Civilization of Renaissance in Italy | Page 6

With his thirst for fame and his
passion for monumental works, it was talent, not birth, which he
needed. In the company of the poet and the scholar he felt himself in a
new position, almost, indeed, in possession of a new legitimacy.
No prince was more famous in this respect than the ruler of Verona,
Can Grande della Scala, who numbered among the illustrious exiles
whom he entertained at his court representatives of the whole of Italy.
The men of letters were not ungrateful. Petrarch, whose visits at the
courts of such men have been so severely censured, sketched an ideal
picture of a prince of the fourteenth century. He demands great things
from his patron, the lord of Padua, but in a manner which shows that he
holds him capable of them. 'Thou must not be the master but the father
of thy subjects, and must love them as thy children; yea, as members of
thy body. Weapons, guards, and soldiers thou mayest employ against
the enemy---with thy subjects goodwill is sufficient. By citizens, of
course, I mean those who love the existing order; for those who daily
desire change are rebels and traitors, and against such a stern justice
may take its course.'
Here follows, worked out in detail, the purely modern fiction of the

omnipotence of the State. The prince is to take everything into his
charge, to maintain and restore churches and public buildings, to keep
up the municipal police, to drain the marshes, to look after the supply
of wine and corn; so to distribute the taxes that the people can
recognize their necessity; he is to support the sick and the helpless, and
to give his protection and society to distinguished scholars, on whom
his fame in after ages will depend.
But whatever might be the brighter sides of the system, and the merits
of individual rulers, yet the men of the fourteenth century were not
without a more or less distinct consciousness of the brief and uncertain
tenure of most of these despotisms. Inasmuch as political institutions
like these are naturally secure in proportion to the size of the territory in
which they exist, the larger principalities were constantly tempted to
swallow up the smaller. Whole hecatombs of petty rulers were
sacrificed at this time to the Visconti alone. As a result of this outward
danger an inward ferment was in ceaseless activity; and the effect of
the situation on the character of the ruler was generally of the most
sinister kind. Absolute power, with its temptations to luxury and
unbridled selfishness, and the perils to which he was exposed from
enemies and conspirators, turned him almost inevitably into a tyrant in
the worst sense of the word. Well for him if he could trust his nearest
relations! But where all was illegitimate, there could be no regular law
of inheritance, either with regard to the succession or to the division of
the ruler's property; and consequently the heir, if incompetent or a
minor, was liable in the interest of the family itself to be supplanted by
an uncle or cousin of more resolute character. The acknowledgment or
exclusion of the bastards was a fruitful source of contest and most of
these families in consequence were plagued with a crowd of
discontented and vindictive kinsmen. This circumstance gave rise to
continual outbreaks of treason and to frightful scenes of domestic
bloodshed. Sometimes the pretenders lived abroad in exile, like the
Visconti, who practiced the fisherman's craft on the Lake of Garda,
viewed the situation with patient indifference. When asked by a
messenger of his rival when and how he thought of returning to Milan,
he gave the reply, 'By the same means as those by which I was expelled,
but not till his crimes have outweighed my own.' Sometimes, too, the

despot was sacrificed by his relations, with the view of saving the
family, to the public conscience which he had too grossly outraged. In a
few cases the government was in the hands of the whole family, or at
least the ruler was bound to take their advice; and here, too, the
distribution of property and influence often led to bitter disputes.
The whole of this system excited the deep and persistent hatred of the
Florentine writers of that epoch. Even the pomp and display with which
the despot was perhaps less anxious to gratify his own vanity than to
impress the popular imagination, awakened their keenest sarcasm. Woe
to an adventurer if he fell into their hands, like the upstart Doge
Agnello of Pisa (1364), who used to ride out with a golden scepter, and
show himself at the window of his house, 'as relics are shown,'
reclining on embroidered drapery and cushions, served like a pope or
emperor, by kneeling attendants.