The Book of the Courtier (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER

BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE

INTRODUCTION BY JOHN LOTHERINGTON

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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INTRODUCTION

BALDESAR Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier is the High Renaissance in microcosm. It is the portrait of a group of leading thinkers, politicians, soldiers, clerics, diplomats, and wits gathered together in the Palace of Urbino in March 1507, playing a game over four evenings, which are described in four books, where their task is to delineate the perfect courtier. They were real-life characters, although artfully presented by Castiglione who completed his portrait of them some twenty years later. In their conversations about courtliness they range from chivalry to humanist debates about language, literature, painting and sculpture, to the art of conversation and the telling of jokes, the role and dignity of women, the delicate job of guiding willful princes, and finally to love and its transcendent form in pure spirit. The setting is high society at play, a minor ducal court at a particular moment, but this is the elegant frame for a larger exploration of human experience and what it is to be civilized, marked by the distinctive idealism and anxieties, the light and shade, of an extraordinarily creative era. By the time he completed his book, Castiglione was lamenting the early deaths of a number of the friends he had portrayed in it. But he had preserved a way of thinking and a set of values and aspirations which came to represent much that seemed essential in the High Renaissance to his contemporaries and his successors, in Italy, then into northern Europe and beyond, and down through the five centuries since those four Spring evenings in Urbino, to the reader today.

The paradox of Baldesar Castiglione’s life is that he was held in such high esteem—the Emperor Charles V called him one of the finest gentlemen in the world—while his career was that of an undistinguished soldier and a diplomat who could rarely achieve his goals. He was born in 1478 into a Mantuan noble family of no great wealth, but well-connected with Mantua’s ruling dynasty, the Gonzagas, and known for a tradition of service to the neighboring and more powerful Dukes of Milan. As a soldier, courtier, and diplomat, Castiglione served the Marquis of Mantua, two Dukes of Urbino and finally the Pope, for whom he acted as nuncio to the Emperor Charles V in Spain. He could do little to protect his masters from the buffetings of Renaissance politics and war, although his loyalty was rewarded by the Duke of Urbino in 1513, when he was made Count of Novillara, along with a gift of lands—which was, however, later lost as precipitately as earlier it had been ceremoniously granted. At the end of Castiglione’s career, for all his efforts in Spain on behalf of the Pope (for which he was made Bishop of Ávila), the army of Emperor Charles V was let loose on Italy and, in its mutinous Sack of Rome in 1527, scattered the creative forces of the Renaissance as decisively as it had destroyed the military power of the Papacy. Castiglione died, less than two years later, in 1529 at the age of fifty. But it had also been in 1528 that he had finally brought to publication Courtier which he had been working at, on and off, since 1514. Castiglione’s status as one of the finest gentlemen in the world, long in the making, was confirmed. It had not been the substance of his career which had won him Charles V’s accolade, but the style. He had been at the heart of a network of courtiers and artists, and he had been unequalled in the deployment of all the symbols of a refined courtly and diplomatic life. In short, his life had become a work of art.

Castiglione’s earliest experience of courtly life was in Milan, where, from the age of sixteen, he studied the core Latin and Greek texts of a Renaissance humanist education, and observed the court of Lodovico Sforza, ‘Il Moro.’ This was no political paradise—Lodovico had usurped his nephew’s ducal authority—but the court was a magnet for thinkers, writers, and artists, not the least of which was Leonardo da Vinci. However, this early aesthetic and political experience was brought to an abrupt end by an invading French army and the deposition of Lodovico. It was the first template for Castiglione of creative court society and its fragility. Thereafter he entered the service of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, for whom he fought as Italy was gradually overwhelmed by French and Spanish invaders, until in 1504 he sought leave, brusquely granted, to enter the service of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. The next four years constituted the golden age which Castiglione was to depict in The Book of the Courtier.

The prestige and wealth of Urbino, and the palace itself, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture, had been established by Federico da Montelfeltro, the first Duke, a great (mercenary) warrior and an equally great patron of the arts. His son Guidobaldo was to be no less a sponsor of civilized living drawing on the profits of war but, crippled by gout, he himself was no warrior and indeed was forced to retire early each evening, leaving the court under the command of his duchess, Elizabetta Gonzaga. It is on one such occasion, on 8 March 1507, in the relaxation following the departure of Urbino’s most eminent guest, Pope Julius II, that the duchess deputes her friend, the witty and animated Emilia Pia, to supervise the evening’s entertainment. She calls on the assembled company to propose games and, after a number of debates had been canvassed —mostly about love and human frailty—it is settled instead that they should take turns to create in imagination the perfect courtier.

Castiglione claimed that the resulting play of ideas was reported to him afterwards, as at the time he was away on a mission to England standing in for Duke Guidobaldo at his investiture by King Henry VII with the Order of the Garter. This mission had indeed taken place, but Castiglione was back in Urbino before March 1507. He was distancing himself from the occasion, allowing freer play between fiction and reality. One of the participants in the game, the future Duke, Francesco Maria delle Rovere, turns up late the first evening, having escorted his uncle, the Pope, from the city, and has to be filled in the following day as to what had been said—but no one could agree precisely what opinions had been expressed. So, within the text, Castiglione jokes about the unreliability and creativity when people tell their stories.

The precedents for these evening games which Castiglione claims to provice second-hand report are the dialogues of classical authors such as Plato or Cicero, and their Renaissance successors, and the courtesy books of the Middle Ages, although those were much more prescriptive in their rules of social behavior. Castiglione had digested his reading well, so there is no simple genealogy, but in particular he draws on Plato’s Symposium, with its relaxed sociability and the testing and ultimately the idealization of the human capacity to love. Parts of Courtier also resemble very closely Cicero’s De Oratore, a debate about the perfect orator, a political performer who could be transmuted from republican Rome to become the courtier of Renaissance Italy. The Ciceronian ideal, though, was a citizen active in a city state. For Castiglione the courtier, as a subject, could influence but not exercise power, so taking refuge in an aestheticization of life, an attempt to stave off the depredations of fortune and mortality through art.

Classical texts, such as the Symposium and De Oratore, while in the form of open discussions, are more didactic than Castiglione allows. His voice can be heard directly in his prologues to each of the four books, in which the four evenings of debate are presented, but even there the accent is a carefully controlled one of tact and courtliness, in melancholy colors. His characters’ speculations represent more diverse voices, and, although some are given greater weight, which is often assumed to show us Castiglione’s own views, the reader is expected to establish the Golden Mean for herself. Gravitas and light-heartedness, for instance, are both needed—the balance will depend on circumstances, not the application of hard and fast rules.

There were literary as well as philosophical influences on Courtier. Castiglione’s very protest that he has not modelled his language upon that of Boccaccio suggests that he had thought long and hard about The Decameron, with its diverse stories told by a group of witty and imaginative Florentines gathered in a country house. It is this openness, the deliberate uncertainties, which allow Courtier to shimmer and stimulate the imagination, rather than shine a harsh light. There is a relaxation of ordinary social rules, a festive, carnivalesque atmosphere which allows people to develop ideas and express emotions much more freely. And just as there was also a shadow in The Decameron, setting off the brilliant story-telling in the country house, which was the plague in Florence that had brought the story-tellers together in flight from the city, so the darkness of a capricious fortune and the Italian Wars, as the peninsula was overcome by foreign invaders, the tyranny of so many princes, and the instability of court life, shades into the light-hearted debates about the good life, and underscores the laughter in the palace of Urbino.

The game and the arguments are the thing. The characters in The Book of the Courtier are drawn with minimal strokes of the brush. The Duchess is serene and authoritative but quite remote. The driving force is her lieutenant and friend, Emilia Pia. Her sparring with the young Gaspare Pallavicino begins and ends the book. He is the most contrary of the courtiers, always willing, and with glee, to push the limits of the argument. The encounters of Emilia and Gaspare have a sexual energy which has led to speculation that they were the originals of Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, but the genealogy has never been proved. Other characters have clear features—the dignity of Count Lodovico of Canossa who opens the debates, or the liveliness of Bibbiena’s discourses on humor. But there are also cameos which catch the eye—Morella da Ortona, the crusty old soldier, or the jokey friar, Fra Mariano. These were all Castiglione’s acquaintances and, in many cases, friends. Emilia Pia received her bound copy of the work which was to give her an immortality just a few days before she died.

In some cases, though, the gap between the character in Castiglione’s dialogues and the real person yawns very wide indeed. Duke Guidobaldo’s heir, the Prefect of Rome, Francesco Maria delle Rovere, who arrives late on the first evening, having escorted his uncle the Pope from the city, is as courteous and civilized in his demeanour as any of the other participants. His savagery in real life is occluded in Courtier. Delle Rovere stabbed to death his sister’s lover; he had three Venetian border guards beaten to death for the temerity of questioning his right to bear arms on Venetian territory; and, most spectacularly, he murdered Cardinal Alidosi who blamed him for the loss of Bologna. This is not an exhaustive list of his acts of violence, but renders perhaps some of the darker colors to his character. It is possible to be cynical about the brighter tones in which he is portrayed in The Book of the Courtier—it should be noted that Castiglione served delle Rovere as a diplomat when the latter became Duke of Urbino. Nevertheless, the form of the dialogue and its purpose were designed to operate in a different dimension: to demonstrate ideals, not report on life in all its gritty reality. That said, there are traces in Courtier of the real threat of savagery of which delle Rovere proved himself capable. On the last evening of the four, Ottaviano Fregoso questions the value of all the perfections of courtiership delineated over the previous three nights. Are they just trivialities? His answer is no, as they give access to the prince and his understanding. They give just a chance of influencing decision-making for the better which determined the fates of principalities and their peoples. Like his contemporary Machiavelli’s The Prince, Castiglione’s Courtier was written amidst violent political upheaval and rapid shifts in fortune; both their books were attempts to build defenses against that capricious goddess, Fortuna. Castiglione’s reaction was to fashion the veneer of civilization in a princely court, with a view to allowing care and rational thinking a better chance to flourish. (There is aggressive play as the courtiers attack each other’s views, but it is sublimated aggression; again and again, the courtiers dissolve into laughter, at points where the argument could be too pointed or too personal.) Insofar as Courtier was written with the ilk of delle Rovere in mind it was about aspiration to a better way of life rather than a reflection of reality, while Ottaviano Fregoso’s contribution shows a sensitivity to the dangerous underlying realities as acute as Machiavelli’s. Castiglione’s mode may have been courtesy rather than the ruthlessness presented by Machiavelli, but in his approach there is still a concern with how best to deal with disorderly politics.

To pin down a key characteristic of the courtier, Castiglione coined a new word—sprezzatura. It means nonchalance, the disguise of effort, and was Castiglione’s contribution to the tradition that the purpose of art is to conceal art, and his application of that aesthetic tradition to social life. Affectation is condemned, but that just means an action must appear natural—and appear so easy that it suggests a much greater talent lying in reserve. The Court is an arena for social competition; the evening debating games are themselves contests. Grazia, grace, is the winning and elegant command of body and soul—with which the Duchess is particularly endowed—but sprezzatura, the manipulation of appearance is needed to supplement that. In addition, there is a shading to the word which means a lofty disdain, even contempt for what is being undertaken, and certainly careful restraint in showing any emotional commitment. (In a more recent mode the courtier would be the cool guy, in shades.) The elevation of sprezzatura to a value worries some modern readers. Between the Renaissance and us lies the romantic cult of sincerity—Rousseau’s condemnation of an artificial courtly life—as well as the stress in many religions on genuine humility and integrity. But Castiglione is working to different rules in the moral universe of his court. All are expected to understand those rules, and they do not just regulate the competition for status. In the way the courtiers prize performance and the stimulation of the onlookers’ imaginations, they are behaving as artists. Artificiosa is a word used by Castiglione. Although for us it has a negative connotation of artificial, to Castiglione it means made with care, artistic. He accepts the fact of courtly life that it is that your competitors are your peers and you have to catch the eye of the prince. Taking this for granted, perfection then is in the effectiveness of the performance and its artistry. Rather than being a matter of deceit, it is about a disguise, a mask, the social code well understood in a court. For a modern reader, as for those through the five centuries since Courtier was published, the power of this concept, and the unease which it brings, stems from the knowledge that roles are performed in diverse social situations, now as then, and likewise their distance from reality may be well understood if rarely acknowledged.

For Castiglione sprezzatura matters in all things performed in public; great or small, there is an aesthetic element and a social statement to be made, whether in a tournament, dancing, or telling funny stories. But there is a particular focus on the fine arts at the heart of courtiership, and the debates surrounding them in Courtier rehearse themes typical of Renaissance discourse. There is a lengthy digression about language—how far the written model of language should be Tuscan and, more than that, the Tuscan of Petrarch and Boccaccio of two centuries before, or how far it should be contemporary, drawing on the best usage from diverse parts of Italy. We know Castiglione’s views on this more definitely than on other topics. Despite the protest in his prologue that he writes in the language of contemporary Lombardy, the vocabulary and syntax of Courtier is largely Tuscan and with a strong preference for the most Latinate words. In emphasizing the centrality of the arts, there is a clear assumption that the great artists are heroes of the age. The artist as hero was one of the features of the High Renaissance in general, which gained special attention in the nineteenth century and still informs attitudes today, when art has become for some a substitute for religion. This elevated role for the artist underlies a debate in Courtier about the relative merits of painting and sculpture. The dispute focuses on which art form can make something appear natural and individual, and yet not jar with the idealism in the artist’s imagination, as abstracted in an Aristotelian way from the observation of many models. This was a standard, perhaps even hackneyed, Renaissance debate, but it had never before been given form in an artistic and social setting as it was in Courtier. And again the book itself embodies the concerns of the High Renaissance in its own form, blending naturalism and idealism. Castiglione’s feeling toward the arts gave shape to his own social life as well as his book. He moved within an unequalled network of writers and artists. Raphael was a particular friend who painted his portrait on the occasion of his wedding.

Another theme debated, where Courtier was not so much being original as giving well-worn ideas a new valency, was in the discussion of the dignity of women, formally undertaken to establish the characteristics of a donna di palazzo who would make the perfect counterpart to the male courtier. (Perhaps revealing as to embedded male views of women, the female counterpart to cortigiano—cortigiana—could not be used, as the word means courtesan.) The argument is clearly weighted to the side of Giuliano de’ Medici, known as the Magnifico, and Cesare Gonzaga, who decry the claims that women are inferior to men, as put forward by others such as Gaspare Pallavicino, and present lengthy arguments to acknowledge their right to equal regard. Gaspare caricatures, and so seems to discredit, the position of the anti-feminist, and at one point Emilia Pia and the other ladies playfully pummel him as though they had become Bacchantes. Modern feminists, however, have interrogated the apparent weighting to the advantage of feminist arguments to be found in Courtier. The Magnifico, for instance, is at first esoteric and then lists the heroic deeds of a few women in extreme circumstances, nearly all from previous ages if not legendary. Thus he avoids addressing contemporary experience. Cesare Gonzaga praises women for being chaste while men are so often dishonorable, and so implicitly identifies women’s virtue with sexuality, a focus of concern which has not featured in earlier discussion of the ideal male courtier. He also presents women as an essential inspiration to men, rather than an end in themselves, and in the very form of The Book of the Courtier itself, the women are there to stimulate the men to compete in debate rather than participate substantially themselves. The Duchess is in charge, but as a deputy to her husband, and Emilia Pia is in turn a deputy, taking authority to a more playful, rather than a more radical, level. They command respect but in a patriarchal format where the men undertake the essential action. However, if Castiglione had, despite a vaunted respect for women unusual in his period, inscribed patriarchy in his book, it has also been argued that this was done to excite further critical thought. Whether this was so or not, in the structure of the book’s patriarchy is set in tension not with a modern-style feminism, but with a contemporary anxiety about feminization.

In the early stages of Courtier, ritual obeisance is made to the courtier as a warrior and expert in manly sports. But there is precious little discussion of what makes a good warrior and the focus shifts completely to the refined pursuits of courtly life (except, it has to be said when heroic women are being discussed), and war is condemned as intrinsically evil. The central value lies in the arts of peace, nurtured in the peaceful enclosure of the court. (This emphasis may reflect Castiglione’s own life—if an author may be assumed a life outside his text—given his mediocrity on campaign and, in contrast, his social eminence as a courtier.) But over an uncomfortable number of the debates—whether on the subject of the appropriate masculine response to women, or which mode of dress to adopt, or contrasts with the French and the Spanish, or, above all, the fate of Italy prostrate before foreign invaders, with a heroic resistance distinctly lacking—there hovers an anxiety that traditional masculine roles are under threat in the very courtiership which is being celebrated in the book’s debates. This is most clearly represented by Duke Guidobaldo in his absence—crippled by gout, he is incapable of being the warrior his father was and even abandons leadership of the Court in the evenings to the women. So, if patriarchy is not undermined in Courtier, its nature is highly problematic. In Book 4, as we have seen, one way out is the use of courtiership as the means of controlling the often brutal and destructive figure at the apex of patriarchy, the prince. (This would be its virtù, signifying both its virtue and its manliness.) The other road taken is through Bembo’s great speech, expounding neo-Platonic love, where fleshly desire is consumed in the fire of passion, leaving the exultation of a purely spiritual bond, the perfect form of love. This is the climax of Courtier, and it leaves debating games far behind. It is through the spiritualization of love that masculine and feminine are, at least in this reverie, transcended, as is the messy political decline of Italy which contrasted so painfully with its artistic supremacy.

A number of the courtiers were to become bishops and cardinals, but the spiritual consolation outlined by Bembo is not specifically Christian. Courtier’s subject is the secular life, and its morality is couched entirely in secular terms. Religion hardly features in the book, except for the Magnifico’s attack on the hypocrisy and licentiousness of friars. This absence of piety became increasingly suspect as the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation took hold, and in 1584 an expurgated version was produced. The original was condemned to feature on the Roman Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books, until, astonishingly, 1966. However, this censorship did not undermine Courtier’s popularity. There were 62 editions in Italy in the 150 years after its first publication, and translations rapidly appeared, the most famous in English being that of Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. Re-workings as well as translations were published in other countries, adapting it to the particularities of other cultures. Aristocracies all over Europe seized on sprezzatura as a sign of membership of the elite, and they appreciated the pragmatism through which the courtier sought to influence the prince. But princes liked it too—the Emperor Charles V kept Courtier by him as one of his three most favored books (with, tellingly, Machiavelli’s The Prince as another). In the end, Courtier was a book which could travel, socially and geographically, with its open questions, its range of opinion and principles which could be adapted to circumstance, and its playful and sometimes profound reflections on how to fashion one’s life in a competitive, creative social setting. It is a text in which there is no closure. The evening debates make room for the reader and her imagination. The book finishes but the games do not. At the conclusion of Bembo’s rapturous vision of Platonic love, all have fallen silent. Emilia Pia plucks Bembo by the sleeve to bring him down to earth, and then the assembled company realizes it is dawn, with Venus, appropriately enough, being the last star to shine in the morning sky over the hills surrounding the palace. Everyone reluctantly retires to bed, but not before Emilia Pia and Gaspare Pallavicino have returned to their sparring, and it is agreed to continue the discussions that following evening. So the games go on, as they have in the imaginations of readers ever since.

John Lotherington is the director of the 21st Century Trust in London. He is the editor and author of several books on European history and on contemporary social issues.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Accolti, Bernardo

A fashionable poet, nicknamed Unico Aretino.

Ariosto, Alfonso

A courtier serving the Este family of Ferrara, and a close friend of Castiglione.

da Bari, Roberto

A nobleman from southern Italy and a leading exponent of courtly skills such as dancing.

Bembo, Pietro

A Venetian aristocrat, writer, and arbiter of literary style and taste. Became a cardinal in 1539.

Bibbiena

Or, more formally Bernardo Dovizi. Served Giovanni de’ Medici and was appointed cardinal after Giovanni became Pope Leo X.

Calmeta

A poet, whose real name was Vincenzo Collo

Canossa, Count Lodovico di

A relative of Castiglione and a much sought after diplomat. Served the Marquis of Mantua, the Duke of Urbino, the Pope, and finally Francis I of France. In 1516 became Bishop of Bayeux.

Florido, Orazio

Served Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino and his heir Francesco Maria delle Rovere as a government servant.

Fregoso, Costanza, Federico, and Ottaviano

Their mother was the illegitimate daughter of Duke Federico of Urbino, where they took refuge having been exiled from Genoa from 1497. Ottaviano returned to Genoa and became Doge in 1513 but, as an ally of the French, was taken prisoner by the Imperial army and died in exile in 1524. Federico was a politician, soldier, and philologist, who opposed his brother’s policies in Genoa; he was appointed cardinal in 1539.

Frisio (Frigio), Niccolò

A diplomat, originally from Germany.

Gonzaga, Cesare

A relative of Castiglione, who also served the Marquis of Mantua and then the Dukes of Urbino in military and diplomatic capacities.

Gonzaga, Elisabetta

Duchess of Urbino, daughter of the Marquis of Mantua and wife of Duke Guidobaldo

Gonzaga, Margherita

The Duchess’ niece

Mariano, Fra

Served the Medici. A renowned joker.

Medici, Giuliano de’

Son of Florence’s Lorenzo Il Magnifico. Often in Urbino after the Medici family were exiled from Florence. Governor of Florence following the Medici restoration and made a general of the Church by his brother, Pope Leo X.

Monte, Pietro

Organiser of court entertainments and tournaments at Urbino.

Montefeltro, Guidobaldo da

Duke of Urbino. Not present at the evening debates owing to crippling gout. When it became clear that he and the Duchess would remain childless, he adopted Francesco delle Rovere as his heir.

Morella da Ortona

An old soldier, fervently loyal to Duke Guidobaldo.

Pallavicino, Gaspare

Despite the liveliness with which he is portrayed intervening in the evening debates, he was plagued by illness. He died in 1511 at the age of 25.

Pia, Emilia

A close friend and confidante of the Duchess, and related to the Duke.

Pio, Lodovico

A soldier and courtier.

Romano, Giovan Cristoforo

A sculptor, maker of medals, and a musician.

delle Rovere, Francesco Maria

His uncle, Pope Julius II, appointed him Prefect of Rome when he was only 14. This early promotion seems to have gone to his head, as he cut a murderous swathe through the politics of central Italy. Duke Guidobaldo adopted him as heir to the Duchy of Urbino, to which he succeeded in 1508, although was deprived of the duchy by Pope Leo X between 1516 and 1522.

Serafino, Fra

A great correspondent and court wit.

de Silva, Michel

A Portuguese nobleman and diplomat, to whom Castiglione dedicated The Book of the Courtier.

TO THE REVEREND AND ILLUSTRIOUS

LORD DOM MIGUEL DE SILVA,¹

BISHOP OF VISEU

WHEN my lord Guidobaldo Di Montefeltro,² Duke of Urbino, passed from this life, I, together with several other cavaliers who had served him, remained in the service of Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere,³ his heir and successor in the State. And as the recollection of Duke Guido’s character was fresh in my mind, and the delight I had during those years in the kind companionship of the notable persons who at that time frequented the Court of Urbino, I was moved by their memory to write these books of the Courtier, which I did in a few days,⁴ purposing in time to correct those errors that arose from the wish to pay this debt speedily. But for many years past fortune has burdened me with toil so constant that I never could find leisure to make the book such as would content even my poor judgment.

Now being in Spain,⁵ and learning from Italy that my lady Vittoria della Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara,⁶ to whom I gave a copy of the book, had against her word caused a large part of it to be transcribed, I could not but feel some annoyance, fearing the many inconveniences that may befall in such cases. Still, I relied upon the wit and good sense of this lady (whose character I have always held in veneration as a thing divine) to prevent any mischief coming to me from having obeyed her wishes. Finally I was informed that this part of the book was in the hands of many people at Naples; and as men are always eager for anything new, it seemed likely that someone might try to have it printed.⁷ Alarmed at this peril, then, I resolved to revise the book at once so far as I had time, with intent to publish it; for I thought it better to let it be seen imperfectly corrected by my own hand than grievously mutilated by the hand of others.

And so, to carry out this plan, I began to read the book again; and touched at the very outset by the title, I was saddened not a little, and far more so as I went on, by the thought that most of the personages introduced in the discussion were already dead; for besides those mentioned in the proem of the last Book, messer Alfonso Ariosto⁸ (to whom the work is dedicated) is also dead, a gracious youth, considerate, of the highest breeding, and apt in everything proper to a man who lives at court. Likewise Duke Giuliano de’ Medici,⁹ whose kindness and noble courtesy deserved to be enjoyed longer by the world. Messer Bernardo,¹⁰ Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico, who for his keen and playful readiness of wit was most delightful to all that knew him, he, too, is dead. Dead also is my lord Ottaviano Fregoso,¹¹ a man very rare in our times: magnanimous, devout, full of kindness, talent, good sense, and courtesy, a true lover of honour and merit, and so worthy of praise that his very enemies were ever forced to praise him; and the misadventures that he bore so bravely were enough to prove that fortune is still, as always, adverse to merit. And of those mentioned in my book many more besides are dead, to whom nature seemed to promise very long life.

But what should not be told without tears is that my lady Duchess,¹² too, is dead. And if my heart mourns the loss of so many friends and patrons, who have left me in this life as in a solitude full of sorrows, it is meet that I grieve more bitterly for the death of my lady Duchess than of all the others; for she was more precious than they, and I more bound to her than to all the others. Not to delay, then, the tribute that I owe the memory of so excellent a Lady and of the others who are no more, and moved also by the danger to my book, I have had it printed and published in such state as the shortness of time permitted.

And since you had no knowledge in their lifetime either of my lady Duchess or of the others who are dead (except Duke Giuliano and the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico), in order to give you that knowledge after their death as far as I can, I send you this book as a picture of the Court of Urbino, not by the hand of Raphael¹³ or Michelangelo,¹⁴ but of a humble painter, who knows only how to trace the chief lines, and cannot adorn truth with bright colouring, or by perspective art make that which is not seem to be. And although I tried to show forth in their discourse the qualities and character of my personages, I own I failed to express or even to suggest the excellences of my lady Duchess, not only because my style is inadequate to describe them, but because my intelligence fails even to conceive of them;¹⁵ and if I be censured for this or any other matter worthy of censure (for I well know that my book contains many such), I shall not gainsay the truth.

2.—But as men sometimes so delight in finding fault that they reprehend even that which does not merit reprehension, to such as blame me because I did not imitate Boccaccio¹⁶ or conform to the usages of present Tuscan speech, I shall not refrain from saying that while, for his time, Boccaccio had a charming faculty and often wrote with care and diligence, yet he wrote far better when he followed only the guidance of his natural wit and instinct, without further thought or care to polish his writings, than when he strove industriously and laboriously to be more refined and correct. For this reason even his followers declare that he greatly erred in judgment concerning his own works, holding cheap what did him honour¹⁷ and prizing what was worthless. Therefore, if I had imitated that manner of writing which in Boccaccio is censured by those who elsewise praise him, I should not have been able to escape those same aspersions that were cast on him in this regard; and I should have more deserved them, because he committed his faults thinking he was doing well, while I should have known I was doing ill. Again, if I had imitated the style now admired by many but less esteemed by him, it seemed to me that by such imitation I should show myself at variance with him whom I was imitating, a thing I deemed unseemly. And again, if this consideration had not moved me, I was not able to imitate him in my subject-matter, for he never wrote anything at all in the manner of these books of the Courtier; and I thought I ought not to imitate him in language, because the power and true law of good speech consist rather in usage than in aught else, and it is always a bad habit to employ words not in use. Therefore it was not meet for me to borrow many of Boccaccio’s words that were used in his day, but are not now used even by the Tuscans themselves.

Nor was I willing to limit myself to the Tuscan usage of to-day, because intercourse between different nations has always had the effect to transport, as it were like merchandise, new forms of speech from one to the other; and these endure or fail according as custom accepts or rejects them. Besides being attested by the ancients, this is clearly seen in Boccaccio, who used so many French, Spanish, and Provençal words (some of them perhaps not very intelligible to modern Tuscans) that if they were all omitted his work would be far shorter.

And since, in my opinion, we ought not to despise the idiom of the other noble cities of Italy, whither men resort who are wise, witty, and eloquent, wont to discourse on weighty matters of statecraft, letters, war, and commerce, I think that, of the words used in the speech of these places, I could fitly use in writing such as are graceful in themselves, elegant to pronounce, and commonly deemed good and expressive, although they might not be Tuscan or even of Italian origin. Moreover, in Tuscany, many words are used which are plainly corruptions of the Latin, but which in Lombardy and other parts of Italy have remained pure and unchanged, and are so generally employed by everyone that they are accepted by the gentle and easily understood by the vulgar. Hence I think I did not err if in writing I used some of these words, or preferred what is whole and true speech of my own country rather than what is corrupt and mutilated from abroad.

Neither do I regard as sound the maxim laid down by many, that our common speech is the more beautiful the less it is like Latin; nor do I understand why one fashion of speech should be accorded so much greater authority than another, that, if the Tuscan tongue can ennoble debased and mutilated Latin words and lend them such grace that, mutilated as they are, they may be used by anyone without reproach (which is not denied), the Lombard or any other tongue may not support these same Latin words, pure, whole, precise, and quite unchanged, so that they be tolerable. And truly, just as to undertake, in spite of usage, to coin new words or to preserve old ones may be called bold presumption, so also, besides being difficult, it seems almost impious to undertake, against the force of that same usage, to suppress and bury alive, as it were, words that have already endured for many centuries, protected by the shield of custom against the envy of time, and have maintained their dignity and splendour through the changes in language, in buildings, in habits and in customs, wrought by the wars and disasters of Italy.

Hence if in writing I have chosen not to use those words of Boccaccio that are no longer used in Tuscany, nor to conform to the rule of those who deem it not permissible to use any words that the Tuscans of to-day do not use, I seem to myself excusable. And I think that both in the matter and in the language of my book (so far as one language can aid another), I have followed authors as worthy of praise as is Boccaccio. Nor do I believe that it ought to be counted against me as a fault that I have elected to make myself known rather as a Lombard speaking Lombard, than as a non-Tuscan speaking Tuscan too precisely, in order that I might not resemble Theophrastus, who was detected as non-Athenian by a simple old woman, because he spoke the Athenian dialect with excess of care.¹⁸

But as this subject is sufficiently treated of in my first Book,¹⁹ I shall say no more, except that, to prevent all possible discussion, I grant my critics that I do not know this Tuscan dialect of theirs, which is so difficult and recondite. And I declare that I have written in my own dialect, just as I speak and for those who speak as I do; and in this I think I have wronged no man, because it seems to me that no one is forbidden to write and speak in his own language; nor is anyone bound to read or listen to what does not please him. Therefore if these folk do not care to read my Courtier, I shall not hold myself in the least wronged by them.

3.—Others say that since it is so very hard and well nigh impossible to find a man as perfect as I wish the Courtier to be, it was superfluous to write of him, because it is folly to teach what cannot be learned. To these I make answer that I am content to have erred in company with Plato, Xenophon and Marcus Tullius, leaving on one side all discussion about the Intelligible World and Ideals; among which, just as are included (according to those authors) the ideal of the perfect State, of the perfect King and of the perfect Orator,²⁰ so also is the ideal of the perfect Courtier. And if in my style I have failed to approach the image of this ideal, it will be so much the easier for courtiers to approach in deeds the aim and goal that I have set them by my writing; and even if they fail to attain the perfection, such as it is, that I have tried to express, he that approaches nearest to it will be the most perfect; just as when many archers shoot at a target and none hit the very mark, surely he that comes nearest to it is better than the rest.

Still others say that I thought to paint my own portrait, as if I were convinced that I possessed all the qualities that I attribute to the Courtier.²¹ To these I shall not indeed deny having essayed everything that I should wish the Courtier to know; and I think that a man, however learned, who did not know something of the matters treated of in the book, could not well have written of them; but I am not so lacking in self-discernment as to fancy that I know everything I have the wit to desire.

My defence then against these and perhaps many other accusations, I leave for the present to the verdict of public opinion; for while the many may not perfectly understand, yet oftener than not they scent by natural instinct the savour of good and bad, and without being able to explain why, they relish one thing and like it, and reject another and hate it. Therefore if my book wins general favour, I shall think it must be good and ought to live;²² but if it fails to please, I shall think it must be bad and soon to be forgot. And if my censors be not satisfied with the common verdict of opinion, let them rest content with that of time, which in the end reveals the hidden defects of everything, and being father of truth and judge without passion, ever passes on men’s writings just sentence of life or death.

BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE.

CONTENTS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

TO THE REVEREND AND ILLUSTRIOUS LORD DOM MIGUEL DE SILVA, BISHOP OF VISEU

THE FIRST BOOK - TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO

THE SECOND BOOK - TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO

THE THIRD BOOK - TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO

THE FOURTH BOOK - TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO

ENDNOTES

SUGGESTED READING

THE FIRST BOOK

TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO

WITHIN myself I have long doubted, dearest messer Alfonso, which of two things were the harder for me: to deny you what you have often begged of me so urgently, or to do it. For while it seemed to me very hard to deny anything (and especially a thing in the highest degree laudable) to one whom I love most dearly and by whom I feel myself to be most dearly loved, yet to set about an enterprise that I was not sure of being able to finish, seemed to me ill befitting a man who esteems just censure as it ought to be esteemed. At last, after much thought, I am resolved to try in this matter how much aid my assiduity may gain from that affection and intense desire to please, which in other things are so wont to stimulate the industry of man.

You ask me then to write what is to my thinking the form of Courtiership¹ most befitting a gentleman who lives at the court of princes, by which he may have the ability and knowledge perfectly to serve them in every reasonable thing, winning from them favour, and praise from other men; in short, what manner of man he ought to be who may deserve to be called a perfect Courtier without flaw. Wherefore, considering your request, I say that had it not seemed to me more blameworthy to be reputed somewhat unamiable by you than too conceited by everyone else, I should have avoided this task, for fear of being held over bold by all who know how hard a thing it is, from among such a variety of customs as are in use at the courts of Christendom, to choose the perfect form and as it were the flower of Courtiership. For custom often makes the same thing pleasing and displeasing to us; whence it sometimes follows that customs, habits, ceremonies and fashions that once were prized, become vulgar, and contrariwise the vulgar become prized. Thus it is clearly seen that use rather than reason has power to introduce new things among us, and to do away with the old; and he will often err who seeks to determine which are perfect. Therefore being conscious of this and many other difficulties in the subject set before me to write of, I am constrained to offer some apology, and to testify that this error (if error it may indeed be called) is common to us both, to the end that if I be blamed for it, the blame may be shared by you also; for your offence in setting me a task beyond my powers should not be deemed less than mine in having accepted it.

So now let us make a beginning of our subject, and if possible let us form such a Courtier that any prince worthy to be served by him, although of but small estate,² might still be called a very great lord.

In these books we shall follow no fixed order or rule of distinct precepts, such as are usually employed in teaching anything whatever; but after the fashion of many ancient writers, we shall revive a pleasant memory and rehearse certain discussions that were held between men singularly competent in such matters; and although I had no part in them personally, being in England at the time they took place,³ yet having received them soon after my return, from one who faithfully reported them to me, I will try to recall them as accurately as my memory will permit, so that you may know what was thought and believed on this subject by men who are worthy of highest praise, and to whose judgment implicit faith may be given in all things. Nor will it be amiss to tell the cause of these discussions, so that we may reach in orderly manner the end to which our discourse tends.

2.—On the slopes of the Apennines towards the Adriatic sea, almost in the centre of Italy, there lies (as everyone knows) the little city of Urbino. Although amid mountains, and less pleasing ones than perhaps some others that we see in many places, it has yet enjoyed such favour of heaven that the country round about is very fertile and rich in crops; so that besides the whole someness of the air, there is great abundance of everything needful for human life. But among the greatest blessings that can be attributed to it, this I believe to be the chief, that for a long time it has ever been ruled by the best of lords;⁴ although in the calamities of the universal wars of Italy, it was for a season deprived of them.⁵ But without seeking further, we can give good proof of this by the glorious memory of Duke Federico,⁶ who in his day was the light of Italy; nor is there lack of credible and abundant witnesses, who are still living, to his prudence, humanity, justice, liberality, unconquered courage,—and to his military discipline, which is conspicuously attested by his numerous victories, his capture of impregnable places, the sudden swiftness of his expeditions, the frequency with which he put to flight large and formidable armies by means of a very small force, and by his loss of no single battle whatever;⁷ so that we may not unreasonably compare him to many famous men of old.

Among his other praiseworthy deeds, he built on the rugged site of Urbino a palace regarded by many as the most beautiful to be found in all Italy; and he so well furnished it with everything suitable that it seemed not a palace but a city in the form of a palace; and not merely with what is ordinarily used,—such as silver vases, hangings of richest cloth-of-gold and silk, and other similar things,—but for ornament he added countless antique statues in marble and bronze, pictures most choice, and musical instruments of every sort, nor would he admit anything there that was not very rare and excellent. Then at very great cost he collected a goodly number of most excellent and rare books in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, all of which he adorned with gold and with silver, esteeming this to be the chiefest excellence of his great palace.⁸

3.—Following then the course of nature, and already sixty-five years old,⁹ he died gloriously, as he had lived; and he left as his successor a motherless little boy of ten years, his only son Guidobaldo. Heir to the State, he seemed to be heir also to all his father’s virtues, and soon his noble nature gave such promise as seemed not permissible to hope for from mortal man; so that men esteemed none among the notable deeds of Duke Federico to be greater than to have begotten such a son. But envious of so much virtue, fortune thwarted this glorious beginning with all her power; so that before Duke Guido reached the age of twenty years, he fell ill of the gout,¹⁰ which grew upon him with grievous pain, and in a short space of time so crippled all his members that he could neither stand upon his feet nor move; and thus one of the fairest and most promising forms in the world was distorted and spoiled in tender youth.

And not content even with this, fortune was so contrary to him in all his purposes, that he could seldom carry into effect anything that he desired; and although he was very wise of counsel and unconquered in spirit, it seemed that what he undertook, both in war and in everything else whether small or great, always ended ill for him. And proof of this is found in his many and diverse calamities, which he ever bore with such strength of mind, that his spirit was never vanquished by fortune; nay, scorning her assaults with unbroken courage, he lived in illness as if in health and in adversity as if fortunate, with perfect dignity and universal esteem; so that although he was thus infirm of body, he fought with most honourable rank in the service of their Serene Highnesses the Kings of Naples, Alfonso¹¹ and Ferdinand the Younger;¹² later with Pope Alexander VI,¹³ and with the Venetian and Florentine signories.

Upon the accession of Julius II¹⁴ to the pontificate, he was made Captain of the Church; at which time, following his accustomed habit, above all else he took care to fill his household with very noble and valiant gentlemen, with whom he lived most familiarly, delighting in their intercourse: wherein the pleasure he gave to others was not less than that he received from others, he being well versed in both the [learned]¹⁵ languages, and uniting affability and pleasantness¹⁶ to a knowledge of things without number. And besides this, the greatness of his spirit so set him on, that although he could not practise in person the exercises of chivalry, as he once had done, yet he took the utmost pleasure in witnessing them in others; and by his words, now correcting now praising every man according to desert, he clearly showed his judgment in those matters; wherefore, in jousts and tournaments, in riding, in the handling of every sort of weapon, as well as in pastimes,