A Literary Blackmailer of the Sixteenth Century

IN the middle of the eighteenth century Count Mazzuchelli, one of the most distinguished littérateurs of his day, published a life of Aretino. The preface of the second edition begins thus: “The name of Pietro Aretino has always been so famous in the world that it never could be hid from the knowledge of even the least learned.” And Addison in the Spectator of March 27, 1711, declined to tell the career of Aretino as an illustration of his point because he is “too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his tributaries.”

It is doubtful whether either of these sentences would be written now. The fame of Aretino, so vivid two centuries after his death, has declined, until to-day many people of cultivation would know little more of him than his name. It is, perhaps, just as well not to know anything about Pietro Aretino, because up to the last few years it was difficult to know the truth about him. Pietro’s life was written by enemies, and, as his contemporary Cranmer said of his own foes, “They dragged him out of the dunghill.” The scandal-mongers of later generations enlarged their invectives into the following story. And features of the disreputable career thus created for him appear in every mention of Pietro Aretino, except those of a few Italian writers of the last dozen years.

According to this legend he was the illegitimate son of a gentleman of Arezzo and a notoriously bad woman. After such an up-bringing as might be expected from his parentage, he fled from Arezzo because of an impious poem. (A variation of the legend makes him steal from his mother.) He made a living in Perugia as a bookbinder, and picked up his education by reading the works he handled. There was a picture in the city representing the Madonna at the foot of the Cross. Aretino painted a lute in her outstretched arms. After this sacrilege he fled to Rome, where he became a servant in the house of Chigi, the great banker. He stole a silver cup from his master, and fled to Venice, where he led a life of extraordinary debauchery, and won an evil reputation as an atheist and writer of pornographic literature. He was fatally hurt by falling over backward from his seat in a fit of laughter at an anecdote of dishonorable adventure of one of his sisters, whose lives were worse than his mother’s. And this scene was painted in 1854 by the noted German painter, Feuerbach. Finally, he died uttering one of the most profane sayings in the annals of blasphemy.

In addition to this unsavory life history, entirely false, Aretino has been labeled with a larger number of strong epithets than any other man in the history of literature . “ The ignominy of his century; ” “the Cæsar Borgia of literature;” “perverter of morals and letters;” “the synonym for all infamies.” These are a few of the judgments that have been passed upon him.

To know Pietro Aretino in the four thousand letters from and to him, which have survived in print, is to recognize that he had great capacities and some amiable qualities, which won him many ardent admirers and a number of warm friends. But it is also to perceive that his character was essentially selfish and corrupt. In spite of the strain of religiosity in Pietro’s character, it is hard to raise any very strong objection to the epitaph falsely supposed to have stood on his tomb. “Here lies Pietro Aretino, who spoke evil of every one except God. He never spoke evil of God, simply because he never knew Him.”

If, then, the epitaph is just, why trouble to retell correctly the story of a bad life ? Simply because, to put Pietro Aretino aside labeled and classified by an absolute moral judgment, to make him a scapegoat for the sins of his times, is to miss knowing a vivid and illuminating personality. To judge him sympathetically, to see his career as it appeared to himself and to many of his contemporaries, is to throw upon the society of the late Renaissance in Italy gleams of light comparable in revealing power to those which shine from the pages of Benvenuto Cellini. If the cobbler’s son, who in an age of pedantry gained fame and fortune by an untrained pen; whom Titian painted out of close friendship; whose head Sansovino cast in the bronze doors of San Marco; of whom Ariosto wrote in Orlando Furioso, “Behold the Scourge of Princes, the divine Pietro Aretino; ” to whom his native city gave the title Salvator Patriæ, and the King of France sent a gold chain of eight pounds’ weight; whom a pope rose from his seat to receive with a kiss of welcome, and who by command rode in a stately procession in the post of honor at the Emperor’s right hand, — if this man be a degenerate type, his degeneration cannot be diagnosed by a fixed moral judgment, for his character and career are symptomatic of the disease of his times.

There is not space in this article to show Aretino as he was. And it seems wisest to speak of one side of his career,— the financial side. Balzac, in introducing his characters, seldom fails to tell us about their income; and to understand where Pietro got the money which supported the palace on the Grand Canal at Venice, in which for so many years he kept open house, is to begin to form a conception of the man. He coined it out of a reputation for a certain kind of skill with the pen which he had acquired when he came to Venice at the age of thirty-five.

A short account of his previous career will show what that reputation was. Pietro was born in Arezzo, in 1492, of a poor shoemaker and his wife, both, so far as we know, honorable people. He left his birthplace to seek his fortune, and after a stay in Perugia, went to Rome, where he found a patron in Agostino Chigi, the rich papal banker. From the house of Chigi he passed to the court of Leo X, that Pope “who enjoyed the papacy God had given him,” spent eight thousand ducats a year on his kitchen, a hundred thousand in gaming and presents to court favorites, gave Michael Angelo six thousand for painting the Sistine Chapel, and showed equal zest for a hunting trip, a fresco of Raphael, an indecent comedy, a discussion between Bembo and Bibbiena, or the elaborate farce of a wild practical joke. In the cultivated company gathered in Leo’s palace, Pietro soon made a place for himself among the best, — not by training, for he had none, but by the vigor of his language. A poet, known for skill in reciting improvised verses to the lute, mentions him among the famous men of Leo’s court, Bembo, Castiglione, Sadolet, and others, as “a singer sweet and free, whose lithe tongue has the mastery, both of praise and blame.” But, either because the men he knew were not laudable, or because his spirit was acrid, blaming evidently came easier to him than praising. A pastoral dialogue of the day makes one speaker advise the other, “Try your best to have Aretino for your friend, because he is a bad enemy. God guard every one from his tongue.”

In 1521 Leo died. Hate followed his bier. Every enemy of the Medici family and party took the ready arms of voice and pen. The cardinal Soderini thanked God in an oration for having delivered the church from Leo’s tyranny. A letter from Rome reported, “no Pope since the Church of God existed has left a worse memory at his death, so much so that all Rome is saying, He came in like a fox, he lived as a lion (Leo), he died like a dog.” These were, of course, the words of Leo’s enemies, and the friends of his family rallied at once for defense. They had no time to lose over the dead. They looked to the future pope. The adherents of the Medici did all they could to force the election of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, Leo’s cousin with the bar sinister. While they struggled behind the closed doors of the conclave, Pietro waged a bitter fight for the family of his patron, issuing a series of mordant satires on the cardinals. The form he gave them foretells the vigorous originality of his talent. He never cared for the fashionable style and methods of the trained littérateurs of his day. His bent took him into unbeaten paths. Six times in his career he gave to a literary form, as yet but little used, new power and vogue. And now, while fighting for his patron like other bravi of the pen, he made the beginning of a fame which might be called Italian. Pietro was, so far as we know, the first man whose name became noted outside of Rome as a writer of Pasquinades.

His party lost, and an outsider, whose name had never brought any price in the pools the Romans eagerly sold on the election, was suddenly chosen. When the Pope elect crossed the Alps, and drew near to Rome, Pietro thought it wise to leave. Adrian was an honest priest and a stern ruler. He wanted to throw into the Tiber the stone image of Pasquino, to which the satires were fastened, and was only dissuaded by being told it was useless to try and drown Pasquino; “like a frog, he would talk out of the water.” If the Pope could have laid hands on Pietro he certainly would have tried to see whether “the secretary of Pasquino” could talk out of a dungeon.

Pietro was not kept away from Rome long. Adrian died, to the great joy of Roman society, whose sons of Belial decorated his physician’s door with laurel wreaths and the inscription Salvator Patriæ. A new golden age seemed to begin. The son of Lorenzo de’ Medici was succeeded, after the brief pontificate of a Flemish barbarian, by the nephew of Lorenzo, Clement VII. The whole band of those who lived by their talents rejoiced that a pope representing the reactionary ideas of the Middle Ages was replaced by a man of progress, in touch with the times. Adrian had taken great interest in religion, and none in art. They hoped that Clement would not spend so much energy in promoting the old-fashioned virtues, that he would have none to spare for forwarding men of “Virtú” who could create with pen or chisel or brush things to please the mind or the taste.

The temper of the secretary of Pasquino was soothed by golden hopes, his dreaded and applauded tongue was still. His contemporaries were ill content with his silence. After color and form in the plastic arts, the Italians of the early sixteenth century seem to have found most pleasure in satire. And Aretino had shown himself able to give them a satire suited to their taste, — suggesting no ideals, without hope of reforms, so local and personal that it is hard for another generation to understand it, — no bitter passion of the soul, but just a delicate morsel for the intense Schadenfreude of the day. They called on him not to stop his career. What stood for the public of our day demanded something from his pen. A poet wrote in a dialogue between a Traveller and Marforio, the comrade of Pasquino: “Traveller: Marforio, since the day when this Pope was elected, your brother Pasquino is grown almost dumb and Aretino no longer reproves vice. What have you to say about it? Marforio : Why, don’t you know that Armellino has cut short Pasquino by giving him to understand that if he makes a sound they’ll slit his tongue for him ? So the poor chap doesn’t dare to breathe, much less talk. Traveller : Pietro Aretino, who is in such high favor, was taken with a mouthful of bait like a frog, and now he sings, but he does n’t want to touch the court. That would be a mistake, because it is giving him means to play the swell like a baron,” etc.

On the 7th of June, 1525, the secretary of the Marquis of Mantua wrote, “You promised several days ago to send some beautiful and pleasing compositions, made for Pasquino, and we have been continually in eager expectation because we want always to have some new fruit of your active talent. And we don’t know why we suffer such dearth of them unless it is to make us more hungry for them,” etc., etc. To which the Marquis added a postscript in his own hand: “Please M. Pietro send me some of your compositions, and kiss the feet of His Holiness for me — and I am entirely yours — entirely yours. The Marquis of Mantua.”

These urgings, backed by the factional hatred of the court and perhaps by disappointment because Clement’s gold did not flow his way fast enough, set Pietro’s tongue free. Pasquino began to talk again; more particularly about the Datario Ghiberti, Clement’s chief counselor. As a result, Pietro, riding alone one day, was dragged from his horse and left for dead, covered with dagger wounds. Everybody knew who had tried to kill him, — a certain Achilles della Volta of the household of the Datario Ghiberti, and years afterward Achilles, on trial for another deadly assault, confessed that he had stabbed Aretino. It was taken for granted by all Rome that the master had ordered the servant to avenge the insults of “the secretary of Pasquino;” an accusation which Ghiberti, years afterward, when Bishop of Verona, solemnly denied in a letter to the Marquis of Mantua. Aretino did his best to get the Pope to punish his assailant, but Achilles remained untouched in the household of Clement’s chief counselor. Vowing vengeance, Pietro left Rome, and shortly afterwards settled in Venice, where he lived for twenty-nine years.

He was a born spendthrift. Money burned in his pockets and leaked through his fingers. And, like so many men who have the gift of language, he claimed the right of genius to have every desire satisfied. In 1537 he was spending, according to his own account, about a hundred ducats a month, living lavishly in a palace on the Grand Canal, with a household of twenty people. In 1542 he reckoned his receipts at eighteen hundred ducats a year. Little, if any, of this money was from the sale of his books. In his first volume of letters he includes one to his publisher, which says, “With the same good will with which I have given you the other works, I give you these few letters. . . . The only profit I wish is your testimony that I have given them to you. I wish, God willing, to get my pay for the fatigues of writing, not from the poverty of those who buy my books, but from the ‘Cortesia’ of Princes. Let him learn to be a merchant who seeks material gain, and practising the trade of a bookseller, lay aside the name of a poet. . . . So print my letters carefully and well, because I do not want any other return from you.”

By the “ Cortesia” of Princes, on which Pietro depended for his income, he means a magnanimous readiness to promote in every way the pleasure of a man of ability. It belongs to the character of a prince. Without it the monarch is lower than the merchant who has it. “It is a noble thing,” he writes, “to love a woman; it is a divine thing to wish well to be a man of genius, because the love of genius is related to the love of God.” His pages are full of praises of the divine trait of liberality to genius and invective against meanness. By “Servitú” which repaid “Cortesia,” he meant the moral duty of the man of genius to repay his patrons by immortality. He asserts that “ the road of Cortesia leads to eternal glory.” For he believed that his writings would give eternal glory to those mentioned in them, and he called himself “the secretary of the world.” The belief was not too fatuous in one who was told in various forms by dozens of correspondents, “your benefits are of such a nature that they render immortal those who receive them.” And the world of great men treated him like its secretary, with gifts of splendid garments, heavy gold chains, splendid plate, and streams of ducats. The man who was pensioned and complimented simultaneously by Henry VIII of England, Francis I of France, and the Emperor Charles V, might not unreasonably claim to hold a position of international authority in the world of letters.

For all the favors he received from his patrons Aretino paid to the best of his ability. It is difficult to see how adulation could be raised to a pitch higher than the tone of some of his letters. He writes to Antonio da Leyva: “It is not to be doubted that Antonio is more God than man, because if he was more man than God he would not have risen from a private position to be a prince, and from a mortal to an immortal. Everybody knows how much dignity Alexander gained from his being born of a King, and how much was added to Cæsar because he was not descended from an Emperor. For which reason virtue, and not fortune, crowned him in the same way in which she will crown you. And very justly, because you have gained of yourself all that is in you. Therefore the fortunate Emperor ought to count the chief of his felicities, the possession of the good Leyva.” It was rather difficult, of course, to keep on the same scale in a letter to Leyva’s master, printed almost next to this, but Aretino was equal to the task. He tells the Emperor that, if the scroll on which he writes had a soul, it ought “to prefer itself to all the glorious scrolls of the ancients, just because it is not read but merely touched by the friend of Christ, Charles Augustus, before whose merits the universe ought at once to bow. And certainly, as God has enlarged the world to give room to your merits, it is necessary for Him also to raise the sky because the space of the entire air is not large enough for the flight of your fame.” He is able to touch the harp of flattery with a firm hand for private patrons also. He writes to Signor Severino Bonci who has shown toward him the royal virtue of magnificence in every sort of “Cortesia,” “He is worthy of being deified in the eternity of memory as a terrestrial Jove.” And he bids Signora Beatrice Pia, “exulting in the thought of the graces with which the grave qualities that make you illustrious, thrive in splendour, feel certain that you abound in such great perfection of your essential nature, that you could with the mere superfluity of such a divine gift change into goodness the imperfection of the being of all your sex.”

But perhaps the masterpiece of the vast collection of flattery, of which the reader has only a few scattered specimens, is found in Aretino’s dedication of his second volume of letters to Henry VIII. “O supreme Arbiter of peace and war, temporal and spiritual, do not be indignant that the Universe does not dedicate to you temples and erect to you altars as to one of the more sublime numi because the infinite number of your immense deeds keeps it confused, just as the sun would confound us if nature, taking it from its place, should place it close to our eyes.”

In this exchange of “Servitú” for “Cortesia,” Aretino was simply carrying into literature the relation of the mercenary soldier to his patron. And as the Swiss Guards of the Tuileries two centuries later felt bound to die for their bread, so Aretino felt bound to exalt and defend the glory of those who sustained his genius. He writes to Signor Luigi Gonzaga, “I was always, Signore, and always will be as faithful to my patrons as to my friends, and unless I am given cause of offense, would rather die than attack the honour of another.”

In thus hiring himself out as a giver of immortality, Aretino was playing on the common weakness of the men of his day, — an insatiable desire for fame. This craving for glory, which possessed the age like an infectious disease, was not the desire to be praised by those who knew, for doing well things worth doing — but a passion largely vulgar, — a thirst to be known among one’s fellows for anything and everything; a material pride that made all ears itch for even the coarsest flattery. The liking for applause beset the men of the Renaissance. One has only to glance at a book which shows the best side of the society of the first generation of the sixteenth century, the Cortigiano of Castiglione, to see that he advises the perfect gentleman to be always, in every act of his life, playing to the gallery.

Aretino has given, perhaps, the most striking description of this characteristic passion of his age, — this thirst and hunger for praise which made fame seem almost like a material thing to be eaten and drunk. “I do not know the pleasure misers feel in the sound of the gold they count, but I know well that the blessed spirits do not hear music which is more grateful than the harmony which comes out of one’s own praises. One feeds on it as in paradise the souls feed on the vision of God.” He writes to the Cardinal of Trent at the baths, “Although it may be that crowds of friends, a swift succession of pleasures, harmony of instruments, the sight of jewels, the suavity of odours, the delicate folds of drapery, the pleasantness of books, the joyfulness of songs and agreeable conversation may not seem to you suited to your pious dignity — you can enjoy instead of such pastimes the thought of your own merits, recreating your senses and spirits with the goodness which all people perceive in you, for which grace all men bow before you, praise you, and watch you. Certainly there is no joy which surpasses the joy of him who is not only known as good but is approved as the best.”

It was the shrewd choice of a man who knew his public which led Aretino to give up the small gains of bookselling to levy heavy tribute on the inordinate vanity of the great men of his day.

And he would not sell flattery at retail. He writes Signore S. G.: “I have sent back the ten ducats to your friend, begging him on receiving back your gift to return the praises I gave you. Because it does not seem to me the part of an honest man to honour one who vituperates me as you would have vituperated me if I had accepted what is rather an alms given to a beggar than a present to a man of genius. Certainly those who buy fame must be generous minded, giving, not according to the rank of their soul, but as the condition of him to whom they give demands, because the poor ink has a hard task in trying to exalt the name which is weighed down as if by lead by every sort of de merits.”

The passion for fame had another side, and the audacious cleverness of Aretino’s scheme for coining his reputation cannot be appreciated until we have looked at it. The love of flattery seldom fails to breed an extreme touchiness. To the man greedy of adulation the time comes when one word of dispraise gives more pain than ten words of praise can give pleasure. If the Italian of the Renaissance was apt for satiric speech, he paid for his evil tongue by a thin skin, sensitive to every malicious breath. Even to-day among the Latin races, where the Renaissance flourished in its vigor, there is a lasting sense of wrong for verbal insult—“injuries,” oltraggi—which the Englishspeaking race, used to a word and a blow, or to words forgotten, finds it hard to appreciate. And Aretino counted on this shrinking hatred of mordant words to bring in his tribute from those who thought the price of his praise too high.

He tried his hand with success at comedy, tragedy, letters, verse, religious works, and pornographic works, but his specialty was maldicentia. It was admitted that he had the worst tongue in Italy. Nobody cared to feel the rough side of it. Every prince and lord in Europe whose name was mentioned in Italy was anxious to keep Aretino from commenting on those facts of his career or those traits in his character which would provoke cynical laughter. They were the more anxious not to become the theme of Aretino’s wit because he was shrewd enough not to invent scandals. Those he uses in his satiric writings are either true or had become current in private talk.

From the time he went to Venice until his death, Aretino asserted that he had a divine mission, — to punish the vices of princes and expose the hypocrisy of priests. And one cannot turn over five pages of his letters without finding vague allusions to the crimes which haunt princely courts, and the vileness by which prelates rose to power at Rome. For example, promising to write regularly, he adds, “And in case I fail, put it down to the fault of a certain beastly desire to resemble princes, and not being able to do so with any other mask than that of lies, it may be that I make this promise, keeping it in the way they keep theirs.” Asked by a preacher to define charity, he answers, “A friar’s hood, because the shadow of its sanctity covers the multitude of the vile progeny of your hypocritical actions.” A certain transaction he says would be dishonest “even among cardinals.” “If,” he writes to the Spaniard Don Luigi d’ Avila, “from being Italian one could change into a Spaniard, as from being a Christian one can change into a priest,” etc. Through all his letters runs a stream of such allusions to the meanness and bad faith of princes, or to the hypocrisy of all ranks in the church. These allusions in his published letters are, for the most part, vague. Occasionally, indeed, when the pay of one of his patrons had been too long delayed, he becomes more pointed. He writes to Count Massiliano Stampa: “It is so difficult to decide, O Marchese, which is greater, the praise with which I exalt your honours or the trick with which you delude my hopes, that I keep silent about it, and in my silence I am sorrier for myself who believe in you than for you who trick me — because my trustfulness comes from a certain stupid simplicity of nature, and your cheating me comes from princely malevolence. Wherefore in such a matter I am more worthy of excuse than you of blame.” And sometimes he names prelates who for him incarnate the hypocrisy he denounces in the church. But these passages, though not few among his published letters, would hardly have maintained, amidst the strong competition of the day, his reputation of having the most dangerous tongue in the world. This reputation, absolutely necessary for keeping at its highest figure the income he drew from his profession, he maintained in satiric verse and unpublished letters circulated, for the most part, in manuscript. By these less public writings he could cause fear without giving deadly offense, and if necessary he could disavow them.

The choice which Aretino presented to kings and great men was a very simple one. A eulogistic letter assured them of his desire to spread their fame and make them immortal. Not to accept the offer was to run the risk of being pilloried for the laughter of Italy. This literary mill, whose upper stone was flattery and its lower satire, squeezed from the vanity of men a steady stream of gold for its ingenious author. The plan was not entirely original. In the fifteenth century the sale of eulogy and invective had been common among the humanists, but Aretino first assembled and arranged the rude and elementary devices of his predecessors. And he drew from his machine a large income which enabled him to live in far better style than Erasmus, the acknowledged father and king of letters.

From the seventeenth century on, writers have expanded in severe epithets on the infamy of this system. One obvious thing seems to have escaped them. If the system had seemed in its own day too infamous, it could not have been so successful. The utterances of a ribald blackmailer, looked down on by all honest men as infamous, could not have steadily flattered pride nor stirred fear. Nor did Aretino try to hide his practices. On the contrary, he made so clear an explanation of his system in letters he printed that we trace it entirely in them. And he is proud of his office as the “ Scourge of Princes.”His letters abound with passages like the following: “Believe me, I am the same good companion I was in old days, and my joyful amiability has grown with my growing reputation and ease of life. The weight of years would seem light to me if I were not fat. . . . For my increase of flesh, many attribute the fault to the happiness with which God has surrounded me, and the talents He has showered on me by His grace. And I confess it because mummies would be restored to life if the world continually visited them with tribute. And for that, I render thanks to Christ, because certainly these things are His gifts and not our merits.” “If I were not worthy of any honour for the originality with which I give life to style, I merit at least a little glory for having forced truth into the ante-chambers and the ears of the great ones of the world to the shame of adulation and falsehood. And not to defraud my rank, I will quote the words which fell from the sacred mouth of the great Antonio da Leyva. ‘Aretino is more necessary to life than sermons, for they direct towards the right way only simple people, but his writings, men of birth and power.’ ” He is equally frank in showing the gains of his service and his willingness to sell either silence or speech. He speaks of “one of those presents which Princes often give me, I hardly know whether to say out of fear or out of liberality,” etc. He often threatens “the vendettas of ink, more eternal than the offences of blood.” “The stinginess of promises and the tenacity of avarice is a reason for acting badly, not simply for speaking badly, and if they don’t look out I will put an ornament on the face of the name of somebody which shall stand for a sign until the Day of Judgment.” He considered that he had done a great service to literature in systematizing this commercial use of invective and eulogy. He asserts that he is the “Redeemer of Genius who has returned her to her ancient place.” “ Her glory was dimmed by the shadows of the avarice of men of power, and before I began to lacerate their names men of genius begged the honest necessaries of life. And if some one rose above the pressure of necessity, he did it as a buffoon and not as a person of merit. My pen, armed with its terrors, has brought matters to such a pass that the Signori coming to themselves have cherished great intellects with enforced ‘ Cortesia. ’ ”

He left to posterity, as a proud record of glory, a medal which shows on the reverse Aretino seated while figures bring him gifts. The inscription reads, " Princes supported by the tribute of their people bring tribute to their servant.”