These literati were obsessed with admiration for letters and ancient manuscripts and espe cially for elegance of Latin style. Yet they were more than mere pedants. Working away from the individualistic ideal of the trecento, they broadened the range of studies, in the universal Latin language which they called Lingua Nostra, opened a large field of investigation to the hu man intellect, now released from the limitations of scholasticism, helped the progress of human ity and taught princes and potentates to pay homage to learning. The second half of this century was marked by the fall of Constanti nople, which left Italy the sole surviving warden of classical tradition and its princely courts the only asylum for fleeing scholars and philoso phers. The invention of printing spread learn ing and literature among large numbers. The splendor of newly established courts, each eager to make the people forget their former liberty; in Rome the returning popes, in Naples the House of Aragon, in Ferrara the Este, in Flor ence the Medici and others only less bright because of their lesser importance, all exerting their influence for the glory of letters.
Neapolitan literary life was in the beginning aristocratic, Latin and scholastic; a concourse of rhetors, grammarians and linguists, of whom Gioviano Pontano (1426-1503) and Ja copo Sannazzaro (1457-1530) are types. Pon tano's hexametric and hendecasyl labic 'Sets Bain,' imitate Ovid and Catullus, and sing of lustful love. Sannazzaro's 'Arca dia' presents with more refinement scenes of pastoral life, pictures of innocent gaiety and simple stories of love veiled in melancholy. Florence was not more world-famous for her commerce than for her glorious triumvirate of trecentist poets, and for possessing the liter ary language. In the Florentine crucible classic and Christian ideals were fused, and from her alembic issued the most perfect ex amples of humanistic literature. Lorenzo de' Medici correctly represents these Florentines over whom he ruled. His admiration for every form of beauty, every phase of human thought; his preference for classic forms, his predilec tion for pompous and bright pageantry, even the drinking songs (I Beoni), he com posed in the solemn, almost religious metre of terra rimo, are typical. Because he so com
pletely impersonated Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici loved Angelo Poliziano (1454-94) and Luigi Pulci (1432-84). Poliziano, beginning with Virgil, rifled his gems from all poetic caskets; yet with such gift of assimilation that his Statue are more than mere stolen mosaics. Pulci's is also a rare product of imitation and assimilation, an endeavor to make ideals imported from chivalric feudal France blossom in democratic Italian atmos phere.
But this chivalry of the North, which in the two preceding centuries had so poorly flourished in the soil of Roman civism, in the 15th century degenerated into the vulgar po etry of wandering cantastorie; catering for the amusement of unheroic popolani in the piazzas; and of such farragoes of heroic episodes and pseudo-history as Reali di Francia,' which even in this 20th century is still read in many rustic Italian households. Sceptic scholars like Pulci used these popular errant knights, giants and enchanters as a convenient frame work for their own image weaving. Count Mat teo Boizrdo (1434-94), of aristocratic Ferrara, treats his chivalrous heroes with respect. He adorns his stories with classical embellishments, and prefers the gentle knights of the Round Table to the stern warriors of the Chansons de geste, as is indicated by the very title 'Orlando Innamorato.' There could be no lyric poetry in this age which ignored the charm of intimate self communion and was content with the popular cansonetta and rispetto, or with metrical imi tations of Petrarch. The religious drama (in a century in which the solitary voice of Savon arola cried in the desert) became an anachron ism. Soldiers with muskets stalked through the scenes of the Sacred Passion and angels lisped the prologue. Even the popular 'Santa Uliva) is without literary value. Discarded by scholars, used only for familiar epistle or merry novelle, Italian prose only reaches terseness in the instructive writings of artists like Leon Battista Alberti (1407-72) or Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), careless of literary form; and in a few such passionate orators as Savon arola and San Bernardino da Siena whose elo quence is inspired by the intensity of their convictions.