Italian Renaissance - John Addington Symonds

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power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther.

      APPENDIX V.

       Table of Contents

      I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in 1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in 1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican policy, he continued in secret stanch to the family by whom he hoped to obtain honors and privileges in the state. Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by Pitti, Francesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his expectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their native city, and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they were condemned to exile, death, imprisonment, or frosty toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two years after Cosimo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards of sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the princes to whose service he had consecrated his life and for whose sake he had helped to enslave Florence. To respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any pity for the men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish expectations, is impossible.

      Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of the men whose characters he weighed in his Sommario, and of obtaining a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian philosophy was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics.

      In the dedication of the Sommario della Storia d' Italia to Francesco Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the views of men and morals adopted in my previous chapters.

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