoods and were known to each other and thus were
"judged by their tota! background and persona! history, not by any specifie set of acts," was only
in its early stages, a visitor from 19th century America "woulcl ùndoubtedly note changes in the
direction suggested by Riesman." S. M. Lipset, "A Changing Ameriean Character?" Culture and
Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Reuiewed, cd. S.M. Lipset (N.Y.: The Free
Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1961) 136-71; a similar criticism is given in Talcott Parson and Winston
White, "The Link between Character and Society," also in Culture and Social Character, 89-
135. These criticisms are taken up by Riesman in his 1961 preface, XXX-XXXIII.
2The Lonely Crowd,22.
3Danie! Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (N.Y.: Free
Press, 1958) 50.
more individuals exhibit higher empathie capacity than in any
c previous society.l
The shift from skills with things to skills with persons; from
small, informai, to large, organized firms; and from the
intimate local markets to the large anonymous market of the
metropolitan area--these have had profound psychologieal
results in the white-collar ranks. 3 <,
1Ibid, 51. For a rcœnt version of this argument and an extensive review of the Iiterature, see
Louis A. Zurcher, Jr., The Mutable Self: A Self-Concept for Social Change (Beverly Hills: Sage
Publications, 1977).
2Riesman,20-1. In the self-i:riticism of his 1969 preface, Riesman regrets the factthat "The
Lonely Crowd contributed to the snobbish deprecalion of business careers, in its discussion of the
shift from craft skill to manipulative skill," where he is refcrring to "conceptual" as weil as
"social" manipulation (XVIII-XIX).
( 3c. Wright Mills, White Collar (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1951) 182.
6
... -"', promoting a harmonious social atmosphere within the workplace is now
every bit as important as rationally organizing the division of labor. 1 Over
the past several decades, schools and departments have been created, and
thousands of books have been written, with th~ purpose of teaching the new
science of "management." Indeed, if compared to its present circumstances,
the teaching and study of management at the time of Whyte's writing was
still in its infancy. The objective of this science is the coordination and
shaping of employee behavior to best serve the needs of the enterprise. One
principle which is virtually inescapable for the modern student of
management is the need to determine others' attitudes or orientations, and to
adjust oneself accordingly. For instance, in one contemporary text, The Art of
Managing People, this skill is described as "behavioral flexibility":
After you have correctly identified the style of the person with
whom you are dealing, you then must plan ways of interacting
effectively with that individual. The ability to be changeable and
adapt in different interpersonal situations is called behavioral
f1exibi/ity.2
1William H. Whyte, The Organizalion Man (N.Y.: Simon and Schuslcr, 1956). Anolhcr
critique of Mayo and the newly emerging science of managemenl is given by Daniel Bell, who
writes, "we find a change in the outlook of management, parallelto thal which is occurring in
the culture as a whole, from authority to manipulation as a means of excrcising dominion."
Work and its Discontents (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956) 28.
2Philip L. Hunsaker and Anthony J. Alessandra, The Art of Managing People (N.Y.: Simon &
Schuster, 1980) 45. .
3Ibid.
7
1A trip to the psychology section of a local bookstore reveals an ample selection of such works,
most of which are not included in the library collection. Titles here include, Success!, How to
Get People to Do Things, The Magic of Thinking B(<>. The Double Win, and Taking Care of
Business, among others. For discussion of "success" in modem America, sec John Cawelti,
Apostles of the Self-made Man (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1965) especially ehap.
5; Richard Hubcr, The American Idea of Success (N.Y.: McGraw Hill, 1971); Rex Burns, Success
in America (Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976); and the collection of
primary and secondary extracts and articles in The American Gospel of Success, ed. Moses
Rischin (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965).
2Anthony Robbins, Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement (N.Y.: Simon
& Schuster, 1986) 208.
3Ibid,207.
c 4Ibid,209.
8
1lbid, 212.
2~!l!,=212.
""3Ibid, 216. .
4Dale Carnegie, How tçi Win Friends and Influence People (Toronto: Musson,1937) 76.
9
the same as that of Robbins, and virtually ail the "experts" in this field. It
consists first of overcoming the limitations of one's own naturally
"egocentric" point of view, enabling one to perceive and understand others'
equally self-centered perspectives. Hence Carnegie quotes with approval the
author of How 10 Turn People inlo Gold as saying, "success in dealing with
people depends on a sympathetic grasp of the other man's viewpoint."l
Again, once having discovered the likes, dislikes, or beliefs of that
other person, the next step is to use this information; we must transform our
own self-interested self into one which appears interested in others. But here
Carnegie insists it is not merely the appearance which we must transform, but
our entire being--we must truly refashion ourselves in order to accommodate
views, tastes, and moods at least not originally our own. With a flourish of
academic authority, Carnegie cites William James as providing the necessary
intellectual basis for his own ideas of radical self-formation. According to
James,
1Ibid, 193.
2lbid, 91.
3Ibid.
10
1Ibid,47.
2Mills, 182.
3Riesman, 20
11
thought. One important period of this history took place in the European
Renaissance, and it is with these questions and concerns, and with this
historical period that Theatricality and Power will primarily concern itself.
lrbid, 265; Riesman re-emphasizes the bcnefits as weil as the rosts of the perceived trend in
the 1961 Preface, XXXII.
20aniel Lerner; "Comfort and Fun: Morality in a Nice Society"; American Scholar 27 (1958)
153-165.
" 3Richard Sennet, The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psych%gy of Capita/ism (N.Y.:
C'- Vintage, 1974). A similar view is expresscd in Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authentidty
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
12
."'.'''' of the revived study of classical rhetoric and its conceptions of decorum,
....... artifice, and dissimulation. Chapter III examines the social, economic, and
above all, political context of this thinking--the princely courts.
The next four chapters are "case studies" in the theatrical self-
fashioning of four important Renaissance thinkers: Niccolèl Machiavelli,
Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Michel de Montaigne. The
orientation of these chapters will differ somewhat from the general practice of
interpretation in political theory. Traditionally, this discipline has
understood its mission as that of discovering the position of a thinker on
sorne chosen topic, be it the best regime, the nature of justice, etc. This
approach tends to minimize the existence of internai conflict or ambivalence.
Seemingly contradictory passages are typically either reconciled as only
apparentlycontradictory, or one side of the contradiction is weighed to be the
lighter, and is thus dismissed as the exception proving the more general rule.
In contrast, the approach of this thesis will focus less on thinkers'
intellectual and ethical "positions," and more on certain problems around
which their thinking turns. In this way inconsistency or ambiguity, which
often occur in peoples' lives concerning matters of importance, can be
brought into relief and understood, instead of treated as insignificant or
explained away. As is consistent with this approach, the thesis itself attempts
to present and clarify a number of complex problems and concerns, rather
than to prove a particular point. It is meant to be more of a discussion than
an argument.
Finally, the thesis conc1udes with a brief look at the 18th century as the
midpoint between the Renaissance and the contemporary world in order to
sketch an outline of certain historical continuities and changes concerning
social theatricality. The intent here is not to evaluate these trends in terms of
13
TI
1 Patti P. Gillespie and Kenneth M. Cameron, Western Theater: revo/ution and revival (N. Y.:
Macmillan, 1984) 274-5; Vera Mowry Roberts, On Stage: a history of theater, 2nd ed. (N. Y.:
Harper and Row, 1974) 106·7.
2Roberls, 127; Gillespie and Cameron, 246; besides Roberts and Gillespie and Cameron, there
are a number of historical surveys of the theater which 1found useful, inc1uding Jack Mitchley
and Peter Spalding, Five Thousand Years of Theater (N.Y.: Holmes & Meier, 1982); Oscar
Brockett, The History of the Theatre, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyan & Bacon, 1974); Phyllis
Hartnoll, The Concise History of Theatre (N.Y.: Harry N. Abrams, 1968); Ronald Vince,
Ancient and Medieval Theatre (London: Greenwood Press, 1984), and his Renaissance Theatre
(London: Grccnwood Press, 1984). As these studies largely contain discussions parallel to those
in Roberts and Gillespie and Cameron, 1 will not bother to cite them further.
30n the theatrum mundi, see Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: the market and the
theatcr in Ang/o-American thol/ght, 1550-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,\i986)
14·16; Jackson I. Cope, The Theater and the Dream: from metaphor ta dream in renaissance
drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Frances Yates, Theater of the
Wor/d (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Richard Bemheimer, "Theatrum
Mundi," in Art Bulletin 38 (1956) 225-47.
16
For more than 500 years after the fall of Rome there is very !ittle
evidence for the existence of any continuing theatricallegacy from the
classical world. The first clear signs of a revived, sustained, and actually
performed drama appears in the Medieval church. This begins around the
ninth century with the singing of different "parts" in the mass, sometimes
accompanied by props and even certain ritualized pantomimes. Thus, at the
Easter service priests went to a part of the altar representing Christ's tomb,
brought out the cross, and placed il on the altar. 2 To this were added
dialogues sung in Latin. In the earliest extant example of liturgical drama, the
tenth century Visitatio Sepulchri, four members of the choir were to be
differentiated from the rest by dress--three were to sing the parts of the three
Marys at the tomb of Christ, and were instructed to carry themselves "in the
manner" of women, while the four th had the role of an ange1. 3
Around the 13th century, liturgical drama appears to have declined,
giving way to a more secularized form of theater. This theater was presented
in the marketplace rather than the church, was mainly spoken r~ther than
( sung, and was in the vernacular rather than in Latin, though the subject
matter continued to be religious.
These forms of theater differred in important ways from modern play-
acting. Insofar as Medieval theater actually consisted of depicting a story or
scene, it did 50 largely by means of a symbolic and emblematic presentation of
itssubject matter. In the liturgical theater, when a monk places the cross
upon the "sepulchre:' this is not intended to be a "realistic" representation,
but rather to communicate with an audience accustomed to understanding
the world by means of symbolism and allegory. Just as the halos painted over
:.:
the heads of saints in Medieval art are not meant as actual representations,
but are meant to indicate a status and relationship with God, 50 the acting of
Medieval drama was intended to make symbolically present certain spiritual
truths and events.
Similarly, the viewers of the vernacular religious drama did not only
see before them a rude mechanic with paper ~ii1gs attached to his back, but
perhaps also an angel from God; and in the presence of a burning hank of·
hemp suspended from a rope accompanied by two figures--either actors, or
painted or carved images--they may have experienced the mystery of the
Trinity.1The presentation of the Medieval drama thus generally follows and
conforms to established conventions employed, for instance, on sculpted
facades and in stained glass, which through images and symbols make present
..:.;.;.c.:-
a transcendent reality.2
IV. A. Kolvc, The Play Called Corpus Christi (London: Edward Arnold, 1966) 26.
2WiIliam Tydcman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
( Press, 1978) 215.
18
1Kolve, 24; this argument, advaneed by Kolve, is then further elaborated upon by R. W.
Hanning, '''Vou Have Begun a Parlous Pleye': The Nature and Limits of Dramatie Mimesis as a
Theme in Four Middle English 'FaU of Lucifer' Cycle Plays," The Drama of the Middle Ages:
comparative and critical essays, ed. Clifford Davidson, C. J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe
(N, Y.: AMS Press, 1982) 140-161; sec also Tydeman, 215.
2Kolve, 24.
3Cillespie and Car'1eron, 172.
19
1Bevington, From "Mankind" to Marlowe:" Growth of a Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962) 9; while the characters of the
moralities are in sorne sense "abstract," Natalie Crohn Schmitt cautions that in order to :1
reconstruct the phenomenological experience of medieval drama one must keep in mind that
"the distinction between symbol and allegory was not a clear one for the medieval person and
the distinction between both these modes and the literaI was not as firm as our own," that, for
instance, "the Sins were from their earliest appearance in Christian thought considered
concrete devils or demons, and throughout the Middle Ages they continued, at times, to be so
visualized." "The Idea of a Person in Medieval Morality PIays," in Davidson et al, 307.
2Tydeman,215.
3Qn the general nature and trends of the theater in this period, especially helpful are: Ann
Righter (Barton), Shakespeare and the Idea of a Play (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964) and
Yi-Fu Tuan, Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Préss, 1982) chap.5. Also useful were M. C. Bradbrook,
The Rise of the Common Player (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) and several of
the articles in Davidson, et al. George Kemodle describes the changes in stage scenery and
props in his From Art to Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).
4Leone di Somi, Dialogues on Stage Affairs, in Allardyce Nicoll, The Development of Theatre,
4th ed. (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1958) 250; Concems similar to those expresse<! by di Somi
can aIso be found in Giambatlista Geraldi Cinlio, On the Composition of. Comedies and
Tragedies, in Lilerary Criticism: Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan Gilbert (Detioit: Wayne State
( University Press, 1962) 252-62; See also discussion by Yi-Fu Tuan, 112.
20
be," then as much as "the spectator realizes from the beginning that he is
going to listen to fictional things, yet little by little he voluntarily permits
himself to be cheated until he imagines that he is really looking upon an
actual series of real events. "1 As the dialogue progresses, Veridico spells out
in somewhat more detail how actors should exercise their art:
After Solon (right Worshipful yong men) had seene Thespis his
first edition and action of a Tragedie, and meeting with him
before the playe, demaunded, If he were not ashamed to publish
such feigned fables under so noble, yet a counterfeit personage:
Thespis answered, That it was no disgrace upon a stage (merrily
and in sport) to say and do any thing. Then Solon (striking hard
upon the earth with his staffe) replied thus: Yea but shortly, we
that now like and embrace this play, shall find it practised in our
contracts and common affairs. 3
1Quoled in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Chambers, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oarendon Press,
1923) 370. On the Renaissance actor as a Proteus or chameleon, Righter, 100 and Thomas Hyde,
"Identity and Acting in Elizabelhan Tragedy," Renaissance Drama, New Series 15 (1984) 93-
114.
2Agnew, 14-6, 98-100, and passim.
3Simon Patericke, Letter of Dedication, A, Discourse Upon the Meanes of Weil Governing and
Maintaining in Peace, a Kingdome, or othet Principalitie, trans. Simon Patericke (1602,
reprinted al Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbus Terrarum, 1969). The stary originally appears in
Plutarch's Life of Solon, XXIX. 4.
22
hllis list could also include Jonson's Volpone, Marlowe's Jew of Malta, and a number of other
such figures. See Agnew, 114-6; Righter,68-96; Julia Briggs, This Stage-Play World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983) 170-3. Also on Renaissance theater and deception, see Agnes
Helier, Renaissance Man, trans. Richard Allen (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) 202-
30. On the theatricality of Renaissance culture more generally, see Stephen Greenblatt, Sir
Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973) chap. 2.
2De Ora/ore, trans E. W. Sulton and H. Rackam, vol. 1, Loeb C1assical Library (London:
Heinemann, 1952) I. viii. 32.
23
compels us to develop and cultivate it: "Who therefore would not rightly
( admire this faeulty, and deem it his dutYto exert himself to the utmost ... in
that partieular respect wherein chiefly men are superior to animals?"l
These convictions were constantly repeated throughout the
Renaissance, as for instance by Erasmus in his The Right Way of Speaking,
where he stresses the importance of proper training of the tongue-"there is
no other part of the body 50 quick and 50 pliable and 50 ready to take up
different shapes, nor any other on which a man's acceptability and success 50
much depends ... it is the tongue which distinguishes the human animal."2
In order to fulfill that "duty" of cultivating eloquence, Erasmus and countless
other humanists poured over the works of Cicero, Quintilian, and other
classical authors. 3
Moreover, as Erasmus' reference to "acceptability and success" suggests,
the purpose of perfecting one's manner of speech was not simply aesthetici
the goal and orientation of classical rhetoric had always been thoroughly
practical. That is to say, the primary objective of the study of rhetoric was to
develop the ability to influence others. Thus, for instance, Crassus states that,
"there is to my mind no more excellent thing than the power, by means of
oratory, to get hold of assemblies of men, win their good will, direct their
inclinations wherever the speaker wishes, or divert them from whatever he
lIbid.
2The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue, trans. and annotated Maurice Pope
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) 370, vol. 26 in The Col/ected Works of Erasmus
(hereafter CWE).
30n the centra\ity of rhetoric and eloquence in Renaissance culture see Hanna Gray,
"Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963)
497-514; Jerrold Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968) especially, 3-30; William Woodward, Vitorino da Fel/re and
Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), and also his
Desiderius Erasmus Concerning the Aim and Method of Education (N.Y.: Teachers College
Columbia University, 1964), and Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance 1400-
1600 (N.Y.: Russel & Russel, 1965).
24
important than to win for the orator the favour of his hearer, and to have the
latter 50 affected as to be swayed by something resembling a mental impulse
or emotion, rather than by judgement or deliberation."3 To this end the
orator should make a show of his good character and benevolence: nIt is very
helpful to display the tokens of good-nature, kindness, calmness, loyalty and a
disposition that is pleasing ... [a1l of which] are powerful in winning
goodwill."4 Antonius fo1lows this with the practical consideration that these
qualities of character are "easier to embellish, if only they are real, than to
fabricate where non-existent."s
Not only does the art of oratory require that its practitioner excel in
giving the appearance of goodness and virtue, but aise in giving the
appearance of whatever emotion the orator wishes to reproduce in his
listeners, since "it is impossible for the listener to feel indignation, hatred or
ill-will, to be terrified of anything, or reduced to tears of compassion, unless
aH those emotions, which the advocatewould inspire in the arbitrator, are
visibly stamped or rather branded on the advocate himself."6
At this point Antonius at least at first seems to be going on to defend
his own personal integrity in this matter: "1 give you my word that 1 never
The principle which governs the shifting conduct of the orator is above
aU given by the notion of decorum, or "propriety," which is discussed at
length in Cicero's De Officiis (On Duties). Cicero defines decorum as "that
which harmonizes with man's superiority in those respects in which his
nature differs from that of the rest of animal creation,"S and elsewhere
... we say that the poets observe propriety, when every word or
action is in accord with each individual character. For example,
if Aeacus or Minos said: "Let them hate if only they fear:' or:
"The father is himself his children's tomb:' that would seem
improper (indecorum videretur), because we are told that they
were just men. But when Atreus speaks those lines, they call
forth applausei for the sentiment is in keeping with the
character.4
10rator, trans. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1939) XXI. 71.
2De Officiis, I. xxxv. 126
3Ibid, I. xxxv. 128.
we should "in our dealings with people show what l may almost cal1
( reverence toward al1 men-not only toward the men who are the best, but
toward others as well."l He further il\ustrates the notion of decorum as
considerateness by way of contrasting it with the concept of "justice": "It is
the function of justice not to do wrong to one's fel10w men; of
considerateness, not to wound their feelings; and in this the essence of
propriety (decorum) is best seen."2
Speaking more broadly, decorum has to do with accommodating to
one's circumstances as a whole. It is in this sense of behaving aptly and
appropriately for one's conditions that decorum is of particular relevance to
the orator:
... the orator must have an eye to propriety (quid deceat), not
only in thought but in language. For the same style and the
same thoughts must not be used in portraying every condition
in life, or every rank, position or age, and in fact a similar
distinction must be made in respect of place, time and audience. 3
famous figure, taken from scripture, literature, or history, might give under
certain conditions. For instance, Erasmus advocates students devise
appropriate speeches for Penelope exhorting Ulysses to return home, or for
Jonathan consoling David as he hides from the wrath of Saut. Hence one
modern scholar writes that in this way, "the student was taught to imagine
himself in circumstances utterly unlike his own and to see with eyes other
than his own. "1
In fact, the pursuit of decorum and the cultivated appreciation of
differing perspectives characterized many areas of Renaissance culture,
induding history, law, philology, poetry, and the arts. 2 However, perhaps
above ail, the dassical concept of decorum was adopted by the p.ôfessional
descendents of the ancient orators, the Renaissance humanists devoted to
refinement of speech and conduct. Consequently, injunctions to
accommodate oneself to the circumstances of time, place, and person, appear
regularly in the writings of the humanists. For instance, Thomas Elyot, in his
The Book named the Governour, writes "an orator is he that can or may
1Altman, 45.
2Qn decorum and the appreciation of differring perspectives in the Renaissance in the areas of
history, law, philology, and poetry, sec: G. W. Pigman, "Imitation and the Renaissance Sense
of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus 'Ciceronianus:' Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies 9 (1979) 155-77; Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Edward
Arnold, Lld., 1969); Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historieal Scolarship: Language,
Law, and History, in the French Renaissance (N.Y.: Colombia University Press, 1970); Joseph
H. Preston, "Was There an Historical Revolution?," Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977)
353-364; George Huppert, "The Renaissance Background of Historicism," History and Theory 5
(1966) 48-60; F. Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and
Thought 1580-1640 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962); Eugenio Garin, !tallan
Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. Peler Munz (Oxford: Basil
B1âckwell, 1965) especially 14-7; Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery
in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). On notions of decorum and
perspective in the arls, sec Rensselaer Lee, "Ut Pictura Poesis: the humanistic theory of
painting," Art Bulletin 22 (1940) 197-269, bul especially 228-35; John R. Spencer, "Ut
Rhetorica Pictora," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957) 26-46; and Joan
c Gadol, Leon Batista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1969) 87-91; Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art
(Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1960).
31
1The Book Named the Governor, ed.,·;\th an introduction by S. E. Lehmberg (London: J. M. Dent
& Sons, 1962) 4 6 . "
2Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo, trans. K. Eisenbichler and K. Bartlett (Toronto: Centre for
Refonnation and Renaissance Studies, 1986) 4. For my present purposes 1am ignoring other
senses of decorum reproduced in these texts; for instance, Della Casa does !itlle more than
translate Ciccro's description of "physical decorum ": "It is therefore suitable for well-
mannered persons to be mindful of this balance 1 have spoken of in their walking, standing,
sitting, movements, bearing, and in their dress, in their words and in their silence, in their
repose and in their action~':'(54). \~
3Ibid,5.
4Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (N.Y.: Penguin Books,
1967) 140.
32
c Do you not agree that that friend of ours, of whom l spoke to you
the other day, had completely forgotten whom he was talking to
and why, when, to entertairi a lady whom he had never seen
before, he began their conversation by announcing that he had
slaughtered 50 many men, how fierce he was, and that he knew
how to wield a sword with both hands? And before he left her
he was wanting to teach her how certain blows of the battle-ax
should be parried, both when one was armed and when one was
unarmed, and the various ways of brandishing a sword, until
the poor girl was suffering agonies and every moment seemed
like an etemity till she could make her escape before being cut
down like the others.1
For her part, the lady "should have, above ail else, a certain pleasing
affability whereby she will know how to entertain graciously every kind of
man with charming and honest conversation, suited to the time and the
place."2
But as in Cicero, 50 for màny writers of the Renaissance, the flexibility
implied by the principle of decorum was not without ethical complication.
This is clearly shown in Stephano Guazzo's The Civile Conversation, where
the character Doctor Anniball states "to be acceptable in companie, we must
put of [off] as it were our own fashions and manners, and cloath our selves
with the conditions of others, and imitate them so farre as reason will
permit."3 However, having stated the necessity of adapting and adjusting
1Ibid, 117.
2lbid, 212.
3The Civile Conversation of M. Steeven Guazzo, trans. George Pellie, vol. 1 (London: Constable
and Co., 1925) 105. Guazzo's Civile Conversation was along with Galateo and The Courtier,
one of the most important works to transmit notions of fashionable conduct from Italy to the'l'cst
of Europe; in England it ranked only bchind The Courtier among Italian books, and actually
surpassed it within Italy itself. In the p~st these works have been treatoo together, but ,
recently Daniel Javitch and especially Joryn Lievsay have stressed the differences between
them, and in particular, the Jess courtly ch~racter of Guazzo's work. While 1 agree with
Javitch's critidsms of Lievsay on this counti'and also with his argument that the Civile
.. Conversation is both Jess elitist and aesthetiè',in orientation than is The Courtier, it is not cIear
(
.~.
to me that the former is any more ethically ni'pderate than the Jaller, as both Lievsay and
\/
'\\
33
Javitch suggest. See John Lievsày, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance 1575-1675
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961) and Daniel Javitch, "Rival Arts of
Conduct in Elizabethan England: Guazzo's,Civile Conversation and Castiglione's Courtier,"
Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971) 178-198.
libido
2lbid.
3The Family'in Renaissance Florence, trans. Renée Neu Watkins <Columbia, S.c.: University of
1Ibid, 277.
2Ibid,311.
3Ibid.
4Ibid. ,',
5Cedl Grayson makes an observation relevant hel'e: "This opposi tion of moral idealism and
reality constitues the principal crux of his thought, and in relation to il we must appreciate his
apparent inconsistencies; in particular that oscillation betwecn a personal virtue and an
intellectual supremacy over material things on the one hand, and ,the desire to sec that same
virtue operative within society and directed toward some practical end." Cecil Grayson, "The
Humanism of Alberti:' ltalian Studies 12 (1957) 54.
6Ibid,286.
35
the ninth question of his Questions Diverses, entitled "Si celuy q11i sçait se
bien accommoder aux moeurs & conditions diverses des hommes, merite le
nom & tiltre de vertueux."l Indeed, Le Caron turns to Cicero and exposes his
inconsistencyon this matter. He notes that Cicero attacked Catiline for
making use of "un artifice à gaigner les volontez des hommes, & scavoir
changer sa nature, & 1" manier à temps, & çà & là tourner & fle$chir icelle,
vivant avec les tristes severement, avec les gracieux ioyeusement, avec les
anciens gravement, avec la jeunesse courtoisement."2 H6wever Le Ca,ron
then comments, "Mais telle dexterité de nature ne merite d'estre blasmee &
reprise, ayant esté loüee par Ciceron mesme en plusiers grands Capitaines &
Senateurs."3
Moreover Le Caron also points to Cicero's recommendations of
flexibility for the practice of oratory, and specifically refers to the section of Dc
Officiis discussed above. Given these teachings, he wonders, "pourquoy
peuH-on par l'auctorité de Ciceron blasmer celuy qui scait & gravement,
severement, hautement, & modestement, gracieusement & humblement se
comporter & maintenir avec ceux ausquelz il congnoist telles manieres de
faire estre agreables, & leurs personnes, les temps & occasions le requerir?"4
For his part, Le Caron embraces this social dexterity as the "meilleure
adresse pour pai'venir à la felicité civile,"s and yet insists on certain limits:
"Toutes-fois je ne puis èstimer tel homme vertueux, lequel comme
l'o):seleur 6 voulant piper chacun, ne peut estre autre que trompeur ou
flateur. "1 However his attempts to clarify this distinction seem only further
to confuse the matter: "Je n'entens former un homme double & dissimulé,
ains2 accord & subtil à bien comprendre les complexions de chacun, &
s'accorder à icelles: comme un excellent joüer de Tragedie ou Comedies, en
ce theatre de la vie humaine. "3 In the end, the reader of Le Caron, like that of
Alberti, Guazzo, and many other humanists, may be excused for not entirely
grasping at what point a laudable flexibility approaches dishonesty or flattery.
Flattery
'1. lbid,47.
2SynOli~mous with mais.
3lbid, 46-7.
4pro Archia Poeta, trans. N. H. Watts, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann,1965) xi.
27.
5"Coronatio'i: Oration," trans. and published in E. H. Wilkins, Studies in the Life and Works of
Petrarch (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1955) 309; Petrarch also
arrar,ged this story into the first quatrain of a sonnet, which is presented'as thoroughly
familiar to the cultured membcrs of the cour/at Urbino in The Book of the Courtier, 92.
( '".. 6lbid, 308. "•
37
is a sign of an orator's power and skill to laud his subject so forcefully and
eloquently as to win for him Iife beyond the grave.
Despite the Renaissance valorization ofpraise as generative of fame
and reputation, "flattery" was generally reproved. The condemnation of
flattery and flatterers was an almost obligatory moral commonplace among
the humanists. To this end they repeatedly turned to Plutarch's How ta tell a
Flatterer from a Friend, which supplied many of the Iiterary tropes for
criticizing the overly accommodating. But while humanists attacked flattery,
they also noted that it was not easily distinguished From friendship, as
Thomas Elyot relates, himself here drawing upon Plutarch's essay:
... Iike as the wild corn, being in shape and greatness Iike to the
good, if they be mingled, with great difficulty will be tried out,
but either in a narrow-holed sieve they will issue out with the
other; so flattery From friendship is hardly severed, forasmuch
as in every motion and affect of the mind they be mutually
mingled together.J
flatterer in the supposed friend, but rather that the two can be conceptually
difficult to differentiate. Many, including Elyot, attempt to distinguish
between "flattery" and something Iike "affability"--by which E1yot says one
"speaketh courteously, with a sweet speech or countenance, wherewith the
hearers (as it were with a delicate odour) be refreshed, and allured to love
him in whom is the most delectable quality."2 Whether or not "flattery" is
specifically mentioned, sorne such distinction is the norm, as, for instance, in
1The Book Named the Governor, 155. On the subject of f1attcry in thc Renaissance, sœ Frank
Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory,
(Berkeley: University of Califomia Prcss, 1984) especially chap. 4.
2Ibid,107. Similarly, Vives writes that one should not "slidc into merc f1attcry"--"A man can
reach a certain balance which neithcr denies his own dignity nor takcs away another's."
Inroduction to Wisdom, 141-2.
38
Yea, 1wH say more unto you, that if one of these Gnatoes [a
conniving flatterer in Terence's Eunuchus], of whom you have
made mention, should fall to commending mee, and bend him
selfe to set mee foorth in the best colours hee coulde,
undoubtedly 1 shoulde become a very Thraso [the recipient of
Gnatho's flattery], and 1 shoulde willingly listen unto him,
making my selfe beleeve, that though hee used to flatter others,
yet he dealt plainly with mee. Yea, 1 should can him thanke for
it, and wishe that aIl my friends and kinsfolke were present to
heare it. 3
1Antonio de Guevara, The Diall of Princes, lrans Thomas North and cd. by K. N. Colville
(London: Phillip Allan & Co., 1919) 240.
2Civile Conversation, 83.
3Ibid.
39
lIbid,79.
2Ibid,78.
3Ibid.
4In Praise of Fol/y, trans. John Dolan, The Essential Erasmus (N.Y.:Mentor-Qmcga Books, 1964)
123. Orignal from Moriae Encomium Id Est Stu1titiae Laus, ed. Clarence H. Miller,
(Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing, 1979) 111, vol. 4, part 3 of Erasmi Opera Omnia. This
passage centers on a discussion of medicine; the reference to rhetoric here was a Jater addition,
making more explicitthe allusion to Plato's Gorgias, see below, 41
5Ibid, 133. Moriait Encomium, 130.
6Ibid,132.
40
1lbid, 133.
2Ars Aulica or The Courtier's Art, trans. Edward Blount (London: Meleb. Bradwood, 1607) 157.
On dassica! and Renaissance understandings and justifications of praise, see O. B. Hardison,
The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and
Practice (Chape! Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962).
( 31bid, 155.
41bid, 162.
41
llbid,170-1.
2Corgias, trans. Walter Hamilton (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1960) 44, St # 463
3 De Ora/ore, III. xvi. 60-1.
42
rhetoric or oratory. But in the end he is too practical and political to maintain
( this position consistently. In speaking of those most "philosophical"
philosophers, the stoics, Cicero admits that their style is "possibly subtle and
undoubtedly penetrating," but nonetheless "bald," "jarring on the ear," and
"devoid of darity, fullness and spirit"--as a consequence, entirely without the
power to produce any beneficial effects. 50 while Cicero appears somewhat
tom by the competing daims of rhetoric and philosophy, both his aesthetic
sensibilities, and his attraction to the practical, draw him to oratory despite his
philosophical interests and pretensions. On the other hand, Quintilian is less
ambiguous in his preference for rhetoric. He cites Cicero with approval in
critidzing the historical rupture of oratory and philosophy,l but goes on to
maintain forthrightly and consistently that the subject matter of philosophy
belongs to the study of oratory, and consequently that the well trained orator
would have "no need to go to the schools of philosophy for the precepts of
virtue,"2 or for anything else, for that mattpr.
In the Renaissance, this question of the relative merits of eloquence as
opposed to philosophy was taken up over and over again. Sorne, such as
Valla, followed Quintilian in unambiguously favoring oratory over
philosophy. For Valla, aU philosophy, modern and ancient, was merely a
stepchild and even perversion of oratory. Thus he argues that the "dialectic"
of the philosophers is in fact simply on~:part of the orator's art: "what else is
1
dialectic but one. kind of confutation, the various sorts of which are part of
inventio [one of the five traditional constituent elements of rhetoric]?"3
Moreover, he continues, ..
lIns/i/u/io Oratoria, I. Pro 13.
2Ibid, J. Pro 17.
3Quoled in Jerrold Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton:
( Princeton University Press, 1968) 161-2.
43
1Quoted in ibid, 162. While by no means as absolule as Valla, Erasmus-for whom rheloric
consists of "wisdom speaking copiously"--lakes up the defense of eloquence from the
philosophers' attacks, both propounding the value of elegant slyle, and also himself attacking
rhetoric's detractors. Thus in The Antibarbari, Erasmus lurns the charge of unprincipled
inconstancy against the schoolmen themselves: "They are difficull to gel hold of, and most
troublesome on this account. They never make a sland; lhey are more elusive lhan lhe
Parthians, now saying yes and then no; they are always shuffling, getting away with a
quibble, and Iike Proteus, 'Into ail kinds of wondrous shapes lhey change.'" The Antibarbari,
trans. and annotated Margaret Mann Philips (Toronto: University Press, 1978) 43, vol 23 of
CWE.
2Seigel, 47.
3Ibid.
4ibid; full discussions of ail the above namcd humanists on the question of oralory versus
philosophy can he found in Seigel.
44
If ail that was required of the latter [an eloquent speaker] was
merely to indicate the facts, he might rest content with
literalness of language, without further elaboration. But since it
is his duty to delight and move his audience and to play upon
the various feelings, it becomes necessary for him to employ
those additional aids which are granted to us by that same
nature which gave us speech.l ".
o •
To this he adds, "It is, in fact, as natural to do this as to harden the muscles,
increase our strength and improve our complexion by means of exercise."2
In the Renaissance the argument between rhetoric and philosophy
continued to pose the question as to the character of rhetorical artifice.
Indeed, the very term "artificial" was subject to this debate, for at the time it
could, but need not necessarily, carry a negative, ~onnotation suggesting
,.-" ,\..
rhetoric as the art of setting for th "an artificial declaracion of the mynde, in
the handelyng of any cause, called in contencion, that maie through reason
largely be discussed. "3
Furthermore, because rhetorical artifice included straying from the
"literalness of language," and even sanctioned the orator appearing not "like
himself;' discussion inevitably turned to the nature and status of
"dissimulation" as weil as artifice in general. PE!rhaps the most famous
confrontation of oratory and philosophical dis trust of rhetorical artifice and
dissimulation took place between the accomplished humanist Ermolao
Barbaro and the equally renowned Pico della Mirandola. This exchange was
initiated by Barbaro, who wrote praising Pico's own elegant style, but
criticizing that of the scholastics, upon whom the eclectic Pico drew
extensively. Hence Barbaro claimed that the philosophers were commonly
held to be "dull, rude, uncultured barbarians."1
Pico responded with a long and impassioned letter in which he
represented one of these "barbarians" as stepping forward to defend his
discipline. Exactly what position Pico, or his "barbarian" spokesperson,
intended to advance with respect to rhetorical eloquence is not entirely clear.
He concludes on a conciliatory note, granting that "eloquence and wisdom
may be closely connected,"2 and is willing to consider the estrangement of
philosophy from rhetoric and rhetoric from philosophy as regrettable
developments. Here he merely insists on the proper order of priority:
However, throughout the bulk of the letter he is far less optimistic about
the compatibility of these two studies. In fact he begins by stating that, "50
great is the conflict between the office of the orator and the philosopher that
there can be no conflicting greater than theirs."4 In part this conflict derives
from their different spheres of operation: whereas philosophy is conducted
within and for an elite community of scholars, the skills of the orator belong
1"The Correspondence of Picol1ella Mirandola and Ermolao Barbaro conceming the Relation of
Philosophy and Rhetoric," trans. Quirinus Brccn, Journal of the History of Idcas 7(952) 393.
2Ibid, 40l.
3Ibid, 401.
4Ibid,395.
46
"to those whose business is not in the academy but rather in that
commonwealth where things done and things said are weighed in a public
scale under the eye of one to whom flowers weigh more than fruits."l
Consequently, while philosophy is seen as the search for truth itself, rhetoric
appears to be a much Jess exalted endeavor:
For what else is the task of the rhetor than to lie, to entrap, to
circumvent, to practise sleight-of-hand? For, as you say, it is
your business to be able at will to turn black into white, white
into black; to be able to elevate, degrade, en)arge, and reduce, by
speaking, whatsoever you will; at length you do this to the
things themselves by magical arts as it were, for by the powers of
eloquence you build them up in such a way that they change to
whatever face and costume you please; 50 that they are not what
their own nature but what your will made them; of course they
may not actua11y become what you willed, but if they should not
it may nevertheless appear 50 to your audience. Ali this is
nothing at ail but sheer mendacity, sheer imposture, sheer
trickery; for its nature is either to enlarge by addition or to
reduce by subtraction, and putting forth a false harmony of
words like 50 many masks and likenesses it dupes the listeners'
minds by insincerities. Will there be any affinity between this
and the philosopher, whose entire endeavor is concerned with
knowing the truth and demonstrating it to others?2
. -
Hence, here, and in most of the letter, Pico's position--appears not to be
a mere subordination of rhetoric to philosophy, nor even a disregard for the
former as simply inessential and superfluous, but its condemnation as
positively dishonest and harmful. He maintains that the only legitimate
grounds for persuasion are "the life of the speaker, the truth of his matter,
and soberness of discourse"3; in contrast, ail "colored speech" he equates with
1lbid; however it does not seem that Pico i5 willing to abandon politics to the point of finding
rhetorical deceit intrinsic to, and thus acceptable within, this domain--hc continues: "Who
would not approve a dclicate step, cunning hands, playful eycs in an actor and dancer? In a
fcllow-eitizen ... who would not disapprove, censurc, abominatc them?"(396l.
( ---
2Ibid,396.
3Ibid,401.
47
1Ibid.
2Ibid,397.
1Ibid,408.
2"Melanclhon 10 Pico,'· in ibid, 420.
49
It has been said, with good reason, that when men were still
dispersed and nomadic they were gathered together by
eloquence, and that by it states were founded;by it rights,
religions, legitimate marriage, and the other bonds of human
society were constituted. In fact.. it is by eloquence (aratia) that
these things are maintained in commonwealths. Should we
agree with you and consider this divine power, 50 necessary to
mankind, as nothing but a game or pack of tricks?!
1Ibid, 416.
2Ibid,427.
3lbid. A similar politically-mindcd justification is ilintcd at by Barbaro, ambassador for the
,
~-
Venetian republic, when he observes that "the rules of civil discourse and philosophical
discourse are different" (Barbaro 10 Pico, 408), and elsewhere that Ihe firsl duly of any servanl
of a govemment is "to do, say, advise and think whatever may best serve the preservation and
aggrandizement.of his own state"--a statemenl which Garret Mattingly describes as "the voice
of the new age." Garret Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955)
95.
4During the Renaissance, a sensibilHy was still alive which not only rejected the subtleties of
the orators, but even the premises of their analogies conccrning legHimale artifice in warfare.
HènceMontaigne ",rites that while "skill al arms and ruse" may easily conquer "reckless power
... this is not propcrly valor, since it draws Hs support from skill and has Hs basis in something
other than itself." 1;1~ noies that within his lifetime "the nobilHy avoided the reputation of
good fencers as insulting, and leamcd H furtively, as a cunning lrade, derogating from true and
natural valor," which he follows wilh some lines from Tasso:
50
"Cowardice, Mother of Cruelty:' The Complete ES5IlYs of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame
(Stanford: Stanford:Jniversity Press, 1943) 527.
lArte of English Poesie (N. p.: Kent State University Press, 1970) 305; while, as the tille
suggests, The Arte of English Poesie addresses itself ch;efly to the art of courlly poetry, it
nevertheless frcquenlly and effortlessly crosses over into the domain of courtly oratory in
genera1. A similar usage is found in other Renaissance writers, inc1uding Sir Philip Sidney in
his A Defense of Poetry, which was written before Puttenham's work, but was publishcd a few
years after. Sidney also derives the word "poet" from the Greek, noting, "wc English have met
with the Greeks in calling him a maker" (22·3). Again Iike other Renaisssance thinkers, he
follows Aristolle in holding that this "making" consists of imitation of naturc-"that is to say,
a reprcscnting, counterfeiting, or figuring forth"(25). As he states at more length: "There is no
art delivercd to mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without
which they could not consist, and on which they 50 depend, as they bccome actors and players,
as it were, of what nature will have set forth" (23). A Defense of Poetryi cd. J. A. Van Dorsten
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). While Sidney, Iike Puttcnham, draws upon the
theory of courtiership in expounding his thcory of poetry, DanÏ1il Javitch argues that the lirst
signs of differentiation bctwccn the two arts, which will be more fully made from the 1790'5 on,
as the status of the former dcclines, was already visible in Sidney's Ap%gy. Poetry and
Courtlincss in Renaissance Eng/and (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) chap. 3. See
also Whigham, chap. 4.;;
( 2lbid,281.
51
not for a thousand crownes have bene seene."l Puttenham here remarks that
the initial blunder and lapse of rhetorical decorum was thus "by a wittie
reformation to be made decent againe."2 According to Puttenham, the orator
must "dissemble not onely his countenances and conceits, but also ail his
ordinary actions of behaviour, or the most part of them, whereby the better to
winne his purposes and good advantages."3
But this is not to say that Puttenham openly sanctions ail forms of
hypocrisy and deceit. He scorns those "who spE!~.ke faire to a mans face, and
foule behind his backe,"4 and act in similar such ways. Thus, he argues,
"leaving these manner of dissimulations to ail base-minded men, and of vile
nature 01' misterie, we doe allow our Courtly Poet to be a dissembler only in
the subtilties of his arte."s But for Puttenham, as for many others, it often
seems very difficult to determine where and how to draw the boundaries
separating "the subtilties of his art" from illegitimate deceptions.
However, he does not appear much worried by this problem; his
primary concern is rather to establish the existence of legitimate artifice and
dissimulation in the craft of the "maker" of speech. He attempts to do this by
means of analogies with other "artificers": "our maker may not be in ail cases
restrayned, but that he may both use, and also manifest his arte to his great
praise, and need no more be ashamed thereof, than a shoemaker to have
made a cleanly shoe, or a Carpenter to have buylt a faire house."6 Sorne of his
examples suggest that legitimate artifice may in sorne narrow sense
1Ibid.
2Ibid,282.
3Ibid,305.
4Ibid,307.
Slbid,308.
6Ibid,308.
52
dissimulate nature: "50 also the Alchimist counterfeits gold, silver, and ail
other mettais, the Lapidarie pearles and pretious stones by glasse and other
substances falsified, and sophisticate by arte."l He continues, "These men also
be praised for their craft, and their credit is nothing empayred, to say that their
conclusions and effects are very artificiall. "2
Other examples suggest a somewhat different relationship between art
and nature, for, "In some cases we say arte is an ayde and coadiutor to
nature,"3 instances of which are "the arte of Phisicke" and that of the
gardener. The latter art in particular he takes as an apt analogy for rhetorical
artifice: in that the speaker "speakes figuratively, or argues subtillie, or
perswades copiously and vehementy, he doth as the cunning gardiner that
using nature as a coadiutor, furders her conclusions and many times makes
her effectes more absolute and strange."4 But to some extent the artifice of
this particular art is unique and cannot be understood by analogy with other
crafts and professions:
But for that in our maker or Poet, which restes onely in devise
and issues from an excellent sharpe and quick invention, holpen
by a cleare and bright phantasie and imagination, he is not as the
painter to counterfaite the naturall by the like effects and not the
':, .c_,same, nor as the gardiner aiding nature to worke both the same
.... and the like, nor as the Carpenter to worke effectes utterly
unlike, but even as nature her selfe working by her owne
peculiar vertue and proper instinct and not by example or
meditation or exercise as ail other artificers do, is then most
admired when he is most naturall and least artificiall. 5
1Ibid, 310.
2Ibid, 310.
3Ibid,308.
4Ibid,312.
( 5Ibid, 312-3.
53
1Ibid, 313.
2See G. W. Pigman, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance;' Renaissance Quarterly 33
(1980) 1-32. Also helpful on Renaissance conceptions of literary imitation are: Pigman's
"Imitation and the Renaissance Sense of the Pasto The Reception of Erasmus 'Ciceronianus";
Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero (N.Y.: Teachers College, Columbia
University, 1910) 22-3; Dante Della Terza, "Imitatio: Theory and Practice. The Example of
Bembo the Poet;' Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971) 119-41; A. J. Smith, "Theory and
Practice in Renaissance Thcory: Two Kinds of Imitation;' Bulletin of the !ohn Ryland Library
47 (1964) 212-43; Harold Ogden White, Plagiarism and Imitation During the English
Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935).
3Quoted in "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance;' 10.
4lbid.
"
54
He will strengthen, 1 hope, his mind and his execution, and will
develop from wide reading his own individual style. 1 won't say
that he will avoid ail imitation, but he will conceal it, 50 that his
work won't resemble any particular author but will appear to
bring to Italy something new out of the work of the ancients.
But now, as the way of youth, he delights in imitations; and
sometimes he is 50 enraptured by others' beauties that, contrary
to good poetic practice, he becomes, as Horace says, 50 entangled
in the rules that he cannot extricate himself without revealing
his originals. 1
space for the humanist to find and express his or her own voice. This is
1The Ciceronian: A Dialogue on the Ideal Latin Style, trans. and annotated Belly 1. Knoll
(Toronto: University Press, 1986) 440-1, vol. 28 of CWE.
2Ibid,444.
o 3Ibid.
4Ibid, 441.~:::;C:c,
56
That dissimulation which dissimulates its own art, among other forms
of dissimulation, is especially notable in Castiglione's The Book of the
Courtier. Castiglione took the notion from the rhetorical tradition just
discussed, but then amplified and disseminated it across'E'{r.0pe; as a
'-";-
consequence the idea of art dissembling art appeared not only in the work of
Puttenham, but in that of countless authors of the period.
Castiglione puts the idea in the mouth of Count Lodovico Canossa, an
accomplished humanist and friend of Erasmus, who, with exactly the sort of
1Ibid, 442.
2Ibid.
57
lThe Courtier, 67. The Iink between the orator's dissimulation of "artifice" and that Df the
courtier is also explicitly made by Guazzo's Annibal, who, in a discussion on the advantages
and disadvantages of solilude, addresses his interlocutor: "You have swarved nothing al ail in
this discourse from lhe dutie of a perfect Courtier, whosc protertie il is 10 do alllhings wilh
carefull diligence, and skilfull arl: mary yet so lhat the art is hidden, and lhe whole sœmelh
10 be doone by chaunce, lhat he may lhereby be had in more admiration. And so taking lhal
course, you have here commended solitarinesse, partly by reasons derived from your owne good
wil, and partly by lhe doctrine you have learned of some famous writers, and specially of
Pelrarch and Vida, of whose name and authoritie you have made no mention, because you
would hide lhal glorious doctrine, which some thal are leamed use to discover, in having
alwaies in lheir mou!!. the name, assoone of some Philosopher, assoone of sorne Poel, assoone of
sorne Orator. Bul yel you could not in suche sort cover lhis cunning, bullhalf perceived il, and
was lhereby occasioned greatly to commend your discrete judgemenl" (27).
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
58
discussion from..Çanossa,
'.'
,'_.
he upholds, and even further elaborates upon the
principleof dissimulated artifice. However, the somewhat discredited
1lbid, 149.
2lbid, 150.
3Ibid.
4MartiaI analogies and metaphors were common in Cicero and Quintilian, where they were
somewhat appropriate to the contestatory aspects of c1assical rhetoric, as opposed 10 the more
concilialory nature of courtiership and courtesy in Ihe Renaissance.
60
fine gold. 50 that we must not say that art (or this kind of deceit,
if you want to calI it so) deserves censure.l
1Ibid.
2Ibid.The example of Caesaris particularly interesting in view of the hais which the balding
Castiglione sports in the portraits by his friend Raphael. Sec Rebhom, Courtly Performances,
32. The commonality of Castiglione's conception of idealizing nature through dissimulation
and similar views among Renaissance artisls has been remarked by Rebhom, Courtly
Performances, 64, and Edward Williamson, "The Concept of Grace in the Work of Rapael and
Castiglione," Italica 24 (1947) 316-24.
3lbid, 114.
4lbid.
5Ibid,147.
61
ISee Thomas Greene,"Il Cortigiano and the Choice of a Came," in Hanning and Rosand, 1-15. c•.•·
2The Courtier, 137.
3Ibid, 138.
62
1Ibid:
2Ibid.
3Ibid, 138-9.
4Ibid,258.
5Ibid.
( 6Ibid,259.
63
response she should offer to any romantic overture is to raise her own mask
of non-comprehension: "she will pretend not to understand and will take
the words to mean something else, trying al! the timê very modestly, and
with the wit and prudence we have already said she should have, to change
the subject."l If finally this tactic becomes no longer possible,c the lady may
make use of the generalized disengenuousness of courtly civility to al10w her
to draw a further veil of courtesy over the conversation: "Then if what is said
is such that she cannot pretel'',;! not to understand, she will treat the whole
affair as a joke, pretending to believe that the words are meant to flatter rather
than dedare what is true, dbdaiming her own merils, and attributing the
praises she hears to courtesy."2 In this way she will not only be seen,to be
discreet and modest, but also "she will be more secure against deceit."3
Hence in the realms of both friendship and love, the perceived
pervasiveness of dissimulation is responsible for a certain defensiveness, and
consequently, for further recourse to dissimulation. But it is not only in these
- ~.:.:::-
1Ibid.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
64
III
(
RELATIONS OF POWER IN RENAISSANCE POUTrCS AND IN THE
HUMANIST MIND
living by means of buying and selling were perhaps always viewed with a
certain amount of distrust, and this period was no different. For instance, one
student of Florentine social history reports that the merchants there were
" r~~ __ ../
"famous for their gréa(cunning" and "ail manner of wily tricks."l In fact, ail
acrbss Europe writers and preachers denounced merchants for the craftiness
and falsity by which they were thought to extract a profit from a gullible
(~ 1Cuido Biagi, Meil allli Mallllers of G/d Florellce <Londo(" T. Fisher Unwin, 1909) 94.
65
public.l Typical are sorne lines of English verse which attack both the
duplicity and greed of those professionally engaged in trade:
5imilar views are presented by Alberti, who puts them in the mouth of
his kinsman Lionardo Alberti. Lionardo defends the honesty of the
mercantile Alberti family, although admitting that others consider
occupations consisting in trade to be "never quite c\ean, never untainted by
considerable fraud. They say that ugly intrigues and false contracts are
frequently involved."3
The subject of the market is also briefly treated in Guazzo's The Civile
Conversation. The book opens with William Guazzo in a depressed state "50
weake, leane, and faine away"4 that the sight of him brings tears to his
">-
brother's eyes. However, the almost deathly ill Willia;::::,isJortunate to be
T'"
joined by the goocfa§f,.or Anniball, who advises his palient that if he is to
overcome his present condition he should first recall and reflect upon "the
things that helpe him, and the thinges that hurt him, to the ende to eschewe
the one, and insue the other."s To this the afflicted Guazzo responds:
lRodney Hilton discusses the nervousness conceming the professional integrity ofbakers,
butchers, and especially those petty merchants actually known as "hucksters" in "Lords,
Burgesses and Hucksters," Past and Present 97(982) 3-15; also G. R. Owst, who gives the
example of the homilist who condemns the merchant for taking advantage of the "symple
folk," Iikening him to the fox: for "a fox is a dysseyvable beeste, and ralhere he devowryth
and sleth tame bestys than wylde." Literature and Pu/pit il! Medieval England (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1933) 356-7 ".
2Quoted in V. J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London: Blanford
Press, 1971) 333.
3 Della Famiglia, 142.
4The Civile Conversation, 14.'
5Ibid,17.
66
to his undoing like a moth to the flame. For according to the good doctor,~~ec~
"
llbid.
2lbid.
3lliid. 19.
4lbid.20.
5lbid, 21.
~.'
~.
67
... let us passe only thorow the middest of this Citie, and wee
shall see not only on dayes appointed for travaile, but on those
also whiche are consecrated to the honour and service of God, a
numberlesse multitude walking upp and downe in every place,
keeping a continuall mercate, where there is no other talke but
of buying and selling, of chopping and chaunging, of letting and
taking money to interest, and in summe, there is bargayning for
aIl thinge~(whiche are fit to heale the diseases of povertie, and to
get the hea!th"of riches. And therefore there needeth not muche
labourto perswade men to love conversation, whereto they are
naturally so given. 4 /
lIbid,22.
2Ibid,117.
3lbid.
4Ibid,118.
~. 5lbid.
V
'.1
68
Civile Conversation, and other such works of the time, the market is not
<: given primacy of place. While it seems unimaginable that the culture of early
modern Europe was not profoundl)' 3haped by human relations becoming
,.
increasingly mediated by the market, in the life and work of the Renaissance
humanists, the primary means of socio-economic advancement was not
commerce, but patronage: not the market, but the court.l Thus, for instance,
when the recovering Guazzo speaks of how the "desire to maintaine and
increase their wealth
c
... wiIInot suffer men to stande ydle with their handes
at their gyrdels," he immediately continues,
... whiche you shaIl plainely see, if you once set your fcote in
the Court of sorne Prince, where you shaIl see an infinite
number of Courtiers assemble together, to talke and devise of
many matters, to understande the newes oCthe death or
confiscation of the goods of sorne one, to seeke to obtaine of the
Prince, eyther promotions, gcods, pardons, exemption, or
priviledge for them selves or others ....2
IThe rather limite<! extentto which a market for Iiterature co-existed with a patronage-based
system during the Renaissance is briefly discusse<! in Peter Burke, Culture and Society in
Renaissance Italy 1420-1540 (London: B. T. Batsford L1d., 1972) 104-5. A convenient set of
articles on Renaissance patronage can he found in Patronage in the Renaissance, e<!. Guy Lytle
and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Il is on this question of the
relative importance of the court as oppose<! to the market in the humanist imagination that 1
helieve 1 differ with a work from which 1 have learnCcl,much,Tean-ehristophe Agnew's
Worlds Apart. .
- 2The Civile Conversation, 117.
( 3Ibid,40.
69
him selfe altogether to studie, doeth not frame his learning to the common
life," and remains aloof from "the affaires of the world."l
The theme of these first pages of The Civile Conversation--the debate
over whether a scholar should abandon his sec1usion in order to put his
learned service at the disposaI of a prince--was taken up in other Renaissance
works. For instance, in Thomas Starkey's A Dialogue Between Reginald Pole
& Thomas Lupset, the character Lupset rejects the tradition of contemplative
philosophy, and instructs his fellow humanist, Master Pole:
lIbid.
2A Dialogue Between Reginald Pole & Thomas Lupset, ed. Kathleen M. Burton (London:
Chatto 8< Windus, 1948) 24. On the dcbate bctwœn the active and contemplative lives in the
Renaissance, see Eugene Riee, The Renaissance}dl!ll of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1958) and Hans Baron's revièw article, "Secularizition of Wisdom and
Political Humanism in the Renaissance," Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (960) 131-50.
70
1A. G. Dickens, "Monarchy and Cultural Revival," The Courts of Europe, 00. A. G. Dickens
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1977) 8-32; Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne (London:
Elek Books, 1965) chap. 3; F. L. Ganshoff, The Carolingians and the Franlcish Monarchy
(Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1971) chaps. 6 and 8.
( 2A. G. Dickens, "Monarchy and Cultural Revival."
71
Both the increased resources for courtly expenditure and display, and
the political, economic, and cultural concentration in the royal courts were
closely tied to the broad economic changes of the era. At least in the long run,
the expansion of trade served ,~? augment political centralization. This was
not only because it generated wealth which kings were able to tap for their
own purposes-especiaIly with the greater potential for taxation due to the
more monetized economy-but aIso because it tended to weaken the position
of the nobles, who were often political, economic, and cultural antagonists or
rivaIs of the king.l
Before the revival of trade and the monetized economy, there were few
other means by which to reward service than the distribution of lands and
castIes; but these rewards had the consequence of making their recipient
essentially independent of the prince. In a society with only the most
rudimentary transportation and little economic integration, the lord of a
manor might live off his lands as a king unto himself, with virtually n~
IOn the\iqcial and economic changes resulting in the concentration of power in the royal courts,
sec NorbèrfElias, Power & Civility, vol. 2 of The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund )ephcott
(N.Y.: Pantheon, 1982) and his The Court Society, trans. Edmund )ephcott (N.Y.: Pantheon
Books, 1983) chap. 7; also Rice, Foundations, 99-106; on one of the last great noble rivaIs to
royal supremacy, C. A. J. Armstrong, "The Golden Age of Burgundy," in Dickens, 55-76.
2Elias, Power & Civility, 13-30.
72
growth of the market, but rather remained dependent on a fixed income from
the land.! On the other hand, wealthy or educated commoners were in
greater and greater numbers buying themselves offices or receiving
administrative positions in the emerging state apparatuses, creating the
beginnings of a new nobility, based on administrative_service to the crown.
. ._'~-
Ali of this was vocally protested by those who claimed that noble birthrights
and centuries of tradition uniquely entitled them to their status and to the
roles of royal aids and counsels, but to !ittle avail. 2
':.'
.,;;
lRice, Foundations, 62; Davis Billon. Fre~ch Nobility in Crisis, 1560-1715 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1969) 2; Michael S. Kimmel, Abso/utism and its Discontents: state and
society in seventeenth century France and Eng/and (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books,
1988) 39.
2pauline Smith speaks of "the increasingly made distinction betwecn the nobless d'épée,
descendcd from the old chevalerir, and the noblessé'de robe, elevated from the bourgeoisie from
the fourtecnth ccntury onwards. often to be found discharging various funclions at court," noling
also "the scom and contempt shown by the former for the laller." The Anli·Courtier Trend in
Sixteenth Century French Literature (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966) 43; the greater power of
the monarch over the nobility is indicated by the legalization under Francis 1 of the long
establishcd, but increasing, practice of sellingofficesi' See Mark Grecngrass~,France in the Age
of H6iryj IV: the struggle for stability (N.Y.: Longman,1984) 143·9. For the elevalion of
cominoners in England, and the consequent pinch felt by ire nobility, sec Helen Miller, Henry
VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,jI986); Fritz Caspari, Humanism and
the Social Drder in Tudor England, 1·24; J. H. Hexter, "Thè\E~falion of the AristocrafY in the
Renaissance" in his Reappraisals in History: New Views on His/ory and Society in Early
Modern Europe. (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1961); and W. Gordon Zecveld, "Social
Equalitarianism in a TudorCrisis: Journal of the His tory of Id(~s,7 (1946) 35·55.
73
-...--- justice, and "the Nobility to fight for their defense,"l the military basis of the
nobility was already weil on its way to becoming an anachronism. 2
5ince the late Middle Ages, the nobility watched their former powers
and jurisdiction eroded by the crown. In France from the 13th century on, the
nobles' political and financial autonomy was almost continually encroached
upon. 3 In England, the relatively powerful and centralized monarchy
established from the Norman conquest provided the basis for a fairly
developed court society as far back as the llth and 12th centuries. 4
But for the reasons given above, as weil as others specifie to the
particular country, it was in the era of the Renaissance that royal power and
court grandeur flourished on an unprecedented scale. Lawrence Stone
describes the "enormous expansion of the Court and the central
administration" of around the 16th century as "the most striking feature of
lQuoted in Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)
7.
2The brief discussions by Rice, and the more extensive discussions by Bean, McNeill, and
Kennedy, focus primarily on the mutually reinforcing growth of the centralizeanation-state
and military advances and expansion. See Rice, Foundation, 98-99; Richard Bean, "War and
the Birth of the Nation State," Journal of Economie History 33 (1973) 203-21; William H.
McNeill, The Pursuit Q/ Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) chap.3; Paul
Kennedy, The Rise and Fallu[ the Great Powers (N. Y.: Random House, 1987) 45-6,56,70-2.
On the other hand, Schalk and Elias give greater attention to the changing nature of the once
more independent and militarily based elite: Schalk, passim and Elias, Power & Civility, 258-
69.
3Franklin Ford,'Robe and Sword: the regrouping of the French aristocracy after Louis XIV
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953) 37-9; Robert Mandrou, Introduction 10
Modern France 1560-1640: an essay in historical psychology, trans. R. E. Hallmark (N.Y.:
Holmes & Meier, 1975) 102-12; R. J. Knecht, French Renaissance Monarchy: Francis 1 & Henry
11 (N. Y.: Longman Inc., 1984) 2,15,22,68-73; Robin Briggs, Early Modern France, 1560-1715
(Oxford: Oxford University Press,1977) 2-10; David Parker, The Making of Frenc;' Absolutism
(London: Edward Arnold, 1983) 2 - 1 3 . '
40ickens, "Monarchy and Cultural Revival," 440-5; Briggs, Early Modern France, 2; Elias,
Power & Civility, 102-3. On legal aspects of the emergence of European absolutism in the later
middle ages from its humble beginnings in the Norman kingdoms and the Church, sec Harold
Berman, Law and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983) and Ernst
Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) as well as
his "I<ingship under the Impact of Scientific Jurisprudence," Twelfth-Century Europe and the
Foundations of Modern Europe, cds. Marshall Clagett, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds
(Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961) 89-111.
.'/
74
c members of the upper dass, the establishment or the 'Society' of the country. No doubt, at least
a part of the courUy nobility could not have lived at court had they not been offered many
75
It was during the reign of Francis I that the word cour took on the non-
jurisprudential meaning of "royal entourage," reflecting the growing
importance of this socio-political phenomenon.1 In 1535 Francis' household,
the nucleus of his court, consisted of over 600 posts costing 214,918 livres--
roughly three times the personnel and cost of only fifty years previously.2
This entourai:\e induded commoners employed as cooks, laundresses,
surgeons, etc., but also a host of noble attendants. Among the highest offices
were the chancelier, connétable, and maréchaux, whose duties consisted of
administering justice and overseeing military affairs. But equally prestigious
were the grand maître, grand chambellan, grand veneur, among others,
whose duties concerned the management of the royal housec,pld, bedroom,
the hunt, and so on. During the 1530's, the privileged position of
respollsibility for the royal bedroom was shared by four first gentlemen, with
over fifty secondary gentlemen, all still of important families, immediately
below them.3 Furthermore, besides the growing personnel and expenditures,
there are other indications of the increasingly courtly atmosphere: in 1515
Francis changed the title of those cOl)cerned with the royal bedroom from
valet de chambre t6 gentilshommes de chambre so as to reflect the greater
dignity which this office was supposed to represent. 4
In Renaissance England and Spain as well, the emerging royal
hegemony was accompanied by expanded and more elaborate retinues at
kinds of economic opportunilies there. But what they sought were not cconomic possibililies as
such ... but possibilities of existence that were compatible with the maintenance of their
dislinguishing prestige, their character as a nobility." Power & Civility, 267
1William Wiley, The Gentleman of Renaissance France (Harvard: Harvard University Press,
1954) 41. ':
2R. j. Knecht, Francis l (Cambridge: Cambridgcbnj~~i'sity Press, 1982) 89.
3Wiley, 9, 54-5.
4Knecht, Francis 1,89.
76
court,l But to a considerable extent, the courtly ways of the Renaissance were
<: first and foremost the products of Italy.2 And so it is to Italy we must turn to
find the roots of those practices and ideas which were in large part to inspire
and influence tile elites across the Alps.
In the 10th and llth centuries, power in northern Italy passed into the
hands of local magnates, especially ecclesiastics. The German Emperors
maintained whatever influence they could over the region largely by means
of the bishop.s which they appointed--a power which was further attenuated
with the onset of the so-called "investiture controversy" in the late 1lth
century. Given this absence of strong centralized rule, the prospering Italian
.
cities were able to wrest for themselves a considerable share of local
'.
jurisdiction and self-governance. 3
By the 1130's Pisa, Lucca, Milan, Parma, Rome, Pavia, Genoa, Verona,
Bologna, Siena, Florence, and numerous other cities had established
communal governments, although in sorne cases they continued to share
jurisdiction with the pre-existing authorities for sorne time. For example, in
1181 a dispute concerning the contado of Verona wa~ still heard jointly by the
local bishop, count, and elected consuls. 4
1Qn the emergence of Tudor absolutism and court, Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, espccially,
385-504; Mary Price and C. E.L. Mather, A Portrait of Britain under the Tudors and Stuarts
1485-1688 (Oxford: Clarendoh Press, 1954) 22-34; D. M. Loadcs, Politics and the Nation 1450-
1660 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1974) 100-130; Riec, Foundations, 92-106; Neville Williams,
The Tudors: Three contrasts in persona lity, in Dickens, 147-168. In Spain, despite dramatic
political consolidation under Ferdinand and Isabel, the courtlife was actually quite restrained
and almost spartan, if Guicciardini, who Gcrved there as an ambassador, is to be believed.
However, this was to change under Charles V. Sec Rhea Marsh Smith, Spain: a modern
history (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965) chaps. 12 and 13. On the emergence of
Spanish absolutism, sec also Kimmel, 21-29, and Rice, Foundati~ns, 92-108.
2This should not he overstatcd; the Italian courts were themselves influencedb)doreign
customs and practices-the French culture of chivalry and the Provençal courts were especially
important in this respect; Franco Simone emp!,asizes the mutual influences in the Papal courts
at Avignon. The French Remissance, trans.H. Gaston Hall (London: Macmillan, 1969).
3J. K. Hyde, Society and Polities in MedievalItaly (N. Y.: St. Martin'. Pr~., 1973) 40-8.
4Daniel Walcy, The Itaiian Ciiy Republics (N.Y.: McGraw-HilI, 1969) 57.
77
1Laura Martines, Power and Imagination: City-states in Renaissance lta/y. (N.Y.: Vinlage,
1979) 24-26.
2Waley, 21.
:fl::
~.
3Waley, 62.
78
<: commercial families. And while certain offices might be held by, or even
specificaIly aIlotted for the less elevated citizens of the commune, it was by
and large the grandi who had the positions of real prestige and power.l
However, in the course of the 12th century, the first "popular"
organization emerged in the form of the merchant and trade guilds. InitiaIly,
the papala lacked the unifying organization, discipline, and experience to
advance their cause effectively. But aided in part by the professional skills of
the notaries, who made up an influential contingent in their ranks, the
papafa constituted itself into sophisticated political and para-military
associations, often patterned after the structure and organization of the
commune as a whole. 2 Consequently, in many towns of the early 13th
cent~ry, the papafa met with sorne success in opening up the restricted
communal political process. For instance, in the 1190's the "simple citizens"
of Milan were the main source of communal revenues; but were entitled to
only ol1e-fifth of the places in the consulate; by 1212 aIl offices of the
commune were to be divideclé<:quaIly between the nobles and papala.
il
l'
Elsewhere throughout the cities at l!lis time similar, if less dramatic, reforms
were legislated.3
The papafa was generaIly led by "turn-coat" nobles, bankers,
merchants; and guild masters, but the breadth of its social composition varied
with time and place. It was nonetheless essentiaIly "middle class"; its
membership often extended to artisans and smaIl tradesmen, but always
excluded those at the bottom of the urban socialladder--the poor, the
unskilled, and whole'categories of artisans who were not aIlowed to form
1Ibid, 29.
2Ibid, 51-55. :,
3Both Martines and Hyde noneth~fuss emphasize the continuing dominance of the leading
landcd and commercial families.,.,Scc Martines, Power and Imagination, 47-48 and Hyde, 146.
-:/
-'~'~:~
79
their own guilds. Consequently, the opening of the political process which
the papala achieved continued to restrict the majority of the population of
the cities. 1
The political structure of the growing commune underwent other
changes in response to the increasing complexity and "difficulties" in its
political life--the foremost being pressure from the papa!p. Besides becoming
somewhat less restrictive, the communal organization was reshaped such
that the COI1.sulate was replaced by a single post, the padestà. Hence, beginning
in the late 12th century, city after city turned to government by padestà. The
padestà was not a ruler, but more of a top-ranking civil servant, generally
holding a very brief tenure of office. He served as a sort of head administrator
and chief justice, and sometimes as the commune's military commander, but
he was not to take the initiative in making political decisions; these powers
remained with the various communal councils. 2
Nevertheless, the appearance of the padestà foreshadowed the
dissolution of the commune: by the early 14th century, the majority of cities
had come under the control of signari. Thus whereas in the 12th century
Otto of Freising and Benjamin of Tudela had written of the pervasiveness of
the republican form of government in north and central Italy, only just over
a century later Dante lamented that, "the towns of Italy are full of tyrants."3 It
,i
80
may be argued that this is a difference without a difference: in even the most
(
"popular" of the republican cities only a small fraction of the population were
admitted to full political citizenship. For the vast majority of people living in
these cities the only issue was whether they would be ruled by an individual
and his family or a somewhat more expansive elite.
But while there is undeniably sorne truth to this way of posi:ag the
matter, it is not the whole truth: the question of "regime" involves more
than just the number of rulers. It involves as weIl the principles and
justifications of rule--attitudes concerninKdeference, hierarchy, and
legitimacy. The signori often did away with the old term "citizen," and
replaced it with that of "subjects" (subditi domini): Giangaleazzo Visconti of
Milan actually forbade the use of the word pop% as subversive) When a
later Duke of Milan traveled to Florence accompanied by 5,000 pairs of
hounds, 200 pack mules, and over 2,000 horses covered in gold trappings and
finery, many Florentines were at first awed--but then scandalized. 2 And the
organization and principles upon which a form of government is based can
even influertce the outlook and reality of those excluded from full
membership in that society. It is perhaps a significant fact that the late 14th
century uprisings of the pop% minuto occurred in cities with still vital
republican institutions. 3
The actual signorial seizure of power often came about by means of an
established political position: the podestà, or a leader of the pop%, such as
1Denys Hay, The ltalian Renaissance in ils Historical Background (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1961) 108.
2Marlines, Power and Imagination, 225.
3Martines, Power and Imagination, 133-6; Federico Chabod discusses the cultural shift which
accompanicd the. rise o(the signori, albcit focusing on the dominant classes. He tells of the
depoliticizalionJbf the formerly polilical classes and their mosttalentcd membcrs, who turned
more exclusiv~ly to private affairs or the service of the signore. Machiavelli and the
Renaissance, loans. David Moore_ J.;(London: Bowes & Bowes, 1958) 55-6.
?,
81
lLauro Martines describes how signori continued to use the fonns of communal govemment, in
this case, council selection;while nevertheless determining the outcome: "At Milan, potenlial
members of the large council were reviewed in each parish t:ya commitlcc of parish 'eiders: <~ .
These, in tum, made recommendations to the head of the municipality's chief administrative
body, the Consiglio della Provvisioni, and he made the final choice in consultation with the
twelve members of this consiglio and the approval of his Visconti master. The twelve were
chosen by the lord or by his c10sest collaborators. Controls at Mantua, Verona, and Treviso
entailed similar procedures-review, recommendalion, selL'Ction, and approval. In this way, a
large assortment of citizens secmed to be brought inlo the processes of election, butthere was
complete control from above" Power and Imagination, 104.
2Hyde, 150; Chabod, 51. '
3Certain other economic and polilical pressures were important in the rise of the signori. The
expense of the almost continuai and more costly warfare often put cilies badly in debtto a
leading family. Economie slrain also resulted in social tensions, expressing themselves as
ii
82
<. cilies which most resisted the emergence of the signari were thus the more
commercially developed, where the nobility had taken on "bourgeois" ways.
In contrast, the easiest targets were towns such as Verona, Mantua, and
Ferrara, where the commercial-industrial base lagged behind the rural and
two or three most powerful and competing noble families. 1 Feudal traditions
and social structures persisted most on the Northern Plain; there the old
estates and jurisdictions remained largely intact. And also as Machiavelli and
that more often they were raised up by the nobles, and in any case IÎlost of
them were themselves nobles: virtually ail the usurpers who founded
increasingly violent conflicts; consequently, in sorne cases the gavemo d'lm solo appeared to be a
necessary solution to urban strife. Furthermore, the administrative demands of the larger and
more complex political units engendered a corresponding concentration of power in the city. See
Martines, Power alld Imagillatioll, 97-99, Hyde, 148; Ephraim Emerton, HUlIlallislll alld Tyranny
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925) 48-9; D. M. Bueno de Mesquita
emphasizes sorne of the more benign and practical aspects of the siglwri in his "The Place of
Despotism in Italian Politics," Eurape ill the Late Middle '.4ges, ed. J. R. Hale et al (Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1965) 301-331. Mesquita also gives an informative account
of ducal authority in his Ludovico Sforza and his Vassals," /talian Renaissance Stl/dies, ed.
E.F. jacob.(London: Faber and Faber, 1960) 184-216. Similarly, on the signoria of the Este in
Ferrara, Werner Gundersheimer, Ferrara: the style of a Renaissance Despotism (princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1973)...:=0:;-
lWaley, 222-3. ~".;::c::=:--::':
( 2Martines, Power alld IlIIagillation;''iOO.
3Martines, P"'-1.~r alld Imagillatioll, lOI, Hyde, 146-7.
83
1Martines, Power and I~agination, 97: "Il is true lhat al Verona and Manlua the emergence of
the signory was associated with the popoZo and union of guilds; but as soon as any signore was
able, he eviscerated ail popular organizations and lurncd to ground his regime in the local
nobility, his 'natural' allies. No signory could survive in tandem with a vital guild movement.
One of the two had to die."
'n
....
~ .. 2Hyde, 149.
84
master of the school at York, Alcuin, who directed the library and palace
school at Aacheri. Charles is reported to have told Alcuin, "1 wish l had a
dozen Jeromes and Augustines in my chancery"Las weil he might since the
clerics he supported were busily demonstrating the divine origins of imperial
rule or the anti-Christian nature of the Byzantine Empire. 2
In the Renaissance, clerics no longer had a virtual monopoly on
li teracy and learning; as a consequence, their place in the new courts were
/7.
//
1,(
"~ ...... _-
85
The Paduan spokesperson for princely government begins his arg~ment with
the conventional religious and cosmic analogy:
... because the more the condition of every created thing is hke
that of its creator, the more beautiful, weU-ordered, and perfect, it
is. Therefore, since there is one creator of ail things and one
heavenly ruler, 1 consider the ruie of one man on earth to be
better in that it conforms to the scheme of the universe. 1
But for the most part, Conversino's argument emphasizes the practical
advantages of princely over republican rule. The a,'gument goes that because
"the people" are always divided, and their government is slow, the advent of
a republic promises the end of public peace and progress. Moreover, the
benefits of princely gl)';ernment especially apply to that area most dear to
Conversino: the new studies and learning in the liberal arts. In this respect
the republics are thoroughly deficient, because where the multitude rules, so
does their desire for materiaLacquisition, generally at the expense of
cultivated leisure and the p'.lrs1.lit of glory: "For since each man either piles
Pl) money or considers valueless any glory beyond his doorstep, since he is
ignorant of poets, he scorns them, and prefers to support dogs rather than a
philosopher or a teacher."2
ln contrast, princes are raised in an atrnosphere of wealth and
magnificence; they are schooled in liberality and the pursuit of glory. Thus
Conversino notes the accomplishments of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid
supported by the generosity of Augustus, as weil modern examples of courtly
1Dramalogia de Eligibli Vile Genere, cd. and lrans. Helen Lanneau Eaker (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1980) 109. This, and other arguments on bchalf of princely rule, were already
given in a previous work presented 10 a Carrara lord, "De Dilectione Regnantium," Tlug Courl
'J Trealises, ed. and lrans. Benjamin G. Kohl and James Day (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Vcrlag,
1987).
2Dramalogia, 117.
86
llbid.
2Alberlino Mussalo, The Tragedy of Ecerinïs, trans. Robert Carrubba et al. (University Park,
~enn.: Departmenl of Classics, Univcr:;ity of PClir\sy\vania, 1972} 24.
"Ibid, 64. .~ ,
{[ 4Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol 1,39
87
Similarly, three decades after the writing of Ecerinis, when in 1347 Cola
di Rienzo made a short-lived attempt to rally the Roman populace to re-
establish the ancient Republic and prociaim himself as Tribune, Petrarch
wrote an enthusiastic speech congratulating both Rome and Cola. The latter
is glorified as a modern Brutus--the bestower of liberty, and the former are
exhorted to maintain this victory at ail cost:
1"Exhortation to Cola di Rienzo and to the Roman People;' Pelràrch: A hl/manisl among
princes, cd. and in part trans. by David Thompson (N. Y.: Harper & Rowe, Publishers, 1971)
65-81. Petrarch's reference to the music of the caged bird is espccially interesting in view of the
factthat Cola's uprising was directcd against Petrarch's patrons, the Carrara, for whom he
had penned sorne c;::'sequious "songs"-see his eulogy of Francesco Carrara, Howa RI/1er al/ghl 10
Govenl his Siale, trans by Benjamin Kohl, in The Earlhly Repl/blic, cd. Kohl and Ronald Witt
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978) 35-78. ln fact Petrarch f1uctuated
throughout his career between the courtly and anti-courtly. See Lamer, CI//tl/re alld Society ill
Italy 1290-1420 (London: B. T. Batsford L1d., 1971) 225-7; and his Italy in Ihe Agi: of Daille
alld Petrarch 1216-1380 (N. Y.: Longman Inc., 1980) 252; Hyde, 179; Baron, Crisis, 44-6, 4~; on
Petrarch's legacy to courtly and anti-courtly humanism sec Baron's "Fiftcenth-Century
Civilization North of the Alps and the Italian Quatrocento: Contrast and Confluence" in his ln
Search of F10rentille Civic HllInallism, vol. 2 (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 3-39;
also Martines, Power and ImagillatiQ!I,)19.
~.. -~~
88
communal welfare in general, but also in particular for the flourishing of the
( arts and letters. These republican spokespersons frequently turned to authors
from the first century of the Roman Empire--not the poets cited by
Conversino-but rather thinkers such as Seneca, "Longinus," and especially
Tacitus, who linked a contemporary dedine of oratory and learning with the
rise of imperial rule: 1 Hence, the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni
argued that, "after the republic had been subjected to the power of a single
head, 'those outstanding minds vanished', as Tacitus says."2
This argument is repeated by one of Bruni's successors as Florentine
chancellor, Poggio Bracciolini. Thus in arguing against Guarino da Verona, a
humanist and court ideologue of the Este at Ferrara, Poggio too says,
For Bruni and for Poggio, the rise of tyranny in Italy is associated with
the corruption of letters, and also of speech. This is a general feature of the
modern Italian decadence, touching republics as weIl as courtly regimes--but
is much more fundamentaIly implicated in the latter. Poggio, who previous
to accepting the position in Florence served at a number of noble households,
including the Papal Curia, states, "When l survey the other courts as weIl as
the Roman Curia, l see nothing pure, nothing sincere, nothing simple."l In
the courts the specter of deceit and hypocrisy was seen as tainting ail language,
as flattery and guardedness infect the norms of speech. 2
Even outside of republican Florence, the impoverishing effects of
princely rule on letters and speech were commented upon. The mid-16th
century French exile living in Rome, Marc Antoine Muret, observed that
"republics are no longer very numerous: there are hardly any more peoples
who are not dependent on the orders and the will of a single man, who don't
obey a single man, who are not governed by a single man."3 As a
consequence, "Eloquence, as if the privilege of age had won for it a sort of
retirement," must now content itself with a more restricted field of activities. 4
TraditionaIly, rhetoric had consisted of three divisions: besides panegyric, or
"demonstrative" oratory, there was also "deliberative"--concerned with the
efficiency of one's means to obtain a given end, of use in the political forum,
lStruever, 166.
2lbid,166-8; on Bruni and the association of republicanism with open and frcc speech, 118-20.
The propaganda batlles wagOO by humanists on behalf of princely or republican rule are
discussOO in Denys Hay, The 1talian Renaissance in ils historical background, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961) chaps 5 and 6. There is a1so a debate as te
whether republican propagandis!s, and Bruni in parlicular, were mere1y that or actually
committed partisans. See Seigel's '''Ci vic Humanism' or Ciceronian Rhetoric," l'ast and Present
34 (1966) 3':::8; '.md Baron's response, "Leonarûo Bruni;' Past and Present 36 (967) 21-37.
3QuotOO in Marc Fumaroli, "Rhetoric, Poli tics, and Society: From Italian Ciceronianism 10
French Classicism;' Renaissance Eloquence: studies in the Ih~ory and practice of Renaissance
rhetorie, 00. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 257.
4QuotOO in ibid, 258.
90
of use in the courts. 1 But as the Renaissance progressed, the uses of oratory
became increasingly restricted to preaching the gospel, engaging in scholarly
converse, or praising and serving a prince. 2
Manuals of Courtiership
lQuintilian, Institutio Oratoria, III. iv. 1-16; the thrcc-fold division of rhetoric goes back to
AristoUe's Rhetoric, 1358bl. .
2Muret goes on ta note that the study of fine speech is now essential sa that one may he "in a
position ta write lellers weil, that is ta say eloquently, with prudence, and taking into account
things, persans, and circumstances [and thusl may easily reach the intimacy of Princes, he
entrusted with the most important affairs, and grow from honor ta honor," Quoted in Fumaroli,
258.
3The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928) 3.
91
to the Reader" that the author "took for his example Tully: and designs the
worke according to his manner where he treats de Officiis."l
While The Arts of Grandeur and Submission was not nearly as
influential as Galateo, according to Stubbe, it was Della Casa's preferred work,
written not in Italian but in Latin so that he might with greater freedom and
seriousness state "his more attentive thoughts."2 And although this work
does draw upon the ancient works of rhetoric, t.'lere is much that is new. It
begins by setting out the nature of the distinction between social inferior and
superior, and of that bond or relation which may in sorne way join them: "It
is not in this as in other cases, wherein Learning, Age, Nobility, or intrinsique
worth and vertue is considered: no, these are not the grand inducements
unto, and Pillars of this Amity, but only Riches, Dignity, and Power."3 This
truth being recognized, it should not be lamented, on the contrary:
1Giovanni Della Casa,The Arts of Grandeur and Submission, trans. Henry Stubbe (London, 1665)
"Adverlisement to the Reader." ln this and ail other quotations from The Arts of Grandeur and
Submission 1am omitling the ilalics found in the original.
2lbid. Stubbe here also daims that Muret discussed above, called this work "the best for its
Stile and management, that had becn wrttten since the lime of Cicero."
3lbid, 9.
4lbid, 14.
92
conform to it--"For this is the chart they must sayle by: His will and nature is
that rule, according to which they are to frame their speech. "1 Yet in spite of
the fact that many"cecommend it, and many others use it with profit, Della
Casa, Arc:hbishop of Benevento, rejects the practice of "flattery," saying that
no matter "how gainefull a course soever this may seeme, 1 thinke a man
ought not totally to esloigne himself from the regards of honesty and
justice."2 However, he continues in the next sentence, "Though 1 doe not
binde him up to the rules of that exact and imaginary vertue to be found only
in the Books of Philosophers, and the harangues of malecontents."3 Such
strictness of morals is little sought after in the world:
1Ibid, 30.
2Ibid,32.
3Ibid.
4Ibid, 6-7.
93
1Ibid, 40.
2ûn the rise of Taciteanism in the Renaissancê;zcc Kenneth Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance
Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) and J. H. M. Salmon, "Cicero
and Tacitus in 16th Century France," Renaissance and Revoit (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989) chap.l.
3Ars Aulica, 35-6.
94
Again, as in The Arts of Grandeur and Submission, the purpose ofthis :.,
knowledge is to allow the courtier to "order, rule, and moderate al his
actions,"3 but more spedfically to adopt the ways of his prince. Hence, to what
the prince "is scene to incline, to the same without all questions the Courtier
to enable himselfe, professing armes if the Prince be of nature martiall;
learning & letters, if he delight in knowledge; in holinesse and religion, if he
be devout; [etc.]."4 In fact, Ducci concludes that the courtier should "make
himselfe, if it bee posible, the very portract of his properties and fashions."s
Moreover, this advice is supported by an explicit psychological theory. TIIe
principle underlying the recommended conduct is that "selfe love which is
the roote of all other loves, chiefly extends it selfe unto his like, and more
1Ibid,90. Ifthe illusion of the courtier's dedication to the princc's interest is not maintained
than the observation of decorum is said to indicate a "plebcan and a servile mind."
2Ibid, 99-100.
3Ibid,100.
4Ibid,110-11.
SIbid,111.
95
While books advocating the ideal of the courtier were among the most
popular of their time, the majOlity of works within the tradition of describing
life at court were written in quite a different spirit. 2 Most Renaissance
authors who received a considerable degree of fame also received support
from powerful patrons, whom they served; although these writers were
often deeply implicated in the courts which sustained them, they equa1ly
often expressed resentment or disdain for their courtly circumstances--if not
for their benefactors themselves. As early as the 12th century, William of
Malmesbury deseribed attendance at court as "a death in life, a heU onearth."3
The comparison of the court and he11 is echoed by Walter Map and William
of Blois, who, along with John of Salisbury, a11 expressed anti-aulic
sentiments during the reign of Henry II in the late 12th century.4 For
lIbid,111-12.
2Sidney Anglo, "The Courtier: the Renaissa~ce and the changing ideals: in Dickens, 33·5.
3Ibid,34.
4Ibid,34. The first section, or "distinction" of Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers
Trifles) is hcadcd "A Comparison of the Court with the Infernal Regions." Here Map wrîtes
"for the rolling f1amcs, the blackness of darkness, the stench of the rivers, the loud gnashil)g of
the fiends' tceth, the thin and piteous crics of the frightencd ghosts, the foultrailings of wonns
and vipers, of serpents anJ ail manner of creeping things, the blasphemous roarings, evil smell,
( nouming and horror-wereJ to allegorize upon allthese, it is true thatcorrespondenœs are not
wanting among the things of the court ... the court is a place of punishment." De Nugis /i~;;"'-;
,\
96
Curialium - -Courtiers Trifles, cd. and trans. M. R. James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) 15;
the anti-eourt writing at the court of Henri II is treatcd in Egbert Turk, Nugae Curialium: le
regne d'Henri II Plantegenet, et l'ethique politique (Geneva: Droz, 1977).
1Polieratieus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, cd. and trans.
Cary J. Ncderman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 4. The chief "frivolity" of
the courtier criticizcd by John is f1attery, a topie taken up in several chapters of book III, and
elsewhere in the tex!. On John's concern with the court sec Kate Forhan, "A Twelfth-Century
'Bureaucrat' and the Life of the Mind: the Political Thought of John of Salisbury," Proeeedings
of the PMR Conference 10 (1985) 65-74. For a look at his actual expcrience, GUes Constable,
"The Alleged Disgrace of JohI'cof Salisbury in 1159," English Historical Review 69 (1954) 67-
76. ,ft'
97
life, and both John of Salisbury and Nicolas de Clemanges allude to Gnatho in
(: '
particular.1
But while the late Middle Ages witnessed a stream of anti-aulic
writings, in the Renaissance both the number and intensity of these writings
increased markedly. One of the first and most important Renaissance
critiques of life at court was Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini's De Curialium
Miseriis Epistola, Wlitten in 1444, and first printed sorne 30 years later. The
Epistola purports to be based on Piccolomini's personal experience, but it
borrows heavily from Lucian's De Mercede Conductis Potentium
Familiaribus. 2 Piccolomini also draws upon a pastoral tradition deriving
from Horace and Virgil; however, he did not let his praise for the simple life
.,pta-poor shepherd over that of the man at cour~]<eep him from seeking and
accepting the papal election, aftel",~hich he was known as Pius II.
',~
"
The Epistola was exceeding~YiPôpular; it inspired a number of later
works and was adapted into French, German, Spanish, and into English as the
Eglogu,es of the Miseryes 0lCourtiers. It is comprised of a s~ries of dialogues
over the course of three days be~ween two shepherds--Coridon, who initially
wishes to give up the hard and poor life of tending sheep and seek his fortune
serving a great lord in sorne capacity or other, and Cornix, who had done so
before, and left it. Hence the content of the dialogues consists of Cornix
recounting ail the horrors of the courts, and easily persuading Coridon of the
innumerable advantages of the shepherd's life. 3
30n the ~(.:')f~llhemeand the emergence of romanticism as reflections of nostalgia on the part
of pocts and nobles who had left the countryside of their former days for the life of the court,
see Elias, The Court Society, chap. 8. But also see Raymond Williams, who shows how,
c bcginning in this pcriod. the pastoral theme becomes increasingly conventional and removed
from actual work and life in the countryside. and conscquently blind or indifferent to the real
98
oppression and hardships endured there. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19?3) especially chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 5.
1Eglogues of the Miseryes of Courtiers, published in the Certayne Egloges of Alexander Barclay
(N. Y.: Burt Franklin, 1967) 3. This 1967 reprint appears with Barclay's adaptation of
Mancinus' Liber de Qual/uor Virtutibus et Omnibus Oficiis ad Bene Vivendum as The Myrrour
of Good Manners-a conventional Christian mor,.! tract in the form of an extended renection
upon the cardinal virtues, recommending, among other things, our maintaining decorum while
abstainillg from naltery.
2lbid, 5.
3lbid, 17.
4lbid,8.
5lbid, 21.
99
Ilbid. 8.
2Ibid.20-1.
( 3Ibid. 10.
100
is quickly convinced that "Better is free will with nede and povertie/ Then in
the court with harde captivitie."l Of course neither the author, nor many of
his contemporaries, were 50 easily persuaded-a fact which suggests the
merely moralizing and conventional side of the anti-court tradition.
An.:>ther example of Italian anti-court v..riting in the Renaissance is the
work of the playwright Pietro Aretino, sometimes known as, il flagello dei
principi--"the scourge of princes." Aretino himself had a stormy career
.
seeking patronage in the great courts of Europe-~among others/'Ïloseof
Francis 1., Charles V, and at Rome und\!r Leo X and Clement VII, where the
playwright wrote.thilt he "wasted seven years in the service of the two Medici
Popes."2 This latter experience provides the scene for LA Cortigiana,
published in 1534.3 The play begins with the arrivaI of Signor Ma,:o, who
announces that he has come to try to have himself made a bishop. He is then
advised by the worldly-wise Andrea that the only way to attain a bishopric, or
beyond, is to become a courtier--which he himself daims to be able to teach.
Not surprisingly, this art consists of various forms of misbehavior, from Iying
to blaspheming. 4
Like many works of the period which are critical of the courts, La
Cortigiana presents their corruption as a particularly modern degeneration;
and thus also like many other such works, the notion of the court as a school
of manners and virtue appears as at best a quaint and antique idea. Here the
1Ibid,4.
2Edward Hutton, Pietro Arelino: the Scourge of Princes (London: Constable & Co., 1922) 20;
also on the career of Aretino, sce Ralph Raeder, The Man of the Renaissance (Cleveland:
World Publishing Co., 1933) chap. 4.
30ther pertinent works by Aretino include his lpocrilo and Ragionamento de le Corli.
4The Courtezan, in The Works of Aretino, trans. Samuel Putnam, vol. 1 (N.Y.. : CoviCÎ Friede
Publishers,1933) 183-5. <'>
101
Sem: 50 that he may learn there virtues and good manners and
by such means be able to come into sorne little useful reputation.
But the old man is quickly disillusioned, concluding that "it is better to
be in the Inferno than at Court nowadays,"2 and declaring that he would
rather choke his young charge with his own hands rather than let him go to
court. 3 Subsequently, the falsity of the court is revealed to Valerio, another
chamberlain, when he there suffers a reversaI: "As soon as my Lordchanged
his attitude toward me, the love, the faith, the countenances and the minds of
ail his household dropped that mask which for so long a time had concealed
from me the truth, and now, every vile servant abhors me."4 This experience
leads to a total condernnation of courtly life:
lIbid,193.
2Ibid, 197.
3Ibid.
( 41bid,259.
51bid. l\
.r;i
102
his consequent depravity: "1 came to the court innocent, and come From it
malicious."4 -The bulk ofÙie Menosprecio dr<iws upon the familiar
comparison of the pastoral and courtly lives. Guevara recounts ail the ways
\.
that the Iife of the countryside, which the noble residing at court fon'akes, is
more satisfying and wholesome than the life in the palace. At home he may
do as he pleases, go where he pleases, with his comfortable-pld clothes,
1Qn Hulten's work see Smith, 16, 20, 24-5, 32, 39, 72, 152, 167-8 and David F. Strauss, Ulrich VOl!
Hutten: his life and his times, trans. G. Sturge (London: Dalby, Isbiter, & Co., 1874) 154-6.
2Dispraise, tral1's. by Sir Francis Bryant, (London, 1575). As a more accurate translation, Joseph
Jones suggests, "Criticism of the city and praise of the village"; Joseph Joncs, Antonio Guevara
(Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1975) 91.
o 3Dispraise, 66.
4Ibid,67.
103
attending to his daily affairs. Hence, among the "commodities" of the life of
f: the village is that,
... those that be dwellers there may go alone from place to place
without to be noted to fall from gravitie, they nede no mule nor
horse with afoote c1othe, nor page to wayte of my lorde, or
damosell to wayte upon my lady. And that were scornfu11 to do
in the court alone: and without danger one may walke from
neighbor to neighbor, and from land to land, and not thereby
minish any part of his honor.l
1Ibid, 25.
2pauline Smith, 33
3Julia Briggs, This Stage-Play World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) 141.
4The Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. A. K. Foxwell, vol. 1 (N. Y.: Russell & Russell, 1964) 135.
104
tune to fayne/ To cloke the trothe for praise withoute desart,"J "1 cannot
crowche nor knelle to do 50 grete a wrong,/ To worship them, lyke Gode on
erthe alone,"2 "1 cannot spzke and loke lyke a saint,"3 "1 am not he suche
eloquence to boste/ To make the crow singing as the swan,"4 and 50 on.
Consequently, Wyatt concludes that for these reasons he can be found
confined to the family estate by royal order, but nonetheless free among his
books and the natural simplicity of life in the countryside.5
Despite Myne Owne John Poynz and other anti-court writings in the
time of Henry, by the reign of Elizabeth, such writings were on the decline, as
the conventions of courtliness were imposed even more thoroughly and
strictly.6 Writers of this later generation continued to criticize the courts and
courtiers, but seemed always to do so only against the standard of the "true"
courtly ideal. This inconsistent or "courtly anti-courtierism" can be seen in
1Ibid, 136.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Ibid, 137. .
SStephen GreenbIatt writes of Wyatt that while he complains of the court and declares his
independence from H~.C.QT!".. pling forces, in truth "he always docs 50 from within a context
governed by the essential values of dominatipn and submission, the values oi a system of power
that has an absolute monarch as head of bol!' church and stale. For ail his impulse to negate,
Wyatt cannot fashion himself in opposition ti> power and the conventions power deploys; on
the contrary, those conventions are precisely whal constitute Wyatt's self-fashioning."
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1980) 120. To somewhat varying exlents, much the same thing could he
said of virtually ail anti-courl wrilers.
6Daniel JavÎtch, "The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderslood,"
Comparative Literature 23 (1971) 117.
IDS
1Discusscd in ibid.
2Spenscr's courtly anti-court1incss is discusscd in ibid, and Javitch's Poelry and Courtliness,
chaps. Sand 6; W. D. E\cock arrivcs at a similar conc1usion in comparing Spenscr and du
Bcllay's chafing at thcir disappointmcnls al courl in his "English Indiffcrence to du Bellay's
Regrets:' Modern lAnguage Review 46 (t 9S1) 17S-184.
31n Lyly's play Sapho and Phao, despite dec1arations of the purily of Sapho-the symbolic
tribu le 10 Elizabclh-a character denounces the dissimulations and dishone~ty of those even at
her court. But the subject is quickly droppe<! and is irrelevant to the rest of the play. Sapho
and Phao, in The Plays of John Lyly, e<!. Carter Daniel (London: Associate<! University Press,
1988) 69-108. Lyly's courtly anti-courtliness is discussed in G. K. Hunter, John Lyly, The
Humanist as Courtier, 1-3S, 169.
4Quote<! in Daniel Javitch, "The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderstood,"
118.
SIbid, 119.
(
.~.
6Pauline Smith, 38-9; Anglo,34.
. ~
106
- Pierre Michault, and most importantly, Alain Chartier, were among the
many who attacked the court and courtiers.l
But in the 16th century, under the otherwise largely insignificant last
Valois monarchs, growing lavishness at court was paralleled by an
unprecedented growth in criticism of the court and courtliness. Anti-court
feelings were only strengthened by the ever greater Italian influence in the
French court: courtly Italian customs and a growing army of refined Italian
courtiers were incl easingly privileged, beginning with the first incursions
into Italy at the end of the 15th century, and reaching a peak under Catherine
de' Medici--much to the resentment of many Frenchmen. 2
For these and other reasons, France distinguished itself from other
countries by the intensity. and volume of its anti-court literature, although
many of these French works were strongly influenced by foreign Neo-latin
writers such as Piccolornini, Guevara, and Hutten.3 A great nurnber of the
leading figures in French letters at sorne tirne wrote critically of court Iife:
Baïf, Du Bellay, Le Caron, Jodelle, Du Saix, Bouchet, Gringore, Peletier, La
Borderie, Claude Chappuys, and La Taille are only sorne of the names. 4 Even
1Pauline Smith, 40-54. Chartier's Cl/rial takes the form of a letter written to his brother to
discourage him from coming to court to seck his fortune, and thus contrasts the decent life of the
country with the corruption of the courtiers. William Caxton's English translation of 1484 has
becn reprinted as The Cl/rial made by maystere Alain Chartier Early English Text Society,
Extra Series, #54 1888 (reprinted 1965).
2Anglo,50-1; Pauline Smith, 17.
3For instance, the influence of the above mentioned Neo-latins is clear in Pierre Boaistuau's Le
Theatre dl/ Monde, where he echos Piccolomini: Voilà comme ces pauvres miserables courtisans
vendent leur liberté pour s'enricher. Il fault qu'ils obeissent et obtemperent à tous
commendemens, justes ou injustes, qu'ilz se contraignent de rire quand le prince rit, qu'ilz
pleurrent quand il pleure, approuvent ce qu'il approuve, qu'ilz condemnent ce qu'il condemne. Il
Cault obeyr à tous, alterer et changer du tout sa nature, estre severe avec les severes, triste avec
les tristes, et quasi se transformer en la nature de celuy à qui Hz veulent plaire, ou n'avoir rien."
Following Boaistuau's short passage on courtiers he specifically recommends Piccolomini and
Guevara to his reader. Le Theatre dl/ MOIlde, ed. Michel Simonin (Geneva: Librairie Droz,
1981) 139-42. Discussed in Pauline Smith, 104-5.
o 4Henri Weber describes the resenlment of most of the Pléïade poets: "malgré la conscience qu'il
a de sa dignité, le poète doit toujours pour se procurer des appuis abaisser ses vers à la flatterie."
107
Ronsard--"le poète du roi"-- who likened his princely patrons to Greek heroes
and gods, nonetheless cursed his occupation: "Maudit est le mettier/Qui
nous acquiert du bien par une hypocrisie,"! and complained of the necessity
to change his "naturel."2 Hence Ronsard and others at times turned their
studied eloquence to venting their frustration and disgust with the court.3
One of the more original and interesting such works is that by an
obscure author, Philibert de Vienne. Philibert's Philosophe de Court draws
on Lucian's De Parasita, and other satirical works from antiquity, which were
influential during the Renaissance. 4 Philibert begins by distinguishing his
modern philosophy from that of the ancient moral philosophers, whose
subject was the morality implicit in Nature--which is here explicitly equated
with the Divinity. The modern philosophy "differeth from the Philosophie
of the Auncientes, in that their vertue ... is to live according to the instinct of
Nature: and ours is to lyve according to the manner of the court."s
According to the philosopher of the court, because our way of living "50
changeth and altereth our nature,"6 the natural, and once universal, moral
instinct can no longer govern our behavior. The search for guides as to how
La Création Poétique au XVI siècle en France (Paris: Nizet, 1955) 79. 1 will not even try to
survey French anti-court writing, as this can already be found in Weber, and especially in
Pauline Smith.
1Isidore Silver, "Pierre de Ronsard: Panegyrist, Pensioner and Satirist of the French Court:
Romanic Review 45 (1954) 94.
2Ulrich Langer, Inventioll, Death, and Self-Definitions in tlle Poetry of Pierre de Ronsard
(Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri & Co., 1986) 80; also on Ronsard's anti-courtliness, Wiley, The
Gentleman of Renaissance France, 82, 129, 243.
3Anti-aulic sentiment was also expresscd pictorially: emblem books graphically represented
antipathy to courtiers and courts. In one illustration in an emblem book by Guillaume de la
Perri~re, a courtier is shown with his tongue on a plate before him, and his heart in his hand
behind his back; another, in a work by Alciato, depicts a courtier in fine clothes, but confined
by stocks. Sec Anglo, 44, 49.
4C. A. Mayer, "L'Honnête Homme: Moliere and Philibert de Vienne's Philosophe de Court':
Modern Language Review 46 (1951) 196-217, and Smith, 13-21.
5The Philosopher of the Court, trans. George North, (London, 1575) 17.
( 6Ibid, 12.
108
........
to conduct our lives must now turn not to a universal moral nature, but to
the various forms of human custom--"the diversitie of countries & people"l_-
and in particular, to
that which is most alIowed, & embraced ... which is Courtly life.
The knowlege wherof, we may aptly calI in these days
Philosophie. And this 1 mind to treate of, bicause that they that
know it & can use it, are counted wise men and Philosophers. 2
Whereas the ancient philosophy had concerned itself with "that which
is only good of it selfe,"3 the courtly philosophy concerns itself with "that
which seemeth to them [men in generall goOd."4 And furthermore, Philibert
optimisticalIy states that this new philosophy can readily be mastered: for as
soon as we undertake "to folIow the fashion of the Court, we shalI become
expert masters in evil: 50 apt & capable we are to learne it."s
Most of the Philosophe de Court is organized into five chapters, each
discussing one of five virtues; the first four are the conventional Aristotelian
virtues of prudence, justice, magnanimity, and temperance. These are joined
by a fifth and alI-important courtly virtue, "Good Grace." Of justice, this
courtly philosophy maintains, "it sufficeth us to holde and keepe oure worde
50 farre as the Judge and Lawe may compelI us to perfourme it."6
lIbido
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5lbid. InterestingIy, while this philosophy is defined in terms of the court, Philibert includes
in his doctrine that which might he said to more propcrly helong to the mercantile sphere: "it
is not only sufferable in bargaining, in buying, and selling fOl every man 10 make his most profil,
he it by fraud or otherwise, but also very commendable" (47).
6Ibid, 51. Also, more emphatically: "Is notthat man worthie then to bec notcd an Idiot, and to
he banished a common wealth, who hath apt occasion to dcceyve or bcguile his companion and
mate by any hoseste meane, and will no do il? he leameth il not by our Philosophil!, nor by the
Court. We holde this generally as a great argument of our vertue: that it is tollerable to
109
Magnanimity derives from the desire for glory, and should be esteemed
higher than the love of God, family or friends. Prudence, which was
described by Cicero as a species of wisdom associated with decorum, is here
said to consist in knowing how to conduct oneself according to "the persons,
place, & time, with the rest of their circumstances."l A definition of
temperance immediately fonows: "And this being knowen, Temperance
entreth our harts, & mollifieth an the parts of it ... not to take collic, or be
offended at anything though the same be imperfect, in such sorte, that partlye
it dissembleth, and partlie it applyeth, and obeyeeth to an these
circumstances."2 The model of temperate and modest man is,
.. ' .
hee that pleaseth every man ... In the contrary, he that doth
arrogantlye impresse in'his sprightes his first opinions and
imaginations, & will not any way yeeld to reasonable chaunge is
hated of an men. And of him it is sayde: Malum cansilium
quad mutari non potest: "The counsel of that man is evill,
which may not be altered': For, although suche advyce bee good
and reasonable, yet it muste bee moderated and masked,
according to the pleasure of others. 3
beguiJe, filch, and cogge, and do the worst we can, 50 that neither lawe, Judge, nor iustice may
touch or calch holdof US for il" (48). .
llbid, 92 also: "in allthese actions, he must use a prudence ... regarding why, howe, where &
when, with an other circumstanœs.'· 109.
2lbid,92.
3lbid, 91-2.
(
.~
, .
4lbid,107.
.
~
110
to be open and simple, is meete for beastes and ydiotes: for this
presumption being still among us, that is, every one to deceyve
lIbid, 108.
2Ibid,92.
3Ibid,102.
4Ibid,96.
, '
i!
111
other that most cunninglye can: Those that with open hart
declare and shewe themselves not willing to use fraude, are
(: reputed ignorant, and have not the courage to speake to a man.l
llbid, 100.
2lbid, 96-7.
3lbid,97.
4lbid, 98.
Slbid, 101.
II
112
1Ibid, 108-9. Il is pcrhaps not surprising that as javitch,notcs in his "The Philosopher of the .
Court: A French Satire Misunderstood," ·~"e Philosophe de Court was somelimes taken for a
serious, not ironie work: ils recommendalions differ very Iittle from such works as the Ars
Aulica and The Arts of Grandeur and Submission. Conscquently even some rccent scholars have
failed to recognize the salirical nature of Philiberl's work. This sccms to be the case in Mason's
Gentlefolk in the Making, 49.
113
lit appcars that the work to he discusscd hcrc, De Primo eius introitu ad au/am (Of his Earliest
Introduction to Court), was wrillen by Conversino largely to explain his leaving Padua and in
order to ingratiate himsclf with his ncw bcnefactor, a Venetian noblcman. See the editors'
preface in Two Court Treatises.
llbid,35.
2lbid, 35-7.
3Ibid,41.
4Ibid,51.
115
of standing and waiting in attendance and doing aU the things even the
( lowliestare r'lquired to do. "1
Conversino was to be greatly disappointed. Instead of finding his lot
improved, one day he discovered that his daily ration from the commissary
was diminished: he was deprived of the meat and sauce. The humanist was
filled with resentment and anxiety at his demotion; he scrutinized himself
"to see whether it was something l had done that brought about this result"2,
but discovered no cause. Hence he went on with life at court, grumbling
privately to his friends--or supposed friends--and hoping for a change in his
luck. But after a few months time Conversino experienced "a new grief"--the
servant who brought him his now decreased ration from the commissary
came with only wine, and informed Conversino that he had orders that "you
get no bread from court."3 At this he is thrown into despair: "feeling truly
stricken down by my earlier indignation over the meat and sauce, and not a
whit less by a sense of shame--it would be shamefulthereafter to accept the
wine--I scarcely had it in me to go on like this. "4
Nonetheless, go on like this he does. He sees his privileges restored,
only, along with others, to be removed again. But through it aU, Conversino
appears convinced that the Carrara lord, Francesco il Vecchio, is innocent of
any responsibility for the chumanist's misfortune. In addition, he at least
daims that his~:~fferings have given him a new outlook on himself: he says
\'.
that he now sees how he had been imbued with "the poison of courtly
ambition. "5 This reflection introduces the explicit focus of his resentment
Ilbid,35.
2Ibid,37.
3Ibid,39.
c 4Jbid.
5Ibid,43.
116
and disgust-the court. It is the court and its host of scheming courtiers that
he blames for his ill fortune. His analysis and condemnation of the court is
not so much aimed at that of the Carrara in particular, though sorne
individual courtiers there do come in for sorne harsh treatment, as it is
directed at the social phenomenon of the court in general. Thus he argues
that in court after court, one will find that "innocence has reared up scarcely
anyone, but crimes have exalted a great many."l The first and greatest
casualty of courtly life is truth: the truth remains unspoken because it is
feared that "it would only be an annoyance."2 Instead the courtiers practice a
certain artfulness--"TI1ey put on the face that mirrors another's feelings."3
And h~re Conversino, like many other humanists steeped in the classical
drama, ~kes as the archetypical courtier the arch-panderer, Gnatho; it is to
this in two senses theatrical character that Conversino alludes when he says
that courtiers "answer coming and going, as that well-known father to his
son: 'They say yes, l say yes; they say no, so do 1."'4
The unctuous disingenuousness which emanates from the prince-
courtier relationship pervades the other relationships of the court--and this
despite the fact that "there is always a spirit of destructive rivalry loosl:: in
court,"S as each courtier "struggles to be advanced ahead of his fellow."6
Conversino explains:
You will want to know, l am sure, that the court has this way
about it ... when fortune brings a ruler into close relaÜonship
with someone, the courtiers are found to repay you for favors
lIbido
2De Dileclione Regnanlium, in Two CaurI Trealises, 219-21.
3Ibid,219.
4Ibid.
5De Primo eius inlroilu ad aulam, 45.
6Ibid,45.
117
not yet done, and that too most tenderly and solicitously, not
because of any love lost on you, but because they want--desire-to
seem anxious and concerned for others.l
considers that "in his manner of speech, in the utterly pleasant expression on
his face, in the readiest generosity and attendance to my requests he presented
himself as genuine,"s In contrast, Conversino daims that he himself "never
learned to practice the courtly arts"6--and for this reason he finds himself
degraded and in relative poverty.7
But what is more, the virulent attack on court life given here also
appears in Conversino's defense of princely rule and patronage, the
Drama/ogia. Indeed, many of the condemnations used in De Primo eius
introitu ad au/am are simply repeated in the latter work, joined there by new
•.
1Ibid, 51-3.
2Ibid,37.
3Ibid,53.
4Ibid,63.
5Ibid, 75.
c 6Prcfacc to Familie Carrariensis natio, quotcd in Introduction to Two Court Treatises, 13.
7De Dilectione ,Regnantium, 298·9.
118
ones.! Moreover, Conversino and the Dramalogia are only atypical in the
extent to which their advocacy of the court is mixed with elements of
criticism. Even Castiglione's Book of the Courtier sometimes presents a less
than flattering view of the courts. In book IV, which it seems was not
originally envisioned as a part of The Courtier, the discussion takes a turn
from its previous course. The character Ottaviano rejects his friends'
educational Ideal for the courtier as "vain and frivolous, and in a man of
rank deserving of censure and rather than praise,"2 serving "simply to make
men effeminate,"3 "corrupt the young,"4 and generally bring Haly to ruin and
disgrace. That is, unless these courtly arts are directed to sorne certain higher
goal--in which case they will be "deserving of Infinite praise."S Ottaviano
explains:
1Dramalogia,83-107. The discussion in this work includes as weil repctitions of most of the
quotations above taken from works besides De Primo eius introitu ad aulam.
2The Book of the Courtier, 284. The challenge which book IV presents to the unity of the entire
work is discussed in Wayne Rebhom, "Ottaviano's Interruption: Book IV and the Problem of
Unity in 11 Libro deI Cortigiano " Modern Language Notes 87 (1972) 37-59 and Dain Trafton,
"Structure and Meaning in The Courtier:' English Literary Renaisance 2 (1972) 283-97.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
119
oppose him, and make courteous use of the favour his good qualities have
won to remove every evil intention and persuade him to return to the path
of virtue."1 Hence Ottaviano describes the courtier's true role to be that of a
moral tutor or instructor to the prince; however, he does not pause to ponder
the paradox of how such utter degeneracy, as he describes the courtly arts to
be, can be justified as a means to moral education. But he does give sorne
indication of how difficult and dangerous is speaking openly with the prince
in the decadent world of the modern court. On the one hand, the prince is
always exposed to flatterers, and even his few true friends
... are wary of reproaching him for his faults as freely as they
reproach ordinary people, and often in order to win grace and
favour they think only of suggesting things that are agreeable
and diverting, even though they may be dishonourable and
wicked. In this way, from being friends they become flatterers,
and to benefit from their intimacy they always speak and act in
order to gratify, and they mostly proceed by telling lies that foster
ignorance in the prince's mind not only of the world around but
of himself. 2
c llbid,285.
2lbid, 285-6.
120
The vidous circle completes itself as the prince's growing grandeur and
arrogance further impedes directness and honesty, requiring obsequiousness
and guarded speech from others. Still Ottaviano maintains that if the
courtier possesses ail the "qualities" previously described, "he will succeed in
this purpose without great effort and thus he will always be able to reveal the
true facts on any subject very promptly."2 However, from this point on
Ottaviano talks less about the courtier speaking openly to the prince, than he
does about cleverly and artfully manipulating the prince for beneficial
purposes: he is to practice "a healthy deception like a shrewd doctor who
often spreads some sweet liquid on the rim of a cup when he wants a frai! and
sickly child to take a bitter medicine."3 Moreover, he also makes remarks
seeming to undercut his confident statements of the courtier's ability to
ensure a fair hearing for unwanted truths. For instance, he subsequently
responds to the request to "tell us also everything you would teach your
prince if he needed instruction and assuming you had completely won his
favour and could therefore speak your mind freely,"4 by saying, "If 1 had the
favour of some of the rulers 1 know, and were to speak my mind freely, 1
imagine 1 would soon lose it again."S Even in this most courtly of courtly
works, truth is made to appear a casualty to this way of life.
Similarly, Galateo at times also betrays a certain malaise with the world
of the court. For example, Della Casa expresses ambivalence over courtly
1Ibid,286.
2Ibid,288.
3Ibid, 288-9.
4Ibid,302.
SIbid; on this subject see Daniel ]avitch, "Il Cortigiano and the constrainls of despotism," in
Hanning and Rosand, 17-28.
121
forms of address and conduct, which he claims are a modern and foreign
influence, misplacing the respect and reverence due to the realm of the sacred
to that of the seeular:
IGalateo, 23. The writers of virtually every country try to explain the most questionable
aspects of civility as of foreign influence-often with some smalI kemel of truth. Thus just as
the English and French blame the Italians for certain newfangled excesses, Della Casa believes
the Spanish brought them with them into Italy. Prior to World War II, certain scholars
recognizcd the Iikelihood that practices of civility were transmilled to Europe from the Arabs
in Spain and the Byzantine East-and drew from this certain racist conclusions. According to
Rudolph von Jhering, "while the social forms of the Aryans are founded on the idea of self-
estœm and equality," our "modem forms of submissiveness in social intercourse are of Oriental
origin"; its "spirit of submission and self-abasement" shows ilto be a "Scmetic growth."
Rudolph von Jhering, "Aryan and Scmitic Civilization" in his The Evolution of the Aryan, (N.
p.,1897) 97. Von Jhering is cited wilhout criticism by ooth Mason (309), and Abraham Smythe-
Palmer, The Ideal of a Gentleman (London: Routledge, n. d.) 3-5.
2Galateo, 23.
3lbid.
c 4lbid.
5lbid.
122
Thus, while elsewhere Della Casa virtually identifies "custom" and "reason,"
here they are conceived of as opposed: according to reason, "to kiss as a sign
of reverence is.strictly suited only for relics of saints' bodies or other sacred
things."l
But paradoxicaIly, this does not mean that we should abstain from
these irrational and hypocritical practices. While fully admittlng that
ceremonies are only "beautiful and becoming on the outside,"2 and on the
inside "totally empty,"3 consisting in "appearances without substance and in
words without meaning,"4 Della Casa nevertheless insists that it is our first
dutY to obey the prevailing custom. Hence, "when leaving or writing you
must greet and take your leave according to what not reason but custom
dictates, and not as one used to do or should have done, but as one does."s
We are not to be troubled by this deceitfulness, since it is simply the
inescapable way of the worId as we find it·-"it is a fault of the times, not of
ourselves. "6 In fact, Della Casa argues that there is not even any point in
discussing the relative merits of different ways of behaving; he simply states
as a hard and fast rule that "in the land where we dwell we must diligently
assume the gestures and words which usage and modern custom normally
employ."7
However this attitude of resignation with respect to admittedly corrupt
but prevailing practices at times appears to give way to something more
ambivalent and complex. Thus he finds fault with those who would "have
lIbid,26.
2Ibid,24.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Ibid,26.
6Ibid,24.
7Ibid,25.
123
people begin their letters to emperors and kings in this manner: 'If you and
your children are well, that is fine; 1 am well too."'l This informaI type of
address he associates with the ancient Roman Republic--but he characterizes
it as "rude" and "boorish"; he furthermore adds that "If one followed this
criterion of returning to the past, everyone would revert, little by little, to
eating acorns."2
Again, a similar tension and ambiguity is expressed in The Civile
Conversation. Both the protagonists are in apparent agreement that false
friendship and even treachery are "rife in Courts. "3 In the halls of the great
one always finds certain duplicitous flatterers who "play their part 50 wel"4
that they can convince their hosts "that the Moone is made of greene
Cheese"--or at least "say or doe sorne thing that shalbe acceptable to them."s
And here Guazzo as well refers to the deceitful tricksters from Terence and
other playwrights:
You see likewise the comedies, both of the âme past, and of the
present, furnished with these flatterers alld Gnathoes ... men of
vile condition, and of no valour ... having no honest or
profitable trade to commend themselves by, frame themselves to
delight the eyes and eares of others, b) their owne great shame
and reproch.6
1Ibid,26.
2Ibid.
-3Civile Conversation, 70.
4Ibid,76.
Slbid,76.
6lbid, 76-7.
7Ibid,60.
124
such people, it seems that in fact you can hardly help but become one. For if
one intends to remain at court, the freedom of honest and open expression
will be a necessary and inevitable sacrifice. Hence Anniball states that in the
company of princes, "a man cannot utter his minde freely nor doe any thing
contrarie to their pleasure: if hee doe, hee shalbe no friende of Caesars."l His
partner in discussion then continues:
1Ibid, 210.
2Ibid.
125
N
f_
NICCOLà MACHIAVELLI
general who set before his soldiers sorne captured Persians stripped naked, "50
that seeing their delicate limbs, they would not fear them."l Part of the point
of this anecdote hinges upon the Persians' particular reputation for luxury
and decadence rendering them "delicate"--and therefore unintimidating
when seen in the flesh. But the stripping men down to demystify their
differences and reveal their common humanity is for Machiavelli something
1The Art of War, Machiavelli: the chief works and others, trans Alan Gilbert, vol. 2 (Durham,
N. c.: Duke University Press, 1965) 662.
126
10riginal and translation quoted in Wayne Rebhorn, Foxes and Uons: Machiavelli's
Confidence Men (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) 246.
2"The practice of of the political observer trained to analyze situations of conflict, calculating
the moves of the opponents in accord with their own points of view, is conjoined in Machiavelli
with a mimetic talent and with the histrionic sensibility of an extraordinary theatrical
intelligence"; Raimondi, 12; this is also discussed in Rebhom, Foxes and Uons, 233-4.
c 3Letter #124.
4lbid.
,:,
128
many eyes that from Christian princes everywhere 1 have extracted."l The
importance of assuming a plurality of viewpoints is again taken up in the
dedicatory letter to The Prince, where Machiavelli says to Lorenzo de' Medici,
1Chief works and others, vol. 3, 1463; sec Hanna Pitkin for this interpretation of the "eycs of
Argus," Fortune is a Woman: Gender & PoUlics in the Thol/ght of Niccolà Machiavelli
(Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1984) 35-6.
2The Prince, 30.
129
Other cities that he visited, Verona, Genoa, are his too. When
for a few months he resided in Lucca, he acted as a Lucchese,
interesting himself in her methods of government and writing a
life of her hero, Castruccio Castracani, one of Florence's worst
enemies. Never does he look at Castruccio with the eyes of a
mere Florentine.3
1Hans Baron, "Machiave11i: the Republican Citizen and the Author of The Prince," English
Historical Review 76 (1961) 217-53.
21n ibid Baron reviews the thinking on this question up until the time of writing. Interpreters of
Machiave11i have tried to solve this problem in several ways: usually either by ignoring one of
the two works, or by arguing that the discrepancy is more apparent than real, or that it is real
and represents a shift in his thinking, or else holding t~at Machiavelli is accommodating
himself to his circumstances largely irrespective of his lrûe. convictions.
3The Lelters of Machiavelli, trans. Alan Gilbert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)
44; il has becn observed that part of the success of Machiavèl.li's writings, especially the
Histories derives from the manner in which he is able to sec and recount conflicts from different
sides-incIuding those identifiably opposed to his city of F1oren~~.
4Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Niccolà Machiavelli, trans. Cecil Greyson (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1963) 43. !i
li
1/
130
Anybody who saw our letters, honored friend, and saw their
diversity, would wonder greatly, because he would suppose now
that we were grave men, wholly concerned with important
matters, and that into our breasts no thought could fall that did
not have in itself honor and greatness. But then, turning the
page, he would judge that we, the very same persons, were light-
minded inconstant, lascivious, concerned with empty things. 2
lLeller #179; such thinking is far from forcign to Guicciardini, who in his Maxims and
Ref/ections (Ricordi) states that "deception is very useful, whereas your frankncss tends to
profit others rather than you" #104; and admits of himself, "the positions 1 have held under
several popes have forced me, for my own good, to further their interests. Were it not for that, 1
should have loved Martin Luther as much as myseJr'-not for religious rcasons, "butto sec this
bunch of rascals gettheir just deserts" #28, Maxims and Ref/eclions, trans. Mario Domandi
1Ibid. The prominence of variability or adaptability in Machiavelli's thought was not rosi on
his contemporaries. For instance, in a treatise written for the young Edward VI, on the topie
"whether it be expedient to vary with the time," William Thomas writes: "Trulyas the
musician useth sometime a flat, and sometime a sharp note, sometime a short, and sometime a
long, to make his song perfeet; sa saith Macchiaveghi, ought man ta frame his proceedings unto
his time." Quoted in Felix Raab, The English Faee of Maehiavelli (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1964) 43. On the other hand, this same idea is attacked by Gentillet in his
point-by-point criticism of Machiavelli. Gentillet conderons the notion of adaptability at
length, writing, for example, "these manners ,ire proper ta the Chamaelion, whieh take ail
colours of the place where hec is, and of the Polypus, whieh alwaies seemes ta bee of the
coulour of the earth, whereupon it shineth: But this is not convenient nor comely for a good man,
who ought alwaies to bee constant in virtue,without changing or varying, no not though the
heavens should fall upon hîm." Meanes of Well Governing, 298. "
2Letter #3; Opere di Niccolà Maehiavelli (Milan: Società Tipografiea de' Classici Italiani,
1804) voL 9, 64; discussedin Martin FIeisher, "A Passion for Politics: The Vital Core of the
World of Machiavelli," MacUavelli and the Nature of Politieal Thought, ed. Martin Fleisher
(NY: Atheneum, 1972) 140; this and the following instances of Machiavelli's own reported
contact with the notion of changing with circumstances and times should be seen on the
background of a more general intelleetual culture stressing this idea, itself deriving at least in
part from the classical sources previously discussed, and whieh shaped Machiavelli's own
humanist education, Thus FIeisher is thinking tao exclusively in terms of the Stoie tradition
when he writes that Machiavelli's "break with dominant Greco-Roman and Christian ethical
(.~'. systems is epitomized in the importance and particular raie assigned to i tempi, l :oecasione, '
etc."(l24).
132
~"
Machiavelli, who was Iater to refer to the monk as a man of prudence,
concludes this Ietter by observing that bù.vonarola "keeps on working with
the times" (viene secondando i tempi ), and thus maintaining his credibility.2.·.
Six years Iater, on the day of Julius II's election, the young diplomat
Machiavelli reports that Francesco Soderini, the brother of Florence's
gonfaloniere, toid him that the advent of this new Pope holds great promise
for Florence, but only if the Florentines "know how to harmonise with the
times."1 Two years after this, Machiavelli was sent as a representative of the
Florentine government to the lord of Siena, Pandolfo Petrucd, to obtain an
explanation for "ail the tricks and intrigues" which characterized his relations
with the Florentines. 2 Machiavelli was apparently much impres~ed with
Petrucd, who he says boldly told him, "Wishing to make as few mistakes as
possible, l conduct my government day by day, and arrange my affairs hour by
houri because the times are more powerful than our brains."3
One year after the encounter with Petrucd, Machiavelli for the first
time systematically puts forward~s his own similar ideas concerning adapting
oneself to one's times. While witnessing the successes of Julius II's
characteristic aggtzssiveness, Machiavelli reflects on the causes, of victory and
failure. Thus he writes Piero Soderini saying that in order to get his friend's
opinion, he "shall be so presumptuous" as to give his own, to wit that, "that
man is fortunate who harmonizes his procedure with his time, but on the
contrary he is not fortunate who in his actions is out of harmony with his
time and with the type of its affairs."4 He concludes by echoing the Herculean
vision of a predecessor in the Florentine Chancery, Coluccio SalutatiS--but
replacing the stoic ideal of moral self- (and cosmic) mastery with that of
"adaptation": "certainly anybody wise enough to understand the times and
the types of affairs and to adapt himself to them would have always good
fortune, or he would p:otect himself always from bad, and it would come to
be true that the wise man would rule the stars and the Fates."l
Seven years I"ler, when writing The Prince, Machiavelli virtually
copied out this passage from his letter, and made it a centerpiece of his
political thought. Hence in The Prince he writes that
4Letler #116.
SSalutali held the more important position of Secretary to the First Chancery, Machiavelli
that of the Jess presligious and powerfuJ Second Chancery.
lLetler #116.
2The Prince, 132.
( 3Ibid,132.
134
never have acted other than in character."4 The Pope was spared this fate
only by "the brevity of his pontificallife."S
5imilarly, in book III, chapter viii, of the Discourses Machiavelli writes
that "Those who owing to bad judgement or to their natural inclinations are
out of touch with the times are in most cases unfortunate in their life and
unsuccessful in their undertakings,"l which he follows with a chapter
entitled, "That it behoves one to adapt Oneself to the Times if one wants to
enjoy Continued Good Fortune." He begins this chapter by relating that he
has "often thought that the reason why men are sometimes unfortunate,
sometimes fortunate, depends upon whether their behaviour is in
conformity with the times,"2 and goes on to repeat the example of Julius,
among others, to demonstrate how a lack of flexibility of character may bring
one to ruin.
The repeated reference to "fortune" (jortuna) in the above quoted
passages is not without significance; this previously discussed concept is at
the very heart of much of Machiavelli's thought, and specifically that on
accommodation to circumstances. In the Tercets on Fortune, fortune is
described as a "cruel goddess,"3 and is "called omnipotent, because whoever
cornes into this life either late or early feels her power."4 5he is also said to be
"unstable"S and "fickle"6: "5he times events as suits her; she raises us up, she
puts us down without pity, without law or right."7 As was earlier stated of
41bid, 133.
5Ibid.
IThe Discourses, trans. Lcslic Walkcr, cd. Bernard Crick (NY: Pcnguin Books, 1970) 428.
2lbid,430.
3Chief works and others, vol. 2, 745.
4Ibid.
5lbid,746.
6Ibid.
7Ibid.
135
Machiavelli himself, the one thing that can be counted on from her is her
changeability: "AIways her choice is not to favor one man in every seasoni
she does not always keep afflicting a man at the very bottom of her wheel."B
But nor does she long show favor.
Fortune's association with a wheel, or wheels, is of a long tradition.
However, Machiavelli modifies this conceptualization in ways that are quite
new. He says that within fortune's palace, "as many wheels are turning as
there are varied ways of climbing to those things which every living man
strives to attain"l, but "while you are whirled about by the rim of the wheel
that for the moment is lucky and good, she is wont to reverse its course in
midcircle."2 Yet the fatalism of this picture is mitigated by Machiavelli's own
contribution to the concept of fortune's wheels--"a man who could leap from
wheel to wheel would always he happy and fortunate."3 That is to say, if you
could hop to a different wheel--alter your character and habituai way of
proceeding--whenever fortune chose to reverse the one you were on, you
would succeed in whatever circumstances you foulld yourself.
In fact, this notion of adaptability pervades Machiavelli's thought.
Thus.one of the reasons he gives for preferring the republican form of
government over the princely is because "it is better able to adapt itself to
\
diverse circumstances owing to the diversity found among its citizens than a
prince can dO."4 By the same token, in The Art of War, despite specifying
detailed military guidelines and formations, Machiavelli notes that "you
Slbid.
Ilbid.
2lbid,747.
3lbid; on the novelty of Machiavclli's idca of assuring good fortune by Icaping wheels, see
Pilkin, 146.
4Discourses, 431.
136
have to vary the form of the army according to the nature of the site and the
nature and number of enemy."5
Indeed it is this doctrine of flexibility of character which is largely
responsible for Machiavelli's "machiavellian" reputation, as he expiicitly
takes his notions on flexibility into the realm of morality; he states that in
order to assure the reputation and survival of himself and his state, a prince
"must learn how not to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not according
to need."l Hence, according to Machiavelli, the prince need not actt!ally
possess the moral virtues--that is to say as fixed intrinsic parts of his character-
oit is enough if he can present their appearance as circumstances warrant, and
still be able to shed them when and if necessary:
4lbid.
Slbid, 109.
llbid, 110.
2The analogy of lion and fox derives from Cicero, and thus is not of MachiaveIli's devising, but
he still gives sorne indication of what sort of behavior or character the lion represents for him
in The Golden Ass. Here a beautiful guide leads the narrator through Circe's menagerie of once
human animais: '''On the right hand, at the first entrance, are the lions,' she said, taking up
her discourse, 'with sharp tccth and with hooked c1aws. Whoever has a heart magnanimous
and noble is changed by Ciree into that wild beast'." Thus, at least here, the lion represents
somelhing Iike the values of an honor-bound martial nobility; in contrast, "If anyone is
excessive in fury and rage, leading a rude and violent Iife, he is among the bears in the second
house." Chie! works and olhers, vol. 2, 765.
3The Prince, 98.
4The Discourses, 310.
SOp. cit.,lOO; Opere, vol. 1,84.
138
lion or the fox-othe lion just is a lion; only a fox can play a lion or a fox,
because only the fox can play--that is, change his comportment and
appearance as he desires.
According to Machiavelli, this fox-like variability isnot only made
necessary by the depravity of the real world, but made legitimate too:
"because men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you,
you need not keep your word to them."l Machiavelli leamed the lessons of
his brand of "realism" partially by observing the great political events and
actions of his time. 2 But in addition, in the capacity of Second Secretary for
the Florentine republic, he was for a time himself a player in the games of
international politics and intrigue--albeit a minor one. In fact the weakness
of his position as a relatively low status representative of a mainly
insignificant power forced Machiavelli to rely ail the more on his tough-
minded shrewdness. As Pitkin notes, "His work depended . .. on his
personal ability to gain intim?-te, behind-the-scenes access to the great, to see
and understand what they were really up to, and to manipulate, cajole,
dissemble, flatter, and trick them into doing what he could not force them to
dO."3
But not only was Machiavelli obliged to adopt clever and subtle ploys
in his dealings with foreign elites-ohis social inferiority forced him to assume
a similar comportment with his superiors at home as weil. In a letter
advising the young Raffaello Girolami with respect to his first ambassadorial
l cannot write this history from the time when Cosimo took
over the government up to the death of Lorenzo just as l would
write it if l were free from all reasons of caution ... l shall relate
the events and the circumstances that came about when Cosimo
took over the government; l shallleave untouched any
discussion of the way and of the me_~ns and trieks with which
one attains such power; and if al}.férie nevertheless wants to
understand Cosimo, let him obsé'rve well what l shall have his
opponents say, because what l am not willing to say as coming
from myself, l shaH have his opponents say,"3
the fo)e
, '
with such strategie indirection, he often revels in the role by
l'
temperament. Hanna Pitkin has remarked on how trickery has for a long
time been held in special esteem in Mediterranean societies including Italy.
An important concept in this respect is the Italian term furbo. Furbo refers to
something like "skill in employing ruses that are usual!y, but not necessarily,
dishonest."s Pitkin recounts a recent story of a man living in a hamlet in
southem Italy who dishonestly acquired an American pension, and thereby
received great prestige for being 50 furbo as to cheat such a powerful
govemment. 5he goes on to quote two political scientists' observation that,
"A furbo oHen gets more satisfaction out of taking an unfair advantage in a
single business deal than from making an honest profit in a series of deals
with the same man,"l
While Machiavelli does not use the term furbo, or its contrary fessa, he
does often use different forms of the words ingannare--"to cheat or deceive";
sbeffare and uccellare--meaning "to mock"--which Machiavelli uses to
describe when a clever deceiver tricks and humiliates a rival; and ciurmatori-
-"confidence men."2 Thus, for instance Machiavelli says of Florence that it is
"the lodestone of al! the confidence men (ciurmatori) in the world,"3 Veuori,
Machiavelli's friend and frequent correspondent, offers the fol!owing
reflection after relating the antics of an ingenious beggar:
SPitldn, 33.
llbid; this quote, and the rest of Pilkin's discussion of the notion of furbo is drawn from John
Clarke Adams and Paulo BariJe, The Government of Republican ltaly (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1972). William WiJey briefly discusses the appreciationof trickery in the Italian
culture of Machiavelli's diy in his The Gentleman of Renaissance France, 178-9.
2Rebhom, Foxes and Lions, 13; 1 follow Rebhom's rcndering of ciurmatori "confidence mcn"-
the word derives from the Latin carmen, a poem or charm, and has 10 do with charming somcone
temporal princes and ail those about them, to ail the arts and
disciplines. 4
Thus the world of Machiavelli and his friends, like that of Italian
Renaissance politics, literature, and drama more generally, is largely
populated by either dupes or deceivèrs,1 Indeed, when compared ~ith tb
works of Boccaccio and other Renaissance story-tellers, Machiavelli's
dramatic and literary works are even more completely and exclusively
comprised of these two types. 2 Moreover, this is not far from his outlook on
the real world: besides the few who distinguish themselves by their savvy
and cleverness, most men "are so simple, and so much creatures of
circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be
deceived."3
, ,~-.
,\
For Machiavelli, and perhaps many with whom h~shared a culture, to
"
be vulnerable to the tricks played in the world is a sign of pathetic weakness.
Thus his political and historical writings are full of condemnation for those
who allow themselves to be taken in and despoiled--including at times even
his erstwhile "hero," Cesare Borgia, who allowed himself to be ruined by the
false assurances of Julius II.4 Similarly in his dramatic works: in the
Mandragola, a small-minded elderly lawyer, Nicia, is conned into assisting in
his own cuckolding--and in this way appears as a laughable dupe receiving
his just desserts. In the C/izia, another grasping old schemertries to trick his
way into bed with a young girl--but instead wheÏl the lights corne up, finds
himself having been sodomized by a servant--and consequently humiliated
That night when Piero Soderini died, his spirit went to the
mOU':l of Hell. Pluto roared: "Why to Hell? Silly spirit, go up
to Limbo with ail the rest of the babies."3
Like the playwright himself, Ligurio plots and scripts the action of the other
characters, which they then act out essentially according to his design.4 Not
only is Ligurio the source of the play's action, but as Rebhom notes, the play
is constructed 50 that his power remains concentrated in his hands. For
instance, when Ligurio tells Callimaco that he has a plan to help him, the
latter naturally asks what it is-·but is only told,
You'll find out when the time cornes. For now 1 had better not
tell you, because there is scarcely enough time to act, much less
to talk about it. Go back home and wait for me, and 1 will go get
Messer Nicia. When 1 bring him to you, just listen to what 1 say
and follow my lead.1
"'-.-- Despite his socially inferior status, it is clear that Ligurio in fact
maintains the real power over his betters by virtue of his cunning.
Callimaco is first warned by a servant to be careful that he should not end up
just another victim of Ligurio's scheming. Subsequently, he addresses
himself directly to Ligurio on the subject,saying, "1 believe you, though 1
know that people like you live by tricking others."l To this he is given the
assurance that he will not in turn be tricked and d1eated; but he. has little
with which to protect himself from these potential dangers besides Ligurio's
good will and the threat of withholding his reward. The socially superior
Callimaco is at the mercy of the lowly tricks ter Ligurio.
While Ligurio is the direct descendent of the devious parasites and
slaves in the comedies of Terence and Plautus, Rebhorn notes that the sense
of freedom and power of Machiavelli's character are foreign to his Roman
antecedents. To begin with, the ancient characters tend to be more willing
than able: they are as much buffoons as conmen. Tlfeir exaggerated hunger
and pre-occupation with food marks them as ridiculous figures of social
inferiority. Furthermore, while these trickster /buffoons may deceive their
owners, this is nevertheless only in the service of the latters' embattled sons--
whom they serve with unquestioned loyalty. And finally, in t~e Roman
comedies the final resolution seems almost to require that the slave's
essentially benign machinations be exposed and forgiven by the pater familia,
as the proper social order is reestablished. 2
ln contrast, Ligurio is of lower social standing, but he is not a'slave, nor
is there anything absurd or ridiculous about him. And despite the fact that he
does appear to serve Callimaco faithfully in his exploit, as just shown above,
this is clearly not something that can simply be taken for granted; Ligurio is
(
his own man, and uses his powers as he ChOOSES. Furthermore, Ligurio's plot
goes undetected by its victim Nicia throughout the play; Ligurio is never
divested of his ability to script and control the actions of his social superiors.1
Perhaps even more revealing of Machiavelli's profound attraction for
the character of the wily trickster is an episode from late in his life. In 1526 he
is sent on a mission for the city of Florence to the Franciscans of Carpi, in
order to arrange for one to preach in Florence for Lent. Delayed by
administrative difficulties within the Florentine government, Machiavelli is
forced to remain in the village with little to do. As a consequence, he writes
his friend, the ambassador Guicciardini, who shares Machiavelli's disdain for
the simple monks, that he has turned to "ruminating on how l can sow 50
much discord among them that either here or elsewhere they may go to
hitting each other with their sandals."2 To this end he asks his friend to send
messengers daily, instructed to arrive in great haste, and to deliver their
"urgent documents" to Machiavelli 50 that he might make a great impression
on the gullible Carpigiani, and amuse himself at their expense. In fact
Machiavelli has already begun his garne with a letter Guicdardini had sent
him that day. Hence he recounts that with the arrivai of the messenger,
fraude a torza" and "0 inganno a torza" with that of "0 . .. industria a ...
torza "--essentiaUy equating cheating and trickery with the classical Roman
virtue of industry.3 Moreover, he can scarce:ly hide his resF~ct bordering on
awe for the truly great ciurma tari. For example, he says of a recent pontiff,
lIbid. .
2Quoted.'n Rebhom, Faxes and Lions, 235.
3FIeisher, "A Passion for Politics: The Vilal Core of the World of Machiavelli:' 139. This
",r~c""",,~ .__
same eq~ation appears in Vellori's rcflcction on the ingcnious bcggar.
"\.Ji' '--"~~' 4The Pnnce, 100.
147
c service of his city, that he was advised to moderate his cnthusiasm for the
Duke, lest his own allegiance be drawn into question. 5
In a way Machiavelli's entire corpus of political and historical writings
attempt to forge a sense of kinship between these great swindlers and
Machiavelli himself: as historian and theorist he tries to "go beyond" the
conventional beliefs and notions which govern the lives, or at least cloud the
understanding, of the uncomprehending multitude. Thus Machiavelli
wishes to demonstrate his membership in that select and worldly few who
see thro::gh the generally accepted surface of the world and recognize the
"real" workings of its depths--thirst for power, greed, deceit--allowing them to
be actors rather than acted upon. For, just as being trusting and foreign to a
world of deceit and intrigue is stigmatized as infantile, 50 being worldly-wise
and savvy is tied to a view of manhood. Rence on one occasion, Machiavelli
rebuked a foreign statesman for his lack of political insight and discretion,
saying,
Among the many things which prove what a man is, not the
least important is to note how easily he believes what he is told
or how cautious he is in feigning what he wishes others to
believe: 50 that whenever a man believes what he should not or
feigns badly what he would have others believe, he may be said
to be shallow and devoid of ail prudence. 1
For Machiavelli, the inability to analyze and act in the realm of human
affairs betokens not only the superficiality of the many who do not penetrate
down to the real workings of the world, but also an impotence which
contrasts with a notion of manliness and what it is to be a man. The concept
of virtù--in Machiavelli sometimes translated as "vigor," sometimes as
"ability" or "prowess," and derived from vir, the Latin for "man"--played a
central role in Machiavelli's writing, as did the kindred Latin virtus in the
humanist tradition of mirror-of-princes books which Machiavelli both drew
upon and rejected. In these works virtus was understood as that which
allows a prince to attain honor and glory, and as such was identified with the
"virtues" of liberality, fidelity, honesty, etc.! But as Skinner notes, in
Machiavelli, virtù is divorced from any necessary connection with the
princely and cardinal virtues. 2 What seems accentuated in Machiavelli's
notion of virtù is the sense in which it denotes a power to act and bring about
one's ends. 3 It is for the sake of this masculine potency that Machiavelli
daims to dispense with doudy idealistic notions in favor of the "verittl
effettuaIe" of life and politics. And for Machiavelli the "practical truth"
necessary for the accomplishments corresponding to that manly powcr virlù,
indudes truths concerning the use of fraud, deceit, and opportunistic
adaptability.
However, in the context of Machiavelli's writings, questions arise as to
what exactly it is to possess virlù, and what exactly is the verilà effet/uale. To
1Alan Gilbert, in his Maehiavelli's Prince and ils Forenlllllers (NY: Harnes & Noble, 1938)
shows that some of these lexis were pennissive of, for inslance, dissimulation, bul sloppcd for
short of Machiavelli's radieal positions, 118-33; on lhe genre of "mirror-for-princes, sec Alan
Gilberl, and Skinner, FOllndations, 113-138.
2Skinner, Maehiavelli, 39.
3Por lhis observation on Machiavelli's notion of virtJi, sec Skinner, FOll1ldations, 129, 138; J. H.
Hexler, 'The Loom of Language and lhe Pabrie of Imperatives: The Case of Il Principe and
Utopia:' The American Historieal Review 69 (964) 945-968; J. G. A. Pocock, The
Maehiavellian Moment (Princelon: Princelon University Press, 1975) 162-82; Among lhe many
discussions of Machiavelli's concepl of virtJi more generally arc: John Plamenalz, "In Search of
MachiaveIlian Virh;:' in The Politieal CalCIIllls: essays on Maehiavelli's philosophy, cd.
Anthony PareI (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); J. H. Whitfield, ''The Doctrine of
Virtu:' !talian Stlldies 3 0946·8) 28-33; Ne!l!-Wood, "Machiavelli's Concept of Virtu
Reconsidered:' Politieal Stlldies 15 (967) 159-;·2i Russel Priee, The Senses of Virtu in
Machiavelli:' Eùropean Stlldies Review 3 (973) 315-45; John Gecrken, "Homer's Image of lhe
Hero in Machiavelli: A Comparison of Arele and Virtu:' /talian Qllarterly 14 (970) 45-90; J.
Hannaford, "Machiavelli's Concept of Virtu in the Prince and the Discollrses Reconsidered:'
Politieal Stlldies 20 (972) 185-9.
149
begin with the latter question, and specifically with the role here of
adaptability, there is doubt as to whether it is even possible. Machiavelli
starts Chapter XXV of The Prince, entitled, "How far human affairs are
governed by fortune and how fortune can be opposed," with the statement, "1
am not unaware that many have held and hold the opinion that events are
controlled by fortune and by God in such a way that the prudence of men
cannot modify them, indeed, that men have no influence whatsoever."] He
then follows with the admission, "Sometimes, when thinking of this, 1 have
myself inclined to this same opinion. "2 Machiavelli immediately rejects this
conclusion, theorizing instead that perhaps half of men's fate lies in their
own hands, and proposing his theory of adapting to one's times as the means
to exercise what control is permitted us.
Yet while his intention is to offer an optimistic theory of self-
determination, he produces here only the counter-example of Pope Julius,
and moreover wedges between statements of his voluntaristic theory thE!
observation that we do not "find any man shrewd enough to know how to
adapt his policy in this way; either because he cannot do otherwise than what
is in his character or because, having always prospered by proceeding one way,
he cannot persuade
. ,
himself to change."3 This same doubt and the same
reasoning are given in the previously discussed chapter of The Discourses
entitled "That it behoves one to adapt Oneself to the Times if one wants to
enjoy Continued Good Fortune." ln fa ct, in virtually every instance where
Machiavelli introduces his theory of adapting to the times, he also expresses
doubts as to its possibility. For example in the Tercets on Fortune, where
And since you cannot change your character nor give up the
disposition that Heaven endows you with, in the midst of your
journey she abandons YO!!"
Therefore, if this he understood and fixed in his mind, a man
who could leap from wheel to wheel would always be happy and
fortunate,
but because to attain this is denied by the occult force that rules
us, our condition changes with her course. 1
1Ibid, 99.
2Ibid.
3De Officiis, I. xiii. 41.
4"Everyone realizcs how praiseworthy it is for a prince ta honour his ward and ta he
straightforward rather than crafty in his dealings" (99). In his "Exhortation ta Penitence,"
MachiaveIIi descrihes what it means for a man ta take the part of a beast: by "brutish deed~- .
man changes himself from a rational animal into a brute anima!." By misuse of God's gifts he
changes "from angeI ta devil, from master ta servant, from man ta beast." Chief works and
( others, va!. 1, 172-3.
!
=
152
Agathocles and Oliverotto of Fermo, who murdered their fellow citizens and
benefactors1, but in addition at times even shows a lack of enthusiasm for
deceipt and deception more generally. While it is clear that many of
Machiavelli's images of the turbo actor, such as Ligurio, contrast with their
classical counterparts in that they are represented as more powerful and
effectiv~, elsewhere, such as in the Discourses, the need to deceive is
associated with weakness; it is the weapon of the otherwise impotent, and
hopefully only a temporary stage to be passed through on the way to a more
solid standing. 2 In a later chapter of that same work, entitled "That it is a
Very Good Notion at Times to pretend to be a Fool," Machiavelli counsels
that if people are in a position to attack and remove a despot directly, this is
the best and most honorable course--but, "if their position is such that they
have not sufficient forces to make war openly, they should use every
endeavour to acquire the princz's friendship; and to this end should avail
themselves of every opening which they think necessary to attain it, by
becoming obsequious to his wishes and by taking pleasure in everything in
which they see that he takes pleasure."3 Then when the proper moment
arises, the supposed obsequious fool will shed his guise and reveal the true
colors of his manhood--provided that the opportunity does arise.
This, Machiavelli argues, was the case with Junius Brutus, who
instigated the overthrow of the Tarquin kings. In coming to this conclusion,
Machiavelli explicitly differs from his source, Livy; whereas the latter is said
to describe Brutus as initially engaging in dissimulation simply so that "he
might live in greater security and preserve his estates,"4 Machiavelli insists
that he was always biding his time so that "he might get a better opportunity
( of downing the kings and liberating his country."l Machiavelli goes out of
his way to attribute to Brutus a long-standing republican public-spiritedness-
whieh although he concealed for a time--nevertheless distinguishes him
from the self-interestedness of that mere beast, the fox.
Furthermore, in the History Machiavelli states in the strongest terms
his disgust for the unprincipled attitudes of his time and place:
The general depravity of ail Italian cities ... has depraved and
continues to deprave our city ... an oath and a pledge are
valuable as far as they are profitable, for men employ them not
with the purpose of observing them, but to use them as means
for deceiving more easily. And the more easily and securely the
deceptions succeeds, the more glory and honor it gains. Rence
pernicious men are praised for their ingenuity, and good men
blamed as foolish. 2
Ilbid.
2Chie/ works and others, vol. 3, 1145-6.
3Chie{ works and olhers, vol. 3, 1233.
154
kindles free spirits to imitation, the former will kindle such spirits to avoid
and get rid of present abuses."!
In fact, at one point in the Discourses, Machiavelli's admiration for the
stoic Roman ideal of integrity appears to lead him to differ again from his
doctrine of adaption to Fortune, but in this case without the violence of his
more aggressive conception of manhood and manliness. He draws from Livy
as follows:
Machiavelli clearly at times tries to live up to this Ideal in his own life,
<lnd is almost inexpressibly proud of his profoundly unfox-like constancy and
coùrage. Hence, in another of his letters to Vettori, written shortly after the
end of his ordeal of torture and imprisonment, Machiavelli says, "1 want you
to get this pleasure from my distresses, namely, that 1 have borne them so
bravely that 1 love myself for it and feel that 1 am stronger than you
believed."3 Nor is the expression of such a sentiment an entirely isolated
1Ibid.
2The Discourses, 488. In his recent book, Sebastian de Grazia notes Machiavelli's stoic
alternative to the strategy of continuai adaptation. After having remarkcd on Machiavelli's
skepticism with respect to thatlatter strategy, de Grazia writcs: "Depressing though this
seems, it gives NiccoIb a ray of hopc and enabIes him to urge a more dignified and less acrobatie
pose for men, A man should confront fortune with dry-<!yed stoie virtue, and win with glory or
lose without shame." Machiavelli in HeU (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) 210.
3Letter #119. In another letter to this same friend with whom Machiavelli œlebratcd their
shared changeabiIity, he offers himself as a modeI of honesty and constancy: "Of my honcsty
there should he no doubt, bccause having always preservcd my honesty, 1 shaH hardly now
155
phenomenon; as scholars have long noted, even in his conduct toward the
(. Medici, whose patronage he 50 ardently sought, Machiavelli did not accept
the role of shameless sycophant. 1 Thus, for example, in a previously
mentioned letter to Guicciardini lamenting the latter's absence and thus
inability to advise him on the likelihood of offending the Medici with
unflattering accounts in his His/ory, Machiavelli condudes, "1 shall keep on
taking counsel with myself and shall try to act in such a way that, since 1 tell
the truth, nobody will be able to complain."2
Indeed, in view of the critical treatment of Medici ancestors--and
despite considerable softening in the final draft--Machiavelli's English
translator, Alan Gilbert, comments, "That even a weakened form of this
stood in the manuscript put in the hands of Giulio de'Medici, Pope Clement
VII, is astonishing enough, a ctribute to Machiavelli's desire to write a history
that would inspire all lovers of the common good of man in whatever age or
nation."3 All of this is of course not to say that in the end Machiavelli was
really honest, benevolent, and doser to a stoic sage than to an advocate of
trickery and dissimulation. He was both in sorne ways attracted to, and
repulsed by, dissimulation; attracled to, and repulsed by, honesty. Ultimately,
he was caught between different and sometimes even conflicting notions of
dignity and achievement, one element of which involved the desire to
maintain a sense of himself and his integrity, despite difficult circumstances.
leam to break it; he who has bœn honr-st and good for forty-thrcc years, as 1 have, cannot
change his nature" (Leller #137). Il is of course true that Machiavelli makes this statement in
the context of sccking employment with the new Mcdici govemment, which might naturally
dispose him to stress such qualities as honesty and constancy; but it secms to me thatthere is
more to it than that.
1For instance, J.R. Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance ltaly (London: The English
Universilics Press, 1961) 134.
2Leller #186. l-~
3Chief works and others, vol. 3, 1028.
156
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS
lHoward Norland, "The Role of Drama in Er:l~mus' Lîlerary Thoughl," Acta Conventus Neo-
o Latini Bononiensis, ed. Richard Schoek <Binghàmplon, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texls
and Sludies, 1985) 554. jl
/;:Y
;Y
'1\
157
his earliest youth he was attracted to works of drama; his friend and first
biographer, Beatus Rhenanus, wrote that as a child Erasmus "memorized all
of Terence."1 Late in life Erasmus published an edition of Terence, following
his work on the plays of Plautus, Seneca and Euripides, as well as his
translations of Ludan's satirie dialogues.
One key aspect of Erasmus' attraction to the theatrieal tradition, which
in turn he helped to revive, is pedagogie and moral. He thus lambasts the
critics of the pagan classieal theater, saying, "these fools, these goats, who ...
are at once ignorant and malicious, fail to perceive how much moral
goodness exists in Terence's plays, how much exhortation to shape one's
life. "2 According to Erasmus, the antics of theatrieal characters are depieted
"soc,that we may first see what is seemly or unseemly in human behavior and
then distribute affection or rebuke accordingly."3 As an example of such
moral pedagogy, he spedfieally draws our attention to "that obnoxious
species" of flatterers--of which Terence provides us with "their very type,
Gnatho, the founder of their profession."4
Indeed, these characters, especially Gnatho, are often alluded to in
Erasmus' writing. For instance, he begins a letter to his friend Cornelis
q~rard by saying "if in my letters you come upon a rather flattering phrase,
.~.:::-"
you are to assign it not to the wiles of a Gnatho but to true affection."s And in
this same letter Erasmus goes on to showthat the characters from plays may
not only represent ethieal principles, they may also demonstrate the conflicts
'.
c 4Ibid.
5Ibid,45.
158
which arise between these principles and the sometimes competing demands
of the social world:
lIbid, 46-7.
2Adages, trans. Margaret Mann Philips, annotatcd R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto: Toronto
University Press, 1982) 131, vol. 31 of CWE.
3Ibid.
159
public somehow or other, otherwise they will be slow-clapped and hissed off
the stage."l
While it might seem that the theatrical basis of the expression--people
acting so as to conform to others' tastes and opinions rather than their own--
would give it a pejorative sense, curiously, for Erasmus this is not the case. In
the discussion of this adage he concludes that "To serve the time is indeed the
part of the wise man, as Phocylides warns us: 'Remember, always wary, to
serve the times; blow not once against the wind."'2 And as Erasmus notes,
while this last saying expresses the same idea as his theatrieal dictum, it
derives from the world of sailors, "who once they have set out must be tossed
at the will of winds and tides; it would be vain for them to strive to put up a
resistance."3
The adage Servire scenae introduces a series of other adages al!
Ji expressing roughly the same idea as the theatrieal metaphor, although
( making use of different imagery--but also offering different, or even
apparently conflicting, ethieal implications. For instance there is Uti foro--
"To take the market as you find it"; Erasmus cites Donatus as explaining that
this expression is taken from merchants "who do not set a priee for what they
have brought before they reach the place of sale, but after finding out the
current market priee~:~hey decide whether or not to sel! their wares."4 Despite
the ethical!y questionable flavor of the origin of this expression, Erasmus'
commentary depicts the conveyed message of opportunistic adaptability in an
essential!y favorable light. But there is also Magis varius quam hydra--"As
variable as the hydra"--spo.(~s·')(~"the artful and wily," and "crafty people,
" -. .
'.'.--
lIbid, 131-2.
2Ibid,132.
"('
,~- '.-
..
- 31bid.
41bid.
160
variable as the hydra"--spoken of "the artful and wily," and "crafty people,
clever at àissimulation, or people who are not consistent with themselves."l
.,"
c Disciplines of Critidsm, cd. Peter Dcmelz, et al (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)
437-75.
162
lIbid.
2Ibid, 134-5; as we shall see, Erasmus will make repcatcd use of Paul as an illustration of
commendable decorum. Erasmus explains that Paul makes "frcquent and sudden change of
masks, while he considers now the )ews, now the gentiles, now both; at one point he assumes
the role of a weak man, at another of a strong; sometimcs that of a gqdly man, sometimcs of an
ungodly man." Paraphrases on Romans and Galafians, cd. Robert D. Sider, trans. John B. Payne,
Albert Rabil, )r., and Warren S. Sm~th (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1974) 13, vol. 42 of
CWE.
3Adage;) vol. 31 of CWE, 134.
165
:'
167
IOn Erasmus' reaction 10 Italian worldliness, sec James Tracy, Erasmus: the growth of a mind
(Geneva: Librairie Droz. 1972) 83.120-1.
2Margarel Mann Phillips. The "Adages" of Erasmus (Cambridge: CUP,1964) 209.
o 3[bid. .
4lbid, 210-11; the rcference 10 "feasting" is a response on Erasmus' parI 10 rcmarks made by his
c hosls in Italy conœming his considerable appetile-Erasmus preferrcd 10 allribule Ihis "flaw"
10 his nationalily ralher than 10 his individual personality.
168
into hot in the same breath; and he speaks what is far from
being in his heart.1
But in contrast, she says, "Whatever a fool has in his heart shows itself
in his expression and speech."2 Consequently, Folly attributes to herself this
transparent honesty and simple integrity: "1 have no use for cosmetics. 1 do
not belie the interior of my heart by my outward appearance. 1 am always
myself ...."3 The resemblance between Erasmus' depiction of Foll~"s simple
honesty and that which he daims for himself is both striking and consistent.
For instance, in an autobiographical sketch written fairly late in life, Erasmus
again emphasizes his innocence and lack of guile:
1ndeed, there is sorne evidence to support his daim that from the time
of his youth he showed a particularly acute sensitivity to the matter of
openness and sincerity. Among his earliest extant letters are several pleading
with, even badgering, his friend Servatius Rogerus to express himself
"sincerely, not deceptively, as you were wont to do."s Almost incessantly he
prods Rogerus, asking him "what is more alien to true friendship than
concealing anything from a·friend ... 7" and charging hi~ to "speak out
plainly, for nothing, 1 think,is more irritating than coyness."6
The eyes of God look, not at palpable things but at the hidden;
neither does He judge according to what the eyes see nor rebuke
according to what the ears hear. The foolish virgins, who were
outwardly comely but inwardly empty, He did nota95nowledge.
He did not kr.ow· those who, with their lips, saY·;'Lord;Lord."l 1/
- rIl
It
For Erasmus, as for Thomas à Kempis and other spiritual"'--
Fath~rs of the
c IThe Enchiridion of Erasmus, lrans. Raymond Himelick (Glousler, Mass.: Peler Smith, 1970)
125.
'-'
170
in the leading of a Christian life. Erasmus takes this attitude so far as to treat
the outer forms and rituals of the faith as essentially concessions to the
spiritually immature, and accords them a general indifference:
1lbid,l1l.
2lbid, 160. The notion that ceremonies and the outward trappings of religion were inesscntial,
and could therefore he made to accommodate to one's circumstances is sometimcs known as
"spiritualism," and was an important strand of 16th and 17th century "Nicodemism"-the name
given to th~ belief that il was permissable to dissimulate one's religious views in the face of
persecution. See Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Confonnity in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, ,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990) and George H.
Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962).
.J ~,
"
171
/i
-lI-b-id-,-l-6Q--l;-A-k-e-y-i-n-fl.-::«';;;;-; the Enchiridion was Jean Vitrier, the warden of the Franciscan
monastcry at St Omer.:~VJtrier was very probably the single person most highly esteemed by
Erasmus, and twenty years~,fter wriling the Enchiridion, Erasmus paid homage to the deceased
Franciscan by painting a verl)al portrait of his exemplary Chrislian life. Vitrier is described
as atlaching very litlle importance to "ceremonies; and as disdaining emply rituals. But for
Erasmus what most commanded respect in Vitrier was his moral integrily; he did notseek out
impiety and injustice to pronounce upon, but when they presented thernselves, he did not
hesitate to oppose them. Sc, as Erasmus tells it, when Pope Alexander and the local bishop
collaborated in a scheme 10 increase their own profit, Vitrier opposed lhem only indirectly, for
instance, commenling on the neglect of the poor. But when he was approached with a bribe 10
keep him from making even these crilicisms, "as though struck by divine inspiration, he cried:
'Depart from me, ye workers of simony, and take,~'~urmoney with you! Do you think 1 am the
man to suppress the truth of the Gospel for money? The truth, may stand in lhe way of your
gains, but 1mustlhink more of souls than of your profits,''' Correspondence, trans R. A. B.
Mynors, annotated P. G. Bietenholz (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1988) 229, vol. 8 of
CWf. Hence if long bcfore the controversy of the Reformation broke out Erasmus was
counselling moderalion, at a time when moderation-and assuring the Church of his continued
loyalty-had become primary objectives, he could still pay tribute 10 an example of personal
integrity in conflict with church authority.
172
... l have come to believe of you that you combine piety with
integrity of character, and do not in any respect hide behind a
10n this and other aspects of Erasmus' early life sec, Alberl Hyma, The Youlh of Erasmus (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1930); and Huizinga, chaps. 1 and 2>"\.
2Correspondence, vol. 1 of CWE, 84. '
3lbid,85; a few years laler Erasmus was 10 play Gaguin with one of his own correspondenls,
asking him 10 "eliminale such attractive exaggerations from your correspondence, and leave
slraighlforward affection 10 lalk its own language" Ibid, 290.
4Ibid,85.
F,
"i,r
173
'~')f Vives, who is thought to have spent time in debtors' prison when
llbid,85-7.
20n Erasmus' frequently lamented poverty, S':!<! tltlizinga, 80-1; 91, and passim. Typical of ti~~é
complaints on this count is the following to More, written by Erasmus when weil into mid-life:
"5uch, my dear More, is my destïny. But 1 wil\ play my part in this last act. ACter that, 1 am
almost determincd to make music to myself and the Muscs, as my age and state of health,
which goes downhil\ day by day, almost demanâ. 5uch is the tyranny here of worthless
fellcws in disguisc. None here makes any money exccpt ir.n-keepcrs, lawyers, and tax-
gatherers" Co"espondence, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. P. S. Thomson, annotated P. G.
( Biel,mholz ('I1Îl'(Îrito:,Toronto University Press, 1979) 327, vol. 5 of CWE. Dcspite these
complaints, jean Hoyoux shows that wc must undcrstand Erasmus' "poverty" in relati~e terms;
174
assistance too that will enable us to be successful in appealing for quite a large
(: benefaction. "1
Then Batt is to address his Lady in "conciliatory terms, apologizing for
my diffidence as though it had been impossible for me, because of my
disposition, to confess my poverty to her directly."2 Finally, Batt is to "explain
to her how much greater is the glory she can acquire from me, by my literary
works, than from the other theologians in her patronage"3, and that "such a
one as 1 am is scarcelytr',)e found in many generations-unless you are 50
excessively nice in yo ...fscruples that your conscience forbids you to employa
few small fibs in the, interest of a friend!"4
Batt manages to extract small sums of money for his friend, but âlso
insists that Erasmus must do his part by himselfwriting flattering letters to a
.-J ....
lIbid,301.
.'-"
2lbid. '.'.
3lbid.
4Ibid,302.
for praise from his young subject's still short and uneventfullife into a
rhetorical victory:
Erasmus goes even further than is typical of this genre ta mix his
flattery with daims of complete honesty. Hence he begins his work by
establishing the "social preconditions" of his sincerity; in former times
orations were "extorted by fear, imposed by auttority, or demanded by general
custom."2 For this reason, they "could not quite ring true."3 In contrast,
Erasmus emphasizes his own freedom ta give praise or withhold it as the
guarantee of his sincerity: "a speech of cungratulation can never seem so
sincere or so free from artificial acclamation as when thcre is no necessity ta
make it."4
Erasmus fol1ows thi~·" argument with the most standard of rhetorical
devices--he apologizes for nis "unpolished" prose, hoping that it will be
accepted as the essential1y unretou:hed and spontaneous production of his
1Panegyricus, trans. and annotatcd R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto: Toronto UnivcrsilyPrcss, 1986) 67,
vol. 27 of CWE. Erasmus would latcr wrilc a fricnd that in thc crcation of this work "thrcc
essenlial ingrcdicnts wcrc missing: subjcct-mallcr, cmotion, and lime." Correspondence, vol. 2
of CWE, 83.
2Panegyricus, 9.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
:'
177
heart-felt sentiments: "1 would not deny that my tribute may seem somewhat
hastily put together, 50 long as what it lacks in graceful expression it gains in
frankness and honesty; for 1 would prefer to risk appearing ungraceful in
your eyes than insincere in everyone else's, if 1 must choose between the
twO."l
l:bid. "
2Correspondence, vol. 2 of CWE, 81. <::"
3Ibid.> -';'. .__ . ç
4lbid. This dcfcnsc of pancg§i;c oralory is conv~~ti~~1. Sec O. B. Hardison, The Enduring
Monument.
/'>~:::-::::~,
~.~~~~/ '~
178
grounds throughout his life. 1 In fact, this argument recaUs the previously
mentioned discussion of "good flattery" which Erasmus places in FoUy's
mouth, sorne six years after the Panegyricus. According to FoUy, her brand of
flattery "stems from a certain kindness and candor of mind, and it approaches
virtue more readily than does asperity."2 This flattery "raises the dejected
spirit, it soothes those who are in mourning, mollifies the angry:' and as
weil, "cautions and instructs princes in such a way so as not to offend them.3
However, in his letter to Desmarez, Erasmus does not distinguish
between types of "flattery," but simply maintains that the Panegyricus should
not be considered as such at aIl. l,'fact, here he specificaUy says that his
intention was "to aim at anything but flattery," since, "1 have always been so
averse to this vice that 1 could not flatter anyone if 1 would, nor would 1 if 1
could."4
But in writing to John Colet, Erasmus spoke of the Panegyricus
somewhat differently. Colet was perhaps second only to Jean VitrierS in
Erasmus' estimation; his example of moral courage--for instance in
preaching a sermon in praise of peace to the royal court just as Henry was
preparing to go to war--appears to have especiaUy impressed Erasmus."
/
lAs he docs in the letler of dedication he wrote for the published version. Panegyricus, 7.
Moreover, modem day scholars have tended to agrœ with Erasmus, that within the context of
this genre, his praise was tempered with didacticism, sel' George Faludy, Erasmus (N.Y.: Stein
& Day, 1970) 85,97.
2Folly, 133.
3Ibid.
4Correspondence, vol. 2 of CWE, 83; In his The Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus goes so
far in his condemnation of flatlery as to propose the death penalty for flatlering a prince, in
order to discourage this practice. He admits that "the novelty of the idea may prevent ils
acceptance," but argues that "il might be possible to construct an example artificially by
finding a man who has already bœn convicted of sorne other capital offenœ and having it
advertised that he was executed for contaminating the mind of the future prince with the
plague of flatlery." The Education of a Christian Prince, trans. and annotated Neil Cher.hire
and Michael J. Heath (Toronto: Toro)lto University Press, 1986) 246, vol. 27 of CWE. ',\
5See above, 171 nt. #1.
6See James Tracy, The Poli/ics of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978) 33.
179
1Huizinga, 81.
2Ibid,87.
3Corresponde/iêe, vol. 1 of CWE. 193.
180
likened as God's foremost creatures, yet the fact is that no group of rrlen is
more sordid, more obsequious, more idiotie, or more contemptible than this
set of men."2 FoUy goes on to criticize courtiers for their uselessness and
laziness. But there are sorne arts to which they apply themselves and in
whieh they take satisfaction:
They are contented with being able to speak of the king as "our
master"; in knowing how to return a compliment in three
words; in knowing on which occasion to use the titles of "Your
Grace," "Your Lordship," imd "Your Majesty"; in not knowing
shame; and in having mastered the art of flattery with
exceptional success. For these are the skills that the nobleman
and courtier take a great deal of pride in. 3
1A Comp/aint of Peace Spurned and Rejected by the Who/e Wor/d, trans. and annolated Betty
Radiee (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1986) 297, vol. 27 of CWE. Reference from The
Politics of-Erasmus, 67. .
2Folly, 155.
3JUd.
4Correspondence, vol. 8 of CWE, 61.
SCorrespont!ence, vol. 6 of CWE, '63.
181
and learning. Similarly, he frequently states this priority of values in his own
case, as for instance in the previously mentioned autobiographical profile,
where he says of himself, "For high office and for wealth he had a permanent
contempt, and thought nothing more precious than leisure and liberty."l
Elsewhere he maintains that, "No man on earth refrains from co1\tact with
the court more readily than 1."2
'By the time Erasmus penned this latter disclaimer he was in his early
fifties, certain legal restrictions--stemming from the conditions of his birth--
had been lifted, allowing him to accept prebend8, and in general he enjoyed a
more regular income. However he was still highly sensitive to the subject of
his past procurements. Consequently, when asked for a càtalogue of rus
works, Erasmus included a long and detailed account of his dedications and
the money hereceived thereby. ~}'.hese gifts are generally described as
// '
and its humiliating remedies, he never escaped From being beset with
."cfrcumstances which challenged both hisdiplomacy and integrity. Shortly
! L_,
after Lu~her posted his 95 theses, both sides of the growing controversy began
to criticize Erasmus for his reluctance to speak out, while as Erasmus wrote to
Luther in 1519, he preferred to "keep myself uncommitted, so far as 1 can, in
hopes of being able to do more for the revival of good literature."1 ln this
letter to the fiery German monk, Erasmus goes on to counsel him that "one
gets further by courtesy and moderation than by clamour."2
For his part, Erasmus generally refused comment on the substance of
Luther's writings, giving as a pretext that he had not had the time to read
them with any care; until virtually forced to oppose Luther publicly in 1524,
he would criticize only Luther's inflam111 atory "freedom of invective."3 ln
1521 Erasmus wrote a friend of his and sympathizer of Luther's, Justus Jonas,
lamenting the contemporary corruption of the Church, and explaining that
for this reason, many--including himself--were at first hopeful when Luther
appeared on the scene. But Luther's style ar:.d temperament soon made
Erasmus fearful (-'he "danger of remedies wrongly applied making our
That spirit of Christ in the Gos})els has a wisdom of its own, and
its own courtesy and meekness. That is how Christ attuned
himself to'the feelings of the Jews. He says one thing to the
multitudes, who are somewhat thick-witted, and another to his
disciples; and even so he has to bear with them for a long time
while he gradually brings them to understand the celestial /'
philosophy. With this in mind he bids his followers preach first
llbid.
2Ibid,210.
3Ibid,203.
4Ibid,204. Erasmus' use of Augustine as an example of holy cunning is both contentious and
strategie. The argument for Christian dissimulation draws upon the teachings of certain
Church Falhers, Saint Jerome in particular. Jerome broaches this subjcct in discussing Galatioris .
2:11-14 in which Paul crilicizes Peter for pretending to acceptthe Jewish law while in the
company of Jews. According to Jerome ~he entire scene is a charade enacted by the two apostles
in order 10 educale both Jewish and Gentile converts, and he·therefore takes the incident as
justifying the use of dcceil for bcncvolent purposes. AugustL1e, on the other hand, entirely
rejccted this inlerpretation, as well as the legitimacy of any cl~ception, leading to a ralher
acrimonious disagrcement bctween the two men. See The Correspondence (349-419) Between
Jerome and Augustine of Hippo, trans. and cd. Caroline White (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellèn
Press, 1990) Jerome's Epistle 112 and Augustine's Epislles 28,40, and 82. On this debate and ils
subsequenl history including ils influence on Erasmus and Luther, see Zagorin, Ways Of Lying,
chap.1.
184
Erasmus. He had little taste for conflict and controversy, especially of the
public variety, and as he had first told Luther, his primary interests were
scholarly and literary. He reiterated this attitude in another letter to Jonas,
written a year before the one quoted above, saying: "My heart is set on the
humanities, it is set on truth as truth is found in the Gospel; and there 1 will
pursue it in silence, if 1 may not do so openly.2
But in the later letter, a politic silence is presented as almost a Christian
duty; when the practical requirements of improving the condition of religion
dictate, keeping silence--even silence about Christ-ois Sl<en as a teaching from
the holy exemplar. Hence Erasmus concludes that, "A Christian, 1 admit,
ought to be free of all pretence; but even so an occasion sometimes offers
itself when it is right for truth to remain unspoken."3 Unfortunately for
Erasmus' friend Thomas More, silence was not always capable of satisfying
the com?eting demandÇof prudence and integrity.
IIbid,203.
2Ibid,83.
3Ibid,205. The issue of unspoken lruth also recurs in "On Free Will"; in fact, as Remer and
Kahn note, the real controversy is less about free will--about which Erasmus and Luther
Iargely agree-and more about "prudence." Hence Erasmus returns 10 Paul's distinction between
the permissable and the expedient, and continues, "The lruth may be spoken but it does not
serve everyone at an times and under an circumstances" (11). Luther opposes this view of Paul,
maintaining that, "On the contrary, he would have thc,trulh spokcn cverywherc, at an times,
and in every way,"ând suggcsts that such prudence mighfl:,ring one a cardinal's hat "together
with an the revenues belonging to il," but has nothing to do wilh Christian doctrine. "The
Bondage o~ the Will," Discourse on Free Will, 109-10. 'C-
,;Y
,-
:t'1
,-
J.:
-,.:..:
185
VI
THOMAS MORE
The friendship between Erasmus and More is one of the best known
relationships of the Renaissance. Theil' mutual admiration is expressed in
letters both to each other and to others. Hence, on the pretext of a request .
From Ulrich von Hutten, Erasmus wrote a rather glowing portrait of his
English friend. Among the qualities which Erasmus singles out is More's
particular sociability.Eras!J1Jls says that ail men are charmed by More, for
"such is the skill with which he adapts himself to the mood of anyone."l
Erasmus l'epeats this compliment in his Preface to The Praise of Fol/y, saying
"because of your incredibly affable and easy ways you can play the man of ail
"
186
hours with all men, and enjoy doing 50 (ita pro incredibili mon/III Sl/lHtitate
......
facilitatque cum onmibus omnium horarum hominem agere, et potes et
gaudes)."l
The theatricallanguage of Erasmus' latter comment points to a central
aspect of More's personality.2 Ever since the writing of More's first biography
by his son-in-Iaw, William Roper, interpreters of More have retold Roper's
account of how More, while still a youth serving in Cardinal Morton's
household, would "at Christmastide suddenly sometimes step in among the
players, and never studying for the matter, make a part of his own there
presently among them, which made the lookers-on more sport than aU the
players beside."3
But there is also a more ominous side to what theatrical adaptability
meant to More. As Richard Marius notes, More's History of King Richard III,
"is the first work in Western literature with a dissembling hypocrite as the
major protagonist."4 And under Richard's dissembled appearance of
benevolence lies "evil." Evil is a part of More's moral universe in a way that
it is not for either Machiavelli or Erasmus. However, like them, More
displays a complex moral ambivalence towards the skills of an actor deployed
in social circumstances--especiaUy when those circumstances are
characterized by inequalities of power. In A Dialogue of Comfort Against
Tribulation, which More wrote during the last months of his life while a
1Praise of Folly, trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (N.Y.: Modem Library, 1941) 2. Quoted in
Greenblatt, Re1laissance Self-Fashioning, 32. Original in Moriae Encomillln, 67-8.
2Greenblatt employs these two passages from Erasmus, among othersfrom other sources, in
demonstrating More's theatricalself-fashioning. See Renaissance Self-Fashioning, chap 1.
More's theatricality is also discus,ed in Arthur Kincaid, "The Dramatiê Structure of Sir
Thomas More's History of King Richard III," Essential Articles for the stl/dy of Thomas More,
ed. R. S. Sylvester and G. P. Marc'hadour (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1977) 375-87.
3William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More, in Ann Manning,The HOl/schold of Sir Thomas
More iliith Roper's Life of More (N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920) 2. .
4Richard Marius,Thomas More (ï"\i.:Y.: Random House, 1984) 119-20.
187
lA Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, 00. Louis Marlz and Frank Manley (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1976) 213, vol. 12 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (hereafter
CWM).
2Ibid,214.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
188
The story itself involves the "selfe same prelate" who had asked his
guests to speak their minds concerning his orationi in fhis case he asked a
learned friend to tell "the very trouth" about a treaty he had himself devised.
Consequently, the friend took him in his word:
lIbid, 218.
2Ibid.
3Wopia, ed. J. H. Hexter and Edward Surtz, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965) 55, vol.
in,
~u
4ofCWM.
4Ibid.
190
than one thousand pounds of gold in his coffers. Because of fuis res triction,
( ',-
,-
he has liule reason to interfere in the lives of his citizens or to commit
injustices. ButHythloday condudes, "if 1 tried to obtrude these and like ideas
on men strongly inclinedto the opposite way of thinking, to what deaf ears
shouhi 1 tell the tale!"l To this Morus answers, "Deaf indeed, and without a
doubt ... Neither, to tell the truth, do 1 think that such ideas should be thrust
on people, or such advice given, asyou are positive will never be listened
to."2 However, Morus doesnot, endcihere--he posits an alternative, a different
"philosgphy":
.~\,
Sorne scholars have noted that the conflict represented here between
an "academic philosophy which thinks that everything is suitable to every
place,"l and a more adaptable approach which accepts and even embraces the
theatricality of its world corresponds to the Renaissance debate between
philosophy and rhetoric discussed earlier. The position of Hythloday is thus
identified with the non-context·.J,allearning of the scholastics, but especially
with the Platonism which spread from Ficino's circle in Florence to
humanists across Europe at the end of the 15th century.2 Hence Hythloday
invokes Plato by name as showing that "philosophers are right in abstaining
from administration of the commonwealth."3 In contrast, Morus' position
draws on that theatrical rhetorical tradition going back to Cicero, and as
Quentin Skinner observes, Morus very closely reproduces the imagery and
wording of Cicero's De officiis.4 -- -
1Ibid,99.
2George Logan also finds support for Hythloday's position in sorne Roman stoic thought-
especially Seneca. See The Meaning of More's "Ulopia" (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983) 102-3.
3Utopia, 103.
4Quentin Skinner, "Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the Language of Renaissance Humanism,"
The Languages of Po/itica/ Theory in Ear/y-Modem Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987) 131.
5Utopia, 55.
6Ibid.
(.
192
1Ibid,57.
2Dialogue between Reginald Pole & Thomas LlIpset, 21-22. Skinner discusses the Renaissance
debate over otium and negotillln as it pertains to Wopia and the Dialogue between Reginald
Pole & Thomas LlIpset. in "Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the Language of Renaissance
Humanism," 125-8. .
3Ibid,26.
( ".
.. ~
4lbid .
193
This is net the case in Utopia. By virtue of the Pla tonie paradox that
only those who have no wish to rule are fit to do 50, Morus' views the fact
that Hythloday is "desirous neither of riches nor of power"! as oniy further
"
demonstrating his suitability for a position of authority--from which one may
infer a virtual duty to seek such a position. At this point the real argument
on behalf of royal service begins; there is no more talk of Hythloday's interest
or prosperity--only of duty. Thus More, who always claimed that his public
life was a distraction from his real desire for study and contempla~ion, has
However, ~;:en once the basis of the argument has been defined in
terms of doing vfhaf'ïs worthy of a "generous and truly philosophie spirit,"
Hythloday is notwitJ1out defense. Morus' advocacy of politieal involvement
is inextricably bO\lnd up with his theatrical philosophia ciuilior--to whieh
Hythloday objects as a matter of personal principle: "To speak falsehoods, for
ail l know, may be the part of a philosopher, but it is certainly mt for me."~
1Utopia, 57.
o 2Ibid.
3lbid, 101.
194
But long before the subject oH10rus' "practical philosophy" and the
contrasting rigid commitment to literaI truth is raised, the central question of
this "Dialogue of Counsel" ha!" already been set: can the enlightened royal
advisor realistically hope to have any beneficial effect upon the
administration he serves? It is primarily on this utilitarian consideration
that the matter of public "duty" t....ms. From nearly the outset of the dialogue
Hythloday maintains that there is no possibility of reforming the present
politiéal conditions, and this for two reasons. First, because:kings are
é'
virtuaIly a~t.icted to the pursuit of territorial aggrandizemellt and warfare, to
~:I -
the neglect of other concerns. And second, men at court are receptive only to
the egos of their superiors.
.-~~:..--.::::>'--.........
libido
,.""
195
when suggested by me, but especially the part relating to vagrants because this
was the Cardinal's addition."1 Thus Hythloday conc1udes this story by telling
Morus, "From this reaction you may judge what little regard courtiers would
pay to me and my advice."2
According to Hythloday, court is a scene of constant competition,
where ail seek to out-do one another in appearing to serve the royal interest,
regardless of justice and morality--which are thereby banished, except in
name. Hence he presciently describes the relationship of the king's
counsellors to their master's affairs: "There will be no cause of his so patently
unjust in which one of them will not, either from a desire to contradict or
from shame at repeating another's view or to curry favor, find sorne loophole
whereby the law can be perverted . .. a prete"t can never be wanling for
deciding on the king's side."3 Moreover, in an equally prescient passage,
Hythlodayargues that this situation can not be mitigated by Morus'.c
"practical" philosophy:
'-:-
1Ibid,81.
2Ibid,85.
3Ibid,93.
4lbid, 102-3.
196
c integrity intact. This is essentia1ly where the debate ends concerning whether
oinot one should put oneself at the disposai of a prince. However, at the
conclusion of Book II, Morus is shown to be not entirely won over by a1l of
Hythloday's arguments. He finishes by saying, "though in other respects he is
a man of the most.undoubted learning as we1l as of the greatest knowledge of
human affairs, 1 cannot agree with a1l that he said."l Furthermore, by giving
this character the name Hythloday--meaning in Greek "we1l-!earned in
nonsense"--More appears to have meant to distance himself from sorne of
the conclusions of his protagonist. 2
Scholars have held, and continue to hold, differing views a~ to the
meaning of this dialogue and why it was written, coming as it did only a short
.\ime before More reversed a declaration to Erasmus that he would continue
'to refuse a place at co'~rt, and accepted an office from Henry VIII. Sorne have
argued that the point oftJi.~ dialogue was to advance Morus' arguments on
,/i
"'behalf of royal ser~ice; others claim that the moral of the dialogue is
,r,. c; ':::: "
1lbid, 245.
20n the other hand, the Greek meaning of "morus:' which Erasmus playcd upon in The Praise
of Fol/y, should not be forgotlen.
3J. H. Hexter argues that Hythloday essenlial1y speaks for More at the lime of wriling. Sec
Hexter, More's Utopia: The Biograp/lY of an Idea (N.Y.: Harper & Row Publishers, 1952) 99-
155. Hexter later defends a more ambiguous interpretalion of the dialogue in 'Thomas More
and the Problem of Counsel:' Qllillcentennia/ Essays on St. Thomas More, cd. Michael Moore
(Boone, N. Carolina: Apalachian Slate University, 1978) 55-66: Brendan Bradshaw argues
c lhal it is Morus who speaks for More. Sec his "More on Utopia:' Historica/ !Olmla/ 24 (1981) 1-
27, also Skinner, "Sir Thomas Mere's Utopia and the Language of Renaissance Humanism."
197
argument possible for either side of one question.! More, like Erasmus,
continued to engage in these essentially pedagogic exercises in adult life 2, and
as a lawyer had been further trained in exploril1g the different sides of any
one case.
In addition, others have noted in Utapia a tendency to shift point of
view or perspective. So while Stephen Greenblatt, on the one hand, and
Warren Wooden and John Wall, on the other, ultimately differ in their
interpretations cf Utapia, they are agreed in associating More's unresolved
rhetorical positions with the perspectival and anamorphic painting of the
Renaissance. 3 The latter authors observe that More is even able to go the
artists one better: "while Renaissance anamorphic painters were able to gi;v" ..
"
two views of a painted object, one of which corrects the distortions in the
other, More. is.able to combine, in Utapia far more perspectives."4 At the very
least there are thé perspectives of Morus, Hythloday, Giles, and the author or
reader--who need not be in complete agreement with any of the former.
Perhaps More's purpose in writing the dialogue was to formula te the
pros and cons of royal service which he was then contemplating in his own
life. Or maybe it was to show those friends such as Erasmus, who might not
1Perlette, "Irresolution as Solution: Rhetoric and the Unresolved Debate in Book 1 "fMore's
Utopia," Texas Siudies in Lileralure and Language 29 (1987) 28-53. Others who have stressed
the rhetorical basis of Book 1 are Andrew Weiner, "Raphael's Eutopia and More's Utopia:
Christian Humanism and the Limits of Reason," Hunting/on Library Quarlerly 39 (1975) 1-32-
although Weiner nonetheless privileges Morus' position; Arthur Kinney, "Rhetoric as Poetic:
Humanist Fiction in the Renaissance," ELH 43 (1976) 418; and especially Joel Altman, The
Tl/ùor Play of Mind, 79-87. For other essays defending the general thesis of deliberate
inconcIusiveness in Utopia, see J. C. Davis, "More, Morton, and the Politics of Accommodation,"
JoumalofSrilish Siudies 9 (1970) 27-49, and David Bevington, "The Dialogue in Utopia: Two
Sides ta the Question," Siudies in Philology 58 (1961) 469-509.
2See More's reply to Lucian's Tyrannicida, 00. C. R. Thompson (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974) 94-127, vol. 3,.part 1 of CWM.
3See Greenblatt, Renaissa~ce Self-Fashioning, chap. 1; Warren Wooden and John N. Wall,
., ''Thomas More and thep.,inter's eye: visual perspective and artistic purpose in More's
Utopiu," Journal of Medieval and RenaissaPlce Siudies 15 (1985) 231-63.
4See Wooden and Wall, 237.
198
approve of his choice, that he had considered and was aware of good and
honorable reasons on both sides of the issue. In any case, More did take a
position as royal counsello~cshortly after writing Book l, although here again
. scholars are divided as to his motivation. According to the orthodox
interpretation--which goes back to Erasmus, Roper, and More himself--he
only reluctantly accepted a position.! However, this thesis has been àrawn
into question by recent "revisionists."2
Whatever the truth of the matter, it is clear that More had a keen sense
of the difficulties which could attend a principled stand at court. In his early
political experiE'nce as a burgess in the parliament under Henry VII, More
"i
.:c.> spearheaded the opposition to a royal request of a large sum of money for the
King's daughter's wedding--apparently resulting in a jail term and a fine for
More's father. 3 According to Roper, and the long tradition which followed
him, More's subsequent political career consisted largely of similar acts of
principled opposition.
For instance, Roper tells of an incident in which Lord Chancellor
Cardinal Wolsey decided to appear before the Commons with great pomp in
10n More's "unwillingness," see his letter ~o John Fisher in St. Thomas More: selected leI/ers,
cd. Elizabeth F. Rogers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961) 94; Erasmus' letter to
Hutten, Co"espo"dellce, vol. 7 of CWE, 18 and 22; and Roper,5-7. Most subsequent scholarship
has followcd this line; among reœnt works sec Yoshinori Suzuki, "Thomas More's View of
Politics as a Profession," Morealla 93 (1987) 29-40 and "Thomas More on Politics as a
Profession," Morealla 97 (1988) 125-32; Bradshaw takes a similar position in his "More on
Utopia."
2.See Marius, who stresses that while More loudly lamented his political involvements, he
nevertheless accepted every opportunity for advancement which presentcd itself. Marius
makes much of Morc's love of attention: "AIways we sec in him the young boy who used to step
in among the players and make a part for himself while the audience applauded. The
yeaming ta please God on the one hand and an audience on the other must have been one of the
causes of the tension in him" (24); sec also William Nelson, " Thomas More, Grammarian and
Orator," PMLA 58 (1943) 347-8; G. R. Elton, 'Thomas More, Couneillor;' St. Thomas More:
Actioll alld COlltemplatioll, 85-122; and Jerry Mermel, "Preparations for a politic Iife: Sir
Thomas More's entry into the king's service;' JOl/rnal of Medieval alld Renaissallce Stl/dies 7
(19m 53-66.
3Roper,4.
199
order to intimidate the members into passing a large and unpopular subsidy.
However, the members refused to speak in the presence of the chancellor,
until More, ihe recently chosen spéaker, excused their silence and argued,
"for thenl to make answer was it neither expedient, nor agreeable with the
ancient liberty of the House."l Forced to accept defeat, Wolsey is reported tri
have toldot"fore, "Would to God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when 1
made you Speaker."2 To which More replied, "Your Grace not offended, so
would 1 too, my Lord."3
But of course, More's true test of moral courage came with the "King's
great matter"--the question of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Catherine
had originally been married to Henry's brother, Arthur, the Prince of Wales,
in the year 1501. However, within a year Arthur had left Catherine a widow,
and Henry in line for the succession. Despite sorne questions concerning
'- ~.
1Ibid, 13.
2Ibid.
3Ibid; il should he noted that according to Richard Marius, Roper and others have eXdggeratcd
the extentto which More opposed the policy of his Lord Chancellor and his king. Even wilh
respect to Henry's fatuous military adventurism Marius writes, "in this as in most other things,
More was unwilling or unable to oppose his king" Thomas More, 59, see also 205-10.
4Leviticus xviii: 16.
200
... that if he could not with his conscience serve him, he was
content to accept his service otherwise, and use the advice of
'':._"
lRoper, 22-3.
2lbid, 23.
(~
•...
,.
3Roper, 34; Chambers noies lhal Roper's accounl is corroboraled by More's letter 10 Cromwell.
See Chambers, 237.
201
1Ibid, 34-5.
2According ta the traditional account which we find in Chambers, More resigned the day after
the Submission of the Clergy; however, Marius argues that it must have been slightly later.
Thomas More, 415-6.
3Chambers, 304.
202
who had already sworn the oath. But, as written, the oath was inacceptable to
More; four days la ter he was conducted to the Tower of London.
From the Tower, More wrote his daughter an account of his refusaI.
He would give no reasons for his refusai, for he would not make any
criticism of the oath, nor of anyone for signing it. He conc1uded the letter,
... as touching the whole oath, l never withdrew any man from
it, nor never advised any to refuse it, nor never put, nor will,
any scruple in any man's head, but leave every man to his own
conscience. And methinketh in good faith that so it good reason
that every man should leave me to mine.!
The discussion of the trial at this point turns to the interpretation and
meaning of silence. The royal attorney answers by saying not only that it is
the part of every loyal subject "without any dissimulation, to confess the
statute to be good, just and lawful," but also that More's silence represents a
"maligning and repining against the statute."2 To this More opposes the
principle of civil law that "silence implies consent," and thus argues that
legally "my silence implieth and importeth rather a ratification and
confirmation than any condemnation of your statute."3 More continues:
For as for that you said, that every good subject is obliged to
answer and confess, ye must understand that, in things touching
conscience, every true and good subject is more bound to have
respect to his world besides, namely, when his conscience is in
such a sort as mine is, that is to say, where the person giveth no
occasion of slander, of tumult and sedition against his Prince, as
it is with me; for l assure you that l have not hitherto to this
hour disclosed and opened my conscience and mind to any
person living in ail the world. 4
Only at the end of the trial, with the outcome already essentially
assured, did More break his silence pertaining to the issue of supremacy,
saying, "seeing that l see ye are determined to condemn me (God knoweth
how) l will now in disc1large of my conscience speak my rnind plainly and
1Harpsfield, 156.
2Ibid.
3lbid, 157.
4Ibid.
205
--- freely touching my Indictment and your Statute, withal."l Finally free to
speak his rnind openly, More adamantly rejected the Act of Supremacy as
"directly oppugnunt to the laws of God and his holy Church, the supreme
government of which, or of any part thereof, may no temporal prince
presume by any law to take upon him as rightfully belonging to the See of
Rome, a spiritual pre-eminence by the mouth of our Saviour himself,
personally present upon the earth, to St Peter and his successors, bishops of
the same see, by special prerogative, granted. "2 In addition he noted the
Church's guarantee of independence in Magna Charta, and the promise of
protection in the king's own coronation oath. Having completed his
argument, More sought to put the entire issue in its proper light, saying, "it is
not for this supremacy so much that ye seek my blood, as for that 1 would not
condescend to the marriage."3 Five days later, on July 6, 1535, More was
executed.
Nearly haH a millennium later, More's story continues to strike us as a
compelling illustration of dignity and moral courage--which of course it is.
But we are likely to misconstrue More and his stand if we do not take into
account the outlook and beliefs which informed his actions. What perhaps
most immediately differentiates More from many more contemporary
objectors of conscience is that More quite literally understood his
circumstance as a struggle with the devil for the state of his immortal soul. In
A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, which More wrote during his
imprisonment, two noble Hungarian kinsmen contemplate their probable
martyrdom as the Turkish army approaches Budapest. The work begins with
1lbid, 161.
2Roper,63.
3Harpsfield, 163.
206
he takes. And as Anthony argues in the Dialogue, "of ail the devilles
temptacions, is this temptacion this persecucion for the fayth, the most
perilouse."l In this case Satan
Oespite the use of the Grand Turk as a thinly veiled allusion to Henry,
the above two passages reveal something of the impersonal character of
More's conflict. The Turk is not the enemy; he is merely the devil's
instrument. Similarly, the "wrestling match" of our tribulations is not
between good and bad men, but between "the people of god" and "the cursid
prowd dampnid sprites." Throughout More's ordeal, he consistently
portrayed his struggle as not with the King and his agents, but as with his
own fears and worldly affections--which for More are seen under the aspect of
diabolical temptation. 3
But if More's fight is not against others, it nonetheless involves placing
himself in opposition, in keeping himself apart from others, including far
more than the immediate circle of the King and his courtiers. The subject of
More's non-conformity is taken up in a long letter from Margaret Roper to
Alice Alington, the daughter of More's second wife.4 Roper tells her step-
1Ibid, 201.
2Ibid,200-1.
30n More's struggle as one against himself, see Marius, 454.
4There is sorne question as to the authorship of this letter: it may have becn written by
Margaret Roper, or else by More himself. Sec OOitors comment on "Margaret Roper to Alice
o Alington," The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, 00. Elizabeth Rogers (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1947) 514.
208
sister how she tried to prevail upon her father to sign the oath by citing the
compliance of virtually ail the highly esteemed men of the realm, and how
she also enlisted in her effort a letter by the Lady Alington. This letter reports
a conversation that Alington had with More's successor as Lord Chancellor,
Thomas Audley, who offered the wisdom of two fables. One of the fables tells
how among three animaIs, a lion, a wolf, and an ass, only the morally
scrupulous ass is ill-judged and experiences hardship. The other fable
recounts the story of certain wise men, who when having learned of an
approaching storm which rendered mad ail those who it wet, retreated to a
cave until the rain stopped. After the storm passed, the wise men emerged
and tried to bring order to the multitude who had lost their wits--finally
giving up in despair and wishing they had joined the others in the rain.l
More was not much impressed by these fables and proposed one of his
own. In this story a man is arrested and brought to trial. But as eleven of the
twelve jurors were northernmen, like the accused, ail expected that he would
soon be r~leased. Thus were the eleven jurors surprised when the twelfth
insisted on deba.ting the issue on its merits, prompting one of them to say to
1/
him, "What good felowe ... where wonnes thou? Be not we aleuen here and
you but ene la alene, and ail we agreed? Whereto shouldst you sticke?" and
urged him to go along and be "gude cumpany."2 But to this the twelfth
answered:
Wold God, good maisters ... that ther lay no more weight "
therby. But now when we shall hence and come before God, and'
that he shall sende you to heauen for doing according to your
conscience, and me to the deuill for doing against mine, in
passing at your request here for good cumpany nowe, by God,
1lbid, 518-20
2lbid, 522-3.
209
To this the daughter responds that the story was not apt: she did not
propose that he go along with the others out of fellowship, but "that the
credence that you may with reason geue to their persons for their aforsayd
qualities, shoulde well moue you to thinke the oth such of it selfe, as euery
man may well swere without peryll of their soule."2 But in fact, by this point
More has already expressed his conviction that it is ultimately according to
his own judgement that he must make his decision. As he puts it, "1 neuer
entend ... to pynne my soule at a nother mans backe, not euen the best man
that 1 know tbis day liuing; for 1 knowe not whither he may happe to cary
it."3
1Ibid,523.
o
:..c_"
21bid,524.
3Ibid,521.
;. 1
210
( inwardly calm and at peace and neither stirred by praise of flatterers nor stung
by the follies of unlearned mockers of learning. "1
But in fact, More's attitudes to others' opinions was a good deal more
complicated than this might suggest. As a nurnber of scholars have noted,
More seems anything but indifferent to his public appearance. William
Roper recounts a conversation with More after one of the initial
interrogations leading up to his imprisonment. Perceiving his father-in-
law's good mood, Roper asked its.cause, and received as an answer, "'In good
faith 1 rejoice, son: (quoth he), 'that 1 had given the devil so fouI a faH, and
that with those Lords 1 had gone so far, as, without great shame, 1 could never
go back again."'2 It has been pointed out that in the world of Wapia, much 'bf
the work of sustaining an ethical order is carried out by employing and
directing the discipline of shame 3; here, in More's own life, he harnesses his
,[ i'
'.:
i,'
l'.
211
opynyons saue onely hym selfe."! In fact it is this very independence which
practically defines heresy; for the desire to be "syngular among the pepie" is
attributed to "pryde"--which is in turn, "as saynt Austyn sayth the very
mother of all heresyes."2 Hence, ü is absolutely central to More's defense that
it is not he who is choosing to be "syngular among the pepie." Virtually
whenever More is confronted with the long list of his countrymen who have
not refused the King's oaths, his response is as it was at his trial:
lA Dialogue Concenzing Heresies, ed. Thomas Lawler (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1966) 360, vol. 6, part l of CWM.
2Ibid, 423; as More was surely aware, the word "heresy" derived from the Greek airesis--"a
choosing"-and thus literally referred to those who differeà, who "chose" a path for
[.....)
~iiJ
.;~
..
themselves.
3Roper,64.
212
1Responsio ad Luthemm, 00. John Headley, trans. Sister Scholastica Mandeville (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1969) 199, vol. 5 of CWM; as the entirety of this passage makes clear,
the certainty of the Church does not abolish the neOO for faith, but rather itself presupposes il.
2Consequentiy, More heaps scom on the Lutheran idea that "each person may mount the
tribunal in his own heart," and he a competent judge of truth. Responsio, 621. With respect to
the social basis of moral trulh, we should recogriize thal il is Lutlier, not More, who represenls
the radical position. As Richard Sylvester observes, the word "conscience" is_'.'etymologically,
and in sixleenlh-eentury usage, a 'kri'lwing with', a full and special awareness of bath oneself
and the world about one." "Roper's)Life of More," Essential Articles, 194.
3A Treatise on the Blessed Body, 00. Gary Haupt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963)
194-5, vol. 13 of CWM.
To this More answers that "there was a difference between those two
cases because that at that time as weIl here as elsewhere through the corps of
Christendom the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which
seemeth not like agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in
other realms."2 ThusMore's defense and justification have much less to do
with the sovereignty of the individual conscience than they do with
conformity to truth, as defined by the shared beliefs of the "corps of
Christendom." It was on the basis of this'truth that More had "heretics"
compelled to speak, and finally executed; it was on the basis of this truth that
he dung to a position which ensured his own execution; and thus it was on
the basis of this truth that he differentiated these two cases. But perhaps for
gôod reason Cromwell was not persuaded: the basis of even More's one
island of certainty was becoming increasingly tenuous. As Greenblatt notes,
VIT
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
BThe way of truth is one and simple; that of private profit and
advantage of one's personal business is double, uneven, and
randorn ... CWhat most becomes a man is what is most a part of
him [Cicero]. BI do not want to deprive deceit (la tromperie) of
its proper place; that would be misunderstanding the world. l
know that it has often served profitably and that it maintains
and feeds most of men's occupations.
Essais III: 1
For sorne of his contemporaries, and many who would come I?ter, the
evidence for Thomas More's certainty and his faithfulness to his convictions
is most powerfuUy given by hb unwavering constancy--even at the point of
death. When Michel de Montaigne began his Essais, he believed that the
confrontation of death was by nature a moment of reckoning and self-
revelation. As Lucretius states in a Hne quoted by Montaigne, it is at the
moment of death thal "AThe mask is snatched away, reality is left."1
Montaigne explains:
Il: 19 (55). Ali English translations of the Essais are from The Complete Essays of Montaigne,
trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943). Superscripls A, B, and C
indicate textuaI "strata": material published before 1588, in 1588, or after 1588, respectively.
Ali quotations in French are taken from the Oeuvres complètes de Montaigne, ed. Albert
216
Thibaudet et Maurice Rat (Bruges: Éditions Gallimards, 1962); page numbers are given in
brackets.
1Ibid.
2Ibid [781.
3I1l: 9 (748).
411: 37 (576). In this case it seems clear and is widely accepted thatthe change in Monlaigne's
thinking constitutes an actual evolution; but for the most part the contradictions or
inconsistencies 1will discuss do not appear to follow any orderly time sequence. In this
conclusion 1differ from a number of authors drawing upon the evolutionary schema first set out
by Fortunat Strowski and Pierre Villey, and more recenlly adapted by Donald Frame,
Monlaiglle's Discovery of Man: The HlIInanizalion of a HlIInanisl (NY: Columbia University
Press,1955). For instance, Joan Lord Hall in her "'To play the man well and duely': Role-
playing in Montaigne and Jacobean Drama," Comparative Literalllre Silldies 22 (1985) 173-185,
suggests that when Montaigne begins the Essais, he is highly critical of aIl "role-playing"
outside the confines of the theater itself, but gradually cornes to terms with the paradox which
pits social role-playing as such against honesty and integrity. In the end, she argues,
Montaigne cornes to lIle conclusion that, provided that it is not actually deceitful, role-playing
may serve as a "vehicle for the genuine realization of the self." A similarly progressive
account is given by Zachary Sayre Schiffman, "Montaigne and the problem of MachiaveIlism,"
(..
~' JOllrnal of Medieval and ReJlaissance Shldies 12 (982) 237-258. 1 believe thatthese
characterizations of Montaigne's thinking on theatrical artifice and the self in terms of phases
217
and transition simp!ify the Essais throughout. However, 1 will very !ittle argue this point--
the attentive reader may note the existence of the contradictions 1discuss within the same
general periods and strata, as weIl as their continuity across periods and strata. For discussions
critical of the evolutionary hypothesis more gcnerally, see FIoyd Gray, "The Unity of
Montaigne in the Essais," Modem umguage Quarterly 22 (1961) 79-86, and R. A. Sayce, The
Essays of Montaigne: A Critical Exploration (London: Wicdcnfeld and Nicolson, 1972) chaps. 1
and 14.
11: 26 (111). Michel Magnien places Montaigne in the rhetorical tradition represented by
Erasmus, in "Un écho de la querelle cicéronienne à la fin du XVIe siLcIe: éloquence ct imitation
dans les Essais," Rhétorique de. Montaigne, ed. Frank Lestringant (paris: Librairie Honoré
Champion,1985) 85-99, also G. Logan, "l'he Relation of Montaigne to Renaissance Humanism,"
Journal of the History of ldeas 36 (1975) 613-32. On various aspects of Iiterary dissimulation
11: 26 (108). Montaigne is confusing here;for he actually condemns those "Cwho want to hide
their borrowings and appropriate them;' but the point scems to be to criticize non-
transformative dissimulation meant merely to deny authorship as opposed to dissimulation
which is part of an actual reworking and integration into one's own judgemcnt.
21: 26 (125). .
311: 17 (483) (621).
4II1: 9 (735) [9401.
219
in dress which we see in our young men--a doak worn like a scarf, the hood
- over one shoulder, a negiected stocking--which shows a pride disdainful of
these foreign adornments and careless of art ... c we do weil to lean a little in
the direction of naturalness and negligence."l Moreover, it is evident that
the paradox posed by this artifice of naturalness is not entirely invisible to
Montaigne himself, who notes, "AI am quite conscious that sometimes 1 let
myself go too far, and that in the effort to avoid art and affectation, 1 fall back
into them in another direction."2
With respect to the idea of "artful naturalness," and the logical and
existential difficulties it poses, Montaigne is very much a man of his time and
culture. However, there are as weil other matters, more particular to
Montaigne, which complicate his project of self-depiction, as weil as his more
general ideal of being true to himself. One such difficulty involves the
notion of human variability. According to Montaigne, "Athere is no existence
that is constant, either of our being or of that of objects"3_-but especially of the
human being, that "Amarvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object."4
11: 26 (127).
211: 17 (484). Despite his endorsement of "negligcnce," and even his admission of somctimes
going "too far," in a later essay Montaigne dcfends himself againstthe charge of affecting his
naturalism: "BThose who commonly contradict what 1 profess, saying that what 1 cali
frankness, simplicity, and naturalness in my conduct is art and subtlety, and rathcr prudcnce
than goodness, artifice than nature, good sense than good luck, do me more honor than they take
away from me. But surely they make my subtlcty tao subtle." III: 1 (603) Frederick Rider
discusses Montaigne's adherance ta the ideal of "negligence" and the contradictions contained
in that ideal. See his The Dialectic of Selfhooti in Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford Univcrsity
Press, 1973) 72-6. And John C. Lapp, "Montaigne's 'negligence' and some lines from Virgil,"
Romanic Review 61 (1970) 167-81. Marcel Tetel notes the often tcnuous character of
Montaigne's distinction between art and nature in Montaigne (Boston: Twayne, 1990) 25-8. Also
A. Micha, "Art et Nature dans les Essais," BuIletil1 de la Societé des Amis de Montaigne 19
(1956) 50-5.
,.·-
311: 12 (455).
O
"'"'.
'"
' 41: 1 (5).
220
perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for
they commonly contradict each other 50 strangely that it seems impossible
that they have come from the same Shop."l ln a late addition to the essay
Montaigne returns to this thought, commenting that our "Csupple variations
and contradictions" have led sorne to postulate the existence within each of
us of two souls--"for such sudden diversity cannot weIl be reconciled with a
simple subject."2 Montaigne himself seems to attribute our variability chiefly
to our interaction with changing circumstances and to the various
perspectives with which we may view ourselves--as he illustrates with his
own example:
1II: 1 (239).
2lbid. (242).
(
.. .
'
".
3Ibid (242).
221
11bid (239).
2lbid (244).
3lbid. Jean Starobinski particularly emphasizes Montaigne's diversity and variability, and
the ways in which these features blunt the polarity of the mask/reality metaphors. Jean
Starobinski, MOlltaiglle ill Motion, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1985) especially 83-88. Aiso Alfred Glauser, MOlltaiglle Paradoxal (Paris: A. G. Nizet,
1972) especially chapter 2.
411I: 13 (823) For Montaigne's somewhat selective but enthusiastic appropriation of Sacrates,
o
~'
see Frederick Kellermann, "Montaigne's Socrates,"Rolllanic Review 45 (1954) 170-7, and "The
Essais and Sacrates," Symposium 10 (1956).
222
1Il: 12 (439).
211: 12 (393).
3Recent scholarsbip has stressed that Montaigne's scepticism cannot he confined to any one
essay or period of time, but can instead he found throughout bis work as a whole, although not
as a consistent "doctrine." See R. A. Sayce, The Essays of Montaigne: A Critical Exploration,
chap. 8, and John Christian Laursen, "Michel de Montaigne and the Poiitics of Skepticism,"
Historical Reflections 16 (1989) 99-133.
223
11: 25 (106) James Supple situates Montaigne's often conflicting views on martial and Iilerary
ideals in the context of the general Renaissance debate on this subject. In addition, he draws
into question the widespread assumption that Montaigne's status as a member of the noblesse de
l'épée was highly tenuous, and his attitude consequently defensive. James Supple, Anns Versus
LeI/ers: The Military and Literary Ideals in the 'Essais' of Montaigne (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984).
21: 25 (102).
31I1: 13 (816).
41: 25 (98). On Montaigne's notion of "wisdom," and its contrast to "knowledge," sec Hugo
o Friedrich, Montaigne, intro. and ed. Philippe Desan, trans. Dawn Eng (Berkeley: University of
Califomia Press, 1991) chap. 7, especially, 302.
224
from its own reots, from the seed of universal reason that is implanted in
every man who is not denatured (desnaturé)."l And whereas elsewhere
Montaigne stresses the impossibility of our acquiring knowledge, here he
1III: 12 (811) [1037]. As the above quotation suggests, the contrast between wisdom and
knowledge exists in the early essays, however, the formulation of the former as deriving from
the "voice of Nature" belongs chiefly to the laler essays. Nonetheless, one should keep in mind
"Nature's speech" in the early essay 'That to Philosophize is to Leam to Die" 1: 20 (64-7),
which Montaigne concludes by stating "ASuch are the good counsels of our mother Nature,"
2III: 13 (821-2).
3III: 13 (821) [321]. Emphasis in translation myaddition. Montaigne continues with this idiom
of '1istening to one's self': BI would rather be an authority on myseIf than on Ccicero ... BLet
us only lislen: we tell ourselves ail we most need." III: 13 (822).
225
une forme maistresse), which struggles against education and against the
tempest of the passions that oppose it."l
For Montaigne, the existence and accessibility of this "ruling pattern"
provides guidance and standards within the individual himself apart from
that "Buncertain and shaky"2 foundation based on public opinion:
Not only does Montaigne remove the authority of judgement from the
public arena, but he also views that arena as irrelevant to what is
fundamental in human reality; social roles and occupations are seen as little
more than stage-play, and should be treated as such:
o 4III: 10 (773-4).
5III: 10 (774).
226
discovered and realized in those actions which are ordinary, even mundane,
and above aIl, private in nature:
BAny man can play his part in the side show and represent a
worthy man on the boards; but to be disciplined within, in his
own bosom, where aIl is permissible, where aIl is concealed-·
that's the point. The next step to that is to be 50 in our own
house, in our ordinary actions, for which we need render
account to no one, where nothing is studied or artificial ... To
win through a breach, to conduct an embassy, to govern a
people, these are dazzling actions. To scold, to laugh to seIl, to
pay, to love, to hate, and to deal pleasantly and justly with our
household and ourselves, not to let go of ourselves, not to be
false to ourselves (ne reldcher point, ne se desmentir poinct),
that is a rarer matter, more~difficult and less noticeable.1
AWe must reserve a back shop aIl our own, entirely free, in
which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and
solitude. Here our ordinary conversation must be between us
and ourselves, and 50 private that no outside association or
communication can find a place ....4
Montaigne's own physical "back shop" is his library, on the third floor
of a tower at his estate, which he says he likes aIl the better for its relative
inaccessibility, and describes as his private kingdom: "CI try to make my
authority over it absolute, and to withdraw this one corner from aIl society,
conjugal, filial, and civil ....Sorry the man, to my mind, who has not in his
own home a place to be aIl by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to
hide!"l For Montaigne, what we truly are is not revealed by our most heroic
or greatest achievements, but rather by our ordinary everyday conduct, and
our contact with that reality by its very nature requires the shade of privacy.
The danger to our solitude, our privacy, and thus ourselves, is the
desire for glory, which Montaigne caIls "ambition." Ambition would appear
to have been everywhere and always a threat to the realization of one's true
being--and therefore a "vice"--but for moderns there is the additional
disadvantage that it appears positively ridiculous: "BAmbition (L'ambition)
is not a vice for little fellows and for undertakings such as ours."2 Montaigne
actually takes comfort in the unattractiveness of this ideal: "BIt pleases me to
see how much baseness and pusillanimity there is in ambition (Il me plaist
de voir combien il y a de lascheté et de la pusillanimité en l'ambition), by
how much abjection and servility it must attain its goal."3 The poor and
inglorious aspect of ambition--especially for us moderns--may then serve to
buttress our resolve to preserve our true and private selves: "BSince we will
not do 50 out of conscience, at least out of ambition let us reject ambition
.(aumoins par ambition refusons l'ambition). Let us disdain this base and
1III: 3 (629).
211I: 10 (782-3) [1(00).
3I11: 12 (796-7) [l0I8). See also III: 3 (629): "CAmbition pays ils servants weil by keeping them
ever on display, Iike a statue in a market place. Great forlI/ne is great slavery [Seneca)."
228
beggarly hunger for renown and honor which makes us grovel for it before
ail sorts of people. "1
Of his own case, and despite claiming to derive from a family
"Dambitious above ail for integrity (ambiteuse de preud 'hommie),"2
Montaigne admits "DI sometimes feel rising in my soul the fumes of certain
temptations to'Ward ambition (aucunes tentationes vers /'ambition)."3
However he continues by maintaining, "but 1 stiffen and hold firm against
them ... 1 am seldom summoned to public affairs, and 1 offer myself to them
justas littie."4
These "public affairs" which jeopardize one's integrity are by
Montaigne associated--not exdusively, but paradigmatically--with the affairs
of princes and their courts. This outlook is natural enough given his quite
representative opinion that for the ambitiously minded, the serving of
princes is "Ba more productive traffic than any other."s However, in
Montaigne's time royal centralization and the power of the court was not yet
developed to the point it would subsequently reach. Consequently, for many
contemporary French nobles, princely service and dependence were still to
sorne extent avoidable--at least for those not smitten with ambition. Hence
Montaigne notes that, particularly
4lbid. See also III: 12 (800): "BI have long been preaching to myself to stick to myself and break
away from outside things; nevertheless 1stiIl keep tuming my eyes ta one side. Inclination, a
favorable word from a great man, a pleasant countenance, lempt me. 1stiIl Iisten without
frowning to the seductions that are held out 10 me to draw me into the market place, and 1
defend myself 50 softly that il looks as if 1would prefer to succumb to them. Nowa spirit 50
indocile needs sorne beatings; and we need to knock together and tighten the hoops, with good
maIlet strokes, on this cask thal is splitting its seams, cracking up, and falling completely to
pieces." -;::~::.
511I: 9 (724).
229
... Bin the provinces remote from the court, lets say Brittany for
example ... a retired and stay-at-home lord ... hears speak of his
master once a year, as if of the king of Persia, and acknowledgès
him only by sorne ancient cousinship of which his secretary
keeps a record. The real and essential subjection is only for
those among us who go seeking it and who like to gain honors
and riches by such service; for anyone who wants to ensconce
himself by his hearth, and who can manage his house without
quarrels and lawsuits, is as free as the Doge of Venice ... ,1
... Blechery has been seen in fashion among them, and every
sort of dissoluteness; as also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty; as
also heresYi also superstition, irreligion, laxity, and worse, if
worse there be: an example even more dangerous than the
flatterers of Mithridates, who, because their master was envious
of the honor of being a good doctor, brought him their limbs te
be incised and cauterized. For those others allow their souls to
be cauterized, a nobler and more delicate part.4
11: 42 094-5).
2III: 9 (739).
3Ibid.
4III: 7 (702).
230
to display his finest art, setting it off from the inferior pictures placed around
it. For his centerpiece Montaigne chose to "borrow" the principle written
work of his deceased friend and soul-mate, Etienne de La Boétie--La
Servitude Volontaire, otherwise known as Le Contre Un. In this way
Montaigne held that de La Boétie's work, which concerned "Aliberty against
tyrants" would "do honor to a11 the rest of this work," i.e., the Essays,1
However, at the end of "Of Friendship" one does not find La Servitude
Volontaire, but rather an explanation why it was not included. Hugenots had
appropriated La Boétie's tract for their own purposes of propaganda against
the hostile monarchy, first publishing it in part in 1574, then in its entirety in
1576. Hence Montaigne concludes "Of Friendship" saying that because La
Boétie's work has now already been brought to light by sorne who "seek to
disturb and change the state of our government without worrying whether
they will improve it," he himself would not print it. In addition, he
dismissed the anti-court writing as a mere product of youth and undertaken
"Aby way of an exercise, as a common theme hashed over in a thousand
places in books."2 Instead of the controversial La Servitude Volontaire,
Montaigne decided to honor his friend by including a collection of his love
poetry as a separate essay.3
Nonetheless, numerous other expressions ,of anti-court sentiment can
be found elsewhere in the Essais. For example, he offers the often repeated
saw attributed to Carneades that the only art princes truly master is
11: 28 (135).
21: 28 (144). On Montaigne's decision not to include La Servitude Volontaire, see David
Maskell, ''The Evolution of the Essais," in Montaigne: Essays in memory of Richard Sayce, ed.
I. D. McFarlane and lan Maclean (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) 13-34, and Roger Trinquet,
"Montaigne et la divulgation du Contr'un," Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France 64 (1964)
1-12.
3As these sonnets were eventually published elsewhere, Montaigne finally withheld them as
weil.
231
ll1I: 7 (701).
21: 42 (195).
31: 13 (32) See also III: 3 (625): " ... Bthal indolence of tasle 1have been speaking ofaltachcs
me forcibly ta solitude, even al home ... 1lhere reserve, balh for myself and for olhers, an
unusual freedom. There we have a truce on ceremony, Olt waiting on people and cscorting lhe~
here and away, and olher such troublesome prescriptions of our code of rnanners (oh, whal a .
servile and bothersome practice!) everyone lhere behaves as he pleascs ...."
232
1Il: 17 (492).
2lbid. Montaigne often attributes the impossibility of bis engaging in deception to his artless
and transparent nature, as when he says that his face immediately betrays his thoughts III: 13
(842). But he also appears to put such statements in doubt, as when he daims that as a youth at
college he "played the leading parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and Muret,
and was "considered a master craftsman," given his "assurance in expression and flexibility in
voiee and gesture, in adaptingmyself to the parts 1 undertook to act" 1: 26 (131).
311: 18 (505). Here, and elsewh~re where Montaigne discusses the subject of dissimulation, the
discussion tends to be fairly free-ranging-induding, although notlimited to, courtly or polite
dissimulation.
c 411: 17 (491). At times Montaigne's daims to truthfulness verge on the comical, as when he
suggests that whatev~.r misrepresentations hé is guilty of are not a maller of forethought and
233
calculation, but rather "e~cape" from him at a moment of surprise-like an involuntary gasp or
cry: "My soul by nature shuns Iying and hates even to think a lie. 1 feel an inward shame and a
stinging remorse if one escapes me, as sometimes it does, for occasions surprise me and move me
unpremeditatedly" Il: 17 (491).
Ilbid.
2lbid.
311: 17 (492). Moreover, if Montaigne's contact with the great were a matter of service, he
would then feel his inclination towards frankness as a duty. TItus in the essay "Of Experience"
he gives a hypothetical account of how he would behave if he were to be a counselor to a king.
He says that he would tell his master "home truths" and would judge him "simply and
(O',
'.~_J
naturally, making him see how he stands in public opinion, and opposing his f1atterers." He
concludes, "1 should have enough fidelity, judgement, and independence for that" III: 13 (825).
234
by Thomas More. Here he demands that speech be honest, yet reserv'lS the
right to remain silent: "AWe must not always say everything, for that would
be folly; but what we say must be what we think; otherwise it is
wickedness. "1
But quite often Montaigne goes much farther than this in the direction
of permissiveness, and in 50 doing gives expression to a contradiction
between high-minded principles and a worldly appreciation of practical
realities and practical abilities. This appears most clearly in the essay "Of the
Useful and the Honorable." At one point in this essay Montaigne condemns
the dissimulations of contemporary civility, and specifically defends his own
informai and open manner as natural, not artfully dissimulated. However,
he immediately follows this criticism and self-defense by adding, "BI do not
want to deprive deceit (la tromperie) of its proper place; that would be
misunderstanding the world. 1 know that it has often served profitably and
that it maintains and feeds most of men's occupations."2 While a part of
Montaigne is attracted to a rigorous philosophical ideal of truth-saying, from
another angle he sees such commitment as both impractical and even
pretentiously dogmatic.
Something of this latter perspective is reflected in the early essay "Of
Custom," where after having described the falsity and absurdity of many
":':","
prevailing customs,'Montaigne nonetheless delares, "AThese considerations,
however, do not deter a man of understanding from following the common
style ... For it is the rule of rules, and the universallaw of laws, that each
man should observe those of the place he is in."3 ln a later essay, he returns
1Il: 17 (491).
c 211: 1 (604).
31: 23 (86).
235
to this notion and adds the argument often made in the Renaissance--and
previously seen in Della Casa's Galateo -- that individuals are at least not to
blame for participating in corruption which is characteristic of their place and
age/ and not particular to themselves:
Moreover, an important part of that world we must live in, and where
we may legitimately seek profit, is the court--just as an important part of
those customs which must be accepted involves courtly civility. Thus
Montaigne states that "Cin a monarchy every gentleman should be trained in
the manner of a courtier,"2 and specifically of his own country he says,
"BFrance takes as its rule the rule of the court."3 Under these social and
political circumstances, Montaign~ recognizes the utility of courtesy: "Cit is a
very useful knowledge, this knowledge of social dexterity. Like grace and
beauty, it acts as a moderator at the first approaches of sociability and
familiarity."4
And in spite of Montaigne's frequent self-descriptions as crude and
unpolished, at times he admits his relative mastery of courtly etiquette. "CI
was brought up in this carefully enough in my youth, and have lived in good
enough company, not to be ignorant of the laws of our French civility; l
11: 13 (32). R. A. Sayce expresses Montaigne's complex attitude towards civility and courtiers
by saying that he disapproves of them, "though he sometimes speaks as if he were one of
them." The Essays of MOlltaigne: A Critical Explorati01l, 85-6.
2I11: 3 (625). Despite bis frequent pronouncements ofindependence and detachment, Montaigne's
public and courtly career was considerable. His appearances at court began as early as 1559, at
the age of 26. In the 1570's he received the Order of Saint Michael, and was made gentleman of
King Charles IX's chamber, which honor was subsequently bestowed upon him by Henry III and
then also by Henry of Navarre. He was urged ta defend Raymond Sebond by Margaret of
Valois, congratulated on his Essais by Henry III, chosen to be Mayor of Bordeaux by Catherine
de' Medici, Margaret of Valois, Henry III, and Henry of Navarre, for wbich he served two ./
terms. Furthermore, for much of the last 20 years of his Iife (1572-92), Montaigne participa~d
in political negotiations at the highest level, which at different times involved Henry III, ji
Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre. On Montaigne's public Iife, see Donald Frame,
MOlltaigne: a biography (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984) 266, and passim, but
especially chapters 13 and 15; Géralde Nakam, M01ltaiglle et SOli temps: les évélleme1lts et les
essais (Paris: Librairie A. G. Nizet, 1982) 142-6.
3I11: 3 (621).
c 41: 26 (124). Margaret McGowan illustrates a point conceming Montaigne's changing meaning
according to context by suggesting that Montaigne appears favorably disposed towards
237
"flexibility" when the context concerns the development of human powers, but appears critical
when it concerns the moral degeneration of his age. 5he notes, "Flexibility is without virtue if
it is found in the chameleon shape of the courtier ... but it acquires admirable features aS soon
as Montaigne presents it as the only way a man can come to terms with the constant shift of
events in the outside world ...." Margaret M. McGowan, Montaigne's Deceits, 131, see also 18
and 21. However, this seems to overlook the fact that that shifting "outside world" includes
the court, and also what McGowan has elsewhere described as "tensions in Montaigne's courtly
vision." "Montaigne: A Social Role for the Nobleman?" Montaigne and His Age, ed. Keith
Cameron (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1981) 94. See also Antoine Compagnon, "Montaigne ou
la parole donée," Rhétorique de Montaigne, 9-19.
1III: 9 (758).
21: 26 (123).
(} 3lbid.
-'"'
238
( .--
In contrast to the recalcitrant Callisthenes, Montaigne would have his
prodigy "excel" even in the depravity of court life:
Yet this is not to say that Montaigne advocates that his imagined charge
entirely embrace the decadence of the courtier. As we have already seen, for
Montaigne what we are in the realm of opiniqr. and appearance--those social
roles which make up our public identities--is nôt of our essence; it is
inherently a charade, and for the sake of our true selves, should be treated
accordingly. But whereas we previously saw how Montaigne contrasted
public raies or actions with ail that is private, he also makes a parallel and
related distinction between an "outward" realm of action and an "inner"
realm of though.t. The point of this distinction is to privilegethe realm of
thought, but also to isolate it from that of action, rendering the laŒ?more or
less insignificant. Thus the injunctions to fas!:\ion oneself according to others
and to the circumstances make up only half of Montaigne's
recommendation. For instance, in that passage from "Of Custom" in which
Montaigne recommends conformity to custom as "the law of law~:' he makes
clear this is merely a matter of "externals"--for at the same time, "Athe wise
man should withdraw hissoul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in
freedom and power to judge things freely."2 The spheres of thought and
llbid.
21: 23 (86). Montaigne was by no means unique in his time for advocating thi,s detachment of
thought and action. The most famous example is Justus Lipsius, who was by many believed to be
Europe's greatest scholar of Montaigne's generation, and who praised an early edition of the
Essais. Lipsius himself altemated between Catholicism and Protestantism according to his
tr· cîrcumstances, and advocated an inner detachment and constancy coupled with an outward
~
239
.........
action must be separated so that while one may accommodate and adjust in
that latter sphere, the former remains uncompromised.
For this reason Montaigne states that while the tutor should equip his
pupil for the life of the courtier, he should discourage him from too closely
attaching himself to his prince. As he says,
A courtier can have neither the right nor the will to speak and
think otherwise than favorably of a mas ter who among so many
thousands of other subjects has chosen him to train and raise up
with his own hand. This favor and advantage corrupt his
freedom, not without sorne reason, and dazzle him.J
argues at one point, the court deserves our complete deference and
submission, except, he adds, "Bthat of our understanding."2 Here Montaigne
not only accepts hypocrisy, but insofar as it constitutes the conscious
indifference and conformity. See Zagorin, 122-4; Jason L. Saunders, fustus Lipsius: The
Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism (NY: Columbia University Press, 1955); Gerhard
Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982). On Montaigne's distinction of "inner" and "outer," see Richard Regosin, The Mailer of
My Book: Montaigne's 'Essais' as the Book of the Self (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977) 26, 35-6.
11: 26 (114).
2I1I: 8 (714).
240
One may reprove the fine candor of those two soldiers who
answered Nero to his beard. One, asked by him why he wished
him ill: "1 loved you when you were worthy of it; but since you
have become a parricide, a firebug, a mountebank, a charioteer, l .
hate you as you deserve." The other, asked why he wanted to
kill him: "Because l find no other remedy against your
continuaI wicked deeds."l
11: 3 (9).
21: 3 (9).
3I11: 8 (714).
241
10n the subject of Montaigne's general attitude of acquiesence, Friedrich poses the question
whether this could be considered a "cowardly philistine approach"--which he answers by
saying, "Sometimes it appears to be" (315).
242
vm
<:
CONCLUSION
1The Firsl alld Secood Discollrses, ed. Roger D. Masters, !rans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters
(N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1964) 54.
243
contributing to the degenerate and unmartial character of the Greeks, and that
Charles VIII owed his easy conquests in Italy to similar influences on the
Italians.
But besides the age-old complaint that letters and learning undermine
a peoples' martial and "manly" spirit, in other ways Rousseau also follows a
long tradition that passes through Montaigne in decrying the falsity of
learned refinement and exaggerated dvility: "Before art had moulded our
manners and taught our passions to speak an affected language, oùr customs
were rustic but natural, and differences of conduct announced at first glance
those of character."l According to Rousseau, it was not that ouriess
cultivated ancestOtii were morally superior to their modern descendents, but
rather that the "security in the ease of seeing through each other" and the
consequent lack of mutuai suspicion "spared them many vices."z In contrast,
'1-.
engender such suspicion: "The good man is an athlete who likes to compete
in the nude," for he "disdains ail thos.e vile ornaments which would hamper
Ilbid, 37.
fi~ ZIbid.
-
\~ ,Mt _... 3lbid, 37-8.
244
1Ibid, 37.
2lbid.
3polilics alld)h,eArts, trans. Allan Bloom (!thaca, N.Y.: Comell University Press, 1960) 79.
4lbid, 80. sée Davi~, Marshall, The SlIrprîsillg Effects of Sympathy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988) 'ch.5; on this theme among other wrilers of lhis general period, see his
The Figllre of the Theater: Shaftsbllry, Defoe, Adam Smith, alld George Elliot (N.Y.:
( Columbia University Press, 1986). .
245
These concerns over artifice and hypocrisy draw upon a long tradition
of hostility to the theater,l but also upon a more recent tradition which
opposes pastoral simplicity to the world of the court. Again in the First
Discourse he observes that "Il is in the rus tic clothes of a farmer and not
beneath the gilt of a courtier that strength and vigor of body will be found";
to this he adds that virtue is merely "the strength and vigor of the soul,"2
thereby making the familiar association of the rustic and the virtuous, as
opposed to courtly degradation.
However, for the most part Rousseau diverges from the tradition of
anti-courtly writings in that the primary target of his criticism is no longer the
court, but that more vast aristocratie society which has spilled out beyond the
court, to the salons and various corners of Paris. Hence in Rousseau's
epistolary novel The New Eloise, the character Saint-Preux employs a
familiar trope of the courtly humanist literature in now describing the great
city; there he says one "must be more flexible than Alcibiades."3 In Paris, he
continues,
1See Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981), and also M. Barras, The Stage Contruoersy ill France from Comeille ta Rousseau (N.Y.:
Instilute of French Sludies, 1933).
2Politics and the Arts, 37.
3La Nouvelle Héloïse, Oeuvres Complètes de Jeall-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Henri Goulet and
Bernard Guyon, vol. 2 (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléade, 1959) 234.
4La Nouvelle Héloïse: Julie or the New Eloise, trans. and cd. Judith H. McDoweIl (University
Park, Penn.: Pensylvania State University Press,1968) 197. ;C-;.
"
246
1The social position of that group to which Rousseau directs his criticism is also suggested by
other works. For instance, his attack on social hypocrisy in the Emile follows the influential
contemporary work by Charles Duclos, the Considerations sllr les moeurs de ce siècle, in which
Duclos specifies exactly who are, and who are not, the objects of his critique: "Mes observations
ne regardent pas œux qui, dévoués à des occupations suivies, à des travaux pénibles." ln
contrast, he conœrns himself with those whose personàlity reflect a life possessing a certain
degrec of "opulence and leisure," to which he adds, "Ces hommes-là forment un peuple dans la
capitale" (13). Like Rousseau, in his more reflective moments, Duclos also refuses to advocate
crudeness and lack of consideration for others; he simply aUempts to draw the proper lirnits for
social accommodation: "Quelle est donc l'espèce de dissimulation permise, ou plutôt quel est le
milieu qui sépare la fausseté vile de la sincérité offensante? ... On ne doit ni offenser ni tromper
les hommes" (34). Charles Duclos, Considérations sllr les moellrs, ed. F. C. Green (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1946).
2Under Louis XIV, France "rose" to a place of pre-eminence in Europe in the field of civility.
The considerable, but mainly derivative 17th century French courtesy literature includes such
works as L'Honnête Homme 011 L'Art de ~f'laire à la COllr, by Nicolas Faret; Les Devoirs de la
Vie Civile and the Discollrs sllr la Bienséance, by Jean Pic; Le Caractere de l'Honnête Homme,
by Abbé Gerard; De la Scie/zce dll Monde, by François de Callieres; Reflexions sllr ce qlli Pellt
Plaire 011 Déplaire, by Abbé Bellegarde. This literature is discussed in Mason, Gentlefolk in
the Making, chap. 9 and passim, also in Harold Nicolson, Good BehaviOllr (London: Constable,
1955) chap. 9. ~
247
Perhaps the single most important notion here is that familiar attentiveness
to circumstances: "One of the most important points in life is decency; which
is to do what is proper and where it is proper; for many things are proper at
one time, and in one place, that are extremely ihlproper in another."3 He
observes that this English word "decency" translates the Latin decorum, and
quotes from Cicero on the subject so that his son may "see how necessary
decency is, to gain the approbation of mankind."4
As with many of the earlier humanist authors, Chesterfield
distinguishes between acceptablp. and base flattery,S legitimate and ignoble
1Lord Chesterfield, Letlers lohis Son and Others (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1929) 134.
2Ibid, 3.
3Ibid, 1.
4Ibid. Eisewhere he urges the young Philip, "Pray read frequently and with the ulmost
attention; nay, get by heart, if you can, that incomparable chapter in Cicero's Offices upon the
la prepon, or the Decon/m. It cantains whatever is necessary for the dignity of manners."(p. 111)
The same lesson appears also to he taken from modem French sources: "Les bienséances are a
most neœssary part of the knowledge of the world. They consist in the relations of persons,
things, time, and place" (238).
Sibid, 36, 111.
248
dissimulation,l and also maintains that one must seriously study the tastes
and humors of others, so that one may better accommoda te oneself to them.
In this regard he recommends "the qualifications of the cameleon;'2 and
indeed urges that this adaptability should be exercised regardless of one's
opinion of those others and the particular traits in question: "However
frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show
them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone,
and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your
contempt for them."3 Furthermore, he emphasizes the power contained in
the ability to submit gracefully:
l"lt may be objectee!, that 1am now recommending dissimulation to you; 1bath own and justify
it." Chesterfield follows Bacon and Bolingbroke in rejecting only the most extreme forms of
dissimulation under the label "simulation" (104).
2lbid,216.
3lbid, 19-20.
4lbid,215.
( 5lbid,225.
249
of the Court, are the only true standard des manières nobles, et d'lin honnête
homme) Chesterfield shows little patience for the critics of these norms:
"Let misanthropes and would-be philosophers declaim as much as they
please against the viees, the simulation, and dissimulation of Courts; those
invectives are always the result of ignorance, ill-humour, or envy."2
In truth, the apparent similarity between Chesterfield's world and that
of his courUy Renaissance predecessors is somewhat deceptive. Throughout
Europe, courtly and aristocratie norms were, and would continue to be,
influential for sorne time.3 But while Lord Chesterfield was carefully
grooming his son for a career of royal service and diplomacy, other
occupations were increasingly proving themselves profitable and socially
acceptable to a broader segment of the litera te population. 4
As a result of changing attitudes and opportunities for social and
economic advancement, there emerged a greater interest in acquiring the
skills and knowledge necessary to take advantage of these opportunities--and
consequenUy a literature to answer that demand. Popular guides to
commerce and trade often contained sorne instruction on bookkeeping or
technical matters, but also on proper conduct and behavior. Indeed,
published discussions of these subjects go back at least as far as the
Renaissance, especially in those regions with a commercial tradition. For
instance, the character Giannozzo in Alberti's Della Famiglia gives a number
Ilbid,200.
2Ibid,237.
3The continued importance of the aristocracy in European polilics and culture into the 20th
century is discussed in Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Dld Regime (N.Y.: Pantheon Books,
1981) see especially chap. 2.
40n the early phase of this transformation, see Joyce O. Appleby, Ecollomic Thollght alld
Idealogy in Seventeenth-Centllry England (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1978); on the
18th century, J. G. A. Pocock, Virille, Commerce, alld His/ory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985) especially chap. 9, and Milton L. Myers, The Solll of ECOlwmic Mail
f)
--- (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) especially chapter 2.
250
c 89.
51nstitutio Oratoria, II. xvi. 11.
251
the first few pages of An Essay of Drapery, the reader is told, "Hee cannot be a
good Draper which is not first a good man."1
Scott aiso holds that since "speech makes a man more ~xcellent than a
Beast, 50 eloquence will make him more excellent than other men," and that
to do 50 "it must be fitted to the matter and circumstances."2 However, in Ail
Essay of Drapery the classicai teachings have been adapted to new concerns:
Scott aiso draws similarly adapted Iessons for his man of business from
the modern literature on courtesy. Hence he writes:
2Ibid, 28.
3Ibid. Of course before perfonning such feats of versatility, "a true knowledge of the parties
with whom a man deales, is first necessary." Scott continues, drawing heavily on Bacon's essay
"Of Negociating": "Hec must unùerstand their nature, humour, inclination, designments, and
proceedings: 50 the nature of businesse in hand must bec knowne too. A superficiall knowledge
of it is not enough, a man must penetrate into the inside, and sec things in themselves, with the
acddents and consequents that belong thereunto; joyning bath these together, il will be easy for
him to profit, if according ta divers natures of the persans and afaires, he change his stile, and
manner of proceeding; as a wise 5ea-man, who aceording to the divers state of the 5ea, and
change of winds, doth diversely turne his sayles and rudder; knowing every mans nature and
fashions, hec may lead him; knowing his ends, he may perswade him; knowing his weaknesse
or disadvantage, he may awe him; if the quality of the businesse be understood, to the finding
out of which, every mans oW;le observation must bec set a worke; which if it be diligent, will
bring forth more then the best writer is able to uller" (34).
252
Despite this recommendation, the Essay tries to find sorne middle ground on
the question of the extent of ceremonious courtesy, as it does as well on other
related matters, such as flattery. Here he criticizes the overly indulgent, but
does not hold them fully responsible, since "Sorne Customers will grow dull
and displeased, if they bee not often whetted by a Flatterer; down-right honest
speeches discontent them."2 Consequently Scott concludes, "as the Apostle
said; Be angry but sin not: 50 1 say, Flatter but sin not, if that be possible."3
A number of similar ideas are expressed in the only slightly less erudite
work by Caleb Trenchfield, A Cap of Gray Hairs for a Green Head, published
in 1671. The Cap of Gray Hairs follows in the tradition of advice books
written in the form of a father's counsel for his sono-in this case an apprentice
in London; Yet there is something distinctive in the relatively popular and
commercial outlook of the work. In fact Trenchfield writes that to his
knowledge, he is the first to have "stoopt 50 l~w, to give advice to an
Apprentice" and to write "in the level of the greatest part of persons; to
whom advice was not less needful."4
1lbid, 27. Compare Ga/alro: "And although liberality, courage, or generosity are without
doubt far greater and more praiseworthy !hings than charm and manners, none the less,
pleasant habits and decorous manners and words are perhaps no Jess useful !hose who have
them than a noble spirit and self-assurance are to others. This is so because everyone must deal
with other men and speak to !hem eve-:y day; thus, good manners must aIse be practised many
times daily, whereas justice, fortitude and the other greater and nobler virtues are called into
serviee much more seldom." (3) Scott virtually lifts this passage, while characteristically
omitting sorne of the aristocratie virtues, adding the commercial metaphors and the emphasis
on acquiring wealth.
2Ibid,20.
3lbid. Scott aIse discusses "dissimulation"-denouncing as "servile" and "cowardly" those who
"like the polypus can take ail colours to deceive," and yet in comparison wi!h flatte'Y, finds
dissimulation "a !hing more tolerable with a Citizen" (20); the discussion of the polypus is not
included in Thrupp's edited reprint. "
( 4A Cap of Gray Hairs for a Green Head (London, 1671) 4.
253
Ilbid,63.
2Ibid,8.
3Ibid,82.
4Ibid,81.
beneath their quality"j he suggests that even their dignity and self-worth
( would be increased if they were to be engaged in a useful endeavor,1
One of the most prolific and enthusiastic partisans of commerce was
Daniel Defoe. Hence not only did Defoe author a work entitled The Campleat
EngIish Gentleman, following a number of guides for poIite conduct of
similar titles,2 but also one called The Complete EngIish Tradesman. This
latter work contains advice on a number of subjects potentially of interest to
the man of business or those aspiring to be one; it indudes discussions of the
benefits and dangers of partnerships, the proper use of employees, credit and
borrowing, etc. It also offers counsel on how the merchant is to behave with
his customers: "the man that stands behind the counter must be aIl courtesy,
civiIity, and good manners; he must not be affronted, or any way moved, by
any manner of usage, whether owing to casuaIty or design; if he sees himself
iII-used, he must wink, and not appear to see it, nor any way show dislike or
distaste."3 According to Defoe, this is often a very bitter piII, which must
nonetheless be swallowed. He says of the tradesman that he "must have no
flesh and blood about him;'4 and continues:
1Ibid, #108.
-~ ,.
-c-~L1his inc1udes the three 17th century works by-John Gailhard, Henry Peacham, and Baltasar
Gracian under the title COInpleat Gentleman (the orignial title of the latter work was El
Lliscreto). '
3The Complete English Tradesman, vol. 1 (N.Y.: Burt Franklin, 1970) 62.
4lbid,6O.
255
heat was over, would go down into their shop again and be as
humble, as courteous, and as calm as before .... 1
.~.
1Ibid,62.
2lbid, 62-3.
3Ibid, 63.
4Ibid,194.
SIbid.
6Ibid,184.
{) 7Ibid.
256
In contrast, Defoe seeks a moderate solution, which will both allow the
( tradesman to practice his profession, and yet not bend his conduct so far as to
jeopardize his honesty:
1Ibid, 195.
( 2S ee Mason, Gentlejolk in the Making, 219.
257
'c
i
1'\..
"'- ',
\\
\".
258
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