LEONARDO DA VINCI What Civilization Owes 
to Italy 
By 
James J. Walsh, M. D., Ph. D., Sc. D., etc. 
Extension Professor Fordham University, Professor of Physiological 
Psychology at the Cathedral College and College of the Sacred Heart 
(Manhattanville) New York City, Lecturer on Psychology 
and Sociology at St. Mary's College, Plainfield, N. J 
and Marywood College, Scranton, Pa. Author of 
The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, The 
Century of Columbus, Makers of Modern 
Medicine, Health Through Will 
Power, Religion and 
Health, etc. 
THE STRATFORD COMPANY, Publishers 
1923 
Boston, Massachusetts Copyright, 1923 
The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
Boston, Mass. 
The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. To 
The Most Revebend John Bonzano 
Apostolic Delegate to the United States, 
in esteem and appreciation Contents 
Page 
Preface i 
Introduction v 
Architecture 34 
Arts and Crafts 60 
Astronomy 214 
Biological Sciences 238 
Discoverers and Explorers 379 
Education 97 
Feminine Education 118 
Great Women of Italy 333 
Inventions 398 
Italian Cities 359 
Italian Scholarship 134 
Law 185 
Literature 76 
Mathematics 102 
Medicine 263 
Men of World Influence 308 
Music 46 
Painting 1 
Philosophy 164 
Physical Science 225 
Sculpture 22 
Surgery 288 List of Illustrations 
Leonardo da Vinci ...... Frontispiece 
Opp. 
Page 
Raphael . . . xi 
Entrance, Palazzo Publico, Perugia, Italy ... 3 
Raising of Lazarus (Giotto) 11 
St. Peter’s Rome 40 
Singing Boys (Donatello 1386-1466) . . . .68 
Titian, Emperor Charles V 74 
Palma Vecchio, Poet (Sometimes called Ariosto) . . 90 
Cathedral, Milan, Italy Ill 
Raphael, Pope Julius II ...... 141 
Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks (London) . 152 
Singing Gallery of the Cathedral (Lucca Della Robbia 
1400-1482) 177 
Correggio 193 
Grand Canal with Cavalli Palace, Venice . . . 212 
Cathedral, Baptistry, and Leaning Tower, Pisa . . 231 
Bellini Doge Loredano 246 
Girolamo Fracastoro (1484-1553) 273 
Bellini 275 
Sanctorius on the Steelyard 280 
Verrocchio Colleoni ........ 294 
Christ (Michelangelo) ....... 313 
Filippino Lippi, Madona with four Saints . . . 327 
Pieta (Michelangelo) 349 
Bronze Horses, St. Mark’s, Venice ..... 359 
Bronze Door, Baptistry, Florence ..... 362 
Tomb of Dante, Ravenna, Italy 374 
Amerigo Vespucci 379 
Fortitude, Truth and Temperance (Raffael in Vatican) 398 Preface 
BEFORE the Great War came to give us a series of 
disillusions with regard to our modern civilization, 
nearly all the world was agreed in thinking that material 
prosperity was the certain index of a nation’s greatness. 
Governments were committed to the policy that a nation’s 
place in civilization wTas measured by its bank clearances. 
The happiness of a people depended on the multiplication of 
its comforts and conveniences. The ideal of life was not 
to make people happy, but to make them comfortable. Ap- 
parently many people seemed to think that the two terms were 
convertible, though nothing could possibly be less true than 
that. There was a definite persuasion that if we created 
great leisure classes in the various countries they would 
surely devote themselves to the higher things of life and if not 
by actual creation, at least through discriminating apprecia- 
tion, foster art and literature and the cult of the things of 
the mind which make for the real uplift of humanity. 
Occupied with this thought the world for several gener- 
ations has given itself up to the idea that the struggle for 
material existence, carried out to the fullest extent would 
surely bring with it the evolution of the race, and in the 
course of progress the fittest would survive and humanity 
would rise on stepping stones of its dead self to higher things. 
The awful war, the most destructive that humanity has ever 
had has wakened most of us up to the fallacy of this notion, 
and has made at least those who think seriously about the 
question realize that over occupation of men with the material 
side of life always works out its own destruction, and that the PREFACE 
one hope of mankind is to secure as much interest as possible 
in the things of the mind and heart and soul rather than of 
the body. 
One of our American poets told us that “the dreamer 
lives forever and the toiler dies in a day.” The expression 
is almost commonplace in the mouths of those who have 
studied the history of mankind deeply. Most people felt, 
however, that this contained more poetry than truth and was 
scarcely to be taken very seriously, but the war has shown 
us very clearly how the toilers who take their toil too seriously 
work out their own destruction and disappear in their own 
little day. Only those nations have lived in the memory of 
men who have devoted themselves to the things of the mind 
and heart and soul rather than of the body, who have given 
themselves to the cult of mental and artistic development 
rather than material prosperity or commercial evolution. 
Probably in nothing is this great lesson of history better 
illustrated than in the story of Italy. All down the centuries 
in modern times the Italian peninsula has been the scene of 
civic dissensions and endless conflicts between the many 
petty rulers who have governed various portions of it. There 
has never been, until the last generation, anything like union 
into a single great state that might look for prosperity in the 
modern competitive sense, yet in spite of political division 
which prevented national prosperity, Italy has given the 
world more that “the world will never willingly let die,” to 
use Milton’s noble phrase, than any other nation in Europe. 
The debt of civilization to Italy is so great as to be almost 
incomputable. 
Now that the rising generation has to form anew its ideas 
as to what constitutes the greatness of a nation there could 
probably be no more precious lesson than the story of what 
civilization owes to Italy. It is quite literally the success 
of failure. Italy was never a great, prosperous nation. It 
comprised a people struggling to express the meaning of life 
as it appealed to it, in art and literature, in music and 
architecture, and its dreamers live on as the toilers do not. PREFACE 
In the time to come the nations are going to he judged by 
the generations which succeed them all over the world, just 
in proportion as they rival Italy’s achievements in art and 
literature, and the creation of the things of beauty that are 
a joy forever, rather than in the accumulation of wealth and 
the piling up of material monuments to successful bodily 
effort.. 
Tyre and Sidon and Babylon and Carthage have dis- 
appeared completely after the production of magnificent 
material results, while the art and literature of Egypt and 
Greece and Rome are still living forces in the world, and 
what the Italians have done for civilization will endure to be 
a priceless heritage for mankind, a living source of incentive 
for the race when the material achievements of the prosperous 
nations will have disappeared, or been so eclipsed by time 
that they will be scarcely more than an antiquarian memory. Introduction 
FOR the past five hundred years practically everyone 
possessed of any intellectual curiosity, who could pos- 
sibly secure the opportunity has made a visit of greater or 
less length to Italy. Surely every visitor who heard the legend 
that anyone who threw a copper into the Fontana Trevi 
before leaving Rome was sure to come hack sooner or later 
to that center of history, has yielded to the temptation and 
tossed his coin into the clear water, even though he might 
suspect that the tradition was only a nice little scheme to 
increase the meagre wages of the fountain cleaners. Every 
visitor to Italy who could, has returned once or oftener to 
the peninsula in the fullest persuasion that a tour in that 
country represented one of the most important influences 
in modern life for the development of mind and taste. 
Jocelyn of Brakeland’s visit to Italy in the thirteenth century 
so vividly described by Carlyle, was only a type of what 
had happened all during the middle ages when in spite of 
distance and dangers and hardships and trials of all kinds, 
men of intellectual ambition made their way down to Italy. 
In the Renaissance time great intellectual leaders like Bishop 
Warham and Dr. Caius, the founder of Caius College, 
Cambridge, went down from distant England just as so many 
did from Spain and France, and still others like Nicholas 
of Cusa and Copernicus and Regiomontanus and Reuchlin 
from Germany and Yesalius the Father of Anatomy from the 
Netherlands. In the early seventeenth century Milton visited 
Italy and tells proudly of his welcome there, but so did 
Steno the Danish professor of anatomy whose name is attached 
V INTRODUCTION 
forever to some discoveries and Harvey, the great discoverer 
of the circulation of the blood who cordially acknowledged his 
obligations to his Italian teachers. What they did everyone 
else who could in their time did. 
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the 
grand tour of the continent, as it was called, came to be 
looked upon as a culmination of education that no one with 
any pretence to culture could afford to miss. It always 
included a stay for a longer time in Italy than anywhere 
else and the higher the intellectual taste of the tourist the 
lengthier his Italian travel as a rule. There has been a flood 
of tourist travel into Italy in the later nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries to such an extent that foreign tourists 
have been worth more in money value to the Italians than 
successful factories to most other countries, but without the 
blackening of the landscape and crowded slums near the 
factories that so often go with them. People of all classes 
have gone from all over the world. Some of them have derived 
little benefit from it for Italy rewards all only in proportion 
to what they bring to it, but most of them have felt after 
their return that their visits to Italy was one of the most 
precious experiences of their mental development. 
Cultured people of all types feel that their lives are 
incomplete without a visit to Italy. Those whose education 
has been founded on the classics go with the feeling that the 
actual sight of the remains of Italy will make, the history of 
Rome, not only the city but the empire, a great living phase 
of their mental life instead of merely the dry bones of 
information. Men interested in art, but above all artists 
themselves, feel that there is no place in the world to which 
a visit means so much for the development of artistic taste 
and a proper appreciation of art as Italy. Architects go 
down there with the enthusiastic conviction that no where in 
the world can so many different styles of original work in 
architecture or so many eminently suggestive monuments of 
construction be studied as in the various Italian cities. 
Painters expect to find an inspiration to what is best and INTRODUCTION 
truest in art, but so do those who are interested in the arts 
and crafts, for Italy is a veritable treasure house of things of 
beauty, that are a joy forever in the home, in the nobleman’s 
palace, in public buildings and above all in the service of 
the worship of the Creator. Beautiful furniture, exquisite 
lace and handsome vestments, textiles, smaller bronzes and 
marbles of all kinds, exquisite illuminated books as well as 
paintings and sculpture of artistic quality, have been finding 
their way out of Italy in recent years in spite of government 
regulations to the contrary to be sold in our auction rooms 
at prices which only the very wealthy can afford to give. 
Notwithstanding all this quite frank recognition of 
Italy’s possession of magnificent treasures of art, greater than 
are to be seen anywhere else, all of them the products of 
genius native to the soil, comparatively few people appreciate 
how immense is the debt which civilization owes to Italy. 
The artist is the flower of our civilization, such as it is, with 
the poet the one man who works out what may be worthy of 
man, be as imperishable as himself — a joy forever. 
There are so many and such varied things of beauty for 
which special art lovers turn to Italy for the models, that the 
rest of us have sometimes lost sight of the universality of her 
successful artistic production all down the centuries, amid the 
almost infinite details which so many different classes of 
people admire intensely. We fail to see the trees because of 
the leaves. There is scarcely a department of art work in 
which Italians did not excel the world in modem history at 
least. What is true for art is true also for literature, though 
not to quite so great a degree, but what is not generally 
recognized is that it is true also for a great many other modes 
of intellectual achievement. In education, in science, in 
philosophy, in social work of all kinds, above all in aspirations 
after what is best in life, Italy has been a leader of the 
European nations at so many different times that the debt of 
civilization to her is almost beyond computation. 
It is with the idea of bringing this out ‘ ‘ now that it may 
be told,” after the Great War is over and the nations are INTRODUCTION 
settling down after their precious self-conceit over material 
progress and pursuit of monetary prosperity to re-value their 
values of life and set up standards of national achievement 
that shall be really significant, that this book is published. 
Measured in terms of what were thought significant human 
values before the war Italy’s career all down the centuries of 
modern history as a nation was a profound failure. As a 
matter of fact the nation represents probably better than 
anything else in history the success of failure. A great many 
of Italy’s artists and poets received almost no pecuniary 
reward and very little material return for their great art 
work. Measured in terms of money their lives were failures. 
Some of them to whom money came generously enough, as 
Michelangelo or Donatello, placed it freely at the disposal of 
their friends, content only if they had enough to live on to 
enable them to go on with their work. It is not surprising 
then that their mother country, Italy, should have had a 
similar experience. What is important to realize, however, 
is that while going through that experience Italy accomplished 
so much that the world will never willingly let die and has 
left an imprint on modern civilization so deep that the 
influence of it will be felt so long at least as this stage of our 
culture shall endure. 
It is probably not an exaggeration to say that modern 
civilization not only owes more to Italy than to any other 
nation of Europe, but owes more to her than to all the other 
Western nations put together. Italy for the past thousand 
has been to our modern world what ancient Greece 
was to the old world, the mother and mistress of the arts, 
the fountain head of literature, the foster-mother of education, 
the beneficent patron of the arts and crafts, and — though 
this is less well recognized, the faithful nurse of the sciences. 
Sir Henry Maine once ventured to say that “to one small 
people it was given to create progress. That people was the 
Greek. Except the blind forces of nature nothing moves 
in this world which is not Greek in its origin.” The expres- 
sion perhaps represents the fond exaggeration of a devotee, INTRODUCTION 
but if Italy were to be associated with Greece it would come 
very near being literally true so far as things intellectual 
and artistic are concerned. It was Mr. Gladstone, I believe 
who once said, “whatever lives and moves in the intellectual 
order is Greek in origin, and whatever lives and moves in 
the spiritual order is Hebrew in origin,” but it must not be 
forgotten that in modern history Italy combines these two 
great streams of tendency, intellectual and spiritual, and 
carries them on to highest expression. 
Most people recognize that in the Renaissance Italy was 
the mistress of the world in all intellectual matters. The 
explanation of this in their minds would be the fact that it 
was to Italy that Greek ideas and ideals first came in the 
time of the Renaissance and that as the Italians had the first 
opportunity it was not surprising that they became the 
leaders of European civilization. It is usually presumed, 
however, that Italy occupied that position for only a com- 
paratively brief period and it is even assumed that other 
nations have since far surpassed her. Indeed it seems to be 
generally felt that it was the mere accident of her geographical 
position closest to Greece that gave her an incidental tem- 
porary leadership at the beginning of modern history. 
As a matter of fact, however, long before the Renaissance 
Italy had been the leader of European civilization in every 
department of intellectual effort and for long after the 
Renaissance she continued to hold her premiership. Indeed 
it is only during the past century that the world has ceased 
to look almost exclusively to her for incentive in practically 
every department of aesthetics and the graduate education of 
the wrorld was in her hands for full seven centuries before 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the first half of 
the nineteenth century while Ampere, Cuvier, Lamarck, 
Laenec, Geoffroy St. Hilaire and so many others were 
teaching there, France became the country to which men in 
other countries made their way whenever they sought special 
educational opportunities and facilities higher than those 
that could be secured at home. During the second half of 
IX INTRODUCTION 
the nineteenth century when Liebig and Yon Baer and 
Nageli and Johann Muller’s pupils, Virchow, Helmholtz, 
Theodor Schwann had developed into great teachers and the 
Higher Criticism of the Bible was attracting attention, 
Germany came to occupy that enviable position, but for more 
than seven centuries before that Italy was the home of 
graduate teaching. 
Students went down there for art and sculpture as of 
course they still do, as well as for architecture and for classical 
scholarship, but also for mathematics, for astronomy and 
above all for medicine and surgery and for what we have 
come to call the biological sciences. Great leaders in scientific 
thought down to the nineteenth century were either Italians 
or almost without exception they had been educated there. 
One need only recall the names of such foreign students of 
Italian universities as Copernicus, Vesalius, Linacre, Harvey, 
Steno, not to mention many others, to have that truth vividly 
brought home. In art, in every century almost without 
exception the most distinguished names are those of Italians. 
When artists of other countries did great work they owed 
inspiration and incentive to Italy. The Byzantine art, so- 
called, of the earlier Middle Ages which we are coming to 
appreciate so much more in recent years, is in spite of its 
name, largely Italian in origin and accomplishment. With 
the foundation of modern art in the later medieval centuries, 
the names of Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto are on the corner 
stones. If anyone thinks, however, that because these are the 
initial names on the roll of modern artists the bearers of 
them represent work that is crude and unworthy of the great 
development that has taken place in art since, they are not 
familiar with the expressions of modern art critics. Duccio’s 
painting particularly is highly praised and Giotto has been 
confessedly the master of painters in every generation since 
his time. There is probably no one who conveys better on 
canvas the impression of solidity than this Florentine of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth century. 
In the fourteenth century men like Gaddi did work 
X RAPHAEL INTRODUCTION 
worthy of their great masters of the thirteenth. With the 
fifteenth century came the revival of art induced by contact 
with Greek influences and the list of names of men who 
achieved distinction in art is so long that it would be futile 
to try to mention them. Even the forerunners of the period, 
Mantegna, Massaccio, Melozzo da Forli, Mino da Fiesoli, 
Gentile da Foligno, Benozzo Gozzoli and others represent 
great landmarks in the history of art. They are but the. pre- 
lude to a glorious list of names including Fra Angelico, Fra 
Bartolomeo, Perugino, Pinturriechio, Signorelli, Botticelli, 
Correggio, Titian, the Yivarinis, the Bellinis, Raphael, Leon- 
ardo and Michelangelo, nearly all of whom had done immortal 
work before the fifteenth century closed. The next century 
opened with many of these men still alive and ready to do their 
best work, but their immediate successors such men as 
Tintoretto and Veronese are only less great in art achievement 
than the giants of the Renaissance. The latter half of this 
century was to see decadence from this high order of accom- 
plishment, but some of the names of those who were doing 
their work in what is confessedly a decadent period are greater 
artists than most countries can lay claim to at the climax of 
their art history. Among them are such men as Giulio 
Romano, Giorgione, Domenichino and Carlo Dolci. 
There is almost no century in history in which the 
greatest of living painters were not Italians, though in the 
seventeenth century when Murillo and Velasquez were doing 
their great painting in Spain and Rembrandt and Rubens 
achieving their artistic triumphs in the Netherlands, Italy 
had for a brief generation or two to yield her leadership in 
art to them. 
What is true for painting is true also for sculpture. 
Beginning with the great work of the Pisanis in the thirteenth 
century, Italy has had during every century for seven cen- 
turies very great sculptors and usually the acknowledged 
greatest sculptors of the world. The Pisanis were followed 
in the fourteenth century by Ghiberti and others only less 
well known and they in turn by the group of men who did INTRODUCTION 
such surpassing work in the Renaissance period, Donatello, 
Verrocchio, Luca della Robbia, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and 
John of Bologna. There is great decadence in sculpture 
during the period after this magnificent outburst, but un- 
doubtedly Bernini is the greatest of sculptors in the world 
of his time and when the revival of good sculpture came at 
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 
teenth centuries, Canova was a leader in thought and in exe- 
cution and Thorwaldsen, the Dane, went down to Italy to 
find the environment most suited for the development of his 
artistic genius. 
In architecture the world’s debt to Italy is quite as great 
as in any of the arts. The Byzantine architecture of the 
Middle Ages which we have come to admire again so much in 
recent years and are using effectively in many modern build- 
ings is an Italian development. The Romanesque which 
follows the Byzantine in the history of architecture had its 
origin in Rome and spread thence because bishops from the 
Northern countries of Europe on their visits ad limina to the 
Pope admired the beautiful Roman buildings and were stimu- 
lated to imitate them. The Gothic style is usually not thought 
of in connection with Italy but the first buildings in this 
stjde in Europe were probably erected in Sicily and the 
Normans who developed this style so magnificently obtained 
their original ideas for it on their incursions along the shores 
of the Mediterranean Sea. Renaissance architecture which is 
influencing all our modern buildings not only ecclesiastical, 
but also civic and mercantile is almost entirely of Italian 
adaptation from the classic and our arctitects are simply 
adopting ideas worked out by the Italian architects of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, only rarely turning aside 
to be influenced by other countries and modes of thought. 
The French Renaissance architecture to which many of our 
architects recur is very largely Italian in origin. Many of 
the chateaux on the Loire were designed by Italian architects. 
Everyone concedes Italy’s primacy in the world of art in 
all its forms, but a great many people seem to have the INTRODUCTION 
feeling that this was Italy’s special gift and that the Italian 
contribution to world literature is not nearly so significant 
as what the Italians accomplished for the arts. Confessedly 
great as is the world’s debt to the Italians for art what is 
owed for literature is but very little less. Certainly there is 
no modern literature that surpasses the Italian in its interest 
for the men of all nations. Dante gave us without any doubt 
the greatest of modern poems. There are some excellent lit- 
erary critics of eminently judicial temper — not Italians — 
who think the Divine Comedy the greatest poem of all time. 
Dante’s only rivals in primacy as a poet are Homer and 
Shakespeare. But so far from Dante being “a solitary 
phenomenon” even in his own time, in spite of Carlyle’s 
suggestion to that effect, he was but one of many Italian 
writers who in the later Middle Ages did surpassingly great 
literary work that was destined to endure. 
The Italian troubadors sang some of the most tuneful 
verses that the world has ever had. The author of the Dies 
Irae — we are not sure who he was but he was undoubtedly 
an Italian — wrote in rhymed Latin what is perhaps the 
sublimest poem that ever came from the hand of man. His 
nearest rivals are Italians. Petrarch invented the sonnet and 
introduced that personal note into literature which has been 
dominant ever since. Boccaccio re-invented the novel and 
with all his faults showed what a precious mode of literature 
the short story could be. 
All this in the centuries that shared Dante’s life between 
them. Succeeding centuries were less prolific of great work 
yet never barren and often Italian writers were leaders in 
literary thought and form. Ariosto deeply influenced the 
literary men of every country in Europe, Tasso made a 
supremely great epic poem that was widely read all over 
Europe for two centuries. It is below the Divina Commedia, 
but greater probably than any modern epic except possibly 
the work of Camoens and Milton. In dramatic literature 
Italy is behind Spain and England though she has made 
important contributions even in this mode of letters and the INTRODUCTION 
Italian drama has not a few of its most precious gems con- 
cealed from ordinary view in the librettos of the operas in 
which Italy was so fruitful and in which poet and musician 
so often successfully co-operated for the production of a great 
work of art. Even during the nineteenth century, however, 
probably a larger number of books that have been read 
beyond the bounds of their native country have come from 
Italy than from any other nation, certainly than from any 
other in proportion to population. 
One of the world novels that nearly every person of 
education and culture in the nineteenth century read and 
no student of literature would care to confess ignorance of 
is Manzoni’s 1 Promessi Sposi. Another book that has at least 
that eminently desirable distinction of having been a favorite 
among educated people everywhere for several generations, 
is Silvio Pellico’s “My Ten Years’ Imprisonment.” Alfieri’s 
dramas probably attracted wider attention than those of 
any other dramatist of the early part of the nineteenth 
century and D’Anunzio at the end of the century has been 
played in every country and while we may deprecate his 
influence there is no doubt at all about his power of observa- 
tion or his ability to express himself with a distinction of 
style that has seldom been reached in any other country dur- 
ing our period. He has been distinctly one of the few world 
writers of our generation. 
Those who are quite sure in spite of Italian development 
and accomplishments in art and literature that the Italian 
people are after all inferior to the sterner, sturdier, northern 
and western peoples in practical achievement, will be very 
likely to think that while in what perhaps they would call 
the less significant expressions of human intelligence, in pure 
aesthetics, painting and sculpture and literature, even archi- 
tecture the people of the peninsula may have been marvelously 
successful, they have lacked that depth of intelligence and 
comprehensiveness of mental grasp that would enable them 
to solve the great problems social, political and philosophical 
of the world. If there are any who think so they are indeed INTRODUCTION 
sadly mistaken and their opinion is founded entirely on 
ignorance of what the Italians have done in these departments 
of world thought. 
Many centuries of scholars have declared that after 
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, born at Aquino in Southern Italy 
was probably the greatest philosophic genius that ever lived. 
It used to be the fashion to make little of or at least to try 
to ignore Aquinas and to proclaim that only Catholic theo- 
logians and students of philosophy shackled by the Church 
paid any attention to him. Such talk, however, came only 
from men who did not know their Aquinas and who indeed 
perhaps found it too difficult an intellectual task to get such 
a thorough acquaintance with him as would enable them 
to appreciate him properly. His is not a philosophy with 
which one can scrape up a bowing acquaintance and an easy 
pretense of knowledge after a few hours of reading. Scho- 
lasticism is not the sort of system of thought that can be 
charmingly discussed and nicely disposed of between a few 
spoons of ice cream after a hebetudinous dinner, or between 
two cups of tea at an afternoon party. After seven centuries, 
however, it is coming back into prominence in educational 
circles outside of the. Catholic Church. Huxley found him 
eminently satisfying for his logic and his power of mental 
penetration into the problems of life and the universe. 
Aquinas is but one of many deep original thinkers among the 
Italians and Anselm and Lanfranc and Peter Lombard, the 
Master of the Sentences, Bonaventure, Telesio and many others 
down to Rosmini have kept up the traditions of great philo- 
sophic thinking. 
In political science we may differ with Macchiavelli, but 
no one can doubt the genius of the man or his power to set 
forth political problems, or even to solve them, once his pecul- 
iar notions with regard to government are accepted as justi- 
fiable. They are not and can not be justified of course, but 
from a certain standpoint no one has ever argued out more 
completely the laws underlying the success of tyranny. The 
curiously interesting corollary of his great work is that it also 
XV INTRODUCTION 
exposes the methods of the successful tyrant for the contem- 
plation of those who wish to neutralize such pernicious 
activities. 
While philosophical genius can not now be denied to the 
Italians, but on the contrary it must be admitted that during 
every century since the tenth they have had men of wonderful 
influence, all in all, far surpassing those of any other country, 
the modern who misunderstands them will be almost sure 
to think that this is only after all speculative philosophy and 
that as with regard to aesthetics probably the genius of the 
people of the peninsula is attuned to that. In physical 
science, however, he would be likely to argue that they have 
been far behind the other nations. There are some who might 
add, with that interesting tendency to applied psychology now 
popular, that probably the genius of the Italian mind is 
unfavorably disposed towards the exact sciences and the prac 
tical developments of scientific principles. 
Some might even add that as Italian scholars were to a 
great extent prominent ecclesiastics, this accounts for the 
Church’s definite attitude of pronounced opposition to science 
and it is indeed rather this national trait than Christianity 
itself that led to Church opposition to science. 
As a matter of fact Italy has contributed far more to 
science than any other nation and indeed has almost done 
more for scientific development than for any other depart- 
ment of the intellectual life. Our very generally accepted 
notions to the contrary are entirely due to the fact that we 
have missed many chapters in the history of science and 
knowing nothing about them have concluded there must be 
none. In every phase of science, however, the Italians have 
been persistently active investigators and eminently successful 
in their researches. 
In astronomy and mathematics the Italians have been 
particularly fruitful. Everyone knows of the work of Galileo 
but he is only one of a series of men who taught in Italy and 
attracted students from all over Europe. It is sometimes 
thought by those who misunderstand the Galileo incident, INTRODUCTION 
that because Galileo was persecuted by the Church every 
other effort in that line had been fully suppressed. As a 
matter of fact, however, from the days of Leonard of Pisa in 
the thirteenth century, those who wished to learn more about 
mathematics and astronomy than they could learn anywhere 
else in Europe had gone down to Italy. Regiomontanus, the 
Father of Modern Astronomy, as he has been called, studied 
in Italy for ten years and subsequently went back to work 
at the correction of the calendar there. Cardinal Nicholas 
of Cusa who taught the doctrine that the earth is not station- 
ary but moves as do the other stars and is not the centre 
of the universe, spent much time in Italy. Copernicus to 
whom we owe the heliocentric theory studied with Professor 
Novara at Padua and spent nearly ten years of his life in 
Italy making his mathematical and astronomical as well as 
medical studies and when his great book revolutionizing mod- 
ern astronomy was published he dedicated it to the Pope Paul 
III in recognition of all that he felt that his science owed 
to Italian encouragement and patronage. The Papal observa- 
tory at Rome continued to be a focus of astronomical develop- 
ment. In more recent times Piazzi, the discoverer of the 
asteroids, Secchi who added so much to our knowledge of the 
sun and stars, Schiapparelli, famous as the originator of the 
idea of canals on Mars, Gilii, who did so much for meteorology 
and many other world known astronomical scientists were 
Italians 
In the other physical sciences the names of many of the 
important discoverers are as we shall see mainly Italians. 
Galileo’s name is at least as important in physics as in astron- 
omy and there were such distinguished compatriots as Toscan- 
elli, Toricelli, Beccaria, Galvani, Volta, Avogadro to whom 
we owe the great law that bears his name in chemistry, 
Melloni famous for work in thermic electricity and in our time 
Marconi to whom the development of the wireless telegraph 
owes so much. 
It is sometimes thought that while the physical sciences 
owe much to Italy the biological sciences were either neglected INTRODUCTION 
or the study of them was prevented by Church influence. 
Nothing could well be so false as any such impression as 
this. In anatomy and physiology more is owed to Italy than 
to all the other nations put together. They anticipated the 
discovery of the circulation of the blood both in the lungs and 
throughout the body, they made original studies in digestion 
and respiration, in regeneration, in embroyology and in prac- 
tically every other phase of related function and structure. 
Not only did Italians do great work in these departments, 
but the greatest students and discoverers in them from other 
nations received their instruction in Italy and were not only 
willing but proud to declare their obligations to their Italian 
teachers. Vesalius studied in Italy, as did Guy de Chauliae 
the great French surgeon; Steno the well known professor 
of anatomy at Copenhagen and Harvey whom the English 
so deservedly honor were both students in Italy and grateful 
all their lives for the opportunity thus afforded them. So 
was Dr. Caius who introduced dissection into England and 
Linaere the great Royal Physician of Henry VIII who founded 
the Royal College of Physicians. Many other men came home 
from Italy to be the centre of scientific influence in their own 
countries. Students went to Italy for the biological sciences 
literally from every country in Europe. Foreign Royal 
Societies and scientific bodies of all kinds honored such men 
as Malpighi and Becearia and Morgagni and Spallanzani and 
many others by electing them as members. They realized 
very well however that in honoring them they were really 
honoring themselves. 
We know now, though the knowledge has come to us only 
in the last twenty years, that the work of many of these dis- 
tinguished discoverers and teachers in anatomy had been 
anticipated by the great artists of the Renaissance period. 
Leonardo da Vinci particularly has left us sketches of a 
series of dissections made by him especially valuable for the 
muscular bone and joint systems. At one time Leonardo pro- 
posed to wrrite a text book on human anatomy. Had he the 
time to do so Vesalius’ work would have been largely antici- INTRODUCTION 
patecL Nearly every important artist of the Renaissance 
period did dissections. We have many anatomical sketches 
from Raphael and Michelangelo. Leonardo and Michelangelo 
also made dissections of the horse in order to plan equestrian 
statues and for their pictures of horses in action. They had 
the feeling that unless one knew what was under the skin 
down to the very hone the painting and sculpturing of the 
outside of the animal would not give a proper sense of its 
reality, solidity and vitality. 
It is rather amusing to hear it said, though that used to 
be a commonplace in one variety of history, that anatomy 
was forbidden by the Popes or at least that its development 
was greatly hampered by the prohibition of dissection. The 
human body is declared by these zealous historians to have 
been deemed entirely too sacred to be cut up for anatomical 
purposes. The great anatomists during the very time when 
the prohibition of anatomy is supposed to be effective were 
papal physicians making their researches at the Papal Medical 
School and dedicating their text books to the Pope. At the 
same time the great Renaissance artists were doing dissections 
very freely and evidently anyone who wanted to get the 
opportunity for dissection could procure material without 
difficulty. Nowhere else in Europe was this possible. Yesalius 
had to rifle the graveyards in Paris in order to obtain bones 
for purposes of study. When he went down into Spain later 
in life he found it very difficult to obtain anatomical material. 
In his earlier years he had to take down the corpse of a 
malefactor that had been hung outside the walls of Louvain 
and bring it in piecemeal in order to secure a complete 
skeleton for demonstration purposes. TIis great anatomical 
studies by dissection were made in Italy. The nearer to 
Rome the more the opportunities. Italy ruled by the ecclesias- 
tics and with their universities all under Papal control prac - 
tically was providing opportunities for the world. 
To those who realize for the first time this prominent 
place of Italy in anatomy there may come the thought that 
the Italians mainly devoted themselves to theoretic questions INTRODUCTION 
in anatomy and did not develop its practical side, that is, did 
not apply their discoveries to surgical procedure so as to 
relieve human suffering and overcome the human deformity. 
If there are any who still continue to harbor this dear old 
fashioned notion they have the greatest surprise of their lives 
waiting for them in the real development of Italian surgery. 
Pres. White suggested in his Warfare of Theology with 
Science that until the Emperor Wenceslas at the beginning 
of the fifteenth century by imperial decree required surgery 
to be held in honor once more, there was no serious develop- 
ment of this important department of medical practice. 
It so happens that during two centuries, the thirteenth 
and fourteenth, immediately preceding the date of the German 
Emperor’s decree as cited, one of the greatest developments of 
surgery in all history occurred. All of this magnificent 
development of surgery came in Italy at the hands of the 
Italian Surgeons. The Four Masters of Salerno, Theodoric, 
Ugo of Lucca, William of Salicet and Lanfranc all of them did 
fine original work in surgery and left us their textbooks which 
were printed by the Renaissance printers and have been 
fortunately for us republished in the last twenty years. These 
men did all the operations that we do at the present time. 
They opened the skull for tumor and for abscess, opened the 
thorax for pus and for fluid of other kinds, opened the 
abdomen for many surgical reasons but particularly for 
wounds of various kinds, insisted that wounds of the intestines 
would always prove fatal unless repaired, invented a needle 
holder for their proper suturing and did many different kinds 
of operations for the radical cure of hernia. They contrived 
a number of forms of apparatus for fractures, dislocations 
and various deformities and were particularly copious in their 
inventions of surgical instruments of many kinds. 
While it may be thought that at least in science Italy 
has meant very little in what she has been able to give to 
civilization in recent years, any such thought is a presumption 
founded on ignorance of the realities of the history of science 
in the last century. A list of names that represent and recall 
XX INTRODUCTION 
distinct scientific achievement of the most valuable kind can 
be cited from Italy. 
At the begining of the nineteenth century Galvani and 
Volta were alive and Morgagni and Spallanzani were not long 
dead. At the end of the nineteenth century Golgi was doing 
his great work in brain anatomy and Marconi his in the 
application of the principles of electric radiation to wireless 
telegraphy. In the midst of the century there occur such men 
as Melloni, who did so much for thermo-electricity, Corti after 
whom the organ of Corti in the ear is named because of his 
successful researches on it. On the opening day of the nine- 
teenth century Piazzi discovered the first of the asteroids a 
discovery which opened up a new phase of astronomy during 
the first half of the nineteenth century while in the latter 
half it was Sehiapparelli’s suggestion with regard to the lines 
on Mars as representing canals that attracted more popular 
notice, though also probably more scientific attention, than 
any other astronomical theory of the modern period. The 
contributions to the medical sciences from Italy in the past 
hundred years have been looked for with care by all those 
interested in medicine, for they have often been leaders in 
medical thought always doing serious work in the progressive 
forefront of medical advance. On nearly every important 
phase of modern medicine there are significant accounts of 
valuable research and original investigation. Italian medical 
journals are carefully followed by all those who are trying 
to keep abreast of genuine medical progress. 
There are more names of Italians attached to organs and 
diseases of the human body than of all the other nations of 
Europe put together. This is not due to any vanity on the 
part of the Italians, but is the natural tribute of contempor- 
aries to discoverers who had found something in the human 
body that had not been noted before. Not infrequently when 
the names of men of other nationalities are attached to 
structures which they first described, these men were students 
of the Italian schools and had actually made their discoveries 
down in Italy and were proud to acknowledge their obligations INTRODUCTION 
to Italian masters. Sometimes when a name of another nation- 
ality is attached to a structure by common usage it has been 
found that his discovery was anticipated by an Italian who 
had recorded the, fact, hut in the midst of the large amount 
of good work that was being done down in Italy no attention 
was paid to it and the foreign name slipped into a place that 
should have been occupied by that of an Italian. The dis- 
cussion of this subject of scientific onomatology in its relation 
to Italians (see chapter on Biological Sciences) is one of the 
strong proofs of Italian priority of discovery in the biological 
sciences and a demonstration of the immense debt that the 
world of science owes to Italy. 
Italy then has made a series of surpassing contributions 
to every department of human aesthetics, painting, sculpture, 
architecture, but it has also excelled in what may be called 
the more definitely intellectual arts, literature, education and 
music. In spite of a very common impression to the contrary 
Italy has also been the most important factor in the develop- 
ment of science and has usually been the leader, often the 
teacher, of the world and nearly always the serious rival of 
any other nation exhibiting successful interest in science. 
Besides the peninsula has given birth to men and women who 
from their intellectual or ethical qualities have deeply in- 
fluenced the world of their time and succeeding generations 
for the expression of what is best in human life. 
In order to show then what the debt of civilization to 
Italy is we shall take up in succession the arts, education, 
scholarship, literature, science and then the life stories of 
some of the men and the women who have made Italy the 
home of the highest culture and the active centre of some 
of the most significant social movements in the world’s 
history in modem time. PAINTING 
ITALY is acknowledged by all to be the world mistress 
of art in modern times. The great artists of half a dozen 
periods in modern art have been Italians. Men of all coun- 
tries with art inspirations have longed to go to Italy at 
nearly all times in modem history, either for the sake of 
personal touch with the best artists of the world who have 
been doing their work there; or because of the inspiration 
of her great collections of art which unlike those of other 
countries, are practically all her own. Other countries en- 
thusiastically collect examples of Italian art, so as to make 
their art museums of value for their own people and foreign 
visitors. How immeasurably the galleries of Munich, of 
Dresden, of Vienna, of Petrograd, of London, even of the 
Louvre would lose in interest if their examples of Italian 
painting and sculpture as well as Italian art work of other 
kinds were to be removed from them. Only the galleries 
of the Netherlands and of Spain possess collections that have 
a high artistic interest of their own quite apart from their 
Italian paintings, though even in these it is not a little sur- 
prising to find how much attention the examples of Italian 
art which they exhibit, always attract. 
Italy has been above all the teacher of the artists of all 
nations for there are not many great artists of other countries 
who have not been influenced deeply by Italy and Italian 
masters Few great artists in their own time failed to look 
to Italy as the Alma Mater of their art inspiration. As time 
has gone on Italy instead of losing her primacy has mounted 
higher in art estimation and though many of her pictures 
have been taken from her as a result of the foreign invasions, 
1 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
to which in Filicaja’s poignant phrase her very wealth of 
beauty made her liable, she still remains a surpassing treasure 
house of the great world of art. This is as true in our time 
as in the past. At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
Italy was despoiled by Napoleon and ever since her precious 
art has been filched from her by the Napoleons of finance of 
all nations in the generations that followed, but still she is 
acknowledged the home of greatest art, the mecca for artists 
from all over the world. 
The Italian peninsula nearly everywhere has been wonder- 
fully fertile in art impulses, marvelously productive in art 
accomplishment. One little portion of Italy has been indeed 
so fruitful in supremely great art that it seems almost as 
though there must be something special in the soil of that 
part of the country which brings artistic talent to maturity. 
Within a radius of comparatively a few miles around Assisi 
in the wonderful “Hill Country” the original impulse of four 
great periods of art may be traced. The old Etruscans of the 
seventh and eighth centuries B. C., have left us beautiful 
decorations, charming and genuinely artistic jewelry, fine 
decorated pottery and other art objects, the remains of which 
though buried in the tombs for two thousand five hundred 
years still serve to show how high was the art inspiration 
and how successful the accomplishment of a people with 
regard to whom we know almost nothing except their arts 
and crafts, whose language is as yet a dead letter for us, 
whose history has come to us only in the caricature of it made 
by the Romans, but whose power of achievement in art 
reveals them incontestably as great leaders in the artistic 
history of mankind. We need no more than their art to make 
us appreciate their place as a wonderful people. 
Some six centuries later when the Romans themselves 
under the influence of Greece had wakened up to culture and 
art expression, some of the most beautiful examples of Roman 
architecture were erected in this part of the country. A 
striking demonsration of this is to be seen in the facade of 
the Temple of Minerva still standing in the market place in 
2 ENTRANCE, PALAZZO PUBLICO, PERUGIA, ITALY PAINTING 
Assisi. When Goethe made the visit to Assisi about a century 
ago, of which he tells in his letters, he did not go, as modern 
pilgrims have so invariably done, in order to get more closely 
in touch with the scenes of the life of St. Francis of Assisi, 
nor to view the great art of the Franciscan Church. Indeed 
he tells us himself that he refused even to take the little walk 
that would be necessary to enable him to see the Franciscan 
Monastery and Church with Cimabue’s and Giotto’s treasures. 
He was in the Hill Country viewing the remains of old 
Roman architecture, one of the most beautiful of which is 
the facade of the Assisian temple of Minerva. All around 
the neighborhood, at Perugia, Orvieto and at many other 
places are almost equally beautiful remains some of them of 
the loveliest artistry. Charming little temples to various 
deities, erected under the Grecian art impulse and with a 
refinement and finish characteristic of the Roman period 
when wealth was plentiful and taste was demanding may be 
seen here and there through the region, for the Romans of 
the time were intent on making their charming Hill Country 
landscapes still more beautiful by the shrines they erected. 
When a dozen centuries afterwards the first modem 
revival of art came with the earlier renaissance in the latter 
half of the Middle Ages Cimabue and Giotto both did some 
of their best work at Assisi. The beloved St. Francis in his 
return to utter simplicity of life lifted men out of mere 
worldliness and self-seeking to a rebirth of art as well as 
letters and as was only fair, the first great fruits of that 
earlier renaissance come to maturity in his country and in 
his honor. Two centuries later when the later renaissance, 
unfortunately thought by many the only one, began to mani- 
fest itself in Italy, the Hill Country became the scene for the 
fourth time in its history, of some of the world’s greatest 
art. The more distinguished pupils of that distinguished 
master Perugino, so named after the city of Perugia, a few 
miles from Assisi, drew the attention of the world to this 
portion of Italy. Among these pupils was Raphael whose 
3 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
genius was destined to illumine not only his own time, but 
all the after generations of the art world. 
It might seem as though the suggestion that an American 
millionaire could not do better than bring over some of the 
soil of this wonderfully productive Hill Country to grow 
men on it, in the hope that we here in America might if 
possible secure some of the wonderful initiative and artistic 
impulse of this favored region, is not so entirely absurd as 
perhaps it appears at first. At least the suggestion may serve 
to emphasize how much the world owes to this little portion 
of Italy and how often it has proved a well spring of art that 
was never to die. 
While Etruscan and Roman art belong to the Italian 
peninsula and the world owes a debt for them to Italians, 
we shall only dwell here on what is more particularly known 
as Italian art in our modern sense of the term. Before the 
beginnings of what we think of as modern art, though some 
of the best of it came in the later Middle Ages, in the days 
when what is called Byzantine art developed, there was some 
magnificent artistic work done in nearly every century. 
While Byzantine art is usually thought of as oriental 
and undoubtedly there are strong oriental elements in it, it 
must not be forgotten that the Byzantine Empire after which 
it was named, was the Roman Empire transferred to Constan- 
tinople because the western barbarians had overrun Italy and 
made art and culture impossible. Byzantium was the older 
title of the Italian colony on the Bosphorus whose site was 
selected by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth Century 
for the new Capital of his Empire. Although this capital 
has been known as Constantinople since that time, the adjec- 
tive Byzantine (probably for reasons of euphony as prefer- 
able to Constantinopolitan has been applied by moderns 
to the Empire whose sole capital it became and to the art and 
arts and crafts and architecture which developed there. The 
Byzantine style however, is not oriental in origin, but is a 
distinct evolution from the earlier classic art of the Graeco- 
Roman period in Italy and owes more to Italians than it does PAINTING 
to oriental peoples. Some of the finest examples of its art 
and architecture are to he found in Rome and Ravenna. 
The tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna is a typical 
example in charm of decoration and beauty of eternal archi- 
tecture of what was accomplished in the earlier part of the 
Middle Ages under the influence of what is termed Byzantine 
art and St. Mark’s at Venice is the striking example of the 
same artistic influence nearly 500 years later yet before 
modern art, in the ordinary acceptation of the term had 
awakened. Surely any one who knows these two great gems of 
constructive art, so beautiful in their decorative appeal, will 
not be likely to think little of Byzantine art in general. 
The absolute permanence of the color of their decorations dona 
in mosaic have preserved for the modem time all the charm 
of their original state and only for this it would probably be 
extremely difficult to persuade the world that these medieval 
Italians cherished, during the ages so often thought of as 
dark, an unfailing taste in the employment of color masses 
for decorative purposes. 
Cimabue and Duccio, not to mention many others who 
did good art work were deeply influenced by the Byzantine 
art around them in the thirteenth century, and though long 
before their time it had hardened into a formalism fatal to 
genuine artistic expression so far as it should be a reproduc- 
tion of nature, it was never without its power to accomplish 
good work of charming decorative effect and sometimes even 
haunting beauty. Indeed the modern cult of the Italian 
primitive painters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
has taken some of the master artists of our own generation 
back to Byzantine influence. Some of Sargent’s work in the 
Boston Public Library, representing as it does probably the 
best work of this kind done in our day, remains as yet, under 
certain aspects, difficult of appreciation by many who come 
to see it. The use of raised gilt work, and even low relief 
to enhance pictorial effects is entirely unfamiliar to our 
generation. It represents, however, a return to proper ap- 
preciation of artists whose work had long been under the ban WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
almost of contempt because it was thought that they had found 
themselves compelled to violate the canons of the art of 
painting in order to produce their effects. This imitation 
of the Byzantine work is the sincerest flattery of their achieve 
ments we could have. 
The beauties of Byzantine art, as applied to decoration 
consisted mainly of the color effects. As has come now to be 
well recognized the formalism of the designs assists the color 
effects and indeed is largely essential to them. Colors are more 
effective when boldly opposed and contrasted with one another 
and less effective when connected by shaded transitions or 
modified tints. Professor Goodyear in his Roman and 
Medieval Art (New York The MacMillan Company 1905) 
has emphasized the charm of Byzantine decoration and insists 
that “as far as color results are concerned, the beauty of the 
form is a matter of indifference. This appears in the fine 
color effects of many oriental designs whose forms are stiff 
and unnatural. It is when we study the mosaics in their 
architectural position and their decorative color results that 
the peculiar Byzantine style is seen at its best and for the 
given use and place it then seems absolutely perfect — from 
a decorative point of view.” It is this that was forgotten 
when Byzantine art was regarded so contemptuously, but in 
recent years we have come to recognize and appreciate some- 
thing of its true value. Francois Millet once said that the 
orty definition of what is beautiful that satisfies the artist 
is that a thing shall be suited to its surroundings, — a gnarled 
oak tree is beautiful in its own place. The Italian decorators 
of the Byzantine period knew this principle very well and 
followed it very closely and in so doing created not only the 
most beautiful art of their time, but an art essentially beauti- 
ful for all time. Hence the revival of many Byzantine effects 
in art that have come in our generation. 
What is usually thought of as Italian art came after 
the passing of the Byzantine and the development of the 
modern art ideals in the period so well called the earlier 
Renaissance. With that there came into existance a supremely PAINTING 
great art impulse in Italy the three greatest factors in which 
were Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto. The more carefully the 
works of these men have been studied the higher their reputa- 
tion has become. Because of certain naive qualities and the 
lack of detailed technique and finish of the modern time it 
used to be the custom to regard them not a little with the 
feeling that their art had only a comparative value. For 
their crude time they had accomplished very much, though 
of course it was thought that contemporary and even sub- 
sequent admiration for them was exaggerated by the fact 
that they had gone so much farther than their predecessors 
and were so far ahead of their own time that their work 
meant much for art development. Artists have always rea- 
lized, however, the absolute values of their magnificent paint- 
ings and a more general appreciation of these has come in 
recent years. This has been brought about, not by the develop- 
ment of a fad or fashion, but by art education in such a way 
as to cultivate better taste and more genuine artistic 
appreciation. 
When we hear of Cimabue’s or shall it be called, in 
harmony with modern criticism, Duccio’s Madonna of the 
Ruecellai Chapel carried enthusiastically in procession by 
practically the whole population of Florence, most people 
are inclined to think of this manifestation of devotion to art 
as rather a testimonial of surprise that successful painting 
should be accomplished at all, than as a spontaneous cordial 
tribute to great art. Most visitors to this shrine of primitive 
art are deeply disappointed in what they see and are likely 
to conclude that it is rather because he was a genius pioneer 
than with any idea of attributing surpassing ability to him 
as an artist that art loving generations ever since have 
crowded to see this picture. Anyone who reads the studied 
judgments of experts and the tributes of art critics will not 
be likely to remain in this belittling mood. The greater the 
expert as a rule and above all the more he has studied this 
particular picture the higher is sure to be his panegyric of the 
artist and his work. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
W. J. Stillman in his articles on Italian Artists in The 
Century (Vol. 37 No. 10, Page 64) says of it: 
“The Madonna of the Ruccellai Chapel is still one of the 
chief objects of pilgrimage of lovers of art who go to Italy: 
and it is still hanging, dingy, and veiled by the dust of 
centuries, in the unimposing, almost shabby, chapel of Santa 
Maria Novella, probably where Dante saw it, its panel scarred 
by nails which have been driven to put the ex-votos on, split 
its whole length by time’s seasoning, and scaled in patches, 
the white fesso ground showing through the color — so ob- 
scured by time that one hardly can see that the Madonna’s 
robe was the canonical blue, the sad mother’s face looking out 
from under the hood, and the pathetic Christ-child blessing 
the adoring angel at the side. Like all the work of its time, 
it has a pathos which neither the greater power of modern 
art nor the enervate elaborateness of modem purism can ever 
attain. Something in it, by an inexplicable magnetism, tells 
of the profound devotion, the unhesitating worship, of the 
religious painter of that day; of faith and prayer, devotion 
and worship, forever gone out of art.” 
The very fact that the populace of Florence should have 
followed this picture with such devoted admiration and 
should have made a feast day of the bringing of it into the 
chapel where it was to remain, is of itself the best possible 
evidence of the taste in art of the Florentines of this period. 
In our time only the passage through our streets of some 
distinguished and successful competitor in athletics, above 
all in the prize ring, would call forth such a tribute of 
popular admiration. Such an event even yet sometimes 
disturbs business in a whole quarter of the city showing 
that there are still deep popular interests, but they are very 
different from those which the people of the early thirteenth 
century had in a commercial city like Florence. 
It is easy to think of these primitive painters as after 
all representing only beginnings in art. Their interest for 
the moderns is often supposed to be due rather to the fact 
that they were beginners, greatly venturing in the attempt PAINTING 
to express their vision, rather than artists who accomplished 
much. The primitives lack the nice technique, the finish, 
the smoothness so facile of accomplishment for even the art 
student of the modern time, and they make mistakes in the 
application of first principles of painting, that even the apt 
student of a few months training in the modern time would 
think it a disgrace to make. Only artists can judge, however, 
of the place of an artist and almost needless to say the 
unanimity of praise on the part of artists for these primitives 
is most striking. Nor is their praise in a low key, nor 
expressed apologetically because of the place of these artists 
in the history of art at its beginning. Few men in the modern 
time have ever studied more carefully the painting of these 
primitives than Timothy Cole when he was engaged in re- 
producing some of them in the famous series of woodcuts for 
the Century Magazine. His opinion then both because of his 
opportunities and his own distinction as an artist as well as 
his demonstrated power of expression must be considered of 
great value. Twenty five years ago he wrote in enthusiastic 
admiration for instance of Duccio whose name, so much less 
known than that of Cimabue, deserves to be familiar to art 
lovers: 
“I should like to write particularly of the artist Duccio, 
or rather of his work, which has really fascinated me and 
held me in thraldom for the past few months. His marvelous 
subtilities are now discoverable, since he has emerged from 
his long obscurity in the Duomo to the excellent light of the 
Opera del Duomo. When away from Duccio I have some- 
times wondered whether the high qualities that I was attrib- 
uting to him were not a little of my own making, and this 
thought added gusto to my next visit. But I am convinced 
now that he can not be praised too highly, and in fact each 
time that I come away from him it is with a sublimer idea of 
the man. He is strength and ineffable tenderness artlessly 
combined, but he must be seen and studied to be believed in.” 
There is often an impression that color is a comparatively 
modem invention or at least that the artists’ power over it WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
did not develop much until the Renaissance time with the 
coming of the Venetians. Probably nothing could be more 
erroneous than this for though color owed much to the Vene- 
tians and above all they made it possible by their achievements 
in the development of color technique for every artist to use 
it easily and perfectly if he desired, the genius artists of the 
earlier time in Italy solved the problem of its employment 
and succeeded marvelously in using it effectively. Timothy 
Cole for instance says of Duccio, speaking of his famous 
entombment of the Virgin to be seen in the Duomo of Siena: 
“In some instances his coloring is Titianesque — warm, 
lustrous, and deep. The garment of the Virgin in the entomb- 
ment is a deep blue, of a most charming hue. That of the 
apostle next to Peter and immediately above the head of the 
Virgin is also a blue, but of different, warmer, and softer tone, 
so that here, for instance, is a relief of color very subtle and 
harmonious. That of the apostle John, who holds the palm 
branch, is a rose pink in the high lights, shading to a deeper 
red. The contrast this makes with the lovely blues is the 
most pleasing thing imaginable to look upon. Now the gar- 
ments of the apostle whose head comes just above the stars of 
the palm-branch are also red, similar in tone to the deep 
shading in John’s garment; but there is a softness in tone 
about it that gives just the proper relief to the latter. Then 
the palm branch of which the stars are gold, is a delicious 
soft, tender green, shading gently deeper to one side, and this 
again is properly relieved against the deeper green of the 
garment of the apostle the top of whose head comes just 
behind three of the stars. This apostle, from the type of 
his face and his long hair, is evidently James, the ‘brother’ 
of our Lord. The garment of the one next to him, whose 
hand comes in proximity with those of the Virgin, is a 
charming mixture of warm purple and greenish-blue tints. 
That of the one next to him is of a warm brown, well relieved 
against the brownish shadows of the rock behind. So on 
throughout — always a pleasing variety and subtle relief of 
color. The marble tomb is of a reddish warm tone, roughly RAISING OF LAZARUS (GIOTTO) PAINTING 
hewn, as I have engraved it. The trees, carefully worked up 
in detail, are of various shades of lustrous green, and the 
sky and glories around the heads are gold. The flesh tints 
are warm brownish yellow, while the flesh of the Virgin is 
relieved from that of the others being deader in tone. The 
whole is a most harmonious combination of color — a true 
symphony in color.” 
The third of these great beginners in modern painting, 
Giotto, is undoubtedly one of the greatest painters of all 
time and his work has never lost its significance for mankind. 
In recent years there has been a revival of interest in him 
and a growing admiration for him which shows how enduring 
are the artistic monuments that he created. Berenson has 
not hesitated to say that few artists have ever been able 
to express so thoroughly the sense of solidity of objects on 
flat canvas as Giotto and that he may still be and indeed 
often is yet studied with great advantage by artists for this 
reason. With a wonderful power of composition, the visual- 
ization of genius, a power of expression unrivalled and a 
fertility that has never been surpassed even by the greatest 
painters of the later Renaissance, Giotto is one of human 
nature’s proudest boasts, one of the supreme artists of the 
world’s history. Like Dante whenever he has been most 
admired and his influence has been the deepest the taste 
of the time has been best and its accomplishment most en- 
during. Whenever Italy has failed to appreciate Dante and 
Giotto her own literature and art has been at their lowest 
ebb and taste in art and letters has been unfortunately 
deeadent. Giotto besides being a great painter was a great 
architect and his beautiful tower is still one of the wonders 
of the world of artist history. Many an idea is borrowed 
from it even in the most recent time. The New York Times’ 
building in many ways a replica is sometimes declared the 
handsomest skyscraper in New York. 
For those who feel themselves inexpert in art and hesitant 
as to the opinion they should hold with regard to Giotto, 
Timothy Cole’s expression when he found himself in the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Arena at Padua may well serve as a helpful guide. This 
modern American with critical appreciation thoroughly de- 
veloped by the close study of the great art of all periods, 
found himself supremely impressed by the artist who six 
hundred years before our time had done his painting in the 
chapel that had been constructed out of some of the materials 
and in connection with the remains of the old Roman arena 
at Padua. When all the marvel of Giotto’s work here had 
come home to him Cole wrote: 
“I am here in the Arena Chapel, and am at last con- 
fronted by Giotto. How brilliant, light and rich the coloring 
is! It quite fulfills all that I had read or thought of Giotto. 
I am conveniently located and the light is good, but it is hard 
to keep at work with so many fine things above one’s head. 
I can scarcely escape the feeling that the heavens are open 
above me, and yet I must keep my head bent downward to the 
earth. Surely no one ever had a more inspiring workshop. ’ ’ 
These are the painters of the Thirteenth Century. Every 
century of history since has had its greatest art in Italy. 
For a short time in the seventeenth century Italy was eclipsed 
by Spain and the Netherlands in painting. In the later 
nineteenth century she yielded the palm to France. At no 
other time has there been any serious rivalry of her artistic 
supremacy for some seven centuries. Even after the glorious 
outburst of the Thirteenth Century when decadence from so 
high a level of art might have seemed almost inevitable the 
very next century gave birth to a number of painters in 
Italy whose works we admire ever more and more as we know 
more of them and whose paintings have increased greatly in 
value in recent years. A group of artists at Siena created 
a school of painting parallel to that of Cimabue and Giotto at 
Florence and only less great than that climax of art expres- 
sion. The best known of these are Simone di Martino, Lippo 
Memmi and greater than any of them perhaps Ambrogio 
Lorenzetti. Orcagna at Florence in the fourteenth century 
did some wonderful work that has come into its own, a very 
high meed of admiration, in recent years, though at all times PAINTING 
he was looked upon as a great artist. The tall and lithe and 
willowy forms of his ladies in the Paradise of the Santa 
Maria Novella, Florence, were an anticipation of many ideas 
that were taken up by modern painters. Taddeo Gaddi whose 
work was mainly done about this same time is another of 
these wonderful Florentine painters whom modern artists have 
gone back to appreciate more and more. The only way to 
attain any adequate appreciation of such great artists is to 
have seen their works after a due training in artistic ideals 
or to accept the criticisms of those whose taste can be relied 
on. The more that is known of these painters in our time the 
more highly they are rated. 
Each of the cities of Italy was the home of a great art 
movement and the birthplace of a group of artists who 
would do credit to a nation rather than to a comparatively 
small town. It is scarcely necessary to say that probably 
none of these Italian cities had much more than 100,000 
people at any time until the last century and that those 
above the 100,000 mark in population at any time were very 
few. Undoubtedly some of the smaller cities that we know 
of as having had schools of artists that have become famous 
in history, had less than 25,000 and some of them as for 
instance Perugia and Ferrara probably much less than this. 
If anything serves to show that it is not numbers but the 
genius of a people that counts this surely is a demonstration 
of it. 
Florence was the greatest of these Italian cities and 
perhaps also the largest. The number of great names that it 
supplies to the history of art of men whose works will 
never be forgotten, and which change hands now if at all only 
at prices that are forbidding to any but the very rich or 
national museums, is so large that to do them anything like 
adequate justice would require a volume and indeed many 
volumes have been written about them. On the other hand 
they are so well known that we scarcely need do more than 
mention their names in order to have them produce all the 
weight of evidence for the art genius of their native country. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Some of those already mentioned, Cimabne, Giotto, Taddeo 
Gaddi, Orcagna were Florentines and worthily laid the foun- 
dation of the great art reputation of their native city in 
modern times. 
With the coming of the Renaissance, however, the list 
of great Florentines destined to immortality for painting 
swells to a host. This includes such men as Fra Angelico, 
Benozzo Gozzoli, Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi and then the 
great trio, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. 
Verrocchio must also be counted as a painter though so 
much better known as a sculptor and if we were to stop 
there our list would lack such great names as Botticelli, Fra 
Bartolommeo, Signorelli, Ghirlandajo, Lorenzo di Credi, 
Andrea del Sarto. Even after mentioning all these, doubtless 
there are many ardent students of Florentine art who would 
find sad gaps in such a brief summary of the names of men 
who accomplished great things for art in Florence. 
The difficulty of writing about Italian painting becomes 
mainly a matter of not trying to mention all the names of 
artists whose works are Still very much admired for their 
marvelous vision of the poetic and the real and their power 
of expressing what they saw with the eyes of the mind and 
the body. We can only pick out a few of the greatest in 
each century so as to give a good idea of what was accom- 
plished. In the second half of the fourteenth century Spinello 
Aretino the pupil of Taddeo Gaddi who had himself been a 
pupil of Giotto did some charmingly beautiful work. The 
best examples of it are to be seen in the Campo Santo at 
Pisa. His famous Battle of St. Ephesius with the Pagans of 
Sardinia shows that the artists of this time did not hesitate 
to attempt the most difficult problems of human and equestrian 
action on canvass and solved them with marvelous success. 
There are few more spirited encounters ever painted than 
this and perhaps none that are more dramatically expressive. 
About this same time but living over into the beginning of 
the fifteenth century was Gentile da Fabriano who died about 
1427. According to Vasari, Michelangelo once said of him PAINTING 
referring to his name Gentile which means delicate, graceful, 
“his touch is like his name.” Van der Weyden the great 
Flemish artist declared that Gentile was the greatest man 
in Italy. He was called from Orvieto to Rome to decorata 
the newly restored Church of St. John Lateran, but the 
frescos all have unfortunately perished though some of them 
were to be seen in Michelangelo’s time. His Adoration of 
The Kings in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Florence is 
extremely beautiful. He exhibits in his work according to 
W. J. Stillman “the love of lustre and the jewel like quality of 
the Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck and his 
pictures seem a prophecy of those of Albert Diirer, but in the 
essentials of the art spirit of the great Italian schools — the 
matter of looking at nature and the subjective way of the 
treating of details — Gentile remains true to his immediate 
ancestry. ’ ’ 
Then in the first half of the fifteenth century came 
another of the very great artists of all time Fra Angelico. 
His work is now so well known that surely little need be 
said to show how much the world owes to Italy for this great 
man. The great monastery of San Marco at Florence is 
indeed a museum of Fra Angelico’s work as every one of 
the cells contain one of his frescos. Timothy Cole who studied 
them so carefully in his preparation for reproducing many 
of them in woodcuts declared: 
“The delicate freshness and coolness of the tints blend 
softly and harmoniously together — simple, pure, colors, laid 
in sometimes with fine pencilings. In the ‘ Crucifixion ’ in the 
cloister the shaven face of Saint Dominic at the foot of the 
cross is treated so finely and delicately that the attempt is 
made to show each separate shaven hair by minutely fine 
dots. In this fresco is displayed all this painter’s knowledge 
of the technic of his art. The wings of his angels are 
enlivened with tints of green, yellow, violet, etc. contrasted 
harmoniously. ’ ’ 
Some of Angelico’s paintings as for instance the Angels 
of the Resurrection or the Annunciation are among the most WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
frequently reproduced paintings in the world. His marvelous 
charm of expression in his celestial subjects, his wonderful 
coloration which has not faded in all these years, and the 
beautiful decorative effects of his paintings show what an 
artistic genius he was. He was beloved by his contemporaries, 
he has been praised by all the great artists, he deeply in- 
fluenced his own time and the immediately succeeding period 
in art and some of his disciples are among the greatest of 
painters. 
Almost contemporary with Fra Angelico, but unfor- 
tunately dying before he was thirty was Masaccio whose won- 
derful dramatic power deeply affected the art of his time and 
who must be looked upon as the first of the painters who 
showed a distinct recognition of the every day world as a 
mine of art. His famous fresco of “The Tribute Money” is 
well known. The Christ of the picture has been a favorite 
study for artists since. The attitude of Christ is magnificent. 
“The eye falls naturally upon Him at once, taking in 
the broad play of light from the outstretched arm, while the 
air of commanding dignity, and the beauty of the neck, barer 
than those of the others, aid in distinguishing Him. But one 
needs to mount a step-ladder and get nearer to the picture 
to appreciate at their full value the moral strength and 
manly beauty of Christ’s countenance, his nobility and strong 
personality, and the subtlety of the expression of authority in 
His face. The other heads, too are admirable, and grouped 
finely together, in graceful and easy composition.” (Timothy 
Cole.) In the chapter on Italian Scholarship will be found 
Leonardo da Vinci’s tribute to his “perfect works” and their 
lesson of fidelity to nature for artists for all time. 
Among the other men at this time who are famous and 
whose work will never fail to be the subject of admiration 
are Fra Filippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli. “Filippo was 
the first to substitute for the ideal in art the personal and 
there is for the first time in the progress of Christian 
art a distinct and systematic employment of the individual 
and the personal in the representation of sacred personages PAINTING 
especially of the Madonna, an employment which later becomes 
the rule.” His escapades as an escaped friar, the story of 
which we owe to Vasari, have now all been denied and 
Cavalcaselle has completely wiped out the aspersions on his 
good name. In the Uffizzi at Florence his famous Madonna 
adoring the child Jesus has been the subject of almost endless 
admiration and is very frequently reproduced in our time. 
The adoring angels in the picture are remarkable for their 
sweetness and marvelous innocence. The group is gracefully 
and naturally disposed, forms a charming composition against 
the quiet background which is also full of interest. In the 
Duomo at Prato a short distance from Florence are found 
his most important works which are among the greatest 
creations of the art of the fifteenth century. No man with 
the character the gossip loving Vasari gave him could ever 
have painted these profoundly religious paintings. 
Later in many respects even than Fra Lippo Lippi and 
well worthy of his great master Fra Angelico, is Benozzo 
Gozzoli. His best known work is at the Campo Santo at 
Pisa. He introduced many portraits into its frescos including 
his own and as a consequence we have some very interesting 
memorials of himself and his contemporaries. W. J. Stillman 
says of him:— 
“In all we have of Benozzo’s work there is a cheerful 
sense of the influence of nature, and a love of children and 
animals such as we have not before him; and in this painting 
of children he seems especially happy. In his Campo Santo 
series he introduces them on every convenient occasion. The 
individuality of his heads and even the character of his 
figures, have that air of unmistakable likeness which belongs to 
earnest portraiture, and to a degree not indicated in any 
previous Italian work or in any contemporary prior to 
Giovanni Bellini, who was eight years the junior of Benozzo.” 
Then come the men of the glorious second half of the 
fifteenth century in Italy whose work is so well known that 
it is scarcely more than necessary to mention their names in 
order to bring out how much the world owes to Italy for them. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Some of them are not as well known as they should be except 
by painters, but all of them represent great landmarks in 
the history of art. There is Andrea Mantegna, the first 
painter to come under the influence of the Italian Renais- 
sance, that is of the new ideas and ideals that had arisen in 
Italy as a consequence of the study of the Latin and Greek 
classics and the remains of classical art and antiquities gen- 
erally. It is hard for anyone but a painter apparently to 
understand the marvelous influence Mantegna had. He repre- 
sented in himself the two great streams of tendency the 
Gothic art that had come down from Duccio and Giotto with 
the spirit of antiquity transforming it into something closer 
to human nature than the wonderful visions of the old 
religious painters had been. The well known Mantegna 
triptych in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence composed of the 
Adoration of the Magi, the Circumcision and the Ascension 
is one of the foundation stones of modern art. 
At the end of tl e fifteenth century came the period that 
has been called the Later Renaissance and it brought a 
wonderful outburst of artistic genius above all in Italy. Each 
of the cities of the Peninsula during this Renaissance period 
supplied as many painters as would ordinarily prove quite 
sufficient for a nation’s fame. Their names and achievements 
are so well known that scarcely more than a mention of their 
names is needed. Florence was the great leader and Fra 
Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli were only a prelude to Botticelli, 
Filippino Lippi, Rosselli and Ghirlandaio who with so many 
others took up the light of art and carried it on. Then there 
was Verocchio better known as a sculptor and yet doing some 
great work as a painter and above all influencing deeply three 
such great pupils as Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo da Vinci and 
Signorelli, himself a great painter who deeply influenced 
Michelangelo. Finally, for there must be an end to the list 
there was Andrea del Sarto one of the last of the artists in 
the Golden Age of painting in the city by the Arno. 
In the meantime Venice had made some remarkable 
contributions to painting, particularly in all that concerns PAINTING 
color. Venetian experience in glass making at Murano had 
prepared the artists of the city for the nse of pigments of all 
kinds and above all such as were likely to be permanent. The 
Vivarini family began the great work that was to make the 
Venetian School of Painting the colorists of the world. 
Crivelli was one of the greatest of the early artists and then 
came the Bellinis and especially John Bellini and his pupil 
Vittore Carpaccio who did modern painting at its best. At 
the beginning of the sixteenth century Venice possessed a 
school of artists which for glory of color and technical power 
has never been rivalled. The names of the great artists of 
that school are the familiar possession of all the educated 
people of the world. Their pictures are one of the most 
precious heritages of the race. They have deeply influenced 
all painting ever since and they will doubtless continue to do 
so until this stage of our civilization has passed completely. 
There is no need more than to mention their names for 
everyone to know how much we are indebted to Italy for 
them. Palma Vecchio, Giorgione, Titian, Lorenzo Lotto the 
great portrait painter and then Tintoretto and Paolo 
Veronese. 
Many volumes have been written about these artists and 
still men go back to them for their wonderful power of 
visualization and their almost more wonderful ability to 
reproduce their vision in glorious color. They lived in the 
supreme sunlight of Venice and their colors have as a rule 
something of the limpidity of light and the glorious effulgence 
of the spectrum. While famous for color they are almost more 
deservedly famous because of their composition, their marvel- 
ous recognition of the limitations and yet the capacity of 
paint and canvass to express phases of human life. 
A city like Ferrara usually not thought of as a great 
art centre yet gave the world such fine painters in the fifteenth 
century as Francia and Lorenzo Costa and has among its 
painters such well known names as Ercole Grandi, Dosso Dossi, 
Cosimotura and Garofalo. Ferrara was intimately connected 
with Bologna, some of these men working there; but Bologna WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
is almost better known for the three Carracci, Guido Reni, 
Domenichino, and Guercino. When one enters the Vatican 
Gallery and sees Guercino’s picture of the Incredulity of St. 
Thomas, or recalls how often Guido’s Ecce Homo has been 
copied, one realizes how much these men have influenced the 
world not only of art but of thought and that they are not 
mere names known to a few favored art amateurs or painters 
interested in the history of their profession hut great human 
factors for culture and art development. Even a little towr 
like Parma gave to the world Correggio and his pupil Par- 
migiano. Some of Correggio’s pictures, though this wonderful 
young man like Raphael died before he was forty, are now 
looked upon as among the greatest pictures ever painted. 
Grimm in his Life of Michelangelo has said that this young 
Parmese though untravelled, combines some of the best 
qualities of the work of Raphael and Leonardo and Michel- 
angelo. No one has more deeply influenced young artists 
than Correggio and few artists are better known through 
the many copies made of him. But far from being merely 
an artists’ artist Correggio is one of the most popular of 
Italian painters. 
In the centuries since the Renaissance, Italy has at various 
periods yielded the primacy in painting to other countries 
for a time as for instance to the Spanish school in the first 
half of the seventeenth century, to the Netherlands in the 
second half of the seventeenth century, to France in the later 
half of the nineteenth century, but the peninsula has prac- 
tically never since the end of the Renaissance been without 
some distinguished painters. In the latter half of the six- 
teenth century there were the Carracci, Palma Giovane, Pietro 
da Cortona, Caravaggio with Sassoferrato and Salvator Rosa 
making their early achievements. In the first half of the 
seventeenth century some of these men reached their maturity 
and Carlo Maratta, Guido Reni, Sebastiano Ricci, Carlo Dolci, 
Domenichino, Guercino, Paolo Pannini and Luca Giordano 
were doing their work, most of them carrying it on until 
near the end of that century. In the eighteenth century PAINTING 
came Tiepolo, Canaletto, Zuccherelli and others. Even when 
there has come a distinct descent in artistic taste as for 
instance when Guido Reni and Carlo Dolci were more popular 
than the great Renaissance artists and when their cloying 
sweetness seemed the highest attainment of painting, Italy’s 
influence was deeply felt and it was in reaction against this 
that the realistic Dutch painters secured their finest success. 
As it is the names of such men as Guercino and Domenichino 
in this group which represents Italian decadence show how 
high the preceding period of great art had climbed. 
The name of Italy has become almost synonymous with 
painting at its best. This was above all Italy’s gift to the 
world. In recent centuries Italy’s painters have shared the 
decadence of painting generally, but they have continued to 
he looked upon as great teachers of art, and painters from all 
over the world have gone down into Italy to study and 
those most interested in art in various countries have felt 
that they could do nothing better for the progress of art 
in their own countries than to establish scholarships which 
would include a year of study in Italy, for an Italian visit 
does more to stimulate artistic impulse than almost anything 
else that can happen to a young artist. Even Francois Millet, 
the most original of modern painters, declared that he owed 
nothing to modern French art and that above all the art 
teachers of Paris had not helped him, though a visit to Italy 
and the study particularly of the Italian primitives had 
proved of great inspiration to him. But then why argue as 
to Italy’s supreme place in painting as well, as of art work 
of every other kind since all the world admits it ? SCULPTURE 
IN SCULPTURE Italy bears away the palm from all other 
nations. Not only has she done more of great work in 
sculpture than all the other nations put together, but it 
might well be said perhaps without exaggeration that what 
has been accomplished outside of Italy is of little significance 
compared to the wealth of Italian work. It might even be 
added with the accord of most artists, that the sculpture of 
other nations in modern times has practically always been 
executed.— with such notable exceptions almost alone as the 
Gothic sculpture of North France in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries.— under Italian influence. 
The Romans are usually not thought of as having con- 
tributed significantly to world sculpture. In this department 
of aesthetics as indeed it must be confessed in every other, 
they were so overshadowed by the Greeks that there is almost 
inevitably a reactionary tendency set up in the modern mind 
to depreciate or minimize their work when the enforced 
comparison with the surpassing excellence of Greek art sug- 
gests itself. It must not be forgotten, however, that while the 
Romans were confessed copyists of the Greeks, some of the 
copies made by them show not only a marvelous spirit of 
appreciative art judgment and artistic skill, but a perfection 
that represents the highest talent, if it does not reach up 
close to genius. While Virgil and Horace are copyists they 
have made magnificent contributions to world literature and 
scarcely less can be said of the Roman sculptors in their 
department. For a time many of the statues dug up at 
Rome were attributed to the great Grecian sculptors of the 
highest period of classic art, though most of them have since SCULPTURE 
come to be referred to Roman sculptors of the early Christian 
centuries. Not a few of these sculptures came to have 
magnificent influence in the Renaissance period over the 
nascent plastic art of modern times and even as late as the 
end of the eighteenth century Winckelmann’s book on the 
Laocoon was a bugle call of awakening not only for the mod- 
ern German artistic spirit, but aroused most of the rest of 
Europe. Many a sculpture group or portrait statue that used 
to be extolled to the skies as an example of the highest 
Greek art has fallen in estimation since the demonstration 
by archaeologists that it was of Roman origin, but the force 
of the implied compliment to the Romans in the meantime 
must not be forgotten. The group of portrait busts of the 
emperors and of distinguished men and women of Rome have 
probably never been excelled in portrait sculpture. They have 
been the favorite study of artists at all times of genuine 
appreciation for art, while at the same time they have been 
constantly recurred to by historical writers who realized their 
value as extremely significant human documents. In minor 
sculpture, in architectural ornament, in vases, in urns and 
great basins, indeed in all the decoration of their baths the 
Romans reached a height of sculptural effect almost un- 
excelled. 
Of sculpture in the earlier Middle Ages there was com- 
paratively little, .but so scant has been the information about 
what there actually was and its extent has been so imperfectly 
realized that the presumption has lain very near in many 
minds that there was practically none. Byzantine sculptors 
however not only deserve mention but they should have as 
significant a place in the history of art as have the Byzantine 
painters and decorators. As was the case with their colleagues 
in painting and decoration, the Byzantine plastic artists were 
mainly Italians by birth and training and the new form of 
decorative sculpture developed at Ravenna. The sculptors did 
not devote themselves to regular subjects, but “marble screens, 
altars, pulpits and the like were ornamented in a very skilful 
and original way with low reliefs of graceful vine plants, WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
with peacocks and other birds drinking out of chalices, all 
treated in a very able and highly decorative manner.” 
(Encyclopedia Britannica.) Byzantine art is decorative in 
purpose in every form and our appreciation of it has grown 
just in proportion as our sense of genuine decorative beauty 
has developed in the modern time. While the word Byzantine 
very naturally tempts us to think of all this decoration as 
Eastern in origin, the work is purely Italian in initiative, con- 
ception and execution. 
That the Italians of the Middle Ages even before the 
time of the earlier Renaissance could do good plastic work the 
bronze statue of St. Peter in the great Church of St. Peter’s 
at Rome, the toe of which has been kissed smooth by visitors, 
gives excellent evidence. This is an early work with a simple 
dignity and vigor of treatment which shows a great artist at 
work. It is sometimes said, even in guide books supposed to be 
reliable, that this is an antique statue of Jupiter transformed 
into that of St. Peter by the addition of the keys, but the 
report is untrue and it only affords additional evidence of 
the feeling of profound admiration for the work that it 
should thus be attributed to the times of classical sculpture. 
Unfortunately for any history of monumental plastic 
art at this time it became the custom for sculptors to devote 
themselves to work in the precious metals. Small statues and 
sculptored decorations of various kinds were made in gold 
and silver, but they proved too tempting for human cupidity 
and necessity to be enduring. They were often very beautiful, 
as some few striking remains attest. For example at Friuli 
there are some charming statues bearing crowns and jewels. 
But it is easy to understand that when wars and political 
disturbances came the material of which these works of art 
were composed was as a rule entirely too valuable as mere 
bullion for them to be allowed to continue in existence as 
works of art and accordingly they were either stolen or re- 
moved by the authorities or by revolutionists, melted down 
and used for the financing of all sorts of projects. We know SCULPTURE 
the numbers of them there were from tradition and the few 
that remain attest their fine artistic qualities. 
With the beginning of the earlier Renaissance in the 
thirteenth century beautiful sculpture was executed by many 
in Italy. The work of the Pisani presents some of the best 
sculpture ever accomplished. Niceolo the first who was called 
Pisano, born at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is 
the greatest of these. His beautiful relief of the Deposition 
from the Cross in the Tympanum of the side door of the 
Church of San Martino at Lucca is remarkable for its artistic 
composition, the gracefulness of its execution and its delicate 
finish. The wonder of its beauty grows when one learns that 
the sculptor was probably not thirty years of age when it was 
done. When he was about fifty he did the celebrated marble 
pulpit for the Baptistry at Pisa, copies of which in the full 
size of the original are now to be seen in so many of our most 
important museums everywhere in the world. His great 
pulpit at Siena, a copy of wihch sometimes replaces it in 
collections of replicas, is on a grander scale but in the judg- 
ment of critics is probably not so beautiful. The dignified 
simplicity of the earlier pulpit shows what fine austere artis- 
tic taste Niceolo had when working only to suit his own ideas, 
but apparently the desire of the Siennese to have in their 
pulpit a show piece grander than their Pisan neighbors, temp- 
ted him to somewhat overload its successor with decoration. 
Giovanni Pisano the son of Niceolo is usually considered 
to be little if any inferior to his father either as sculptor 
or architect. To him we owe the Campo Santo at Pisa and 
the masterpieces of sculpture over the main door and inside 
the cloister. The most magnificent of his works is the marble 
high altar adorned with almost countless figures and reliefs 
in the Cathedral of Arezzo. His beautiful tomb of Pope 
Benedict XI with a sleeping figure of the Pope guarded by 
angels who draw aside the curtain (fig. Encyclopedia Brit- 
annica) is one of his most charming works and a marvelous 
triumph of plastic achievement. A work by Giovanni Pisano 
that is very well known and has always attracted attention WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
is the beautiful little chapel of Santa Maria della Spina, that 
is of St. Mary of The Thorn on the hanks of the Arno in Pisa. 
The special treasure of this little chapel is a thorn said to be 
from the crown of thorns of the Savior and this gem-like 
chapel is a worthy reliquary even for so precious a relic. 
Alongside of Giovanni Pisano worked Arnolfo del 
Cambio also a pupil of Niecolo Pisano whose best known work 
is perhaps the Tomb of Cardinal De Braye at Orvieto. Just at 
the beginning of the fourteenth century a pupil of Giovanni 
Pisano who became known for that reason as Andrea Pisano 
did the first of the three world famed bronze doors of the 
Baptistery at Florence, that on the South side. He had been 
a goldsmith as were many other of the celebrated sculptors 
and artists of Italy and he worked for many years at this 
marvelous piece of bronze work which has been declared by 
critics as perhaps the finest the world has ever seen. ‘ ‘ It has 
all the breadth of a sculptor modeling with the finish of a 
piece of gold jewellery,” (Encyclopedia Britannica.) He was 
largely influenced it is said in this work by Giotto. To him 
is also attributed the execution of the double band of beautiful 
panel reliefs on Giotto’s Campanile the subjects of which are 
the Four Great Prophets, the Seven Virtues, the Seven Sacra- 
ments, the Seven Works of Mercy and the Seven Planets, the 
designs of which are said to have been suggested if not actually 
made by Giotto. 
Andrea Pisano had two sons Nino and Tomasso the for- 
mer of whom executed a number of statues of the Madonna 
and the Child which are full of human feeling and sympathy 
and gentle loveliness. They have been declared “a perfect 
embodiment of the Catholic idea of the Divine Mother.” 
Some of Andrea’s pupils however, far out-distanced his sons 
in sculpture. The most famous of them is Andrea De Cione 
who is better known under the name of Orcagna. Orcagna’s 
father was a goldsmith and he too had had the training of 
Hie shop. He is almost as famous a painter as he is a 
sculptor, but like so many of these men of the Italian 
Renaissance he exhausted the whole round of achievements, SCULPTURE 
has done some magnificent work in mosaic, was a splendid 
architect and a poet of much more than ordinary ability. He 
had a large number of pupils and deeply influenced the suc- 
ceeding generation. The great marble tabernacle in the 
chapel of Or San Michele in Florence is wholly from his hand. 
This in its “combined splendor of architectural design, sculp- 
tured reliefs and statuettes and mosaic richness, is one of the 
most important and beautiful works of art wihch even rich 
Italy possesses. ’ ’ The design for the Loggia Dei Lanzi in the 
Piazza della Signoria in Florence is attributed to him though 
it was not actually begun till after his death. Probably no 
work of sculpture anywhere in the world is more magnificent 
than the wonderful tabernacle by him which we have al- 
ready mentioned. It has been the favorite study of artists, 
sculptors, decorators, architects ever since and it has deeply 
influenced many generations. It never tempted to exact 
imitation because it seemed almost beyond the powers of 
anyone after him, but suggestions from it are to be found in 
many parts of the world. 
Another one of the famous pupils of Andrea Pisano is 
Balduccio de Pisa to whom we owe the wonderful shrine in 
the church of San Eustorgio at Milan only less famous and 
less admired than that of Orcagna at Or San Michele. There 
is another magnificent shrine of St. Augustine in the Cathedral 
of Pavia which shows how many great sculptors were at 
work at this time. Ghiberti who did the third pair of the 
famous bronze doors of the Baptistery of Florence has usually 
been looked upon as one of the great masters of sculpture of 
all time. These doors used to be thought of greater signifi- 
cance as a work of plastic art than the critics admit now, 
because it is usually said that Ghiberti went beyond the limits 
that can properly be assigned to plastic art. So great a 
critic as Michelangelo however, is said to have declared that 
these doors were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. They 
certainly constitute a marvelously beautiful and an almost 
endlessly attractive work of art. Some of Ghiberti’s statues in 
the Church of Or San Michele and especially those of St. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
John the Baptist and St. Stephen show how well he could 
execute pure statuary work of the highest excellence. His 
bronze doors have deeply influenced not only the sculpture, 
but also the art of Italy and they have served to stimulate 
every visitor of artistic genius who has come to see the 
wonders of Florence. 
But this is only a beginning of the story of sculpture in 
Italy. Notwithstanding the magnificent accomplishment of the 
earlier Renaissance Italy’s supreme achievement in sculpture 
was to come in what is usually known as the later or true 
Renaissance. The group of names in connection with that 
movement is the best known in the history of sculpture. It 
begins with Donatello and includes Leopardi, Verrocchio, 
Leonardo Da Vinci, the Della Robbias, Benvenuto Cellini, 
Michelangelo, and John of Bologna. There must also be 
mentioned the men who decorated the Certosa of Pavia of 
whose names we are not sure and a host of sculptors of minor 
distinction many of whom however, would have been looked 
up to as possessed of surpassing artistic powers in any other 
time or country. Men of such distinction for instance as 
Mino da Fiesole, the two Rossellinis, Benedetto da Maiano in 
Florence alone and the rivals and imitators of Michelangelo 
Baccio Bandinelli, Giacomo della Porta, Montelupo, Am- 
manati, and Vincenzo di Rossi are among those that deserve 
mention. 
One need only give the names of the masterpieces of the 
greatest sculptors for all to recognize what supreme works of 
art they executed. Donatello’s Gattamelata at Padua is one 
of the greatest of the equestrian statues of the world. He 
seems to have been the first in modern times to have conceived 
the idea of making an equestrian statue and this was the 
result. The actual casting seems to have been done by 
Leopardi but all the arrangements had been made for it by 
Donatello. Ordinarily it would be assumed that the first 
work in a mode of this kind would be crude and that suc- 
ceeding artists would gradually improve in technique and 
execution until a really great work of art was achieved. SCULPTURE 
Whenever a genius sets himself to the accomplishment of a 
great purpose he does it as well at any time in the world’s 
history as at any other and he usually owes very little to his 
predecessors. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the 
case of Donatello’s equestrian statue. Some of his other 
works as for instance his statue of St. George outside the 
Church of Or San Michele at Florence must be considered as 
surpassed only by some of Michelangelo’s work and that of the 
Greeks. 
The next great equestrian statue came from Verrocchio, 
It is the masterpiece, the Colleoni at Venice. Verrocchio was 
the master of Leonardo Da Vinci as a young man and a still 
greater equestrian statue than that of his master is said to 
have been made by Leonardo. This was the famous figure 
of the Duke of Milan on horseback. Unfortunately having 
been set up in plaster for criticism it was shot to pieces by 
the French soldiers who had captured Milan and taken the 
Duke prisoner. Anyone who doubts the tradition of its 
greatness must recall the fact that this generation which 
declared it the greatest of equestrian statues had before it 
Donatello’s Gattamelata as well as Verrocchio’s Colleoni and 
therefore was in a position to judge. 
As the culmination of this group of Renaissance sculptors 
came Michelangelo. He has done greater work in sculpture than 
any other except the Greeks and his sculpture is surpassed 
if indeed surpassed at all by but very few of the masterpieces 
of Greek sculpture. His David on the hill at Florence in 
bronze or the original in marble is a very triumph of the 
plastic expression of youth. His Moses made for the tomb of 
Pope Julius II and now rendering the Church of St. Peter 
in Vincoli a pilgrimage place for all who are interested in 
art is among the unrivalled sculptures of the world. The 
statues for the tomb of the Medici at Florence, his galley 
slaves which constitute the prize pieces of several museums and 
his Pieta have perhaps never been equalled in their artistic 
qualities. Michelangelo has influenced the world of art 
probably more than any other man that ever lived. He saw WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
in large figures, and leaves always the impression of not 
having been quite able to execute his vision, yet his accom- 
plishment is greater than his works. It is no wonder then that 
he so deeply influenced not only his own generation but many 
sacceeding generations. 
A series of most beautiful contributions to plastic art 
were made by the della Robbias and especially by Luca della 
Robbia. He had already demonstrated the possession of the 
powers of a very great sculptor, as his choir in the Duomo at 
Florence clearly shows, when he became interested in terra 
cotta work and produced the wonderful examples of groups 
and figures in colored terra cotta that have been the admira- 
tion of the world ever since. There are several Annunciations, 
a Visitation, and then the wonderful bambinos on the Hos- 
pital of the Innocents at Florence which all the world knows 
very well and which are frequently copied. A number of 
members of the family including at least one young woman 
took part in the making of works similar to these and while 
none of them had anything like the genius of Luca all of 
them did charming artistic work. Very few of the important 
museums in the world now are without models made in imita- 
tion of the della Robbia terra cottas and now that terra cotta 
is properly taking its place once more as a medium for 
external decoration the reputation of the della Robbias and 
the admiration for them is constantly on the increase. A little 
while after them Begarelli of Modena made a number of very 
clever statues and groups in terra cotta which were enthus- 
iastically admired by Michelangelo. 
One of the great sculptors of this time who deserves to be 
mentioned particularly for his name is well known all over 
the world is Benvenuto Cellini. His famous bronze group of 
Perseus holding the head of Medusa to which the Florentines 
have deservedly given a place of honor in the Loggia dei 
Lanzi in front of the old ducal Palace is one of the great 
masterpieces of modern sculpture. W. M. Rossetti spoke of 
it as “a work full of the fires of genius and the grandeur of 
a terrible beauty; one of the most typical and unforgettable SCULPTURE 
monuments of the Italian Renaissance.” While so great a 
sculptor in monumental work, Cellini never thought art 
objects of small size beneath the finest artistic attention and 
with a true Renaissance spirit he modeled beautifully any and 
every form of work in metals. Flagons, hells, and even rings 
and jewels were executed for wealthy customers who appre 
mated art and coins and medals were designed for the Papal 
mint and for the Medici at Florence. The smaller pieces 
from his hands have been accepted by modern sculptors and 
devotees of the minor arts and crafts as veritable models of 
artistic excellence for all time. 
Another of the great Italian sculptors is John of Bologna 
who though born at Douay in France is quite properly known 
as Giovanni da Bologna, because he was educated in Italy and 
lived and worked almost entirely there. His bronze statue of 
the Flying Mercury is one of the favorite popular pieces of 
which copies are to be seen everywhere. It is full of life and 
movement and is indeed a triumph of liveliest action in 
plastic work yet quite within the limitations that may be set 
to this form of art. Working about the same time as Giovanni 
in Italy were Girolamo Lombardo and his sons who made the 
magnificent bronze gates of the Holy House at Loretto and 
the sculpture on the Western Facade of the church at the 
same place. It is one of the delights of the pilgrim to Loretto 
to find how charmingly the little old house, which according 
to tradition was the home of Emmanuel on earth, is here 
enshrined. To see how lovingly it has been cared for is of 
itself almost testimony enough of its miraculous translation, 
and no more suitable place for its settling down could have 
been chosen than its homely surroundings amid a pious, 
simple, art loving people. 
At the end of the sixteenth century signs of decadence 
in sculpture are already beginning to be noticed though they 
are more noticeable in other countries than in Italy. Michel- 
angelo is alive until 1564, and at work until the very end and 
John of Bologna is doing his work when already the signs 
of decadence are notable in Germain Pilon and even in Jean WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Goujon in France. With the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury decadence is marked everywhere however, and Bernini 
came to rule the world of sculpture. At the beginning of his 
career some of his work is of wonderful technical skill and 
delicate high finish combined with soft beauty and grace 
though too pictorial in style. The attempt to imitate or rival 
painting became the predominant trait of his work. With the 
aid of a large school of assistants he produced an immense 
number of works of sculpture. They are progressively more 
unsculpturesque. In spite of this he was probably the most 
admired artist of his time, and one of the most regarded by 
his contemporaries of any time. He had undoubtedly great 
talent and his magnificent colonnade before St. Peter’s shows 
how much of real genius the man possessed, which doubtless 
would have developed very finely had he lived in a better 
period. As it was he absolutely dominated the sculpture of 
the world and with Italy willing to praise what was in bad 
taste decadence was to be noted everywhere. And yet let 
us confess that it is after all a very wonderful decadence. 
It was not until the end of the eighteenth and the 
beginning of the nineteenth century that a sculptor worthy 
of the name was born and he was Canova, the Venetian who 
did so much to bring back the true classic spirit into this form 
of art. When he did classic subjects as for instance the 
colossal marble group of Theseus and the Centaur at Vienna, 
his work is excellent and has much that is reminiscent of the 
best classic art. His influence did more than that of any 
other to bring about a reformation in plastic art. Fortunately 
Thorwaldsen, the Icelander, settled in Rome in 1797 when 
Canova’s fame was at its highest. Under the fostering in- 
fluence of this master and the precious spirit of great classic 
and Italian art all around him Thorwaldsen produced an 
immense quantity of sculpture of very high order and in 
taste closely attuned to that of the best antique art. He even 
excelled his master Canova in such subjects as The Three 
Graces. When Italy herself does not produce, her influence 
is deeply felt. Most of the sculptors who in more recent SCULPTURE 
years have attracted attention have worked in Italy and been 
influenced by their teachers and the great works around them 
in that favored country. Italy is and has always been the 
home of great sculpture, the Mecca for all those who are 
interested in this form of art. ARCHITECTURE 
THOUGH the fact is but rarely appreciated and as a rule 
only by those who have made special studies in the 
subject, the world owes quite as much to Italy in architecture 
as in painting or in sculpture. We have touched the classic 
period but passingly in every mode of human expression in 
this estimation of the Avorld’s debt to Italy, but it must be 
recalled that the Romans, taking Greek models, achieved a 
series of the most beautiful architectural monuments. At the 
beginning of the chapter on painting, I mentioned the charm- 
ing structures which still remain in the Hill Country at 
Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto and other places as enduring evidence 
of Roman taste and accomplishment in architecture. Rome 
itself has a remarkable group of these surpassing monuments. 
Pompey’s Theatre, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Theatre 
of Marcellus, the arches of Titus and Constantine, the Castle 
St. Angelo are examples that everyone will recall. How 
enduringly the Romans built these handsome public buildings 
will be best appreciated from the fact that after all the 
vicissitudes of time and the longest and most disturbed 
political history of any city in the world, notwithstanding 
fire and flood and even earthquake and wars and sieges and 
the incursions of barbarians and the even more damaging 
incursions of barbarous Romans who doubtless thought of 
themselves as representing progress beyond their old time 
ancestors, but used the materials torn from the wondrous 
monument of the past for their own passing structures, 
enough of these monuments still remain to bear witness to the 
power of construction and the fine taste of their builders. 
Just as soon as Christianity was accorded the freedom ARCHITECTURE 
to live in the open and make public demonstration of its 
worship a new epoch of constructive genius opened up and 
architecture began to develop very beautifully. The remains 
of Constantine’s Basilica are the best evidence of this. A 
wonderful evolution of ecclesiastical architecture was accom- 
plished in a comparatively short time. There are in Rome and 
Ravenna a series of churches which demonstrate beyond all 
doubt the genius of the people of the peninsula at this time 
in architecture. Only a little study of the details of the 
construction of San Lorenzo at Rome, planned and executed 
in the sixth century will enable the student to realize at once 
how well the people of this time had solved the problem of 
making a beautifully impressive Basilica “house of the King” 
for the dwelling place of Emmanuel and for the worship 
of the Most High. Quite contrary to the ordinarily accepted 
impression this instead of being unique is but one of a 
number of impressive buildings that have come down to us 
from this time. The Church of San Appolinare in Nuovo of 
Ravenna, built also in the sixth century, or of San Apollinare 
in Classe, or San Yitale, also in Ravenna, illustrate the 
gradual development of this style in beauty and charm. The 
tomb of Galla Placidia, another of the famous structures of 
old Ravenna, shows how these Italians of the earlier Middle 
Ages, when ordinarily men’s minds are presumed to be rather 
hide bound in their tendency to imitate rather than to origin- 
ate, could adapt the ideas of the larger structures so as to 
enhance the beauty of even a comparatively small building. 
Anyone who has visited the tomb of Pasteur the great modern 
French scientist which is situated beneath the main entrance 
of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and learns that it is built 
in imitation of Galla Placidia’s tomb, may perhaps be sur- 
prised that a modern French architect should have gone back 
so much more than a thousand years to a structure of the 
early Middle Ages for the model of a monument to a modem 
man of science, but no one will be disappointed in the beauty 
of the design that he adopted and every visitor is sure to WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
come away with the feeling that the architect displayed ex- 
cellent judgment in his choice as a prototype. 
The Byzantine style of architecture of which these are 
the earliest extant examples continued to develop beautifully 
in Constantinople, or as it was then called, Byzantium, and 
the mode culminated in that very beautiful structure Santa 
Sophia which dates from about the middle of the sixth cen- 
tury. Ordinarily because of its location in Constantinople and 
the fact that its architect was said to have been a Greek from 
Tralles, it is presumed that Santa Sophia is oriental in origin, 
but it must not be forgotten that influences from the Ital- 
ian peninsula were at this time dominant in Constantinople 
and that it was under these that the architectural develop- 
ment of the Capital of the Empire came about. It was the 
building genius of the Italians and not at all that of the 
Gothic rulers of the time that proceeded to make Constantin- 
ople worthy to be the seat -of empire. Santa Sophia is, after 
all, one of the supremely great world structures, mentioned in 
the same breath with Karnac in Egypt and St. Peter’s in 
Rome as marking an epoch in human history. 
The pervasiveness of Italian influence must be recog- 
nized in this just as in many of the later periods of great 
architectural development. As we shall see when the Roman- 
esque followed the Byzantine, Italy’s architectural genius was 
felt all over the western world. During the Renaissance period 
her influence was felt even farther afield from Spain to India. 
Mr. Brander Matthews reviewing E. V. Lucas’ Book of 
Travels, reminded his readers that the Taj Mahal of India 
and the Alhambra of Spain are contemporaries in construc- 
tion and that Italian workers in marble and in mosaic 
labored upon both of these supreme achievements of archi- 
tecture. His authority for the declaration was Sir Martin 
Conway the well known English traveler and art student 
whose reliability on a subject of this kind can be readily 
appreciated. The Taj is usually thought of as being much 
older than the Renaissance time, but as Mr. Lucas says: 
“In India one falls naturally into the way of thinking of ARCHITECTURE 
everything that is not of our own time as being of immense 
age, if not pre-historic, but it is really much nearer to us, long 
past dating Giotto’s tower and even following St. Peter’s at 
Rome.” 
The Byzantine style of architecture of which the churches 
and chapel of Ravenna and Santa Sophia and other structures 
in Constantinople are the outstanding examples developed in 
many parts of medieval Italy and culminated in the great 
Church of St. Mark, at Venice. This basilica came into its 
present form toward the end of the eleventh century. Few 
buildings are more impressive not only because of antiquity 
but because of the charm of line and form and decoration. 
It was not begun until the tenth century and as Goodyear in 
his Roman and Medieval Art remarks much of its construction 
and adornment was accomplished in the period which 
we usually designate as Romanesque, that is the period after 
1000 A. D., when the Byzantine is usually said to have given 
way to the next mode of architecture. Any such arbitrary 
and absolute distinction of architectural periods in history 
applies however, only to Western Europe. Byzantine art and 
architecture long outlived this date in its own home. Venice 
was so closely connected with the Byzantine Empire and 
with its capital city Constantinople, that it is not surprising 
that St. Mark’s should present the best surviving picture in 
the world of an old Byzantine church. The style can well 
alford to be judged entirely by this. An architectural move- 
ment that culminates by giving rise to such a wondrously 
interesting building as Venice’s charming cathedral repre- 
sents a supreme expression of human intelligence and taste 
in art and of man’s power over building materials. After 
all these centuries it is still a favorite place of pilgrimage 
for those who are interested in beautiful things for their own 
sake and above all for those who are interested in the story 
of human development. But to think for a moment that 
what attracts so many visitors is a dead influence in human 
life in our time would be an egregious blunder for many WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of the art impulses in the old St. Mark’s are waking up in 
modern life with genuine vigor and fine force. 
The Romanesque architecture which follows the Byzan- 
tine in the history of human architectural development has, 
as its name indicates, its origin in Rome itself, though as a 
curious result of its development some of the most beautiful 
examples of the style are to he studied in the distant Northern 
countries Germany and England. The word Romanesque 
does not, as some people seem to think, refer to a degraded 
Roman style of architecture, good enough as it were for a 
more or less uncultured medieval people, though it may be 
quite unsuitable for a cultured epoch, but, as students of 
architecture now all recognize it, is the technical term for 
a really marvelous development of beautifully impressive 
architecture. The term Romanesque connotes the two par- 
ticular traits of Roman architecture which began to be re- 
employed after the year 1000 A. D., the pier and the vaulting 
arch. These came into vogue to replace the timber roofs with 
columns supporting the arches of the nave which had been so 
generously employed before. How much this style of archi- 
tecture came to mean not only for Italy but the whole of 
Europe of the time will perhaps be best appreciated from 
the fact that three of the most interesting cathedrals in 
Germany, those of Mainz, Aix and Speyer are in this style. 
That Romanesque was no mere passing fad of a few gener- 
ations but an enduring contribution to world architecture, is 
made very clear from the added fact that two of the most 
ambitious ecclesiastical structures that we have planned and 
built on this continent in our generation, charmingly appro- 
priate they are too, Holy Trinity Church in Boston and the 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York are designed 
in this style. 
As a matter of fact this style of architecture led to the 
creation of some of the features now most familiar in church 
construction. It was in the Romanesque cathedrals that the 
transept was introduced and a cross form given to the church. 
The choirs were considerably enlarged, developing the apse ARCHITECTURE 
of the basilica. This new style while a direct evolution from 
the earlier basilicas enabled the architects and builders to 
give increased grandeur, size and effectiveness to the church 
and at the same time made for a more permanent construction. 
The round arch was employed and the exterior walls were 
massive. These instead of detracting from the beauty of the 
structure as a whole, were taken advantage of by the archi- 
tects and artists of the time to illustrate the value for 
artistic effect of large surfaces of masonry. 
Above all painters found splendid opportunities for the 
decoration of wall space and ceiling and made these Roman- 
esque churches veritable temples of art. In the modern time 
we house our pictures in museums to which but a small 
portion of the population of our cities come and but seldom. 
Great art in Italy in the service of the Church was very 
frequently under the eyes of literally all the people for every- 
one was bound by Church law to go to church about 100 
times a year. The result was a popular education in artistic 
taste such as has seldom been rivalled and only surpassed, if 
even there, at Athens in the palmy days of the Periclean age. 
The Italian painters became the beloved of their people, hold- 
ing the position in popular affection only accorded to those 
who excel in competitive athletics or some national sport or 
perhaps prize fighting in the modern time. 
After the Romanesque came the Gothic architecture 
which derived its name from the fact that it was mainly 
developed by the Germanic peoples, whom the generations 
of the Renaissance in their detestation and contempt for all 
that was medieval and non-classic, spoke of as Goths. While 
this would seem surely to indicate that the Gothic style of 
architecture was invented originally by the Teutonic or at 
least Frankish peoples, there seems no doubt now that the 
first European examples of it were seen in Sicily and that 
its characteristic feature the pointed arch, was if not actually 
invented by the Italians at least first employed by them in 
such a way as to indicate clearly how available it was for 
construction on a large scale. Italy’s own Gothic cathedrals 
bear no comparison with those of the Northern countries in WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
magnificence for reasons that can be easily understood, for 
at the height of the Gothic movement, Italy harassed by wars 
and incessant political disturbance was not in the position to 
erect such great cathedrals. In spite of all this, however, 
such examples of Gothic as are to be found in Italy are well 
worthy of this great style. The Church of the Minerva at 
Rome, so called because built over the foundations of a temple 
of Minerva, is a striking example of pure simple Gothic. The 
cathedral at Milan is in its wealth of detail one of the most 
beautiful buildings in the world. It makes it very clear that 
even in this form of architecture so much more suitable to 
the darker Northern countries, which absolutely required the 
greater amount of light afforded by the large windows, Italy 
could have rivalled if she so desired and the opportunity been 
afforded her, the younger nations to whom the new style gave 
such a magnificent stimulus in constructive work. 
With the coming of the Renaissance Italy’s greatest 
architectural period develops. In every form, in ecclesiastical 
structures, in municipal buildings, in hospital construction, 
in private and public palaces there are still extant many 
exquisite examples of Italian taste and artistic capacity which 
demonstrate beyond peradventure Italian ability to employ 
building materials with charm and fine utilitarian purpose to 
carry off every point and combine the useful with the 
beautiful. They present monuments of impressive construc- 
tions which have never been equalled at least in modern 
times, for their thorough adaptation to their uses and their 
surroundings. The full story of Italian Renaissance archi- 
tecture would be entirely too long to tell in any detail here 
and it will be enough to remind the reader that practically 
all our modern serious building that is not frankly under 
Gothic influence is Renaissance in model and owes more to 
Italy than to any other country. Such beautiful buildings 
as the great Church of Santa Croce, or the Cathedral at Pisa, 
such palaces as the Pitti or the Uffizzi at Florence, such 
marvels of construction as St. Peter’s at Rome, in which 
Michelangelo put the Pantheon on top of the Colosseum, mak- 
40 ST. PETER’S ROME. ARCHITECTURE 
ing it as it were a double wonder of the world, are the 
examples that naturally suggest themselves to anyone who 
thinks of the triumphs of Italian Renaissance architecture. 
There are however, literally hundreds of buildings com- 
pleted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy that 
are so finely planned and finished that they have been the 
subject of profound study by architects at all times in the 
world’s history since, whenever men have been seriously in- 
terested in building beautifully. Rome has a number of 
palaces, some of them designed by Michelangelo and by his 
contemporaries that are used as illustrations in nearly every 
important text book of architecture. Venice, whose wealth 
and touch with the Orient and a great spirit of sublime art 
in painting combined to encourage high impulse in architec- 
ture, possesses in her Renaissance structures literally some of 
the most beautiful buildings in the world. When Ruskin 
wanted to teach his countrymen of the last generation some- 
thing about the meaning of architecture, he called and with 
good reason, his series of lectures which expanded into three 
volumes, Stones of Venice. Probably no better title nor 
more inspiriting subject could have been chosen. Compara- 
tively unknown and quite unimportant towns of Italy 
however such as Vicenza where Palladio did so much of his 
work, possess architectural monuments which furnished sug- 
gestions for many a building of the modern time and are the 
fruitful subject of study on the part of the architects of 
every country at the present time. 
Modern appreciation for Palladio’s work may well be 
judged from what Goethe who admired him very much said 
of him. The great German poet had paid a visit to Vicenza, 
where so many of Palladio’s masterpieces are to be seen and 
he was so delighted with them that he proclaimed in his 
enthusiasm: “When we stand face to face with these build- 
ings then we first realize their great excellence, their bulk 
and massiveness fill the eye, while the lovely harmony of 
their proportions admirable in the advance and retreat of 
perspective brings peace to the spirit.” Later he added: WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
“One ought to spend whole years in the contemplation of 
such work.” 
The modern buildings of which we are most proud, the 
beautiful Library of St. Genevieve of Paris, and our imitation 
of it in the Boston Public Library, our own magnificent 
Public Library in New York, the Royal Exchange in England 
(London) the Pennsylvania Station, indeed almost any 
modern ambitious building shows signs of the influence of 
the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. After the six 
teenth century there was a decadence in taste. Somehow 
such a degeneration seems inevitable in the course of human 
affairs. Men reach a climax in the expression of beauty by the 
use of simple, direct means, then their successors striving to 
equal them and yet to do something different in order not 
to seem to be merely imitators, and fondly hoping really 
to surpass them, add decoration so as to secure effectiveness. 
Before long the decoration occupies so much attention that the 
beauty of the lines of the structure itself is lost. Italy how’- 
ever, even in the midst of the decadence of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries produced some beautiful structures 
and at least was leading the world as in preceding times. 
Architects went to her for ideas and her influence meant 
most. Always Italy has been the leader in architectural 
movements and the source of the ideas used in other countries 
and only in the last generation or so have the other nations 
after borrowing her constructive models equalled or perhaps 
at times surpassed her in architectural achievement. There are 
many authorities in architecture who would deny that Italy 
had ever been surpassed. 
The theatre represents a mode of construction in which 
the moderns have had to think more for themselves than in 
other building. Churches are built with the ideas of older 
architecture necessarily in mind and nearly always under the 
direct influence of the buildings of preceding generations as 
models. The same thing is almost inevitably true of muni- 
cipal and educational structures of various kinds. University 
buildings are more or less prone to be modeled on previous ARCHITECTURE 
achievements in this same line. Theatres however are built 
for a definite use and with limitations of space and cost as 
well as of arrangement for hearing purposes that requires the 
modern architect to study out at least the internal prob- 
lems of construction for himself, though he may still build the 
exterior with classical or Renaissance ideas in mind. In 
theatrical architecture Italy has led the way quite as much 
as in every other phase of architecture. During the Renais- 
sance period Palladio built a theatre at Venice and Serlio 
another at Vicenza with Vitruvius and the classical rules for 
theatrical building in mind. Palladio also erected the Theatro 
Oiympico at Vicenza which still stands as a monument of 
classical taste the oldest permanent theatre in Europe. These 
Dalian theatres well known to the schools have been the 
models that many an architect had in mind when he did not 
actually copy them in planning a great theater. 
The form of the classical theatre thus developed by the 
Renaissance Italian architects was not suited however for 
modern audiences and above all was quite unsuited to the 
demand of the present time to be able to hear the modulations 
of the human voice and as far as possible see the expressions 
of the countenance. In the modern modifications of the 
theatre necessitated by these restrictions the Italians have 
priority. In Venice as Ferguson in his History of Modern 
Architecture tells us, a theatre was erected in 1639 with two 
tiers of boxes arranged circularly round a pit sloping back- 
ward as at present. This constituted essentially the invention 
of the present form of theatre. In 1675 Fontana first intro- 
duced the horseshoe in a theatre called the Tordinoni which 
he erected in Rome. Fontana’s invention may have been said 
to have completed the modern theatre in all its definite parts. 
In the preceding century Baldassare Peruzzi first made use 
of painted movable scenes. They were invented in 1508 for 
a piece called La Calandra which was played before Pope 
Leo X. The further development of this invention in Italy 
led to the construction of a recessed stage with a frame like 
that of a picture and these additions completed the modern WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
theatre and its stage as we know them, every important 
feature of it being part of the world’s debt to Italy. 
In the eighteenth century the need of having large 
auditoriums for opera wiheh had grown popular, led to the 
construction of some magnificent buildings. As opera was 
most cultivated in Italy the great operatic theatres were 
naturally built there. Many of them compared in size with 
the medieval cathedral and the Italian architects rose to the 
occasion thus afforded them by creating magnificent structures 
which have influenced all future theatre building. The first 
of these great constructions was the San Carlo Theatre at 
Naples which within and without is a fine architectural 
achievement. There are six tiers of boxes and the theatre is 
capable of seating comfortably large numbers of people who 
could see and hear well and at the same time when so 
desirous be on exhibition themselves to their heart’s content. 
This has come to be a very definite desideration in the 
modern opera house at least. The architect of La Scala at 
Milan, Piermarina, with the design of the previous theatre 
at Milan, the largest in Europe in its time, erected in the 
time of Barbieri, but destroyed by fire in 1776, and the San 
Carlo at Naples which had been built in 1737 also in mind, 
erected what Ferguson declares to be the best lyric theatre 
in existence. Very little has been done of any originality 
in theatrical architecture since then. 
With the revival of architecture in modern times Italy 
as might be expected, was a leader in the movement and in 
spite of the fact that her people do not command the wealth 
of other countries her municipal buildings and other public 
constructions have been the models for the world of our 
time. Some of the Italian buildings of the past half century 
like the great Passage of Victor Emmanuel at Naples or the 
corresponding structure at Milan, the theatres and municipal 
architecture generally, have been the subject of serious study 
on the part of the architects of the world. Italy has not 
degenerated into a follower of others’ ideas but has used the ARCHITECTURE 
models furnished by her own countrymen to good purpose for 
the constructions needed for modern use. 
Modern architecture is practically entirely founded on 
Italian Renaissance architecture. It is true that occasionally 
buildings have been built with the idea that they are purely 
classical but very seldom does it prove that they have not 
been influenced by Italian ideas. The architects of the 
Italian Renaissance thought that they were using classical 
ideas almost exclusively, but being men of artistic genius they 
adopted and adapted classical structural work to their pur- 
poses. Modern architects have seen their buildings, studied 
their writings and plans and have been more or less neces- 
sarily affected by them. French Renaissance architecture 
particularly as illustrated by the French chateaux owes its in- 
spiration to Italian sources and indeed not a few of the best 
known of the chateaux were built by Italian architects. Fra 
Giocondo among others directed the building of some of them 
as well as one of the bridges that crosses the Seine. Spanish 
Renaissance work owed not a little of its influence to the 
visits of Spaniards to Italy and their coming in contact with 
Italian Renaissance work. English architects confess their 
obligations to Italy, and our own Spanish-American architec- 
ture, the nearest approach to an original idea in architecture 
that has developed in America is deeply indebted to Italian 
Renaissance suggestions. 
The world’s debt to Italy in architecture may be said 
then, without exaggeration to be almost incalculable. Every 
mode and style of architecture that we know owes its origin 
and is indebted more to Italians than to any other nation for 
its development. Indeed it may be said without exaggeration 
that of most of the serious architectural ideas now in vogue 
in a world more interested in building than ever before, 
Italy is the actual or nursing mother. To remove her con- 
tributions to architecture from the treasure house of humanity 
would leave us poor indeed in all that makes for beauty in 
construction. MUSIC 
THE world owes so much to Italy in the arts generally, 
hut especially in those which have afforded the most 
pleasure to man by the creation of things of beauty that are 
joys forever that the debt of gratitude for it all has, as so 
often happens, become a little onerous perhaps and some at 
least are likely, as a consequence, to grudge albeit uncon- 
sciously to themselves that meed of recognition for Italian 
achievements in other departments of aesthetics which is so 
amply deserved. This is particularly prone to be true more 
perhaps with regard to music than other things, especially as 
in recent years the Italians have lost some of their prestige in 
music. The world’s debt to Italy for music must, however, be 
confessed to be scarcely, if at all less than that for the arts 
of painting, sculpture and architecture as well as the decora- 
tive arts and the arts and crafts. If Italy’s contribution to 
music were obliterated we would be deprived of so much of 
what is greatest in music that there would be a sad lacuna in 
the opportunity afforded mankind for the enjoyment of what 
for many is the most charming development of human artistry 
and for all a surpassing motive of joy and happiness.* 
Italy’s great contributions to the musical heritage of the 
race began very early in the history of music and for many 
* The candid recognition by the world that Italy has been the teacher of 
music to humanity is to be found in the employment of Italian terms as the 
common musical ianguage of the world. Not only are words oratorio, opera, 
libretto and other general designations adopted from the Italian, but practically 
also all of the musical terms are of Italian origin. They represent that much 
Italian that nearly everybody knows and they have frequently come to be used 
in metaphorical s’enses so that in a way they are now parts of a universal 
language. De capo, allegro, adagio, largo, soprano, contralto, basso, crescendo, 
diminuendo, andante, finale, forte, fortissimo, piano, pianimissimo, staccato, 
con brio, marcato and many others might be mentioned. Their universal employ- 
ment is the unmistakable tribute to Italy’s place in music. MUSIC 
centuries the Italians were alone in musical achievement that 
has lived to influence subsequent generations. Later, as in 
painting, the Netherlands took up the strain with some pro- 
ducts of magnificent development of original musical genius 
when Ockenheim and Josquin of Hainault, in the latter half 
of the fifteenth century, did their work, and when Arcadelt 
and Claude Goudimel went to Rome to teach their art. 
England had enjoyed a distinct period of evolution in music 
just before the Netherlands, but as with regard to painting 
in oil and printing, Italy took what Western Teutonic talent 
had originated and lifted it up to heights of artistic excel- 
lence that gave it ever so much more significance for humanity 
than it possessed in the hands of its inventors. While the 
inventive genius of Italy is, as we shall see in the course of 
this book, supremely admirable in every line of endeavor, the 
ability of Italians to recognize and to develop the inventions 
of others, especially in what concerns the things of the mind 
and in lines of artistic taste and aesthetic accomplishment is 
scarcely less to be admired. When their application of these 
foreign inventions is not mere imitation but represents gen- 
uinely true evolution as it nearly always proves to be in the 
hands and mind of the Italians, it demonstrates the possession 
of a faculty of critical appreciation which is inferior in value 
only to that of original invention. 
According to tradition the original musical modes of the 
Christian Church came to us from St. Ambrose. This tra- 
dition has been seriously doubted in recent years, hut there 
is no doubt that sometime between the fourth and seventh 
centuries a series of great new developments in music took 
place in connection with the Christian ceremonial. The al- 
ready notable Catholicity or universality of the Church, her 
gathering of many peoples of many kinds into her fold and 
especially the Oriental influences at work in her members, 
bore fruit in the music adopted for the ceremonial. The 
most noted example of this was the establishment of an- 
tiphonal singing at Milan by St. Ambrose, Bishop of that 
city, toward the end of the fourth century. We have WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
contemporary evidence for it from St. Augustine in his Con- 
fessions. After this a musical system called the Ambrosian 
sprang up. The four authentic scales, the basis of the 
medieval system, have been attributed to St. Ambrose, but like 
many of the hymns which are also attributed to him, most of 
these were probably rather the development during succeed- 
ing centuries of the needs of the ceremonial and were due 
to many hands and minds. Antiphonal psalmody, after the 
model of that in Milan was introduced into Rome by Pope 
Celestine about the end of the first quarter of the fifth cen- 
tcry. The first singing schools were founded and the develop- 
ment of the musical liturgy went on apace until St. Gregory’s 
time. 
As with regard to St. Ambrose there is also a doubt 
as to whether St. Gregory really invented or arranged out of 
preceding elements the Gregorian music or Plain Chant which 
goes under his name. There has even been some question 
whether one of the subsequent Gregorys, Pope Gregory II or 
even Pope Gregory III should not he considered to have had 
more to do with this musical development than the great 
saintly Pontiff who sent St. Augustine to England, to whom 
it is usually attributed. One thing is sure that the liturgy 
as it exists to-day was essentially completed not long after 
the year 600 and during the next two centuries a series of 
magnificent developments of the music associated with this 
followed each other. A little later in the course of this 
development hymns were written and the great Latin hymns 
with their sublimely beautiful and unrivalled wedding of 
sense and sound came into use. Nothing shows better how 
thoroughly developed among these medieval inhabitants of 
the Italian peninsula was the faculty of critical appreciation 
in both literature and music, than the selections made for 
church services both as regards the plain chant and the 
hymns for use on special occasions. It is easy to understand 
that many thousands of variations of musical settings were 
composed, as it is also easy to realize that many thousands 
of hymns must have been written. Of the hymns, those chosen MUSIC 
as the sequences are Stabat Mater, Dies Irae, Veni Sande 
Spintus, Lauda Sion Salvatorem and Victima Paschale. No 
greater hymns, indeed probably no greater poetry, has ever 
been written. The plain chant which came into vogue at this 
same time, achieved triumphs of musical composition not 
unworthy of these great hymns. As Mr. Rockstro says in his 
article on Plain Chant in Grove’s Dictionary of Music, prob- 
ably no greater or more beautiful expression of grief in single 
notes in succession has ever been written than the chant used 
by the Church in the services of Tenebrae, for Holy Week; no 
more joyous succession of single notes has ever been arranged 
than that of the chant for the Exultet on Holy Saturday. 
Great as had been Italy’s contribution to music in this 
early period and form this was only the beginning of her 
musical legacy to humanity, for the succeeding periods were 
to prove even more fruitful. In the first century of the 
second Christian millennium Guy of Arezzo, or Guido Aretino, 
or Fra Guittone, as he is variously called, reformed musical 
notation He had been teaching music among the Benedic- 
tines at the monastery of Pomposa in the Duchy of Ferrara. 
A number of inventions and discoveries of music have been 
attributed to him that evidently are not his, for some of them 
existed before and some of them came in only after his time. 
There seems no doubt, however, that Guido invented the prin- 
ciple on which the construction of the staff is based and the 
F and C clefs. He probably did not invent the complete four 
line staff itself. On the other hand, solmisation, that is, the 
process of using certain syllables to name or represent the 
tones of the scale is almost surely his invention. He also 
invented the hexachord and probably introduced the use of 
the syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, from the initial syllables 
of the lines of a hymn to St. John beginning “Ut queant 
laxis” to designate the tones of each of the hexacords then 
recognized. Guido is also said to have called the seven notes 
of the musical scale after the first seven letters of the Alphabet 
down to G, whence the name Gamma taken from the last of 
the series, came to be applied to the whole scale as gamut, the WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
syllable ut at the end perhaps being added because of the 
use of ut for the first note in the named notes which has 
since been changed to “do.” 
After the rise of plain chant the next, great development 
of music culminating in counterpoint and polyphony came 
in England and the Netherlands just before and during the 
Renaissance. These musical modes reached their supreme 
expression, however, in the hands of Italian musicians and 
all the succeeding evolution of music for centuries is Italian. 
The greatest of the Italian musicians is Palestrina, who did 
for music in the second half of the sixteenth century what his 
great Italian compatriots of the preceding generation during 
tie Renaissance, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michel- 
angelo, Botticelli, Titian, Corregio, and so many others did 
for painting and sculpture. In what he tried to accomplish 
no one has ever excelled him and he has come to be looked 
upon as one of the greatest musicians of all time. Not only 
did he achieve great results but his work has the widest 
influence through the channels of the Church and he aroused 
ecclesiastics all over the world to interest in worthy religious 
music. 
Palestrina’s career illustrates the gift of generous critical 
appreciation on the part of those without selfish interest in 
the individual, so often exemplified in the life stories of Italy’s 
great men and the consequent opportunities to rise from the 
lowest to the highest classes which this has afforded with the 
precious resultant chance, so often noted in the history of the 
peninsula, to secure expression for talents which might other- 
wise have been buried. He was only a peasant farmer’s son 
hawking vegetables on the streets of Rome when the beauty of 
his voice attracted the attention of the Choirmaster of St. 
John Lateran. He proved to have musical talent as well as 
a voice, so he was given a careful musical training, 
and became a great teacher and composer of music, creating 
the wonderful works which have ever since been the subject 
of so much admiration. Church music is entirely Italian in 
origin and the genius which has enabled the Italians to take MUSIC 
an eminently sensuous art and fit it to the usage of the 
Church for devotional purposes without distraction, is of 
itself a noteworthy triumph. They did it also for painting, 
architecture, and sculpture, showing their power of adapta- 
tion. Beauty, Francois Millet said, is suitability to environ- 
ment. None have realized this better nor applied the prin- 
ciple more effectively in all the arts than the Italians. 
While Palestrina was doing his work in Rome there came 
into existence in that city the first manifestations of a great 
new movement in music. St. Philip Neri had gathered round 
him in his oratorio or private chapel in Rome a number of 
the young men of the city in order to occupy them with useful 
and beautiful thoughts and afford them intellectual enter- 
tainments of various kinds so that the devil might not find 
work for idle hands. He was anticipating many social move- 
ments of a similar nature in modern times, but with a depth 
of religious feeling and a saintly winningness all his own, 
and he realized the place that music would surely have in 
such a scheme. Accordingly religious scenes and stories were 
set to music in various ways and above all the story of 
Christ’s life and the prefigurements of it in the Old Testa- 
ment were made a basis to illustrate in musical dramatic 
elements for him by the brothers Animuccia. This was the 
beginning of that great musical mode that we have come to 
know as oratorio. It did not reach the fulness of perfection 
until the beginning of the seventeenth century when the 
dramatic elements were fully adopted and adapted to it. 
The invention was, however, a great one in itself and almost 
greater because it opened the way and clearly indicated the 
path for the use of music in connection with dramatics gen- 
erally and even that co-ordination of music and dramatics in 
which the drama is subordinate and which we know as opera. 
Twice in the history of drama dramatic literature has 
come into existence anew out of developments of religious 
ceremonials. The hymns to the gods and the ceremonials in 
honor of Bacchus gradually developed into Bacchic song and 
then tragedy in old Greece; very similarly during the Middle WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Ages the mystery and morality plays, themselves develop- 
ments of Church ceremonial, were the first stage in the evo- 
lution of modern drama. Opera developed out of oratorio and 
oratorio itself was an evolution of the application of music 
to certain portions of Church ceremonial and the symbolic 
interpretation of mysteries connected with it. The early his- 
tory of opera as that of oratorio is entirely Italian. There 
are a series of names which practically every music lover 
knows, beginning with Claudio Monteverde whose Arianna 
and Orfeo produced in 1607 at the Court of the Duke of 
Mantua established the new genre permanently in musical 
history. Recitative music had been applied before this to an 
entire play in Dafne composed by Peri and Caccini in 1597. 
The text or as we would say the libretto was by Rinuccini and 
three years later Euridice by the same poet was set to music 
by the same composers. They did not realize that they were 
creating a new form of art, and did not dream of the sub- 
sequent career of opera, but they sowed the seeds of a great 
musical development. 
Claudio Monteverde probably was not at all conscious of 
the fact that he was working in and actually creating a new 
musical form, but had the thought come to him, far from 
deterring him it would rather have stimulated his best 
efforts, for he is one of the boldest innovators, in the sense 
that is to say of original inventors, that we know in all the 
annals of music. He was the first to use the minor seventh 
free. He had dared to use in his madrigals a series of unpre- 
pared dissonances that had shocked the conventional and 
even professional musicians of his time, but had caught the 
attention of genuine music lovers. He employed as many as 
fourteen instruments in his orchestral performances alloting 
a considerable degree of individuality to each. Dickinson in 
his Study of the History of Music* says: “His (Monteverde’s) 
operas are remarkable, in view of their date, for variety of 
* The Study of the History of Music with an annotated guide to music 
literature hy Edward Dickinson, Professor of the History of Music at Oberlin 
Conservatory, Oberlin College, New York, Scribner’s 1906. MUSIC 
vocal effect, poignancy of expression in the recitative, feeling 
for melodious beauty, and particularly for the use of instru- 
ments to intensify sentiment and situation. Even modern 
musicians can understand the strong effect of such musical 
composition as the lament of the heroine in Arianna, Lasciate 
mi morire, upon the audiences of that day and it is no wonder 
that the strains are to be found in many collections of old 
Italian music.’’ 
During the seventeenth century the great musicians are 
all Italian. Those who know the history of music think 
of Giacomo Carissimi, famous for his oratorios and cantatas, 
a master of counter point whose oratorio choruses are 
varied and dramatic even at times realistic. They are 
among the direct preliminary musical developments that 
were to come to so fine a climax of expression in Handel. 
Another Italian composer of this time whose name will always 
remain a landmark in the history of music is Alessandro 
Stradella. It was during this century that women began 
to appear as singers in opera just as toward the end of it they 
began to appear as players on the stage. The female voice had 
been excluded from the Church but found a precious oppor- 
tunity in the theatre and the latter half of the seventeenth 
century will always he distinguished in the history of music 
and above all of operatic development because of its intro- 
duction of women and the charm of their singing in public 
performances. As the seventeenth century came to a close the 
acknowledged head of Italian opera was Alessandro Scarlatti 
at least thirteen of whose pupils attained European renown 
as opera writers. He did not invent the da capo aria, but 
he made it the most conspicuous feature of his operas, and as 
pointed out by Dickinson, “in his works the three movement 
Italian overture, quick, slow and quick movements, the pre- 
cursor of the symphony is fully developed.” 
Scarlatti was undoubtedly a genius of brilliant musical 
gifts with a marvelous ability for the production of easy 
tuneful melody. Unfortunately as so often happens, his very 
facility tempted him to create a formula which he knew how WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
to use to advantage, but which his disciples abused. Strings 
of da capo arias separated by dry recitative became the stereo- 
typed model which his successors followed for the next century 
to the serious detriment of Italian opera. Unfortunately also 
while Scarlatti himself was able to write some really powerful 
aud impressive Church music the decadent operatic music 
influenced the ecclesiastical music of the time with serious 
results. While opera was becoming shallow and trivial and 
a mere exercise of musical ingenuity, Church music too be- 
came florid and tawdry and Italy’s influence was anything 
but favorable to the production of good music in any form. 
It is as true in musical history as always in the story 
of art, that when Italy loses taste and becomes superficial and 
fellows a formula — to the inevitable detriment of art — that 
particular department of aesthetics whatever it may be is 
sure to be seriously disturbed for the world. Only very rarely 
does a genius arise in some other country to lift it up. Italy 
is looked to as the leader and her history shows how well she 
deserves that respect, though sometimes in the inevitable ups 
and downs of human affairs her influence is for the worse. 
While serious music was thus unfortunately suffering 
an eclipse in Italy a lighter mode of musical expression was 
coming into vogue through Italian composers that was des- 
tined to play an important role in the history of music. 
Light opera which in our day has so sadly degenerated into 
musical comedy originated as a special musical mode in Italy. 
It can be traced to the primitive popular farces, burlesques, 
Punch-and-Judy shows of various kinds with musical accom- 
paniments and at times somewhat ambitious choral effects 
which were popular even back in the medieval period. The 
use of farce in comparatively modern time in connection with 
music came first as an intermezzo beween the acts of serious 
opera. These interval pieces became so popular, however, 
that they gradually encroached more and more upon the se- 
rious portion of the entertainment until composers came at 
length to realize that there was a special opportunity afforded 
them in this musical mode and so what we know as comic opera MUSIC 
or opera bouffe, to use the French term, which has sometimes 
made people think by the universality of its use that the 
musical mode described by it is French in origin, came into 
existence in Italy under the title Opera buffa. 
It was not long before this invention of the Italians was 
found to afford excellent opportunity for the display of high 
musical ability. Comic opera acquired, even though the ex- 
pression may seem to imply a sort of contradiction in terms, 
a musical dignity of its own among the Italian composers. 
Naples was the leader in this new development and one of the 
great Neapolitan composers, Logroscino, is the first great 
master in this mode. It was not long before opera buffa 
demonstrated that it was a natural and not artificial develop- 
ment of music by demonstrating its superiority to the opera 
seria in dramatic vividness, in truth to life, and in spite of 
the farcical elements in its libretto, in the fine opportunity 
that it afforded for genuinely serious satire of the foibles and 
fads of mankind, if not always of its vices. In this form 
of opera the bass particularly came to its own. The ensemble 
or finale at the end of an act was developed and some very 
charming effects produced. Our musical comedy is as much 
a degeneration from this opera buffa of the Italians of the last 
century as our fiction represents a deterioration from the 
Victorian era of novel writing. 
The names of the men who developed opera buffa after 
Logroscino, among them Galuppi, Pergolese, Piccini, Paisello, 
Cimarosa, will always have a place in the history of music. 
While serious opera was declining there was a constant 
advance in this newer mode and as Dickenson says in his 
Study of The History of Music, Cimarosa’s II Matrimonio 
Segreto is the strongest work of its kind before Rossini’s II 
Barbiere di Seviglia. Indeed it was the enduring value of 
the comic operas of the eighteenth century in Italy which 
preserved for the nineteenth century the dramatic traditions 
of Italian music and thus prepared for the revival of music 
in Italy in the nineteenth century. 
During the past fifty years only has Italy’s primacy in WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
music been seriously disputed, some think successfully by 
the Germans and French, though the ultimate decision of 
posterity must be awaited patiently before we can be sure 
whether the ambitious attempt to co-ordinate music with 
drama on equal terms is to be accepted at its face value by 
future generations, or is to prove to have been in reality an 
unfortunate subordination of a sister art to another, to the 
detriment of both. Even in this last century however, Italy’s 
contributions to music have been extremely noteworthy and 
two great Italian composers have achieved world reputation 
and world popularity. Rossini in the first half of the century 
wras the most influential factor in the world of music of his 
time. His genius will be best appreciated from the fact that 
before the age of twenty he had completed five operas. In 
spite of his rapidity of composition at an age when immaturity 
seems inevitable, these bore the unmistakable marks of musical 
genius. The Swan of Pesaro as he was called from his 
birthplace came not unnaturally to be looked upon as one 
of the greatest of living composers. His Stabat Mater in 
church music and his William Tell in opera were in their time 
the most popular of compositions. His successor in Italian 
composition, Verdi, is only less famous than his master. Some 
of his great operas as Aida and Falstaff are among the most 
popular of compositions and rival even the German School 
of Music in their appeal to this generation. What an im- 
mense gap there would be in recent world music if the works of 
these two men were missing. 
Of the lesser Italian composers of the nineteenth century 
some are greater than any of the composers of other countries 
except the very greatest. Few men anywhere in Europe for 
instance have proved a source of so much pleasure to music 
lovers as Vincenzo Bellini who though he died at the early 
age of thiry three has left some operas which have not ceased 
even now nearly a hundred years after his death to be 
popular. Like Rossini his genius for musical composi- 
tion developed very early and he was but twenty four when 
his first successful opera Biancia e Fernando was presented. MUSIC 
His version of Romeo and Jidiet was received with plaudits 
in 1830 and he was but twenty eight when its reception was 
prepared for by his Zaira:. La Somnambula and Norma were 
finished before he was thirty and I Puritani was presented 
just before his death in 1835. All of these still hold their 
places on the operatic stage of all countries not only as old 
time favorites or chance revivals to please the older auditors, 
but as regular numbers of the operatic seasons, looked for 
anxiously by music lovers of all ages and nations. 
Scarcely less well known among the composers so far 
as popularity is concerned is Donizetti who composed alto- 
gether some sixty-five operas. All opera goers know his La 
Fille du Regiment which only later came to be known as La 
Figlia del Reggimento. Because of its French title, Donizetti 
in spite of the frankly Italian form of his name is sometimes 
thought of as a Frenchman. Undoubtedly his work did 
deeply influence French music during the first half of the 
nineteenth century. Donizetti himself was born at Bergamo 
in Italy and died there. His Lucia di Lammermoor is a fav- 
orite and his Lucrezia Borgia in spite of its utterly absurd 
perversion of history, and L’Elisire d’Amore are frequently 
revived. Those familiar with musical history know his La 
Favorita and his Bon Pasquale. He influenced modern music 
deeply and indeed most of the operatic composition of the 
second half of the nineteenth century, until Wagner’s in- 
fluence came to be felt, was dominated by Donizetti, Rossini 
and Bellini. 
In the very recent times two at least of the Italian com- 
posers have probably attracted more serious attention from 
music lovers in our generation than any of the men who were 
writing music in our period. These two are Mascagni and 
Puccini. Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana had a distinct 
immediate success all over the world and though he did not 
fulfill the promise of his early efforts he is one of a very 
few composers of our time who are known beyond the bounds 
of their own country. Puccini’s work is of course well known 
by all opera goers and if not greatly admired by musical WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
amateurs it is at least the most popular music of our time. 
We are in the midst of serious decadence in music as in all 
the other arts just at the present time, but at least some of 
the best work that is being done such as it is comes to us from 
Italians 
A very striking appendix to Italian achievement in the 
making of music is formed by the story of their relations to 
the invention and improvement of musical instruments as 
well as the development of great singers and performers on 
musical instruments of whom, almost needless to say, the 
Italians until very recent years have had more than any 
other nation. Such accomplishments are of trifling signifi- 
cance compared to musical composition, yet as illustrating 
the genius of the people they may be worth while recording 
briefly. 
The inventions of musical instruments in Italy show the 
inventive ability as well as the genius for music of the 
Italians The organ was greatly developed by them in con- 
nection with ecclesiastical music during the Middle Ages. 
The violin came into its present shape in Italy about the 
middle of the sixteenth century. At Bologna, Brescia and 
Cremona magnificent instruments were manufactured during 
the next century. The famous names of makers are of course 
Italian, Amati, Guarnieri, and Stradivari. Their instru- 
ments still command high prices and a Stradivarius is looked 
upon as a precious treasure. There probably has been no 
single development of music ever made that has added more 
tc the enjoyment of mankind than this evolution of the 
violin up to a point beyond which it seems as though it will 
never be carried. It is one of the most charming of musical 
instruments, and one of the most simple; it is comparatively 
inexpensive, it may be enjoyed alone or in small companies 
though it may delight huge audiences and taken all in all it 
represents one of the supreme advances in instrumental music. 
The Pianoforte does not owe as much to the Italians as the 
violin, the Germans and French having done very much for 
it and yet the one invention that did most to make the piano as MUSIC 
we now know it, a finished musical instrument, is the hammer 
action, which was invented by Bartholomeo Christofori in 
1711. 
Among the great Italian violinists are Corelli and 
Tantini the first great violinist known to musical history and 
Paginini who is looked upon usually as one of the greatest 
of violinists who ever lived. Sgambati is another disting- 
uished Italian violinist very well known and some of whose 
compositions are still frequently rendered by violin virtuosos, 
in concerts. Fritz Kreisler’s programs of the New York 
Symphony Society often include pieces by Corelli and Tan- 
tini, though it might be thought that the development of the 
violin music in recent years in other countries, would have 
left these older composers in the background and surely 
without much interest for our time. 
It is surely no mere accidental circumstance that Italy 
has developed more great singers, especially more great pos- 
sessors of the three all important voices, soprano, tenor and 
basso than any other nation. The musical taste of the people 
of the peninsula has always been looked up to as almost in- 
fallible. Whatever of music itself or voice or chorus has made 
a success in Italy has almost without exception been accepted 
without further question in other countries. To come from 
Italy with the prestige of a distinct success scored in one of 
the great theatres of the Italian cities is almost infallibly to 
be sure of a hearty reception elsewhere. The judgment of the 
audiences of the great theatre of La Scala at Milan has come 
to be looked upon as probably the least liable to mistake of 
any in the world. 
In a word in every way the world of our time still pays 
its tribute to the Italians in music, employing their terms, 
repeating their operas, welcoming their singers, accepting 
their judgments, so that there can be no doubt at all of the 
thorough going recognition on the part of all the civilized 
nations of the immense debt which civilization owes to Italy 
in this department. ARTS AND CRAFTS 
AFTER a rather long period of comparative neglect, the 
cult of beauty in the ordinary things of life, even for 
house furnishings of all kinds as well as the familiar objects of 
the home, has developed again in our generation. The taste 
of generations immediately preceding our own in this regard 
was very low. Very little attention was devoted to having 
the every day things of life beautiful as well as useful. Mr. 
Yeats, the Irish poet, once said “no nation can think of 
itself as cultured until the very utensils in the kitchen are 
beautiful as well as useful. ’ ’ This is an extremely interesting 
standard of culture, very different from that which has pre- 
vailed at many times in history and particularly in recent 
years, but it is one that will commend itself to thoughtful 
people. The “arts and crafts” has come to be the term by 
which the making of the ordinary things of life, furniture, 
wall coverings, tableware, rugs and carpets, beautiful as well 
as useful, is designated. The term meant very little for us 
until comparatively recent years. William Morris, a gener- 
ation ago, waked England up to the lacuna in life which had 
been allowed to develop in this. Appreciation of the place 
that the “arts and crafts” should have in life has gradually 
arisen in our time and with it additional interest in the his- 
tory of this movement in older times. 
Almost needless to say many of the most important 
chapters in the history of “the arts and crafts” have had their 
evolution in Italy. From the very earliest historical records 
that we have the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula have 
been famous for their ability to make beautiful things. Some 
of the jewelry found in the old Etruscan tombs of the sixth ARTS AND CRAFTS 
and seventh centuries B. C. is extremely beautiful, indeed 
has probably never been excelled in charm and there are 
other remains in connection with these ancient Etruscan 
burying places, which have revealed to a modern incredulous 
world evidence of high artistic taste and marvelous ability to 
express their artistic ideas among this people from whom we 
expected so little. As their inspiration was probably indepen- 
dent of Greece for some of the most interesting Etruscan 
remains date from before Grecian artistic development, they 
illustrate very well Italy’s own original initiative in art 
matters It is true that as was surely the case in Greece the 
ancient people in Etruria may have been influenced by Crete 
which in recent years we have come to recognize as the his- 
toric intermediary of civilization between Egypt and the 
peoples living along the north shore of the Mediterannean. 
Unfortunately we have as yet no clue to the mystery of the 
old Etruscan language and as a result many things that will 
probably make their art and its origin and meaning much 
clearer to us are still concealed from us. 
The Romans in their early history were warriors; nothing 
more. The later Romans when culture came to them, were 
mainly imitators in art, but their reproductions of not a 
few of the masterpieces of Greek sculpture did much to pre- 
serve at least some of the spirit of these for the wonderful 
outburst of artistic development which followed the redis- 
covery of the Roman specimens during the Renaissance 
period. The world owes them a large debt for this if there 
were nothing else. Even almost in our time Lessing’s book 
on the Laocoon and Roman influence on Goethe did more 
than anything else to bring about the later German Renais- 
sance. Rome itself at least so long as the Republic endured, 
was much more occupied with the arts of war and of govern- 
ment than the more intellectual arts. Indeed there seems 
no doubt that during the centuries while Rome was acquiring 
dominion first over Italy and then over the world her people 
were paying almost no attention at all to art and the intellec- 
ual life. When Coriolanus went over to the Yolsci and came WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
very near bringing about the destruction of his native city 
Rome, it is probable that Rome was little better than a col- 
lection of huts, while even the scanty remains we have of the 
Etruscan cities show us that they must have been on a rather 
high plane of civilization. When Rome eaptured and des- 
troyed Carthage, that capital of North Africa was probably 
the most charming city in the world, of the time, wonderfully 
handsome in its architecture, a veritable city beautiful in 
many ways and Rome itself was a very sordid mean little 
town occupied with the one idea of war and paying little or 
nO attention to the things of the mind. 
When Rome’s time came however, after her conquest of 
the world and above all after she had vanquished Greece, she 
fell in love with the Grecian arts and “captive Greece took 
her captor captive.” Then there began for the Romans the 
development of at least an imitation of Greek art, well worthy 
of admiration. There are no monuments of this until almost 
the time of Christ, but there are Roman remains from Pompeii 
and Herculaneum that are most interesting and have deeply 
influenced the modern world. 
That a little town of only some 14,000 inhabitants like 
Pompeii, even though it were a sort of summering place for 
wealthy people, should contain at this time, a little after the 
middle of the first century after Christ, all the beautiful 
things the remains and traces of which are to be found at 
Pompeii, decorations, mosaics, urns, pottery, small statuary 
and other evidences of successful devotion to a high ideal in 
the arts and crafts must make us conclude that Rome herself 
and some of the larger cities of Italy could not fail to have had 
many beautiful examples of all these various kinds of art 
work. What we learn of the garments of the Roman women 
during the Empire would seem to indicate that there must 
have been much of taste as well as of lavish display in the 
dress of the Romans, and not a little of beautiful needlework 
for personal and home decoration; though Rome doubtless 
drew on the East and Oriental sources for these purposes as it 
did on its Grecian sources in the higher arts. ARTS AND GRAFTS 
It is sometimes thought that during the earlier Middle 
Ages all serious attention to the cult of beauty for its own 
sake above all for domestic and familiar surroundings was 
lost. As a matter of fact Byzantine art included the develop- 
ment, particularly of decorations, in such a way that with our 
own reawakened interest in interior decoration we have gone 
back to take up seriously many of their artistic modes. 
Above all in the use of mosaic they excelled. The formalism 
and massing of colors which created such fine decorative effects, 
but the appreciation of which was lost in the modern world 
until comparatively recent times, are now come to be looked 
upon as qualities of high artistic effectiveness. The use of 
gilt and gold ornaments in connection with decorations and 
of raised work in intimate relation to flat decorations also 
jarred on modern notions, until the deeper study of decora- 
tions by the latest generation of artists has brought with it a 
recognition of the good taste even in these matters of the 
older medieval artists. Sargent went back to this mode in 
the Boston Public Library. In the chapter on Architecture 
I have called attention to the fact that the tomb of Pasteur a 
great scientist of the later nineteenth century is decorated in 
imitation of the tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna of the 
seventh century. 
The triumph of Byzantine decoration is St. Mark’s at 
Venice. Glass making was always a specialty of Venice and 
so it is not surprising that they made the magnificent glass 
mosaics for the walls of St. Mark’s which still continue in 
undimmed lustre to show the artistic quality of medieval art 
and above all of Byzantine forms. From the tomb of Galla 
Placidia at Ravenna to St. Mark’s is five centuries and it is 
quite fair to assume that in no century of the interval was 
Italy without the spirit and the power for beautiful interior 
decoration. Floor and wall mosaics have continued to be a 
specialty of Italy ever since. For centuries there was always 
a studio and manufactury of mosaic at the Vatican and the 
old-fashioned art so eminently valuable because of its endur- 
ing qualities has never been permitted to sink into oblivion. WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
There are of course scattered all over Italy magnificent 
mosaics which now that we are beginning to cultivate the 
feeling for beauty in every part of our public and private 
houses serve as models for our modern workmen. Our great 
hotels particularly find in Italian sources examples that can 
be copied with great effect and which eminently represent 
beauty and utility. 
With the coming of the earlier Renaissance in Italy 
everything that was made particularly for public or semi- 
public use took on beauty as well as utility. The doors of 
the Baptistry at Florence are a typical example. Doors might 
very easily be looked upon as necessities to be treated almost 
entirely from the standpoint of their adaptation to their 
purpose. For the Italians however, they became literally the 
finest opportunities for marvelous works of art. While the 
Florence doors are so well known it must not be forgotten 
that in many other parts of the Italian peninsula there were 
handsome bronze doors, amply fulfilling the rule of combin- 
ing the useful with the beautiful. 
The woodwork of the churches was beautifully carved. 
The stone work was sculptured into charming designs. The 
iron railings and the hinges and bolts and the locks and even 
tLe keys became the subjects of artistic handieraftmanship of 
the highest order. Nothing in connection wdth their beautiful 
temples to the Most High could be insignificant. Every por- 
tion clamored to be made beautiful as well as useful. The 
people felt that these Churches were theirs and were made 
almost without exception by their fellow townsmen; so their 
attitude toward the art in them was very different from that 
which the visitor almost inevitably assumes toward the art 
objects in the modern museums. They had something very 
similar to that personal feeling of possession and enjoyment 
which the collector who is a real amateur enjoys. Day after 
day they saw and handled — which they are so carefully 
invited not to do in the modern time — these charming artis- 
tic objects. No wonder that Italy became the treasure house 
of medieval art and the quarry out of which many other ARTS AND CRAFTS 
nations have obtained the materials for their museum collec- 
tions and the models of the beautiful things that with our 
awakened taste for art, we are coming back to look for in the 
modern time. 
Literally all the objects in the churches were affected by 
the taste of the Italians. The vestments used in religious 
ceremonials came to be such beautiful examples of needle- 
work that they have been famous ever since. Some years ago 
the American public heard that Mr. Pierpont Morgan had 
purchased the famous Cope of Ascoli. He paid a very sub- 
stantial sum for it because experts asured him that it was 
the most beautiful piece of needlework in the world. Later 
it was found that the Cope had been stolen from the little 
Convent of Ascoli in North Central Italy where it had been 
made toward the end of the thirteenth century. Mr. Morgan 
gave it back to the Italian government, but not until the 
story of it had awakened general interest in this magnificent 
accomplishment with the needle of the nuns of the later 
Middle Ages. Almost needless to say this is only one of 
many such examples of Italian needlework that share in the 
beauty of the arts and crafts work of that time. Nearly 
everywhere in Italy Cathedrals and Convent Churches pos- 
sessed beautiful examples of needlework done for vestments 
that lifted what seems a mere handicraft up to the level of 
real art. Modern auction rooms have made our generation 
familiar with these objects and they command prices that 
seem almost incredible but that are only a deserved tribute 
to the thorough going artistic spirit in which they were con- 
ceived and executed. 
After the vestments the greatest attention and devotion 
was given in making the books used in the religious services 
beautiful. As a consequence illumination of manuscripts be- 
came one of the arts to which Italians devoted themselves with 
passionate ardor. Some of the illuminated missals and Books 
of Hours of the later Middle Ages are among the most 
beautiful examples of book-making that can well be conceived. 
Executed on enduring parchment in colors that have not WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
faded in many hundreds of years these triumphs of the art 
of the Italian illuminators fortunately remain as monuments 
to tell of their skill. Their blues are as permanent as their 
burnished gold, though we have lost the secret to a great 
extent of keeping either of these modes of decoration up to 
their original coloration. Our blues fade, our gold dims. 
The number of designs, each original, often in charmingly 
beautiful detail, which the Italians made for their religious 
books shows how deeply their artistic sense was touched and 
how literally it was true that for them a thing of beauty was 
a joy forever. 
It is not surprising then, after this beautiful book mak 
ing by hand, that when printing was introduced, Italy at once 
took up the new craft and lifted it to the plane of an art. 
Some of the most beautiful books that have ever been made 
were finished in Italy during the first century after the inven- 
tion of printing. They invented fine faces for the printed 
letters, adjusted the spacing and the size of margins so as 
to make an artistic page, made serviceable and enduring 
paper and then bound the books handsomely and suitably in 
all manner of beautiful bindings. When some three centuries 
later printing had sunk into a decadence that made the books 
of the middle of the nineteenth century so shameless in their 
cheap effrontery, a modern renascence of beautiful book- 
making occurred through the study of the handsome books 
that had been made by the Italians during the Renaissance. 
When William Morris toward the end of the nineteenth 
century wanted to restore bookmaking to the plane of an art 
from which it had been dragged down by the commercial 
printer and publisher, he chose some of the old Italian books 
and imitated them in making the well-known issues of the 
Kelmscott Press which now sell in the auction rooms almost as 
dear as the originals. One of the first great book collectors 
of modern times, Thomas Maioli, an Italian, had the famous 
inscription on his books Tho. Maioli et amicovuin, declaring 
that the books belonged not alone to their owner but also to ARTS AND CRAFTS 
his friends. These Italians had the true community spirit. 
Anyone willing to share his books has. 
The wonderful Missals and Books of Hours of the old 
church services proved an inspiration to the early printers 
but not more than the beautiful vestments were for everything 
else used in the churches and then their influence extended 
to the things of ordinary life. The bells and gongs of cere- 
monial usage were made with an eye to their beauty, always 
as well as their utility. The cruets for the wine and water of 
the sacrifice and the various sacred vessels, chalices and 
ciboria came to be made with the highest artistic skill. 
Ostensoria for the exposition of the Host gave excellent oppor- 
tunities for fine art work. The vases for flowers on the altar 
and the candlesticks, the sculptured or carved details of the 
altar itself, the worshipping angels, the tabernacle and the 
canopy above it all these were treated with eminent artistic 
ability. Our churches are only now beginning to imitate in 
some way what these old medieval cathedrals and above all 
the monastic churches did so well. Of course besides great 
artists were invited to decorate the wall spaces and magnifi- 
cent pictures were secured as further decorations. And all 
this was visited Sunday after Sunday and nearly always one 
day in the week besides, by all of the people who lived in the 
neighborhood, until they were as familiar with all of it as 
with the objects in their owTn homes. 
While so much of attention was devoted to the altar, 
other objects within the Church did not suffer and indeed 
sometimes for personal reasons took on special art qualities 
that made them monuments of the artistic taste of the time. 
Monarchs were buried in magnificent tombs in the Churches 
and great sculptors were summoned to fitly commemorate the 
dead rulers. In many ways then their Churches became 
educational factors for history and furnished stimulii to their 
knowledge of their country and its rulers. Besides disting- 
uished men of all orders found their last resting place within 
the Church and the records of their deeds were chronicled 
fittingly on their tomb stones. Many of these tomb stones WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
became the subjects of artistic engraving that has given them 
a special interest in the modern time. Stone, bronze and 
brass were used effectively and even when set into the pave- 
ment to be trodden on lacked not in beauty. The very grave 
yards, as the Campo Santo, in Pisa, became museums of 
great art in which the people at the impressionable times 
when they came to be with their dead, found the religious 
motives that mean so much for life pictorially represented on 
the walls around them in paintings that are still the subject 
of the admiration of artists from all over the world. 
The choir lofts and singing galleries were not only 
worthy of the rest of the sculpture decoration of the great 
churches, but sometimes rival even the high altar in the 
excellence of their artistic quality. The famous singing 
galleries of the Duomo at Florence made by Luca della Robbia 
and Donatello, which are unfortunately no longer to be seen 
in the great church itself, but in the Museum at the Eastern 
end of it, are typical examples of how seriously such a com- 
paratively humble portion of the Church, so far as its con- 
nection directly with the ceremonies was concerned, was 
taken in its relation to art, at this time. The Italian pulpits 
are of course famous all over the world. What the Pisanis 
did at Pisa, and at Siena are well known. Copies of the pul- 
pits from these two cities in the full size of the originals are 
to be found at the present time in many modern museums far 
distant from Italy. The sculptured decorations in connec- 
tion with these two pulpits were beautifully done and have 
been the subject of loving study by sculptors and artists all 
over the world whenever there has been an awakening of the 
art sense ever since. How beautiful these works are only 
those who have made special studies of them and who are 
themselves possessed of critical artistic faculty of high order 
can properly tell us. 
Practically everything connected with Church services 
became subjects of loving artistic workmanship. Once it is 
realized what their Churches meant for the medieval people 
the true significance of this devotion to art in everything con- Donatello 1386-1466 
SINGING BOYS ARTS AND CRAFTS 
nected with them will be more readily appreciated. Literally 
all the people went into the Churches many many times every 
year. By the law of the Church they were required to hear 
Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of obligation. In the 
later Middle Ages the number of holydays of obligation was 
almost as great as that of the Sundays. This number varied 
in various places but it was probably never less than forty 
and sometimes larger. Probably therefore a hundred times 
every year at least, practically everybody went to Church. 
If this should seem too great an assumption it may he well to 
call attention to the attendance of Catholic Churches in our 
own time and comparatively how few Catholics there are 
who do not go regularly to Church. In the days when to 
stay away made one a marked individual and when absence 
was so readily noted and therefore public opinion and human 
respect confirmed Church law, there must have been almost 
universal attendance. 
It is easy to understand then what an education in art, 
and what a feeling for beauty must have been produced among 
the people by such frequent association with art objects of 
high quality. We are spending large amounts of money in 
the creation of museums and the collection of art objects of 
all kinds, some of the most precious of which come from Italy 
of this later medieval period of which we have been talking. 
We have the feeling that such expenditures will be amply 
repaid if only our people can be brought in real touch and 
true sympathy with good art. Out of our whole population, 
however; comparatively few go to our museums and even those 
go rather rarely. It would be interesting to be able to calcu- 
late what proportion of our people in New York City go to 
the Metropolitan Museum more than once a year and perhaps 
still more interesting to know how many go there of their 
own initiative and not because a friend from out of the city 
must be taken to see the sights. 
Weekly attendance or oftener in a building containing 
on all sides the objects that now are collected so assiduously 
and with so much expense for our museums, must have proved 
69 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
a great education in good taste and been a real cult of beauty 
for all the people who could possibly have any appreciation. 
They were literally steeped in an atmosphere of artistic qual- 
ity and fairly forced to learn as far as such learning is 
possible the meaning of beauty in life. Even such favorable 
surroundings would not produce an art sense if it were not 
already present nor create a taste, but it would marvelously 
stimulate all the artistic qualities that were present. Hence 
it is not surprising that Italy continued for centuries to be 
a magnificent home of the artistic arts and crafts and that 
these affected every phase of existence and all the objects 
that men used. 
A typical instance of the devotion of the Italians to the 
making of things beautiful even though they might seem to 
other peoples too trivial for artistic effort is to be found in 
the career of Benvenuto Cellini. Nothing came amiss to his 
artistic hands provided it would be reasonably well paid 
for and he had liberty to execute it as he saw best. All over 
Europe there are well authenticated specimens preserved of 
smaller pieces, even table ornaments and utensils made by 
his hands. There is a gold salt cellar in Vienna, a bell in the 
Rothschild collection, the beautifully chased armor of Charles 
IX of Sweden to be seen at Stockholm, a series of beautiful 
seals, a collection of magnificently executed medals and a 
large number of coins designed for the Popes and for the 
Medici family. No form of plastic work was strange to him. 
He did the magnificent crucifix in white marble which was 
presented to Philip II of Spain by the Duke of Florence and 
is one of the most precious treasures of the Escorial. There 
is a shield elaborately wrought by him which is an equally 
precious treasure at Windsor Castle. 
The typical attitude of Italian artists toward the arts 
and crafts is to be seen in a great series of tapestries made 
for the Sistine chapel. At the request of the Pope the 
cartoons for these tapestries were drawn by Raphael. In 
the modern time one might possibly think that a great artist 
would refuse to devote himself to work of this kind in which ARTS AND CRAFTS 
his designs were to be expressed only by colored threads and 
the mechanical process of weaving. Above all since by the 
conditions of the work his cartoons would have to be cut in 
narrow strips to be distributed to the weavers, it might be 
anticipated that the artist if for some reason quite apart 
from his love of art he took up the making of the designs 
would not give his best energies and artistic inspiration. 
Raphael’s cartoons, however, for these Sistine Chapel tapes- 
tries discovered in narrow rolls in the store rooms of the 
Flemish Tapestry manufactory long afterwards, are now per- 
haps the most precious treasures of the South Kensington 
Museum and illustrate very well how much the Italian 
spirit favored the idea of having everything, even the hang- 
ings of a distinguished structure as beautiful as possible. 
With the revival of interest in classical antiquity in the 
Renaissance there came also a renewed devotion to the making 
of artistic jewelry and the carving of gems under the inspir- 
ation particularly of the Greek gems that had been pre- 
served. Jewelry became something more than merely a 
costly ornament and rose to the plane of an art. Until com- 
paratively recent years our generation was content with 
wearing precious stones as adornments. The only attraction 
possessed by these is their costliness and a certain childish 
liking for shining things that survives in most of us but is 
really primitive and barbaric. Artistic jewelry, however, 
produces not the sense of envy which precious stones inevi- 
tably arouses and for which they are really worn, but a 
genuine feeling of pleasure due to the fact that a thing of 
beauty is a joy forever, and that above all whatever has been 
made beautiful by the hand of man always evokes man’s 
admiration. The Italian Renaissance gems and cameos are 
deservedly famous and served as a stimulus and provided 
models for gem cutting in other countries of Europe. Some 
of the Italian Renaissance gems rivalled the antiques so 
closely as at times to be taken for antiques. For most of the 
centuries since, Italy has retained her primacy in these arts 
71 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
and it is mainly from there that the most beautiful gems and 
cameos and present day jewelry are obtained. 
In the Renaissance time the arts and crafts in Italy 
were applied not only to churches and public buildings, they 
were brought close to life in every way. Homes were made 
beautiful, private apartments rendered charming by the de- 
signs of great artists and they were invited particularly to 
make living rooms models of artistic beauty and especially 
was this true for the living rooms of the ladies of the times. 
A typical example of howr thoroughly this work was done is 
afforded by the models of the private apartments, camerini 
as they were called, of some of the palaces of this time, which 
public museums in our day are engaged in reproducing. The 
apartment of Isabella D’Este, reconstructed for exhibition in 
the Museum at South Kensington, London, makes it very 
clear what a charming retreat Isabella made for herself at 
the time when her position as Dowager Duchess gave her the 
leisure as well as the opportunity to devote herself to the 
construction of an apartment which should reflect her per- 
sonality. This has been described in some detail in one of 
the manuals on interior decoration issued by the museum. 
In the grotto on the ground floor were collections of art 
in which she accumulated statues and rare objects and even 
added a cortile with fountains playing during the Summer- 
time. This was for the large receptions when princes on their 
travels, ambassadors on their missions and travelers and 
artists of distinction came to visit her. 
There were three new rooms at the top of the Palazzo 
which were made particularly for her own delectation. They 
were known as the Paradiso and they reflect their mistress’ 
many sided interests in the arts. Some paragraphs from the 
South Kensington Art Handbook, already mentioned, on Ital- 
ian wall decorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
will give the best idea at once of the tastes and of the much 
deeper than amateur interest that Isabella must have had to 
succeed in surrounding herself w7ith so many things that are 
of enduring artistic value. 
72 ARTS AND CRAFTS 
“The first room was dedicated to music, the favorite 
pursuit of Isabella. The cupboards were filled with beautiful 
instruments: mandolines, lutes, clavichords, inlaid with 
mother of pearl, and made specially for her by Lorenzo of 
Pavia; and here stood the famous organ by the same master, 
the description of which is to be found in the princess’ 
correspondence. Round the walls of this first room were 
reproduced views of towns in ‘intarsia’ of rare wood and on 
one of the panels figured a few bars of a ‘Strambotto,’ com- 
posed by Okenhem to words dictated by Isabella, and signed 
by that famous singing master. On the ceiling was the 
‘Stave.’ which exists in the coat-of-arms of the House of 
D ’Este, and along the cornices friezes were formed of musical 
instruments carved in the wood. 
“In the second room, devoted to painting and also to 
study, six masterpieces by the greatest painters of the time 
adorned the walls above the panelling. 
“The third room was reserved for receptions. Every- 
where in the ceiling, in the compartments, in the friezes 
(delicately carved in gilded stucco upon an azure back- 
ground) are found the devices commented on at length by the 
humanists of her court: ‘Alpha and Omega’ and the golden 
candlestick with seven branches, on which a single light has 
resisted the effects of the wind, with the motto, ‘Unum sufficit 
in tenebris;’ and everywhere is to be read the mysterious 
motto of which she was so proud, ‘Nec Spe nec Metu,’ the 
highest resolution of a strong mind, which henceforth ‘with- 
out hope, without fear,’ ended in solitude a tormented life. 
In the recess of the thick wall slightly raised above the floor, 
Isabella placed her writing table within reach of the shelves 
containing her favorite books; while she read there or wrote 
those letters addressed to the poets and artists of Italy, over- 
flowing with enthusiasm for arts and letters, when she lifted 
her eyes beyond the tranquil waters at the mouth of the Po, 
towards Governolo, she would see coming the gilded Bueentaur 
with the coat-of-arms of Ferrara, which brought her news of 
her family, D ’Este, and that of Aragon. ’ ’ 
73 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
This was only an example and there were many other 
apartments rivalling to some degree at least these camerini of 
Isabella D’Este. Her sister-in-law, Lucretia Borgia, of ill 
fame, but whose name has been so thoroughly vindicated in 
recent years, is said even to have excelled Isabella D’Este by 
the charm of the apartments which she had decorated for 
herself. Unfortunately these apartments were destroyed by 
fire in 1634, but the reputation that they enjoyed as excelling 
Isabella’s and the fact that they had been adorned with 
paintings by Bellini, Titian, and Dosso Dossi, fitted into 
recesses of white marble, carved by Antonio Lombardi, is 
quite sufficient to make it clear that their reputation was well 
grounded. The rooms of these camerini were of rather small 
size, real living rooms and not at all the formal reception 
rooms of the palace. They were sanctuaries of art and of 
literature with selected libraries of chosen volumes and fine 
bindings and of music with beautiful musical instruments. 
Every phase of life had its contribution from the art of 
Italy. Beautiful glass of all kinds has been a tradition at 
Venice and the Venetian glass of the later Middle Ages and 
the Renaissance is still looked upon as admirable, so tasteful 
and thoroughly artistic was the work of these Venetian glass 
makers. 
There is not a single phase of the arts and crafts in which 
Italy and the Italians have not been pioneers for the modern 
world at least. In most phases of the arts and crafts they 
have been ever so much more than pioneers for they have 
carried out their inspiration so completely that they have 
accomplished some of the best work ever done in many special 
lines. That is the real reason why art objects from Italy com- 
mand such high prices in the auction rooms in our time. Our 
generation has come very definitely to the persuasion and is 
quite willing to recognize that Italy can provide the best 
models for us in this regard and we are willing to pay for 
them. The movement itself is only just beginning, however, 
and a great many of our people have not yet awakened to 
the realization of the growing admiration that there is in the 
74 TITIAN, EMPEROR CHARLES V. ARTS AND CRAFTS 
minds of those best capable of judging, for what the Italians 
have accomplished in this regard. Italy is far more im- 
portant than any other country in the arts and crafts and has 
such an immense precious treasure of beautiful objects from 
many centuries that even the sales for years will not make 
the treasure house of Italy much less valuable for the visitor 
than it has been. 
The Italians not only made their homes beautiful but also 
made the surroundings of their dwellings as charming as 
possible. In recent years we have heard much about the Ren- 
aissance gardens and above all various forms of Italian 
gardens, because we ourselves are gradually coming to the 
place where we can live under conditions that provide enough 
room to have a garden around the house. The automobile is 
enabling people to live in the suburbs and as a result the 
women of our time have become very much interested in the 
formal garden. The best models come to us from Italy and 
our magazines have published many articles with regard to 
them. Whether the garden is to be small or large, to have 
vistas and water scenes of various kinds, or whether it is to be 
mainly a question of flowers and shrubs and trees, the Italians 
have worked out the most beautiful ideas and it is always 
worth while knowing what they accomplished. Probably no 
one knew better how to combine statuary and various artistic 
decorative effects with shrubbery and garden vistas and 
sunken garden plots and falling water where sound and 
vision both combine to give pleasure, than these Italians. LITERATURE 
ITALY has been the home of two great literatures, the Latin 
as well as the vernacular Italian. The peninsula is the 
birthplace of the older Latin literature of the classical period 
and must be credited with the gift of that to civilization. The 
great Latin verse and prose of the first century before and 
after Christ are truly Italian in origin. We are prone to 
think of this Latin literature as Roman but the great writers 
of Rome were almost without exception born outside the city 
in various parts of the peniusula. As is so true in great city 
life at any period in history, the intellectual leaders in the 
Roman capital were the sons of country folk as a rule, born 
far from “the madding crowd” of city life, or at least brought 
up in smaller towns where existence was not too strenuously 
full of excitement to keep man from thinking. Like many 
a budding genius of the modern time, these poets and liter- 
ateurs who were to be called Romans because the city greedily 
swallowed them, went to the metropolis to make their way 
when they felt the first stirrings of their talent within them. 
This picture of history is so characteristically exemplified 
at Rome that scarcely a single one of the best known Latin 
authors was born in the city itself. Even that stern old 
Roman, the elder Cato, was born at Tusculum. Ennius long 
before had been born at Rudiae in Calabria. Plautus, the 
typical Roman dramatist was born at Sarsina in Umbria. 
Livy was born up at Padua and in the eyes of the critics 
at least never quite got over a certain provincialism of style 
which they called Patavianism, from the Latin name of his 
birth place. Virgil was born up at Mantua, Horace up on the 
Sabine farm, the Plinys both at Como, Catullus at Verona, LITERATURE 
Cicero at Arpinum, Persius in the Hill Country where prob- 
ably Juvenal also was born, and Ovid at Sulmo. The whole 
Italian peninsula was represented in the old Latin literature. 
How much the world is indebted for this classic Latin liter- 
ature to the foster land of it would be hard to tell. 
As always throughout this book this antique claim of 
Italy is waived with just a mention of it, though it must not 
be forgotten that there is besides the classic Latin a modern 
Latin literature for which the world is more deeply indebted 
to the Italians than to any other nation. This Latin liter- 
ature which used to be rather contemptuously spoken of as 
medieval Latin, has come into its own of appreciation during 
the past generation. Its verse consists of the Latin hymns 
of the church services and its prose of the great tomes in 
Latin of the philosophers and scholars of the later Middle 
Ages, as well as of the Renaissance period. Professor March 
whose studies in philology give him a right to an opinon in the 
matter, has suggested that the Latin hymns are the true Latin 
folk poems, representing the genius of the Latin tongue much 
better than the classical poetry, so much of which was in 
imitation of the Greek. He did not hesitate to say that ‘ ‘ For 
inspiring and elevating thought and for vigor, harmony and 
simplicity of language the Latin hymns are better than any 
Augustan odes.” They have been well called, as he tells us, 
‘ ‘ the Bible of the people ’ ’ and they have ever so much more of 
the Bible’s literary merit than most people were accustomed 
to think until the more careful study of them in recent years 
brought them back into proper appreciation. 
The greatest of these Latin hymns which constitute a 
supremely important contribution to world literature, we 
owe to the Italians. In proof of this I need only cite the Dies 
Irae, the Stabat Mater, Aquinas’ great hymns, and those at- 
tributed, rightly or wrongly to Ambrose and Augustine, and 
which w’ere certainly due to their disciples. The greatest of 
these Latin hymns is universally conceded to be the Dies 
Irae, probably written by Thomas of Celano, the biographer 
of St. Francis of Assisi, whose life of Francis is one of the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
important works of the Latin prose of his time. Professor 
Saintsbury of Edinburgh, whose prestige as a critic of 
world literature gives his opinion great weight, goes so far 
as to say that there was probably never a more wonderful 
wedding of sense and sound than is to be found in the Dies 
Irae. The supreme tribute to it is the number of translations 
into every language that have been made, a great many of 
them by men distinguished for their own poetic genius and 
thorough-going capacity to appreciate poetry. More of these 
translations have been made during the past hundred years 
or so than at any time during the nearly seven hundred years 
that have elapsed since the Dies Irae was originally written. 
Not a few of the translations have been made by men who 
were far from being particularly noted for their piety and 
some of whom indeed were rather well known for the opposite. 
Goethe and Byron are in the list, but many another rather 
free living and free thinking poet in the last three generations 
has tried his hand at providing a worthy setting in his own 
tongue for this greatest of religious poems ever written. 
We have literally hundreds of English translations, some of 
them extremely well done, though the task is about as difficult 
as it can be. 
Scarcely less great as literature and poetry is the Stabat 
Mater Dolorosa, usually attributed to Jacopone da Todi. 
Rivalling this in poetic quality and approaching even the 
sublime Dies Irae in their marvelous expression of sublime 
religious truths in charmingly beautiful language, so touched 
with emotion as to be real poetry, are the great hymns written 
by St. Thomas Aquinas for the office of the Blessed Sacrament. 
Some of St. Bonaventure’s great hymns, though not so well 
known, are only next to those of Aquinas in charm and beauty. 
From the original cultivation of this form of poetry under 
the patronage of St. Ambrose at Milan in the fifth century, 
for nearly a thousand years there were a series of magnificent 
contributions made by Italians to this mode of literature. 
There were literally thousands of hymns, though only com- LITERATURE 
paratively few are known and only those which are frequently 
used in the Church services are properly appreciated. 
The Latin prose written during the Middle Ages by the 
Italians, though the subject of not a little contemptuous scoff- 
ing on the part of the Renaissance writers for whom Classic 
Latin was the supreme ideal, was a vivid vigorous language, 
much of which was destined to live and influence men more 
deeply than the elegant stylism of the post-medieval Latinists. 
This Latin prose consists of such books as Thomas of Celano’s 
Life of St. Francis, already mentioned, and a number of lives 
of saints written by those who knew them well, as well as such 
descriptions of saintly living as are to be found in books like 
the Little Flowers of St. Francis which it must not be for- 
gotten wras originally in Latin. Many editions of these books 
have been issued in recent years and not always because of 
their religious character but because of the na'ivly beautiful 
human appeal which they contain. 
Then there were monastic chronicles some of which are 
very wonderful in their simple relation in humanly sympa- 
thetic fashion of the events of the older time. They were 
materials for history rather than history itself, yet often with 
more literary flavor to them than much more ambitious his- 
torical writing of quite recent date. A series of encyclopedias 
such as that of Thomas of Cantimprato must not be forgotten 
and finally the philosophic works of the great teachers of 
philosophy constitute a magnificent contribution to prose often 
of true literary quality. The language in which the schol- 
astic philosophy was couched has, until comparatively recent 
years, been spoken of quite contemptously by men of the after 
time who had only dipped into it slightly or knew it only at 
second hand, but never by anyone who really knows anything 
about it. The man who despises scholastic philosophy and its 
style has either never read it, or having tried to read it and 
found it very difficult, has concluded that of course the diffi- 
culty must be in the style and not in himself, either his power 
of application or of understanding. As a matter of fact no 
language has ever been developed to the point of expressing WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
so exactly the meaning intended to be conveyed with the nicest 
accuracy of distinction as the Latin of the scholastic phil- 
osophy. It owes more to the Italian philosophic writers, to 
Anselm the founder of scholastic philosophy, to Lanfranc, to 
Peter Lombard, above all to Thomas Aquinas than to any 
others. 
Prof. Saintsbury of the University of Edinburgh whose 
studies in the European literatures of all the modern times 
gives him the right perhaps more than anyone who writes 
English in our day, to express an opinion in the matter, does 
not hesitate to say that the influence of this scholastic Latin 
on the modern languages which were coming into existence 
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was most 
happy. The passage of comment on it from his “The Flour- 
ishing and the Rise of Allegory” the first of the volumes of 
his Periods of European Literature, deserves to be quoted 
here because it places squarely before the reader the authori- 
tative declaration of a great modern critic, a profound student 
of the literature of the world, as to the value in mere style of 
scholastic writing, an element that has been often quite missed 
or sadly misunderstood. 
“The claim modest and even meagre as it may seem to 
some, which has been once more put forward for this scholas- 
ticism— the claim of a far reaching educative influence in 
mere language, in mere system of arrangement and expression, 
will remain valid. If at the outset of the career of modern 
languages, men had thought with the looseness of modern 
thought, had indulged in the haphazard slovenliness of mod- 
ern logic, had popularized theology and vulgarized rhetoric, 
as we have seen both popularized and vulgarized since, we 
should indeed have been in evil case. It used to be thought 
clever to moralize and to felicitate mankind over the rejection 
of the stays the fetters, the prison in which its thought was 
medievally kept. The justice or the injustice, the taste or 
the vulgarity of these moralizings of these felicitations, may 
not concern us here. But in expression as distinguished from 
thought, the value of the discipline to which these youthful LITERATURE 
languages were subjected is not likely now to be denied by any 
scholar who has paid attention to the subject. It would have 
been perhaps a pity if thought had not gone through other 
phases; it would certainly have been a pity if the tongues had 
been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin constraint. 
But that the more lawless of them benefited by that constraint 
there can be no doubt now. The influence of form which 
the best Latin hymns of the Middle Ages exercised in poetry, 
the influence in vocabulary and in logical arrangement which 
scholasticism exercised in prose are beyond dispute, and even 
those who will not pardon literature, whatever its historic 
and educative importance may be, for being something less 
than masterful itself, will find it difficult to maintain the 
exclusion of the Cur Deus Homo, and impossible to refuse 
admission to the Dies Irae.” 
The first great beginnings of Italian literature in the 
vernacular came in the songs of the Troubadours or Trovatore 
before Dante. Men like Sordello or like Dante’s teacher 
Brunetto Latini or his friends Cino da Pistoia, Guido Caval- 
canti and Dante da Maiano, wrote lyric poetry of a high order 
in Italy before the close of the thirteenth century. Dante 
himself was in his younger years just one of these lyric 
singers of a day. Had he not lived to write the Divine 
Comedy he would be known as one of the Italian Trovatore 
and perhaps not the greatest of them, though there is no doubt 
some of the lyric poetry of his younger years is worthy of 
very high consideration, while that of his friends about the 
same time represents a real outburst of true poetic quality 
in lyric song. Some of Dante’s sonnets are among the 
greatest poems ever written in this form. 
As for the Divine Comedy the only danger is in under- 
estimating its value, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate its 
worth to mankind. There are not a few people in our time 
who seem inclined to think that there is more or less of a con- 
vention among those who are dissatisfied with our own period 
and have been taking up with older times, to praise Dante 
very highly, as if that somehow justified their disagreement WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
with the generality of mankind on human values present 
and past. For them this praise of Dante seems utterly exag- 
gerated and perhaps due to the fact that he is not very easy 
to understand and that incomprehensibility is therefore taken 
for sublimity. Tacitus said omne ignotum pro magnifico, what 
is unknown is often thought to be great by humanity and this 
would for some people seem to be the root of Dante’s repu- 
tation. Those who need authority however to back them up in 
an opinion with regard to the height and depth of Dante’s 
poetic quality, can find it without difficulty and indeed 
need not go beyond our own English writers in what is prac- 
tically our own generation. They will find it so abundant 
and so emphatic in the mouths of men whose modern interests 
were entirely different from those of the medieval poet in 
religion and politics that there can not be the slightest doubt 
cf the absolute sincerity of it. 
Dean Milman declared that “Christendom owes to 
Dante the creation of Italian poetry, through Italian of 
Christian poetry.” While Dean Milman has above all in his 
commentary on the place of Dante’s Paradiso as one of the 
sublimest of human expressions shown how highly we should 
appreciate the Florentine’s poetic sublimity, perhaps the 
comparison of Dante with Tacitus will show better Dean 
Milman’s interest and estimation, for as an historian Tacitus 
must have been one of his favorite subjects of study as an 
ideal. 
“To my mind there is a singular kindred and similitude 
between the last great Latin and the first great Italian writer, 
though one is a poet and the other a historian. Tacitus and 
Dante have the same penetrating truth of observation as to 
man and the external world of man. They have the common 
gift of flashing a whole train of thought, a vast range of 
images on the mind by a few brief and pregnant words; the 
same faculty of giving life to human emotions by natural 
images, of imparting to natural images as it were, human life 
and human sympathies; each has the intuitive judgment of 
saying just enough; the rare talent of compressing a mass of LITERATURE 
profound thought into an apothegm; each paints with 
words, with the fewest possible words, yet the picture lives 
and speaks. Each has that relentless moral indignation, that 
awful power of satire which in the historian condemns to an 
immortality of earthly infamy in the Christian poet aggra- 
vates that gloomy immortality of this world by ratifying it 
in the next.” 
Higher praise than this there could scarcely be and it 
comes from a man of whose ability as a critic there is no 
doubt while his breadth of scholarship and knowledge of 
humanity makes his opinion of the greatest possible value. 
He was bom some six hundred years after Dante in a country 
as distant from Italy in temper as he was himself from 
Dante in time and yet he can scarcely find words strong 
enough to express his praise of the great Florentine poet. 
Dean Milman, however, was but one of a very large group of 
scholarly Englishmen who during the nineteenth century, 
when the knowledge of Italian literature became a common 
possession again, proclaimed their supreme admiration for 
him. The two great English cardinals, Newman and Manning, 
might of course have been expected to be sympathetic toward 
Dante, but their almost unbounded praise shows how lofty 
was their admiration. Cardinal Manning said “No uninspired 
hand has ever written thoughts so high in words so resplen- 
clant as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia. ... .It may 
be said nf Dante post Dantis Paradisum nil restat nisi visio 
Dei.” 
It is easy to accumulate authorities as to Dante’s great- 
ness. Frederick Denison Maurice for instance in his Moral 
and Metaphysical Philosophy has a very strong passage with 
regard to the place of Dante and the influence of his writings 
on his own and subsequent generations. His opinion is all 
the more interesting because he feels that Dante represents a 
more significant starting point for modern times than the 
Reformation. He said:— 
“Wise men of our own day have said that Dante embodies 
the spirit of the medieval time and is a prophet of Ihe time WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
which followed. We testify our assent to that remark by 
accepting his poem coeval as it is with the great judgment of 
the Papacy under Boniface with the practical termination of 
the religious wars, and with the rise of a native literature, 
not only in the South, but in the North as a better epoch from 
which to commence the new age of European thought than the 
German reformation of the sixteenth century.” 
Most people know Dean Church’s high opinion of Dante. 
After all his years of study of the poet no English writer had 
a better right to an opinion and he has been absolutely un- 
stinted in his praise. After the passage in the article in the 
Christian Remembrancer for January 1850* nothing more re- 
mains to be said: 
“The Divina Comedia is one of the landmarks of 
history. More than a magnificent poem, more than the begin- 
ning of a language and the opening of a national literature, 
more than the inspirer of art and the glory of a great people, 
it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind’s 
power which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise 
up ineffaceably and forever as time goes on, marking out its 
advance by grander divisions than its centuries and adopted 
as epochs by the consent of all who come after. It stands with 
the Illiad and Shakespeare’s plays, with the writings of 
Aristotle and Plato, with the Novum Organum and the Prin- 
cipia with Justinian’s Code, with the Parthenon and St. 
Peter’s. It is the first Christian poem and it opens European 
literature as the Iliad did that of Greece and Rome. And, 
like the Iliad, it has never become out of date; it accompanies 
in undiminished freshness the literature which it began. ’ ’ 
It might be thought that in the course of these six hun- 
dred years Dante’s great poem would have become out of date 
or at least would be so antiquated that it would have scarcely 
more than an antiquarian interest for men. Great geniuses 
of the modern time have found it a supremely living poem. 
Dean Church said of it “it is the first Christian poem and it 
opens European literature as the Iliad did that of Greece 
* Republished in Essays and Reviews by R. W. Church, M. A., 1854. LITERATURE 
and Rome. And like the Iliad it has never become out of 
date; it accompanies in undiminished freshness the literature 
which it began.” Charles Elliot Norton did not hesitate to 
say that the changes which have come over man’s mode of 
thinking since Dante’s time have not diminished the prestige 
of the great medieval poet which manifestly now is destined 
to endure for all time. He said: 
‘ ‘ The increase of knowledge, the loss of belief in doctrines 
that were fundamental in Dante’s creed, the changes in the 
order of society, the new thoughts of the world have not 
lessened the moral import of the poem any more than they 
have lessened its spiritual significance.” 
Gladstone, whose deep study of Homer for many years so 
admirably fitted him to be a judge of what was greatest in 
poetry, might possibly have been thought, for many reasons, 
to find Dante unsympathetic. The supreme Greek poet differs 
so completely from his medieval colleague that it might be 
deemed hard for a modern to be deeply in love with both and 
yet Gladstone did not hesitate to say ‘ ‘ In the school of Dante 
I have learned a great part of that mental provision (however 
insignificant it be) which has served me to make the journey of 
life up to the term of nearly seventy-three years. ’ ’ Macaulay 
is perhaps the other great writer in English in the nineteenth 
century who might wTell be expected not to appreciate Dante 
very thoroughly, and yet in spite of his very strong English 
sympathies at a time when the recent cult of Dante had by 
no means reached the height it has attained during the past 
generation, Macaulay compared Milton and Dante and made 
the greatest of English epic poets fall far short of the stature 
of his Italian colleague. 
On the other hand John Ruskin might have been expected 
to be thoroughly sympathetic with Dante and yet few would 
dare to anticipate such lofty words of praise as actually came 
from Ruskin when he declared “I think that the central man 
of all the world as representing in perfect balance the imag- 
inative, moral and intellectual faculties all at their highest, is 
Dante.” William Blake, whose spirit was so near akin to the WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
mystical side of Dante, studied the great Italian poet for a 
series of illustrations at the very beginning of the modern 
revival and declared that Dante was inspired by the Holy 
Ghost. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was another harbinger of 
the revival and declared Dante to be “the living link between 
religion and philosophy” and added “You can not read Dante 
without feeling a gush of manliness of thought.” 
It mattered not what was the training or the pre-eminent 
sympathies of men if they devoted themselves to any serious 
study of Dante, they came almost without exception to be 
devout disciples or supreme admirers. Carlyle whose Teutonic 
leanings and studies might possibly have been expected to dim 
appreciation of Dante, wrote passage after passage in his lec- 
ture on the poet as hero which reveal his intense admiration. 
“For rigor, earnestness and depth he is not to be paralleled 
in the modern world; to seek his parallel we must go into the 
Hebrew bible and live with the antique prophets there.” 
After all these tributes from England it is not surprising 
to find that American poets and critics were scarcely less 
enthusiastic in their praise, though they might possibly have 
been expected, because of distance in time and space, to have 
missed something of the significance of the great medieval 
poet- The famous Dante Club was organized at Cambridge to 
help Longfellow in the translation which he was making and 
which it was hoped would make Dante a great living force 
for the American people. Our greatest literary geniuses 
in America were willing to give their time and mental effort to 
the exposition of the meaning of the great medieval poet, 
feeling that they themselves would be amply rewarded by the 
intimate contact with him. James Russell Lowell, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, Emerson, Charles Eliot Norton and other 
American leaders of thought thus devoted themselves to a 
beloved task. They felt very probably that, as Longfellow 
has hinted in one of the great sonnets to Dante which form 
the prelude to his translation of the Divine Comedy, there 
was no better refuge from “the tumult of the time discon- 
solate,” for the Civil War was seriously disturbing the minds LITERATURE* 
of American lovers of their country, than this great poem, so 
like a magnificent Cathedral in which “kneeling in prayer, 
and not ashamed to pray,” one might rest in peace to have the 
burden of the heart rending period 
To inarticulate murmurs die away 
While the eternal ages watch and wait. ’ ’ 
After Dean Church’s essay probably the greatest critical 
appreciation of Dante ever written is that of Janies Russell 
Lowell who does not hesitate to say of him that Dante repre- 
sents in his great poem the ancient and the modern world. He 
is himself the transition between these two great periods, 
seemingly so distant from each other. “Aesthetically also as 
well as morally Dante stands between the old and the new and 
reconciles them.” But there is much more than this, “he 
combines the deeper and more abstract religious sentiment of 
the Teutonic race with the scientific and absolute systematism 
of the Romanic.” S'O far from thinking the poet, however, a 
blend or composite of all these influences, Lowell insists that 
Dante stands alone, seems to have drawn his inspiration 
wholly from his own internal resources and dares to lay his 
scene in the human soul and his fifth act in the other world. 
I have taken the quotations from English and American 
authorities because their appreciation must mean so much. 
Similar quotations might have been made from the poets, 
critics and writers on literature of other countries. It has 
been said of Italy that whenever it neglected or failed prop- 
erly to appreciate Dante its standards of art and literature 
were at their lowest and there was an ebb tide of production 
in aesthetics. Indeed this parallelism between Dante and 
the Italian national spirit has been formulated into what is 
known as Cornelius’ Law and there has been very definite 
demonstration of its truth. The law applies to the whole of 
Europe as well as to Italy and whenever there is neglect of 
Dante the period has usually been unproductive of really 
great work. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
It is evident then that if Italy had done nothing else 
except contribute Dante to modern literature, as a country it 
would eminently deserve a place among those to whom mod- 
ern civilization is deeply indebted. As a matter of fact, 
however, Dante was only one of a series of great writers whose 
works have deeply influenced not only their own beloved Italy, 
but practically all the other countries of Europe. I think 
there can be no doubt at all in the mind of anyone who has 
given a modicum of attention to Italian literature, that there 
is no European country to whom so much is owed both for 
pioneer work in literary movements and for the heights to 
which her writers have attained in expressing the significance 
of human life in words worthy of the subject. 
After Dante but always associated with him in memory, 
come Petrarch and Boccaccio. Petrarch’s sonnets gave that 
mode of poetry a vogue which lasted many centuries. 
It is easy in the light of other days to say flippant things of 
these sonnets of a young poet to another’s wife, the mother of 
many children, but the reality of Petrarch’s reverential love 
is quite undoubted. The young poet looked up to her as one 
eminently worthy of his respectful adoration and her in- 
fluence was for all that was good in his life. Some of his 
sonnets show that he was ennobled by this love and it is 
easier to understand some of the phases of chivalry and the 
lack of mere corporeal passion through Petrarch’s sonnets than 
in any other way. It was the very sincerity of them that gave 
them their vogue and invited so many imitations. While one 
of the great scholars of the time, Petrarch was a real poet and 
Ms influence lasted for centuries and is not yet entirely 
extinct among the Italians themselves. It was his influence 
out of Italy, however, that makes Petrarch deserve a special 
place here. 
Unless attention is explicitly directed to it very few 
people realize how much of Italian influence there is in the 
English literature of the nineteenth century. As a matter of 
fact some of the most powerful factors in the writing of the LITERATURE 
Victorian period were Italian in origin. Ruskin whose writ- 
ings meant so much for mid-nineteenth century English, was 
deeply influenced by Italian motives. His Stones of Venice 
shows this very clearly and the volumes transferred to other 
people of his generation something at least of the deep impres- 
sion produced on Ruskin by Italian culture. Walter Pater 
particularly was touched by Ruskin, but the Italian Renais- 
sance meant more for his developmental years than all his 
other studies. Pater is indeed in many ways a man of the 
Italian Renaissance, set down in England at the end of the 
nineteenth century. The name given the Pre-Raphaelites indi- 
cates very clearly how closely this group of young men who 
did so much to reawaken strivings after culture in England 
in the nineteenth century felt that they were under the in- 
fluence of Italians. The Rossettis, father and children were 
Italian in origin. Indeed it was this that gave them their 
eminent individuality among the English of their genera- 
tion. Edmund Gosse in his Critical Kit Kats declared 
that “Gabriel Rossetti both as poet and painter remained very 
Italian to the last.” His sister Christina Rossetti, Gosse de- 
clares, wrote religious poems that have no rivals in recent 
English poetry except those from Cardinal Newman. 
Boccaccio acquired influence scarcely less wide than that 
of Petrarch on literary folk and enjoyed a far wider popular 
vogue. His revival of the novella created a fashion in Europe 
that was to be rich in productiveness in every country, and 
was to last for centuries. His stories have been published in 
many editions in every country in Europe. He is undoubtedly 
an important landmark in world literature. It is surprising 
to find how many anticipations of what is apparently most 
modern in the short story are to be found in Boccaccio. His 
Fiammetta has the distinction in the eyes of many historians 
of literature of anticipating the merits and defects of Goethe’s 
Werther. It has real pathos and truth to nature and though it 
seems tedious to us now, accustomed to the rapid sketching of 
incident and character, it was a great advance over anything 
that had preceded it. Above all as Dante had vindicated WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the vernacular Italian as worthy and capable of express- 
ing the highest poetry, Boccaccio vindicated vernacular prose 
as a medium for the expression of human emotions, hereto- 
fore supposed to be expressible only in verse. He was many 
defects from the moral side and yet with our modern news- 
papers and their realistic stories of crimes and the modern 
novel only too often engaged merely with sex problems, 
Boccaccio’s morality surely can not he much deprecated by 
our generation. 
The Renaissance in Italy is usually associated in the 
minds of men ever so much more with art than with liter- 
ature and yet there are distinguished contributions to liter- 
ature made by the Italians at this period. Her art was so 
great that Italy might well have dispensed with great inspir- 
ation in letters, but had that happened the world would have 
missed some very precious treasures. The Italian writers of 
the Renaissance, influenced not only the Italy of their time 
but also the world and their influence still continues to be 
felt. The three great Renaissance writers in Italy were the 
poets Ariosto and Tasso and the prose writer Machiavelli. All 
three were widely read beyond the bounds of the lands where 
Italian is spoken. Ariosto’s influence has waned in other 
countries, but still remains of great significance among his 
own countrymen. His Italian style makes him one of the 
peninsula’s great writers and his continued popularity among 
his countrymen is of itself quite enough to demonstrate 
Ariosto’s qualities as a genuine poet. 
Tasso wrote one of the greatest of epics that is at the 
same time so intensely human that for several centuries it was 
probably the most widely read book among educated people 
generally throughout Europe. He deeply influenced the poets 
of many other countries and while no longer read in anything 
like the way that it used to be, it still continues to be pub- 
lished in editions at regular intervals in most of the European 
languages and remains one of the books that no educated man 
cares to confess entire ignorance of. Chivalry received its 
highest poetic expression from Tasso centuries after the in- 
90 PALMA YECCHIO, POET (SOMETIMES CALLED ARIOSTO) LITERATURE 
stitution itself had ceased to exist and when a great poetic 
imagination was needed to revive interest in it. Jerusalem 
Delivered now more than three centuries after the death of 
its author must be considered to occupy a permanent place 
in world literature. 
Maehiavelli is more difficult to place in the estimation 
especially of the western peoples of Europe, but undoubtedly 
his prose works are among the greatest contributions in this 
mode to the literature of western civilization. It has often 
been said that there are four writers of history whom no one 
who plans to write history in our day can afford to neglect. 
These four represent the climax of the power of man’s mind 
to see through human motives and express the meaning of 
human activities in terms of the spirit that rules men. They 
are Thucydides, Herodotus, Tacitus and Maehiavelli. The 
three first named are beyond all doubt the greatest writers of 
history in the world. There is very general agreement that 
Maehiavelli is the only writer of history in modern times who 
deserves a place beside these because of his penetrating 
knowledge of human nature. His history of Florence has 
been proclaimed one of the master pieces of the literature of 
the knowledge of the human heart. The Prince (II Principe) 
is an essay in political philosophy that no one interested in 
human events, either a statesman or historical writer can 
afford to miss. It has become the custom to bewail the lack of 
morality displayed in the principles which Maehiavelli lays 
down for rulers’ direction, but if we had any illusions as to 
how much better our generation was in this regard than 
Maehiavelli’s or how far we had advanced from the crude 
standpoint of the Renaissance, most of them have been dis- 
pelled by the great war. Maehiavelli’s insistence on the need 
of a popular army has received a striking confirmation from 
the experiences of our day. His deep knowledge of human 
nature made him the favorite reading of so great a mind as 
that of Francis Bacon who quite candidly confessed his obli- 
gations to him. 
Three writers of the Renaissance time Yasari, Benvenuto, WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Cellini and Baldassare Castiglione, have been the favorite 
reading of men particularly, not only in Italy, but in most 
of the countries of Europe during many generations since 
that time. There is scarcely anything to be compared with 
them in other literatures. Vasari’s biographies of artists have 
deservedly won for him the title of “the Herodotus of art.” 
Cellini’s autobiography is one of the most wonderful con- 
fessions ever made. Only St. Augustine and Rousseau may 
be mentioned with it perhaps, and Cellini stands alone in 
many regards. Castiglione has written a book that while 
expressing better than almost anything that we have from 
that time the innermost feelings of the men and women of 
the period, has enough of elegance, acumen and graceful but 
not cumbrous erudition to make it a favorite book of reading 
among the better educated classes, whenever and wherever 
there is a serious literary taste to be found. It deeply in- 
fluenced England where it contributed to form the character 
of Sir Philip Sidney and it was destined to attract attention in 
many subsequent generations and is thoroughly alive in our 
time. 
After the Renaissance Italy continued to exert an im- 
mense influence on the literature of the world, but unfor- 
tunately not always for what was in best taste. A sad blight 
fell upon Italian literature during the seventeenth century 
which has been variously explained. Garnett’s expression as 
to it is interesting for he says that it was due to “the malady 
which necessarily befalls every form of literature and art when 
the bounds of perfection have been reached, the craving to 
improve upon what is incapable of improvement ’ ’ which leads 
men to add decorations to buildings and what are called 
beauties of style to literature until the bounds of good taste 
are overpassed. As a result of this tendency there came at this 
time a striving after mere verbal beauty which led away from 
true literature. The greatest offender was Marini. His poetry 
unfortunately attracted attention all over Europe. A series 
of artificial literary efforts of many kinds developed in the 
seventeenth century. Garnett suggests that in some respects 
92 LITERATURE 
Marini might be compared to the Cowleys and Crashaws 
of the time of Charles I, “but he is physical while they are 
metaphysical: his conceits are less far fetched and ingenious 
than theirs and few of them either could or would have pro- 
duced his licentious, but from an artistic point of view, admir- 
able Pastorella.’’ The interesting feature of Marini’s career 
for us is his wide influence. Italy was, as so often, the leader, 
but alas! in a wrong direction. 
Other Italian poets of this seventeenth century did work 
that was equal to any poetry written among the Latin coun- 
tries of Europe, except in Spain during the first half of the 
eentury and they still occupy an important place in Italian 
literature. Francesco Redi to whom we devote much more 
attention in the chapter on the biological sciences was “a dis- 
tinguished poet as well as an illustrious physician and natur- 
alist.” (Garnett.) His well known f/oem, Bacchus in Tus- 
cany, has been beautifully translated by Leigh Hunt and 
Garnett thinks there can be no doubt that Dryden had it in 
mind when he wrote Alexander’s Feast. Edmund Gosse 
translated some of his sonnets and Redi has not been without 
critical admirers in practically every country in Europe. 
Two of Redi’s friends Menzini and Filicaja are poets of no 
mean order and Filicaja’s sonnet to Italy is one of the great 
sonnets of the world to be compared only with some of 
Milton’s or Wordsworth’s or some of those written by Dante 
or Shakespeare. 
During the eighteenth century the era of poor taste in 
poetry continued and after the foundation of the Arcadian 
Academy which fostered another epoch of pastoral poetry 
with a deluge of insipid verse that had the one good effect, it 
prepared the way for Romantic revolt at the end of the cen- 
tury and the beginning of the next. Unfortunately for Italy 
its one epoch of dramatic literature came during this period 
and so Italy has nothing to show in any way equal to the 
dramas of France or Spain or England and has comparatively 
little place in the history of dramatic literature. Three of 
the men, however, who contributed to the Italian dramatic WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
literature, such as we have it, were certainly leaders in the 
second rank of great dramatic poets and their influence was 
widely felt. Metastasio, Goldoni and Alfieri are names to 
conjure with even yet. Metastasio’s librettos for operas are 
probably the best ever written. It has been said of him that 
“He is a very Scribe for briskness, deftness and clever con- 
trivance of plot.” Goldoni, the Italian writer of comedies 
does not approach in any way the exhibition of the vis comica 
of Moliere, who was the object of his idolatry, but anyone who 
has seen Signora Duse in La Locandiera can not help but 
feel that its author had marvelous power in the comedy of 
manners. Alfieri is far below either Corneille or Racine, and 
yet he has merits that rightly gave him a European reputation 
and at least continental influence at a time when the drama 
everywhere had declined and when he must be considered to 
have been the protagonist of what was best in serious drama- 
tic literature. 
During the nineteenth century Italy continued to con- 
tribute in at least as great degree as the other countries in 
Europe to the literature of the time. With the coming 
of what is sometimes called the romantic period or the return 
to nature in which the spirit of the French Revolution played 
so large a part, Italian Avriters took their places besides those 
of other countries. Ugo Foscolo was probably as widely read 
throughout Europe among educated people at least as anyone 
of his time. His romantic career and agitated life, due partly 
to his OAvn lack of self control, yet vindicated by the rejection 
of the bribes of Napoleon and the favors of the Austrian 
Government though these sent him into exile, brought pub- 
licity for his work. The Return to Nature, which he had only 
begun, was completed by Manzoni, whose I Promessi Sposi 
came to be one of the most read hooks of the time. He well 
deserves to be named beside Goethe and Byron and Sir Walter 
Scott and his novel went through many editions in every 
important European language and still continues to he read 
Py all those who have any pretense to a knowledge of literature 
outside of their own countries. LITERATURE 
European reputation scarcely less wide and an influence 
even more deep, though in an ethical rather than a literary 
sense, was acquired by Silvio Pellico’s Le Mie Prigioni. The 
author told the story of his ten years’ imprisonment in such 
simple, yet natural terms in such a realistic yet self-pity- 
shunning manner that he won the hearts of all readers. After 
a hundred years it still continues to be read in most languages 
and very few who have read it once fail to go back and read 
it again and again. In its own time it was one of the most 
famous books of the early nineteenth century and it proved to 
have a great moral force for his native Italy in her darkest 
day when Austrian domination was so cruel. His long im- 
prisonment broke his spirit and probably crippled his genius, 
though his tragedy of Francesca da Rimini was very much 
admired and still continues to be read by those who want an 
Italian version from a real poet of the sad tale of that young 
Francesca, whose story at the beginning of the Divina Corn- 
media has so well been called ‘ ‘ the lily in the lion’s mouth. ’ ’ 
Italy’s greatest poet of the nineteenth century, Leopardi, 
is also one of Europe’s greatest poets of the period. Few 
men have ever presented a more perfect wedding of sense and 
form than Leopardi and it has well been said that the trans- 
cendant excellence of his scanty literary performances raised 
Italian literature to a heighth which it had not attained since 
Tasso. Two other Italian poets of the nineteenth century have 
come to be world characters known beyond the bounds of 
Italy. One of these is Carducci, the national poet of united 
Italy, whose lyrical genius has been declared to have “poured 
new blood into the veins of Italian poetry.” Carducci has 
abounding vigor combined with a devotion to form that makes 
him a model for modern poets. Besides achieving distinction 
as a poet Carducci was a distinguished critic, especially cap- 
able in his judgment of foreign literature. While an intense 
patriot he had a thorough going appreciation of the literary 
work of other nations. His greatest rival and his successor as 
the representative poet of Italy is D ’Annunzio, better known 
as a novelist than a poet, but undoubtedly one of the greatest WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
poets alive in onr day, unfortunately poor as it is in poetry. 
In our time comparatively few writers are known to any 
extent beyond the bounds of their own countries for their 
literary work and during the nineteenth and twentieth cen- 
turies Italy has had more of these than probably any other 
country. D’Annunzio’s novels are almost the only novels of 
our time which are very generally read in other languages 
besides that in which they are written. Italy has another 
novelist in our day, almost as well known as D’Annunzio, 
Yerga to whom the story that forms the libretto to Cavalleria 
Rusticana, popular in the European countries at least, is due. 
At all times then Italy has had literary men of distinc- 
tion always exerting a deep influence on other countries and 
much more often well known beyond the bounds of their own 
country than probably the writers of any other nationality. 
When it is recalled that literature is the one mode of artistic 
excellence in which Italy does not surpass the other nations, at 
least it is clear that even in this the peninsula has not fallen 
behind and that the power to foster genius is just as manifest 
in this department of human expression as in all of the others. EDUCATION 
ORDINARILY it is assumed that Italy’s most important 
contribution to world culture is in the arts, but sur- 
prising as it may be to many people unaccustomed to think 
of the Italians as pioneer educators in nearly every depart- 
ment in modern times, it is probable that the world’s greatest 
debt is owed to them for what they have done for education 
and scholarship. Indeed so much has been done that separate 
chapters have to be devoted to these two subjects in spite 
of their very intimate relations. In practically every period 
of modern development until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century when, after the Napoleonic wars, for political 
reasons rather readily understood, there was a lapse, Italy 
has been the leader of the world in education. In every 
phase of the intellectual life of humanity Italy has not only 
developed education for her own people to a high degree, 
but has impressed her academic thought deeply upon other 
nations. This is true not only for modern history since 
the Renaissance but ever since the decline of Greece, and is 
true not only as regards arts and letters, but also the 
sciences, pure and applied, and the ethical as well as the 
physical sciences, besides for medicine and surgery. 
The Romans took up Greek education which had been 
rather suggestive than systematic, and gave it a definite 
organization. They laid down the principles on which our 
modern education was to a very great extent to be developed. 
Cicero and Quintillian made important contributions to the 
theory of education and gave valuable hints as to its practice 
in what may be called the cultural departments of human 
knowledge at least. During the earlier Middle Ages Italy WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
succeeded not only in keeping alive the flickering flame of 
culture and passing it on from generation to generation, 
but as we shall see, began that organization of education 
which was to mean so much for all the subsequent centuries 
to the modern world. Only a superficial knowledge of the 
history of what has been so well called the humanities is 
needed to enable us to appreciate the truth of this. 
In the Middle Ages Italians were the great leaders in a 
magnificent period of artistic, intellectual, literary and 
educational accomplishment. In the Renaissance Italy 
taught all the nations of Europe. In modern science though 
this is sometimes thought of as a field of human effort not 
cultivated to any considerable extent by Italy, an Italian 
stands as the founder in nearly every important scientific 
department, while some of the most important of those born 
out of Italy who have laid deep foundations in sciences were 
educated down in the peninsula, or owed a preponderating 
part of their intellectual development to her schools or her 
writers. 
The first great series of educational institutions in 
modern Italy that is after the breaking up of the Roman 
empire, were the Benedictine monasteries. There was a time 
not so long ago when in English speaking countries the im- 
pression was very prevalent, that monks were rather im- 
practical individuals lacking in any right sense of initiative 
who had retired from the world because they were unwilling 
to face its trials and difficulties and labors and who were 
eking out at worst a lazy and at best a lackadaisical life, in 
the easy going secluded existence of the cloister. Our genera- 
tion has changed all this false impression as the result of 
even a little real knowledge of monasticism. When the 
barbarians had overrun the Roman empire and destroyed its 
institutions of learning and culture, and themselves without 
interest in the things of the spirit were preventing others 
from occupying themselves with the intellectual life in the 
cities and towns, monasticism came to provide a series of 
quiet retreats where men might cultivate the spiritual and 
98 EDUCATION 
the intellectual life in peace. There was sufficient required 
occupation of body to ensure good health and the training 
of hand and eye that developed men roundly and secured 
the evolution of the arts and crafts. 
St. Benedict founded his monastery, wrote his rules for 
his monks, and at a time when that was sadly needed restored 
the dignity of labor, for everyone who entered the monas- 
tery, prince or peasant, had to work with his hands; yet at 
the same time he provided men with a magnificent oppor- 
tunity to develop every intellectual interest. His monasteries 
became great centres of civilization and of education but 
also of social work and opportunities to rise. The peasants 
who were attached to the monasteries learned to know how 
happy life might be “under the crozier” and their sons and 
daughters became the foster children of the Benedictines. 
Benedict’s foundations gradually spread throughout Italy 
and proved to be oases in the desert of the barbarous life of 
the time, where the traveler through life, wary with trouble 
over many things, might find peace and the opportunity for 
his own development. It was in these institutions that satis- 
faction with life was appreciated as coming from within and 
not from without, from a man’s own faculties and not from 
external pleasures. When life in the cities had become a 
dreary round of self seeking pursuit of the trivial, no wonder 
that monasticism spread rapidly all over the world. 
If Italy had done nothing else but give the world this 
great institution of monasticism, establishing it, organizing 
it, developing it according to the needs of men of various 
places and times, and demonstrating its ability to be a great 
help to mankind, the debt of civilization to her would be 
very great. Every mode of the intellectual life was fostered 
by the Benedictine monasteries and by other monastic 
institutions which arose in imitation of them and many of 
which had their origin in Italy. Nor must it be thought 
that the monastic foundations benefitted only the men for as 
we shall see in the chapter on The Women of Italy, what 
Benedict did for the men his sister Scholastics did for the WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
women, and with quite as great success. The Benedictine 
nunneries in Italy became the homes of feminine culture and 
education and then were spread throughout all of Europe. 
Women members of the nobility who did not want to marry, 
or whose inclinations were toward intellectual or spiritual 
life and who found the ordinary home life too distracting 
for their peace of mind, could secure refuges for the quiet 
of contemplation and meditation and study in the nunneries. 
Even in such so called “dark ages” as the tenth and 
eleventh and twelfth centuries, we have writings of these 
Benedictine nuns preserved for us, dramas, political and 
medical essays, chronicles, fiction, legends, which show 
us how intense wras the intellectual life among the women of 
the time and how much they were doing for themselves. 
The real significance of all this feminine intellectual life that 
came about through Italian influence was missed until recent 
years, but now there is so much that deserves to be said 
about it that it has to be reserved for the special chapter on 
Feminine Education. 
Taken all in all these monastic institutions for men and 
women founded in Italy and developing to their highest 
extent down there, for a thousand years, until the very 
beginnings of modern life, were the greatest factor for 
education and through that for civilization and culture as 
well as for the diffusion of happiness among mankind. 
Monasticism was not without its abuses. No human institu- 
tion ever is. These abuses, however, were comparatively 
rare and the institution carried with it its own compensatory 
factors by which reformation could be brought about from 
within and reforms actually were instituted over and over 
again, when a great saint came to renew the spirit of the 
religious life or the Church authorities recognized the need 
of it. When the confiscation of the monasteries came the 
excuses put forward for the spoliation were never the real 
motives. It was not because the monks were idle and lazy, 
nor because corruption had spread among them, but because 
in the course of generations the value of the unremunerated 
100 EDUCATION 
labor of so many men, together with the gifts of those who 
appreciated the great social work they were doing, accumu- 
lated to such an extent as to prove a temptation for selfish 
rulers and politicians intent on securing riches for them- 
selves. 
It was the presence of this large body of men most of 
them well educated, but all trained to work out whatever 
they considered their duty without question of personal 
remuneration, that enabled the Church to begin in Italy that 
organization of education extending to all classes which 
the modern researches into the history of education have so 
surprisingly revealed. The first elementary schools were 
those of the monasteries. Later there came town and village 
schools all of eccelesiastical origin under the direction of the 
Church and usually taught by members of the religious or- 
ders. As early as 774 there was a school law enacted in Italy 
that each Bishop should found an ecclesiastical school and 
appoint a competent teacher to instruct “according to the 
tradition of the Romans.” Pope Eugene II ordained in 826 
that efficient teachers should be provided for the Cathedral 
Schools wherever needed, who were to lecture “on the 
sciences and the liberal arts with zeal.” The Council held 
in Rome in 1079 under Pope Gregory VII passed a decree 
that “ all bishops shall have the liberal arts taught at their 
churches.” The Lateran synod, a century later (1179) en- 
acted “in as much as it behooves the Church like a loving 
mother to see to it that poor children who can not count 
upon the support of their parents should not lack oppor- 
tunity of learning to read and make progress, there should 
at every Cathedral Church be given an adequate wage to the 
teacher who is to teach the clerics of the Church and the 
poor pupils gratuitously.” 
This organization of popular education in the Middle 
Ages in Italy is often ignored or fails to be appreciated. 
The extent to which education was developed even long 
before the end of the Middle Ages would perhaps be best 
appreciated from Villani’s computation that fully 12,000 
101 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
children out of a population of 90,000 which Florence con- 
tained in Dante’s time, attended school. The large majority 
received only an elementary training and the apprentice 
system supplemented school life. How much of real educa- 
tion the apprenticeship involved and how truly it represented 
a thoroughly practical continuation school at this time will 
be readily understood from the magnificent achievements 
which made Florence’s artisans so famous. Brunelleschi 
and Donatello were only goldsmith’s apprentices and many 
others of the great painters and sculptors of the Renais- 
sance received their technical training and their artistic 
initiative from the environment of one of these Italian work- 
shops. Our generation is engaged in trying to learn how it 
may secure some of this same genuine education of eye and 
hand as well as of mind for its children. 
Toward the end of the Middle Ages some of the Bene- 
dictine monasteries began to assume forms which remind us 
of modern educational institutions. The famous Monastery 
at Monte Cassino which for so many centuries was the 
centre of learning and intellectual incentive is a typical 
instance. Here not only the Benedictines themselves, but 
many of the sons of the nobility of Italy obtained the oppor- 
tunity for education while the monastery itself by the copy- 
ing of books, by communication with other monasteries of 
the East and the West and by the intercourse of scholarly 
members of the order became a great clearing house of the 
intellectual life of the time. 
Not far away at Salerno under Benedictine influence 
there came into existence the first modern university. This 
obtained greater reputation for its medical department than 
for any other. To this first modern medical school flocked 
students from all over the world and professors from every 
nation. According to the tradition which is probably not 
literally true, but which is veritably symbolic of early con- 
ditions, the first professors were a great physician from 
North Africa and another from Asia Minor, associated with 
no less distinguished colleagues one a Jew, the other an 
102 EDUCATION 
Arab. This story typifies the world influence which is recog- 
nized to have made itself felt in Salerno from the very be- 
ginning. 
The medical school at Salerno is the first university 
department of modern times. It reached its climax of effi- 
ciency during the twelfth century. From this period we 
have a series of textbooks of the teachers and the transla- 
tions and compilations which were made for the use of 
students, and we know not a little of the many patients who 
came to be treated there and of the professors who went 
out from the South Italian centre of learning to teach at 
other universities. The best known of their teachers is 
Constantine Africanus, born in Africa a traveling scholar in 
the Orient during his earlier life, but whose productive later 
years to a fine old age, were all spent under the fostering 
care of Italy. Nor was his a solitary work, for we have the 
books of many other Salernitan teachers. Perhaps the most 
interesting feature of the education at Salerno was that the 
department of women’s diseases was placed entirely in the 
charge of women and licenses to practise medicine were 
issued to them freely and in large numbers not only for the 
neighborhood of Salerno itself but for Naples and all of 
Southern Italy at this time. Of this subject more is said in 
the chapter on Great Italian Women. 
Salerno has a definite place in the evolution of medicine 
because it represents a reaction against the older Arabic 
medicine with many of its far fetched theories and its tend- 
ency to sophistication of treatment. Above all the Salernitan 
School insisted on getting back to the simple natural 
remedial measures, air, exercise, diet and the use of water 
while avoiding the polypharmacy of the Arabs. The popular 
medical book of that time, the famous Regimen Sanitatis 
Salernitanae, is one of the best in the sense of most sensible, 
popular books on medicine ever issued. It went through 
some three hundred editions not a few of them in the nine- 
teenth century and is still often quoted. This kind of 
103 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
contribution to popular education is just the sort of thing that 
is not ordinarily expected from medieval Italy. 
IIow much the Benedictine monks who were prominent 
in their influence in the school had to do with all this intel- 
lectual development we are not sure, but there are some very 
good reasons for thinking that they were more largely 
responsible for it than any other agents. The best known of 
the teachers of medicine at Salerno Constantine Africanus 
became a monk in the monastery of Monte Cassino and wrote 
his great books for which hs is famous in that peaceful 
refuge. His dearest friend had been the Abbot Desiderius, 
the head of the monastery and doubtless Constantine had 
retired to Monte Cassino with the idea that they two as con- 
genial friends would spend the rest of their lives there 
together, but only a few years after he entered the monastery 
Abbot Desiderius much against his will was made Pope 
under the name of Victor III and while he encouraged 
Constantine in every way in his work the two friends were 
separated for the rest of their lives. 
Salerno thus became the centre of the educational world 
of that time and the eyes of scholars all over were turned 
there. Duke Robert of Normandy and many members of 
the Anglo-Norman nobility went down to Salerno to be 
treated and there are traditions of noble and royal visitors 
from Germany and France and it is easy to understand how 
the reputation of the school would spread under such cir- 
cumstances. The Italian tradition thus established flourished 
down to modern times. Men came to think that when they 
could not obtain facilities for higher education in their own 
country Italy was the place to seek them. This reputation 
continued practically until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. During the last half century Germany has been the 
home of post-graduate teaching to which the scholars of 
many countries turned when they had exhausted the educa- 
tional opportunities of their native country. Before that for 
half a century France was the mecca of graduates seeking 
further knowledge. During all the seven centuries before 
104 EDUCATION 
the nineteenth however Italy was almost the exclusive home 
of the world’s greatest post-graduate teaching in every 
department, in medicine, in law, in the biological sciences 
generally, in surgery, in mathematics, in astronomy, in 
philosophy and theology, in all that related to ecclesiastical 
matters, as it has been since the Renaissance time in the 
classics and all that that term includes. 
After the University of Salerno came Bologna the 
nucleus of which was a law school under Irnerius the 
great medieval authority on Roman Law. This law school 
came into prominence at the end of the twelfth century. 
Before the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century 
there was a school of philosophy, of medicine, and of the- 
ology to complete the university. At the end of the thir- 
teenth century Bologna had become as famous for medicine 
as for law at the beginning. The University has continued 
for seven centuries to be one of the most important educa- 
tional institutions in the world. There have been many 
periods when Bologna was the most important University 
not only of Italy, but of the civilized world. There have 
been others when the institution has fallen below the highest 
standards, yet never at any time has the educational work 
of Bologna been trivial. Never for instance did it fall as 
low in its provision of educational opportunities as Oxford 
during the eighteenth century, or of some of the German 
Universities after the religious disturbances which followed 
the Reformation. Bologna, Paris, Oxford have been the 
three great names in university history and while Bologna 
is probably more famous than either of the others for posi- 
tive achievements, she has less of negative moments in her 
history to her discredit. 
After Bologna came a whole series of university founda- 
tions in Italy, some of them made very soon after that of 
Bologna and all of them representing the finest kind of 
aspirations after the higher education. Padua is the most 
important of these and for over six centuries has been a 
thoroughly cosmopolitan rather than a municipal or even 
105 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
national university, with a world appeal to students. In 
medicine Padua was during many centuries the leader of 
the world. Many a foreign student has come to Padua to 
secure opportunities for anatomical, physiological, medical, 
surgical, clinical work that could not be obtained at home, 
and he has gone back to spread the light of Padua’s knowl- 
edge and methods of teaching. Some of the greatest dis- 
coverers in all branches of medicine are on the rolls of Padua 
either as students or professors. Vesalius, Linacre, Harvey, 
Steno, these alone would be enough to glorify any university, 
but they are but a quartet of the greatest and Padua has 
many hundreds of foreign students whose names are immor- 
tal in the history of medicine. Padua came under the author- 
ity of Venice and the Venetian Republic was liberal in its 
provision for education and still more liberal in its assurance 
of freedom of teaching at the university and its encourage- 
ment of original wrork and investigations of all kinds. Any 
country in Europe might well deem itself rich in educational 
influence in history if it had but Padua’s record. It must 
not be forgotten that Padua is but one of a score of universi- 
ties in Italy and while it is one of the greatest, with Bologna 
indeed as its only serious rival in prestige, all the other 
Italian universities did good work and some of them, as the 
University of Naples or the Sapienza at Rome or the Univer- 
sity of Pavia are second in rank only to their greatest 
Italian rivals. 
Lest perhaps it should be thought that Padua’s influ- 
ence was only in the Middle Ages or perhaps did not reach 
beyond the Renaissance it might be well to note that the 
prestige of the University of Padua in the seventeenth cen- 
tury and its powrer of attracting foreign students, which 
could only have persisted because of its maintenance of 
high standards and provision of the best facilities for educa- 
tion, is evident from the fact that in the Archives of the 
University we find, during this century, such familiar names 
as Ramsey, Bannerman, Dixon, Short, Callahan, Roper, Leith, 
Anderson, Roberston, Campbell, sa well as many others that 
[i°6] EDUCATION 
seem strange enough at an Italian University in the century 
after the Reformation. They indicate that men from all 
three of the countries of Great Britain and Ireland were 
willing to make what was then the very long journey to 
Padua, far more arduous than the trip to Europe for Ameri- 
can students even from the distant West, in order to secure 
the opportunities for the higher education presented by that 
university and enjoy the incentive of the contact with great 
teachers which the greatest university of that time pro- 
vided. 
Italy was the cradle of the universities as we knew them 
then, she made the mould in which the human mind has been 
cast ever since. In doing so the Italians created practically 
all the distinguishing traits of academic institutions as they 
have developed in modern times. The four distinctive fea- 
tures of university life or indeed of the life of any institution 
of learning are (1) the organization of a curriculum, (2) the 
insitution of examinations, (3) the conferring of degrees, 
and (4) the co-ordination of teachers and students of differ- 
ent departments. All these are of Italian origin. They are 
the heritage of the modern world from medieval Italy due 
directly to the marvelous genius for the practical organiza- 
tion of human life in all its interests, but especially the intel- 
lectual life which Italy possessed. The curriculum of studies, 
the seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium held 
sway in higher education for over 1,000 years. It was un- 
known in antiquity. It has often been misunderstood and 
even referred to contemptuously in the modern time, but not 
by those who really knew it and its workings in detail. 
Even Huxley is on record with the declaration that the 
curriculum of no modern university was so well calculated 
to develop the many sided mind of men as this medieval 
trivium and quadrivium. Examinations, the second of these 
Italian inventions in education seem very obvious now, but 
they represented a great invention and discovery in their 
own time. Degrees are now so commonplace as to be very 
much abused, but the conferring of the degree as a formal 
107 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
reception of the student into full membership of the academic 
guild was quite literally “ a patent of academic nobility’’ 
which brought distinction, privileges and immunities as 
well as special titles. It introduced the individual at once to 
his academic dignity and wras a notable advance in university 
organization. The organization of the faculty as such with 
the interdependence and coordination of teaching which this 
implied and the development of cooperation for disciplinary 
purposes which it naturally involved, is another of these 
wonderful contributions of the Italian talent for organiza- 
tion. The world owes a very large debt for it, though until 
comparatively recent years this indebtedness has been almost 
entirely lost sight of and even now is properly appreciated 
only by the comparatively few who have taken the time to 
study the history of universities with reasonable fullness. 
Practically every important detail of our modern Uni- 
versity system had its origin in the medieval universities 
and most of these origins can be traced very definitely to 
Italy. It is surprising down to what minutiae of curriculum 
and discipline and social life this old-time influence can be 
followed. President Stanley Hall in his address on 
“Medieval and Modern Universities” delivered at the cele- 
bration of the 25th anniversary of the Catholic University of 
America, May 1915 points out that the fraternities and 
other student societies of to-day here in America as well as 
the Landsmannschaften and student corps of the German 
universities originated in the so-called “nations” of the old 
universities whose organization at Bologna meant so much 
for university life and was imitated elsewhere. He also 
points out that our honor system, academic vesture, the 
docent system, initiation ceremonies, hazing, indeed all the 
phases of student life in the modern time—except competi- 
tive athletics—are to be traced to medieval university cus- 
toms. The wearing of academic vesture is becoming more 
and more of a sacred custom, the debating clubs of the uni- 
versities of our day and even the organization of debates for 
various extramural societies as by the Universities of Wis- 
108 EDUCATION 
consin, are a repetition of the disputations so dear to the 
heart of the medieval Italians particularly. So that Italian 
medievalism is on the ascendant rather than on the wane in 
our universities until as Dr. Hall suggests “if we compare 
all this with Sheldon4 s compilation of student customs in this 
day and land we shall be struck with the ultra conservatism 
and the utter lack of originality on the part of modern 
students in this field.” 
Dr. Hall does not hesitate to say even that “while 
appropriations and endowments have vastly increased and 
brought with them centralization of control, student life has, 
until the recent athletic movement, added almost nothing 
not found in the early days of reaction from the strictness of 
cloistral rule, if indeed it has not lost much of its pristine 
freshness and romance. As to the relation of studies to life 
and to the social, political and religious institutions of their 
time, no university of our own day has been more practical 
than its medieval forerunners. The ideals of academic youth 
are often said to be the best material for prophecy or the 
the best embodiment of the Zeitgeist, and we are often told 
that as Oxford inclines so England will go a generation 
later; and so as these medieval universities led, Europe 
followed. There is always a sense in which a university does 
not consist of buildings, endowments or numbers of students, 
but is a state of mind. It is found whenever a great teacher 
and a few gifted pupils are gathered together. In all these 
respects the more we know of the medieval universities the 
more we shall see that we owe them.” 
Not only the universities themselves are of interest, 
however, in the history of education, but many of the inci- 
dents of their work show how much was due to Italy for the 
great intellectual development of the Middle Ages which 
now instead of “dark ages” we are coming to call the 
“bright ages.” With the beginning of formal university 
life as we now know it, during the first half of the thirteenth 
century, there came the foundation of the mendicant friars 
which was to mean so much for the education of all classes WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
during the subsequent centuries. Their work was felt above 
all in Italy where indeed St. Francis made his foundation 
and where some of the greatest of the work of St. Dominic 
developed. These orders realized very soon the place that 
universities were coming to have in the life of the people of 
the time and they proceeded to take advantage of it. As a con- 
sequence some of the most distinguished of the teachers of 
the universities belonged to these orders. Alhertus Magnus, 
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Roger 
Bacon are typical names taken almost at random of the dis- 
tinguished teachers and waiters who were members of the 
mendicant friars. What these new orders did above all was 
to provide an opportunity for the sons of even the very poor 
to obtain even the highest education if they had the desire 
and the talent for it. Members of all classes entered these or- 
ders and were educated according to the ability they pos- 
sessed. This new departure in education which meant so 
much was almost entirely Italian in origin: Italy continued 
to be the great home of the mendicant friars for centuries 
and the centre from which they were governed. 
Most of the important auxiliaries of education as we now 
know them had their origin in Italy. Among these the most 
valuable are academies so-called and the history of academies 
has its most significant early development in Italy but we 
have had to reserve their story for the chapter on Scholar- 
ship. For the modern world museums had their origin there, 
not only in all that regards the arts as everyone knows, but 
also as few realize in what concerns the sciences. Father 
Kircher’s museum founded over 250 years ago, to which the 
Jesuits from all over the world sent various objects of inter- 
est is still in existence. As a matter of fact most of the 
Italian Churches and monasteries were from very early 
Christian times veritable museums, that is housing places of 
materials associated with the arts to which the ancients 
attributed the patronage of the muses. In them great works 
of art often of high distinction, always of significant edu- 
cational value for the community were on exhibition. CATHEDRAL, MILAN, ITALY EDUCATION 
The manifest conviction throughout Italy was that great 
art should not be the exclusive or even limited possession of 
private individuals, but should be where the public could 
easily get at it and where indeed it is not only tempted to 
come to see it but as far as possible inevitably bound to he 
brought in intimate association with it while engaged in 
the fulfillment of other duties. Accordingly the Italian 
spirit was to have the great pictures painted not for private 
collections but for the churches, monasteries, hospitals and 
town halls. In these public places they were not only always 
easily available for educational effect, but indeed fairly 
thrust on people’s attention to the inevitable betterment of 
taste and provision of high intellectual pleasure. 
In science the anatomical theatres and the laboratories 
of various kinds are of Italian invention and a great many of 
the technical adjuvants—the dissecting room for so long the 
only laboratory available for medical students is a typical 
example—come from Italian intitiative. While a group 
organized for the discussion of a problem in education is now 
usually spoken of as a Seminar — the German term for a 
modern German reintroduction into education, — it was in 
Italy that this custom first orginated in the formal disputa- 
tions organized by the students of scholastic philosophy. The 
institution was developed finely to the great advantage of 
the members in medieval Italy. It is indeed a by-product of 
that interchange of argument on important questions insisted 
on by the great teachers of scholastic philosophy, because it 
refines and renders knowledge accurate. Circles circula as 
they were called in medieval Latin, still have their place in 
the teaching of Catholic philosophy by a direct heritage from 
the old Italian schools of philosophy. 
After the Middle Ages came the Renaisssance and still 
Italy maintained her primacy in education and the intel- 
lectual life. The story of Renaissance education in Italy has 
attracted wide attention in our time. There have never been 
more kindly charming scholars as teachers, whose pupils 
thought more of them or who served to arouse more TVIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
enthusiasm for education, than those of the Italian Renais- 
sance. The life of Vittorino da Feltre has been written over 
and over again in every country in Europe in recent years and 
there have been several lives of him in English during the 
past generation. The story of this son of poor, though noble, 
parents who went to Padua as a student where he maintained 
himself by teaching students younger than himself and by 
waiting on the solitary professor of mathematics, who how- 
ever declined to instruct him except for payment in money, 
is indeed interesting. Having acquired a magnificent educa- 
tion for himself Vittorino insisted when summoned to Mantua 
by the Gonzagas that poor students should be allowed to 
attend lectures in the Palace School free and that women 
should have the same opportunities as men. No educator in 
history has been so forward looking or so thoroughly com- 
prehensive. 
It is often concluded that the insistence in recent years 
on the necessity for training of body as well as of mind is a 
new development in education. On the other hand the 
question of religious education and of the necessity for up- 
lift of soul and of heart which is so much under discussion 
at the present time is often presumed to be a dawning hori- 
zon of educational evolution. The story of Vittorino da 
Feltre’s work shows how clearly he anticipated these sup- 
posedly modern ideas in education. He insisted on caring 
as much for the bodies as for the minds of his pupils and be- 
lieved it his duty to lift up hearts and cultivate souls as 
well as train memories and impart information, and the more 
one knows of the details of his school wrork, the easier it is to 
understand why he has been looked up to as probably the 
greatest school-master of all history. 
In his school at Mantua as we have said, poor boys of 
special promise were gratuitously educated, together with 
the sons of wealthy parents who could afford to pay the usual 
fees. Altogether there were some sixty or seventy scholars 
and no matter what their rank they were under the self 
same discipline. All played together, and Vittorino’s school EDUCATION 
must have been a magnificent training in essential humanity 
and in thorough going sympathy of all the different classes 
of citizens with each other so far as a school could affect that 
consummation. Vittorino believed in making schools a pleas- 
ant and not at all a gloomy or forbidding place and his 
schoolhouse received the name of the “Pleasant House,” and 
was situated in the midst of playing fields on the slopes above 
the Mincio. 
No more interesting, broadly human traditions gather 
round any even of the great English public schools than have 
come to us with regard to this great Mantuan School of 
Vittorino. He spent some twenty-two years as a school 
master. During those memorable years, Woodward, who has 
made a special study of Vittorino’s work, declares that “He 
established and perfected the first great school of the Renais- 
sance -• a school whose spirit, curriculum, and method justify 
us in regarding it as a landmark of critical importance in the 
history of classical education. It was indeed the great typical 
school of the humanities.” Professor Sandys of St. John’s 
College, Cambridge in his Harvard Lectures on The Revival 
of Learning (Cambridge University Press, 1905) to whom we 
owe many of these details, has told the story of how Vittorino’s 
first care was to modify the physical constitution of the two 
sons of the Marquis of Mantua and although they called for 
very distinct and indeed quite opposite treatment Vittorino 
succeeded by nice discrimination in making them healthy, 
manly fellows. “Both of them unhappily had been spoiled; 
the elder was so fat that he could hardly walk; ‘he moved as 
if he had been made in one piece’ (Creighton) ; the younger 
was attenuated and awkward; but the skill of Vittorino soon 
brought them to normal proportions.” 
These are the sort of problems that are usually supposed 
to have been recognized as clamoring for solution from the 
school master only in our time. Vittorino, however, led his 
pupils in their athletic exercises “and his heart rejoiced when 
their shouts went up to heaven and all was filled with dust.” 
fie believed it important to arouse in his boys the spirit of 
113 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
bravery and to harden them for the standing of pain and 
discomfort and also to make them indifferent to heat and 
cold. Perhaps the best tribute to his completeness and balance 
as a school master is to be found in the fact that though thus 
much interested in the physical side of his students, he accom- 
plished so much with them from the physical side as to 
make it rather difficult to understand how he got the time to 
do it all. 
For his course of reading of the classic authors was very 
broad and extensive. The Latin authors studied in his school 
included Virgil, and Lucan with parts of Horace, Ovid and 
Juvenal, besides Cicero and Quintillian, Sallust and Curtius, 
Caesar and Livy. The Greek authors were Homer, Hesiod, 
Pindar and the dramatists, with Herodotus, Xenophon and 
Plato, Isocrates and Demosthenes, Plutarch and Arrian. It is 
no wonder that he had no time for the writing of books or the 
editing of special editions of the authors. He graved his 
influence deeply on the generations to come through his 
pupils. Federigo, the famous soldier and scholar who founded 
the Library in the Ducal Palace at Urbino one of the first 
of modern book collectors was one of these. Another Avas 
Leonieenus, his successor whose grammar was widely used. A 
third was Perotti, the author of the first large Latin grammar 
and Giovanni Andrea who was the editor of the first printed 
editions of as many as eight of the Latin classics:—Caesar, 
Gellius, Livy, Lucan, Virgil, Ovid and The Letters and 
Speeches of Cicero. In his splendid edition of Livy, Andrea 
paid a special tribute to his master Vittorino. If Italy had 
contribute no other great school master than Vittorino the 
world’s debt to her in education would be very great. 
Scarcely less important in the history of education is the 
name of Guarino of Verona an older man by eight years than 
Vittorino to whom he taught Greek. He lived for some four- 
teen years after his pupil, attaining as did so many of these 
busy scholars an advanced age. Guarino was the better schol- 
ar though not so influential a teacher. He had a wider knowl- 
edge of Greek, a more minute familiarity with details of 
114 EDUCATION 
textual criticism in Latin, but while Yittorino declared that a 
learned man without goodness was dangerous and tried to 
educate his pupils to be good citizens, to serve God in Church 
and state, Guarino seems to have concentrated much of his 
attention, as Sandys says, on the narrower aim of producing 
clever and eloquent representatives of pure as opposed to 
applied scholarship. Scholars flocked to Guarino from all over 
Europe, his English pupils included a Bishop of Ely and a 
Bishop of Bath, a Dean of Wells and a Dean of Lincoln, the 
Hungarian Bishop Janus Pannonius eulogized him as his 
master in more than a thousand hexameters and he had any 
number of distinguished Italian pupils including especially 
a number of scholarly ladies. Guarino won the hearts of his 
pupils quite as Yittorino did and his teaching remained a 
precious influence on character as well as mind for the rest 
of life These two Italian schoolmasters have been the living 
study of serious educators ever since who have felt that here 
indeed were models for all time. 
One of the most important elements of Italy’s contribu- 
tion to education in the later Renaissance time is the organ- 
ization of the Jesuits at Rome and their constantly existing 
focus of influence there. St. Ignatius himself was not an 
Italian but a Spaniard, but traces of Italian influence are to 
be found in all the work of the Jesuits. Some of the greatest 
of the generals of the Jesuits and especially those who like 
Aquaviva and Yitelleschi, whose years of generalship were 
each more than thirty and whose influence on the order itself 
and particularly on its educational development was so pro- 
found, were Italians. Indeed the great majority of those who 
held this high office were of this nationality and perhaps 
there could be no higher compliment paid to Italy as an edu- 
cational centre than the fact that so many of its sons were 
chosen by the Jesuits of the world to this responsible position. 
Some of the leading spirits of the order and some of the great 
lights of its scholarship have at all times been Italians. 
The great Roman college of the Jesuits was the training 
school of a large number of scholars whose influence was 
115 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
widely felt throughout the world and whose learning in- 
cluded not only the sciences of theology and philosophy so 
often presumed to be the special subjects to which a religious 
order would devote itself but also Latin and Greek and above 
all science. Distinguished members of the order from all over 
the world were summoned to Rome to be the teachers in this 
great central school of the order. At all times the Jesuits 
have had some of the most distinguished scholars of the 
world at the Roman College and they have found there a 
favoring environment for their work in the ethical sciences 
or in physical science or in the elucidation of the texts of the 
classics or in the study of antiquities and of the oriental 
languages. To blot out of world publications the important 
contributions in many departments of human thought that 
had been made there would be indeed to leave a sad lacuna 
in human history. The story of some of their work has been 
told in the chapter on Italian Scholarship and in the chapters 
on Astronomy and Mathematics and the Biological Sciences. 
Other religious orders did not contribute so much in pro- 
portion as the Jesuits and yet gave many distinguished 
educators to the generations of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. 
As a matter of fact it can not be too often emphasized 
that as we have said, for the seven centuries before the 
eighteenth whenever men in any country in Europe wanted to 
secure special opportunities for education on a more extensive 
scale than they could find it at home, or to find training in 
special departments that were not as yet developed in their 
own countries they invariably went down to Italy for that 
purpose. This was as true for Guy de Chauliae the French- 
man in surgery, as for Nicholas of Cusa and Regiomontanus, 
the Germans, in mathematics and Copernicus the Pole in 
Astronomy as well as for Vesalius the Fleming in anatomy, 
Linacre and Caius the Englishmen in medicine and the clas- 
sics as for Harvey the Englishman in physiology and so on 
through the whole list. Italy was literally as Harvey greeted 
her when leaving Italy, the alma mater studiorum for the 
116 EDUCATION 
world, until Napoleon’s disturbance of European polities 
shifted the centre of interest to Paris for the first half of the 
nineteenth century and the rise of the Germanic Empire 
carried it up to Germany in our own time. Leyden was a 
serious rival of the Italian universities for a time in the 
seventeenth century, Paris was nearly always the second 
choice for students who could not go to Italy, but Padua, 
Bologna and Rome, continued for seven centuries to be the 
centre of educational interest for all the world, the magnet 
that attracted men occupied with practically all the branches 
of human knowledge. 
In the modern time Italian influence in education has not 
been less, but even greater if possible than in the long ago. 
How many of the ideas of modern education can be traced 
back to that Italian school master of the early part of the 
nineteenth century Pestalozzi. Thomas Davidson emphasized 
for Americans how much the philosopher and pedagogic psy- 
chologist Rosmini meant for the presentation of modern ideas 
of education. In the twentieth century the personage who 
for the moment at least attracted the most and widest atten- 
tion in education here in America was probably Madame 
Montessori. We may agree or disagree with any of the ideas 
of these educators, we may consider that they represent the 
passing fashion of a moment, or a climax of educational 
evolution, we may consider that their thought is trivial or of 
great significance, but we can not deny that their influence is 
widespread and that they have attracted more attention in 
their generation than any others. To be the leader of thought 
in one’s own generation in any particular department is as 
much as any human being can wish for and it is ever so much 
more than any except a chosen few are ever able to attain. 
Italy was the leader guide and master of the world in the 
mental world for all the centuries of modem history down to 
the nineteenth. Even in the last hundred years she has not 
ceased to be the home of men and women who think seriously 
on educational topics and attract the attention of the world 
by their work. 
117 FEMININE EDUCATION 
STRANGE as it must seen to those who are inclined to 
think that this is the first time in the world’s history 
that women have ever had the opportunity for the higher 
education and above all are quite persuaded that 
women’s only intellectual opportunities have developed in 
the Western countries in Europe and especially in our own 
America, Italy is quite as far ahead of all the world in the 
chapter of education for women as she is in the educational 
opportunities provided for men. During the ancient Roman 
times the women of Rome occupied very much the position 
they hold in our time. When Christianity came, their oppor- 
tunities were enhanced. During the earlier middle ages they 
shared all the privileges of the men even the franchise in 
most of the Italian cities. For the last eight centuries there 
has scarcely been a single generation when there has not 
been one or more distinguished women scholars teaching at 
Italian Universities, and while feminine education has had its 
ups and downs in the Peninsula, as has every mode of human 
culture everywhere in spite of the general delusion of con- 
stant progress, there has practically never been a period 
when a woman who genuinely wanted to get the higher edu- 
cation in Italy, no matter what the department in which she 
was interested, might not readily secure it. 
The traditions in Italy that had come down from the old 
Roman days were then distinctly favorable to feminine edu- 
cation. There is a confused very general impression that 
women of the ancient times, that is, before Christianity or 
indeed before the Renaissance, were as a rule kept very 
strictly to their domestic concerns and not allowed to take FEMININE EDUCATION 
any serious interest in either the intellectual or political life 
of their times. This is supposed to be particularly true as 
regards the pre-Christian period. In Greece it is true that 
women were almost entirely confined to their domestic life, set 
apart from all their husband’s outside interests, even dwell- 
ing in a particular portion of the house known as the women’s 
apartments and scarcely ever appearing in publie. As I have 
emphasized in my chapter on The Women of Two Republics* 
any such notion with regard to the women of Rome is utterly 
false. One of the first books put into the hands of boys who 
learn Latin is Lives of Illustrious Romans by Cornelius 
Nepos. This well known Latin author said in a passage that 
Ferrero the Italian historian declared in his book on The 
Women of the Caesars to be “one of the most significant in 
all the little work:— 
“Many things that among the Greeks are considered im- 
proper and unfitting are permitted by our customs. Is there by 
chance a Roman who is ashamed to take his wife to dinner 
away from home? Does it happen that the mistress of the 
house in any family does not enter the anterooms frequented 
by strangers and show herself among them ? Not so in Greece: 
there the woman accepts invitations only among families to 
which she is related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner 
part of the house which is called the gynaeceum, where only 
the nearest relatives are admitted.” 
To a great extent the women of Rome enjoyed all the 
liberties accorded to women in our time. Cornelia’s influence 
over her sons, the famous Gracchi, is well known. The mother 
lost both her boys, whom she had so proudly exhibited as her 
‘ jewels’ when they were younger, but she had the consolation 
of knowing that her sons had perished nobly in the struggle 
to secure and maintain the rights of the people and keep the 
few wealthy aristocrats from absorbing all the opportunities 
of life, leaving the great body of the people to almost hopeless 
poverty. It is now known that their careers were largely 
* Modern Progress and History, Fordham University Press, New York, 
1912. 
119 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
shaped by her influence and she kept the memory of their life 
and work from perishing, gathering around her in what was 
really a great political salon at Rome about the middle of the 
second century before Christ a group of men and women who 
deeply influenced Roman life. Abbott in his “Society and 
Politics in Ancient Rome” says that “Through her the cause 
for which Tiberius and Gaius( her sons) died, lived after their 
death. We may well believe that some of the men who carried 
on their reforms went out from this little circle about 
Cornelia.” 
Mrs. Putnam in her book The Lady in the chapter on 
Roman Ladies tells the story of what happened to the women 
of Rome when wealth flowed into the city and Eastern luxury 
came to replace Roman simplicity and through the Roman 
woman “society” was organized for the first time in Europe. 
Mrs. Putnam said “A woman of fashion, we are told, reck- 
oned it among her ornaments if it were said of her that she was 
well read and a thinker and that she wrote lyrics “worthy 
of Sappho.” She had her hired escort of teachers, indulged 
in literature, cultivated what is called “club life” in our 
time, read her verses to her companions and for her the vers 
de societe were expanded and the novel originated, for women 
became a large element in the reading public. We have not 
any great literary achievement from the women of the time, 
but this dearth of good literature by feminine writers was 
evidently not due to any lack of opportunity or of the leisure 
for it or of any deterrent discouragement. Indeed as Mrs. 
Putnam insists the intellectual life of the Roman women 
resembles that of the women of our own time so closely as to 
be almost identical in its apparent opportunities yet manifest 
failure. 
It was into this state of freedom for women that Chris- 
tianity came at Rome and while for several centuries because 
of persecution Christian lives were necessarily lived too en- 
tirely in the background for us to have any remains of the 
intellectual accomplishment of Christian women, we know 
that from the very beginning woman was encouraged rather FEMININE EDUCATION 
than discouraged in service for the community. The order 
of Deaconesses was established and training for the care of the 
ailing and for the Christian education of children was devel- 
oped. As soon as the Church acquired a position in which 
it could influence the public life of the time, we find in the 
association of St. Jerome with Eustochium and Paula definite 
evidence of the Christian feeling as regards feminine educa- 
tion. The foundation of the monastery at Jerusalem, where 
these learned women helped St. Jerome in his work and 
where many other women must have obtained the chance 
for similar tasks, can scarcely have been a unique example 
of the opportunity afforded thus early in Christianity for 
women who felt no inclination to marry and who had a 
vocation to the intellectual and spiritual life, to take it up, 
in this way, with guarantees for the future and for their old 
age. 
St. Jerome’s letters on the education of young girls show 
that Christianity was guarding morality, but encouraging 
rather than discouraging education for women. This was even 
more strikingly exemplified in Ireland in the next century 
when St. Brigid who founded the school at Kildare came to be 
reverenced only next to St. Patrick himself. When the coming 
of the Teutonic tribes into Italy, the Invasion of the bar- 
barians as it is called in history, occurred, there was for 
several centuries very little opportunity for anything like 
organized education or the cultivation of the intellectual life. 
Men lived perforce in the crippling grip of wars and polit- 
ical disturbances. As ever when an inferior civilization comes 
in intimate contact with a superior civilization, the ruder 
people take first the vices and only after a long interval as 
a rule the virtues of the higher state. The prepondering mass 
of the population from the North, where they had lived in 
savage simplicity, were carried away by the superficial satis- 
factions of civilization around them and indulged in all its 
pleasures without realizing its duties and the necessity for 
self control. It took centuries for the Church to bring the 
new order of things which resulted, genuinely under the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
influence of Christianity and in the meantime the intellectual 
life of Europe disappeared almost completely 
In these unfortunate conditions Benedict of Nursia, tired 
of the madding crowd, withdrew from the world where all was 
distraction and “the witchery of trifles which obscures good 
things ’ ’ and sought to live his life in peace and quiet, follow- 
ing the maxim of Descartes a full millennium later qui bene 
latuit bene vixit, he who has hidden himself well has lived 
well. Other young men, however, discovered Benedict’s secret 
of happiness and satisfaction with life and came to live near 
him finally in such numbers, that he had to organize his 
religious order and give it the constitution or rule which 
shows so clearly that he was a statesman as well as a saint 
and a scholar in the best sense of the word. 
Not long after the founding of the Benedictine monas- 
teries, Scholastica, Benedict’s sister established the Benedic- 
tine nunneries. Women asked and obtained similar oppor- 
tunities for the intellectual and the spiritual life as had been 
secured for men. The Benedictine nunneries became in 
sadly disturbed times homes of peace which provided for 
women, who desired it, the fullest opportunity for study and 
for occupation with the things of the spirit consonant with 
community life. Probably no institutions have ever been 
more misunderstood by a great many people of modern times 
than the nunneries. In English speaking countries particu- 
larly it has been the rule almost to assume that very little of 
any significance was done in convents, and that they were 
mainly homes for women without initiative and without de- 
sire or ambition to do anything in life, who sought in them 
shelter and peace in idleness or the chance to live their lives 
so occupied with trifles that practically nothing was accom- 
plished. None of all the false impressions of history could 
well be less true or less representative of realities than this. 
The nunneries were practically always as they are at the pres- 
ent time, busy hives of industry, with absolute regularity of 
life, early rising for a long day, short sleeping and every hour 
with its serious occupation assigned. Sometimes the nunneries FEMININE EDUCATION 
have fallen from this high estate and purpose, as every human 
institution is fated to do, but such descent has been ever 
so much rarer than is often thought. The most interesting 
reflection with regard to them is that it was always when 
nunneries were less strict, relaxed as it was said, that the 
numbers of the religious began to fall off, while every new 
reformation with tightening of the bonds of religious life 
increased the number who applied for admission. 
The nunneries of the Benedictines became like the monas- 
teries of their masculine brethren, centres of culture and 
education and above all opportunities for happiness for a 
great many people. The peasants who lived around the nun- 
neries were helped with their agriculture and many an 
abbess proved a magnificent administrator of immense estates. 
As a consequence they were often summoned for consultation 
by government authorities and letters of advice were asked 
from them. They were given a seat in the English Parliament 
and a place in the government of other countries, in the days 
before the Reformation, and going to a nunnery became as 
much a vocation with definite purposes in life as any worldly 
occupation of the modern time. A certain number of women 
at all times feel a disinclination to matrimony, or at least 
never meet the man to w'hom they would care to confide their 
happihess and the direction of their lives. As St. Teresa said 
of herself, they do not mind obedience but they hesitate about 
having to obey one man all their lives, and yet they recognize 
that if there is to be any true happiness in a home there must 
be one head of it. For this always large number of women 
in every generation, the Benedictine nunneries founded by St. 
Scholastica provided an excellent resource. 
In these nunneries they occupied themselves above all 
with the study of that fount of good letters, the Scriptures, but 
not with mere sterile critical study of the text, but with the 
deep spiritual human significance of the Holy Writ. It need 
scarcely be said how much that meant for genuine literature. 
It is a surprise for most people to know, that even in the tenth 
century when the intellectual life of Europe was, as a result WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of the transmigration of nations at its lowest ebb, a Benedic- 
tine nun, Hroswitha of Gandersheim wrote a series of dramas 
for the monks and nuns of the time. A still greater surprise, 
however, is to find the reason why she wrote these dramas. 
She says in her preface that so many of the religious of the 
t’me were reading Terence for the sake of his style as they 
declared, though there was so much in him that was disedify- 
ing and dangerous for Christians, that with the consent and 
encouragement of her superiors, she wrote these dramas in 
order to supply reading that would be less dangerous than 
that of the classic Roman dramatist. She also wrote a series 
of chronicles that are well known. The chronicles of the 
convents were kept just as faithfully as those of the monas- 
teries and represent important sources of history. They also 
did copying, their libraries* were famous and they provided 
opportunities for the girls of the lower and middle classes 
with intellectual aspirations to obtain mental training. All 
this organization of feminine opportunities is due to the 
Italian lady of the sixth century, Scholastica, who founded 
the Benedictine convents. 
IIow much this convent life meant in the provision of 
intellectual opportunities for women, in spite of the rather 
contemptuous feeling with which they have been regarded, 
has only begun to be properly appreciated generally in quite 
recent years when definite, special study has been devoted to 
them. The better the convents are known the more we have 
learned to recognize how much they accomplished and the 
more any given writer knows about them the higher is the 
praise of them. 
Lena Eckstein in her work on Women Under Monas- 
ticism went so far as to declare that ‘‘the career opened to 
* Miss Bateson has published the catalogue of the Brigittine Monastery 
(convent) of Syon in England, famous for its cope, one of the most beautiful 
pieces of needlework in the world. This is one of the few such catalogues 
preserved but it provides ample evidence of the breadth and be it said the 
depth of the intellectual interests of the nuns of the later middle ages. The 
Brigittines are named after St. Bridget, Queen of Sweden who founded them. 
In the days when Sweden and England were in close political relations and their 
royal families intermarried a number of Brigittine communities were founded in 
England. FEMININE EDUCATION 
the inmates of convents in England and on the Continent was 
greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the 
course of modern European history.” She ventured to say 
further “The contributions of nuns to literature as well as 
incidental remarks show that the curriculum of study in the 
nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks and 
embraced all available writing whether by Christian or 
profane authors. . . .Throughout the literary world as repre- 
sented by convents the use of Latin was general and made 
possible the even spread of culture in districts that were 
widely remote from each other and practically without inter- 
course. ’ ’ 
Miss Eckstein is not alone in this surprising estimation 
of the old nunneries — as it must be to ever so many people 
— for others who have studied the subject as seriously as she 
has done, share her views. 
Mrs. Emily James Putnam whose position for years as 
Dean of Barnard College the women’s department of Columbia 
University, N. Y., gives the assurance of her capacity to 
judge and at the same time would guarantee against any 
partial judgment in favor of the convents as compared with 
other and more modern educational institutions, has used 
some rather strong expressions with regard to the place 
held by the religious life in all that concerns feminine intel- 
lectual development in the past and she does not hesitate 
even to contrast it with our institutions of the present 
day and surprisingly enough more than a little to the dis- 
advantage of the modern college for women. In her book 
on The Lady (New York 1910, page 71) Mrs. Putnam said 
“No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the 
freedom and development that she enjoyed in the convent in 
early days. The modern college for women only feebly repro- 
duces it, since the college for women has arisen at a time when 
colleges in general are under a cloud. The Lady Abbess on 
the other hand, was part of the two great social forces of her 
time, feudalism and the Church. Great spiritual rewards 
and great worldly prizes were alike within her grasp. She WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
was treated as an equal by the men of her class, as is witnessed 
by letters we still have from Popes and emperors to abbesses. 
She had the stimulus of competition with men in executive 
(rapacity, in scholarship, and in artistic production, since her 
work was freely set before the general public; but she was 
relieved by the circumstances of her environment from the 
ceaseless competition in common life of woman with woman 
for the favor of the individual man. In the cloister of the 
great days, as on a small scale in the college for women to-day, 
women were judged by each other as men are everywhere 
judged by each other, for sterling qualities of head and heart 
and character.” 
The first formal beginning of feminine education of 
university scope came, as we have already said, down at Saler- 
no where the most important department of the university was 
the Medical School in which the special department of 
women’s diseases seems to have been placed in the hands of 
women. The presence of women at this university as teachers 
and evidently as pupils in large numbers, must be all the more 
surprising to most of our generation because the principal 
influence in the educational developments at Salerno came 
from the neighboring Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino 
and indeed the preliminary teaching at the University in the 
under-graduate courses seems to have been at all times almost 
entirely in the hands of the Benedictines. Monastic influence 
usually is supposed to be almost inevitably opposed to fem- 
inine education, but it is needless to say to those who know 
anything about the subject that any such supposition is quite 
without foundation in the history of monasticism. The 
Benedictine nuns were organized almost exactly like their 
brother monks of the order. The greatest possible indepen- 
dence was given to women in the monastic life, they elected 
their own superiors and they made their own rules, subject 
only to the approbation of the Church authorities as in the 
case of the men, managed their own worldly affairs and even 
sat in parliament and in various governmental bodies as 
representatives of their estates, exercising all the rights and FEMININE EDUCATION 
privileges, sometimes though very wrongly, supposed in our 
time to have always been monopolized by the men. 
In these Benedictine convents women were trained par- 
ticularly in the care of the ailing. Many of the houses were 
large, containing hundreds of inhabitants, sometimes situated 
at a considerable distance from a town, so that a physician’s 
services were not readily available and the infirmarians had 
to be especially trained in the care of the sick. The peasants 
on the convents’ estates also looked to their religious friends 
for help in times of sickness and the monastery and nunnery 
gardens always contained the herbs and simples from which 
the favorite herbal medicines of the time were made. It might 
be thought that the intruction afforded these infirmarians 
would be of the slightest and that they would depend on a 
body of traditions that meant very little for true medicine. 
The most important works that we possess from these old 
Benedictine nunneries however, is the Liber Simplicis Medi- 
cinal and Liber Compositae Medicinae written by the Abbess 
Hildegarde of Gandershiem, which has been declared by 
good authorities to be the most scientific work of the century 
in which it was written, the twelfth.* She gathered together 
information that had been accumulating in convents along 
the Rhine for many generations, added much of her own and 
published it. What nuns did in Germany however was only 
a repetition of what had long been the custom in Italy, for 
the German Benedictine convents were foundations from 
Italy. It is not too much to assume then that the same state 
of things prevailed in Italy, though the political disturbances 
of the peninsula have obliterated the evidence of them, to a 
great extent. 
Among the Benedictines themselves Seholastica’s convents 
were coordinate not subordinate to those of the men. Every- 
where they were treated on a footing of equality and while the 
Benedictine monasteries often provided their spiritual advisers 
and supplied them wdth special teachers and with books for 
their libraries and represented the “big brothers” to whom 
* See Lipinska, Paris Thesis 1900 (crowned) Les Femmes Medicins. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
they might have resource in their difficulties, there was never 
any direct authority exercised over the convents, except by 
those elected by themselves and of course the higher ecclesias- 
tical authorities. 
With all this in mind it is easy to understand that the 
wise Benedictine monks seem to have realized how advisable 
it was to put the department of women’s diseases at Salerno 
into the hands of women professors and to have encouraged 
this special development of medical education which provided 
the many women physicians whose licenses are registered from 
the neighborhood of Naples. 
Some of these women at Salerno wrote text books on the 
subject of women’s diseases that became famous throughout 
Europe. The work of one of them, Trotula, was very widely 
known and indeed her name as Trotula, or Trot, or in other 
variant forms was in succeeding centuries taken as a symbol 
of the learned woman of every country and time. De Renzi 
in his Story of The School of Salerno, has many details with 
regard to this medieval woman university professor. She be- 
longed to the family of Ruggiero of the Salernitan nobility 
and was the wife of John Platearius I, who was the Professor 
of Medicine at Salerno, so-called because there probably were 
three professors of that name. Trotula was the mother of 
Platearius II, who succeeded his father in the professorship.* 
We have some of Trotula’s books one of which bears the 
subtitle Trotula’s Book of Experience (Liber Experimentalis) 
in the Diseases of Women Before, During and After Labor 
with other Details Likewise Relating To Labor. In my Old 
Time Makers of Medicine I have quoted some passages from 
the book which show that in spite of the facile supposition 
of our time that a physician of the eleventh century could 
scarcely be expected to know anything worth while about 
women’s diseases, Trotula provided many practical hints for 
* It was only later and mainly in the West that Universities became celibate 
institutions, establishing rigid laws as to the non-married state of teachers and 
fellows. Italy never yielded to this intolerant spirit which hampered feminine 
education very much in the West, probably being initiated by the unfortunate 
Abelard and Heloise incident at Paris, for Paris bore a sort of maternal relation 
to most of the universities of Western Europe. FEMININE EDUCATION 
the care of the mother in such things as diet, exercise and 
the rule of life before and after labor and for the diet and 
regulation of the life of the child. Her books have been 
printed in a number of editions, and her work has been re- 
viewed by Mdlle. Lipinska in her Paris Thesis <on Women 
Physicians. We have the names of a number of others who 
taught and wrote on medicine at Salerno as for instance 
Mercuriade who wrote On Crises, on Pestilent Fever, On 
The Cure of Wounds; Abella who wrote on Black Bile and 
Eebecca Guarna who wrote on Fevers and on the Embryo. 
The School of Salernitan women came to have a definite place 
in medical literature. As late as 1415 Constanza Calenda was 
the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Salerno. 
It is a great surprise perhaps for people in our time to 
think of women physicians of Italy in the Middle Ages since 
it proved so difficult for women to secure once more the privi- 
lege of medical study in our time, but this surprise is founded 
on ignorance of medieval ways of doing things. They were 
an intensely practical people, particularly in all that con- 
cerned social problems. The formula of the preamble of the 
license, granted to women to practice medicine in Italy in the 
medieval period ran as follows: “since then the law permits 
women to exercise the profession of physicians, and since, 
besides, due regard being had to the purity of morals women 
are better suited for the treatment of women’s diseases, after 
having received the oath of fidelity we permit, etc.” Nicaise 
in the Introduction to his edition of Guy de Chauliac’s Grande 
Chirurgie reviews briefly the history of women in medicine 
and concludes: “Women continued to practice medicine in 
Italy for centuries, and the names of some who attained great 
renown have been preserved for us. Their works are still 
quoted from in the fifteenth century. ’ ’ 
Up at Bologna during the first century of the University’s 
existence there were women professors or assistant teachers 
in practically every department. Irneria was her father’s 
assistant in the department of law when the great law school 
at Bologna acquired the fame which gradually led to the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
establishment of a university there. We have the record 
of a woman professor of mathematics there, as well as of 
philosophy and literature. Even more surprising is the fact 
that the assistant to the great professor of anatomy Mondino 
who re-introduced the regular practice of dissection into 
medical teaching was a young woman, Alessandra Giliani. 
She was engaged to be married to the prosector of Mondino, 
but unfortunately he died before the marriage and she fol- 
lowed him not long afterwards, both the untimely deaths 
being perhaps a consequence of some of the infective accidents 
that must have been so common in the dissecting work of that 
time. Before her death, however, she had invented a method 
of injecting bodies in order to preserve them and lessen to 
some extent the deterrent work of dissection. Curiously 
enough it was another Italian woman, Madame Manzolini, 
assistant to Galvani, some five centuries later to whom we 
owe the first use of wax models, colored to imitate tissues so 
that anatomical studies might be made from them without the 
necessity for constantly recurring to dissections. Not a cen- 
tury has passed since the thirteenth in which there have not 
been women professors at the universities of Italy, not a 
few of them reaching distinction in the academic world.* 
With the coming of the Renaissance there was a great 
new awakening of education in Italy in which the women 
shared to the fullest extent. The first great Renaissance 
teacher Vittorino da Feltre took up the position of teacher 
for the Gonzagas at Mantua on condition that women should 
* The question of how many women students there were in attendance at 
the University of Bologna has often occupied the attention of historians of 
education. It might be thought that a glance at the registers of the University 
itself would decide this question once for all, but they only serve to show why 
it has remained a non-solved problem and is likely to continue so probably 
forever. It was not the custom at that time in giving baptismal names to 
distinguish so accurately between masculine and feminine names as it has be- 
come since though the Latin nations especially Italy have a great many boys 
who received feminine names. Not a few girls were given masculine names. A 
child of parents of any but the very lowest classes always received several names 
with what we would think a mixture of sex in them. Mary was a very common 
name as the first baptismal name for both boys and girls. In Venice the 
custom obtained of giving every child whether boy or girl no matter what other 
names were given by parents the two names John, Mary, which were those of 
patrons of the city. Similar customs obtained in some other Italian cities so 
that it becomes easy to understand then that an examination of the registers 
of Bologna with the idea of determining just how many masculine and how 
many feminine students there were from the list of names is quite futile. FEMININE EDVCATION 
be allowed to attend his classes as well as men and that poor 
students who wished to attend should also he admitted. His 
influence was so wise and deep that it is not surprising that 
following the example set by him everywhere else in Italy 
women were given opportunities for the study of the New 
Learning as it was called. Everywhere we find abundant 
evidence not only of the provision of opportunities for fem- 
inine education, but also as to how well these opportunities 
were taken advantage of. It came to be understood that the 
young women of the nobility and particularly the reigning 
houses should know Latin well, some Greek, should be able to 
write Italian verse and often know at least one other modern 
language. An ignorant woman was considered to be without 
charm. Cardinal Bembo declared that “the more a young 
woman knew the more charming she was. ” It is easy to under- 
stand that with the upper classes thus interested in education 
the middle and lower classes came as always to imitate them 
just as far as possible. 
Nor was all the organizing of education for women in 
Italy in this precious Renaissance time done only by men. 
A great woman educator, whose work has lived after her down 
to our time and has shown its power to fit itself to varying 
conditions, was born in the little town of Desenzano in the 
early sixteenth century. She organized a little school for 
girls in her native town and was so successful that she was 
called to Brescia to develop a school system and was summoned 
to Rome by the Pope who wanted her to develop her work 
from the centre of Christendom. She pleaded to be allowed 
to go back to Brescia to perfect her system and gathered 
around her a number of young women who devoted themselves 
to the service of feminine education. Soon she realized the 
necessity of a permanent organization and so her religious 
order was founded which her companions wanted to call 
Angelines after her name Angela Merici. She chose the name 
of Ursulines, however. When her constitutions were sent to 
Rome, for approval, Pope Paul III, who had often said that 
the number of religious orders must be reduced rather than WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
increased, was struck with the practical common sense out- 
lined in the new institute and approved them. According to 
tradition as he signed the new constitution for the Ursulines 
the Pope said to St. Ignatius Loyola, whose advice he had 
asked and whose constitutions for the Jesuits he had approved 
the preceding year, because as he said himself he felt that the 
“finger of God” was in them;—“Now I have given you 
sisters.” The two orders were to have magnificent success 
as teachers and were to be partners in persecution whenever 
any serious attempt was made to discredit religion. At the 
present time the Ursulines have houses all over the world 
and missionary schools among savage peoples, in Africa, 
Alaska, among the Indians of South America, as well as in 
East India and in China. They have schools all over the 
United States and when the movement for the higher educa- 
tion of women developed they were ready to open the first 
Catholic colleges for women. They have succeeded admirably 
everywhere. Literally hundreds of thousands of women every 
century since her death, now nearly 400 years ago, have 
been educated according to the principles which this modest 
Italian woman saw so clearly and established so firmly in her 
institute. Every century since, too, thousands of women 
have found a precious life work following the simple duties 
allotted to them by her rules and constitutions which yet 
afford ample opportunity for the development of the highest 
administrative ability and intellectual talent whenever these 
may be present. Literally thousands of women have found 
happiness in life following in her footsteps. 
When the needs of the Italian emigrants to the two 
Americas in the early nineties of the last century came to be 
particularly demanding, a little Italian woman had the in- 
spiration to organize a series of institutions for the care of 
these poor foreigners so little understood who needed so much 
the sympathetic guardianship of their own people. This was 
Mother Cabrini to whose care, after he had seen her work 
among the poor in Italy, Pope Leo XIII commended the Ital- 
ians in the two Americas. She came to New York some thirty FEMININE EDUCATION 
years ago and absolutely without means proceeded to organize 
her work. She founded Columbus Hospital and then another 
of the same name in Chicago, as well as hospitals in Denver 
and Portland, Oregon. She organized hundreds of schools 
and gathered round her several thousand young women, many 
of them Italians, but many more of them of all nationalities 
to help in her task. It was a never ending surprise to see 
the marvelous influence which she exercised over men and 
women. The young women who became her companions in 
her work fairly reverenced her. The task of organizing the 
care of the poor Italians in the United States would seem to 
be enough for anyone, but Pope Leo XIII had said “the two 
Americas’’ and so Mother Cabrini proceeded to perform a 
similar task for the Italians in South America. She had 
herself carried over the Cordilleras from Argentine to Chili 
on mule back and disappeared for a time over the edge of a 
precipice, but pushed on with her labors to a successful 
conclusion. 
When, after thirty years of labors she was carried off 
by hemorrhage at the age of 67 she had created a great insti- 
tution for social service of all kinds among the Italians and 
left behind her a name that will be famous forever in the 
history of Italian emigration. In our time, usually supposed 
to be barren of such successful efforts, she did work that 
parallels in many ways that of Angela Merici in the Renais- 
sance and it would seem as though five hundred years from 
now it will still be as great a living factor for civilization as 
that of so many other Italian women whose example proved 
an incentive to others in their own generation, and whose work 
proved an opportunity for the young women of many suc- 
ceeding generations to find a vocation that satisfied mind 
and heart and soul in the care of others. ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
WHILE Italy lias done so much for systematic education 
the debt of the world to her is almost greater for what 
she has done for efficient scholarship, that is not for dry-as- 
dust accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, but for that 
productive erudition which makes it easier for other men to 
enjoy the fruits of knowledge garnered in previous genera- 
tions to better advantage or which enables them to appreciate 
more fully the great thoughts that have occupied men in 
ancient times. Italy has done more for the printing of mag- 
nificent editions of the classics, valuable for their scholarly 
collection of the best available texts, their helpful apparatus 
of notes and commentaries, their arrangement, paragraphing 
and punctuation (how few readers realize that we owe all this 
to the early printers and the first editors,) as well as the 
material form in which they were presented, their printing, 
binding and the rest, than any other nation. 
What the Alduses did at Venice and what was accom- 
plished by the great printers of incunabula at Rome, Florence, 
Naples and the other Italian cities, represents a magnificent 
heritage presented to mankind by Italian scholars who were 
willing to spend their days and nights in toil in order that 
other men might the more easily reap the fruits of scholar- 
ship. The more one studies what was accomplished by Italian 
scholars of the Renaissance in this matter, the more one rea- 
lizes the depths of the obligations to them under which the 
world lies for scholarly work. Besides editions of the great 
authors, dictionaries, geographies, commentaries of all kinds, 
explanatory manuals of all sorts have come from these Italian 
scholars, and their value is recognized by the world of ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
erudition. More modern scholars have taken advantage of 
their work until often it is buried so deep as to escape proper 
recognition, but that is the way of all fundamental work 
such as theirs was. 
If the Italians had done nothing else for scholarship than 
what they accomplished during the Renaissance time they still 
would have deserved the highest place in history for merit in 
the department, but as a matter of fact at all times during 
the Middle Ages, Italy was in a fine scholarly way greatly 
contributing to the education of Europe both for the time 
and for subsequent generations. They were preserving the 
classics by collecting libraries and copying and illuminating 
manuscripts thus giving them an added value that would 
more surely contribute to their preservation. They were mak- 
ing commentaries on them and attracting attention to them 
by references. Long before printing in the earlier Middle 
Ages Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy was an important 
scholarly work and Cassiodorus collected manuscripts and 
arranged for their copying in his monastery as well as for 
other modes of diffusion of classical knowledge. Monastic 
libraries especially in Italy saved the classics during the 
darker period of the ninth and tenth centuries and the monks 
and nuns kept alive a flame of intellectual life and carried 
on the torch of education, while men were occupied with the 
sordid materialism of war and looting during the period 
when barbarism was slowly giving way to civilization. 
It was in Italy that the universities at the end of the 
Middle Ages and above all in the Thirteenth Century, which 
has come to be called the earlier Renaissance, proved to be 
centres of scholarship and erudition, of collections of books 
into libraries, of the making of copies and commentaries that 
were to mean so much for the after time. How highly they 
valued this work can be seen from the magnificent editions 
with illuminations which they issued and the large number of 
fine copies that were made. In spite of seven centuries of 
destruction by fire and flood and war and above all by the 
neglect that unfortunately came for these precious treasures WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
after the invention of printing, there are so many copies of 
the classics still extant as to give an excellent idea of how 
zealous the Italians must have been in their work of producing 
manuscript copies. From Salerno and Bologna and Rome 
and Padua and Messina literally hosts of scholars went all 
over Europe and even to the near East and the northern coast 
of Africa to spread the good tidings of the great university 
revival of learning which took place in Italy. 
It is for what was done in what has been called the period 
of the revival of learning that the world is most indebted to 
Italy. The Renaissance, as it is often called, is usually con- 
sidered to follow the fall of Constantinople in 1453. We have 
been putting the date of it back farther and farther, however, 
and it is now recognized that it should begin not later than 
the death of Dante in 1321 and that it is practically over at 
the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, and definitely finished by 
the sack of Rome in 1527. During these two centuries, the 
productive scholarship of which begins with Petrarch, the 
main purpose of scholars was the imitation of the classics. 
When Dante died, Petrarch, the first of the humanists was 
still a young student at Montpelier, but he was already en- 
raptured with the style of Cicero and Virgil. He studied his 
beloved Latin authors when his father supposed he was study- 
ing law. Virgil and Cicero were his favorites but he came to 
appreciate Horace and especially the lyrics of the Roman poet 
very thoroughly. Virgil had been the favorite author of the 
Middle Ages and through Petrarch’s influence Cicero came to 
occupy a high place in education and scholarship. 
Petrarch was ready to spend time without stint in the 
unearthing of any of Cicero’s lost writings. He discovered in 
1333 two hitherto unedited orations at Liege and then had the 
supreme happiness of finding the letters to Atticus. The 
many friends that Petrarch made, his devoted studies, his 
immense correspondence and his constant enthusiasm accom- 
plished untold good for classical studies. He did not appre- 
ciate Greek properly and yet he prepared the soil of Italy for 
the reception of Greek culture. ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
Boccaccio is second only to Petrarch in what he did for 
the revival of learning. He visited the libraries of monasteries 
where he found precious hooks, treasures, neglected in some 
places, but where he succeeded in arousing interest and stimu- 
lating others to take up the work of conserving the classics. 
Boccaccio was always the type of the scholarly gentleman, so 
frequently met after his time in Italy. The Chancellor of 
Florence declared after his death that he had never known a 
more lovable being than Boccaccio. Boccaccio had a liking for 
Greek, supported a Greek teacher for three years in Florence 
in his own house engaged in making a translation of Homer, 
and had himself a fancy for giving Greek names:—some of 
them very curiously and clumsily compounded it must be 
confessed — to his Italian works. He was the awakener of 
the modern world to Greek studies. 
During the century from 1350 to 1450 a series of Greek 
scholars were kept busy teaching Greek, editing Greek books 
and elucidating Greek manuscripts in Italy. Italian noble- 
men and wealthy merchants, the ecclesiastics and the monas- 
teries welcomed them and provided them with opportunities 
for scholarly work denied them in their own troubled country. 
Only for this preliminary patronage of Greek studies the 
revival of learning would have been very much delayed, even 
after the fall of Constantinople. 
It was not long moreover before the Italians themselves 
began to do this scholarly work as rivals of the Greeks. Such 
men as Poggio Bracciolini, Filefo, Landriani, Politian, the 
Sicilian Aurispa, Ciraco de’ Pizzicolli of Anconia, who has 
been called the Schliemann of his time, a self taught student 
who spent all his life in traveling, not only for the purposes 
of trade but also for the collection of objects of archaeological 
interest, Flavio Bondi of Forli and many others who did 
most of their work before the fall of Constantinople, show 
how thoroughly Italy had awakened to classical studies in the 
first half of the fifteenth century. Traversari, Manetti, 
Leonardo Bruni, Marseppini, Yergerio and Guarino as well as 
Yittorino da Feltre, are names that deserve to be remembered WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
forever as they doubtless will be, because of their devotion to 
humanism, their collection of manuscripts, their teaching of 
many students, their own enthusiastic absorption in the New 
Learning and the conveyance of their enthusiasm to others. 
Above all, as I have said, the printing of the classics in 
Italy put the world under a debt to Italian scholarship that 
can never be fully repaid. Already even before the days of 
printing such a man as Vespaziano da Bisticci had made him- 
self famous throughout Europe for being able to supply 
manuscript materials to those who wanted them. It is on 
record that he supplied orders for codices of various kinds 
for Hungary, Portugal, Germany and England, and he wTas 
the trusted agent of the three greatest book collectors in the 
fifteenth century, Cosimo de Medici, Pope Nicholas V and 
Duke Frederick of Urbino. He came to be better known in 
his time and deservedly than any of our modern bibliophilic 
experts and was famous for his ability to secure beautifully 
bound books as well as good copies. Vespeziano recalled the 
fact that after the invention of printing the Duke of Urbino 
wanted all his books done with the pen because “he would 
have been ashamed to possess a single printed book.” The 
new mode of reproduction smacked of ‘ ‘ machine-made goods, ’ ’ 
as it were, and the Duke wanted his hand-made. But the old 
order was to change and Italy was to be foremost in the 
making of beautiful printed books. 
Doubtless many people are prone to think of the wealthy 
amateur and collector of art and beautiful books and fine 
examples of the arts and crafts of our time as distinctly a 
modern development. Anyone who knows the careers of the 
merchant princes of Italy in the Middle Ages and during the 
Renaissance will not be likely to think so however. The first 
famous member of the Medici family, Cosimo, was a banker, 
traveller, literateur, collector, connoisseur, liberal patron of 
all the arts with a spirit thoroughly appreciative of every 
form of intellectual development. Our modern wealthy col- 
lectors seem quite narrow in their interests, but above all 
almost sordid in their enthusiasm for mere rarities compared 
138 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
with him. Not only did he like art and spend money on it, 
but he could discuss philosophy, or Greek, or Latin letters, or 
even divinity with intelligence and discrimination; above all, 
he did not merely collect what preceding generations had 
proclaimed to be good, but tried to help the artists of his own 
time in every line. He employed Michelozzo to build his 
palace now known as the Riccardi, one of the most beautiful 
of such buildings in existence; he furnished most of the 
funds for the erection of the cathedral of San Marco; em- 
ployed Brunelleschi to rebuild the abbey at Fiesole and 
commissioned Fra Angelico to decorate San Marco and 
Benozzo Gozzoli to decorate the private chapel of the Medici. 
No succeeding record is equal to that; perhaps Pericles is his 
only serious rival and the Grecian statesman’s work was 
accomplished through the resources of the state, not his per- 
sonal fortune as in the case of the Florentine. 
Cosimo de’ Medici’s interests were not confined, however, 
to a palace for himself and to religious structures, though 
what he did for these would seem to provide occupation 
enough for most cultured minds in any life time, but he 
arranged for the construction of several library buildings in 
Florence and one in Venice. He devoted as much attention 
to the subject of libraries as any of our modern millionaires, 
was ready to pay good prices for books, arranged for the 
collection and copying of them, and wanted as many places 
and people as possible to share in the benefits to be derived 
from them. 
Almost needless to say these interests required the expen- 
diture of large sums of money. He had made immense sums 
in his business, however and was quite willing to spend liber- 
ally. Toward the end of his life he declared that the one 
idea that still gave him a scruple was his regret that he had 
not begun to spend money liberally ten years before he did, 
rather than go on accumulating it. We think of the expression 
of an American millionaire that it is a disgrace to die rich 
as characteristically modern. Cosimo de Medici apparently 
had the thought rather poignantly in his time. As the years 
139 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
advanced and old age came on lie often sat alone in deep 
thought. His friends and relatives, particularly his women 
folk, were afraid that he was becoming despondent and 
wondered what he did with his hours of silent meditation. 
Finally one of them ventured to question him with regard to 
them and what he occupied himself with at these times. He 
asked her if she were going on a long journey would she not 
occupy herself very much with preparations for it? He was 
making his preparations for his last long journey. He was 
very much devoted to the ethics of Aristotle and it is said 
to have been the last book that he read with deep attention. 
After the story of his career even thus briefly put, one 
understands better why he should have been called Pater 
Patriae, “Father of his Country.*’ His influence was deeply 
felt in every phase of Florentine life for all that was best 
in her intellectual development. It has often been declared 
that the commanding influence he acquired for himself and 
his family through his wealth hurt Florence in a political 
way. In our times of democratic ideals it is easy to think 
that this must have been the case. The Medici held no office 
but were the “bosses” in our familiar phrase, of the munici- 
pality. As a result of their activities the republican gov- 
ernment was less ideal. Mankind seems however often to 
get on better under a benevolent autocracy and Florence cer- 
tainly furnishes an example of what may be accomplished 
for culture even under such informal patronage. 
At all times the Popes were scholarly patrons of learning 
and even when themselves not distinguished for scholarship, 
gathered scholars around them as a rule and encouraged edu- 
cation. A number of great Popes did so much for scholarship 
in Italy during the revival of learning that their names will 
always be associated with it. Nicholas V laid the foundation 
of the Vatican Library, employed a large number of copyists 
to make copies of the classics just before printing came to 
simplify this matter of the multiplication of books and did 
everything to encourage scholarship. Pope Pius II whose 
name Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini is famous forever in the 
140 RAPHAEL, POPE JULIUS II ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
annals of scholarship, was himself a distinguished scholar 
who owed his advancement to the Papacy not a little to his 
reputation for scholarliness. 
While he himself had little opportunity to encourage 
and patronize literature, devoting himself rather to the great 
task of bringing the Christian nations together to keep out 
the Turks, for he realized that Mohammedan conquest would 
indeed mean the end of all good letters, his elevation to the 
Papacy was a magnificent tribute to the scholarship of the 
time and contributed greatly to lifting it into popular estima- 
tion. Sixtus IY who also did very much for the Vatican 
Library and after him the series of great Popes who during 
the next hundred years encouraged the setting up of printing 
presses in Rome and the multiplication of books, themselves 
contributing not a little to the expenses of good bookmaking, 
made Italy the most important place in the world at this time 
for scholarship. 
The Papal Secretaries and the librarians at the Vatican 
were chosen with special reference to their scholarship and 
such men as Bembo and Sadoleto not only lent prestige to 
these positions, but brought the scholar as such into world 
prominence. Under Pope Julius II these two, who eventually 
became Cardinals, with Vida, laid the foundation of that 
fruitful scholarship which further developed was to throw 
so much lustre on the age of Pope Leo X. It was at this time 
particularly that scholars from all over Europe came down 
to Italy to take advantage of the magnificent opportunities 
provided by the Italian schools and scholars. Linacre, John 
Caius, Dean Colet of St. Paul, Erasmus, all were willing to 
acknowledge how much they owed to Italy. Erasmus wrote 
to one of the Cardinals that “the river of Lethe alone would 
wash out the memory of the delights of Rome.” To another 
Cardinal he wrote that he recalled with regret the libraries, 
the scholarly conversation and the theatre which he had 
enjoyed so much while he was in the Papal City. The Roman 
Academy flourished at this time and such men as Platina, the 
future Librarian of the Vatican and Sabellicus, the future 
141 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Prefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice were among 
its members. 
Some of the great Italian scholars bear names familiar 
to everyone who has studied the history of education and 
represent some of the broadest erudition in modern history. 
The great architect, Leon Battista Alberti found the inspira- 
tion for his architecture in the study of the classics and is a 
type of the practical Italian scholars who knew how to 
apply their knowledge so well and whose erudition was never 
a burden to them. They had none of the tendency to miserly 
accumulation of details of erudition that characterizes the 
dry-as-dust scholar. His contemporaries were such men as 
Ficino the fine productive student of Plato, the magnetic 
centre of the Academy at Florence, who translated and ex- 
pounded Plotinus; Landino, tutor with Ficino of Lorenzo 
de’ Medici, and Politian poet, teacher and editor. Another 
of these great Florentine scholars of this time was Pico della 
Mirandola, whose reputation for scholarship has become almost 
proverbial. He died in 1494 at the early age of thirty-one, 
possessed by the great thought of the unity of all knowledge 
and absorbed in planning a vast work which was to form a 
complete system of Platonic Christian and Cabalistic lore. 
The proof of his intellectual capacity is that he deeply in- 
fluenced Sir Thomas More and many of the well known 
English scholars of the time, though living only to an age 
when it is ordinarily presumed to be quite impossible that a 
man should have acquired such scholarship as would make his 
influence deeply felt on profound scholarly minds. 
In the year of Pico’s death, 1494, Politian equally as 
great in reputation for scholarship, died at Florence at the 
early age of forty. When but thirty he was tutor to Lorenzo 
de Medici’s children as well as Professor of Greek and Latin 
literature in Florence. Among those from England who 
attended his lectures were Grocyn and Linacre. Some idea of 
his erudition may be gathered from the fact that he was 
deeply interested in the textual criticism of Terence, Lucre- 
tius, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, and Ausonius as well as Celsus, 
142 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
Quintilian, Festus, and the Scriptores Rei Rusticae. In addi- 
tion he had made a special study of the Pandects of Justinian 
and the influence of his example did much to prevent narrow 
specialism gaining any ground among the Florentine scholars 
of this time. He denounced the so-called Ciceronians who 
refused to employ any word or turn of phrase not found in 
the Roman orator, as mere apes of Cicero and said “I am 
not Cicero, what I really express is myself. ’ ’ He wrote Greek 
poems at the age of seventeen and his first translation of the 
four books of the Iliad, finished before he was twenty, gained 
him the title, of which he was rightly so proud, of Homericus 
Juvenis. When his great patron Lorenzo the Magnificent 
died, Politian could not contain his grief. He followed his 
patron to the tomb only two years after. 
Probably Italy’s most important contribution to the 
intellectual life of modern Europe came from the great 
printers of the Renaissance period. The Manutiuses of Venice 
were particularly active with their presses and thorough in 
their work. They themselves were scholars and they gathered 
round them scholarly men from every country who helped 
to edit the wonderful Editiones Principes which appeared at 
the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth 
century. Many an important work of the Middle Ages and 
undoubtedly some even of the Greek and Latin classics would 
have disappeared during the sterile intellectual period of the 
late seventeenth and early eighteenth century only that the 
multiplication of books by Italian printing presses during 
the fifteenth and sixteenth century had made it practically 
impossible for texts to be lost. The scholarly work done in 
the preparation of these texts, the immense amount of labor 
involved, the educated judgment so often exercised, the careful 
collation of texts whenever that was possible, show how thor- 
oughly the Italians of the Renaissance took to heart the work 
of providing suitable printed books for their libraries and for 
private use. The rare books for which now high prices are 
often paid and that are the valued treasures of great libraries 
were more largely the fruit of Italian printing presses than 
143 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of those of any other country — and the Italians were the 
leaders. Others who came after them had the example of the 
Italians to stimulate them and their diligence to emulate. 
Some of the Italians who are famous for quite other 
reasons must also be counted among the world’s great scholars. 
Deservedly we think of Aldus Manutius as the greatest of 
printers, but he was besides a very great scholar, the founder 
of the New Academy called after his name Aldi Neacademia 
in which all the members were required to speak Greek among 
themselves under penalty of a fine. Aldus was a typically 
productive scholar who used his knowledge for a very practical 
purpose and devoted himself quite regardless of the material 
rewards that might come to him to the diffusion of a great 
literature. One of our greatest printers of the modern time, 
Theodore Low DeVinne, writing with manifest affectionate 
regard for Aldus in the old Scribner’s magazine of October 
1881, has a paragraph that is almost a filial expression of 
respect, coming evidently from a man who knows and appre- 
ciates very well his subject, in which the modern American 
has finely summed up what Aldus had accomplished for his 
profession. Coming from such a source the compliment 
carries all the more weight. 
“Aldus’ taste as editor went beyond the text. Not 
content with an accurate version, he had that version presented 
in pleasing types. Everybody admits the value of his inven- 
tion of Italic, even if his use of it as a text letter be not 
approved. But few persons consider that we are indebted to 
Aldus for the present forms that he introduced. How great 
this obligation is will be readily acknowledged after an exam- 
ination of the uncouth characters and the discordant styles 
of Greek copyists before the sixteenth century. Adus’ in- 
vention of small capitals has already been noticed. Here, 
then are three distinct styles of book-printing types which 
he introduced, and which have been adopted everywhere 
almost without dissent. Other printers have done work of 
high merit; other type-founders have made pleasing ornamen- 
tal or fancy types; but no printer or founder since Aldus has 
144 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
invented even one original style of printing types which has 
been adopted and kept in use as a text letter for books. ’ ’ 
All during the Benaissance period it was felt all over 
the world that Italy was the eminently desirable mecca for 
scholars who wanted to get in touch with what was most 
advanced in the intellectual life and lay a sure foundation 
of scholarship. No department of the intellectual life was 
neglected. The Greek authors were issued in magnificent 
editions and of course the Latin authors were studied with 
the greatest care, the manuscript copies of their works sedu- 
lously collected and faithfully collated. Boman history was 
enlarged and humanized and illustrated by the study of 
poems, inscriptions and antiquities generally. Such names 
as those of Boberttelli, Segonio, Panvinio, Nizzoli and above 
all Muretus to use the more familiar Latin form of his name, 
are forever famous in the history of scholarship. The last 
named was a Frenchman, a most brilliant teacher and lec- 
turer, a friend of the group of poets known as the Pleiades, 
a private tutor of Montaigne. Muretus began to lecture before 
he was twenty and before he was twenty-five was famous. 
When about thirty he found it impossible to live in France 
because of the civic dissensions and spent the remaining 
thirty years of his life in Italy. He was five years in Venice 
and published at the Aldine Press editions of Catullus, Horace 
and Terence, Tibullus and Propertius. The last twenty years 
of his life were spent in Borne where he lectured on Aristotle’s 
Ethics, the De Officiis and the Letters of Cicero, and the 
Bhetoric and Politics of Aristotle. Most of his published works 
were really his lectures written out for a larger public. 
Muretus was probably the best imitator of Cicero’s style that 
ever lived. Buhnken declared that nature had given him the 
same genius as Cicero. He was, however, essentially a stylist, 
not a great thinker. More than once the Boman ecclesiastical 
authorities interfered with his lectures and forbade their con- 
tinuation because Muretus lacked solidity and conservatism 
in philosophic, legal and social matters. He himself recog- 
nized certain unfortunate tendencies to extravagant expression WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
in these topics and continued his life at Rome with great 
satisfaction in spite of these interferences, drawing ever 
closer to the Church and eventually becoming a priest. Prob- 
ably nothing illustrates better the relations of the Church to 
scholarship at this time than the fact that Muretus, like 
Linacre, toward the end of their careers both asked for and 
obtained the privilege of ordination as priests of the Church. 
Italian ecclesiastical discipline was for them so tempered by 
breadth of sympathy with scholarship that they learned to 
appreciate both. 
While so good a Latinist, no one appreciated the value 
of Greek more than Muretus, and he did not hesitate to 
declare that “all that is lofty in thought is enshrined in the 
literature of Greece.” He even added the declaration that 
“we can predict with confidence that if the men of our time 
shall begin to neglect Greek literature the degradation and 
even destruction of high thinking and artistic interests will 
surely he imminent.” At the age of fifty Muretus became, as 
we have said, a priest and at his death some ten years later 
was buried with high honors near the main altar of the 
French Church of SS. Trinita de’Monti. 
Muretus was followed as a lecturer at Rome by Francesco 
Patrizzi who was not only not interfered with in his lectures 
on Plato but who, as noted by Sandys in A History of Classical 
Scholarship (page 153) actually proceeded to attempt in his 
Nuova Philosophia (1591) the rather dangerous combination 
as it might seem of the opinions of Plato with the teaching 
of Bernardino Telesio (See chapter on Physical Science.) 
He dedicated his book with due permission to Pope Gregory 
XIY who had formerly been his fellow student at Padua. 
Pope Clement VIII invited Patrizzi to Rome where he was 
professor of Platonic Philosophy till his death in 1597. 
About this same time among the antiquarians and archae- 
ologists at Rome were such men as Fulvio, Orsini, Marliani, 
Ligorio, Panciroli. These men and others published descrip- 
tions of the ancient statues, the buildings and other ancient 
monuments and gathered a vast collection of Latin inscrip- 
146 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
tions and made plates of the remains of old Rome with efforts 
at reconstruction of great use to subsequent scholars. 
Italy has continued all down the centuries to be the 
abounding mother of the great productive scholars whose 
influence was felt all over the world of their own day and 
by succeeding generations ever since whenever they were 
scholarly inclined. Probably the most erudite historian of 
more modern times is Baronius whose Annales Ecclesiastici 
marked an epoch in the writing of history and obtained for 
its author the title, after Eusebius, of Father of Ecclesiastical 
History. The first volume of his Annals appeared in 1588 
and immediately attracted wide attention. It had a phenom- 
enal sale and was immediately translated into the principal 
European languages. He completed the twelfth volume which, 
according to tradition, he had forseen in a vision would be 
the last of his works, in 1607. He became the head of the 
Oratorians after St. Philip Neri’s death, was made a Cardinal 
in 1596 and would doubtless have been elected Pope, but 
having incurred the enmity of Philip II of Spain, his election 
to the Papacy was vetoed by the Spanish Cardinals. He was 
very highly esteemed and his reputation for critical scholar- 
ship has maintained itself all down the centuries. Writing 
at his period he necessarily made mistakes, accepted some 
documents as authentic that were not and failed in critical 
discrimination of materials, but he was a pioneer in genuine 
scientific history and his work brought about a real founda- 
tion of the science of history by which his own writings are 
now judged much more severely than would have otherwise 
been the case. He published many lesser works and these were 
all widely read. 
One of the great scholars of Italy and one of the greatest 
of intellectual influences in Europe for a full century of the 
most disturbed time was the Jesuit, Bellarmino, usually known 
as Cardinal Bellarmine. He dominated the religious contro- 
versial world of the latter half of the sixteenth century. He 
was the most influential figure in the Church during the 
stormy period from 1550 to 1650. As a Cardinal he was 
147 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
famous for his lavish charity to the poor and his utter devo- 
tion to his work. A whole immense library of volumes was 
issued in answer to his controversial works and a special lec- 
tureship against his writings founded at a Protestant 
University. It is indeed rather hard for most people to 
understand now, how universal was the attention of the 
intellectual world of Europe during his time to everything 
that came from his pen. We are no longer interested in 
religion enough to controvert about it, but in Bellarmine’s 
time it was the subject closest to all hearts and as a conse- 
quence his writings were read by scholarly men all over 
Europe. Protestants as well as Catholics were interested 
everywhere. Bellarmine’s works are his monument. Certain 
parts of them will never grow old. They have been the mine 
for many subsequent controvertialists and the storehouse for 
preachers and writers. The more they are known the more 
they are admired. 
Prof. Sandys the distinguished English classical scholar 
of Cambridge, England, who in 1905 delivered the Harvard 
lectures on The Revival of Learning has necessarily much to 
say in the lectures as published* of Italian scholarship at 
this time. He tells the story of the academies of Italy in 
Florence, Venice, Naples and Borne, and how much they 
accomplished for true scholarship, and for the intellectual 
life and culture not only of Italy itself but for the world in 
general. He gives in some detail the various special objects 
of their interest. There were academies for the cultivation 
of Cicero, of Plato, of classic agriculture, of architecture, of 
country life and of the classical theatre and the presentation 
of classical plays. Foreign students and scholars who visited 
Italy at this time were particularly interested in the Italian 
academies. Erasmus was welcomed at Venice and at Florence 
by their academies. Linacre found himself at home, made 
so especially by the academicians and Milton on his 
visit to Italy was formally received by one of the 
Florentine academies and “recited from memory some of his 
* Cambridge University Press, 1905. 
148 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
early Latin verses described in the minutes of the meeting 
as molto erudite, while his other compositions were received 
(as he tells us) ‘with written encomiums which the Italian 
(as he observes) is not forward to bestow on men of this 
side the Alps.’ ” 
Milton on his return from Italy felt that such an insti- 
tution as he had found this academy to represent, would be 
admirable for the cultivation of the intellectual life of 
England. In his essays on The Reason of Church Government 
he dwelt on this and approves of the adaptation for 
England of such “festival pastimes as may civilize, adorn, 
and make discreet our minds by the learned and affable 
meeting of frequent academies.” In spite of many reasons, 
religious and political, for lack of sympathy with the Italians, 
Milton found much to admire in the intellectual life of 
Italy. He was very proud of their recognition of his equality 
as a literary man, he recalled with pleasure his meeting with 
Galileo and in the rude England of his day, when scholarship 
was at such a low ebb, he seems sometimes to have regretted 
the happier scholarly environment of Italy. 
Some of these academies in Italy were rather short lived. 
That might possibly be expected from the rather trivial names 
given certain of them. One of them, for instance, at Naples, 
was called simply “The Idlers.” In Florence four of these 
academies bore the fanciful names of “The Insipid,” “The 
Shy,” “The Disheartened,” and “The Stunned.” Evidently 
studious youth delighted as much in the bizarre in the matter 
of titles and above all in whatever gave a flavor of mystery, 
as in our own time and country. In Bologna there was a 
second academy of ‘ ‘ The Idlers, ’ ’ Degli Oziosi, or as we would 
say perhaps, “The Strollers.” Curiously enough some of 
these trivially named academies were suppressed by the Italian 
governments. The reasons for suppression are not always 
absolutely known, but it would seem that in some places 
they were used as a cloak for political meetings, and in others 
their proceedings degenerated into immorality. Some of them 
were scarcely more than the reading clubs and study circles 
149 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
which exist in many cities now, and which so often bear some 
cryptic name adopted in order to avoid the air of pedantry 
associated with more serious designations. All record of a 
great many of these academies has doubtless perished, for it 
became the custom during the Renaissance period particularly 
to organize associations that were partly social, partly liter- 
ary and were merely meant to afford amusing relaxation 
from the more serious business of life. Prototypes of all our 
modern associations for art, letters, and even the more trivial 
culture interests of all kinds are to be found in Italy. 
In spite of the apparent triviality and temporary signifi- 
cance of many of these academies, some of them lasted for 
a good many years. The Academia della Crusca founded in 
the sixteenth century at Florence, the Academy of Bran as 
it was called, whose place of meeting bore the semblance of 
a flour mill and a bakehouse, a symbol of the occupation of 
the academy with the sifting of the Italian language, is still 
in existence. It was founded as a protest against the exclusive 
study and imitation of the Italian poems of Petrarch, and in 
order to create a standard of usage for all Italy. Its dic- 
tionary has made it famous and is at the same time a monu- 
ment to the scholarship of the men who created it. The 
Roman Academy of the Lincei or Lynxes devoted to philos- 
ophy and science, founded about 1600 and counting Galileo 
among its earliest members, has been revived and still flour- 
ishes. That other Florentine Academy, known as the Colom- 
baria, from the turret room, resembling a dovecote, in which 
it met, continues after two centuries still to produce papers 
on Italian history. How much of productive scholarship and 
culture the world owes to these academies, only those who 
are familiar with the details of the history of them can 
properly appreciate. Writers who have studied their histories 
are enthusiastic with regard to the stimulus they afforded 
members, and the sincerest flattery is the imitation which has 
been accorded to them by the development of corresponding 
academies in all the countries of the world since the Renais- 
sance. 
150 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
The Italians placed the world of scholarship profoundly 
in their debt by their work in lexicography, above all in Latin. 
The first great modern Latin lexicographer was Ambrogio da 
Calepino better known as Calepinus from whose name a term 
for dictionary was made and in tribute to whose work the 
French have made a new word, calepin, a note book or com- 
monplace book. Calepinus’ dictionary published first in 
1502, and corrected in an edition published in 1521 marked 
a great advance on the medieval glossaries and on the various 
vocabularies of the last quarter of the fifteenth century 
(Sandys.) For many years Calepinus’ work formed the 
basis of dictionaries of many kinds published in various 
countries, which in their origin usually began as revisions of 
Calepinus. When Calepinus’ work was finally replaced it 
was by Facciolati and Forcellini which has continued with 
revisions to be the principal Latin lexicon of scholars down to 
the present time. For this Forcellini was mainly responsible, 
and by forty years of patient work he raised a lasting monu- 
ment of gigantic industry and magnificent exhaustive scholar- 
ship. 
Italian scholarship never made, at least the great mass 
among the Italians, mere bookmen, or admirers of the past 
to the oblivion of the present. Indeed, it may be said that 
perhaps in nothing are the Italians more wonderful than in 
their fine faculty for critical appreciation of others’ work, 
not only in the past but in their own time. Michelangelo’s 
appreciation of the sculpture of the Greeks is well known. 
It was he who when called to see, immediately after they 
were excavated, the famous sculptured horses that are now 
on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, after admiring them from 
every standpoint finally stepped up to one of them and said 
in Italian “camina” (in familiar English “get up,”) as if the 
horse seemed so lifelike to him that it ought to walk off at 
his word of command. Could there have been a higher tribute 
paid to the old time sculptor than this. 
There is scarcely one of the great Italian artists of the 
greatest period of art of whom some similar story is not told. 
151 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
The great founder of modern art, that is, the man who united 
the two streams of artistic influence, that of Gothic art from 
the Middle Ages, and that of ancient art as it was being 
unearthed in the early Renaissance time, was Masaccio. We 
are now quite sure about his high place in art, but Leonardo 
da Yinci was so assured of it in the generation immediately 
after Masaccio’s death, that we have from him one of the 
highest of compliments. Masaccio died at the early age of 
twenty-seven, and it might seem to have been rather easy for 
a great painter like Leonardo to have missed the significance 
of his work. This, however, is what he said of him: “After 
Giotto the art of painting declined again, because everyone 
imitated the pictures already done. Thus it went on until 
Tomasso of Florence, surnamed Masaccio, showed by his per- 
fect works how those who take for their standard anyone 
but Nature — the mistress of all masters — wear themselves 
in vain.” Leonardo summed up a great career in a fine ap- 
preciation for the artist and a critical maxim for all time. 
Leon Battista Alberti, himself one of the greatest of 
architects, but a great scholar and a man of profound erudi- 
tion in all that relates to classical antiquity, might almost 
be excused if he had his judgment somewhat warped in favor 
of the past and prove therefore to have neglected, or at least 
not have properly appreciated his contemporaries. It is from 
him, however, that we have the well known expressions, when 
surprised on his return from exile at the magnificent strides 
in art that were being made in his native city Florence, he 
said to Brunelleschi: “ I have been accustomed both to wonder 
and to grieve that so many divine arts and sciences which we 
see to have abounded in those most highly endowed ancients 
were now lacking or utterly lost. . . But since I have been 
restored to this our native land which surpasses all others in 
her adornment, I have recognized in many, but chiefly in 
thee, Philip (Brunelleschi) and in our near friend Donato, 
(Donatello) and Luca della Robbia and Masaccio, genius ca- 
pable of every praiseworthy work, not inferior to that of any 
ancient and famous master in the arts.” Has there ever 
152 LEONARDO DA VINCI, MADONNA OF THE ROCKS (LONDON) ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
been contemporary appreciation that proved to be the judg- 
ment of the after ages as this! 
The charming courtesy of this letter and yet the terms 
of intimate familiarity and the thorough appreciation of the 
true greatness of his friends is typical of the Italian character 
in many ways. Not only did they do this for their own com- 
patriots, but over and over again the painters from foreign 
countries were welcomed, given opportunity to express them- 
selves, and their genius finely appreciated. Hence the fine 
influence that Italy exerted on the art of other countries; of 
which our histories of art are full, but what is not so well 
known is that in every department of the cultural life the 
same thing was true. 
In science Yesalius found his best opportunity for study 
in Italy. He went to Padua when he was twenty-one, having 
failed to obtain the opportunities for study that he desired 
at either Paris or Louvain, in his time the two great univer- 
sities of the West of Europe. They made him a professor at 
Padua when he was twenty-seven. He did his work in Italy 
for some twenty years and there was not a sign of Chauvinism 
about their treatment of him. Later Steno the Dane, lacking 
opportunities in Holland and finding a jealous master who 
hampered his work in Paris, went down to Italy and accom- 
plished there the great work in anatomy which meant so much 
for the development of anatomical science, and for which he 
was so deservedly chosen the professor of anatomy at Copen- 
hagen, in his native country. 
While the scholarship of France in the later Renaissance 
period is sometimes said to have seriously rivalled the prestige 
of Italian scholarship before the end of the sixteenth century, 
it must not be forgotten than the first great teacher of the 
French in the New Learning was Jerome Aleander, an Italian 
who arrived in France shortly after the beginning of the 
sixteenth century with an introduction from Erasmus. He 
became Rector of the University of Paris in 1512, but resigned 
this position to become Librarian of the Vatican at Rome in 
1517, where his distinguished services, learning and devotion 
153 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
to Christian scholarship brought him a Cardinal’s hat. It 
was under his direction that the first Greek printing in France 
was done. In 1509 he issued an edition of Plutarch’s treatises 
on morals to serve as textbooks for his pupils. 
The first of great native French scholars of this time 
was Budaeus ("Budej who went on diplomatic missions to 
Popes Julius II, and Leo X, and drew deep inspiration and 
incentive from contact with the learned Italians of that time. 
His influence with Francis I and Margaret of Navarre, the 
king’s sister, meant much more than any other single factor 
for the foundation of the College of France. 
Nearly everywhere the influence of Italian scholarship on 
French can be traced very clearly. The Scaligers who con- 
ferred so much prestige on French scholarship in the six- 
teenth century were of Italian origin, the elder born in Italy 
and securing his education there. Even Babelais, whom the 
world has come to recognize now as having done so much 
for scholarship and education at this time, was more deeply in- 
fluenced by visits to Italy and by his Italian masters than 
by any other elements in his environment. 
In the Spanish Renaissance the influence of Italy can be 
traced even more directly and more fully than in France. 
There was a magnificent development of scholarship which 
began shortly after the discovery of America, due to men 
who had studied in Italy and returned with copies of the 
classics, and with the spirit of the New Learning so pro- 
foundly in possession of them that their initiative roused 
many others to active study of the humanities. The earliest 
of these Spanish scholars was Guzman, a nobleman who vis- 
ited Italy during the Council of Florence, and returned with 
copies of Cicero and Quintilian. Antonio of Lebrixa, after 
spending twenty years in Italy, returned about 1473 to lec- 
ture at all the Spanish Universities, and to publish grammars 
of Latin and Greek as well as Hebrew. After this, grammar 
became the specialty of the Spaniards, suiting their philo- 
sophic temper of mind, and they wrote the grammars for 
Europe. Barbosa, a pupil of Politian, taught Greek at 
154 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
Salamanca and many Spanish Bishops who went on official 
visits to the Pope came back with manuscripts, and above all 
with deep interest in classical studies to scatter the seeds of 
the New Learning everywhere. Very few of the distinguished 
Spanish scholars of this time failed to be influenced either 
directly by visits to Italy or by Italian teaching. 
Portugal received its first impetus to scholarship at this 
period from Italy and Resende taught Greek at Lisbon, and 
Evora after an education in Italy. Achilles Statius, perhaps 
the most famous of Portuguese scholars, won his high repu- 
tation in Rome by a work on ancient portraits, and by com- 
mentaries on the Ars Poetica of Horace when he was not yet 
thirty, and added greatly to his reputation by his scholarly 
editions of Catullus and Tibullus. The University of Coimbra, 
which became famous about that time for its scholarship and 
attracted students from many parts of Europe, owed most 
of its incentive to good work in the humanities to Italian 
sources, and the Jesuits who shed such prestige on it were 
greatly influenced from their central house, the Collegio 
Romano in Italy. 
England like all the other countries of Europe owed much 
to Italy for stimulation to scholarship at this time. Practi- 
cally all the distinguished Renaissance scholars of England 
studied in Italy. The first English Humanist was Lord Grey 
of Codnor, who having gone to Cologne, famous for its gen- 
eral culture and education at this time, made so many friends 
there, that when he came to the conclusion that he must 
go to Italy because he felt sure that he could secure better 
opportunities for classical culture down in the Peninsula, 
he had to steal away from his German friends at night. He 
ordered a library in Florence, studied at Padua, was attrac- 
ted to Ferrara by the reputation of Guarino and from there 
went to Rome, where the scholarly Pope Nicholas V, wishing 
to have all the weight of his influence in England exerted 
to the best advantage for classical studies and the development 
of scholarship, nominated him Bishop of Ely. Dr. John 
Free, a physican whose expenses during his Italian trip were WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
paid by Lord Grey, attracted so much attention from Italian 
scholars that he came to be recognized as their peer in 
every way, was appointed Bishop of Bath with the same idea 
of fostering education, but unfortunately he died before 
consecration. 
The most interesting feature of Italy’s welcome for these 
students from Britain “which is situated outside the world,” 
was as we have already emphasized with regard to students 
of other nationalities, the absolute lack of any narrow national 
jealousy so far as regards their academic careers and oppor- 
tunities. It was not unusual to have them appointed to 
important posts in the university in competition with the 
Italians. We pride -ourselves on our internationalism, but 
where will it be exemplified as in the Italy of the Renaissance. 
Reynold Chichelev, who studied at Ferrara under Guarino, 
became Rector of the university there. John Tiptoft, Earl 
of Worcester, was honored everywhere in the eourse of his 
student pilgrimages to Italy, and was heard in a Latin ora- 
tion by P-ope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius) who is said to have 
wept tears of joy because of the feeling of satisfaction that 
classical scholarship was now a world possession, having 
crossed the Channel to Ultima Thule. The first Englishman 
who studied Greek in the Revival of Learning was William 
Selling, a Benedictine monk, who had his interest aroused 
while on an embassy to the Pope. He was the uncle of Lin- 
acre, who had the privilege of accompanying him on this 
embassy. Grocyn and Bishop Fisher and Dean Colet were 
all influenced directly or indirectly very deeply by the Italian 
scholarship of this time. 
During the seventeenth century the palm for scholar- 
ship in Europe was to pass to the Hollanders in connection 
with the University of Leyden, and yet the names of such 
men as Raphael Fabretti of Urbino, who became director of 
the Archives of Rome and Father Strada, S. J., whose Pro- 
fusions are still of interest to scholars and the great mass of 
Latin verse which seemed so important in its own time, but 
has become so almost utterly insignificant in ours, shows the ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
Italian devotion to the intellectual life. There are devoted 
scholars of that seventeenth century Latin literature of the 
Italian peninsula who feel sure that it is destined to have a 
revival in a generation that shall have more mental interests 
than we have. Certainly it is a standing monument of the 
scholarly interests of the Italians of that time. 
In the eighteenth century, as we have said, Italy gave 
the world that magnificent aid to scholarship, Forcellini’s 
surpassing Latin lexicon. This is one of the epoch making 
works of Latin scholarship. Corsini’s Fasti Attici laid the 
foundation for a chronology of the history of Athens and 
opened up the path to the solution of most of the problems 
of Hellenic chronology. It was during this century, too, that 
Piranesi did his wonderful work in the bold and vigorous 
engravings of the Roman monuments of Italy, which are still 
so famous and continue to interest the world. Was ever 
a report of a commission so marvelous in its completeness as 
his? No work equal to this has ever been done by a single 
man and it has a profound significance not only in art, but 
in scholarship and history. 
Another of the great world scholars whom the world owes 
to Italy at this time was Lodovico Antonio Muratori, whose 
works form almost a library by themselves. His monumental 
work Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab Anno Erae Christianae 
400 ad Annum 1500 contains the sources of Italian history as 
never before collected. With the assistance of the Societa 
Palatina of Milan it was published in twenty-eight folio 
volumes. Modern appreciation of its value can be gathered 
from the fact that a new critical edition of it was in course 
of appearance in Italy before the war. It was looked upon 
as one of the most important works of this generation. This 
is however, only a single one of Muratori’s works. He has 
six volumes of essays on many subjects connected with Italy 
entitled Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi. In the third volume 
of this collection what is known as the Muratorian canon, 
the oldest known list of books of the new testament which 
was discovered by Muratori is published. The manuscript WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
containing the canon originally belonged to the ancient mon- 
astery of Bobbio and is now at Milan. It is of the highest 
importance for biblical exegesis. Altogether Muratori’s works 
fill seventeen volumes quarto in the original edition or 
eighteen volumes in the edition of the nineteenth century. 
In spite of adhering to certain political doctrines unfavorable 
to the Papacy, and holding certain religious ideas in which he 
was in disagreement with a large number of the theologians 
of his time, Muratori was highly respected by churchmen, 
and received most encouraging letters from Pope Benedict 
XIV. and from Cardinal Ganganelli, who was afterwards 
Pope Clement XIV. Muratori is one of the universal geniuses 
of wide scholarship and profundity of intellect, at home in 
all fields of knowledge, who furnish incontrovertible evidence 
of the breadth and depth of the Italian intellect at its best. 
One of the great Italian scholars of this eighteenth cen- 
tury whose work has deeply influenced the erudition of the 
world is the Jesuit Tiraboschi, whose career fell in the latter 
half of the century. He became the librarian of the Duke 
of Modena, enriching the library with many books and manu- 
scripts and providing it with catalogues. He wrote a history 
of Italian literature which is very known. It is extremely 
valuable because of the abundance of precious documents with 
which it is illustrated. Besides he wrote a series of other 
historical papers of less importance, and yet all of them of 
value because of the immense erudition which he had at his 
command, and the breadth and depth of his scholarship. 
Italian scholarship even in the nineteenth century, in 
spite of the political disturbances and unfavorable conditions 
made some magnificent contributions to world culture. The 
learned Jesuit Angelo Mai in the first part of the nineteenth 
century did much original work of great value. No recent 
scholar has had the good fortune, due in Mai’s case to intense 
devotion to his work, to add so much to the classical treasures 
of the world as this Italian member of the great teaching 
order. ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
Sandys in his History of Classical Scholarship furnishes 
a brief catalogue of his works:— 
“As Librarian in Milan (1811-9), he published, from Mss. 
formerly at Bobbin, fragments of six speeches of Cicero, the 
correspondence of M. Aurelius and Fronto, portions of eight 
speeches by Symmachus, fragments of the Yindularia of 
Plautus, as well as scholia and pictorial illustrations from the 
Ambrosian Mss. of Terence (1814-5). His publications from 
Greek Mss. included a large addition to the Speech of Isaeus 
De Hereditate Cleonymi, a hitherto unknown portion of the 
Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1816), as 
well as scholia on the Odyssey (1819) ; he also took 
part in an edition of the newly discovered Armenian 
version of the Eusebian chronicle (1818). In Rome he pub- 
lished from a Vatican palimpsest large portions of Cicero’s 
lost treatise De Republica (1822) collected the remains of the 
pre-Justinian Civil Law (1823), and summed up his wonder- 
ful work as an editor of hitherto unknown texts by producing 
from the Mss. of the Vatican three great series, of ten volumes 
each, the Scriptorum veterum nova collectio (1825-38), Clas- 
sici auctores (1828-38) and the Spicilegium Romanum (1839- 
44). After an interval of eight years the Spicilegium was 
followed by the Patrum nova collectio of the last two years of 
his life. (1852-4).” 
Other distinguished Italian scholars of the last century 
whose productive erudition is well known were Amadeo Par- 
ron who did so much for Cicero’s text, though also for 
Empedocles and Parmenides; Masso Vallauri, who wrote a 
critical history of Latin literature and edited a large number 
of school texts of Latin classics; Domenico Pezzi who wrote 
La Lingua Graeca Antica looked upon as very valuable; Ascoli 
who accomplished so much in comparative philology and 
whose lectures on comparative phonology have been trans- 
lated into several European languages, while his edition of the 
Codice Irlandese of the Ambrosian Library made in 1878 
was a distinguished contribution very early in its history to 
the modern Celtic movement and the revival of the study of WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Gaelic. Rosmini’s companions and disciples made some fine 
contributions to Italian scholarship. Perhaps the best known 
is De-Vit, who became a member of the Institute of Charity 
founded by Rosmini, and in the leisure thus afforded for his 
studies made an enlarged and revised edition of Forcellini 
and wrote lexicographical articles on Latin inscriptions and 
various historical associations of the Lago Maggiore and the 
valley of the Ossola. 
Italy has of course been the great home of the illumin- 
ating studies in inscriptions and coins, which have meant so 
much for the history of Rome and for the better understand- 
ing of classical literature. The studies in these subjects dur- 
ing the nineteenth century have been particularly assiduous 
and successful and classical archaeology has been pursued by 
many in Italy with ever increasing success. Luigi Canina 
Bartholomeo Borghesi, who- as citizen and podesta of the still 
independent republic of San Marino, produced two volumes 
on the new fragments of the Fasti Consulares and many other 
valuable studies is a typical instance. His collected works 
fill nine volumes. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum owed 
much to him and practically all to Italians. The Jesuit 
Raffaele Garrucci did his early work down at Naples, where 
he published the first edition of his Graffiti di Pompei and 
then was for thirty years in Rome where he prepared a 
sylloge of inscriptions of the Roman Republic and a great 
work on the coins of ancient Italy. Other names such as 
Cavedoni, Competetti, Abellino, Fabretti, the Duke of Ser- 
radialco and Cavalari as well as Fiorelli and Bruzza well de- 
serve to be mentioned, and would of themselves have con- 
ferred distinction on the scholarship of any other country. 
Italian scholars in the nineteenth century have been 
particularly successful in the great work of re-creating early 
Christian times from the monuments. De Rossi, famous for 
his work in many branches of archaeology and especially suc- 
cessful in Latin epigraphy, did much for the study of Roman 
topography and especially the elucidation of the Regions and 
City and Roman inscriptions generally. His magnificent de- 
160 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
tailed research by which he brought about the identification of 
the cemetery of San Callista, will ever remain a triumph of 
genius scholarship. To use Sandys’ expression: 
‘ ‘ He is justly regarded as the founder >of the recent study 
of Christian Archaeology in Rome, but De Rossi himself had 
a special reverence for the memory of ‘the true Columbus’ 
of the Catacombs, Antonio Bosio (1575-1629), the learned and 
industrious author of a far earlier Roma Sotteranea (1632).” 
Scarcely less famous than De Rossi was Bruzza, whose 
complete corrections of the Roman inscriptions of Vercelli 
won the highest praise from Mommsen, while the grateful 
citizens of Vercelli called their local museum by the name 
of Bruzza and struck a gold medal in his honor. He was 
President of the Roman Society for the Preservation of 
Christian Archaelogy and met his death while superintending 
the excavation of the crypt of St. Hippolytus. 
The Italians have published many books, contributed to 
the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, published bulletins and 
periodicals of many different kinds with regard to archae- 
ology, classical scholarship, grammar and classical studies of 
all sorts. What they have done for a better understanding of 
Roman history by their excavations in the forum alone shows 
how they are continuing finely the old time tradition of 
Italian scholarship. Sandys says: 
Since the end of 1898 the excavations in the Roman 
Forum have comprised the discovery of the site of the ‘Lacus 
Curtius’ the base of the colossal statue of Domitian described 
in the Silvae of Statius, the pavement on which the body of 
Caesar was burnt, the legendary tomb of Romulus, and the 
earliest of all Latin inscriptions.” 
One of the wonders of the world, as he has been well 
called, wdiose career shows at its highest the power of the 
human mind to accumulate knowledge and use it practically, 
was the Italian Cardinal Mezzofanti, “the greatest of poly- 
glots,” who died in 1849. He had a prodigious memory and 
at the end of his life spoke perfectly thirty-eight languages, 
some thirty others less perfectly and knew from practical 
161 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
use fifty dialects. From his very earliest years his memory 
had been remarkable, and he completed his three years course 
of philosophy at the age of twelve with a public disputation. 
He had completed his theological studies long before he could 
be ordained, and in the interval of waiting he devoted himself 
to languages. When he was about twenty-five, after the 
Napoleonic battles of 1799 and 1800, he was chaplain to the 
hospitals of Bologna, which were crowded with the wounded 
and sick soldiers of almost all the nationalities in Europe. 
Here Mezzofanti devoted himself to affording consolation to 
all of them whatever their languages. He thus perfected his 
own knowledge, added new languages to his repertoire, yet 
devoted himself so unstintedly to the care of the poor fellows 
into whose life he brought so much consolation that he was 
looked up to as a marvel of charity. This set the seal upon 
his life-work and he became the confessor of foreigners. He 
was invited to Rome to place his learning directly at the 
service of the Holy See, he became custodian-in-chief of the 
Vatican Library, and Consultor of the Congregation for the 
Correction of the Liturgical books of Oriental Rites, of which 
he became the Prefect. He is one of the few marvels of pre- 
cocity in history, famous in early youth for their knowledge 
who have lived out a long life, (he was past seventy-five 
years of age when he died) and fulfilled the promise of their 
early years. 
As a marvel of erudition Mezzofanti may well close the 
chapter on Italian Scholarship. The brief summary requir- 
ing so much condensation that it could be made scarcely more 
than a catalogue of learned authors and their works certainly 
affords abundant evidence that the people of the Italian 
peninsula have had more profound scholars among them than 
any other country. Their influence has been felt in every 
country where the higher education has flourished, and it is 
no wonder that all down the centuries ambitious students of 
the humanities have looked longingly to Italy, and many of 
them have found their way down to the peninsula. Italian 
scholars almost without exception have not been merely ac- 
162 ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP 
cumulators of erudition, but productive workers in the field 
of scholarship, nearly always leaving behind them as a 
special heritage of mankind, works that rendered the paths 
to scholarship much easier for succeeding generations. PHILOSOPHY 
PHILOSOPHY, as the science of the meaning of life and 
the origin and destiny of man and of the universe, took 
its primal rise in Greece, and the impress of Greek thinking 
has always remained on it. There is to all practical purposes 
no mode of philosophic speculation that was not anticipated 
in Greece long ago. Idealism, realism, atomism, dynamism, 
matter and form, evolution, all the philosophic ‘isms’ are 
readily traceable to Greece. We may not quite agree with the 
suggestion of Sir Henry Maine and Gladstone that ‘ ‘ whatever 
lives and moves in the intellectual order is Greek in origin,” 
but there can be no doubt that Greek thought occupied by 
far the most important portion of the history of philosophy. 
Indeed there are many phases of Greek philosophy which over 
and over again have seemed to be mere idle speculation to 
many generations, yet to others have appealed as perhaps the 
nearest approach to truth that man is likely to attain. 
Immediately after Greece in the history of philosophy, 
however, and with its practical genius developing and passing 
on the message of Greek philosophy for the modern world 
comes Italy and the Italians. In the classical period 
the Eomans made no supreme contributions to philosophy, 
though they accomplished work in the practical philosophy of 
life, and left some writing on ethics that men will never 
willingly let die. The world of literature and of thought 
would indeed be very much poorer if it did not possess such 
works as those of Cicero on “Immortality” or his interesting 
contribution to applied ethics in De Officiis, The Duties of Life, 
or the philosophic essays on Friendship and On Old Age with 
their distinctly modern flavor which created a new type of 
164 PHILOSOPHY 
literature and have proved models and hints for so many 
essays in the after time. So great a mind as that of St. 
Augustine was deeply influenced by Cicero’s Hortensius from 
which he declared that he imbibed a love of the wisdom that 
true philosophy of life which Cicero so eloquently praised. 
Augustine had been a rhetorician up to this, but now his 
heart became devoted to philosophy. 
The history of literature and philosophic thought would 
suffer a sad gap without Lucretius, and the after time would 
be the poorer indeed for failing to know how modern and 
thoroughly up-to-date a poet of the century just before Christ 
could be in his philosophic speculations on the origin and 
destiny of life, and on the question of evolution. The surprise 
is how much the Roman poet anticipated many phases of 
thought usually supposed to be very recent in origin. The 
Plinys are less seriously philosophical and yet they deserve 
a place in the history of philosophy, while one of the greatest 
of philosophical historians of all time is undoubtedly Tacitus. 
All this we owe to natives of the Italian peninsula in the 
older time that we often scarcely think of as Italian, though 
it is. 
With the beginning of the Middle Ages Italy assumed 
a distinct leadership in the world of thought. The Romans 
had been scarcely more than imitators, marvelous copyists it 
is true, with a power and lucidity of expression all their 
own, but with the coming of Christianity, Latin philosophy 
in the Italian peninsula assumed a newer and deeper signifi- 
cance and a great original current of thought was initiated. 
Boethius “the last of the Romans,” as he has been styled, 
but recognized by history as a Christian martyr who just 
about the end of the first quarter of the sixth century was 
put to death for his faith, wrote his De Consolatione Phil- 
osophiae while in prison preparing for his execution. While 
his book is strictly classical in character without any men- 
tion of Christianity, Boethius also wrote a series of Chris- 
tian theological works, some of them mentioned by Cassio- 
dorus. This testimony of a contemporary puts aside all 
165 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
thought of the lack of authenticity of these works which 
used to be questioned. Boethius’ Consolations of Philos- 
ophy “is by far the most interesting example of prison 
literature the world has ever seen.” It was a chosen sub- 
ject of study for ten centuries and the important poets and 
literateurs of Europe were devoted to it. It was a favorite 
book with statesmen and historians as well as philosophers 
and theologians. It has a glorious history in its translators 
and commentators. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by 
King Alfred and into old German by Notker, the German. 
Its influence may be traced very clearly in Dante’s Convito 
and references to it are frequent in the Divine Comedy. 
Its enduring vitality and its appeal to a world audience may 
be appreciated from the fact that its influence is quite as 
noticeable in Beowulf as in Chaucer. In Anglo-Norman and 
Provencal popular medieval poetry allusions to it are con- 
stantly to be found. It will thus be seen that few books 
have ever made so deep an impression on the greatest 
thinkers of so many generations as Boethius’ Consolations. 
A contemporary of Boethius, whose long life of ninety- 
three years was divided between statesmanship and contri- 
butions to philosophy was Cassiodorus. When about fifty 
years of age he retired to a monastery founded by himself, 
and devoted his life to harmonizing the culture of the 
ancient with that of the modern world. As a pioneer in 
this, modern civilization owes more to him than perhaps to 
any other single individual, of the early Middle Ages. He 
was the first great philosophic Christian educator. In his 
Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum he out- 
lines a broad liberal education in direct connection with 
the study of the Holy Scriptures. He encouraged research, 
dwelt on science as well as philosophy and insisted on the 
necessity of good libraries for consultation, thus helping in 
the establishment of the tradition of large monastic collec- 
tions of books. 
Among the great philosophic writers who have deeply 
influenced human thinking for some fifteen centuries are the 
166 PHILOSOPHY 
four great Latin Doctors of the Church, Ambrose, Jerome, 
Augustine and Gregory. All of these must be looked upon 
as Italians, for though Augustine was born in Africa he 
came of strictly Latin stock that had not been many gener- 
ations out of the peninsula. These four men have more 
influenced the course of Christian thought ever since than 
any others. Ambrose was a characteristically practical 
Roman in whom the ethico-practical note is always dom- 
inant. His homilies are evidences of his gifts as a profound 
philosophic orator touched with poetic inspiration, who set 
forth the great message of Christianity in practical terms 
for all time. 
Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church 
writing of Augustine nearly fifteen centuries after his time 
says that “He was a philosophical and theological genius 
of the first order, dominating like a pyramid antiquity and 
succeeding ages. Compared with the great philosophers of 
past centuries and modern times he is the equal of them all; 
among theologians he is undeniably the first, and such has 
been his influence that none of the Fathers, scholastics or 
reformers has surpassed him.” Most of the historic theo- 
logical controversies in the Church since St. Augustine’s 
time have been founded on differences of opinion with regard 
to his meaning. The opposing scholars almost invariably 
asserted their claims to teach by his authority. He discussed 
very fully the most difficult questions of man’s relation to 
the Creator and particularly grace and free will, and he is 
appealed to as the authority by practically all theological 
and philosophical teachers of these subjects ever since. His 
works have been issued in an almost endless number of 
editions and they have always been a favorite subject of 
study at every period since his death by all those deeply 
interested in the thought underlying Christianity. His 
work The City of God is the first great philosophy of history 
ever written, and contains an immense amount of philosoph- 
ical thinking that has deeply influenced all succeeding gen- 
erations. His Confessions show his power of looking within WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
himself, a quality of mind often thought reserved for our 
time, and he made of it a book that has meant very much 
for the practical philosophy of life ever since, probably 
never more so than for our generation when many editions 
of it have been issued. With Plato, Augustine has probably 
influenced the thinking of the scholars of humanity, the 
chosen minds of mankind, more than any other who ever 
lived, and there is good reason to think that the Latin 
Father of the Church has meant more for men in his strictly 
philosophic influence than even the Greek Father of Phil- 
osophy. It would be easy to gather eulogies *of him which 
place him among the half a dozen greatest intellectual 
geniuses who have ever lived. 
Nearly every Christian thinker of significance appealed 
to St. Augustine, or at least thought that he founded his 
theological speculations on Augustine’s writings. Even 
Albert the Great and St. Thomas in the thirteenth century 
were condemned at times by various ecclesiastical authorities 
and even Church assemblages because they were thought to 
contradict St. Augustine. As a matter of fact, probably no 
writers on theology have ever had a higher opinion of Augus- 
tine than they. Above all in most of St. Thomas Aquinas’ 
great Summa, his one idea seemed to be to incorporate into 
theology to as great an extent as possible St. Augustine’s 
thoughts. In the fifteenth century Bessarion and Marsilio 
Ficino used Augustine’s name for the purpose of enthroning 
Plato in the Church and excluding Aristotle. It is rather 
easy to find the basic ideas of Cartesianism in some of St. 
Augustine’s philosophic speculations and Descartes un- 
doubtedly thought that he was drawing his inspiration from 
the great Latin Father of the Church. Descartes, it may be 
recalled, has been looked upon as the most important of 
modern philosophers whose influence Avas most deeply felt 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Malebranche 
and Rosmini and our own Brownson ascribed their onto- 
logism to St. Augustine, or at least used his authority to 
support it. Augustine has been the favorite master of PHILOSOPHY 
nearly every Christian thinker since his time. The faithful 
and heretics have both claimed his support. Jansenius 
founded his system of religious thought Jansenism, pre- 
sumably on Augustine. Helvetius supported similar doc- 
trines in what he claimed were commentaries on St. 
Augustine. 
St. Jerome the third of the Latin Fathers of the Church 
is a much less important contributor to theology and eccles- 
iastical philosophy than Augustine, though he has a dis- 
tinguished place in the history of religious controversy. It 
was rather as a literary worker than as an original thinker 
that his influence was to be felt. His great translation of 
the Bible has done more than anything else to establish a 
standard scriptural text, and his principle of exegesis that 
“it is usual for the sacred historian to conform himself to 
the generally accepted opinion of the masses in his time” 
has remained as a basic maxim of biblical criticism meaning 
more for the explanation of the difficulties of the text than 
any other. His controversial works, especially against 
Jovinian and Rufinus and Yigilantius are storehouses of the 
thought of his time which has become fundamental in 
Christianity, and his commentaries on the Scriptures are 
in the present day of even greater significance than they 
have been during much of the intervening period. When it 
is recalled that his controversial works concern such ques- 
tions as the relative value of faith and good works for sal- 
vation, the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin and 
the principles of asceticism, it will be seen that far from 
representing ideas that have lost their significance in the 
course of time, he has touched on the problems that are 
almost of the greatest interest at the present time. 
When the middle ages were beginning their ascent into 
modern times, there came a great philosophic thinker and 
writer who was destined to influence the scholars and stu- 
dents of Western Europe as deeply almost as the Fathers 
and Doctors of the Church. This was Anselm, the great 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been the abbott of the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
famous monastery of Bee in Normandy as successor of 
Lanfranc and afterwards succeeded him in the English 
primacy. Anselm was born at Aosta and though usually 
thought of as English because of his occupation of the See 
of Canterbury, he was thus a native of the province of 
Turin and his birth place, the Roman Augusta Pretoria had 
been a Roman colony since Augustus’ time. Its great 
Cathedral of the eleventh century shows how thoroughly 
Italian it had become. His father was a Lombard, but the 
family had been for many centuries in Italy and were of 
the same stock as most of the enterprising North Italians 
of our day. Anselm is usually considered as the father of 
scholasticism as applied to theology, and as this has proved 
the absorbing study of most of the theologians since, it is 
easy to understand how profound Anselm’s influence must 
be recognized to have been. 
His works are the Monologium, the Proslogium, the Cur 
Deus Homo and various homiletic and meditative writings. 
The Proslogium is famous as containing Anselm’s chief 
achievement in philosophy, the ontological argument for the 
existence of God. This has been the subject of much dis- 
cussion and contradiction, and yet many thinkers have come 
back to it time and time again ever since it was written. 
His Cur Deus Homo has been the basic teaching in what 
concerns the doctrine of the atonement, that is why God 
became man, ever since it was written. It has been a favor- 
ite volume for many who were not so much interested in its 
philosophy and theology as in its literary philosophic quality 
and its charming exposition of this great problem that lies 
at the basis of Christianity. It has been issued in all manner 
of editions ever since, and few scholarly Churchmen of any 
denomination are willing to confess utter ignorance of 
Anselm’s wonderful little book. Answering those who 
criticize the Middle Ages for lack of attention to form and 
style in their writings and “who will not pardon literature 
whatever its historic and educative importance may be, for 
being something less than masterly in itself,” Prof. Saintsbury PHILOSOPHY 
of the University of Edinburgh declared that they “will find 
it difficult to maintain the exclusion of the Cur Bern Homo 
or the Dies Irae” from the list of great literature. Even in 
the form of presentation and style these are great works. 
Hegel the German philosopher was one of those who was 
deeply influenced by Anselm. To him the ontological proof 
of the existence of God had a special appeal. The same thing 
was true of Descartes. Between these Kant assailed it, but in 
doing so paid his tribute to the philosopher of nearly eight 
centuries before. While the argument was rejected by St. 
Thomas Aquinas, it was accepted enthusiastically by Alex- 
ander of Hales and ardently supported by Duns Scotus, men 
who are deservedly looked upon as among the greatest think- 
ers of that period, the end of the thirteenth and the beginning 
of the fourteenth century. More than five hundred years later 
the ontological argument proved supremely fascinating to 
such profound philosophic minds as Rosmini and our own 
Orestes Brownson, as well as to a large number of disting- 
uished teachers of philosophy and theology. Thus to have 
influenced men of deep thinking powers for many genera- 
tions, men of such different forms and modes of culture for 
nearly ten centuries, is the highest possible tribute to the 
quality of Anselm’s philosophic genius. He was not at all, 
however, a mere writer of books and discusser of theories in- 
dulging in philosophic speculation. As the Archbishop of 
Canterbury he is one of the greatest of English churchmen. 
Freeman declared that “stranger as he was he has won his 
place among the noblest worthies of our Island” and he has 
further wTords of lofty praise for Anselm’s charming char- 
acter of gentle saintliness, yet immovable determination when- 
ever the right was concerned. Carlyle, not easy to please 
declared him “One of the purest minded men of genius” and 
Frederick Dennison Maurice said of him “For Anselm was 
a philosopher, the philosopher of the eleventh century. 
Anselm’s predecessor at Canterbury as well as Bee, Lan- 
franc, is another of the great Italian thinkers of that time WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
who clarified ideas and especially worked out some of the most 
profound theological principles and their relations to reason. 
He was another example of these great Italian scholars of the 
Middle Ages who exerted deep influence in the West and 
proved to have great administrative powers as well as high 
intellectual ability. From his name he is often thought 
French, but like his namesake the great surgeon of the thir- 
teenth century, he was an Italian born at Pavia and his fam- 
ily name was Lanfranchi. After Anselm the next great basic 
contributor to scholasticism was Peter Lombard, so-called 
from his birthplace in Lombardy, the “master of the sen- 
tences” or simply “the master” as he was known, whose 
Book of Sentences was written about the middle of the twelfth 
century. This work first printed in 1472 has been often re- 
printed since, the last time in 1892 (Paris.) Peter Lombard 
has continued to be a great living force in thought, and 
though his writings have often been attacked they have con- 
tinued to be a basic element in Christian philosophy. He 
was the first successful follower of a via media on which one 
could safely walk between the encroaching claims of reason 
and dogma. Down to the sixteenth century the Book of Sen- 
tences was the university textbook upon which each future 
doctor of philosophy had to lecture during two years. 
The greatest of the philosophers of Italy in the opinion 
of the majority of scholarly men in nearly every generation 
since his time, the greatest thinker since Aristotle and Aris- 
totle’s most profound expounder, was Thommasso d’Aquino, 
usually known as Thomas Aquinas or simply Aquinas, 
and called by English speaking Catholics, St. Thomas 
of Aquin. In the midst of the early Renaissance, when Greek 
influence was beginning to make itself deeply felt in Italy, 
St. Thomas took Aristotle in the standard edition of his works 
that had at last become available and adopted and adapted his 
principles to Christian theology. He did this so successfully 
that he has been hailed ever since as a Doctor of the Church 
and has been recognized as the ultimate authority in prac- 
tically all questions of theology with regard to which the PHILOSOPHY 
profound use of the human reason is required. His own gen- 
eration were ardent in their appreciation of him and Dante’s 
adoption of Aquinas’ teaching as the basis of his sublime 
poetry is the striking demonstration of the place Aquinas had 
come to hold. With the decadence of interest in deeper prob- 
lems that came in the eighteenth century Aquinas lost some- 
thing of his prestige only to have it all restored to him, just 
as happened to Dante, in our own day. 
With the fondness of the Middle Ages for descriptive des- 
ignations of favorite professors, Aquinas was given, because 
of the depth of his speculations on theological subjects the 
title of the Angelic Doctor, with the innuendo that he had the 
penetrating mental qualities of the heavenly intellectual 
powers. The greatest pope of the nineteenth century, Leo 
XIII, whom the intellectual world of his time not only within 
but without the Church considered one of the wisest minds of 
our time, decreed that St. Thomas’ writings should be the 
standard in the teaching of philosophy and theology in all 
the Catholic institutions of learning throughout the world. 
If anything were needed to show his enduring influence surely 
this decision of a great modern pope makes it very clear that 
far from being an intellectual force of the dead and distant 
past, Thomas’ teaching is still a great living reality in the 
world of thought and philosophy. Leo XIII, himself a dis- 
tinguished scholar was an intensely practical and thoroughly 
modern ruler, above all without any of the qualities that 
would stamp him as a nebulous mystic whose thoughts were 
warped by any real or supposed medieval barriers. 
When the Pope promulgated this decree he was only 
formulating as a rule what has become spontaneously the 
almost constant and universal practise and tradition of Cath- 
olic schools and universities. Even those who disagree with 
Aquinas in certain few points of philosophy and theology 
are quite ready to confess his greatness and to admit that no 
one has ever taken the whole field of philosophy and theology 
for his work and accomplished so much. The more one knows 
of St. Thomas the more is he respected. Only those despise 
173 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
him or make little of him who have never taken the trouble 
to give time enough to understand his work. Quite needless 
to say he is not always easy reading, but that is not because 
of the obscurity of his teaching, but because of the profundity 
of the problems he treats and the depth of his speculations, 
on them. No philosophic writer ever has expressed so exactly 
or with such scrupulous nicety his absolute meaning about 
the most important distinctions of thought on the most sig- 
nificant questions of philosophy and ethics as St. Thomas. 
While he had a magnificently speculative intellect, he had 
also a thoroughly practical mind, and in applied ethics his 
opinion is quite as valuable as it is with regard to the great 
underlying principles of speculative philosophy and dogmatic 
theology. 
Anyone who thinks, however, that St. Thomas represents 
mere speculation, that is, deductions and a priori reasoning 
from assumed principles, will be quite surprised to find what 
a wealth of knowledge and information with regard to all 
subjects of which he treats, Aquinas possesses. In our own 
time Herbert Spencer amazed his generation by the wealth of 
his information and the almost infinite detail of his knowledge 
in scientific matters. I venture to say that those who know 
their Aquinas best would be quite ready to declare that the 
medieval philosopher had compassed more of the information 
of all kinds possessed by his time, or what his generation 
thought to be information, than anyone has ever had and that 
in this respect Herbert Spencer, in spite of all his marvelous 
accumulation of information, was far surpassed by his col- 
league of the thirteenth century. Above all, St. Thomas knew 
the science of his time very well. He constantly used his 
knowledge in his philosophical writing. There is never any 
display of erudition for erudition’s sake any more than there 
is in Dante. He constantly reverts to the conclusions of scien- 
tists and as his great teacher and brother Dominican, Albertus 
Magnus was a scientific genius of the highest order, acknowl- 
edged as such now by all who know his work, who had written 
books on many subjects in physical science, Thomas’ oppor- 
174 PHILOSOPHY 
tunities to secure information can be readily understood to 
have been of the best. 
Perhaps the best standpoint of comparison between the 
supremely human significance of our nineteenth century phil- 
osophers and that of the thirteenth century Italian can be 
found in the attitude of poets toward them. It would be hard 
to think of a great poet using any of our modern philosophic 
systems much less the dry bones of scientific speculation, as 
the basis of a great poem or a series of poems. It has often 
been said however that Dante in writing his immortal poem 
lifted St. Thomas' Summa into sublime poetry. All the 
ultimate problems of man’s relation to the Creator and to the 
universe are treated with a completeness and a thoroughness 
by St. Thomas that his book very naturally became the quarry 
out of which a great poet obtained his materials. The works 
of the Angelic Doctor have been the source not only of su- 
preme poetry, but of marvelous books of devotion and of 
mystical philosophy. They have been the consolation of many 
who are not occupied with the thought of having to teach 
them, or comprehend their conclusions for intellectual satis- 
faction, but because they find in them the most workable 
material for their sermons, their meditations and even most 
of what means much for the direction of the daily lives of 
themselves and others. 
Perhaps the most surprising thing about St. Thomas is 
his anticipation of many quite modem problems in philosophy 
and even in science. There are many of the ardent followers 
of Aquinas, who insist that the whole of Kant’s philosophy is 
anticipated in certain objections which St. Thomas urges 
against his own teaching and which he answers very effec- 
tively. No one has ever stated opponents’ objections with 
such sincerity and force as Aquinas. His teaching with regard 
to evolution is very interesting, and though he was an Aris- 
totelian he is quite favorable to many modem evolutionary 
ideas. Aristotle has stated and rejected the doctrine of 
natural selection. He believed in evolution, but not the evo- 
lution of Democritus of which our modern systems are the 
175 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
descendants. In spite of this St. Thomas, commenting on 
St. Augustine whose expressions he is amplifying and sup- 
porting insists that creation was not of individuals nor even 
of species, but of “the seeds of living beings/’ so that a de- 
velopment was to be expected. St. Thomas even suggests 
quite formally and explicitly that new species may arise in 
the course of the life of living things and that they are the 
result of the natural laws that exist in creation. His whole 
discussion of the subject of creation shows how much of 
respect he had for the opinion of serious students of physical 
science, even in that time when science was so much less well 
informed than it is at the present time. 
The more one knows of Aquinas the more thoroughly he 
is admired. His ideas with regard to matter for instance are 
in anticipation of many of the nations that are usually sup- 
posed to be quite modern. As we have seen in the chapter 
on Physical Science he was teaching in the thirteenth cen- 
tury not only the indestructibility of matter, but also the 
conservation of energy, and his doctrine of the composition 
of matter resembled very closely that of the modern physical 
chemist. 
Another of the great Italian philosophers of this fertile 
time was Bonaventure, the general of the Franciscans, a con- 
temporary of Aquinas, who has also received the title of 
Doctor of the Church, and because his writings refer to the 
mystical side of religion and philosophy, he has been called 
the Seraphic Doctor. He has always been a favorite study 
of his brother Franciscans, and they have been distinguished 
for learning down the centuries. Besides, many of the Popes 
have referred to him in the highest praise. Leo XIII calls 
Bonaventure “the Prince of Mystics” who “having scaled 
the difficult heights of speculation in the most notable man- 
ner treated of mystical theology with such perfection that 
in the common opinion of the learned he is facile princeps in 
that field.” While Thomas was a marvel of analytical intel- 
lect, Bonaventure was a synthetic genius. His works have 
been issued with commentaries in many editions. In the fif- 
176 SINGING GALLERY OF THE CATHEDRAL 
Lucca Della Robbia 1400-1482 PHILOSOPHY 
teenth century, just after the invention of printing, but three 
centuries after their author’s death, no less than fifty editions 
of Bonaventure’s works appeared. He is still fondly studied 
by a great many deep scholars, and looked upon by them as 
one of the great thinkers of all time whose influence has con- 
tinued to exert itself all down the centuries. 
Perhaps the most interesting phase of the work of both 
of these men, St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure, is that be- 
sides being philosophers they were poets, and that too, among 
the greatest. Aquinas has taken the deepest problems in 
devotional theology in his hymns to the Blessed Sacrament, 
and in spite of their profundity of thought and the necessity 
for the most careful expression to satisfy theological dogma 
has made very beautiful, indeed sublime poetry. Several of 
his hymns are considered as having a high place among the 
very greatest in use in the Church’s liturgy. The Lauda Sion 
Salvatorem and the Pange Lingua Gloriosi must be numbered 
among the most sublime religious poems ever written, worthy 
of a rank among the seven supreme hymns of the Church. 
Some of St. Bnnaventure’s are scarcely less famous. That 
the men who were the most influential teachers of philosophy 
at the greatest university of the time, that of Paris, should 
also be the authors of such sublime religious poetry can not 
but be a never ending source of surprise. Bonaventure’s 
hymns are among the sweetest that there are in all the re- 
ligious poetry, and only those of St. Thomas with the Dies 
Irae and the Stabat Mater excel them. 
It is sometimes the custom to think that this old scholastic 
philosophy is entirely out of date, and no longer of interest to 
men. Such a thought however, can come only to those who 
have not taken the pains to stud}'' the old philosophers. Their 
philosophy is no more antiquated than their great hymns 
which are still familiarly used throughout the world and no 
more out of date than Dante, their intimate poetic disciple, 
who has attracted more attention in the later nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries than in almost any century since his death. 
Dante is after all the poet of scholastic philosophy owing 
177 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the basis of all his poetic speculations to the philosophers of 
the thirteenth century and particularly to Aquinas. The 
greatest poets and critics of the modern world are agreed 
that so far from humanity having outlived serious interest in 
Dante, no one has expressed the philosophic significance of 
life on the background of eternity as Dante has done it. 
Dr. Stanley Hall has recently suggested some of the antic- 
ipations (they might easily be multiplied) of modern thought 
in the philosophic writings by Italians of centuries ago. They 
serve to emphasize for us that unwelcome thought of the 
modern time that man’s intellectual life is not progressive, 
but runs in a series of cycles occupying itself with different 
phases of thought at different times, but in recent centuries 
at least constantly recurring to previously discussed notions. 
He suggested that it would be only too trite to show in detail 
“how Anselm in his famous arguments of God was followed 
by Descartes, and in his credo quia absurdum by Jacobi, who 
found a light in his heart which went out when he tried to 
take it into his intellect, or how Bonaventure anticipated 
Schelling’s intellectual intuition, and Fichte’s blessed life.” 
He adds, but “such comparisons are endless and belong else- 
where.” 
The Italians had been the leaders in the development of 
scholastic philosophy, the greatest thinkers and writers among 
the scholastics having been born in Italy. Modern deductive 
philosophy then, is largely theirs. It is usually thought, how- 
ever, that inductive philosophy came from the West of 
Europe. In the minds of most people in the English speaking 
countries the name of Francis Bacon is associated with the 
development of induction as a philosophic method for the 
acquisition of truth, and its adoption among educated men 
to replace scholasticism and the philosophy of deduction is 
commonly attributed to him. Francis Bacon had, of course, 
been long anticipated in all that concerns the inductive method 
in science by many of the Greeks and even in modern times 
by his much greater namesake, whom now after seven cen- 
turies we are beginning to appreciate more properly, Roger 
178 PHILOSOPHY 
Bacon. Even the formulation of the principles of inductive 
philosophy, so as to make them popular, was not due to 
Francis Bacon, but to Italian writers on philosophy, among 
whom Cardano or as we usually know him in English, Jerome 
Cardan, Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno and Campanella 
are well known by all those acquainted with the history of 
philosophy. 
Of Cardan’s place in this regard we have spoken in the 
chapter on Physical Science. Telesio is looked upon as the 
founder of the school, and in his work De rerum natura 
juxta propria principia he advocates the use of the empirical 
method of investigating nature, and formulates a system ac- 
cording to which the universe results from the combination 
of three principles, matter, heat and cold. The first part of 
this work was published in Home in 1565 where Telesio had 
resided for several years, enjoying the patronage of Pope 
Paul III. His place in the history of philosophy and of 
science is well recognized. In Science for December 19th, 
1913, Professor Carmichael said of his work: 
‘ ‘ He abandoned completely the purely intellectual sphere 
of the ancient Greeks and other thinkers prior to his time, 
and proposed an inquiry into the data given by the senses. 
He held that from these data all true knowledge really 
comes. The work of Telesio, “marks the fundamental revo- 
lution in scientific thought by which we pass over from the 
ancient to the modern methods.” He more than any other 
unloosed men’s minds from Aristotle.* 
Telesio is very little known outside of Italy, though one 
of his contemporaries, Giordano Bruno, is very well known. 
The reason for the difference is that Telesio confined his 
speculations to scientific matters, avoiding the thorny prob- 
lems of religious controversy and political philosophy. The 
reputation of Bruno is due entirely to the fact that he was 
persecuted for holding certain opinions subversive of both 
* The innuendo that preceding philosophers had depended too much on 
Aristotle to the extent of blinding their own intellects by worship of him is 
true only for the lesser writers, not for the great thinkers who admired 
Aristotle very much, but criticized his conclusions, quite freely. None did 
this more effectively than the great Italian scholastics. 
179 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
religion and government and was finally put to death. Bacon 
confesses his obligations to Telesio whom he frankly hails as 
the first experimental observer of nature. Campanella, who 
has a much wider fame than Telesio, because he too is sup- 
posed to have been persecuted for his views, though his 
troubles were all due to politics, wept at Telesio’s tomb, con- 
fessing him to he his great master. Telesio’s philosophic sen- 
sationalism, Garnett suggests, helped to mould the thought of 
Hobbes and Gassendi. 
Giordano Bruno was, as we have said, a disciple of 
Telesio. Though Telesio had been on terms of intimate 
friendship with the Pope and ecclesiastical circles in Rome, 
Bruno teaching practically anarchy soon found himself in 
trouble with the political as well as the ecclesiastical author- 
ities of the time. He wandered over Europe everywhere 
setting men by the ears, attracting wide attention, but always 
also opposition and persecution. His doctrines are in many 
ways absurd, though in others they represent many modern 
tendencies. For him the universe was ruled absolutely by 
law, and there is no place for human freedom in his system 
of determinism. His philosophy is almost pure pantheism. 
It is he and not the coldly intellectual lens grinder of 
Amsterdam, Spinoza, who should have been called “the God 
intoxicated man.” Bruno declared that “soul is an emana- 
tion from the divine universe and all organisms are composed 
of living monads each of which reflects all reality.” (Turner.) 
Many modern philosophic speculations are anticipated by 
Giordano Bruno and even Spinoza, who influenced the phil- 
osophy of our time so deeply would seem apart from his 
ethical doctrines, to have owed much to him. 
Bruno, in spite of the place that is usually assigned him 
as the founder of modern naturalistic philosophy, remained 
all his life a metaphysician and poet. The most interesting 
of his works has been declared to be his Gli Eroici Furori, The 
Heroic Furies, a dythyramb in prose and verse on the pro- 
gress of the soul to union with the Divinity, which was dedi- 
cated to Sir William Sidney. The book emphasized very 
180 PHILOSOPHY 
clearly the extent of Bruno's influence all over Europe. 
Bruno owed his education to the Dominicans, among whom 
he passed his earlier years, though his philosophic system 
owed very little to any education that he had secured or to 
his reading, for it came mainly from his own intuitions and 
from a deep poetic quality in his nature, with much of the 
unbalaneedness of genius about it, and it is this that at once 
secured him his following, and yet aroused bitter opposition 
wherever he went. He was a man born before his time, 
though it is doubtful whether without the friction of opposi- 
tion that he encountered we would have had from him the 
brilliant speculations we now have. 
Campanella, like Bruno, became a Dominican and hav- 
ing become interested in Telesio’s philosophy, wrote on the 
subject. He was very ardent in the expression of his views 
and applied some of them to questions of government and 
social rights and duties. As a member of a religious order 
he was summoned before the Holy Office in Rome, but after 
a careful examination of his writings only a warning seemed 
necessary and he was permitted to return to Naples where, 
however, he soon got into the hands of the civil authorities 
on the charge of aiming to set up a communistic common- 
wealth. He was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and 
even the efforts of Pope Paul Y were not sufficient to secure 
his release. Through Pope Urban VIII, who interested him- 
self directly with Philip IY of Spain, Campanella was at 
last released, but another conspiracy was discovered among 
his followers in 1634 which threatened his freedom once more. 
With the aid of Cardinal Barberini and of the French Am- 
bassador De Noailles, Campanella succeeded in escaping to 
Rome before he could be apprehended, and was afforded a 
refuge in the Papal capital. Louis XIII and Richelieu re- 
ceived him with marked favor, granted him a liberal pension, 
and he spent the rest of his days in the enjoyment of eccle- 
siastical patronage in the Dominican Convent of St. Honore 
at Paris. He is one of the most influential writers on philos- 
ophy of his own time, and Cardinal Pallavicini declared him 
181 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
a “man who had read all things and who remembered all 
things; >of mighty hut indomitable character.” There has 
always been a division of opinion among theologians as to 
the place of his doctrines, though the great De Lugo, after- 
wards Cardinal, held his opinions above suspicion. John 
Addington Symonds refers to him as the ‘ ‘ audacious Titan of 
the modern age possessing essentially a combative intellect; a 
poet and philosopher militant, who stood alone, making war 
upon the authority of Aristotle in science, of Machiavelli in 
statecraft and of Petrarch in art.” His teaching is rather 
critical of others’ opinions than in any sense constructive, but 
his enthusiasm for the study of nature made him a man of 
European influence at a time when every scholar read Latin, 
and when his Universalis Philosophia was in nearly every 
scholar’s hands. While inductive philosophy is usually 
thought of as more modern than the Renaissance and non- 
Italian in origin, as a matter of fact the great impetus to 
that mode of thinking as in older times to scholasticism came 
from the Italians. They were not only the pioneers in its 
modern application, but also the teachers and writers whose 
books spread the doctrine all over the intellectual world. 
After the sixteenth century mental philosophy as a dis- 
cipline gave place to scientific philosophy. One of the great 
contributors to modern thinking in that department was, of 
course, Galileo, though he was entirely of too practical a 
genius to be what would be called a speculative philosopher. 
In politics Machiavelli occupies for good or ill a place and 
influence corresponding to that of Galileo in science. While 
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Kant were piecing together 
the philosophic speculations that were to occupy most of the 
attention of the philosophic students of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, there are no equally significant Italian 
writers on philosophy. As has been pointed out however, 
practically all that these men developed were ideas suggested 
by Italian speculators of earlier centuries. Kant’s whole 
position was stated in one of Aquinas’ great questions and 
definitely rejected by him. Descartes, Fichte, Schelling, 
182 PHILOSOPHY 
Spinoza were, as Prof. Stanley Hall suggests, correspondingly 
anticipated. There is nothing new under the sun in philo- 
sophy. 
About the middle of the nineteenth century Italy once 
more became an important centre of philosophic influence. 
The neo-scholasticism which has ever and more deeply im- 
pressed itself on modern serious thinkers developed in Italy, 
and had its greatest exponents in the Italian schools. One of 
the most important nineteenth century philosophers, in the 
sense that his teachings attracted wide attention and exerted 
profound influence far beyond Italy itself, was Rosmini. He 
revived many of the old ontological ideas that is of the foun- 
dation of our knowledge >on the idea of Being, but he also 
treated many other and more practical philosophical ques- 
tions. His writings were the subject of much discussion in 
Italy particularly, but the echoes of the controversy were 
heard all over the world. Our own Thomas Davidson here in 
America was deeply taken with Rosmini’s philosophical sys- 
tem and discussed it in a volume published in 1882. There 
are many other works in foreign languages written with re- 
gard to him. Very properly his life finds a place in the 
French series of Les Grands Philosophies. Whatever may 
be thought of his philosophic teaching there can be no doubt 
at all about the purity of his motives, and the exemplariness 
of his life. The Institute of Charity which he founded re- 
mains as his monument, and contradicts the prevalent im- 
pression that founders of philosophic systems are almost 
necessarily impractical men so wrapped up in their specula- 
tions that they have no time for the solution of pressing social 
problems. Rosimini’s Institute of Charity, whatever the 
fate of its founder’s system of philosophy, is destined to do 
great good for many generations. 
When in the nineteenth century after many vicissitudes 
scholastic philosophy came into its own again, it was a dis- 
tinguished band of Italian scholars and teachers who were 
mainly responsible for its revival. As a rule their names have 
not been known outside of Italy and the Catholic institutions 
183 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of learning throughout the world, but as scholasticism came 
once more into its proper meed of recognition the Italian ini- 
tiative in this, as in so many other intellectual movements, 
was properly appreciated. The Italians deeply influenced 
Cardinal Mercier and many other conservative teachers of 
philosophy. This recent development represents the con- 
stantly recurring exemplification of the principle that Ital- 
ians have nearly always in modern history been the leaders 
in philosophic thought and the teachers of the world. Above 
all they have been noted for the perfect clearness of their 
views and teachings, even with regard to the most intricate 
and knotty subjects. While men of other nations have been 
obscure and dubious, even, for their students so that one of 
the most influential philosophers of modern times, Hegel, is 
said to have declared that only one man in Europe understood 
him and that he did not completely understand him, and the 
meaning of even the basic principles of his German colleagues 
Kant and Fichte are a bone of contention sometimes among 
their most ardent disciples, Italian philosophic thought has 
always been noted for its clarity and Italian writing on 
philosophic subjects for its lack of obscurity, even when the 
themes were most difficult. 
184 LAW 
WHILE the world’s debt to Italy for great achievement 
in all the arts is universally acknowledged, and her 
important contribution to literature and to education has 
always been well recognized by those at least who are in 
familiar touch with these subjects, and while in recent 
years with the growth of our knowledge of the history of 
science the obligation that civilization is under to Italy 
both for her own many great scientists and for those of 
other nations who went to her for opportunities for teaching 
and investigation has come to be better appreciated, there 
remains another department of human accomplishment in 
which comparatively few even of those whose life interests 
bring them closest to it realize how much we are all in- 
debted to Italy. This is the department of law. In recent 
centuries the important contributions to law have nearly 
all come from other nations, but there is a full millennium 
and a half perhaps even more during which Italy was almost 
literally the law giver of the world. Besides the Roman 
law which is the foundation of all our modern jurisprudence 
and its splendid modification through Christian principles 
to meet human problems — an achievement which we owe to 
the Italians of the early Christian and medieval centuries — 
there is a thousand years of the Middle Ages during which 
Italy was the world’s teacher in law. 
Most of our modern law is of course founded on the old 
Roman law of Italian origin. The one great original contri- 
bution to the history of human thought that the world has 
from the Romans is the system of Roman law. The citizens 
of this military republic, in spite of their aggressive tendencies 
185 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
towards other nations around them had an abiding sense 
of justice among themselves and crystalized this in a great 
system of law. While they imitated Greece in philosophy, 
in literature, in art, in education, their civic ethics were their 
own, representing a distinct advance over anything that the 
world had seen up to this time, so far as human wisdom is 
concerned. Roman law has been the basis of all succeeding 
legislation, and has been a favorite subject of study for all 
great lawyers ever since. Without it the world would have 
missed a distinct phase of evolution of great import for the 
race, and while we are concerned more here with the debt to 
Italy in the modern times, this contribution to civilization 
must at least be mentioned. 
When Christianity came it was in the order of Providence 
so placed at Rome that the system of Roman law naturally 
became the basis of Christian law making. Two months after 
Constantine in 312 A. D. had won the decisive battle of the 
Milvian Bridge he published the famous edict of Milan, which 
established liberty of worship. While there are historians 
who minimize Constantine’s Christianity and hint at the self 
interest which could so well have been a prominent motive 
in making him accept Christianity as the religion of the 
Empire, the Imperial Laws which we have from him show 
very clearly a definite effort to modify Roman law in ac- 
cordance with the principles of the Gospel, yet without doing 
so much violence to long established traditions as would give 
just cause for complaint of the violation of vested rights. The 
best evidence that there was a new spirit introduced into 
the Roman Imperial Legislation at this time is to be found 
in the opinion expressed by the pagan writer Nazarius, who 
in 321 said of Constantine’s legislative reforms “New laws 
were established to maintain a high standard of morality and 
to limit vice. Constantine set aside many of the old legal 
technicalities of procedure which were a source of injury to 
the poor and simple. He upheld decency and strengthened 
the marriage tie. ’ ’ 
Under Constantine the Christian custom suggested by 
186 LAW 
St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians of submitting 
differences to the bishops for arbitration and decision so as 
to avoid the disturbing necessity of appeal to the lower 
courts which so often led to violations of Christian charity, 
was sanctioned by the civil law. Indeed, all cases concerning 
the clergy themselves or dealing principally with religious 
matters and claims, were by law referred to the bishops, and 
out of this developed the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which 
came to occupy so prominent a place in legal affairs during 
the Middle Ages. Where both litigants in a civil case asked 
that the bishop should be appointed arbitrator, this was done 
by law, and as a consequence St. Augustine complains that 
the bishops came to be so much occupied with the adjudication 
of cases that they had not sufficient time for spiritual duties, 
though as a rule they did not complain, because their legal 
position gave them opportunity to be the defenders and 
advocates of the poor and needy and of the widows and 
orphans. 
The first legislation with regard to compulsory Sunday 
rest which was to mean so much for the laboring classes in 
the aftertimes was inaugurated by Constantine, and continued 
by his successors. It was not long before this legislation also 
included freedom from the necessity of laboring on Church 
holy days of obligation, and these gradually multiplied until 
an average of at least one in every ten days besides Sunday 
was a day of rest. 
Standish O’Grady, to whom the Irish literary revival 
owes so much, on a recent visit to New York, called attention 
to the fact that twice in the world’s history when great works 
of art were accomplished and literary and philosophic thought 
made achievements which the world will never willingly for- 
get, in the fifth century before Christ in Greece, and during 
the Middle Ages in Europe, one third of the time of the 
people who originated these great accomplishments was given 
over to leisure in preparation for, or in the celebration of, 
religious festivals. For the leisure of the Middle Ages Italy 
is more responsible than any other nation. The laws regulating 
187 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
it gradually developed as the Christian Spirit invaded more 
and more the Roman law. 
Perhaps the finest development of law that came was 
that which concerned provision of care for the ailing poor. 
This was entirely a Christian development, and hospitals and 
what we would now call free dispensaries, as well as the visit- 
ing of the ailing poor in their homes by the members of the 
order of deaconesses, who in the course of time through ex- 
perience became skilled attendants was introduced and became 
ja feature of municipal care for citizens. Side by side with 
this ran regulations for the care of slaves and the laboring 
classes. Constantine was the first to decree that the master 
who killed his slave was guilty of murder. He forbade the 
separation of the members of a slave’s family except under 
circumstances regulated by law. He decreed that a master 
might not expose the children of slaves. Above all it was 
made easy to enfranchise slaves and the teaching of the Chris- 
tian principles of the equality of all men in the sight of God 
encouraged enfranchisement. The social inferiority of freed 
men which had been emphasized by the Roman laws was now 
obliterated. 
Other emperors followed the good example of Constan- 
tine and gradually introduced more and more Christian ele- 
ments into legislation, particularly in all that concerned the 
care of the poor. The Emperors Yalens and Yalentinian is- 
sued a decree not only empowering the bishops to prevent 
imposition on the poor by high prices, but especially that 
they should take care that in times of special necessity mer- 
chants should not raise the price of their goods to the injury 
of the poor. Later the Emperors Leo and Anthemius issued 
decrees placing the insane and orphans under the special pro- 
tection of the Bishops, and requiring them to see that all 
those who needed such special care were to be provided with 
proper tutors and guardians. The same Emperors by a piece 
of legislation that seems somewhat strange to us, placed upon 
the bishops the duty to see that the soldiers obtained the 
rations alloted to them and were not deprived of them by 
188 LAW 
chicanery of any kind or by the graft tendencies that have 
always exhibited themselves in the history of human nature 
whenever the opportunity presents itself. 
It was not long before the principles of Christianity 
found their way into every portion of the Roman Law, and 
particularly all that referred to the place of the ruler in 
matters of law so as to modify the ancient autocracy and 
imperialism in the direction of responsible sovereignty. This 
will be best appreciated from some of the edicts of the Chris- 
tian emperors themselves. The Emperors Theodosius II and 
Valentinian III proclaimed humbly in 429 “the dignity of 
the sovereign requires him to acknowledge that he is subject 
to law. Our power is nothing else than the power of law; it 
is much nobler to submit to the law than to command others 
to obey it. Our aim in the present edict therefore is to make 
others know what we forbid ourselves doing.” The Emperors 
Leo and Anthemius made a very similar proclamation declar- 
ing that ‘ ‘ a good prince believes that he can do only what is 
allowed to individual citizens; and if he is liberal he wishes 
to be so according to law.” No wonder that Prof. Boucaud 
should insist in his work on the influence of Christian law 
on the Roman law* that Christianity brought about an almost 
complete modification of the Roman Law in favor of all those 
who were likely to suffer injustice in any way from the sterner 
provisions of the Roman law. 
Not only did Christianity bring about a modification of 
Roman law and the introduction of Christian principles, but 
above all the spirit of Christianity secured the enforcement 
of the law equitably for the rich and the poor, for the weak 
and the powerful. The example of St. Ambrose bringing even 
the great Emperor Theodosius to acknowledge his fault and 
to do public penance for it, must have meant very much in 
impressing respect for law and authority on the people of 
the time. 
In the meantime the care of the poor and the ailing 
* La Premiere isbauche d’un Droit Chretien. dans le Droit Romain par 
Chas. Boucaud, Paris Tralin 1914. 
189 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
became an important principle in the Civil Law under the 
Christian Emperors. Even Julian the Apostate, in a letter 
to Arsacius, High Priest of Galatia, quoted by Sozomen, shows 
very clearly that he was convinced that Christianity would 
continue to spread and gain in influence throughout the 
world unless those who clung to the state religion could rival 
the new religion in its care of the needy. He attempted in 
many of the cities of the Empire to secure the erection of 
institutions that would rival those of the Christians, but 
found that while Imperial power could supply material re- 
sources, the inner spirit that made Christianity so fruitful in 
its charities was lacking. 
Professor Boucaud has pointed out other developments 
of law which came under Christianity and which had their 
origin in Italy. The old Roman idea of the father as having 
power of life and death over the members of his family was 
modified, and parental despotism greatly lessened. The chil- 
dren of a first marriage were protected in their rights when 
a parent married again, and widows were accorded by law 
a fourth of their deceased husband’s property by inalienable 
right. Naturally pious foundations and works of charity 
were encouraged, and it must not be forgotten that this rep- 
resented a development of humanitarianism which had prac- 
tically never occurred before. The old Pagan laws discour- 
aging celibacy were abolished and much more human freedom 
was secured in every way. Above all the Christian dispensa- 
tion as worked out in Italy mitigated the severity of prisons, 
and abolished some of the harshest penalties, as well as bring- 
ing about a gradual diminution of torture. 
The most important Christian modification of the Roman 
Law came under the Emperor Justinian. He is one of the 
greatest Italian products, one of the epoch making person- 
alities we owe to the peninsula. Only such men as Julius 
Caesar, Gregory YII and Napoleon, (all of them Italians) 
deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with him for his 
power over his own generation, and the influence that his 
achievements material and intellectual have had over all sub- 
190 LAW 
sequent history. Justinian was a great military genius, pos- 
sessed of a marvelous legal mind, and in addition by a sur- 
prisingly uncommon combination, a good taste in the arts. 
All these qualities taken together enabled him to consolidate 
the empire, to lay the foundations of a wonderful develop- 
ment of law, and to initiate a marvelous period of architec- 
tural expression. It is with his law making that we have to 
do here. 
Conway in his article on Christianity and the Roman 
Law* to which I owe other references on this subject, has 
summed up Justinian’s contributions to law in one very full 
paragraph: 
“The Christianizing of the Roman law reached its full 
development under the Emperor Justinian in the sixth cen- 
tury. The Corpus Juris Civilis has been compared to the 
Bible for its influence on the history of Christian civilization. 
The law codified by Justinian was essentially different from 
the law set forth by the jurisconsults of the first three cen- 
turies. It was promulgated in the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and under the auspices of God; it spoke plainly of 
Divine Providence and of the Sovereign Trinity; the imprint 
of the Gospel teaching was evident on nearly every page. Jus- 
tinian wras not a mere compiler of the old Roman law; he 
was in a true sense a legislator, who wished to breathe a new 
spirit into the pagan code of the old classic jurisconsults. 
Despite its technical perfection, the pagan code knew nothing 
of the piety, humanity and benignity which characterized the 
Justinian code; its crude individualism was utterly alien to 
the Christian idea of charity and brotherly love, and the 
Christian notion of the paramount importance of the gen- 
eral interests and the common good.” 
The spirit behind the law, which means so much for its 
righteous interpretation, was fostered in the spirit of the 
highest humanity by that great genius ruler, Pope St. Gregory 
the Great, at the beginning of the seventh century. He in- 
sisted particularly on the duties of the rich toward the poor. 
* Catholic World, April, 1914. 
191 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
He declares in one of his moral homilies that “the poor are 
not the clients of the rich, but the rich are the mystical 
clients of the poor, depending upon their friendship to 
attain eternal life.” Gregory insisted that the main duty of 
the man who had surplus means must be to care for others, 
and that the fulfillment of other duties could mean com- 
paratively little for him unless that one were carefully tended 
to. Alms giving to a considerable proportion of the income 
was not merely a counsel of perfection but a strict moral 
obligation. Gregory himself as Pope was one of the largest 
land owners in the world of his time. He gave the example 
then by emptying the treasury of the Church by his excessive 
benefactions. It is not surprising to find that he took a firm 
stand in the matter of defending the Jews against the bitter 
persecution to which they were often subjected, and which 
was supposed to be founded on Christian principles. Gregory 
did not hesitate to stigmatize anti-Semitism as absolutely 
contrary to all Christian feeling. 
Probably the greatest legal benefit ever conferred upon 
mankind was that which came as the result of Christian legis- 
lation as to rest for workers on the sabbath and on the church 
holy days. This too was due to the great Italian churchmen of 
the early Middle Ages particularly who secured the enactment 
into the civil law of legal regulations governing the matter 
or obtained such predominence of the cannon law as had the 
same effect. The holy days increased in number until there 
were over thirty of them in the year so that besides Sunday 
there was a day of rest and recreation more than once every 
two weeks. Neither Sundays nor holy days were kept in 
Puritanic fashion, but after the required attendance at 
church men were free to recreate both in mind and body for 
the rest of the day. There are some who think that this 
development of law was unfortunate because it gave too 
many days of rest, but Standish 0’Grady’s opinion quoted 
above may stand against this. 
This fine Christian phase of law then, so far from doing 
harm had exactly the opposite effect, and gave men the chance 
192 CORREGGIO (1494-1534 LAW 
to occupy their minds with thoughts which were really worth 
while, and encouraged genius to express itself in great works 
that would occupy the leisure of the less gifted on these days 
of rest and recreation, and above all provided an audience 
who had the time, because they were not permitted to do 
servile work, to give to the appreciation of beautiful works 
of literature and of art. As a matter of fact it was in Italy 
itself where the regime of frequent holy days was most rigidly 
enforced and encouraged under the patronage of the Popes, 
that the magnificent development of the later Middle Ages, 
usually known as the earlier Renaissance, came. The result 
of it was a whole series of monuments of letters and art that 
endure in the admiration of mankind ever since. 
Important developments in formal law came with the 
evolution of every mode of intellectual achievement in the 
latter part of the Middle Ages. The generations that created 
the universities and developed modern painting and archi- 
tecture as well as achieved such marvelous success in the arts 
and crafts and whose literature lifted itself up to a wonder- 
ful culmination in Dante could scarcely be expected to neglect 
law. In the twelfth century began the development of Canon 
Law. Gratian compiled his Concordantia Discordantium 
Canonum about the middle of this century. He is the true 
founder of the science of Canon Law. The interest aroused 
in the subject of law by Gratian’s work and that of Irnerius 
who about this same time at the instance of Countess Matilda 
of Tuscany devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence, 
taking the Justinian Code as a guide, soon worked a new 
evolution of both Canon and Civil law. Irnerius introduced 
the custom of writing explanatory commentaries or glosses 
on the margins of the old law books. He wrote a Summa 
Codicis which has recently been edited with a critical intro- 
duction by Fitting, who has also issued other editions of 
Irnerius’ works in connection with the celebration of the Two 
Hundredth Anniversary of the Foundation of the University 
Halle-Wittenberg, so that at last this pioneer teacher and 
writer on law of medieval Bologna is coming to his own of 
193 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
recognition as a great 'original genius for organization in 
jurisprudence. 
Irnerius’ writings and lectures together with Gratian’s 
work attracted world attention to Bologna, and when that 
institution of learning came to be a university its law school 
was by far its most important department. A series of dis- 
tinguished professors did work there which represents foun- 
dation stones in the modern science of law. Pope Innocent 
III, who was a student of the law school of Bologna himself, 
and one of the greatest jurists of his time reorganized Canon 
Law so thoroughly and influenced Civil Law so much that 
he deservedly came to be known as Pater Juris, father of the 
law. His successors on the Papal Chair in the thirteenth 
century were distinguished for their attention to law. Pope 
Gregory IX commissioned his Chaplain the famous Ray- 
mond of Pennafort, who had been a professor of Canon Law 
in the University -of Bologna, to codify all the decretals since 
the time of Gratian. This work was officially issued in 1234, 
four years of labor having been devoted to it. The laws are 
in the form of decisions announced in cases submitted to the 
Pope from all parts of Christendom, including many from 
the distant East — not a few from England and Scotland. 
Gregory’s decretals were published in five books; a supple- 
ment under the name of the sixth book was published under 
Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, the last Pope of the great organ- 
izing Thirteenth Century, who had also, like Pope Innocent 
III received his legal training at Bologna, and was looked 
upon as one of the greatest jurists of his time. 
This sixth book is interesting because for the first time 
abstract rules of law are laid down extracted from actual 
judgments made in the cases published not only in this book 
but in the five preceding books. This advance in legal formu- 
lation was doubtless due to Pope Boniface’s interest in the 
subject of law. At the end of the thirteenth century both 
the Canon and the Civil Law had mainly through Italian 
interest in the subject and the persistent intellectual efforts 
of great scholars and administrators of the peninsula, been 
194 LAW 
brought into the form in which it exists at the present time 
and very little has been added to it since. The thirteenth 
was of course the century of the establishment of fundamental 
laws in all the countries of Europe, Magna Charta in Eng- 
land, the Forum, Judicum of Louis IX of France, the basic 
laws of Spain under Louis’ royal cousin St. Ferdinand III, 
the Golden Bull of Hungary, but Italy far surpassed other 
countries in her accurate formulation of law and in her 
scientific organization of it. 
During the fourteenth century Padua became the great 
and successful rival of Bologna in the teaching of law as 
well as of medicine. The two important departments of civil 
and canon law were developed and the subject matter still 
further formulated. Men usually took the two degrees in 
these disciplines, hence our modern “doctor of laws” and 
not merely of law, just as those who were to study science 
took the paired doctorates in philosophy and medicine. Padua 
was under Venetian influence and was encouraged in every 
way to develop its teaching 
Very probably one of the best bits of evidence for Italy’s 
development of law is to be found in her pioneer legislation 
for the regulation of the practice of medicine. It is usually 
presumed that the practice of medicine was on a very low 
plane during the Middle Ages, and that while only little was 
known about medical science, the methods of practicing the 
medical art were crude, as befitted an earlier time in evolution 
before modern advances had come. Any such impression is 
founded entirely on ignorance of the conditions which actually 
existed. In his studies in the history of anatomy in the 
Middle Ages, Von Toply quotes the law for the regulation 
of the practice of medicine issued by the Emperor Frederick 
II in 1240 or 1241. The law was binding on the two Sicilies, 
and shows exactly the state of medical practice in the southern 
part of Italy at this time. Everything that we think we 
have gained by magnificent advances in modern times is to 
be found in this law. A physician must have a diploma from 
a university and a license from the government; he must 
1495] WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
have studied three years before taking up medicine — then 
four years in a medical school, and then must have prac- 
ticed with a physician for a year before he will be allowed 
to take up the practice of medicine on his own account. If 
he is to take up surgery, he must have made special studies 
in anatomy. The law is especially interesting because of its 
regulation of the purity of drugs, in which it anticipates by 
nearly seven centuries our Pure Drug Law of the beginning 
of the twentieth century. 
Physicians were forbidden to keep apothecary shops nor 
to “take any of them under his protection nor incur any 
money obligations in their regard.” Manifestly they realized 
all the possibilities of abuses. The apothecaries had to pre- 
pare their drugs under State inspection, and any fraud in 
drug making or substituting was punished by the confiscation 
of their moveable goods. They were definitely put out of 
business. If the government inspectors allowed any fraud 
they were to be condemned to death. Medieval law makers 
did not believe in allowing any playing of fast and loose with 
human life. We need some of their straightforward direct- 
ness in legislation and many fewer laws at the present time. 
In the century before Frederick’s legislation, indeed as 
early as 1140, King Roger of the Two Sicilies had promul- 
gated the law: 
“Whoever from this time forth desires to practice medi- 
cine must present himself before our officials and judges, and 
be subject to their decision. Anyone audacious enough to 
neglect this shall be punished by imprisonment and confis- 
cation of goods. This decree has for its object the protection 
of the subjects of our kingdom from the dangers arising from 
the ignorance of practitioners.” 
In a word the Italian legislation for the regulation of the 
practice of medicine and for the maintenance of standards of 
medical education anticipate our modern ideas by some eight 
centuries. Probably nothing illustrates so well the thorough 
going legal sense of the Italians in a great practical way as 
this. We have come to realize how much such legal regulation 
[ig6] LAW 
means for the health of the community and for the progress 
of scientific medicine. Above all we have learned to appreciate 
how much it means for the prevention of serious abuses, and 
the medieval Italians manifestly had the same realization. 
What is not usually realized is the genius of the Italian 
people for the practical organization of human affairs so as 
to facilitate the transaction of all manner of business. Presi- 
dent Stanley Hall pointed out in his address on Medieval and 
Modern Universities (The Catholic Educational Review May 
1915) how much the world owes to Italy’s successful efforts 
in the erection of a great structure of law and the thorough 
organization of its teaching. He said: 
“The chief secular problem of the middle ages was to 
reorganize the world of business, government and society. 
To-day we seek only to improve what they were obliged to 
create almost de novo. Their chief instrument to this end, 
as Savigny has best shown us, was Roman law. Deeds and 
contracts, courts and judicial procedure, inheritance and 
succession, corporations and charters, the status and rights 
of the various social classes, the kinds and functions of offi- 
cials, taxation, crime — all had to be provided for. Besides 
the Codex of Justinian in twelve books, which was at first all 
that was known, there came a little later the fifty books of 
the Pandects, digesting the results of fourteen centuries of 
legal experience, unknown till Irnerius introduced them at 
Bologna in the twelfth century, and thus created anew for 
the modern world the profession of law, which henceforth was 
taught not as a branch of rhetoric as before, but as a vocation 
requiring long and special study by itself. Henceforth we 
are told ‘law was the leading faculty in by far the greatest 
number of medieval universities for more than five centuries. ’ 
The practical effects of this upon European history and the 
progress of civilization is incalculable. The law universities 
recodified the law more efficiently than had been done in the 
Institutes or other ancient text books, and nothing was more 
congenial to the unique instinct of the medieval mind for 
organization than this written reason or Organon of economic WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
and sociological statecraft. More systematic and comprehen- 
sive than many codifications <of modern laws, it is still taught 
beside them in most European countries. Even the constitu- 
tion and statutes of the medieval, and in many respects those 
of the modern, French and English universities are based on 
Roman Law.” 
As a diminution of the credit owed to her for law organ- 
ization, Italy is usually supposed to have encouraged or at 
least not properly suppressed various intrusions upon the 
rights of the individual as by torture. There is a tradition 
in this matter hut it is not in accord with the facts. The old 
Roman law used torture as one of the modes of securing evi- 
dence. While the Church adopted the Roman law, as far as 
possible the spirit of that law was enforced without recourse 
to torture, and indeed a tradition in opposition to torture was 
established very early. From the beginning the clergy, at 
any rate of the higher ranks, were made immune to torture. 
A synod at Rome in 384 pronounced against torture. Torture 
for treason and usury was still considered justifiable. The 
Canon law declared that torture was no sin, but a priest must 
not inflict it, and charity was to be used in all punishment 
and no confession was to be extracted by torture. The re- 
finements of torture of which the world knows the most belong 
not to the Italians nor to the Latin nations, but to the Teu- 
tonic nations. The “Virgin of Nuremberg,” the iron gloves 
for roasting hands, and the boots for crushing the feet were 
invented in Nuremberg well on in the seventeenth century. 
“Little ease” and the “scavenger’s daughter” and various 
refinements of the rack and screw are English inventions, or 
at least were modified to a high refinement of ingenuity in 
England. As a matter of fact legal torture in its frequent 
use and excesses came into vogue after the Middle Ages, and 
Italy in spite of her long history is smirched less by the story 
of such abuses than any country in Europe. 
During the eighteenth century a series of writers on law 
in Italy had much to do with introducing the modern period 
of jurisprudence. Vico corrected some false impressions with LAW 
regard to Roman Law. Giannone, who began the movement 
which led to the subjection of the Church to the State and 
Baccaria and Filangieri, the former in his book Dei Delitti e 
delle Pene (1763) the latter in his Scienza della Legislazione 
(1783) first emphasized the idea that punishment was meant 
not to cause suffering so much as to bring about the reforma- 
tion of the criminal. The idea has been developed largely in 
modern Italian jurisprudence. Italians at this time, as for 
instance Antonio Genovesi, were also the precursors in the 
discussion of those laws of economy which were taken up 
afterwards by the English school of economic philosophers, 
attracting so much attention and securing so many adherents 
during the nineteenth century. In the present drift of 
things it seems as though what occupied our English speaking 
forefathers of a generation or two ago will be relegated to the 
limbo of outworn systems of thought, because the ideas repre- 
sented only a very partial view of humanity’s interests in 
such important matters as wages and supply and demand, 
but at least it may be interesting to recall that the initiative 
in this, as in so many other phases of human thought came 
from Italy. 
Italy’s contributions to law and legal procedure and the 
interpretation of law have continued to be important down to 
our time. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the 
most important contribution to law in modern times was 
made in the form of the Code Napoleon. This has influenced 
more deeply modern law making in practically all the States 
of Europe and America than any other legal development. 
I need scarcely recall here what has been dwelt on elsewhere 
in this book that Napoleon, in spite of his connection with 
France and the French form of the name usually used, was 
of pure Italian origin. As a matter of fact the Code Napoleon 
owes some of its most characteristic features to the Italian 
influences under which its author was brought up, for Corsica 
in his day had belonged to France but a short time, and the 
people were thoroughly Italian in every way. 
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
twentieth century there are some very important contributions 
to modern criminology that come to us from the Italians, and 
indeed they may well be recognized as world teachers in legal 
matters once more. One of the most important of these con- 
tributions to modern criminology is Baron Raffaele Garofalo’s 
work on that subject which has recently been translated* for 
the Modern Criminal Science Series which is being published 
under the auspices of the American Institute of Criminal Law 
and Criminology. Garofalo’s book which originally appeared at 
Naples in 1885 has gone through a number of editions in Italy 
and at least six editions in French, and translations had been 
made into Spanish and Portuguese before this English version 
was made. As the separate books of the series in which Garo- 
falo’s book appears were selected by a committee consisting 
of distinguished professors of law and editors of law journals 
throughout the United States, it is easy to understand that the 
one reason for including the volume was not any passing fad 
of the moment, but represented the judgment of men thor- 
oughly familiar with the literature of this subject. 
Of the nine volumes announced for publication in the 
Modern Criminal Science Series it is rather interesting to 
review the nationality of the authors. The first Modern 
Theories of Criminology is by De Quiro of Madrid, a Span- 
iard ; the second on Criminal Psychology is by Professor Hans 
Gros of Gratz, Austria; the third, Crime, Its Causes and 
Remedies is by Professor Lombroso, the fourth is by Professor 
Saleilles of the University of Paris, the fifth by Professor 
Gabriel Tarde of the College of France, the sixth by Professor 
Aschaffenburg of Cologne, the seventh by Professor Garofalo, 
the eighth by Professor Bonger of Amsterdam, the ninth by 
Professor Ferri of the University of Rome. Of the nine books 
by men of five nationalities three are by Italians. This gives 
some idea of the place that Italian thinkers are acknowledged 
to represent in the domain of modern penology. 
In almost every century of the Christian era then at least 
for more than 1500 years Italian thinkers and writers have 
* Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1914. LAW 
done very important work in law and jurisprudence and the 
organization of legal procedure so as to secure justice among 
men. While other nations have made significant contributions 
there can be no doubt that Italy has done more than all the 
other nations of Europe put together in the department of 
law. Civilization owes indeed a great debt to Italy for this 
work, though comparatively few even of lawyers realize the 
origins of law well enough to be aware of how much Italian 
genius has accomplished for this great discipline of human 
thinking. MATHEMATICS 
IT IS agreed by all that Italy easily bears away the palm 
from the rest of the world in painting, sculpture, 
architecture and all the arts and crafts and that she rivals 
any nation in literature, but it is commonly felt that as if 
in compensation for her superiority in art and her great 
achievements in letters her people have been notably lack- 
ing in the ability to make scientific progress and that as a 
consequence it has been left to other nations to be the leaders 
of the world in theoretic and applied sciences. Indeed it 
seems to many that probably the most important reason 
for the failure of the physical sciences at least to develop 
until practically our time (an assumption in history which 
many make) is that the Italians held the primacy in the 
intellectual as well as the artistic world, yet lacked the 
scientific temper of mind. This feeling is not so much a 
reflection on the Italians as a reminder to those who might 
possibly lose sight of it, that it is but quite natural that an 
artistic literary folk should be lacking in those qualities 
of intense close observation and practical intelligence re- 
quired for scientific progress. The aesthetic and scientific 
minds are supposed to be altogether different in character 
and almost if not quite mutually exclusive in make-up. 
It is rather difficult to understand just how this impres- 
sion should have become prevalent for it is of course quite 
untrue. Italy has done at least as much for world science 
as for world literature and indeed almost as much as for 
world art. The Italians have been the great ground break- 
ing discoverers in nearly every department of science. 
When another name than that of an Italian heads a science, MATHEMATICS 
not infrequnently it will be found on looking into his 
biography that Italy fostered his genius and that he went to 
the peninsula for opportunities for study which could not 
be secured at home. Many a great foreign discoverer in 
science proudly and affectionately looked back upon his 
years of study in Italy as Linacre did when erecting an 
altar on the last place in the Alps from which he could see 
the fair Italian country he had learned to love so well, he 
saluted this other native country of his as he felt her to be, 
as the Alma Mater Studiorum—the dear mother of studies. 
Indeed the world’s debt to Italy in science is so great 
that even a very compressed sketch of the history of Italian 
science requires a series of chapters, one each on mathematics 
and astronomy which represent the foundations of the 
physical sciences, a third on the other physical sciences, a 
fourth on biological science; for despite the fact that the 
origin of biological science is usually thought of as due to 
other nations, Italians have been the founders and greatest 
contributors. That is why also there have to be additional 
chapters on medicine and surgery, those practical applica- 
tions of the biological sciences to man. Her highest claims to 
recognition as a great national source of scientific discovery 
and development are, however, founded on the achievement 
of her sons in the physical sciences, especially astronomy 
and mathematics. 
Italy is seldom thought of as the home of great advance 
in mathematics and astronomy unless by the few who know 
the history of these sciences. Even by the well informed 
it is usually felt that whatever was accomplished by Italians 
was done in the older time before, as it were, the other 
nations had a chance to wake up. At all times in history, 
however, even down to the present, Italy’s contributions to 
these departments of science have been very important. The 
main difficulty for the writer of Italian achievements in 
mathematics and astronomy is not to find materials, but to 
compress the many important details into a chapter that will WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
not be out of proportion with other phases of the description 
of Italian accomplishment. 
The success of Italian devotion to the exact sciences 
will be best appreciated from the place of their students 
in the history of mathematics. It is seven centuries since 
the great English medieval scientist Roger Bacon said “for 
without mathematics nothing worth knowing in philosophy 
can be attained,” and even ventured to add “for he who 
knows not mathematics can not know any other science; 
what is more he can not discover his own ignorance or find 
its proper remedy.” But it is generally recognized, despite 
the lapse of time since the English Franciscan’s declaration 
that far from outliving its significance, more than ever 
mathematics lie at the basis of most of the real progress 
in the physical scienses and controls and confirms the reality 
of scientific advances better than anything else. Only those 
who are especially acquainted with the history of mathe- 
matics know how much was accomplished by the Italians, 
but only a short review of it is needed in order to make it 
clear that as with regard to other phases of human progress 
Italy contains the most important focus of mathematical 
development during many centuries and has practically 
never been lacking in magnificently successful students of 
mathematics whose work has facilitated the accomplishment 
of others. 
When the Roman Empire was breaking up Boethius, 
whose Consolations of Philosophy was one of the most used 
books of the Middle Ages, the favorite reading of Dante, 
summed up in his Institutio arithmetica and his Geometria 
all that was known of mathematics in his time. He had 
exemplified some of the principles, and he was besides respon- 
sible for an improvement in the abacus, the apparatus by the 
aid of which calculations were made. 
The books on mathematics attributed to him and espe- 
cially the geometry have sometimes been said to be the 
work of another and later hand, but as they are mentioned 
by Cassiodorus within two generations after Boethius there MATHEMATICS 
can be no good reason to doubt that they were due either 
to him or some one very close to him and inspired by his 
work. This is the first great contribution to mathematics due 
to Italians, but it was followed by many others. Cassiodorus 
himself in his Encyclopedia gives an important place to 
mathematics. These two men represented the concluding 
chapters in the old Roman scholarship. 
When the intellectual world of Europe woke up again 
after an eclipse of academic interest during the migration of 
nations, Gerard of Cremona and Plato of Tivoli translated 
a number of the Greek works on mathematics out of Arabic 
into Latin. This represented the beginning of modern 
mathematics in the West. Plato of Tivoli, Tiburtinus, as he 
is according to the Latin form of his name, having heard at 
the beginning of the twelfth century, of the Arabian knowl- 
edge of astronomy, went across to Spain, making what was 
at that time a long perilous journey which better than any- 
thing else showed his ardor for study, to secure a knowledge 
of astronomy and mathematics. He made, as we have said 
a series of translations including the Sphaerica of Theodosius. 
At the end of the twelfth century his Italian colleague Gerard 
or Gherardo of Cremona, Cremonensis in Latin, is said to 
have translated altogether some seventy books. The hearty 
enthusiasm of these early scholars and their willingness to 
make sacrifices of time and labor for the cause of science 
shows the spirit that was abroad. 
They were followed in the thirteenth century by Leonardo 
of Pisa, sometimes known also by his family name of Fibon- 
acci, who is “one of the greatest geniuses in the history of 
mathematics” (Cajori). Indeed he went so far beyond his 
contemporaries that they were quite unable to follow him, and 
it took several centuries to catch up with him. Every mathe- 
matical writer for centuries went back to Leonardo and foun- 
ded his work on what Leonardo had accomplished. He is best 
known for his Liber Abaci or Book of the Abucus which in 
the language of the day meant book of calculations. Hankel, 
the German mathematician of the middle of the nineteenth WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
century declared that this work “has been the mine from 
which arithmeticians and algebraists have drawn their wis- 
dom ; on this account it has become in general the foundation 
of modern science.” Fink in his History of Mathematics 
mentions a number of improvements, real inventions or ori- 
ginal modifications of previous methods, made by Leonardo 
which indicate his practical genius. “Besides ordinary sub- 
traction with borrowing, he teaches subtraction by increasing 
the next figure of the subtrahend by one, and is to be regarded 
as the creator of this elegant method.” In the arithmetic of 
fractions he laid a new foundation by his exercises prelim- 
inary to division. He showed how to separate a fraction into 
unit fractions. “Especially advantageous in dealing with 
small numbers is his method of determining the common 
denominator; the greatest denominator is multiplied by each 
following denominator and the greatest common measure of 
each pair of factors rejected. He was familiar also with the 
casting out of the nines for which he furnished an independent 
proof. ’ ’ 
Besides the Liber Abaci Leonardo of Pisa wrote a Practica 
Geometriae which indicates very clearly his thorough going 
mathematical genius. It contains a geometrical demonstra- 
tion of the area of the triangle as a function of its three sides 
that is notable at that time, and “all of the problems are 
treated with skill and Euclidean rigor” (Cajori). 
During the disturbances that occurred in Italy in the 
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries very little attention 
was paid to mathematics. There had been a magnificent de- 
velopment during the twelfth and thirteenth, and then came 
the decadence, apparently so inevitable after a period of 
marked advance and especially likely to occur in the midst 
of civil strife such as was brought on by the absence of the 
Popes at Avignon and the confusion of civil and political 
government which ensued throughout Italy. 
With the coming of the Renaissance however, about the 
middle of the fifteenth century there was in every other 
department of intellectual progress a magnificent reawaken- MATHEMATICS 
ing. Along with the arts, literature, scholarship, architecture 
and education, mathematics had its Renaissance. The first 
and greatest name in the revival of mathematics was Lucas 
Paciolo (or Paciuolo) the Franciscan friar who was succes- 
sively professor of mathematics at Perugia, Rome, Naples, 
Pisa and Venice, and some of the latter years of whose life 
was spent in Florence. Italian interest in mathematics in 
the Renaissance was manifestly not confined to any one city or 
region but on the contrary existed everywhere. In his first 
work Summa De Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportione et 
Proportionalita, published at Venice two years after the dis- 
covery of America he followed the principles laid down by 
Leonard of Pisa. He was not an original but a practical 
mathematical genius to whom is owed the application «of 
algebra to geometry and the first use of symbols, that is of 
letters to indicate numerical quantities. 
Paciolo was a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci and the 
book ascribed to him on The Divine Proportion was written 
with the co-operation, to some extent at least, of his great 
contemporary. To Leonardo da Vinci Cantor in his great 
History of Mathematics devotes more than a score of pages, 
and there is no doubt at all that the great painter, sculptor, 
architect, scientist and engineer, was also a great mathematical 
genius, though his intense occupation with many other things 
kept him from that formal development of his ideas that 
might have made him as important in the history of mathe- 
matics as of art. Above all, Leonardo da Vinci recognized 
very clearly the truth of Roger Bacon’s remark that science, 
to be certain, must be capable of formulation in mathematical 
laws.* 
* We owe most of our modern knowledge of these older Italian mathe- 
maticians to the life long labors and enthusiastic collector spirit of Prince 
Buoncompagni Ludovisi, whose favorite life study was the history of mathe- 
matics.. His Bollettino Buoncompagno was very well known to the special stu- 
dents of mathematics all over the world and contained numberless papers by the 
princely editor himself. He spent immense sums of money for various mathe- 
matical publications that otherwise might not have seen the light and expended 
a fortune on his library, which contained over 600 manuscripts and nearly 
20,000 printed books. He made it his business to be helpful to mathe- 
matical genius wherever he found it and aided many a poor scholar to secure 
further mathematical training and the opportunity for the publication of his 
books. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
With the sixteenth century came the rapid development 
of algebra in Italy. In 1505 Scipio Ferro imparted to his 
pupil Floridas a solution of the equation X2 -f- MX = N 
and also a solution of cubic equations which represented 
the first step in this direction ever made. A second solution 
of cubics was made by Nicolo of Brescia, who is better known 
in history as Tartaglia, the stutterer, because of a defect of 
speech due to an injury in early life. Tartaglia had worked 
out a general solution of cubic equations, forced to it by a 
contest in the solution of problems, the challenge of which he 
had accepted. Such discoveries were looked upon as inven- 
tions in those days, and like the inventions of our time were 
kept secret for the benefit of the inventor. Tartaglia, how- 
ever, confided his secret to Jerome Cardan, who though he 
was bound under the strictest secrecy with regard to it, pub- 
lished it in 1545, and thus precipitated a controversy with 
Tartaglia over priority. About this time Ferrari solved bi- 
quadratic equations after Colla had proposed the problem 
X4 -j- 6X2 -f- 36 = 60X, which he looked upon as insoluble 
by any mathematical method then known. Ferrari solved 
it and thus made another step in algebra. Ferrari was a pupil 
of Cardan’s and Cardan’s influence meant very much for 
algebra. 
In 1572 Raphael Bombelli published an algebra which 
summed up the knowledge of that day, disclosing a much 
better acquaintance with imaginary quantities than might be 
supposed possible in this time. About the same time Mauro- 
lycus of Messina wrote on conic sections in quite modern 
temper. In the seventeenth century Galileo described and 
investigated the cycloid curve, which came to be valued for 
the graceful form which it imparts to architectural details. 
Nearly two centuries before, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, a 
German who was long under Italian influence, had first called 
mathematical attention to this curve, having recognized it as 
the path described in the air by a fly alight on the top of the 
wheel of his carriage while the wheel went around and the 
carriage moved forward. Vincenzo Viviani, a pupil of MATHEMATICS 
Galileo, described the tangent to the cycloid. The word ab- 
scissa for one of the elements of the mathematics of trigo- 
nometrical curves is said by Cajori to occur first in a work of 
Stefano degli Angeli, a professor of mathematics at Rome. 
The word ordinate does not occur until Descartes’ time, though 
it is derived from the term lineae ordinatae which had been 
used by the Roman surveyors. 
To Galileo we owe the development of the basic prin- 
ciples of mechanics. He anticipated fundamentally Newton’s 
laws of motion. He taught the possibility of various motions 
being given to a body at the same time and acting indepen- 
dently on it and thus formulated the true theory of pro- 
jectiles. In the fourth of his Dialogues on Mechanics he 
demonstrated that the path described by a projectile, being 
the result of the combination of a uniform transverse motion 
with an uniformly accelerated vertical motion, must apart 
from the resistance of the air, be a parabola. He went a meas- 
urable distance toward the discovery of the third law of 
motion by his satisfactory definition of momentum and his 
theory of the inclined plane. He did almost as much for 
statics as he did for kinetics, and by establishing the theory 
of virtual velocities laid down the fundamental principle 
which in the opinion of La Grange contains the general ex- 
pression of the laws of equilibrium. When to all this is added 
the fact that he introduced infinitesimals into geometrical 
demonstrations, thus starting the mathematical world out on 
the path toward calculus, some idea of his marvelously prac- 
tical genius as a mathematician will be clear and how great 
the world’s debt is to this Italian scientist in mathematics. 
A series of Galileo’s pupils added greatly to mathematics 
at this time. Toricelli, better known for his contributions to 
physics, worked out the mathematics of the cycloid curve. 
Yiviani, as we have said, discussed the tangent of it and its 
mathematical significance. Cavalieri, of whom more presently, 
had been a pupil of Galileo’s as a younger man and was 
afterwards a Jesuit, studied the mathematics of infinitely 
small quantities and suggested the method of indivisibles WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
as a contribution to mathematics. Bernoulli, who occupied the 
chair of mathematics at Padua which had been previously 
occupied by Galileo, was himself a great teacher of mathe- 
matics, and the father and grandfather of the most distin- 
guished mathematical family that the world has ever known. 
His son was made a member of most of the learned societies 
of Europe for his contributions to mathematical science. 
His grandsons taught mathematics at St. Petersburg and at 
Basel, and were looked upon as among the greatest mathe- 
maticians of their time. One of them applied the theory of 
probability to insurance to determine the number of sur- 
vivors at a given age from a given number of births. His 
theory of “moral expectation” as exploited in mathematics 
attracted a great deal of attention, and is in our time the 
phase of mathematical development which lies at the basis 
of actuarial calculations in life insurance. 
One of the most important Italian authorities in mathe- 
matics is Father Cavalieri, the great Jesuit mathematician, 
who when scarcely thirty became professor of mathematics 
at Bologna. He had been just placed in possession of that 
chair when he stated the principles of indivisibles, though 
he did not publish his results until 1635. The method of 
indivisibles rests on the assumption that any magnitude may 
be divided into an infinite number of small quantities which 
can be made to bear any of the required ratios one to the 
other. It represents the first practical step taken toward 
the formation of an infinitesimal calculus. After this begin- 
ning further steps were comparatively easy, or at least natu- 
rally to be expected, for the suggestion had been made and 
development meant only the working out of ideas already 
involved in the problems as they came up for solution. 
There are even some traditions and some solid historical 
facts for feminine achievements in mathematics in Italy. One 
of the interesting traditions on the University of Bologna is of 
a young woman professor of mathematics about the middle of 
the thirteenth century who knowing her own charms, feared 
lest they might distract her students from the serious mathe- MATHEMATICS 
matical study in hand, and accordingly lectured from behind 
the curtain. Curiously enough it is women themselves who 
have most doubted the truth of this story in the modern 
time, apparently being unwilling to think that if a young 
woman were handsome she would be quite ready to conceal her 
charms behind a curtain. More definitely historical is the 
story of Maria Gaetana Agnesi who was born in Milan in 
1718, and who after a most precocious youth began her monu- 
mental work Le Instituzioni Analitiehe, a mathematical trea- 
tise in two large quarto volumes on differential and integral 
calculus, to which she devoted ten years. She used to become 
intensely absorbed in her work, forgetting the passage of time 
and losing track of material necessities such as meal times, 
quite as Newton did. More than once she solved problems 
somnambulistically, being surprised to find them done in her 
•own characters on getting up, though when she had gone to 
bed the problem was still not solved. 
Her work was translated into most of the European 
languages, and its enduring value will be appreciated from 
the fact that so long as fifty years after its original publica- 
tion in Italian it was translated into English by the Lucasian 
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. 
Signorina Agnesi was elected a member by a number of the 
scientific societies of her time, and especially by the French 
Academy of Sciences, and won the admiration of and personal 
friendship of the distinguished Pope Benedict XIV, and was 
highly honored by the Empress Maria Theresa. She was made 
Professor of Higher Mathematics in the University of Bologna, 
but at the very height of her reputation resigned the post 
to enter a religious order and devote herself to charity. 
Other Italian women have achieved reputations in mathe- 
matics. One of them, Laura Bassi, is mentioned in the chap- 
ter on Feminine Education. 
In arithmetic the world’s debt to Italy is even greater 
than in any of the other departments of mathematics. Noth- 
ing shows so well the practical genius of the Italians as their 
development of all the processes of arithmetical calculation WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
that are now so familiar. These nearly all seem so obvious to 
us now that it is a little hard to understand the world being 
without them, and yet many of the familiar modes of 
solving arithmetical problems represent inventions that in 
their own day were very wonderful. The Italians were the 
great eommercial people of the Middle Ages, with their ves- 
sels on the Mediterannean and their travelers in the East, 
and their trade nearly everywhere, and they were the bankers 
and the brokers and the medium of interchange between East 
and West. It is not so surprising then that they should have 
been the inventors of our modern arithmetical processes, for 
necessity is ever the mother of invention, but they must be 
given due credit for what they accomplished. Ball in his 
short History of Mathematics (London, fifth edition 1912) says 
that the processes of commercial arithmetic were first intro- 
duced into Florence in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
tury and have remained practically unchanged ever since. 
Some of the details of this Italian development of arithmetic 
are very interesting. 
Ball says that “if multiplication was considered difficult 
in the old times, division was at first regarded as a feat which 
could be performed only by skilled mathematicians.” He 
illustrates the method commonly employed by the Arabs and 
the Persians in which a sheet of paper was divided into as 
many vertical columns as there were figures in the number 
to be divided. Each figure of this was then taken and by a 
process of segregation, involving a number of intricate pro- 
cesses requiring a long time for their accomplishment, the 
division was completed. This method never found much 
favor in Italy, and our present system was in use there as 
early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, though the 
method generally employed was that ordinarily known as the 
galley or scratch system. The medieval writers were acquain- 
ted with the methods now in use, but considered the scratch 
method more handy. Almost needless to say these two in- 
ventions, multiplication and division in our present methods, 
or such modifications as led up to our present methods, as 
212 GRAND CANAL WITH CAVALLI PALACE, VENICE. MATHEMATICS 
made by the Italians, represent a saving of time and mental 
energy for mankind that has scarcely ever been surpassed 
by any human invention. 
It was the Italians who arranged the problems to which 
arithmetic could be applied into different classes such as the 
Rule of Three, Interest, Profit and Loss, Discount, Longitude 
and Time and the other similar classifications which have 
made so much for the simplification of the teaching of arith- 
metic itself, as well as of arithmetical processes. They also 
reduced the fundamental operations of arithmetic to seven. 
Pacioli declares that this was done out of reverence to the 
Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.* 
Whatever the reason may have been, the reduction of 
fundamental operations to “numeration, addition, subtrac- 
tion, multiplication, division, raising to powers and extraction 
of roots” represent a thorough simplification of arithmetic, 
as a practical science. Indian mathematicians, enumerated 
some 20 principal processes and sometimes a dozen of sub- 
sidiary ones, and the Italians were the first to reduce the com- 
plex system to its modern simplicity. 
It is easy to understand then that with so much of the 
development of trigonometry and of algebra theirs and with 
practically all of arithmetic, the world’s debt to Italy and 
to mathematics is very large. The Italians literally accom- 
plished more for this science and especially the great foun- 
dations of it than all the other nations put together. We 
shall find in treating the development of modern astronomy 
that practically the same thing is true -of that subject. 
* Writers on the History of Mathematics have sometimes scoffed a little at 
the reason for this seven fundamental operations but they might as well have 
laughed at Newton’s division of colors into seven for which he had scarcely 
any better reason. The spectrum as he divided it has however proved very 
useful in optical problems. ASTRONOMY 
ASTRONOMY practically always runs parallel with 
mathematics in its evolution, and so it proved in Italy. 
Modern astronomy began nearly a millenium ago when Italian 
scholars made a series of translations of Arabic books on 
astronomy as well as mathematics, which proved the seeds 
for the development of these sciences in the West. As we 
have said in treating of mathematics one of the most active 
of the translators was Plato of Tivoli, to whom we owe the 
translation of Albategnius’ Astronomy as well as other astro- 
nomical books. Gherardo of Cremona was even more indus- 
trious and is said to have made translations of about seventy 
scientific treaties, including the Almagest of Ptolemy. Dur- 
ing the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries important original 
additions to the science were made. Such names as Leonard 
of Pisa and other Italian mathematical students of this time 
must be counted in astronomy as well as mathematics. They 
opened up the field of scientific astronomy in modern times. 
Dante in his great poem made significant use of the 
knowledge of astronomy of his time, which was by no means 
so vague and indefinite as might be thought. He is the typical 
university man of his time, and shows how broad must have 
been the interest of cultured Italians of that period, for Dante 
wrote for and was eagerly read by his contemporaries. Any- 
one who thinks that science was neglected or cultivated only 
by a few rare spirits in the first century of formal university 
life has not read Dante with care. Alexander von Humboldt, 
the great German scientific writer of the early nineteenth 
century, pays a fine tribute to Dante for his love of nature 
and sensibility to the charms of terrestrial life, as well as for ASTRONOMY 
his scientific knowledge. Dr. L. Oscar Kuhns, Professor in 
Wesleyan University has in his book The Treatment of Nature 
in Dante’s Divina Comedia suggested a comparison between 
the scientific attainments of Dante and Goethe. Goethe is 
usually looked upon almost as much as a scientist as a poet. 
This comparison is particularly apt in all that concerns their 
knowledge of astronomy. Professor Kuhns says of Dante 
that “one may confidently assert that no such perfect lines 
descriptive of the stars have ever been written.” Dante de- 
clares in his Convito that the milky way is composed of a 
multitude of minute stars, and there are many other astro- 
nomical details of information often supposed to be of much 
more modern acquisition. 
Dante knew thoroughly the Ptolemaic system of as- 
tronomy. He refers to the eclipses and their causes, has many 
references to comets and to shooting stars which he knows 
to be most numerous in August, and presents constant and 
accurate allusions to the constellations in their various shapes 
and positions in the heavens. The hour of the day and the 
season of the year are often referred to in terms of astronomi- 
cal science. Dante’s teacher was Cecco D’Ascoli, who was not 
only an astronomer but a scientist in many other departments. 
Dante has used his scientific knowledge more effectively to 
illustrate his poetic meaning than any poet of the succeeding 
centuries down to our own time, and may well be compared 
to Tennyson for his employment of details of scientific in- 
formation to illuminate his deeper meanings as to the prob- 
lems of the universe. Dante’s many scientific allusions are 
above all interesting, as showing how deep must have been 
the interest of Italians of the fourteenth century in everything 
scientific. 
Astronomy had a period of decadence in Italy from 
which every form of intellectual life suffered in the later 
fourteenth century, but at the end of the Middle Ages and 
the beginning of the Renaissance there was a revival. The first 
great name in modern astronomy is that of George Purbach 
of Vienna. His life was spent in the Teutonic countries, WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
but through the inspiration of Cardinal Bessarion he 
realized how much of value it would mean for him to study 
in Italy for the sake of mathematics, and above all because 
of the opportunities afforded by Italian collections to con- 
sult Mss. of Ptolemy in the original instead of in the round 
about versions from an Arabian commentary. He died before 
he could put his purpose into effect, but not before he had 
made arrangements for his pupil Johann Muller, subsequently 
known by the Latinized form of the name of his birthplace, 
Konigsberg as Regiomontanus, to have this Italian expe- 
rience. Altogether Muller spent seven years in Italy and laid 
the foundation of our modern astronomy. After having sub- 
sequently worked in Vienna and in Nuremberg he was called 
to Rome again in order to correct the Calendar, but unfor- 
tunately died there at the early age of forty before his task 
had been completed. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, also a 
German, who did much of his work in Italy, was a patron 
of Regiomontanus. Cusa’s books, while he was the particular 
friend of many Popes, familiarized men’s minds with gen- 
uinely scientific astronomical ideas. He taught that the earth 
was not the centre of the universe, was not without motion, 
and must be considered as one of the stars in the heavens. 
Leonardo da Vinci about the end of the fifteenth century 
pointed out that when the moon was nearly new, the half 
of the earth which was then illuminated by the sun was turned 
nearly directly towards the moon, and that the moon was in 
consequence illuminated slightly by this earth shine just as 
we are by moonshine. This accounts for the dim illumination 
seen over the rest of the surface of the moon when the bright 
part is only a thin crescent. No wonder with all this of inter- 
est in astronomy that towards the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury Copernicus went down to Italy in order to study mathe- 
matics and Astronomy with Novaro at Padua, then looked up 
to as the greatest of mathematicians alive. During all his 
subsequent life Copernicus evidently looked back with grate- 
ful good will for his Italian experience. When he had pre- 
pared the first sketch of his great theory he sent it to Rome ASTRONOMY 
to be announced there, and his theory was first publicly taught 
there to large, and be it said so far as tradition goes, enthus- 
iastic audiences. Just before his death he dedicated his great 
life work to the Pope. All his life he had been in rather 
intimate relations with Italian ecclesiastics, and exchanged 
letters with many of the student friends whom he had met in 
Italy. 
The work that began so interestingly in the later fifteenth 
century was destined to bear fine fruit in the following cen- 
turies. Fracastorius in the first half of the sixteenth cen- 
tury pointed out that comets ’ tails constantly point away from 
the sun as the comet changes its position. A series of Italian 
students of astronomy kept alive the interest of the science 
until with the coming of Galileo, in the early seventeenth cen- 
tury, it was to receive its greatest impetus in history. 
Galileo was by the universal accord of all historians of 
science probably the greatest of observational astronomers 
of all time, but he was even much more than this. Trouessart 
said ‘ ‘ In science we are all disciples of Galileo. ’ ’ David Hume 
said ‘ ‘ Bacon pointed out at a distance the road to true philos- 
ophy, and few realize how great the distance from which he 
pointed it out. Galileo both pointed it out to others and him- 
self made considerable advances in it.” 
Pie was only eighteen when he noticed the synchronous 
character 'of the pendulum swing. Though when he was 
twenty-one poverty compelled him to quit the university 
without taking the regular course so as to receive his degree, 
he spent the next four years intensely and successfully 
occupied with scientific subjects. When he was twenty-two 
he wrote a scientific essay on an instrument which he had 
invented called the hydrostatic balance. In 1604 when he was 
thirty he made his first great astronomical discovery. When 
he discovered a new star in the constellation Serpentarius, 
he proved that this star was more distant than the planets, 
and thereby confirmed Tycho Brahe’s discoveries along the 
same line. He demonstrated besides that there were changes 
taking place in the universe outside of the solar system. A WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
few years later he invented the telescope, not being the first 
to do so, and perhaps obtaining the hint for it from rumors 
that had reached him from the Netherlands, though certainly 
without any definite description of the instrument to guide 
him. “While perhaps a little later than Harriot in making 
astronomical observations the credit of first using the tele- 
scope is to a great extent justified by the persistent way in 
which he examined object after object whenever there seemed 
any reasonable prospect of results following, by the energy 
and acuteness with which he followed up each clue, by the 
independence of mind with which he interpreted his observa- 
tions, and above all by the insight with which he realized 
their astronomical importance.” (Berry, Short History of 
Astronomy.) 
His telescopic studies on the moon were epoch-making. 
He even ventured to calculate from observations the height of 
some of the more conspicuous lunar mountains, the highest 
being estimated by him to be about four miles in altitude, a 
result agreeing closely with modern estimates of the greatest 
height on the moon. He thought there was water on its sur- 
face and demonstrated that the moon was in many respects 
similar to the earth, but he noted the absence of clouds. 
His telescope also revealed to him many stars never seen 
before. He saw thirty-six stars in the Pleiades where the 
unaided eye sees but six. The Milky Way and various nebulae 
were now demonstrated to consist of a multitude of faint 
stars clustered together. Before this men had reached this 
truth by reasoning about them. The most important dis- 
covery however, was that of the moons or satellites of Jupiter, 
made in January, 1610. He demonstrated that they revolved 
around the planet and estimated with a fair approach to 
accuracy their periods of revolution, ranging between forty- 
two hours and seventeen days. 
Before the end of the same year Galileo had observed that 
the planet Saturn appeared to consist of three parts; also 
that Venus which to the naked eye appears to vary much in 
brilliancy but not in shape, was in reality at times crescent ASTRONOMY 
shaped like the new moon, and passed through phases some- 
what similar to those of our moon. This showed that Venus 
was, like the moon, a dark body in itself deriving its light 
from the sun; so that its similiarity to the earth was thereby 
made more evident. The discovery opened up the problem of 
possible inhabitants on the other plants. The recognition of 
the dark spots on the sun was the fourth important ground 
breaking discovery of this single year, 1610. By observations 
made on these he demonstrated the rotation of the sun. Dur- 
ing the following years he made application in many ways 
of his discoveries. He suggested for instance that observations 
on Jupiter’s satellites might be used as a standard for time. 
Even at the end of his life he discussed the question of the 
moon, always presenting the same face to us, and by very 
careful observation succeeded in discovering what we now 
know as the librations of the moon, though he had not quite 
completed his demonstration of them when failing sight cul- 
minated in blindness. 
The idea that about this time astronomy was in any sense 
of the word a forbidden subject or even an object of sus- 
picion on the part of ecclesiastics that hampered its progress, 
in Italy, is an idea due entirely to a perversion of the signifi- 
cance of the Galileo case, which is completely negatived by 
the fact that two distinguished German students of science 
who did much for astronomy about this period were invited 
to Rome at this time, and did their work there for years. 
One of these was Christopher Scheiner, whose studies on the 
sun have made him famous, and who was the first to describe 
sun spots. He also observed their rotation and the appearance 
of the faculae. He wrote an important work on the Sun called 
Rosa Ursini which was published in Italy, and he became 
Professor of mathematics in Rome. The other was Father 
Kircher who wrote several books on astronomy, devised an 
instrument to demonstrate for class teaching the movement 
of the heavenly bodies, and was deservedly looked upon as 
one of the greatest scholars of the time, as we have pointed 
out in the chapter on Physical Science. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
The next great Italian astronomer after Galileo and his 
immediate contemporaries, was Giovanni Domenico Cassini 
(1625-1712) who discovered the rotation of Jupiter, of Mars, 
and of Venus in successive years after 1665 and made the 
tables of the motions of Jupiter’s moons, 1668. He was then 
invited to Paris as Astronomer Royal, where he discovered 
four new satellites of Saturn and the dark marking in 
Saturn’s ring, which has come to be recognized as a division 
of the ring into two, and is since known as Cassini’s division. 
He made significant additions to the current constitution and 
movements of the sun and calculated a fresh table of atmos- 
pheric refraction. At his suggestion John Richer undertook 
a scientific expedition to Cayenne, where the observation of 
the position of Mars in the sky combined with those made 
by Cassini and others in France led to a reasonably accurate 
estimate of the distance of Mars and hence that of the sun. 
Cassini calculated the distance of the sun as about 360 times 
the distance of the moon, nearly 90,000,000 of miles. Cassini’s 
descendants succeeded him for three generations at the French 
observatory while several members of the Maraldi family into 
which his sister had married worked in eo-operation with their 
cousins. They made a number of planetary and other valuable 
observations, but mainly illustrate how easily science falls 
into a rut, for they were slow to accept the great discoveries 
being made around them. 
Italians continued to be shining lights in astronomy in 
the eighteenth century and one of the greatest astronomers 
and mathematicians of this time, Boscovich, was on the 
paternal side of distant Slav origin, but his given names, 
Ruggiero Giuseppe are thoroughly Italian. He was born in 
Dalmatia, but educated entirely under Italian influences and 
lived all his life in Italy. He was a Jesuit, but his esteem in 
the scientific world may be realized from the fact that he was 
made a member of the Academies of Bologna, Paris and 
London and received many invitations to become professor 
at foreign universities. He wrote some sixty-six treatises 
altogether and was looked upon as one of the most important ASTRONOMY 
contributors to science in his time. For nearly fifty years 
his work was done in Italy, and after the suppression of the 
Jesuits he accepted an invitation to become Director of Optics 
for the Marine, a new office created especially for him in order 
to secure his services for France. He was preeminent among 
the scholars of his time, was recognized as one of the pioneers 
in science, the inventor of important instruments which are 
still employed, such as the ring micrometer, and as a most 
prolific writer on the most important subjects of mathematics 
and the physical sciences related to astronomy as well as in 
general philosophy. 
During the nineteenth century a series of very important 
discoveries were made by the Italian astronomers. The cen- 
tury had scarcely opened when on the first night of January 
of the year 1801, Father Piazzi engaged in making star maps 
found a heavenly body of the eighth magnitude, which on 
repeated observations proved to shift its position. He thought 
at first that it was a comet, but it proved to be a planet with 
an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Keppler and Bode had 
called attention to the apparent gap between these two 
planets, and this made the discovery of great importance. 
Six hundred of these small planets have since been located 
in this same space in the heavens. Besides this discovery 
Piazzi published a series of star catalogues, that of 1814 con- 
taining observations on 7,646 stars. Prizes were awarded to 
these catalogues by the Institute of France, and they undoubt- 
edly represented a magnificent advance over all preceding 
star maps and catalogues. Piazzi corrected errors in the esti- 
mation of the obliquity of the ecliptic, of the aberration of 
light, of the length of the tropical year and the parallax of 
the fixed stars. He is a worthy Italian colleague even of such 
great contemporaries in other countries as Sir John Herschel. 
A series of Italians, some of them clergymen, attracted 
attention for their astronomical work during the nineteenth 
century. One of the first to whom Piazzi sent the account of 
his discovery of the new planet was Father Oriani, the direc- 
tor of the Milan Observatory. Though born in the humblest WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
circumstances and in his boyhood a mason’s apprentice, 
Oriani through the Barnabite Order obtained the opportunity 
for an education. For fifty-two years he contributed largely 
to the Effemeridi of Milan. His observations on the planet 
Uranus gave him a place among the astronomers of all times. 
He was looked upon as an authority and was made a Count 
by Napoleon, received the Legion of Honor, and was given 
the duty of measuring the arc <of the meridian between Rimini 
and Rome. Some of his work in mathematics also has attrac- 
ted attention. 
Inghirami was another Italian clergyman who attracted 
attention in astronomy. He was selected by the Berlin 
Academy to do a portion of its map of the celestial equator. 
Encke, the Prussian Astronomer, declared Inghirami’s execu- 
tion of the part assigned him — one of the most difficult of 
all — as perhaps the best accomplishment of the great under- 
taking. Denza, another Italian of this century, was one of 
the founders of meteorology. He made a series of thorough 
scientific observations and aroused interest in the new science. 
He succeeded in covering Italy with a net work of 200 weather 
stations which provided the model for other nations. He 
became the director of the Vatican Observatory and occupied 
himself with the photography of the heavens. This Observa- 
tory was chosen with seventeen others to execute an inter- 
national photographic map of the heavens. 
Santini whose successful prophecy of the time of the 
return of Biela’s comet gave him a popular reputation, had 
acquired high esteem from his astronomical colleagues by his 
catalogue of the stars between the tenth degrees north and 
south latitude, and his calculation of the paths of some 
seventeen comets. Secchi did work that attracted world 
attention in both astronomy and meteorology. He invented 
self registering meteorological instruments which are in prin- 
ciple at least used all over the world at the present time, and 
for which he received prizes from the French exposition. He 
is best known for his epoch making work on the physical 
constitution of the sun and the stars. He applied the spec- ASTRONOMY 
troscope to the investigation of star light and studied alto- 
gether 6,000 stars. He made most delicate observations 
on the sun's protuberances and sun spots and exact measure- 
ments on over 1300 double stars. He wrote so many papers 
containing valuable observations that Rospigi said of him 
that “his industry resembled rather the activity of a scientific 
society than of an individual.” He sixty-five indepen- 
dent works and monographs and some 42 scientific periodicals 
contain literally hundreds of his shorter papers. 
Father Secchi’s epoch-making achievement was the dis- 
covery of -what are known as the five Secchi type of stars 
deduced from about 4,000 spectra of stars, on which he had 
been at work for some twenty years. The unexpected dis- 
covery that all fixed stars may as far as their physical chem- 
istry can be determined by the spectroscope be reduced to a 
few types, seemed to many an accomplishment of as great 
significance as any that had ever been made in astronomy. 
The theory of the unity of the world and of the identity of 
the fixed stars and the sun from a material standpoint re- 
ceived profound scientific demonstration. His observations 
on the sun brought him many distinctions and opened up new 
chapters in the knowledge of that important body. His 
studies of the moon, of the double stars and of the planets, all 
have a very important place in modern astronomy, and some 
of them have been taken as the basis of further work by 
subsequent astronomers. 
One of his great Italian colleagues was his teacher, De 
Yico, well known for having six times won the gold medal 
offered by the King of Denmark, as the first discoverer of a 
telescopic comet and by his observations on Venus, and his 
important discovery that the spots on the planet could under 
the Italian sky be observed in the day time. Political troubles 
after the Revolution in 1848 sent him into exile from Italy 
because he was a Jesuit, but he received an honorable welcome 
in France and England and was given important astronomical 
commissions by foreign governments. 
In every century since the beginning of the twelfth, when WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Plato of Tivoli made the long, difficult journey to Spain to 
obtain from the Arabs a knowledge of astronomy and mathe- 
matics wdiich they possessed as the result of their direct con- 
tact with the old Greek authors in the still Grecian cities of 
Asia Minor, down to our own day, either Italians themselves 
have made significant additions to both of these disciplines, or 
else men who had been educated in Italy and who were quite 
ready to confess that they owed their intellectual ability and 
power of achievement in these exact sciences to their Italian 
teachers have made great advances. This constitutes a chapter 
in Italy’s intellectual achievement that is often pot well under- 
stood, and is very seldom known in anything like its real sig- 
nificance. It really constitutes one of the most important 
chapters in the history of human intellectual development in 
modern times. PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
WHILE the Italians, as we have just seen, have been so 
prominent - and so thoroughly original in their pro- 
ductiveness in mathematics and astronomy as probably to 
surpass any other single nation in the significance of their 
contributions to these important modes of human knowledge, 
they have been scarcely, if any, less notable in their achieve- 
ments in the physical sciences generally. Ordinarily it is 
presumed that physical science did not develop to any great 
extent until comparatively recent times, but in this, as in 
every other department of science the more careful study of 
history in recent years has made it very clear that men have 
at many times devoted themselves successfully to the solution 
of scientific problems and have worked out, some at least, of 
the principles underlying them. A great many people would 
have the feeling that physical science is so modern that the 
Italians could count for very little in it, not so much through 
any direct fault of theirs, as because they did not have the 
advantage of primacy in the intellectual world when science 
came into its own and reached a definite phase of evolution. 
As a matter of fact the history of physics in Italy is an ex- 
tremely interesting chapter in the story of science. 
The old Romans are sometimes said to have been ignorant 
of such principles of hydrostatics as that water seeks its own 
level, and consequently were compelled to build the immensely 
expensive aqueducts, the remains of which are still to be seen 
on the Campagna in order to carry water into the city. 
There is ample evidence, however, for their knowledge of this 
scientific principle, but the difficulty in securing a water 
supply which they had to encounter, lay in the inability of WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
that time to construct such water carrying devices as would 
enable them to take advantage of it. Hence they solved their 
practical problem of securing a city water supply by the 
erection of the magnificent aqueducts which, treated in fine 
architectural spirit, became the beautiful adornments of the 
landscape which they still remain, in spite of the vicissitudes 
of time. 
In the making of glass and above all tiles of various 
kinds which we have in recent years labored to imitate, and 
not always successfully, in the manufacture of colors many 
of which have proved more enduring than any that we can 
make, in the decoration of pottery as well as in ever so many 
other phases of the arts and crafts, the Romans showed 
that they had solved many chemical and physical problems 
for which at least a practical knowledge of scientific principles 
is required. Wendell Phillips in his oration The Lost Arts has 
called attention to some things the Romans could do that we 
are not able to accomplish in our time with all our knowledge 
of physical science. 
The interest manifested by many of the Romans of the 
early empire in the problems of nature shows that physical 
science was not foreign to the Roman disposition. To name 
but Celsus and Pliny we have two writers whose works have 
always deservedly attracted attention because <of their com- 
pilation of scientific information. What Humboldt did in 
our time in his Cosmos, Pliny had tried to accomplish in his 
Naturali# Ilistoria during the first century. It is to him 
that we owe the term Natural History, so commonly used 
until our time when some scientists began to object to it. He 
lacked the definite information of the modern time, but he 
had the breadth of interest, was an immense reader, and even 
in certain ways proved himself an original observer. His 
story of certain intermittent springs in Italy and his death 
while venturing too near Vesuvius during an eruption in 
order to make personal observations, are ample proof of this. 
His second book treats of earth, stars, meteors and such ter- 
restrial phenomena as earthquakes, the elevation of islands PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
and so forth, and the next three books are geographical. The 
next twenty books are devoted to biology, but then there are 
a series of treatises on the metals, on precious stones and on 
the different kinds of stone and marble. This was, however, 
compilation and while not science, in our acceptation of the 
term, we must not forget that we have limited its application 
until a reaction against our use of it seems imminent. 
It is probably true to say that the first genuine contribu- 
tions to physical science in Italy came in connection with the 
development of what they termed the science of cosmology 
by the scholastic philosophers. Such men as Anselm, Peter 
Lombard and Aquinas, to mention only the greatest names in 
what might be made a rather long list, writing commentaries 
on Aristotle made a series of speculations with regard to 
matter and its qualities, which represent positive basic prin- 
ciples in physical science. These speculations were founded 
on comparatively few observations and a great many assump- 
tions, but at least they had the advantage of Aristotle’s knowl- 
edge of physics and their thinking was modified by much more 
of actual observation than has usually been supposed. The 
conclusions they came to are interesting because they fore- 
shadowed very clearly a number of doctrines that were ar- 
rived at by our most exact observation in physical science 
during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the extent to which 
they anticipated some of the very latest conclusions of modern 
science is rather startling to those who have not had their 
attention called to it before. 
They taught very distinctly for instance what is the most 
recent teaching of physical chemistry that all matter had an 
underlying basis the same in all material things, though dif- 
ferentiated into various substances by certain superadded 
qualities. In accordance with this teaching all matter was 
composed of two principles, one of which was dynamic termed 
‘‘form” and the other material, termed materia prima or 
“prime matter.” This was the teaching of Aristotle, but 
they developed it notably and applied it very concretely. 
According to this teaching prime matter was the same in all WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
material substances, while the different kinds of matter as we 
know them were differentiated by certain dynamic qualities 
or forms joined to this prime matter. The scholastic philos- 
ophers did not think as did most of the scientists of the nine- 
teenth century that there were a number of essentially 
different kinds of matter so-called elementary substances. 
They felt that all the various substances had the same sub- 
stratum, but with distinctive qualities dependent on the force 
elements in them. Once this is understood it is not surprising 
to find that the scholastics, in spite -of the obloquy that has 
unfortunately gathered around that term, taught as definite 
truths the indestructibility of matter and even the conservation 
of energy. Matter might change in its mode of being, but 
could not disappear and even its dynamic qualities might be 
modified, but neither would these disappear, and they repre- 
sented the sources of energy as we know them. When Aquinas 
declared, as he did in his lectures at the University of Paris 
(1270) nihil omnino in nihilum redig etur, “nothing at all 
will ever be reduced to nothingness,” he was teaching the 
indestructibility of matter as well as of energy. 
As a matter of fact just as soon as our modern science 
tries to lift itself above the mere accumulation of information 
into the realm where it thinks out the significance of its obser- 
vations, it is almost sure to find out that distinguished Italian 
thinkers of the olden time have anticipated some, at least, of 
the conclusions that it seems forced to draw. 
It was not until the Renaissance however, that physical 
science properly so-called came into existence as one of the 
disciplines of human thinking. One of the first who became 
prominent in history as a physicist in our sense of the word 
was Toscanelli, the son of a physician and himself in his 
early years following the profession of his father. He was a 
close personal friend of Regiomontanus and Nicholas of Cusa, 
and his interest in astronomical and mathematical questions 
was constantly kept up. He made painstaking and exact 
observations of a series of comets and constructed the well 
known gnomon of Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence, by the PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
shadow of which he could determine mid-day to half a second, 
and could settle with precision the altitudes of the solstices. 
He became the centre of scientific interest in his time, and 
the friend and advisor of the greatest scholars of Italy and of 
other countries. This wide influence was to be of very great 
value to the world when the question of sailing westward in 
order to get to the other side of the globe began to be bruited. 
There is a well authenticated tradition which has rather 
been re-established than in any way disturbed by recent contro- 
versies, that Toscanelli’s tentative chart of the Western Ocean 
greatly encouraged Columbus, and above all made many of 
those with whom Columbus came in contact feel that the 
Italian adventurer who wanted to secure the opportunity to 
sail westward was after all not such a dreamer as he seemed 
to be at first. Toscanelli had insisted with the Portuguese 
for a considerable period that instead of going around Africa 
as they had been trying to do for half a century, they might 
by sailing westward, find a shorter voyage and a less stormy 
route. Toscanelli’s knowledge of the geography of his time 
was as thorough as could be, and he may well be looked upon 
as the founder of cosmography, the branch of science which 
aims to secure knowledge of the world in every detail. Tos- 
canelli had interested himself also in meteorology, and though 
his writings unfortunately have not been preserved, the title 
of one of his books Meteorologia Agricula, The Science of the 
Heavens for the Farmer would seem to indicate how thor- 
oughly practical Toscanelli’s scientific observations usually 
were. 
To many it would seem as though these earlier specula- 
tions and even scattered observations in physical science 
meant very little for true scientific development because as 
yet the foundation stone of physical science, the inductive 
method had not been well laid. Some seem even to think that 
the world had to wait for Francis Bacon to lay this before any 
real structure «of science could be built up. Long before 
Francis Bacon, however, the question of inductive science 
had been thoroughly discussed. Even his great namesake, WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Roger Bacon, the Franciscan Friar of the thirteenth century 
painted out very clearly the significance of the inductive 
method. In the century before Francis Bacon, Bernardino 
Telesio, the Italian philosopher, stated very fully the value 
of induction and recognized all its possibilities. In Science, 
for December 19, 1913, Professor Carmichael said of him: 
“He (Telesio) abandoned completely the purely intel- 
lectual sphere of the ancient Greeks and other thinkers prior 
to his time and proposed an inquiry into the data given by 
the senses. He held that from these data all true knowledge 
really comes. The work of Telesio, therefore, marks the 
fundamental revolution in scientific thought by which we 
pass over from the ancient to the modern methods. He was 
successful in showing that from Aristotle the appeal lay to 
nature, and he made possible the day when men would no 
longer treat the ipse dixit of the Stagirite philosopher as the 
final authority in matters of science. ’ ’ 
The books of that universal genius Jerome Cardan and 
notably his De Subtilitate Rerum and De Varietate Rerum 
contain a series of speculations which are very interesting in 
the light of modern scientific development. They show for 
instance that the ideas of evolution which had been expressed 
in the preceding century by Leonardo da Yinci, were still 
insistently presenting themselves to the minds of original 
thinkers. Cardan was quite sure that all creation was in 
progress of development and he declared very definitely 
that all animals were originally worms, or very small living 
creatures of simplified structure. He extended his idea of 
evolution, however, to the physical world and taught that 
even the non-precious metals must be accepted as efforts 
of nature to produce gold and steps in the way of nature’s 
progress toward that goal. Now that our physical chemists 
are ready to declare that they would like to remove all the 
silver from a large quantity of lead ore and leaving it aside 
come back after years to see if they would not find further 
traces of the precious metal, for they think that silver is 
constantly being manufactured by radio activity in the 
230 cathedral, baptistry, and leaning TOWER, PISA. PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
midst of plumbiferous ores, as probably gold is in all copper 
ore, this expression of Cardan becomes very interesting as an 
anticipation of what is most modern in physical science. 
If after the Renaissance Italy had given the world of 
science nothing but Galileo the debt of civilization to her 
in the physical sciences would indeed be great. There is 
scarcely a department of physics so-called to which the 
great Florentine did not make magnificent contributions. 
He was but twenty five years of age when he made the 
remarkable series of experiments by which he established the 
first principals of dynamical science. He used the leaning 
tower of Pisa to give the professors and students of the Uni- 
versity an ocular demonstration of the falsity of the notion, 
which seems almost inborn in human thinking, that heavy bod- 
ies fall with velocities proportional to their weight and thus 
began the modern study of gravity. He was the inventor 
of the thermometer and greatly improved the telescope and 
showed how it should be used. His contributions to 
astronomy are dwelt on in the preceding chapter. His teach- 
ing of such principles as that gravity and levity are relative 
terms and that all bodies even the invisible gases have a 
certain weight, that weight is a continuous force attracting 
toward the centre of the earth, that in a vacuum all bodies 
fall wfith equal velocities and that the inertia of matter 
implies the continuance of motion as well as the permanence 
of rest are all revolutionary and fundamental in mechanics. 
He taught besides that the heavenly bodies are composed 
of matter like that on the earth equally corruptible and 
probably closely related.* 
One of the great successors of Galileo among Italian 
contributors to the physical sciences is Toricelli the quality 
of whose contributions to science may be well appreciated 
* The interest in Galileo and his work down even to our own time 
and the feeling that what he wrote is always classic, that is valuable to 
students, will perhaps be best appreciated from the fact that a national edition 
of Galileo’s complete works is now being issued in Italy under the editorship 
of Professor Antonio Favaro of Padua. The Dialogues Concerning Two New 
Sciences have been translated into English by Henry Crew and Alfonso 
de Salvio of Northwestern University. It is probable that after the publication 
of this national edition of Galileo in Italy new translations of most of his 
works will appear in many of the modern languages. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
from the fact that though he died before he was forty his 
name has an enduring place in the history of science. He 
was distinguished first in mathematics and because of his 
successful devotion to certain problems that had interested 
Galileo was brought in contact with the great Florentine 
scientist. After Galileo’s death Toricelli was prevailed 
upon to remain at Florence and to succeed Galileo at the 
Academy. It was while here that he invented the barometer 
and corrected the old idea that “nature abhors a vacuum.” 
The Toricellian Vacuum, obtained by a column of mercury 
in a tube being allowed to fall until it is just supported by 
the outer air, is still employed for the purpose of getting a 
very high vacuum. Toricelli was also very much interested 
in lenses and constructed a number of microscopies which 
made microscopic work ever so much easier than it had 
been before and encouraged workers in the biological 
sciences to use this instrument with confidence. 
Between Galileo and Toricelli in the history of science 
comes the name of Castelli the pupil of the one and the 
teacher of the other. He was a Benedictine monk who later 
was made an Abbot, but about 1623 Pope Urban VIII in- 
vited him to Rome and appointed him Chief Mathematician 
to the Pope and Public Professor of Mathematics in the 
University of Rome. While in this position he was often 
consulted by the municipalities of Italy in connection with 
drainage, water supply, the prevention of floods and the 
like. His important work ‘ ‘ On the Mensuration of Run- 
ning Water” was translated into most of the modern 
languages and has been reprinted a number of times. He 
made a number of discoveries in hydraulics and developed 
the important relations that the speed of a current varies 
inversely as the area of its cross section and that the dis- 
charge from a vessel depends on the depth of the tap below 
the free surface of the water. According to Poggendorf, 
Castelli was the first to suggest the use of darkened lenses 
in order to make continuous studies of the sun possible with- PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
out injury to the eye and he is besides the inventor of the 
instrument known as a helioscope. 
While the Italians did so much for mechanics and 
hydrostatics their most important contributions to physical 
science were in the department of optics. To Leonardo da 
Vinci is usually attributed the invention of the simple camera 
obscura without a lens. Giovanni Battista de la Porta is 
said to have added the lens making the apparatus complete. 
He is also said to have invented the opera glass, though 
it must not be forgotten that Pliny mentions a glass used by 
Nero to bring the figures in the amphitheatre nearer to him. 
The stereoscope was invented in Italy and the magic lantern 
is usually attributed to Father Kircher who spent most of 
his active fruitful scientific years in the study and teaching 
of science in Italy. The telescope if not invented by Galileo 
was at least greatly improved by him and most of the im- 
provements in the microscope which brought it to be the 
valuable instrument that it is at the present time came from 
the Italians. The oil immersion lense which made it possible 
to use lenses with much higher powers successfully is, as 
noted in the chapter on Inventions, an Italian invention. 
They began the work, constantly putting the world in 
their debt by further developments in this department as 
well as by the discovery of principles that made for a better 
understanding of light and its phenomena. 
Italian interest in science in the seventeenth century 
can be most readily appreciated from the series of text books 
in the various departments of physical science issued by 
Father Kircher then teaching at the Roman college. There 
is scarcely a department of physics with regard to which 
Father Kircher did not publish a large magnificently illus- 
trated volume. One of the most important of these was his 
volume Ars Magma Lucis et Umbrae which was illustrated 
by many original experiments and demonstrations. He 
constructed a large burning glass in order to demonstrate 
the story told of Archimedes that he had succeeded thus in 
setting the Roman ships afire in the harbor of Syracuse. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Two of his treatises are on magnetism and the second one 
De Arte Magnetica is one of the landmarks in the history of 
this science for in it the word electricity (electricitas) first 
occurs. Five years after his book on light he published a 
book on sound under the title Musurgia Universalis with the 
sub title The Art of Harmony and Discord. Some five 
years later appeared a treatise on astronomy and then 
another Mundus Subterraneus which treated of mineralogy, 
metallurgy and the chemistry of metals as well as other 
subterranean phenomena. 
These are not brief treatises nor small manuals, handy 
text books for schools, but are large quarto volumes magnifi- 
cently printed and illustrated and now commanding high 
prices at auction rooms and book sales because of their fine 
bibliographic qualities. These were the books used very 
commonly by the teachers of science in the higher schools 
and colleges of Italy and monastic training schools particu- 
larly were seldom without them. No other such series of 
scientific books summing up the state of science at a given 
time has ever appeared anywhere in the "world. They 
owed their appearance to the encouragement given Father 
Kircher in his Italian environment. 
Probably the most important phase of Italian contribu- 
tion to the development of physical science is to be found 
in that branch of it which developed the latest. If there 
is anything that shows very clearly that Italy’s genius for 
original observation in science is not a thing of the past 
but on the contrary is thoroughly up-to-date it is the story 
of Italian contributions to the evolution of magnetism and 
electricity. Two of the most important modes of electricity, 
Galvanic and Voltaic, were by the International Congress of 
Electricians that fixed the terms of their science, called after 
the Italians wTho did so much to open up in a practical way 
the modern science of electricity. Even before Galvani and 
Volta had begun their great original work however, there 
were distinguished contributors to this science among the 
Italians. For his work in magnetism and electricity the PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
Abbe Beccaria was made a member of the Royal Society 
of England shortly after the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Priestley, himself the discoverer of Oxygen, in his 
History of Electricity issued shortly after Beccaria’s election 
as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1775 calls him “one of 
the most eminent of the electricians on the Continent” and 
describes his experiments on air and water which he says 
were arranged “in a pleasing and satisfactory manner” as 
we would now say very ingeniously. Professor Chrystal the 
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Saint Andrews 
in his history of the development of electricity in the 
Encyclopedia Britannica (IX edition), has expressed his 
admiration for Father Beccaria’s work and above all how 
much his incentive meant for the world of science of that 
time. 
The two great founders in modern electricity, however, 
are Galvani and Volta. Galvani found by his experiments 
that the contact of metals produced muscular contraction 
in the frog. At once the thought that electrical force was in 
some very intimate way connected with vital force sug- 
gested itself and a question was opened as to the relations 
of the two modes of energy that is not yet decided. Volta 
opposed the notion of the identity of the forces and the 
world took sides for and against the two Italians. Galvani 
was an anatomist and not a student of physics, but he had 
the genius to be able to take advantage of the happy accident 
of seeing a frog’s legs twitch. It was such another fortunate 
incident for science as Newton’s seeing the apple fall, or 
Lord Kelvin’s recognition of the weightless arm for an 
indicator that a beam of light might be when his eye glass 
fell from his eye, but millions of people had seen such 
events before and failed to benefit by them. A few years 
later Volta invented the Voltaic pile by which a continuous 
current of electricity might be obtained through chemical 
means. This was the beginning of applications of electricity 
for industrial purposes and it has been well said that the 
invention of the Voltaic pile is now proving to have been a WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
more important mechanical advance for man in controlling 
energy than that of the steam engine.* 
The work of the great Italians of the end of the eigh- 
teenth century was continued during the ninenteenth. Nobili 
invented the thermoelectric pile which Melloni applied to 
the measurement of very small differences of temperature 
thus enabling him to evolve the dynamical theory of heat. 
At the end of the century Marconi taking the observations 
and discoveries that had been made by a series of men for a 
generation put into practical form the use of electrical waves 
in the ether for wireless telegraphy. Probably no greater 
or more useful invention than this has ever been made. 
In another department of physical science an Italian 
scientist of the nineteenth century the well known Luigi 
Palmieri, who in 1843 invented magnetic electric apparatus 
for the demonstration of terrestrial magnetism, secured de- 
servedly a world reputation. In 1856 he was selected as the 
director of the observatory which King Ferdinand II had 
erected for volcanic observations on Vesuvius and here for a 
generation he was brought in intimate contact with every 
important scientist who visited the crater. For forty years 
he devoted himself to ardent and successful researches on 
meteorolgy and the outbreaks of volcanos. He invented a 
series of instruments for the measurement of earth tremors, 
for the estimation of the velocity of the winds, and the 
tension of the electricity of the air as well as various 
mechanical applications for the investigation of other phases 
of physical science. He did not hesitate to expose his life 
on many occasions in making his observations on Vesuvius 
* A very curious early anticipation of some modern ideas is the story of 
the sympathetic or magnetic telegraph. At the beginning of the seventeenth 
century an Italian Jesuit, Father Strada had described in a Latin poem how 
two friends by means of magnetic needless on dials had been able to com- 
municate with each other by moving the magnetic needles to the various 
letters when the corresponding free swinging one would repeat the moves at a 
distance. The idea had been even at that time in the air for a considerable 
period. It is usually attributed to Cardinal Bembo, the elegant scholar and 
private secretary to Pope Leo X, but it was his friend Porta, the versatile 
philosopher who made it widely known by the vivid description which he 
gave of it in his celebrated work on Natural Magic, published at Naples in 
1558. Cabeo in his Philosophia Magnetica in 1629 gives a picture of the dial 
of the sympathetic telegraph. Men were naturally quite taken with the 
idea and it became a favorite subject for popular stories and imaginings. PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
when in eruption. His book on atmospheric electricity has 
been translated into several European languages and his 
observations on Vesuvius are known by every scientist in- 
terested in volcanic eruptions. He did important funda- 
mental work in all these departments. 
Even in chemistry, the great fundamental discoveries 
in which are usually supposed to have been limited to France, 
England and Germany, there is at least one great name for- 
ever famous. This is Avogadro, who in 1811, noting that 
equal variations of temperatures and pressure produce in all 
gasses and vapors the same change of volume, enunciated 
what has since been known as Avogadro’s law. All in all 
there are more names of Italians attached to important 
phases of discoveries in the physical sciences than of any 
other nation. I have only to mention Galileo, Toricelli, 
Galvani, Volta and Avogadro as the evidence for this. 
These names alone provide a very definite demonstration of 
the immense debt that civilization owes to Italy in the 
department of physics. BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
AFTER the names of such distinguished discoverers in 
physical science as Galileo, Toricelli, Volta, Galvani 
to say nothing of others who might well deserve to be 
mentioned, are recalled, the world’s debt to Italy in this 
department is easy to appreciate. In spite of the contradic- 
tion of prevalent impressions as to Italy’s lagging in 
science, there is likely to be, even in the minds of those 
familiar with things scientific, a feeling that it is probably 
because of lack of interest in the biological sciences that 
Italy’s scientific deserts have failed of recognition. On 
first thought I suppose that most people, even many who 
think themselves quite familiar with the development of 
the biological sciences, would be inclined to believe that 
Italy has done very little in this department. Here, as 
elsewhere, however, only a little investigation of actual 
scientific history is needed to show that Italy was a leader 
in this, as in other departments. It so happens that in 
recent years, that is during the past two or three generations 
most of the great discoveries in the biological sciences have 
come from the western nations of Europe, though by no 
means to the exclusion of Italy. Before that time, however, 
all the world looked to Italy for initiative and enterprise in 
biology, as in all the other sciences, and for seven centuries 
there was scarcely any period when Italy did not possess 
the leading thinkers and discoverers in the biologieal 
sciences. 
Indeed the story of the work done in the Italian 
peninsula for biological science when told, even in the brief 
detail that is possible here, is one of the most glorious BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
chapters in the whole history of science. Italy presents a 
long role of men famous for discoveries and diligent investi- 
gation in biology, whose names the scientific world at least 
will never willingly let die. Besides what is owed to Italy 
for actual discoveries in biology and for the encouragement 
of biological studies, the world’s debt to Italy is very large 
because of what was accomplished for education in the 
biological sciences in the peninsula. A great many of the 
biological scientists of other countries owe their education 
to Italian universities or confess to having been deeply in- 
fluenced by Italian scientific workers. Though the word 
biology was first used only at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century the ideas underlying it have been the subject of 
study ever since man began to make observations and draw 
conclusions as to the living things around him. The basic 
sciences of biology are anatomy and physiology and the 
two men whose names are associated deservedly with the 
foundations of these, Vesalius and Harvey, though neither 
of them Italian were both students of Italian universities 
and acknowledged their deep obligations to their Italian 
masters. 
To take first anatomy, the foundation stone of the 
sciences in the biological group, the first great teacher of 
anatomy and modern science was Mondino (Latin Mundinus) 
who was professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna 
at the end of the thirteenth century and who wrote a manual 
for students arranged so as to be an aid for the practice 
of dissection. This became the standard handbook for this 
purpose for several centuries. It is extremely limited in 
scope but its one merit is that it encouraged actual observa- 
tion and the practice of dissection rather than the fine-spun 
elaboration of theory and the dependence on mere book 
learning that had been the custom. For centuries, indeed 
until our own time the dissecting room offered the only 
opportunity for regular laboratory work in the biological 
sciences. The laboratory is important not only for the 
information it imparts, but for the scientific method which WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
it cultivates and the habits of observation which it forms. 
This work and its place in science we owe to Mondino of 
Bologna. 
Mondino’s assistant, a young woman Alesandra 
Giliani by name, is said to have invented a mode of in- 
jecting bodies for preservation for anatomical purposes and 
this greatly facilitated the development of the renascent 
science. For the next two centuries all the impetus for the 
study of anatomy came from Italy. Guy de Chauliac, the 
great French surgeon, well called “The father of modern 
surgery’ ’tells us how his teacher down in Bologna, 
Bertrucci, used to make dissections and he evidently looks 
back with pleasure on the profit derived from the years of 
study he spent in Italy. Many a man before and after him 
had his experience and his feelings. The magnificent de- 
velopment of surgery that we now know to have come at this 
time is the proof of how much anatomical studies meant for 
the evolution of scientific medicine in Italy in the later Middle 
Ages. 
With the beginning of the Renaissance after the fall of 
Constantinople, the study of the old Greek classics of medi- 
cine led to a reawakening of interest in all the biological 
sciences, but particularly in anatomy and a very important 
group of men in Italy each one of whom bears a name famous 
in the history of science did excellent work in that depart- 
ment. Berengar of Carpi declared that anatomy could not 
be learned by word of mouth, but that sight and touch 
were absolutely necessary. He himself had dissected hun- 
dreds of cadavers though most of his career is in the 
fifteenth century. 
Every distinguished artist of the Renaissance period 
almost without exception did dissections for himself in 
order to make his painting and sculpture more real and ex- 
pressive of the actual structures of the human body. There 
is a prevalent historical tradition, accepted by most people 
and even by many who are supposed to be scholars, which 
has found its way into secular history, though never into BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
serious medical history, that out of respect for the human 
body dissection was forbidden at this time by the Church 
and that what little study of the human body by direct 
methods was done had to be accomplished in secrecy and 
with such haste and surreptitiousness as seriously hampered 
the development of the science of anatomy. Exactly the 
contrary is the case and there has never been a time in the 
history of anatomy, even our own, when it was so easy to 
obtain material for dissection purposes as in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. This the many hundreds of dis- 
sections made and sketched by Leonardo da Vinci and 
Michelangelo amply attest. 
The tradition of church prohibition of dissection and 
consequent suppression of scientific anatomical development, 
is entirely due to the acceptance of a version of history 
initiated in religious controversy, fostered because it served 
to discredit the old Church, but it is absolutely without 
foundation in the realities of history. The men who gave 
credit and publicity to it meant well enough, but they 
were ignorant of the real history. Neuberger in his Handbook 
of the History of Medicine* says “The Italian professors, in- 
cited by the brilliant example of Mondino, surpassed all the 
other anatomists of the world because they did not disdain 
to take in their own hands the anatomical scalpel, and it is 
for that reason that at this time anatomy in Italy was culti- 
vated with greater breadth of vision than elsewhere. The 
Italian anatomists initiated at the end of the fifteenth century 
the most famous period in the history of the art of dissection 
and became the teachers to the physicians of the world. ’ ’ 
Attention in recent years has been so much centered 
on the great anatomists of the sixteenth century, the group 
of men whose names are connected in some way with Vesalius 
that it is sometimes apparently thought that Vesalius came 
down to Italy and woke up the Italians to the value of anatom- 
ical science for medicine. Quite the contrary, his academic 
* Neuberger and Pagel, Handbuch der Geshichte der Medicin, Jena 1903, 
Vol II. page 23. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
excursion to Italy was made, fully aware that he could obtain 
in the peninsula better teaching, and above all more ample 
facilities for the study of anatomy and under the guidance 
of broader minded biological scientists than anywhere in the 
world, and his long stay of some twenty years shows how well 
satisfied he was in his new environment. 
One of the great world anatomists who did his work 
mainly before the sixteenth century is Alexander Achillini, 
professor first of philosophy and then of medicine at Bologna 
for nearly twenty years, whence he was invited to the Univer- 
sity of Padua but after a few years returned to the Univer- 
sity of his native city. He has written three anatomical 
works entitled “Anatomy of The Human Body,” “Notes 
on Mondino’s Anatomia” and “Anatomical Studies.” His 
anatomical descriptions are always followed by notes on the 
maladies to which the different organs are subject and he 
indicates with marvelous conciseness the principal surgical 
operations that were done on them. He made a large 
number of discoveries in anatomy. He described the hammer 
and anvil bones in the ear, though Morgagni says they had 
been known to Italians before that time. Achillini described 
the salivary duct beneath the tongue to which the name of 
Wharton has since been given. He knew the brain very 
well, described the first pair of nerves as penetrating the 
nose and as representing the organ of smell, described the 
spinal chord as ending in a series of branches in the lumbar 
region and made a special study of the veins of the arm. 
Achillini died in 1512, two years before the birth of Vesalius, 
so that the thoroughly objective study of anatomjq even as 
early as the end of the fifteenth century in Italy can be 
understood from his career. 
Probably the greatest anatomist of the beginning of 
the Rennaissance, however, was Alexander Benedetti. De 
Renzi quotes the declaration of a historian of medicine that 
“Benedetti was the light of Italian medicine in the fifteenth 
century, the first to construct an amphitheatre for anatomi- 
cal instruction, one of the first to teach the contagiousness BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
of the pest and one of the early successful students of 
syphilis, rhinoplasty, pathological anatomy, and lithotripsy.’’ 
He received his degree in Padua, .traveled for a time in 
Greece, practiced in the Island of Candia, became professor 
in Padua and later also professor in Bologna. He was the 
surgeon for the Venetian army and it was through Vene- 
tian influence that he secured his opportunities for study 
abroad. He labored to replace the reigning empiricism, 
many notions of wdiich had eome from the Arabs, by Hippo- 
cratic philosophy. Haller speaks of him as the first original 
writer on medical subjects who though knowing the classical 
medical writings depended more on what he had himself ob- 
served. Benedetti emancipated anatomical teaching from 
the too slavish following of Mondino, secured the provision 
of a number of cadavers for dissection purposes, instituted 
the first anatomical theatre in 1493 and wrote his treatise 
on anatomy in five books in 138 chapters before the end of 
the fifteenth century. 
The foundation of this first anatomical theatre is almost 
exactly 100 years before that founded in Padua for Fabrieius 
da Aquapendente, which is sometimes spoken of as the first, 
but one had been built at Pisa in 1521 and at Pavia a year 
later. Nothing meant more for the teaching of anatomy than 
this removal of the scene of study from the out of the way 
places where it had been done to handsome public buildings. 
Only the most profound interest in the subject drew students 
to the anatomical demonstrations before and there was no 
temptation to do any special research work. With this de- 
velopment however, everything was changed and no wonder 
that the next generation during the first half of the sixteenth 
century accomplished the magnificent work in anatomy that 
has made its great investigators famous ever since. 
Laboratory work in medicine is sometimes spoken of as 
modern in origin, but the dissecting room was always a 
laboratory, and whenever the studies in it were pursued in 
the broad scientific spirit of the Italians, it provided not only 
knowledge but a training in methods of observation. Our WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
laboratories of the modern time have sometimes labored 
under the suspicion of distracting students from strict medi- 
cal studies, but the dissecting room never had that disad- 
vantage and we owe its introduction and the development of 
its use entirely to the Italians. 
It is with regard to the anatomists of the Renaissance 
time that Puschmann in his History of Medical Education 
says, “The Italian anatomists had the habit of making the 
dissections of bodies for themselves and it is for this reason 
that all the great anatomical discoveries of the time come 
from Italy. The anatomical schools of that country were the 
best in the world. All the greatest anatomists of the six- 
teenth century received their education there and among the 
masters of the Italian schools are to be found the greatest 
names of which the science of anatomy can boast.” 
The man who well deserves the name of Father of Mod- 
ern Anatomy was Vesalius. He was not an Italian but a 
Fleming, his family name being Wesel, after the town of 
the same name in Brabant, but at the age of twenty-one he 
went to Italy in order to secure opportunities for scientific 
work in anatomy. He had been unable to obtain anatomical 
facilities to the extent that he desired them either in Louvain 
his own university or in the University of Paris, where he 
had sought them. He stayed in Italy for more than twenty 
years and revolutionized the science of anatomy. How little 
of anything even approaching narrow national jealousy, or 
what we now call Chauvinism, there was in the Italians, will 
be readily appreciated from the fact that at the age of 
twenty-seven Vesalius was made Professor of anatomy at 
the University of Padua and subsequently held similar posts 
in the universities of Bologna and Pisa and was generally 
looked up to as a great leader of scientific thought in biology 
in Italy. 
To know all that he did for anatomy one must have 
studied his great text book which is still a valued treasure 
not only because it is a real work of art in printing and illus- 
tration, but because in all that concerns bones, muscles and BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
organs the book is actually of great scientific value. The 
illustrations were made partly by Titian perhaps, but mainly 
by Calcar, a pupil of the great Venetian master and are 
among the finest anatomical illustrations ever executed. 
Only those of Leonardo da Vinci which have recently been 
republished from the collection of the sketches at Windsor 
rival them. 
Vesalius deserves a place not only in the history o£ 
anatomy but also of physiology and of pathological anatomy 
and of clinical medicine. He was in a word one of the world’s 
great geniuses who found happily for him a fine opportunity 
for work and expression in the Italy of the early sixteenth 
century. Beside him there developed a group of men all 
Italians as his own teachers had been, whose names are ir- 
revocably attached to some of the most important discoveries 
in the history of anatomy. There was Eustachius after whom 
the Eustachian canal and other structures are named, 
Varolius after whom the great connecting structure in the 
brain is called, Columbus who discovered the circulation of 
the blood in the lungs; Caesalpinus who described the circu- 
lation of the blood in the body a generation before Harvey, 
Fallopius, after whom a series of structures which he first 
described is named, Aranzi who taught and demonstrated 
so well in anatomy at Bologna and to whom we owe the 
terms hippocampus and the description of the fourth ven- 
tricle, as well as the discovery of the origin of the muscles 
of the eye from the optic cavity. There was very little of 
gross or macroscopic anatomy left to be described after these 
great masters had finished their work. Our own Oliver 
Wendell Holmes in describing the course of the history of 
anatomy once paid the Renaissance anatomists of Italy this 
tribute — and it must not be forgotten that for twenty-five 
years Dr. Holmes was the professor of anatomy at Harvard 
— first, he said, there came the harvesters of the sixteenth 
century who gathered all the important discoveries into their 
granaries from the ripe fields of anatomical science; after 
them came the gleaners of the seventeenth and eighteenth WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
centuries who gathered an occasional grain that had not 
been overlooked but that had been neglected, because con- 
sidered of so little importance in comparison with the ripe 
harvest of great discoveries, and finally in the nineteenth cen- 
tury came the geese who discovered a grain or two here and 
there through the fields of anatomical science and whenever 
they did they cackled very much over it. 
Nor did successful achievement in the anatomical and 
related sciences stop with the Renaissance or its usually ac- 
cepted terminal date, 1550. There were great successful 
Italian workers in biology in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. Fabricius da Aquapendente who was born of a 
family in very moderate circumstances and made his way for 
himself, is a typical example of these. He made his classical 
studies in Padua, where in spite of his humble origin the 
patrician family of Loredano, one of whose members has 
been immortalized by Bellini’s portrait, received him into 
their house. He had the good fortune to be a special scholar 
and a favorite pupil of the distinguished anatomist Fallopius. 
At Fallopius’ premature death he was given the task of con- 
tinuing the anatomical demonstrations at the University of 
Padua, though he was only twenty-five at the time and at 
twenty-eight he was made professor of surgery and of anat- 
omy. After a time he became so popular as a teacher that 
at his own expense he built an anatomical theatre in order 
to accommodate the numerous students from every part of 
Europe who came to him. Harvey from England was among 
their number and every country was represented. The Vene- 
tian Senate erected a larger and handsomer theatre for his 
increasing classes and loaded him with honors. Distinguished 
people from all over the world came to claim his services as 
a surgeon and he acquired an immense fortune by his prac- 
tice. His patients were so well satisfied with what he did 
for them however, that they insisted on rewarding him with 
many presents in addition to his fees and he collected these 
into a cabinet above which was the inscription Lucri Neglecti 
Lucrum, — the profit of neglected gain. He owned a mag- 
246 BELLINI, DOGE LOREDANO BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
nificant country place La Montagnola where he was famed for 
his hospitality. Probably no one of his profession was in 
higher honor when in 1619 at the age of eiglity-two he died. 
To him medicine owes the complete description of the 
valves of the veins which he did not discover, having been 
anticipated by Italians, but every detail of which he 
worked out and pictured in his monograph. After this the 
complete demonstration of the circulation was only a ques- 
tion of time and Harvey owred much to him. Fabricius also 
is famous for his work in embryology and especially as a 
founder of scientific comparative methods for anatomy and 
embryology founded upon careful observation and thorough 
comparison of the various structures and appearances. In 
this also Harvey is under deep obligations to him. While he 
is famous as an anatomist he devoted himself to surgery 
with ardor and there are a series of inventions of apparatus 
for the treatment of torticollis, of spinal curvature and of 
club foot. He was the inventor of a tube to be introduced 
through the nose for the purpose of forced feeding and of 
many surgical instruments. 
A man whose career illustrates the opportunities for 
education in the Italy of his time is Casserio, sometimes 
known as Julius Casserius the famous anatomist who suc- 
ceeded Fabricius da Aquapendente in the Professorship of 
anatomy at Padua. Casserio came of a family in very humble 
circumstances and was at first the laboratory assistant for 
the rough work of the dissecting room of Aquapendente. 
His acuteness of observation, his intelligence and his indus- 
try and helpfulness attracted the attention of the professor 
and he was given an opportunity to lift himself up to an 
academic career. His books on the organs of voice and 
hearing and the Pentaestheseion or volume on the anatomy 
and physiology of the five senses are very well known. The 
latter went through many editions and is still looked upon 
as a bibliographical treasure. Gurlt calls his chapter on 
the comparative anatomy of the organ of voice “a brilliant 
treatise.” WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
The most convincing testimony to the place of Italians 
in anatomy is to be found in the number of Italian names 
that have become attached to anatomical structures in the 
human body, from the fact that they were named after their 
discoverers. We may deprecate such nomenclature as un- 
scientific, but at least it serves to set up landmarks in the 
history of the medical sciences. There is the pons Varolii 
in the brain, the fissure of Rolando, the Vidian canal in the 
skull (named after Guido Guidi, Vidius in Latin) the duct 
of Botallo, a fetal structure in the neighborhood of the 
heart, the Eustachian tube, the Fallopian tube and the 
acqueduct of Fallopius, the organ of Corti in the ear and 
the rods of Corti in the retina, the Malpighian bodies in the 
spleen, the Malpighian corpuscles in the kidney, and the 
rete Malpighi in the skin, Scarpa’s triangle and the fascia 
and foramina called after him, and while Steno’s duct is 
named after a Dane, he made most of his studies down in 
Italy and acknowledged how much he owed to Italian oppor- 
tunities for all that he did in anatomy. But this is only the 
beginning of the story as yet. There are in the larynx the 
cartilages of Santorini as well as the emissary veins of the 
skull and the musculus risorius — the laughing muscle of the 
face named after him, and we have the ducts of Rivini, Ruf- 
fini’s nerve endings in the skin, the spaces of Fontana, the 
sinus of Morgagni, the sinus of Valsalva as well as the func- 
tional connection between the throat and the ear, demon- 
strated by Valsalva’s experiment and named after him, the 
process of Ingrassias, the band of Giacomini and the band 
of Gennari, the corpuscles of Pacini, the crescents of 
Gianuzzi, the Pacchionian bodies; there is the nerve of Lan- 
cisi, Golgi’s processes of brain nerves and the organs of 
Golgi, the Casserian perforating nerve named after the great 
Italian surgeon, the foramen of Thebesio, the acqueductus 
Cotugni, through which the naso palatine nerve described 
by Cotugno runs. Galvanism, named after Galvani, was dis- 
covered in the midst of medical experiments and Voltaic 
electricity deserves a mention here because it was discovered BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
in connection with experiments and studies stimulated by 
Galvani’s work. 
Not a few of the anatomical discoveries that have come 
to he known by the names of men of other nations were due 
originally to Italians. The sutural hones in the skull for in- 
stance are known as Wormian hones after Olaus Worm, but 
they had already been seen by Eustachius and described and 
even pictured by him. Another example of this same thing 
is the so-called duct of Wharton leading from the sub- 
lingual glands which Achillini described fully as follows: 
“Two fountains of saliva into which a probe can be intro- 
duced are manifest, opening under the tongue and there 
are glandular masses situated at the end of them.” Various 
names have at times become attached to portions of the 
peritoneum and its related structures but it is interesting 
to note in the history of anatomy how the Italian anatomists 
gradually solved the puzzle of the peritoneum and organs 
contained in the folds of it. Piccolomini recognized the 
special character of pancreatic tissue and Eustachius de- 
scribed the capsule of Glisson, though this came to be named 
after the English anatomist who described it much later. 
Eustachius also described the renal tubules though these had 
been seen by Fallopius before him, yet subsequently the name 
•of Bellini, the third investigator of their function became 
attached to them. 
Often when a discovery is made in anatomy by a man of 
another nationality it is under Italian influence and some- 
times in Italy that it is made. Steno, the Dane, studying in 
Italy, demonstrated that the heart is a muscle. The pan- 
creatic duct of Wirsung, as it is sometimes called, was made 
in Vesalius’ dissecting room in 1542 by his prosecutor George 
Wirsung. Scultetus, after whom the reverse mode of 
bandaging is named was not an Italian, but a German, as 
the un-Latinized form of his name Schultheis indicates, but 
he and Spigelius, whose name Spieghel also betrays his 
Teutonic origin, were together at Padua for their medical 
studies, for there is a record of Scultetus consulting Spigelius WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
about a surgical case there. After Spigelius is named the 
Spigelian lobe of the liver. 
While it is not generally appreciated the Italian physi- 
ologists of the Renaissance were not behind the anatomists 
in accomplishment. One needs only read De Renzi’s chapter 
on physiology in the second volume of his History of Medi- 
cine in Italy to be quite sure of that. Aquilano, Tommasio, 
Zenone and Giacome da Forli, Filelfo, Bartolomeo de la 
Rocca and others wrote on embryology and on various func- 
tions. Marliani wrote a book on the Heat of the Human 
Body in Winter and Summer and of its Heat Regulation. 
Many others might be mentioned; Lignamine, famous printer 
as well as physician, wrote on foods; Frigimelica who 
studied baths and their influence and the possibility of mak- 
ing artificial baths so as to obviate the necessity for distant 
travel; Cananus who pictured not only the anatomy, but 
illustrated the functions of muscles; Petronius, who wrote on 
diet and health; Mercurialis, who studied particularly the 
effect of exercise and gymnastics of all kinds on the human 
body and so on through a long list well known to those who 
are familiar with the history of medicine, are all Italians. 
The most significant development of physiology in mod- 
ern times is that of the discovery of the circulation of the 
blood. While this is usually attributed to Harvey, there has 
been endless dispute as to the real discoverer and without 
wishing to abate Harvey’s merit in the matter it becomes 
very clear that he was anticipated by Italians and that while 
his thoroughly scientific grasp of the great discovery made 
it a definite advance in science, he had great Italian pre- 
decessors some of them his teachers who had reached con- 
clusions as wide as his own in this matter. There is no 
doubt at all that the circulation of the blood in the lungs 
was demonstrated by Realdus Columbus. In his De Be 
Ancitomica, published posthumously by his children in 1559, 
Columbus correctly describes the pulmonary circulation. 
English writers on physiology have sometimes made little of 
Columbus’ merits and have suggested that this discovery BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
was more or less of an accident, but Harvey himself spoke 
of Columbus with high respect as of a great authority. He 
gives him due credit for all that he had accomplished and 
for the significance that his work had for his successors 
like Harvey himself. 
Columbus had been the Papal Physician at Rome and 
a Professor at the Papal University and one of his successors 
Caesalpinus, was destined to complete the discovery of the 
circulation of the blood in the body as well as the lungs and 
to describe its functioning completely. Prof. Foster of the 
University of Cambridge in his lectures on the History of 
Physiology during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
Centuries, delivered before a series of universities in this coun- 
try admits almost grudgingly it would seem, “We must there- 
fore admit that Caesalpinus had not only clearly grasped 
the pulmonary circulation, but had also laid hold of the 
systemic circulation. He recognized that the flow of blood 
from the tissues took place by the arteries and by the 
arteries alone, and that the return of the blood from the 
tissues took place by the veins and not by the arteries.” 
Prof. Foster quotes from Caesalpinus two works, the Quaes- 
tiones Peripateticae and Quaestiones Medicae certain pas- 
sages which demonstrate beyond all doubt how completely 
Caesalpinus grasped all the facts of the circulation. 
Other Italians made discoveries while Caesalpinus was 
doing his work which are more anatomical than physiologi- 
cal, but as they discussed function as well as form and as 
these are confirmatory of the circulation they deserve to 
be noted. Cannanus, Professor at Ferrara, observed the 
valves in the veins in 1547 and told Vesalius of his observa- 
tion. Their real significance was not recognized, however, 
until Fabricius, himself the student of Fallopius and the 
teacher of Harvey published his little book De Venarum 
Ostiolis, “The Little Doors of the Veins,” which was pub- 
lished in 1574. Fabricius recognized exactly the significance 
of these and after this only two things were needed to com- 
plete the cycle of information necessary to demonstrate the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
circulation with absolute certainty. These were the dis- 
covery that the heart is a muscle made by Steno, the Dane, 
while working down in Italy and the other that of the 
capillaries connecting the arteries and veins made by Mal- 
pighi. Harvey having studied in Italy, put together all that 
he had learned there, added his own demonstrations and 
placed the circulation on a firm scientific foundation. 
There are at least two other Italians, Paolo Sarpi and 
Ruini, for whom claims have been made for the discovery of the 
circulation of the blood. Henry Stubbs or Stubbe, 1632-1676, 
an English physician who wrote a work Legends no Histories 
or a specimen of some animadversions upon the History of The 
Royal Society, London 1670, insisted that Harvey had obtained 
the original idea for his discovery from Caesalpinus. That was 
the beginning of the controversy which has lasted ever since, 
and which the discussion even so late as the meeting of the 
International Congress of Medicine in London in 1913 shows 
is not settled yet. There is no doubt at all of Harvey’s merits 
in the matter. He did not originate the idea of the circulation, 
but he did work it out in such a way that after a prelim- 
inary period of opposition the medical world took it up. He 
did exactly what Darwin did with regard to evolution in the 
nineteenth century. Darwin’s ideas were not new, but the 
reasons advanced for them were new and of a character 
everyone could understand, and so evolution became a popu- 
lar theory. Malpighi’s discovery of the capillaries had to be 
made before the demonstration of the circulation was com- 
plete, some objective evidence for Darwinism must be ob- 
tained before its place in science is assured. 
In the further development of physiology Italian names 
predominate to a much greater degree than is often thought. 
This is illustrated very well by the fact that the anatomists 
whom we have already mentioned did not limit their work 
strictly to the study of tissues, but worked also in their func- 
tions and Fallopius, Eustachius and Columbus, are great 
names in physiology as well as in anatomy. Malpighi con- 
stantly discussed function as well as morphology and one of BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
the greatest contributors to physiology is Borelli, whose work 
on the locomotion of animals and on the mechanics of living 
beings influenced subsequent generations so deeply. In later 
times Badia and Menghini demonstrated that the blood con- 
tains iron and that internal respiration is carried on through 
the iron salts. The action of air upon blood was demonstrated 
by Mistichelli. He inflated the lungs of dying animals with 
air and in this way was able not only to cause the blood to 
change color, but at the same time to revive the movements 
of the heart. (Puschmann, History of Medical Education.) 
Borelli’s great work in physiology is acknowledged by 
all. Prof. Foster* says that “when we consider the effect 
which a perusal of Borelli’s book has upon the reader, even 
we can easily understand how he was a founder of a great 
school which flourished long after him.” Steno, the Dane, 
working in Italy had laid the foundation of the dynamics of 
muscle and of the explanation of the mechanical problems 
of the body. His work had followed close on Vesalius’ pro- 
found speculations in the matter — another foreigner finding 
his best opportunities for study in Italy. Borelli completed 
the theories of these two geniuses and wrote a book De motu 
animalium, which is still a classic in its suggestiveness and 
marvelous intuition into natural processes. 
While physiology and anatomy were thus sedulously 
cultivated the field of psychology was not neglected in Italy, 
but has been constantly worked by men whose work has often 
had enduring influence. The old Italian scholastic philos- 
ophers, notably Anselm and Aquinas, developed scholastic 
phychology to a point where it served to explain as well the 
difficulties of mental operations as probably any system of 
thought has ever done. This was not all mere speculation 
for besides reflection there was serious study of dreams, of 
the phenomena of memory and of many of the peculiarities 
of mind. This phase of psychology comes more appropriately 
in the chapter Philosophy. With the Renaissance deep inter- 
est was awakened in the curious, unusual manifestations of 
* loc cit. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
mind, and the writings of men like Jerome Cardan attracted 
attention to the ulterior significance of dreams, premonitions, 
and telepathic communications of one kind or another. Car- 
dan’s autobiography, quite the equal in interest from a scien- 
tific standpoint of Cellini’s autobiography, is itself a great 
contribution to psychology. It is only during the later nine- 
teenth century that Cardan’s genius has come into the recog- 
nition that it deserves for great originality, initiative of mind 
along lines which many usually neglect or for some reason 
consider beneath their notice, though they represent most sug- 
gestive materials for the understanding of phenomena that 
have always excited the attention of mankind. 
In more recent years the Italians have been interesting 
and valuable contributors to the science of physiological 
psychology. The Marquis of Corti’s investigations of the 
delicate organ of Corti, so-called, threw significant light on 
the whole question of the perception of sensation. Golgi’s 
work on brain cells was most suggestive as regards certain 
phenomena of memory and of the reception and storage of 
sensation. Murri’s work with regard to fatigue and similar 
states has helped to a much better understanding of the rela- 
tions of mind and body. Great attention was paid to the 
psychology of the criminal in Italy, and the foundations laid 
for some serious studies in the science of criminology. These 
have not proved as significant as they first seemed to promise, 
but they aroused the attention of the world of our time, and 
we owe the correction of many false notions to the opening 
of new lines of thought in the treatment of the criminal to 
the work of the Italians. Lombroso in his school set the 
initiative which awakened many minds all over the world. 
The influence of Italy in the biological sciences even when 
priority in original work or in the foundations of a science 
stand in the name of a foreigner, is well illustrated by the 
work of Sigismund Elsholz in anthropology. He published 
a book on human measurements, Anthropometria, in 1654, 
the year after he had received his degree of doctor in medi- 
cine at the University of Padua. This book is a fundamental BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
contribution to anthropology in a very concrete way by obser- 
vation and measurement and it attracted wide attention. It 
proved very suggestive to other workers because of its simple 
directness, and the author’s exclusion of theoretic consider- 
ations and his limitation of his work almost entirely to thor- 
oughly scientific data and their discussion. 
In botany while so much is due to the Northern and 
Western nations of Europe, the Germans and the English, 
Brunfels; Fuchs, Tragus, the Corduses, Conrad Gessner, 
Nehemiah Grew the Englishman, and Linnaeus the Dane, for 
great pioneer work, Italians shared in nearly every step of 
this progressive foundation of the science in rather striking 
ways. Leonardo da Yinci became interested in plants as in 
every other phase of nature around him, making sketches 
of the flowers, dissecting them as he did animals, pointing 
out their various parts, studying the growth of trees and the 
lines that indicated it, and how much might be judged of the 
seasons in which lines of varying thicknesses occurred and 
other details of observation that are supposed to be much 
more modern. This was of course scarcely to be called 
science for it represented only a genius’ intuition of the 
meaning of observations that less penetrating minds were to 
reach the significance of in orderly classified fashion much 
later. 
That the spirit of science and botany was in the air in 
Leonardo’s time is very well illustrated by the fact that the 
scientific development of botany was taken up in Italy not 
long after Leonardo’s death, and that at the time when the 
German botanists were doing their basic work, Italians were 
also occupied with the subject and two great names deserve to 
be mentioned. Edward Lee Greene has told the story of 
them in his Landmarks of Botanical History (Smithsonian 
Miscellaneous Collections, Yol. IY 1909) in a single para- 
graph. 
“Contemporarily with these German herbalists 'there 
flourished in Italy a learned professor, first at the University 
of Padua, then at Bologna, afterwards at Pisa, whom people WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
regarded as the one peerless botanist of the time. His univer- 
sity lectures were received as oracular and students came to 
him from almost everywhere in Europe, yet Professor Luca 
Ghini published nothing. His supremacy as the botanist of 
the first half of the sixteenth century is attested by tradition 
only. In the very next generation after him, several of the 
chief luminaries of the science were men whom he had trained, 
and to one of them, Caesalpino, there is nowhere accorded the 
praise of having created the epoch of modern botany. To 
what extent is Caesalpino’s great work, Be Plantis, a product 
of the mind of Ghini? The question is one that forces itself 
upon us and is perhaps the more interesting because hopeless 
of ever being answered.” 
Caesalpino or Caesalpinus, whose name we have had to 
mention so often in this chapter on biological sciences, is 
really one of the great founders in botany. Linnaeus said 
of him in the next century that the Italian biologist was the 
first in the order of time among real systematists, primus vere 
systematieus, in botany. His work Be Plantis is one of the 
classics in the history of botanical science, published at Flor- 
ence in 1583 at a time when the eyes of the world were 
centered on Italy, and when most of the scientific initiative 
came from her this book attracted wide attention. Its dis- 
tribution of the 1520 plants then known into fifteen classes 
— the distinguishing characters being taken from the fruit, 
showed the possibility of bringing order, out of what up to 
this time must almost have seemed the impossible chaos of 
plant life. It is easy to understand then why Linne, who took 
upon himself the task of correcting and developing this sys- 
tematization, should have so thoroughly appreciated his great 
Italian predecessor whose work very probably he found not 
so much of use as of encouragement. 
How near Caesalpinus came to anticipating the discovery 
of sex in plants, if indeed he must not actually be rightly 
considered to have discovered their sex differentiation, can 
be readily appreciated from his expression that “a ‘halitua’ 
or emanation from the male plant fertilizes the female.” BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
This expression occurs in his De Plantis which was published 
in Florence in 1583 almost exactly a hundred years before 
Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants (London 1682) to which 
the first scientific account of sex in plants is usually traced. 
One of the distinguished Italian physicians of the seven- 
teenth century was equally distinguished as a botanist, chem- 
ist and surgeon. He laid out the Botanical Gardens at 
Messina, where he cultivated many foreign medicinal plants, 
and one -of his pamphlets written in 1653 calls attention to 
the cinchona plant and its curative properties in cases of 
malaria. At this time Castelli was one of the best known 
of the medical scientists of the time, and even the distin- 
guished Danish anatomist, Thomas Bartolinus felt that it 
was well worth the trouble and time involved in the long 
journey from Denmark to Italy to visit Castelli at Messina 
in order to get more closely in touch with his scientific meth- 
ods. The incident only serves to show how widespread was 
the influence of Italian science at this time, and from how 
far men were attracted to the Italian peninsula in order to 
have the advantage of touch with it. 
The greatest contributor to botany in Italy, however, 
was a man noted for his contributions to many departments 
of biological science. Malpighi, wandering in the gardens 
of the University of Messina one day, saw the uneven frac- 
ture of a growing limb and recognized in the dependent 
portions that bundles of little vessels had been broken off 
irregularly. He had always been interested in the vascular 
system of animals and now he took up the study of the 
vascular system of plants. The result was his monograph 
on the anatomy of plants which was published by the Royal 
Society of England. Just at this same time Nehemiah Grew, 
working in England, was writing his anatomy of vegetables. 
The incentive for scientific development was in the air. In- 
deed, the day on which Malpighi’s first sketch of his discov- 
eries in botany was presented and read before the Royal 
Society happened to be the very day on which Grew presented 
to the Society his printed book The Anatomy of Vegetables. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Prof. Michael Foster in his Lectures on the History of Physiol- 
ogy (Cambridge University Press 1901) lectures which were 
delivered at a number of the great universities says, page 
93: “But everyone who has read the two works by the two 
men must acknowledge that while that of the Englishman is 
a sound piece of honest arduous labor, that of the Italian, no 
less sound, though perhaps less abounding in valuable detail, 
shines more than does the other, with the light of genius, 
and is richer than the other in philosophic insight.” To 
Malpighi, anatomist, physiologist, botanist; as well as phy- 
sician, must deservedly be given the name of founder of the 
science of comparative biology and especially of comparative 
anatomy. 
One of the great names in the biological sciences of the 
seventeenth century with world fame ever since, is that of 
Francesco Redi, who is probably better remembered in his 
own country as a poet than as a biologist, though he did 
some really epoch making work in the biological sciences, and 
this has come to mean more during the present generation 
than perhaps ever before. He was physician to the Grand 
Dukes of Tuscany, taught literature in the University of 
Florence, was an active member of the Academia della Crusca, 
aiding in the preparation of the Italian dictionary, and was 
one of the first members of the brilliant academy known as 
The Arcadia. 
His scientific work turned almost entirely on the prob- 
lems of Spontaneous Generation. He made a series of obser- 
vations on vipers and of experimental investigations on the 
generation of insects. It was this latter subject that led 
him to the generalization that there is no spontaneous gen- 
eration, and that the appearance of minute crawling creatures 
in decaying material is due entirely to the laying of the ova of 
insects in such materials, and not to corruption producing 
maggots. Spontaneous generation so far as minute living 
things are concerned had been accepted by practically all 
scientists before this time, and it continued to be at least the 
popular belief for a long time afterwards. Even at the pres- BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
ent time there are many who are inclined to think at least of 
the possibility of spontaneous generation. Redi’s work was 
thoroughly scientific and was frequently referred to in the 
later nineteenth century because it represented definite con- 
clusions from observation and experiment and not the theoriz- 
ing which has always been so common in the history of 
science, and is not nearly so absent from our scientific dis- 
cussions of the present day as many seem ready to declare. 
There are three great names in the biological science of 
the eighteenth century. They are those of Yallisnieri, the 
Professor of Botany at Padua, whose chair had been the 
centre of interest in the natural sciences for many years at 
the time of his death; of Spallanzani, professor in the bio- 
logical sciences successively at Reggio, Modena and Pavia, 
though he was also offered the chairs of Coimbra, Portugal 
and Parma and Messina in Italy; and finally that of Morgagni, 
whom Virchow greeted as the Father of Modem Pathology. 
All three of these men were recognized by the world of science 
of their time as the most distinguished teachers and investi- 
gators in their special subject. They were made honorary 
members of many of the important Italian and foreign acad- 
emies and scientific societies of the time, and were the per- 
sonal friends of many of the men who were working in 
science in every country in Europe during their lives. Any- 
one interested in science who went down to Italy at this time 
made it a point, if possible, to meet these men. They were 
the leaders of scientific thought, recognized as such, and their 
works were read widely and referred to confidently every- 
where in the scientific world of the time. 
Spallanzani, like Redi, in the preceding century, has 
come into prominence again in our time because his experi- 
mental work in biology was occupied with so many of the 
problems that are now the theme of earnest discussion and 
experimentation. He took up particularly the subject of 
regeneration and showed by many patient ingenious experi- 
ments that a great many of the lower animals like the lizard 
and the snail, if accidently injured, regenerate even the most WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
important parts of their body. The land snail actually re- 
generates what seems to be its head. It was afterwards shown 
that this does not contain the brain, though it contains the 
eyes, mouth, tongue and teeth and these are all regenerated. 
There was little left to learn about the principles of regen- 
eration after Spallanzani had finished his investigations, 
though ampler details of information have been supplied by 
modern studies. The full significance of Spallanzani’s work 
has only come to be properly appreciated now that this sub- 
ject of regeneration in biology has proved to be a crux for 
the theory of natural selection, which utterly fails to account 
for it, and therefore can not be considered as a basic theory 
of the origins of living things. 
Italians continued to be noted as the biological experts 
as regards smaller living things well into the nineteenth 
century, so that when the material of the famous Challenger 
expedition was to be worked up to the best possible advantage 
for science, that portion of it expected to furnish new in- 
formation with regard to the diatoms was handed over for 
investigation to an Italian, Francesco Castracane degli An- 
telminelli, the recognized world authority on the subject. In 
the course of the investigations he discovered three new gen- 
era, 225 new species and some 30 varieties. 
As an illustration of how much work of more than pass- 
ing significance Italian investigators are doing in the bi- 
ological sciences related to medicine at the present time, and 
indeed how important are their contributions in this depart- 
ment the subjects of the physiology and general biology of 
the parathyroid glands may serve our purpose. While these 
glands were discovered and described by a Swede, Sand- 
stroem, thirty-five years ago and their physiology elaborated 
by Gley at Paris in 1891, a large number of the names that 
are associated with the development of our knowledge of the 
thyroid are Italians. In his original paper in 1891 Gley 
mentioned Colzi, Tizzoni, Ughetti and Mattei as having 
worked on the subject before him. Morel in his monograph 
on the Parathyroids in Professor Dastre’s collection of mono- BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 
graphs on Biological Actualities*mentions a number of other 
Italian names that show how much Italian investigators were 
occupied with this important subject. Among others there 
are Cavalleri, Livini, Capobianco and Mazziotti, Sanquirieo 
and Oreechia, Cristiani, Coronedi, Luzzato, Albertoni, Mas- 
saglia, Sciolla and Corsi, Canalis and Colzi, Fano and Zanda, 
Sgobbo and Lamari and others literally almost too numerous 
to mention. 
Some of the most important features of our knowledge 
of parathyroids and some of the most ingenious suggestions 
that have enabled us to eliminate the false from the true with 
regard to them has come from Italian workers in this depart- 
ment. Their publications have shown a fine appreciation 
of the work of others, a thorough knowledge of the liter- 
ature and a patient investigation, yet with a power of imagin- 
ation to lead them that shows the genius of their nation. A 
study of the bibliography of this subject shows that the Ital- 
ians have done much more than their share <of the work of 
the world of science in this important newly developing sub- 
ject. This is not said to make little of the work of other 
nations, for there is probably no recent development in 
science that makes so clear the solidarity of the world of 
science and utter disregard of national boundaries than this 
rapid accumulation of facts during the past two decades with 
regard to these minute ductless glands, which have proved, 
however, to be so important in pathology and physiology. 
There are very few who realize, outside of Italy itself, how 
many serious biological investigators are to be found at 
Italian Universities and how much their work counts in the 
world’s congress of science. 
In the chapter on medicine we have called attention to 
the foundation of botanical gardens in Italy first in association 
with the monasteries and then in connection with the univer- 
sities. It was after the establishment of the University Botanic 
Gardens in Italy and the observation by students who went 
down to the peninsula of the amount of good accomplished 
* Paris, 1912. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
by them that university botanic gardens were founded in 
other countries. Most of these in foreign countries date 
from well on in the seventeenth century, while those founded 
in Italy came in the first half of the sixteenth. These botanic 
gardens established originally for medical purposes soon at- 
tracted attention to the study of plants as such, and gave a 
great impetus to the development of the science of botany. 
Among the prefects of the botanical garden at the University 
of Padua were the eminent botanists Anguilara and Prospero 
Alpini. MEDICINE 
AS THE once very prevalent, indeed quite general, 
impression that almost nothing in medicine worth 
while talking about was discovered until during the last 
few generations, gives way to the truer idea which increasing 
interest in the history of medicine in recent years has 
brought out so clearly, that men at many times in the past 
have accomplished work of lasting significance in the medical 
sciences, Italy’s extremely significant place in medicine 
comes to be recognized more and more. It has been the 
custom to think that in the older times and above all in the 
Middle Ages physicians failed to make any progress in medi- 
cine largely because they trusted too much to the authority 
of the ancients and dared not think for themselves. The 
Italians are commonly presumed to have been particularly 
liable to this fault and to this almost more than anything 
else was thought to be due the absence of anything like 
important progress in medical science in Italy for many 
centuries especially in the medieval period. The incubus 
of too great trust in authority to the exclusion of personal 
research and observation is supposed to have remained until 
almost our own time. 
Unfortunately for any such presumption we have found 
that once the genuine history of medicine is known, signifi- 
cant progress in the medical sciences, some of which through 
almost inexplicable lapses was lost afterward, is very easy 
to trace in the older times, not a little of it in the medieval 
period. After all it would be quite inexplicable if centuries 
and peoples who did great work in art and architecture, in 
literature and philosophy should have been lacking only in WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the medical sciences. As for Italian devotion to the 
authority of Hippocrates and Galen hindering progress in 
medicine, everyone of the distinguished authorities in medi- 
cine at all times, even when men have been most progressive 
in medical science, have recognized how much these great 
Greek thinkers meant for medical science, above all in their 
power of direct observation of patients. That is, when all is 
said, by far the most important part of medicine at all 
times. 
Medieval and particularly Italian respect for such 
supreme contributors to human thought as Hippocrates, 
Aristotle and Galen, far from being the stigma of lack of 
original thinking that it used to be considered, has come now 
to be recognized on the contrary as an index of the deep 
intellectual interest and nice critical judgment of generations 
of the Italians. Aristotle is undoubtedly the greatest 
philosophic writer who ever lived. Probably no physician 
in the whole history of medicine has reviewed the problems 
of human illness more sanely or with clearer vision than 
Hippocrates. The more we have learned about Galen in the 
modern times the more we have come to think of him. 
Sydenham and Boerhaave in the later seventeenth and early 
eighteenth centuries reformed medicine by bringing it back 
to Galen and Hippocrates. The great scholars of the 
Renaissance some of the greatest geniuses of modern times 
may be said fairly to have worshipped at the feet of Galen. 
It is easy to think little of him, but to do so one must know 
little about him. To read Galen’s works sympathetically 
is to recognize at once that here is a master of clinical 
observation of the nicest scientific acuity and of marvelously 
sympathetic vision for the ills of mankind. 
If the Italians had done nothing else in science and 
medicine but insist on keeping the world in touch with 
these great Greeks, that itself would have constituted an 
important element of the debt which civilization owes them. 
Of course there were abuses in the devotion to the Greek 
masters. Many minds bound themselves too rigidly to MEDICINE 
authority and swore by the very words of the chosen 
master, but that is true of small minds at all times in his- 
tory. Even in such cases when the master they swear by is 
as great as were these wise Greeks there is some hope for the 
disciples. When the master, as is unfortunately so often 
true in the modern time, is some narrow specialist who 
endeavors to explain all of the enigma of disease and solve 
the problems of human ills by some superficial formula or 
by some fine spun theory, then the consequences are really 
unfortunate. The large minds among the Italians were very 
far from any such slavish subservience. Over and over 
again Italian thinkers insisted that even the great Greek 
masters were “not gods but men” and therefore liable to 
error and that their doctrines must therefore not be followed 
with absolute submission, but with that rational critical 
eclecticism so necessary to keep opinions in touch with the 
growth of information. 
The Romans themselves did not practice medicine but 
left this task for foreigners, slaves and freedmen, as a result 
there was no development of medicine in the peninsula, their 
one merit being that they appreciated the Greeks and passed 
on their great work in medicine to succeeding generations. 
It was not until after the gradual decadence of the Roman 
Empire that medicine came to receive any independent atten- 
tion in Italy. Cassiod-orus, who after having been Imperial 
Prime Minister under Theodoric, later became a monk, recom- 
mended particularly the study of medicine to the monastic 
brethren both for the preservation of the health of the 
community and also in 'order that they might help those who 
lived on the monastery estates in case of illness. His enumera- 
tion of the books that should be studied show a breadth of 
knowledge of the medical classics that is surprising in his 
time. After this it is not surprising to learn that there is a 
well grounded tradition that at Monte Cassino medical teach- 
ing was one of the features of the education provided there 
by the monks. It was under their influence down at Salerno 
that the first great medical school of modern times was WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
developed beginning probably late in the tenth and continu- 
ing during the next three centuries to attract wide attention 
and make medical science a living reality in Europe. 
The first great physician of modern times is Constantine, 
known in history as Africanus because he was born in Carth- 
age. He studied in the Orient and returned to practice in his 
native town, but life there was made very uncomfortable for 
him, because through his Eastern travels he had obtained so 
much more knowledge of medical subjects than his colleagues 
in Carthage possessed that his advantage over them on his 
return made his professional brethren jealous of him, and 
they even did not hesitate to accuse him of practising magic. 
About this time Constantine’s work attracted the attention of 
Duke Robert of Salerno who invited him to become his phy- 
sician. After a time Constantine became a royal counsellor 
and private secretary to the Duke, and afterwards a pro- 
fessor of medicine at Salerno. After some ten years of teach- 
ing he gave up his professorship to retire to the Abbey of 
Monte Cassino where for many years he wrote the books which 
have made him famous. It has been said in modern times 
that a great institution is usually the lengthened shadow of 
a man, and Salerno must be considered more that of Constan- 
tine than of any other. 
How important Salerno became in the history of medi- 
cine is very well summed up by Pagel, the well known 
German historian of medicine. He is emphatic in his praise, 
but not more so than this first great European medical school 
deserves. He has called attention particularly to the origin- 
ality of the work accomplished there and that of itself is 
the highest compliment to its Italian founders that could be 
paid. Pagel said: “If we take up now the accomplishments 
of the School of Salerno in the different departments, there 
is one thing that is very remarkable. It is the rich, inde- 
pendent productivity with which Salerno advanced the ban- 
ners of medical science for hundreds of years, almost as the 
only autochthonous centre of medical influence in the whole 
West. One might say that it was like a versprengten Keim — MEDICINE 
a displaced embryonic element — which, as it unfolded, 
rescued from destruction the ruined remains of Greek and 
Roman medicine. This productivity of Salerno, which may 
well be compared in quality and quantity with that of the 
best periods of our science, and in which no department of 
medicine was left without some advance, is one of the 
striking phenomena of the history of medicine. While posi- 
tive progress was not made there are many noteworthy 
observations to be chronicled. It must be acknowledged 
that pupils and scholars set themselves to their tasks to 
further, as far as their strength allowed, the science and art of 
healing. In the medical writers of the older period of 
Salerno, who had not yet been disturbed by Arabian culture 
or scholasticism, we can not but admire the clear, charmingly 
smooth, easy-flowing diction, the delicate and honest setting 
forth of cases, the simplicity of their method of treatment, 
which was to a great extent dietetic and expectant; and 
while we admire the carefulness and yet the copiousness of 
their therapy, we can not but envy them a certain austerity 
in their pharmaceutic formulae, and internal medicine was 
especially developed. The contributions to it from a theo-. 
retical and literary standpoint, as well as from practical 
applications, came from ardent devotees.” 
With the first development of a modern medical school 
in Europe at Salerno a change came over the face of medi- 
cine and the Arabian polypharmacy was abandoned for much 
more rational therapeutics. Diet, exercise, fresh air, the abun- 
dant use uf water internally and externally, and the 
attempt to help nature in her curative efforts, to assist the 
vis medicatrix naturae, an expression which became a favorite 
at this time, took the place of the former meddlesome thera- 
peutics. Salerno itself since become the seat of the most 
virulent kind of malaria was then one of the most salubrious 
places in Europe, beautifully situated and particularly favor- 
able in its climate for patients who living in the cold north 
were greatly benefited by a sojourn during the winter far 
from the fogs and dampness and vicissitudes of the climate WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of their Northern homes. No wonder then that a great many 
members of the nobility and even patients of royal birth 
came to Salerno and were cured of their ills and returned 
to encourage others to go there. Salerno became the great 
health resort of Europe and continued to be so for several 
centuries. 
When the universities of Northern Italy preempted the 
place that had been held by Salerno the development of 
medicine continued. Unfortunately with the evolution of 
science and especially chemistry and botany there came to 
be an impression that these departments of knowledge con- 
tained the solution of the mystery of the cure of disease 
and as a consequence men were distracted away from the 
natural modes of cure that had been developed at Salerno. 
What the northern universities of Italy accomplished how- 
ever was the development of pathology, after normal anat- 
omy had been studied mainly for the sake of surgery and 
for medical diagnosis, so that medicine began to develop 
out of the art that it had been into the science that it was 
to become. 
As a matter of fact it is easy to trace magnificent origi- 
nal Italian contributions to medicine and surgery all down 
the centuries for at least eight centuries. So important is 
the development of surgery due to the Italians that it must 
be treated in a separate chapter. As regards most of the 
medical sciences, the great foundations of them were laid either 
by Italians or by men who received their medical training in 
Italy. Not a few of the great discoveries made by those 
who were not Italians were actually reached while these 
men were students in Italy. In the Italian peninsula came 
the development of anatomy with Yesalius and his great 
predecessors who have been quite unknown to the general 
reader until comparatively recent years and his distinguished 
contemporaries and successors, many of whose names as 
Eustachius, Fallopius, Yarolius, Malpighi, are never to be 
forgotten landmarks in the history of the science because 
they came to be attached to the organs which they had MEDICINE 
discovered, or first described, or pointed out the significance 
of. In physiology all the preparatory work for the dis- 
covery of the circulation of the blood was done in Italy 
and Harvey himself had been a student at Padua and frankly 
confessed his obligations to his Italian masters in the intro- 
duction to his published work. 
What is thus true of anatomy and physiology is equally 
true of the sciences of pathology, diagnosis, and therapeutics. 
In pathology the Italians were for centuries the great pio- 
neers. In diagnosis the more one knows of the details of 
the clinical observation of the Italian physicians the more 
one recognizes the fact that for acuity of vision and logic 
of conclusion in the differentiation of disease they easily 
bear off the palm from all the other nations. Important de- 
velopments in diagnosis came from men of other countries, 
but the great body of the science of diagnosis is Italian in 
origin. As for therapeutics from the time when Italian 
physicians and surgeons as early as the eleventh century 
corrected the polypharmacy of the Arabs and substituted 
the employment of natural means of cure, through the period 
when their colleagues of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies determined the mode of use of mercury for specific 
disease — a development of therapeutics that is probably 
the greatest ever made — and the subsequent period when 
the proper employment of so many drugs from opium to 
quinine were tested out more successfully in Italy than 
elsewhere, down to our own time when Italian work in 
therapeutics in many departments has attracted wide atten- 
tion, the physicians of the peninsula have nearly always been 
looked to for thoroughly conservative yet progressive obser- 
vation. 
In the last hundred years, other nations have surpassed 
them and yet not nearly so much as is usually thought. In 
none of even the three last generations has there been a 
time when great Italian medical scientists have not been 
thoroughly appreciated by their colleagues in other coun- 
tries. During all the eight centuries before the nineteenth, WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
there was scarcely ever a time when the Italians were not 
leaders in medicine and when men of all the various coun- 
tries of Europe desirous of securing opportunities for the 
study of advanced medicine that could not be readily studied 
at home were not in the habit of going down to Italy for 
post graduate work. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century as a consequence of Napoleon’s disturbance of 
Europe, Italy lost her prestige for a time to France; in the 
latter half of the nineteenth century and in our own time 
down to the war, Germany usurped French primacy but 
neither of them to the entire exclusion of Italy. Every 
faculty for the study of medicine in its scientific aspects was 
developed finely down in Italy. 
The invention of printing had scarcely been made a 
practical feature of life before medical books began to 
appear. In the course of half a century all the important 
medical and surgical treatises of the Middle Ages were 
printed thus saving them for the modern world, for they 
existed only in manuscript and they would surely have dis- 
appeared during the century of almost absolute neglect of 
the history of medicine which occurred before the nineteenth 
century. To Italy we owe far more than to any other for 
this conservation of medical classics. Some of these medical 
books were printed in magnificent editions on good paper 
with excellent type and have become bibliographic treasures. 
Early in the sixteenth century physicians began printing 
their own books and securing good illustrations for them. 
Some of them as for instance Yesalius’ Fabrica, came to 
be model text-books and evidently no expense of time or 
care was spread in making them monuments of the taste 
and ability of the time. Important books with regard to all 
the various subjects in medicine were written and published 
by the Italians. It would be easy to make a very long cata- 
logue of important Italian books on medicine and allied sub- 
jects. There are literally hundreds, probably even several 
thousand of these old Italian medical books that now com- 
mand good prices and with the growth of medical book MEDICINE 
collectors in our time, it becomes increasingly difficult to 
get hold of them because they are treasured by their owners 
and but rarely get into the channels of trade. 
Only comparatively slight extension of portions of the 
brief outlines of Italy’s place in medicine thus laid down 
will be necessary to make clear how literally true are all 
the claims made for her achievements in the medical sciences. 
The most important scientific development of medicine in 
modern times came in connection with pathological anatomy. 
We now realize that this is the all significant underlying 
science of medicine. Only entire lack of knowledge of the 
history of medicine would permit one to ignore that the 
most important contributors to the foundation and the 
superstructure of pathology are Italians. At the Inter- 
national Medical Congress held at Rome in 1894, Professor 
Virchow of Berlin, himself the greatest contributor to 
pathological anatomy in our time, and besides a long time 
medical editor, well acquainted with the history of medicine, 
delivered one of the presidential addresses, taking for his 
subject Morgagni as the Father of Modern Pathological 
Anatomy. There is no doubt at all that the title thus ac- 
corded was eminently deserved and that Morgagni’s work 
is the most important in this department that we have from 
anyone. His great book on ‘ ‘ The Seats and Causes of 
Disease,” published about the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury is still a classic in medicine. Far from growing old or 
antiquated in any sense of the word and becoming in the 
course of time and the progress of medical science so out 
of date that only the dry-as-dust scholar intent on details 
of history knows anything about it, or cares to give time to 
reading of it, the distinguished English professor Benjamin 
Ward Richardson said of it: 
“To this day no medical scholar can help being de- 
lighted and instructed by the study of this wonderful book. 
To move into it from the midst of a body of current medical 
literature, is like passing from the periodical flux of current 
general literature to the perusal of a Shakespearean drama, WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the Pilgrim’s Progress, or Paradise Lost. It is a transition 
from the mediocrity of incessant repetition of well-known 
truths told in loud and hackneyed terms, back to descrip- 
tions derived direct from nature and fresh from her treasury. 
It matters not where the book is opened, it is always good 
and instructive reading, full of suggestion and rich in origi- 
nal narrative.” 
Before Morgagni’s time there were many distinguished 
contributors to pathological anatomy in Italy and there have 
been many since. About the middle of the fifteenth century 
information as to the definite changes produced by disease 
began to accumulate and three distinguished teachers of 
medicine, Montagnana of Padua, Savonarola of Ferrara and 
Arcolani of Bologna, described a number of different patho- 
logical conditions, which they had noted in connection with 
the diseases of their patients whose bodies they had had the 
opportunity to dissect after death. Then came Benedetti 
the Professor of Anatomy at Padua and the founder of the 
anatomical theatre of that university, who made a series 
of reports on gall stones and apoplexies. Benivieni, a simple 
practicing physician at Florence, recorded a large number of 
pathological observations and has sometimes been called the 
father of pathological anatomy. Prof. Allbutt, the Regius 
Professor of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, Eng- 
land, does not hesitate to say of Benivieni: “Before Yesalius, 
before Eustachius, he opened the bodies of the dead as de- 
liberately and clear sightedly as any pathologist in the 
spacious times of Baillie, Bright and Addison.” Malgaigne 
the French historian of medicine, has described his book as 
“the only work on pathology which owes nothing to any- 
one.” These tributes be it noted, are from foreigners, not 
from his own countrymen. 
Every one of the great Italian anatomists of the Renais- 
sance made pathological observations: Berengar of Carpi, 
the first to observe the appendix, Aranzi the Professor of 
Medicine and Anatomy at Bologna, who paid special atten- 
tion to tumors, Eustachius, who tells of many things that he 
272 GIROLAMO FRACASTORO (1484-1553). MEDICINE 
had discovered, but whose untimely death robbed him of 
the chance to publish the details — his anatomical plates 
show how well the work would have been done had he been 
spared to do it; Columbus the discoverer of the circulation 
of the blood in the lungs, who made autopsies even on high 
ecclesiastics for the purpose of determining the cause of 
death, and Yesalius, working in Italy, who like Eustachius, 
promised to publish his pathological observations, but unfor- 
tunately was prevented from doing so by his untimely death; 
Fracastorius, who in his work on contagion, made a clear 
statement of the problems of contagion and infection, recog- 
nized typhus fever as an independent disease and clearly 
anticipated our knowledge of the contagiousness of phthisis, 
is but another of this great group, only less well known. 
How Fracastorius anticipated the most modern ideas as to 
contagion is particularly interesting. Osier says of it: 
‘ ‘ Fracastorius draws a remarkable parallel between the proc- 
esses of contagion and the fermentation of wine. It is not 
the same as putrefaction, which differs in the absence of 
any new generation and is accompanied with an abominable 
smell. Certain poisons resemble contagion in their action, 
but they differ essentially in not producing in the individual 
the principle or germ capable of acting on another person.” 
Fracastorius illuminated every subject that he touched 
and he touched many in his lifetime. Garrison in his His- 
tory of Medicine (Saunders Philadelphia, 1913) to whom I 
am indebted for a number of these details, says that 
“Fracastorius was at once a physician and poet, physicist, 
geologist, astronomer and pathologist and shares with 
Leonardo da Yinci the honor of being the first geologist to 
see fossil remains in their true light (1530.) He was also 
the first scientist to refer to the magnetic poles of the 
earth (1543).” He was the inventor of the word syphilis 
and his treatise De Contagione (1546) is famous as the first 
book in which is stated with absolute clearness the modern 
theory of infection by microorganisms. 
This whole problem of infection was treated by successive 
273 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Italian scientists after Fraeastorius, in a way that shows 
the genius and leadership of the Italian scientists. 
It has sometimes been said that Fraeastorius’ expressions 
and his work were never fully understood until modern 
times. In their paper on “The Development of the Doctrine 
Contagium Yivum” read before the Seventeenth Inter- 
national Congress of Medicine (London, 1913) Dr. Charles 
and Mrs. Dorothea Singer, after looking into the question 
rather thoroughly, suggest that it would be quite impossible 
for them to “mention even a tithe of those sixteenth century 
writers on the plague and other infectious diseases who owed 
their theories entirely to Fraeastorius.” They then say 
further: 
“Among those who comprehend him more thoroughly, 
may be mentioned the botanist Andrea Matthioli (1554), who 
applies the theory specially to rabies, Francesco Boccalino 
(1556), Gabriel Ayala (1562), Jerome Donzellino (1570), 
Antonio Saracenus (1572), Philip Ingrassias (1576), and 
Andrea Gratiolo di Salo (1576). Especial mention may be 
made of Le Paulmier de Grentemesnil, who, in 1578, re- 
applied Fracastor’s views to syphilis and Jerome Mereu- 
rialis, who followed Fracastor very closely and spoke of him 
as ‘the first who opened men’s eyes to the nature of con- 
tagion.’ ” 
They suggest even that in certain works of the sixteenth 
century there are some additions to Fraeastorius ’ conception 
though it is not always easy and is even sometimes impossible 
to trace such suggestions to their true source. “Thus the 
great name of Jerome Cardan may be associated with the 
suggestion that the seeds of disease are truly living and 
reproduce their kind after the manner of minute living 
animals. (1557) In the preceding year (1556) Victor de 
Bonagentibus in his boiok Decern Problemata de Peste (Venice 
1556) freely compared the generation and conveyance of 
fevers to the putrefactive processes which produce ‘worms’ 
in corpses. Gabriel Fallopius in his treatise on lues (De 
Morljo Gallico Tractatus, 1564) has an expression which shows BELLINI. MEDICINE 
very clearly how well the Italians even as early as the 
middle of the sixteenth century anticipated many ideas of 
the spread of contagious disease, which are supposed to be 
at least two centuries later. Fallopius said, “Every con- 
tagious disease spreads itself throughout the whole infected 
substance.” “Thus, in phthisis the force of contagion is con- 
veyedby the vapor which comes from the lungs. This vapor 
contains certain minute corpuscles of the blood which issue 
forth with the breath and are spread by the circumambient 
air. So they are attracted to the lungs of another and if 
they thus reach suitable soil they infect it and communicate 
the disease.” (Singer). 
In the seventeenth century, a series of workers in Italy 
carried still further this idea of living agents of contagion 
and the comparison between fermentation processes and 
disease. In particular, Andreas Baccius or Bacci, who was 
one of the Papal physicians to Pope Sixtus Y, is said by the 
Singers to have “gained a clarity of view, distinctly ahead 
of his age in dealing with the nature of fermentation.” 
Baccius had written books on “The Wines of Italy” and on 
“Poisons and Their Antidotes” and as he was professor of 
botany, was very ready to recognize the place of biological 
growth as a factor in the production of widespread conse- 
quences. Some of his passages show very clearly that men 
of the middle of the seventeenth century were thinking many 
thoughts that are now familiar in current scientific literature 
and using expressions not very different from those we use 
at the present time. It is true that they did not quite 
understand all the meaning of the expressions they used, 
but on corresponding subjects, it is almost equally true that 
we realize how much there is left for us to know with regard 
to many things which we state rather categorically. 
Other Italians were deeply occupied with some of these 
same problems. Harvey, the English physiologist, writing 
to Naldi in 1653 said, “Among other things that delighted 
me greatly in your book was that part where I see you ascribe 
plague almost to the same efficient cause as I do animal WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
generation.” Father Athanasius Kircher is of course not an 
Italian, but practically all of his great work was done down 
in Italy and altogether he spent some sixty years in the pen- 
insula. In his volume on the pest, he makes it very clear 
that he understood just how organisms of very small size 
must be the active agents of contagion. He used the micro- 
scope constantly and was quite sure that he had seen living 
and moving corpuscula in the blood to which he referred the 
origin of the disease. Just what he meant by the word cor- 
puscula can not now be decided and it is possible that he saw 
nothing more than blood corpuscles, but he certainly had a 
very definite idea which anticipated our modern theory of 
infection by microorganisms and the spread of contagion by 
microscopic agencies. 
During the eighteenth century Italy continued to have 
distinguished medical scientists who anticipated some of 
our modern teachings. The Singers in their review of the 
development of the doctrine of contagium vivum are enthusi- 
astic in their expressions of admiration for “the splendid 
work of Lancisi.” They mention the names of other Italians, 
however, and particularly that of Valisnieri and his school, 
who “seized on the analogy between scabies and febrile 
diseases and drew the obvious conclusion.” Yallisnieri ob- 
tained a good view of the corpuscles of the blood and was 
among the first, if not the very first, to distinguish white 
from red blood corpuscles. The Singers add: “He has also 
the merit of clearly realizing that the minute organisms 
which he believed to be the actual cause of infection were 
of an altogether different nature to the microscopic infusoria 
with which he was acquainted.” 
When taken in connection with this, Lancisi’s views as 
expressed in his book De Noxiis Paludum Effluviis (Geneva 
1718), are a demonstration of the very modern way in which 
these older Italian medical scientists faced the problems 
of disease production and distribution. The Singers sum up 
Lancisi’s views and those of some of his contemporaries in 
this paragraph. MEDICINE 
“Working in a malarious country, he clearly grasped a 
relationship between gnats and malarial fever. He traced 
accurately the course of development and life history of these 
pernicious insects, and he came very near modern views on 
the nature of malarial and plague infections. Accepting the 
view that minute creatures are related to infection, he sug- 
gests that worms or insects themselves nesting in our blood, 
but from ‘the organic effuvia’ carried by them, which ‘fer- 
ment’ within us. As to the exact nature of the ‘organic 
effluvia ’ or ‘ ferments, ’ Lancisi suspends judgment until wider 
and more careful microscopic experiments have been made, 
although he is well aware that the power of spontaneous 
multiplication presented by these ‘ferments’ partakes of the 
nature of life. Lancisi thus represents the high-water mark 
of philosophical speculation before the actual demonstration 
of the real organic cause of febrile disease. Meanwhile 
Vallisnieri attributed disease of man and beast to vermicules 
and had many Italian adherents. Throughout the eighteenth 
century, current views of infection are usually inferior to 
those of Lancisi and Vallisnieri, and although some writers, 
aided by a lucky guess, reached nearer the modern view, 
nevertheless they represent the best opinion of the early 
eighteenth century.” 
After pathology diagnosis is the most important branch 
of medicine and in this Italians have a like preponderant 
place. Italian contributions to our knowledge of heart 
diseases illustrate very well how much is owed to the medical 
scientists of the peninsula and how much earlier they treated 
many important subjects in medicine than is usually thought. 
Professor Vierordt in his Chapter on the History of Heart 
Diseases has reviewed the subject in Puschmann’s Handbook 
of the History of Medicine (Vol. II). Vierordt is himself a 
distinguished contributor to the subject in the modern time, 
thoroughly familiar with German, French and English con- 
tributions to this specialty, so that he is not likely to ex- 
aggerate Italy’s place. In the seventeenth century Pissini, 
Bartoletti and Malpighi, made some interesting observations WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
on the pathological anatomy of the heart. Lancisi, Albertini 
and Morgagni in the eighteenth century did much to lay 
the foundations of our modern knowledge of heart diseases. 
They laid down the principles on which hypertrophy and 
dilatation of the heart can be best explained and treated, 
suggested the significance of disturbed valvular function and 
the associated pulmonary congestion and catarrh. Albertini 
and Valsalva, in the eighteenth century, outlined a course 
of forty days of “rest and hunger cure” for aneurism. This 
is the method which attracted so much attention again in 
the hands of Bellingham and Tufnel during the nineteenth 
century. 
The connection between heart diseases and certain in- 
fectious diseases notably scarlet fever and diptheria, had 
been suggested by Benivieni and Rota and Bartoletti and 
many important observations in this matter were made by 
subsequent Italian pathologists, notably by Morgagni. The 
effect of lues upon the heart had been emphasized by Lancisi 
and afterwards by Morgagni. What we now know as heart 
aneurism, designating thereby a partial dilatation of the 
wall of the heart was first described by Galeazzi in 1757. 
These Italian clinicians of the older time particularly 
Pissini and Albertini (seventeenth century) as well as 
Lancisi and Morgagni (eighteenth century) described ner- 
vous conditions of the heart and recognized palpitation of 
the heart due merely to nervous factors as an important 
clinical condition. Morgagni’s contributions to this subject 
have often been referred to in the modern time and some 
of Lancisi’s observations are well known. At a time when 
the status of the heart as a serious factor in pathology was 
making way, they called attention to the fact that heart 
symptoms were not always necessarily connected with heart 
lesions, but might be due to extra-cardiac factors that had 
no serious significance as regards possible fatality. 
Some idea of the extent to which attempts were made 
to classify heart disturbances by the earlier Italians will 
be obtained from Santorio’s classification of seventy-three MEDICINE 
kinds of pulse which was even more than Galileo had been able 
to differentiate though he had begun with Galen’s classification 
of twenty-seven. Italian studies in the pulse continued to 
attract attention, though Lancisi and Morgagni’s work on 
the nervous heart conditions tended to restore the balance 
of common sense and keep physicians from giving exagger- 
ated significance to trivial details of minute differences of 
heart function. 
One of the significant contributions to medicine in the 
Renaissance period made by an Italian was not written by 
a physician and yet has been widely read and has deeply 
influenced many generations ever since, having been issued 
in many editions in practically every modern language. This 
is Luigi Cornaro’s “Treatise on the Simple Life,” its title 
in the original Italian was Trattato della Vita Sobria and 
Cornaro though an Italian wTas a thorough believer in that 
word sober as used in English for abstention from intoxicat- 
ing fluids as well as indulgence in over eating. Garrison in 
his History of Medicine, suggests that “it is probably the 
best treatise on hygiene and the simple life in existence.” It 
has been frequently reprinted and after four centuries, is 
still reprinted often enough, in all languages, to make it clear 
that it has a universal appeal. The fact that the writer 
after finding himself broken down in health at forty, worked 
out for himself a diet and a mode of existence, which not 
only restored him to health but enabled him to live until 
he was past ninety-nine, has always given the book a vogue 
among readers though Cornaro’s emphatic insistence on self 
denial has not always made disciples in fact as well in 
thought. This was not the first important contribution to 
popular medicine from Italy however, for the oldest manual 
of popular medicine in Europe published and republished 
many hundreds of times and still often reprinted is the 
Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, the famous Rule of Health of 
Salerno. 
The development of mechanical aids to diagnosis rep- 
resents an interesting chapter in the story of Italian WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
contributions to medical science. The first suggestion of the 
clinical value of weighing the fluids of the body and measuring 
the frequency of the pulse and respiration in disease and 
health by means of a klepsydra or water clock was Cardinal 
Nicholas of Cusa who was at the time in Italy, and was 
greatly influenced by the Italians. This suggestion came 
before its time and bore no fruit and it was Galileo wdio in 
the midst of his experiments with a pendulum, next came 
to the thought of measuring the rate and variation of the 
pulse by means of a pendulum, after having first hit on the 
idea of using his pulse beats as a measure for the pendulum 
swings. Galileo’s contemporary Santorio took advantage of 
these suggestions of Galileo to fashion various instruments 
for clinical diagnosis and he describes a clinical thermometer 
and a pulsilogium or pulse clock for the measuring of the 
human temperature and pulse. He invented a series of 
clever instruments, the best known of which are the trochar 
and canula and various apparatus for extracting stones from 
the bladder and foreign bodies from the ear. But these in- 
struments belong in the domain of surgery and more is said 
of them in the chapter «on that subject. 
Sanctorius was also the inventor of ingenious means of 
giving patients baths without removing them from bed and 
various arrangements for external and internal hydro- 
therapy. In recent years he has had renewed reputation 
because he was the first to attempt definite accurate experi- 
ments on nutrition. The Frontispiece of his Ars De Statica 
Medicina represents Sanctorius seated in his steelyard chair 
weighing himself for a metabolism experiment after a meal. 
How complete and detailed Italian observations in medi- 
cine were, may be gathered from the fact that shortly after 
the middle of the sixteenth century, Ulysses Aldrovandi, 
professor of natural history in Bologna, treated the subject 
of intestinal parasites of men in considerable detail in his 
book De animalibus insectis, libri septem. In the next century 
Redi the biologist who occupied himself very much with the 
subject of spontaneous generation, denying its occurence, 
280 SANCTORIUS ON THE STEELYARD. MEDICINE 
because so far as his observations went all living tilings 
proceeded from preceding life, studied the parasites of ani- 
mals and experimented with methods of treatment for in- 
testinal parasites of various kinds. Other Italian writers, 
Yallisnieri, Morgagni, Thaddeus Dunus who described the 
bothriocephalus latus, and Panaroli who in 1650 seems to have 
found a cysticercus in the brain of an epileptic, made acute 
observations that gradually led to the development of our 
knowledge of these parasites. 
How well Redi understood what is usually supposed 
to be a much more recent discovery in biology, the develop- 
ment of life only from preceding life, is clearly manifest 
from his formulation of the principle omne vivum ex vivo. 
He had been investigating putrefaction and the occurrence 
of living things in the midst of putrefying substances, but 
emphatically declared that life never came from death, but 
always from preceding life. Father Kircher working in 
Italy about the middle of the seventeenth century gave in 
his Scrutinium Pestis (Rome 1658) the details of seven ex- 
periments upon the nature of putrefaction showing how 
maggots and other living creatures are developed in decay- 
ing matter. He applied these observations to the question 
of contagion and came to the conclusion that the infectious 
diseases were caused by contagium animatum, that is by living 
contagious materials. 
Italy’s place in preventive medicine, that all important 
practical side of medical science, is scarcely less important 
than in other departments, but it is oftener ignored. The ques- 
tion of tuberculosis will illustrate this. At many times in the 
Italian peninsula subsequent to Galen, ideas anticipating what 
is most modern in our knowledge of the disease came to be 
generally accepted. As early as the fifteenth century certain 
of the Italian towns organized boards of health and arranged 
for quarantine for the prevention of the spread of epidemics. 
A century or so later they began to declare tuberculosis con- 
tagious and required the destruction of the clothing of the 
tuberculous after their death and the thorough cleansing of WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
their rooms. About the middle of the eighteenth century 
Morgagni refused to make autopsies on tuberculous subjects 
because he was sure that the disease was contagious, and 
declared that he had noted its transfer as a consequence 
of dissection wounds. About this same time Naples and the 
States of the Church both declared the disease contagious, and 
made a series of sanitary regulations to prevent its spread. 
These precautions with regard to the disease, scoffed at not 
infrequently as barbaric by other nations, led to a great reduc- 
tion in the death-rate from it and as a consequence of this 
the Italians apparently forgot about the danger of it, allowed 
their sanitary laws to fall into abeyance and tuberculosis once 
more became a serious danger. 
Italy has done much in the modern time to care for the 
health of her people. Malaria was the great scourge allowed 
to creep in when its cause was not understood. A whole 
series of interesting experiments were made in order to reduce 
it, though not until the modern proper understanding of the 
mode of diffusion of malaria were these successful. The Ital- 
ians recognized that waste spaces were somehow breeders of 
malaria and therefore encouraged the re-growth of forests. 
They did not realize that the main reason why forests lowered 
malaria morbidity and mortality was by preventing the pres- 
ence of surface water in which mosquitos would breed. They 
grew eucalyptus trees in large numbers and these by absorb- 
ing moisture had a similar beneficent effect on malaria. Rome 
has gradually become from one of the most deadly of cities 
for foreigners because of the dread Roman fever, one of the 
healthiest large cities of Europe and indeed a great health 
resort for invalids. It is very rare now for a visitor to Rome 
to be stricken with Roman fever. Almost needless to say 
these represent distinct triumphs in hygiene and sanitation 
carried out with determination and great practical ability. 
In popular estimation, therapeutics, or the cure of 
disease, is the most important department of medicine. The 
physician knows that in this there is more danger than else- 
where of being led astray for cures are fallacious. The herbal 
remedies, however, very early received serious attention in MEDICINE 
Italy and were experimented with until demonstrations of 
their value or insignificance were reached. An immense 
number of remedies were thus employed, some of them quite 
inert and some of them of thoroughly practical value. 
One nf the significant medical developments in Italy was 
the establishment of Herbularia in connection with the monas- 
teries. This began very early among the Benedictines for the 
brother infirmarian was expected to care for the health of the 
brethren, and to plant and gather simples for this purpose. 
All the old traditions point to the knowledge of the monks in 
this regard. As the monasteries became more important in 
the world of the time, and many of them gathered a numer- 
ous peasantry in association with the monastery, living on the 
monastic lands, it was understood that their health also should 
be cared for by the monks. Hence their “physick” gardens 
became larger and more important. The experience of the 
various monasteries was communicated to the Brethren in 
distant places and they exchanged seeds of various kinds and 
pharmaceutic products. The Benedictine nunneries had the 
same customs and so it is not surprising to find the most 
important book on medical subjects in the twelfth century 
written by the Abbess Hildegarde of a Benedictine nunnery 
along the Rhine. The original Italian traditions had been 
preserved and developed as they wandered Northward. We 
know that there was a Herbularium or Physick Garden at 
the Monastery of St. Gall as early as the ninth century. After 
all, the epochmaking work of Abbot Mendel which has attract- 
ed so much attention in recent years, was done in a monastic 
garden not unlike those in which the old-time Italian monks 
cultivated the various plants, noted their peculiarities, learned 
to grow the best varieties and passed on this precious knowl- 
edge to the peasantry near their own monastery, and to the 
other monasteries with which they were in communication. 
AVith the development of University medical schools the 
field was already cultivated for the establishment of botanical 
gardens in connection with them. The first formal creation 
of a University Botanical Garden was that at Pisa which WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
began in 1544. The following year Padua established a similar 
Botanical Garden, and among its Prefects were the eminent 
botanists, Anguilara and Prospero Alpini. It very soon be- 
came the custom to make yearly demonstrations of the living 
plants for the students in order that they might be able to 
recognize them. Pharmacy thus came to have as practical 
teaching as clinical medicine and during the second half of the 
sixteenth century Zurich, Leyden, Leipzig and Paris followed 
the example set by Pisa, Padua and Bologna. It was only 
during the seventeenth century that other universities ac- 
quired their botanic gardens. 
The use of herbal medicines was not followed blindly in 
Italy, however, and above all there was a very definite antici- 
pation of our modern use of natural curative methods. They 
were brought into vogue under the influence of the first great 
medical school of modern times, that at Salerno, where this 
special evolution of medical practice makes it very clear that 
the Italians of the later Middle Ages had thrown off Arabian 
domination in medicine and were thinking for themselves. 
Earlier in the Middle Ages the Arabs with the advantage of 
close touch with Greek medicine in the towns formerly the 
seat of Greek schools of medicine, which they had captured 
in Asia Minor, were naturally the most important practitioners 
of medicine and writers on medical science until the tenth 
century. Unfortunately their Oriental mystical tendencies 
led them to distrust nature and tempted them into the use 
of many drugs until their polypharmacy became absurd in its 
multiplicity. Physicians prescriptions looked so much like 
lists of the days of the month because of the many ingredients 
in them that no wonder they were called “calendar” prescrip- 
tions. Somehow it was thought that if a great many drugs 
were given, someone of them would be sure to do the patient 
good. The fact that the others might at the same time be 
doing harm scarcely seems to have occurred to these enthus- 
iastic drug givers. Long afterwards we had the “gunshot 
prescriptions” of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu- 
ries which represented a reversion to the old crude therapeutic MEDICINE 
ideas, in spite of Italian conservatism having eliminated one 
phase of such generic treatment. 
In medicine the Italians of recent years have at least 
maintained the reputation of their nation. Banti’s disease is 
called after the Italian discoverer because of merited recogni- 
tion of the fact that here was a fine description obtained by 
the most careful clinical observation of a symptom complex, 
the varying parts of which had never been put together 
before. In malaria the contributions of Italians have been 
extremely valuable and have been eminently practical. They 
have done much to make many districts supposedly uninhabi- 
table because of the presence of malarial organisms not only 
possible for human life but even wholesome and healthful. 
We owe to them the study of the life cycle of the plasmodium 
malariae discovered by Laveran and the differentiation of the 
various forms of the parasite which cause the varying kinds 
of the disease. Their work in tuberculosis has been scarcely 
less valuable than in malaria and some of it has attracted 
attention throughout the civilized world. Mosso’s work on 
fatigue, Lombroso’s work on the criminal and many other 
Italian contributions to medicine though eventually proving 
not conclusive but only stages in knowedge, have been im- 
mensely valuable because of their suggestive quality, and the 
incentive they furnished to the work of others. 
Often when other names have become attached to medical 
phenomena it is surprising to find that the original discoverer 
was an Italian. This is well illustrated by the development 
of our knowledge of observations with regard to exophthalmic 
goitre. The affection is often spoken of as Graves’ Disease 
because that distinguished Irish physician called attention to 
the association of heart palpitation with goitre. The name 
of Basedow is associated with the disease because he described 
also the third symptom that occurs in the affection, the prom- 
inence of the eyeballs. This was not, however, until 1850. 
The Roman physician Flajani had, however, described the 
disease as early as 1802, and Italians have rightly protested WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
that if any name should be associated with it it ought to be 
his. 
The prominence of Italians in very recent work in medi- 
cine can be very readily seen from the number of names of 
Italian investigators who have found their way into the bibli- 
ography of the trypanosomes. Dr. Garrison in his History 
of Medicine mentions Castellani, who saw this organism in 
the cerebro-spinal fluid and blood of five cases of African 
sleeping sickness. The piroplasms or babesioses of the dog 
were studied by Piana and Galli Yalerio. The bodies found 
in the central nervous system in hydrophobia by Negri and 
called after his name have attracted much attention, and yet 
now after over forty years we have not added much that is defi- 
nite to the observations made by him. The work of finding pro- 
tozoa in small-pox and other familiar diseases whose microbic 
causes have not yet been absolutely worked out was initiated 
by Guarnieri with his study of Cytoryctes variolae in 1894. 
When the spirochete of African relapsing fever the familiar 
tic fever was discovered in 1904, one of the independent 
discoverers was Nabarro an Italian. 
In our own time Italy’s leadership in the solution of medi- 
cal as well as social problems is very well illustrated by the 
fact that the city of Milan has erected the first hospital and 
clinic for occupational diseases. The “safety first” movement 
which has properly attracted so much attention and which 
is not only an important social advance but presents a serious 
indictment of our nineteenth century industrial progress has 
come in everywhere with a rush, yet as suggested by Dr. Gil- 
man Thompson in his volume on Occupation Diseases, (New 
York Appleton 1904) the Milan Hospital and Clinic for Oc- 
cupation Diseases is not only the first in the field but it repre- 
sents a complete institute for its purpose with a staff of twelve 
research investigators and a series of extension departments. 
Arrangements are made for visiting the homes of workers 
when for any reason they can not or will not come to the 
dispensary or hospital, leaflets of instruction on the avoidance 
of the dangers of occupations as regards both injuries and MEDICINE 
disease are issued, popular conferences on these subjects are 
held, there is special instruction of students on all the subjects 
related to the “safety first” movement and physicians are 
trained as experts and specialists in this work. 
The statistics from this clinic for 1910, 1911 were pub- 
lished in II Lavoro (Milan 1911) and constitute a most valu- 
able contribution to our knowledge of this subject. It is of 
course not surprising that Italy should prove a pioneer in this 
subject in the modern time, for some of her great surgeons of 
the medieval period and later in the Renaissance time dwelt 
on occupation injuries, though not in the specialized way of 
the modern time. In 1713 Bernardino Remazzini published 
at Padua the first book on the diseases of workmen which 
called emphatic attention to the abuses that existed in many 
occupations. His De Morbis Artificum Diatriba, the title 
literally translated would be “Diatribe on the Diseases of 
Workmen,” aroused considerable attention and represents 
pioneer work in this direction that was of great value. Un- 
fortunately it was lost sight of however, in the decadence of 
education which occurred during the eighteenth century in 
the midst of which the use of Latin as the common tongue of 
professional men and especially physicians ceased, and the 
confusion of tongues incident to vernacular authorship of 
medical works set the nations out of touch with each other 
in medicine for a full century. SURGERY 
SURGERY is usually supposed to be a very modern devel- 
opment of medical science. Ordinarily it is assumed 
that, so little was accomplished by surgeons before the last two 
or three generations that the history of surgery up to the 
middle of the nineteenth century is scarcely worth while talk- 
ing about. It is quite frankly conceded that men were doubt- 
less quite willing and even anxious to make surgical advances, 
but with a very imperfect knowledge of anatomy consequent 
upon opposition to dissection, emphasized by the awful pain 
that was inflicted by surgical procedures without anaesthesia 
and involving the prohibitive risk of complications and even 
death from almost inevitable septic complications after oper- 
ation, what wonder there was almost no successful efforts made 
for the development of surgery. With the evolution of surgery 
as a science thus definitely presumed to have come only in 
quite recent years since Italian names are not particularly 
prominent in it, it would be natural to conclude that at least 
in surgery the world owes Italy no special debt. Probably 
nothing shows better the almost universal failure properly 
to appreciate the history of other times and other countries 
than an impression of this kind for the chapter on Italian sur- 
gery is one of the most important in the book. 
One of the greatest surprises of the recent developments 
in historical knowledge has been the gradual accumulation of 
information from old time text books, which shows us very 
clearly that far from this being the first time in the world’s 
history that there has been a great development of surgery, 
quite on the contraary at a number of times men have done 
magnificent work in this specialty, and accomplished nearly SURGERY 
as much as we have even in our time, which represents a cli- 
max of successful devotion to surgical progress. Above all 
there was a period during the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies when the great Italian Universities had a series of 
professors who accomplished almost incredible advance in 
surgery and left not merely traditions of their achievements, 
but extended text books in which for the benefit of their stu- 
dents, who came from all the Western world, they described 
in detail what they had succeeded in doing. These are clas- 
sics in the history of surgery, which after being reprinted in 
the Renaissance, were neglected until almost our own time. 
These great surgical teachers invented several methods of 
anaesthesia, they obtained union by first intention, using strong 
wine as an antiseptic, and they succeeded safely in entering 
every cavity of the body in order to relieve pathological con- 
ditions of many kinds existent in them. Even tumours were 
removed from the brain, the thorax was opened and many 
abdominal operations were performed. 
The names of the great Italian surgeons of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries are now well known by all who 
have paid attention to the history of medicine. Modern 
surgery began at Salerno in the latter part of the twelfth 
century and very soon the influence of the great Salernitan 
teachers was felt all over the peninsula. As Arabian influence 
was strong in the Mediterranean regions at this time it has 
sometimes been declared that it was really through the Arabs 
that Salerno became so famous for medicine and that sur- 
gery developed so thoroughly. Gurlt, who is acknowledged 
as the authority on this subject, in his great History of Sur- 
gery (Vol. 1 page 701) contradicts this supposition emphati- 
cally, and says with regard to the first of the great Italian 
writers on surgery, Rogero, that “ Though Arabian works on 
surgery had been brought over to Italy by Constantine Afri- 
cans a hundred years before Roger’s time, these exercised no 
influence over Italian surgery in the next century, and there 
is scarcely a trace of the surgical knowledge of the Arabs to WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
be found in Roger’s works.” Instead of any Arabisms being 
found in his writings many Graecisms occur. 
The fact of the matter is that in the Southern part of 
Italy which in older times had been called Magna Graecia, 
Greek influence lived on, and the Greek writers were con- 
sulted in the original almost as soon as Salerno began to 
develop its medical teaching. Two great masters in surgery 
were already recognized in Italy early in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Their names, Ruggiero and Rolando, sound so romantic 
that many have thought of them almost as myths. They were 
very real and above all practical. The book of Ruggiero or 
Roger as he is called in English, rests almost entirely upon 
his own original observations and those of his colleagues. 
As he himself says in the preface “We have resolved to write 
out deliberately our methods of operation, such as they have 
been derived from our own experience and that of our col- 
leagues and illustrious men.” He probably wrote his text 
book toward the end of the twelfth century. It was com- 
mented on by his pupil Rolando and subsequently enlarged 
and annotated by “The Four Masters.” Almost in its orig- 
inal form Roger’s book was reprinted by De Renzi in his 
Collectio Salernitana. It is comparatively easy now to read 
either the complete originals -of these books, or the abbrevia- 
tions made by modern historians of medicine, and above all 
by Gurlt, and thus to learn at first hand how many startling 
anticipations of what is most modern surgery are to be found 
in these old authors. 
The Four Masters represent in that older time such a 
collaboration in text book making as has become familiar in 
our ‘ ‘ systems ’ ’ of medicine and surgery. Their teaching was 
very practical. Wounds of the head for instance were treated 
of in great detail, and with a thorough knowledge manifestly 
founded on experience. They warned the young surgeon not 
to conclude because the scalp was unbroken that therefore 
there was no fracture of the skull. When the instrument in- 
flicting the wound was blunt, of heavy metal like the clapper 
of a bell, or a large key, or a rounded instrument made of SURGERY 
lead, — an anticipation of the lead pipe of the modern time, 
—they said that there might be fracture of the skull without 
penetrating wound of the scalp. If the symptoms were 
severe they even suggested the advisability of exploratory 
incision. With a fracture present, if symptoms of compres- 
sion developed they must be relieved without delay by trephin- 
ing and raising the depressed bone. They were quite familiar 
with fracture by what is technically called contre coup, for 
they declared that ‘'quite frequently though the percussion 
comes in the anterior part of the cranium the skull is frac- 
tured in the opposite part.” They knew of the possibility of 
internal hemorrhage from lacerated intracranial arteries and 
tell the story of a youth who had a very small wound made 
by a thrown stone; after the primary shock was recovered 
from there seemed no serious results or bad signs. He died 
the next day however. His cranium was opened and a large 
amount of black blood was coagulated about his dura mater. 
They warned of the danger of infection and Gurlt quotes 
a very striking expression “in elevating the cranium be solici- 
tous lest you infect (Italics Gurlt’s) or injure the dura 
mater.” On the day when a trephining was to be done the 
physician was warned that ‘ ‘ his hands must be clean, that he 
must avoid the taking of food that may corrupt the air such 
as onions, leeks and the like, that he must avoid contact with 
menstruating women” and in general must keep himself in 
a state of absolute cleanliness. These men were above all 
observers, and they had noted the bad effects which followed 
from neglect of these precautions. They had reached a virtual 
anticipation of our nineteenth century principles of aseptic 
surgery. This is not a far fetched explanation meant to 
magnify the reputation of medieval Italian surgeons, but a 
simple estimation of their real achievements, to which any 
reader who knows their books and actual observations is forced 
by the evidence. Gurlt, in a few pages supplies quite suffi- 
cient details of information to show this very clearly. 
After these South Italian surgeons came a series of North 
Italian surgeons, worthy successors who surpassed even WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Salerno’s prestige. The greatest were Bruno of Longoburgo, 
Theodoric and his father Ugo of Lucca, William of Salicet and 
Lanfranc, his name was really Lanfranchi, the last practised 
for a time at Milan in Italy, afterwards taught in Paris and 
laid the foundation of French prestige in surgery. These 
men developed anaesthesia and antisepsis, greatly increased 
the scope and field of surgery and lifted the specialty up into 
a thoroughly scientific department of medicine. They studied 
putrefaction rather carefully, recognizing how much it meant 
for their success or failure in surgery, and they developed 
wonderfully the technique of operative intervention. Gurlt 
in his History of Surgery gives some fifteen octavo pages of 
rather small type to a brief compendium of Bruno’s teaching 
on surgery alone. Ugo of Lucca was the city physician at 
Bologna early in the thirteenth century, and he became the 
medico-legal expert of the municipality. The civic statutes of 
Bologna are the oldest monuments of legal medicine in the 
Middle Ages. Ugo lived to be nearly one hundred years of 
age and three of his five sons became physicians. One of 
them, Theodoric, who afterwards was made a bishop, set him- 
self the task of writing out his father’s teachings. In this he 
left a monument not only to the surgery but the medicine of 
the time, for his father had occupied himself somewhat in the 
study of anodyne and anaesthetizing drugs, and is said to 
have been the first who taught the sublimation of arsenic. 
Theodoric comes nearest to the moderns of all these old 
surgeons, and his teaching with regard to the cause and mean- 
ing of the infection of wounds is distinctly modern. I sug- 
gested in my Old Time Mahers of Medicine in the chapter on 
Great Surgeons of Medieval Universities, that Theodoric’s 
expressions in a passage like the following, are full half a 
millenium before what is usually presumed to be the origin 
of such ideas. “For it is not necessary, as Roger and Roland 
have written, as many of their disciples teach, and as all 
modern (sic) surgeons profess, that pus should be generated 
in wounds. No error can be greater than this. Such a prac- 
tice is indeed to hinder nature, to prolong the disease, and SURGERY 
to prevent the conglutination and consolidation of the wound.” 
The italics in the word “modern” are mine and are meant 
to call attention to the fact that the whole expression might 
well have been used by some early advocate of antisepsis or 
even by Lord Lister himself. Six centuries almost to the year 
would separate the two declarations, yet they would be just 
as true at one time as at another. When we learn that 
Theodoric was proud of the very beautiful cicatrices which 
resulted without the use of any ointment, pulcherrimas cica- 
trices sine unguento aliquo inducebat, then further that he 
impugned the use of poultices and of oil on wounds, while he 
declared powders “too drying” and said that besides they 
had a tendency to prevent drainage, — the literal meaning 
of the Latin words he employs saniem incarcerare is “to in- 
carcerate sanious material”:—it is easy to understand that 
the claim that antiseptic surgery was anticipated six cen- 
turies ago in Italy, is no exaggerated and no far-fetched ex- 
planation with modern ideas in mind of certain clever modes 
of dressing wounds hit upon by fortunate accident by medie- 
val Italian surgeons. 
William of Salicet was a pupil of Bruno’s and the mas- 
ter of Lanfranc, who though himself an Italian was the Father 
of French Surgery. Salicet was a thoroughly 'observant phy- 
sician and a skilled surgeon, who was practical enough to 
find always the simplest way to practice surgical intervention 
and who knew enough of his anatomy to know how to relieve 
many hitherto intractable conditions. Above all he had the 
surgical audacity to tackle difficult problems and solving 
many of them successfully has left a great name in the history 
of surgery. Professor Clifford Allbutt of Cambridge has 
praised him highly, and Gurlt has given him some ten pages 
of rather small type in his History of Surgery. The one thing 
interesting for us is that William depended much more on 
the findings of his own experience than on anything he found 
in the text books. His own work then is remarkable for its 
orginality and quality. He devoted six chapters to diseases 
of the eye and the eyelids, two chapters to the affections of WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the ears and several chapters to the nose and mouth. He 
treated ranula, epulis and polypus by extirpation, and recog- 
nizing their tendency to recur, suggested the use of cauter- 
izing substances such as vitriol powder, or alum with salt, in 
order to produce such inflammatory changes as would obliter- 
ate the base of the lesion and thus prevent recurrence. He 
thought it better to allow swollen cervical glands to remain 
than to operate on them and suggests that internal medica- 
tion and building up of general health is better than oper- 
ative procedure. In his experiences the surgeon secured much 
better ultimate results from allowing these enlarged cervical 
glands to open of themselves, if they would, than to operate 
on them. It is worthy of special note that after much meddle- 
some surgery we have to a very great extent come back to 
William’s conservative conclusions with regard to the best 
treatment of this condition in the modern time. 
Lanfranc, known for his teaching in Paris and bearing 
what looks like a native French name is seldom thought of as 
an Italian, but he was born in Northern Italy of Italian paren- 
tage, the family name being, as we have said, Lanfranchi. He 
studied under William of Salieet at Piacenza, practiced in 
Milan until he was banished by the Visconti, and then having 
succeeded in making a reputation for himself in Lyons was 
called to Paris to teach in the University medical depart- 
ment. He is a favorite author of Gurlt’s who gives him more 
than twenty-five closely printed large octavo pages in his 
History of Surgery. Anyone who wants to learn how deserved 
is Gurlt’s admiration for this great Italian Professor at the 
University of Paris should read those pages. Lanfranc knew 
the literature of surgery up to his time very well and quotes 
altogether more than a score of writers on surgery who had 
preceded him. On the other hand there is scarcely an impor- 
tant surgical topic with regard to which Gurlt does not report 
some interesting observations made by Lanfranc from his 
own personal experience. 
The next great European surgeon, Guy de Chauliac, hav- 
ing made his studies in Italy frankly acknowledged his obliga- VERROCCHIO COLLEONI SURGERY 
tions to the Italians. While he well deserves the name of 
Father of Modern Surgery in a certain sense, it is not because 
he was the originator, but because he was the brilliant genius 
who closed a long and interesting line of contributors to 
surgery and gathered together all their combined experience 
in his great text book of surgery La Grande Chirurgie. In 
this he quotes freely from his teachers in Italy and from 
Lanfranc with whom he was for some time at the University 
of Paris. After reading his text book it is easy to understand 
why Friend the great English physician and father of English 
medical history calls Chauliac the Prince of Surgeons, yet he 
himself was unstinting in the acknowledgment of his obliga- 
tions to his Italian masters. 
In order to appreciate properly how much the Italians 
have accomplished for surgery one should turn, as I have 
said, to a work such as Prof. Gurlt’s History of Surgery* As 
a thorough German of the modern time, himself a distin- 
guished surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of 
Berlin, he is not likely to exaggerate the accomplishments of 
old-time surgeons nor to magnify beyond their deserts what 
the Italians have done. He devotes many hundreds of pages 
to an account of the writings of Italian surgeons and makes it 
very clear that they were the teachers of the world. Men of 
other nations did good work in surgery but usually under the 
inspiration of the Italians, either taught directly by them or 
by a surgical tradition that had been originally drawn from 
Italian sources. The surgeons of the Renaissance alone oc- 
cupy some two hundred pages of his monumental work. There 
is scarcely a distinguished anatomist of this time in Italy who 
was not also a contributor in some way to surgery. Some of 
those whose names we are accustomed to associate more with 
physiology than with any other department of medicine, such 
men as Caesalpino, Fallopio, Botallo, Aranzi, Fabrizio da 
Acquapendente, to give them the Italian forms of their names, 
under Gurlt’s penetrating study prove to deserve a place in 
* Geschichte der Chirurgie und Ibrer Ausiibung von Dr. E. Gurlt III Band, 
Berlin, 1898. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the history of surgery and represent important links in sur- 
gical development. 
The Italian surgeons of the Renaissance period bravely 
undertook nearly all the striking surgical interventions that 
are sometimes supposed to have been reserved for our more 
progressive time. The bone surgery of the Renaissance is 
particularly interesting. Fallopius insisted on the preserva- 
tion of the periosteum of the bone just as far as possible, for 
this would bring about regeneration. The older methods of 
using force for the reduction of dislocations yielded place to 
the maxim that the joints should be restored along the same 
path through which the dislocation took place. Vigo described 
fractures of the inner table of the skull when the outer table 
is unbroken and Argelata described depression without frac- 
ture as occurring in children or those who had not attained 
their growth. Helferich’s chapters on the History of Surgery 
in Puschmann’s Handbook of the History of Medicine shows 
how many discoveries and rediscoveries and inventions and re- 
inventions were made in the course of time, and how almost 
without exception the Italians were the first to put most of 
the original ideas into practical use. 
These surgeons brought severed tendons together, treated 
the various deformities by rational methods instead of force, 
corrected defective limbs, designed corsets and various 
apparatuses for orthopedic purposes, invented gold and silver 
tubes to be used after tracheotomy and developed all of the 
specialties. Savonarola, the grandfather of the martyr Dom- 
inican of that name, suggested the extirpation of ranula and 
recommended the puncture of the pleural cavity for effusion. 
Della Croce taught that pathological fluid should be emptied 
out of the thorax by aspiration and Arculanus laid down the 
principle of drainage from the most dependent portion. Cabral 
declared that wounds of the heart were not necessarily fatal 
and tells of one that he had treated successfully and after- 
wards seen healed at autopsy when death took place from an- 
other cause not long after. Fioravanti reported a case of 
splenectomy with the recovery of the patient; Berengar of SURGERY 
Carpi detailed some cases of extirpatio uteri for procidentia 
and developed the technique of inunctions of mercury for 
lues. Fallopius described union by first intention as resemb- 
ling that which 'occurs between two waxed surfaces when they 
are brought together and adhere. Fabricius of Aquapendente 
and many others suggested various means of curing club foot. 
The Italians were famous for their work in plastic sur- 
gery. Those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alone ac- 
complished some wonderful things. The general public is not 
inclined to be so much interested in plastic surgery, that is 
the remaking of tissues and the facilitation of function by 
operations upon diseased or injured parts, as in the sensa- 
tional operations by which life is saved by mutilation, but 
surgeons themselves recognize that the members of the pro- 
fession who do this work successfully are among the most in- 
ventive, patient, and progressive surgeons at all times. The 
Italians have actually left very little for others to invent 
in this specialty and their employment of soft tissue and bone 
grafts of all kinds anticipated such uses by any others, long 
before the surgeons of other countries took up the subject. In 
our time the great increase of industrial injuries and auto- 
mobile accidents with consequent maiming, as well as the 
unfortunate cripplings of such chronic diseases as tubercu- 
losis in our overcrowded cities have attracted special attention 
once more to the subject of plastic surgery. Some of the 
most important sessions of a recent International Congress of 
Surgeons in New York were given up to this subject. Surgeons 
themselves have come to recognize the surgery of repair as 
almost more important than life saving surgical intervention 
for emergencies. Our own renewal of interest in this subject 
which saves so much human suffering has made us realize 
better than anything else what work was accomplished by 
the old time Italian surgeons, often under very discouraging 
conditions, and how much honor they deserve for it. 
In the chapter on surgery in my book on The Century of 
Columbus, the story of what the Italians did for surgery dur- 
ing the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is dwelt on in suffi- WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
cient detail to show their really great achievements. Here 
only some of the most interesting anticipations of what is 
sometimes thought of as the most recent developments in 
surgical technique will be mentioned. The Brancas, father 
and son, invented and developed the method of making new 
noses for those who had unfortunately lost those important 
organs through the many sword wounds of that time. Later 
on another Italian, Tagliacozzi, applied their technique to 
such an extent that his name became known throughout 
Europe, and not always favorably, because the popular im- 
pression seems to have been that it was not quite right for 
anyone to try to improve the appearance of human beings, 
as if it was an interference in the domain of Providence. An 
Italian of the early fifteenth century suggested the employ- 
ment of the trachea of animals for intestinal surgery for large 
wounds and especially complete divisions. The freshly re- 
moved trachea was to be inserted in the intestines so that the 
lumen of the intestinal canal might be maintained. The 
cartilaginous trachea would gradually be absorbed in the 
secretions but not before complete agglutination of the 
divided intestines had taken place. Italian surgeons also 
experimented with metal tubes of various kinds for this 
same purpose and anticipated practically all the inventions, 
the Murphy button, the bone plates and the like that 
attracted so much attention in this line in recent years. 
With the beginning of the Renaissance there was a 
great new awakening in the surgical specialties in which 
Italy took the leading position as she did in every other 
phase of Renaissance achievement. It is curiously inter- 
esting to note how much was done for all the specialties at 
this time. Even dentistry of which we are inclined to think 
that there was almost nothing of value known, and less prac- 
tised, until our own time, developed to a noteworthy degree 
and John of Arcoli, or Arculanus, as he is often known by 
his Latin name mentions the filling of teeth with gold. 
About this time also the Italians were wont to use tin for the 
filling of dental cavities. Interestingly enough tin has be- SURGERY 
gun to come unto use again in the modern time and has 
proved to be eminently useful because it does not oxidize 
readily and the salts that are formed from it are rather 
preservative for the teeth than otherwise. Arculanus who 
was a professor of medicine and surgery at Padua, about 
the middle of the fifteenth century, gives a number of direc- 
tions for the care of the teeth and details of the technique 
of their repair. Guerini in his History of Dentistry says 
that the subject of dentistry is treated by Arculanus rather 
fully and quite accurately. Arculanus has a number of 
chapters on the treatment of diseases of the mouth and nose. 
A very great Italian surgeon to whom Gurlt has devoted 
more than a dozen of pages is Carcano Leone who when not 
yet twenty years of age and while still making his medical 
studies, received an invitation to become a surgeon in the 
Artillery Corps of the Spanish Army which the Duke of 
Alba had brought to the siege of Santhea in Piedmont. It 
was not easy to obtain surgeons and in spite of his limited 
experience, his work gave so much satisfaction that he was 
made a surgeon major. Instead of this turning his head he 
insisted that he should be given a leave of absence in order 
to perfect himself under Fallopius. This was granted him 
and prepared him for a magnificent life work. Fallopius 
would like to have had him succeed himself some years 
later in the chair of anatomy at Bologn’a, but the professor- 
ship was given to Fabricius da Aquapendente. When he was 
thirty-seven, however, Carcano Leone succeeded Cuneo as 
professor of anatomy in Pavia and then took the opportunity 
to write his great book on wounds of the head which went 
through many editions and which Scarpa valued so highly 
that he recommended its study to his contemporaries nearly 
two centuries later. 
The Italian development of care for gunshot wounds 
is of itself a triumph of surgical development and the finest 
evidence of their power to face and solve difficult problems. 
Up to the employment of firearms, wounds had been made 
with cutting or crushing instruments and now came the very WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
different—perforating lead bullets. At first it was thought 
that these were both burning and toxic in their effects, 
searing and poisoning the tissues which they penetrated. A 
series of experiments were made to decide these important 
questions in what can not help but be recognized as the 
most thoroughly scientific temper. Maggi (1516-1552) the 
Italian surgeon showed that leaden balls do not melt when 
they strike a hard surface and besides are not in the state of 
high temperature in which they had been generally presumed 
to be while travelling through the air, because of the heat 
developed by the exploding powder which originally drove 
them or of the friction of the air through which they 
passed. Even balls of wax that are fired do not spread 
out as if the wax were melted. Lead bullets do not produce 
burned wounds, because they are not superheated as is 
usually supposed. He showed by actual experiments that 
such bullets may be fired through a bag of gunpowder with- 
out causing it to explode. 
This whole series of experimental observations made by 
Maggi is a triumph of the Italian surgery of the Renaissance. 
Gurlt in his History of Surgery compares the conclusions 
drawn by Maggi from his experiments in the early sixteenth 
century with those reached after the discussion of the same 
subject following a series of experiments made after the 
Franco-Prussian War. He does not hesitate to say that the 
old time Italian surgeons anticipated practically all of the 
conclusions of the modern time. He devotes some eight 
pages to Maggi’s work on gun-shot wounds and describes 
his experiments at some length. Maggi had fired balls 
made of sulphur out of guns without setting them on fire, 
pointed out that the paper wads used in guns were not 
singed much less set on fire, called attention to the fact that 
the wound of entrance had the same appearance as the wound 
of exit in gun shot wounds in spite of the fact that if the ball 
had been hot on entrance it would be cooled in the tissues; 
and though when shots were fired very close clothing might SURGERY 
be set on fire from the flash, this was due to the burning 
powder and not to the heat of the bullet. 
The surprise is how many things discovered by the 
Italians of earlier days wTere somehow forgotten later and 
had to be rediscovered. This is of course true of all history. 
It is not the progress of mankind that is most interesting, for 
there is very little evidence for that, but the mystery of 
subsequent oblivion, for the careful student of history, 
constantly finds that men discover things and then after- 
wards for some reason forget about them. The greatest 
development in surgery in our time has been due to Lister’s 
work with antiseptics and the subsequent evolution of 
aseptic surgery out of his genius initiative. It is curiously 
interesting to find that Michelangelo Biondo, sometimes 
known by his Latin name of Blondus, taught the use of hot 
water as the only proper application to wounds early in the 
sixteenth century. In my book on The Century of Columbus 
(N. Y. 1914) I have summed up some of his expressions which 
show the solution of the most important problem of surgery 
by an Italian nearly four centuries ago. 
Biondo tells of some physicians of his time who, in place 
of liniments and all the various applications that are made 
by the “wax-dealers” simply wash off their wounds with 
warm water. He adds that these physicians insist that a 
great many surgical patients are not killed by their disease 
so much as by the custom of allowing them only small 
amounts of food and the unfortunate effect produced by the 
well meaning, but mistaken materials applied to their 
wounds. He adds further that the successful surgeons are 
not wont to treat patients suffering from fevers by keeping 
them on a light diet, but on the contrary they give them wine 
and nourishing food instead of slops (ptisans.) His comment 
is that this sensible method of supporting treatment unfor- 
tunately does not make much headway in the profession. 
Apparently it was too simple and natural to appeal to the 
physician of the time. He adds with a touch of modern irony 
“ It is said to be preferable to die in accordance with accepted WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
methods than to live empirically.” Gurlt gives some further 
details of Biondo’s treatment of wounds. After the staunch- 
ing of the bleeding, the wound was to be cleansed and then 
covered with oleum abjetinum, very probably a mixture of oil 
of turpentine one part, to two parts of oil of roses. With re- 
gard to the use of water in the treatment of wounds, Biondo 
said: “The most experienced of the older physicians hold 
water in such dread that they would scarcely use it in remov- 
ing dirt from the neighborhood of wounds. I myself however, 
having seen the wonderful effect of water in wounded parts, 
can not help but be amazed at its supercelestial virtue.” In 
spite of this emphatic declaration of his own observation, even 
Biondo himself in his book gives chapters on all the old meth- 
ods of treating wounds and the various applications that were 
supposed to work wonders in bringing about healing. The 
consequence was that the water doctrine was pushed into the 
background and probably attracted very little attention. 
Here was much more than the germ of a great discovery, the 
actual recognition of the full value of the use of boiled water 
for wounds evidently reached by the most careful observation, 
yet it was destined to oblivion instead of the hearty appre- 
ciation that it deserved, and its true value was to remain 
hidden until four centuries and a half later after Lord Lister’s 
antiseptic teaching had cleared the way, when the further step, 
the doctrine of asepsis gained firm foothold. 
Aranzi, whose name is usually connected with medicine 
rather than with surgery and who is famous for his anatomical 
observations in his monograph on the human foetus, did many 
things in surgery worthy of note. Long before Tagliacozzi 
he practiced rhino-plasty, that is, the rebuilding up of de- 
formed or defective noses, and taught his students in Bologna 
the principles by which this could be best accomplished. He 
invented a form of nasal speculum of which Gurlt has quoted 
the description, he made a series of original observations on 
the nose and throat, and on tumor. Strange as it may seem 
to those who think of this as peculiarly a modern specialty, he 
made many advances in genito-urinary diseases. SURGERY 
One of Aranzi’s great contemporaries was Jerome 
Mercurialis who wrote a series of books on such specialties as 
skin diseases, gynaecology, pediatrics and toxicology, and yet 
made distinguished contributions to plastic surgery and pub- 
lished that very popular book which went through so many 
editions in various countries, his De Arte Gymnastica, in 
which he treats of all the manipulations and exercises by 
which curative results may be secured. After such success in 
his studies as portended his future success, Mercurialis was 
sent at the age of thirty-two on a mission to Pope Pius IV at 
Rome and found such excellent opportunities for his scientific 
studies there that he remained for seven years and attracted 
so much attention by his researches in medicine and his writ- 
ings that he was invited by the Venetian Senate to become 
the successor of Trincavalla at Padua, where he remained for 
nearly twenty years. Afterwards he was for sometime Pro- 
fessor of Bologna, a post which he owed to the rivalry between 
the two Italian universities. He taught eventually at Pisa, 
which the grand Dukes were trying to make the seat of the 
most important University in Italy. Mercurialis was prob- 
ably the greatest consultant physician of his time, was once 
summoned to see Kaiser Maximilian II in Vienna, and as a 
consequence of his reputation made an immense fortune from 
his profession. 
A typical example of the inventive genius of Italian 
surgeons is Santorio, sometimes known by his Latin name, 
Sanctorius, who became professor of theoretic medicine at the 
age of about fifty, after he had been for many years in 
practice in Venice. His best known work is his Aphorisms of 
Static Medicine (De Medicina Statica, Aphorismi) which 
went through some two score of editions and translations from 
his time down to the middle of the eighteenth century and 
gave him a European reputation. He made a series of obser- 
vations in which he demonstrated the occurrence of insensible 
perspiration, and the ingenuity required for this gives an 
excellent idea of his power of observation and his persistence 
in investigation. WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
What he is famous for however, is his invention of instru- 
ments of various kinds to be used in medicine and his applica- 
tion of various inventions to medical purposes. According to 
Gurlt, Santorio was the first to make use of the thermometer 
and hydrometer in order to determine variations in vital 
phenomena. He had great mechanical talent and invented a 
sphygmometer, pulsilogium. or pulse measure was the name he 
suggested for it. He was the inventor also of an instrument 
anticipating the trocar and canula with a tube and projecting 
needle which he used for the opening of the air passages in 
case of suffocation due to obstruction in the upper air tract. 
He describes his method as follows: 
“For infants and adults who suffocate, if no other rem- 
edy avails, perforation with our instrument made below the 
larynx recalls the patient from sudden death to sudden 
health, provided suffocation is due to anything above the 
larynx or the point of perforation. If the obstruction is 
below or in the lung itself the instrument will not avail. ’ ’ 
His description of the instrument and his insistence on 
the necessity for there being no roughness where needle and 
canula meet ‘ ‘ so that they may seem to be one and not two ’ ’ in 
order to avoid lacerating tissues, his detailed directions as to 
the position that must be assumed by the patient as well as 
of the proper point of the puncture and of the necessity for 
not wounding the back wall of the trachea, with the way to 
avoid this, all show his thoroughly practical genius. He de- 
clares that the instrument is actually life saving in angina 
suffocante, probably diptheria, and adds that if it were allowed 
to use it on those who were being hanged it would save them 
from suffocation. The canula is to be allowed to remain so as 
long as the difficulty of breathing persists. A similar form 
of instrument is described also for abdominal puncture and 
the removal of fluid. 
We have pictures of various hospital appliances that were 
invented by Sanctorius. He describes a bathing arrangement, 
for instance, made of leather to be used in bed for those 
patients who are so weak that it seems inadvisable to get them SURGERY 
out of bed for a bath. Water was admitted into this bathing 
bag at the back of the patient and allowed to flow out from 
a tube at the foot of the bed when the bath was finished. 
Sanctorius’ use of this arrangement was for fever patients, 
and he describes the success he had with it in the treatment of 
those suffering from hectic fever. Sanctorius was also the 
inventor of an artificial bed lectus artificiosus which had six 
special purposes. The patient might sit up in it, it had special 
arrangements for cleanliness, it could be suspended, there 
was a special table arrangement in connection with it and the 
patient might readily be transferred to another bed placed 
beside it while the clothing was being changed. He also 
improved the dry cups of the times and the clyster apparatuses 
and other instruments. 
He also suggested and has left a picture of a tricuspid 
instrument for the extraction of vesical calcula. Whether 
this was ever practically used or not we do not know, though 
Sanctorius’ confident enumeration of the details of the tech- 
nique of its uses in various cases is most convincing. It is no 
wonder that his writings were exceedingly popular at this 
time, and that he came to be looked upon as probably the 
greatest physician of his day. The other book of his 
the Static Medicine which was famous and went through many 
editions, bears the inviting title “Method of Avoiding all the 
Errors which may occur in the Art of Medicine.” He wrote, 
besides, Commentaries on Galen, on the Aphorisms of Hippo- 
crates and a book on The Invention of Remedies. 
In every century down to our own time Gurlt finds dis- 
tinguished Italian surgeons. In the seventeenth century 
Tagliacozzi attracted wide attention for his plastic work in 
the restoration of lost noses. Such men as Magati, Codranchi, 
Settala, Silvatico, Gavassetti, Passaro, Alpino, Cortesi, San- 
torio, Ferrara, Muratori, Zacchia, Plazzoni, Rossi, Pecetti wrote 
books on surgery in this century which were widely read, 
some of which went into second and even third editions and 
which made them acknowledged leaders in the world’s surgery 
of that century. To most of these in his crowded, yet well WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
balanced work, Gurlt devotes from three to five pages of 
rather small type discussing original observations and sug- 
gestions that they had made. No one would be given this 
much space by the great historian of surgery unless he had 
done work that justified the distinction. 
In the nineteenth century the Italians have at least main- 
tained their reputation for great work in surgery, and some 
of the surgeons’ names that are best known by those familiar 
with the history of surgery are Italians. 
Among the great surgeons of the end of the nineteenth 
century of Italian origin was Bassini, whose wonderfully 
well planned operation for the radical cure of hernia came 
to be known and practiced all over the world. It was a 
masterpiece of technique and probably did more than any 
other to make it clear to the surgeons of the world that 
their patients did not need to carry round with them hernia 
that were dangerous as well as uncomfortable, but that they 
might be cured and the cure be genuinely radical, so that 
there would almost never be a relapse. Another one of the 
great Italian surgeons of our time was Durante who was 
one of the pioneers in the important department of the 
surgery of the central nervous system. His contributions 
attracted the attention of the world and set many a sub- 
sequent successful worker in this field to the task of develop- 
ing nerve surgery. The Italians of our generation have the 
merit of literally creating the surgery of the heart. The 
stiletto rather than the revolver is the favorite weapon of 
the Italian bravo and that has given an opportunity to see 
and treat successfully many wounds of the heart, until it is 
universally recognized that not only a heart wound is not 
necessarily fatal, but that there are wounds of other organs 
such as the liver for instance that are much more serious. 
In spite of the impression that surgery is modern then, 
and mainly due to great workers in this department in 
western Europe this review of the work of Italian surgeons 
made not from vague traditions, but from actual text books, 
shows very clearly that there have been distinguished Italian SURGERY 
contributors to surgery in every century since the twelfth. 
The surprise is to find how many valuable advances have 
been made in surgery that have afterwards been forgotten 
or relegated to neglect because the men of a particular 
generation became interested in some new theory or because 
political and martial disturbances suppressed interest for 
the time being and necessitated a fresh start. Even the 
brief account given here will, I think make it very clear that 
the world’s debt to Italy for surgery is by no means the 
least important of the phases of civilization’s indebtedness 
to the Italians. MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
ITALY has given birth to more men who have influenced 
mankind deeply and widely and whose personalities have 
impressed themselves more profoundly on the actual lives 
of the men and women not only of their own generations, but 
of many subsequent generations than any other country in 
the world, not even excepting Greece. These men have ex- 
erted the highest influnce of all kinds on their fellows. They 
have been painters, architects, sculptors, musicians, to whom 
their fellows down the centuries have ever recurred, writers 
in poetry and in prose, whose works have been sources of 
inspiration and incentive in all countries, but besides this 
they have been statesmen, lawmakers, educators, scholars 
in every department, whose work has lived after them and 
above all they have been saints, social workers, philosophers, 
diplomatists, rulers, explorers whose lives are still written 
because other times have reawakened to their significance. 
In a word Italians have made exemplary achievements in 
every phase of human activity and the effect of their example 
is still felt. 
There has but rarely been a century in modern times 
when some native of Italy has not been attracting world 
wide attention and his work shaping the destiny or touching 
the hearts of the men of his time. In many centuries there 
has been a whole series of Italians, well known beyond the 
bounds of their own country, and recognized generally as 
doing the most significant work in the particular department 
to which their talent attracted them. Not a few of these 
have been supreme geniuses, unexcelled in their work by 
any one, seldom even rivalled. Not only is this true more- MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
over for the men of Italy, but it is true also for the women. 
In nearly every century there has been one or more distin- 
guished Italian women deeply impressing their characters 
and personalities on their time and doing work that has not 
been nor will it be forgotten. Their careers are of such 
import that a special chapter is needed for them; only after 
very careful selection and compression can even a few of 
the greatest of the men be mentioned here. 
Above all Italians have stamped their personalities on 
their own and subsequent generations and have deeply in- 
fluenced men simply by their force of character and their 
outlook upon life itself, without any of the significant 
material or intellectual achievements usually considered 
necessary to secure an enduring place in history. To take 
first the men who have influenced mankind in the direction 
of happiness by the simplification of existence. Italy is 
particularly rich in those who have brought home to men 
an understanding of genuine values in life. After all the 
centuries of human history the besetting fault of the race 
is still its failure to see the real meaning of life in terms of 
happiness. Happiness consists in the satisfaction of human 
desires. The more desires that remain unsatisfied the less 
of happiness there is. There are two ways then of striving 
after human happiness, one by persistent efforts for the 
satisfaction of desires, which multiply however, just in 
accordance as they are indulged; the other by pruning 
desires and so leaving the ratio between the satisfied and 
unsatisfied wishes of humanity smaller than it would be 
before. human happiness equals what we have got 
divided by what we want. Dividing the denominator of 
human wants is much easier than multiplying the numerator 
of acquisitions. 
Two great Italians with an interval of over five hundred 
years between them, Benedict of Nursia and Francis of 
Assisi, influenced mankind deeply and enduringly in this 
second direction. The first was Benedict who in the 
midst of the turmoil and political disturbance of the sixth 
309 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
and seventh centuries founded a series of retreats in which 
men might find peace and an approach to happiness by 
simplicity of life. He made men understand when that 
understanding was sadly needed how much happiness de- 
pended on the lopping off of desires rather than the attempt 
to satisfy them. Above all he taught the men of his time 
when they needed such knowledge very much, the dignity of 
manual labor and showed that man being body and soul, 
since only proper exercise of body would keep him healthy, 
even manual labor had its place in a happy life. Perhaps 
never has the ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body been 
so well cultivated as under the rule of this Italian of the 
early middle ages. 
Benedict is one of the great souls of the world’s history 
whose foundation has lived on after him, for nearly a millen- 
nium and a half. The Rule that he made for his order has 
been often praised as representing a wonderful development 
of human legislation. The largeness of view that enabled 
him to see the possibilities of the monastic life also for women 
and which influenced him to help his sister in the organization 
of the Benedictine nuns is of itself the best possible evidence 
of his broad sympathetic humanity. His institute preserved 
to a great extent for the after time the old classics, because 
it provided permanent homes for libraries, encouraged book 
collecting and furnished faithful copyists who multiplied 
books for all of Europe. But his foundation was as far as 
possible from being a mere foster mother of book learning, 
even though by that term is meant mainly the precious ancient 
classics. During the Middle Ages his great monasteries be- 
came centres of industry of all kinds, though particularly of 
agriculture. But they also provided for food distribution, 
built docks and quays and even vessels, arranged for the im- 
provement of stock and the diversification of crops, organized 
forestry and made the wilderness smile as a garden. The 
peasants who lived on monastery land were proverbially the 
happiest and it was a common saying “it is well to live under 
310 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
the crozier” that is as the tenant of a monastery or convent, 
under the rule of an abbot or abbess. 
When President Goodell of the Agricultural College of 
Massachusetts made his inaugural address at that institution 
some tweny years ago he recalled attention to the fact that 
the monasteries of the middle ages had been the first agri- 
cultural schools. They not only taught the tenants of the 
monastery lands how to farm to ever better and better 
advantage, but they improved the various crops by experi- 
ment and consultation with each other, they exchanged seeds 
and blooded stock, they drained marsh lands and subsoiled 
mountainous tracts which were so often given them because 
they were of no use to anyone else, they irrigated arid areas, 
dyked the sea and made gardens smile where there had been 
nothing but desert spots or sea swamps before. 
England as “the garden of the world” owes more to the 
Benedictines and to other monastic institutions founded 
under the inspiration of Benedict’s influence than to any 
other single factor. When one stands above Lincoln Cathe- 
dral, itself a monument to monastic architectural genius, 
and looks out over what he is told is the Fen Country, and 
sees how it blooms, the visitor is likely to wonder why it is 
called the Fen Country. A fen is a sea swamp. It was 
here, however, in the midst of the sea marshes of the earlier 
centuries that at York and Lincoln and many another place 
great monastic institutions were built up which drained the 
salt swamps and in the course of time made this the garden 
spot of the world. In his book on the Ruined Abbeys of 
Great Britain, Ralph Adams Cram, our American architect, 
has called attention to how much the monasteries did, not 
only for architecture and for the marvelous development of 
the arts and crafts, but also for the encouragement of trade, 
for the proper distribution of food stuffs to the people, for 
import and export, for the training of workmen, for all 
manner of trades and crafts, for the establishment of fairs 
and markets and in general for the facilitation of human 
intercourse in times when such developments were very 
311 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
sadly needed. Only for the monasteries at which one could 
stop for the night or for several days, travel would have been 
almost impossible throughout Europe and that intercourse 
which meant so much for the diffusion of culture would 
have been almost impossible. All of this we owe to Bene- 
dict’s foundation of a monastery down in Italy with a great 
living idea in it which was to develop and mean ever so 
much for subsequent generations. 
The Benedictines are still very much alive doing their 
good work in literally every country in the civilized world 
and many of the uncivilized regions nearly fifteen hundred 
years after Benedict’s death and it looks as though the 
influence of this great Italian of the sixth century is never 
to die unless there shall come some cataclysmic change in our 
present order of civilization. Some of the members of the 
order during the past hundred years have been among the 
most influential scholarly men of our modern time. 
After Benedict in time, though perhaps not in the 
breadth and surely not in the depth of his influence over 
men of his own and the long after time, is his compatriot and 
brother founder of a religious order, Francis of Assisi, one 
of the most influential of the Italians of all ages. We are 
coming to appreciate this very thoroughly in our genera- 
tion when Francis has attracted world wide attention more 
than ever before. Probably the last thought that would 
have come to him in his life time would be any idea of fame 
or of his influence living on. He made a discovery for him- 
self as to the true meaning of life and put it into practice 
in spite of the misunderstandings of many around him and 
after a time he found that many others were fascinated by 
his discovery and wanted to share his enjoyment of it. 
They asked to come and live their lives with him and after 
a while the women pleaded to be allowed to live such lives 
also, and the consequence was the beginning of a social move- 
ment of great significance which has lasted down to our time 
and has shaped the lives of more people than almost any 
other and strange though it may seem is shaping them even 
312 CHRIST (MICHELANGELO) MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
at the present time. Sordid and practical though our age 
may he it has found time and attention to devote to St. 
Francis and he has been more written about than almost any 
other in the last two generations. 
Francis was a merchant’s son in the little hill town of 
Assisi, born not long after his father went on a commercial 
journey to France and hence called Francisco, the French- 
man. His father was rather wealthy, as things went at 
Assisi and young Francis had a pleasant, lively time, even 
according to his own confession, sowing some wild oats, 
probably in a very mild way. In his early twenties he fell 
ill of a severe disease from which it was thought for a time 
he could not recover. This sobered him to thoughts of the 
real meaning of life and gave opporunity for introspection 
and restrospection. Dean Stanley in our time under similar 
conditions once said “Life looks very different when viewed 
from the horizontal,” and especially is this likely to he true 
if one is persuaded that one may never view it from the 
vertical again. Francis came to the conclusion that life 
lived for selfish satisfactions or the accumulation of passing 
material things was a delusion. He realized that men in 
their quest of happiness strive to satisfy their desires, but 
as these increase in number in a direct ratio to their satis- 
faction, happiness grows more distant. He determined to 
seek happiness by putting off the desire for many things 
for himself and thinking mainly of others. He took “the 
Lady Poverty” for a bride and earned his daily bread by 
simple manual labor, but did not disdain to accept alms when 
his simple teaching of those around him occupied him. 
Strange as it may seem to our sophisticated generation the 
young men of the neighborhood, attracted by his simple 
idyllic life so full of the contemplation of the beauties of 
nature as expressed in his wonderful Hymn to the Creatures, 
and yet so satisfying in its sympathy for others, asked to 
join him. He received them as companions of his pilgrimage 
through life and the little company became a group of 
Franciscans. He preached to the people lessons of brotherly 
313 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
love and helpfulness, precepts of forgetfulness of self, and 
lessened preoccupation with the passing things around them, 
but when people were not ready to listen he preached to the 
birds and to the fishes and such was his gentleness of spirit 
that men came to think of him as almost more than human 
and surely sharing the divine in human nature more than 
others. It is not surprising then that he was able to settle 
the feuds of the neighborhood, to bring people together to 
give a new view point to his generation, to arouse men from 
sordid living to what was higher and nobler in them and to 
make life much happier for a great many people. 
Assisi was a quite unimportant town in Italy at this time 
and this was the Middle Ages. It would seem beyond per- 
adventure that a man who lived his life out in this little 
hill city, despised money, dressed in the meanest of clothes 
and accepted alms, who because of his singularity was con- 
sidered for a time at the beginning of his career at least 
somewhat in the way we now look upon the harmless 
wanderer without the conventional sense of getting-on in 
life, likely to he thought of as a tramp, and to be pitied 
rather than admired, could scarcely hope to impress himself 
deeply on future generations, and yet Francis’ simple life 
so close to the heart of things and close to the heart of 
nature not only drew men and women to him in his own time, 
but has attracted some of the best of mankind to him ever 
since, whenever his career was called to their attention. 
Perhaps there has been more written about Francis and his 
work than any man who ever lived, except Dante and one 
or two of the great poets, and Dante prided himself on being 
a Franciscan. Nor has all this writing been done merely by 
Italians or even by Franciscans, hut all manner of people 
entirely out of sympathy with Francis’ religious views have 
bowed down before the poem that he made his life. In our 
day such divergent thinkers as Matthew Arnold, Ernest 
Renan and Paul Sabatier have been ardent worshippers at the 
shrine of Francis’ poetic genius. 
His Franciscans have not only lived but have spread all 
314 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
over the world and are still doing magnificent work. When- 
ever they have departed far from his spirit of detachment 
from everything they have failed to some extent at least in 
their great purpose of making people more Christ-like, which 
was the supreme idea of Francis’ life, and whenever they 
have been most faithful they have accomplished wonders. 
Few men have ever lived who had such a wide and far 
reaching influence as this “little poor man of God” of Assisi, 
il poverello di Dio, as he loved to call himself, so that it is 
little wonder that whole libraries have been written about him 
and his work. Poets and painters have paid their tribute to 
him, sculptors and architects have studied his career with 
almost infinite patience in order to be able to illustrate it in 
great works of art, and the tributes of the world’s finest intel- 
lects have been at his feet in every country in Europe. When- 
ever men think seriously about the significance of life and 
especially about the comparative triviality of the passing show 
around them, Francis is almost sure to become a favorite sub- 
ject of study with them. 
He was scarcely dead before his fame spread far and 
wide. King Louis of France admired him deeply and paid 
a personal visit to one of his companions, Brother Giles, the 
simple hearted, in order to hear more of him. Queen Eliza- 
beth of Hungary, that charming character who attracted all 
hearts to herself in South Germany, was glad to count herself 
a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, that is of those 
of his disciples who, living in the world and in the ordinary 
relationships of married life, still strive by detachment from 
the things around them to be as poor in spirit as if they 
possessed nothing, and to realize that they are only stewards 
of whatever they may possess for the benefit of others. Great 
scholars and poets like Dante and Giotto enrolled themselves 
among the Franciscans of this Third Order in the generation 
after Francis’ death. Meantime the Friars Minor came to 
occupy commanding places in the universities. Men of such 
imperishable fame as Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Roger 
Bacon represent the scholarship of the Franciscans of the 
315 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
century after his death. Francis himself had gone to the 
Holy Land, his Franciscans went as missionaries everywhere. 
In a generation after Francis ’ death one of them had travelled 
in the far East and another of them in the near East, one of 
them had entered Lhasa, the holy city of Thibet, which was 
not to he entered again by Europeans until our own time. 
Always it was the spirit of their father Francis that helped 
them in their trials and hardships and enabled them to bear 
everything and accomplish all they could for the benefit of 
others. 
Francis’ devotion to the Lady Poverty is the keynote to 
his life. It would seem as though ‘ ‘ that sort of thing ’ ’ with 
its medieval mysticism and vague impracticality could have 
very little appeal to the people of a very practical time like 
ours, yet more than a score of lives of St. Francis, not count- 
ing translations, have been issued in our generation. Most 
of them have been translated into several languages. Many 
of them represent real labors of love on the part of their 
writers, distinct contributions to literature. They have at- 
tracted wide attention and there is a striking renewal of 
interest in St. Francis’ life and work. Some of this is due 
to the fact that he was a great poet. His Hymn to The Crea- 
tures was declared by men of such a different temper of mind 
from his own as Matthew Arnold and Renan to be an epoch- 
making contribution to literature and one of the greatest 
of poems. What is memorable, however, is the poem he made 
out of his life which has been the loving study of poetic souls 
ever since. His career and his subsequent fame are living 
illustrations of how when a man tries to forget himself the 
world will never willingly forget him. Self forgetfulness is 
so rare and so precious that men cherish it, though they may 
not understand it, and may prove utterly unsympathetic to 
it during the life of the individual, they come to recognize 
its true worth and to set it up for emulation and imitation 
in the aftertime. 
Two men who, following in the footsteps of St. Francis 
in the Franciscan order, accomplished a great good work by 
316 MEN OF WOULD INFLUENCE 
very simple means are those whom we have come to know in 
the modern time as Bernardino of Siena and Bernardino of 
Feltre. Bernardino of Siena is one of the most popular of 
Italian saints, a favorite figure for both painters and sculp- 
tors. This is the test of popularity in the best sense of the 
term, for the painters themselves and their patrons were try- 
ing to secure ideals for their pictures. He frequently finds a 
place in della Robbia groups and a series of pictures of his 
life was made, because of the exemplary value of his activities, 
for Ara Coeli in Rome by Pinturicchio. Bernardino deeply 
influenced the men and women of his time and above all suc- 
ceeded in making a great many of his generation more thought- 
ful of others and of the sufferings of the poor, and first sug- 
gested the idea afterwards developed by his brother Francis- 
can, Bernardino of Feltre of institutions for loaning money 
to the poor in times of need. His sermons were sometimes 
three hours long, and yet people crowded to them and listened 
with wrapt attention. How practical his preaching was will 
be best realized from the fact that his appeals for the appease- 
ment of the bitter, even mortal feuds so common in Italy often 
moved people to do very wonderful things in overcoming 
enmities of long years duration, while his sermons on charity 
aroused all their better natures. 
To Blessed Bernardino of Feltre, another of the great 
Franciscans of the fifteenth century is due the organization 
of Monti di Pieta — mons in Latin meant an accumulation 
of wealth or money and hence came to refer to a lending 
institution of any kind — and the montes pietatis were char- 
itable lending houses. It is easy to understand how much 
they meant for the immediate necessities of the poor without 
any tendency to pauperization of them. Only a genius could 
have appreciated the many details of the work by which it 
might be made helpful and -organized its administration. 
Hence Bernardino has been highly honored, and now in our 
time that the organization of charity has been taken up again, 
the memory of his deeds and of the inspiration of St. Ber- 
nardino of Siena is coming int-o deserved recognition once 
317 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
more. Many times since in many countries these ideas have 
been fruitful. 
Any mention of Franciscans whose work has lived after 
them almost like that of their great father, Francis, would 
be incomplete without a reference to Anthony of Padua, one 
of the early Franciscans. He was the first teacher in theology 
in the order, but he is more famous as a preacher and as a 
wonder worker in social life. The effect of his words on those 
around him was so great that he was able to bring about the 
correction of all sorts of social evils and to alleviate social 
abuses. Family feuds that had lasted for generations were 
appeased under his pleading, the poor were taken care of, 
injustices were corrected, restitutions made and scandals re- 
paired. Through his influence the municipality of Padua, 
March 15, 1231, passed a law relieving debtors who could not 
pay their debts of the necessity of spending their lives in 
prison. As the result of a brief life, for he was only thirty- 
six when he died, Anthony had succeeded in bringing about 
a noteworthy correction of the three most obstinate vices 
•of the time, luxury, avarice and tyranny. A magnificent 
church in his honor was erected in Padua where his remains 
are treasured. It is one of the most famous shrines of Chris- 
tendom and Anthony of Padua is still honored all over the 
world, and as the result of movements initiated by him social 
organizations for charitable work of all kinds still exist all 
over the world, and statues of him are to be found in most of 
the churches of America at the present day. 
Contemporary with St. Francis was an Italian church- 
man whose life lived at the very opposite pole to that of St. 
Francis, who had even more influence at the time and whose 
work has continued to be ever since a notable factor in the 
social life of Europe. This was Giovanni Lothario Conti 
whom history knows as Innocent III, Pope from 1198 to 1216. 
Virchow in a well known passage of his essay on the history 
of hospitals, has told the story of Pope Innocent’s relations to 
the solution of Europe’s social problems during a trying 
period, in terms that are more emphatic than anything that 
318 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
anyone else less well informed than he would dare to use. 
Almost needless to add Virchow, so far from being a papis- 
tically minded individual was rather the contrary, so that his 
tribute carries all the more weight. 
“The main factor decisive in influencing the world and 
arousing the interest of the people of the time in the hospitals 
of the Holy Ghost was the Papal enthusiasm in the matter. 
The beginning of their history is connected with the name of 
that Pope, who made the boldest and farthest-reaching attempt 
to gather the sum of human interests into the organization of 
the Catholic Church. The hospitals of the Holy Ghost were 
one of the many means by which Innocent III thought to bind 
humanity to the Holy See. And surely it was one of the most 
effective. Was it not calculated to create the most profound 
impression, to see how the mighty Pope who humbled emper- 
ors and deposed kings, who was the unrelenting adversary of 
the Albigenses, turned his eyes sympathetically upon the 
poor and sick, sought the helpless and neglected on the streets, 
and saved the illegitimate children from death in the waters ? 
There is something conciliating and fascinating in the fact 
that at the very same time at which the fourth crusade was 
inaugurated through his influence, the thought of founding 
a great organization of an essentially humane character, which 
was eventually to extend throughout all Christendom, was 
also taking form in his soul; and that in the same year (1204) 
in which the new Latin Empire was founded in Constanti- 
nople, the newly erected hospital of the Holy Spirit, by the old 
bridge on the other side of the Tiber, was blessed and dedi- 
cated as the future centre of this organization.”* 
Pope Innocent is probably more misunderstood than most 
of the popes, but it has ever been the fate of greatness to 
fail of understanding in the eyes of lesser mortals. He is 
often cited as an example of the pretensions of the Papacy, 
* Virchow’s article on the German hospitals is to he found m Gie second 
vircnow s . . pSgavs on Public Medicine and the History of 
EnXmics which is? unfortunately! not translated into English so far as I 
know but will have to be consulted in the original Gesammelte Abhandlungen 
aSs dem olbiet der Oeffentlichen Medicin und der Seuchenlehre von Rudolph 
Virchow, Berlin, 1879. August Hirschwald. 
319 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
but the more one knows of his career and what he succeeded 
in accomplishing, the less thought is there of any personal 
ambition of the man or of his pretensions as a ruler, and the 
more of his great unselfish striving to make life happier for 
mankind. He compelled the French monarch to take back 
as his wife Ingeborga, whom he had married from the Scan- 
dinavian countries, and whom since he had become enamored 
of a younger, handsomer woman, he thought he could put 
away with impunity because she had no powerful friends. He 
interfered actively in the political troubles in England, pro- 
tecting King John against the exaggerated claims of his barons 
and the people from royal and baronial authority, but he 
thought much more of what Christianity could accomplish 
for the people than for the aggrandisement of the papacy or 
his own personal satisfaction. He had noted the suffering 
of the ailing poor and organized the famous Santo Spirito 
Hospital at Rome, calling to help him for that purpose Guy 
of Montpelier, who had made the finest hospital in Europe 
down there, and then every Bishop who came to Rome for his 
official visit was enjoined to organize a hospital like it in his 
diocese. Until the religious revolution of the sixteenth cen- 
tury came to confiscate foundations made for the poor, disturb 
the religious -orders and obliterate the charitable institutions 
of the preceding time, the influence of Pope Innocent’s work 
continued to be felt all over Europe. It still lives in almost 
innumerable institutions, for Virchow was able to trace most 
of the hospitals of Germany back to foundations of hospitals 
of the Holy Ghost, for which Innocent III is ultimately respon- 
sible. What was true in Germany was true also in the other 
countries in Europe. 
As for the man himself his profound little book of spirit- 
ual philosophy -on the contempt of the world, De Contemptu 
Mundi, which is still often read not only by those interested 
in spirituality but also by those attracted by the literature 
of personal philosophy, must be taken as the best revelation 
of the character of the man. In subsequent centuries because 
of this well known effort in this mode of letters, that master- 
320 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
piece of spiritual pholosophy The Imitation of Christ was 
attributed to Innocent III by many, though as we now know 
not on good grounds. To those who knew him personally 
Innocent was looked up to as one of the gentlest, kindliest of 
men, and the most sympathetic of friends. He is in every way 
worthy of the great spirits of the thirteenth century, a fitting 
contemporary or forerunner of men and women like St. Fran- 
cis, St. Dominic, St. Louis, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas 
Aquinas, St. Clare and St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who in the 
thirteenth century impressed themselves deeply not only upon 
their own generation, but lived so close to the heart of human 
nature that serious thinkers in all generations have turned 
to them in sympathetic reverence and admiration. 
Pope Innocent is but one of a series of Italian Popes 
who exerted a broad influence on the world of their time, and 
the work of some of them has lived on even to our time. They 
were among the greatest administrators of the world’s history. 
The Italian Popes include such names as Gregory VII, Hilde- 
brand, born in Tuscany, whose genius for administration has 
placed him deservedly among the world’s greatest men and 
whose career is a wonderful example of the power of the 
human spirit to lift itself above obstacles of all kinds, and 
succeed in accomplishing great results in spite of what would 
seem to ordinary men insurmountable opposition. The son 
of a poor man, in his own younger days a swineherder, he suc- 
ceeded in reforming the abuses that threatened Christianity 
because of the determined, ever repeated effort of secular 
rulers to keep the Church in subjection to the civil govern- 
ment. Eventually the German emperor had to submit and 
come in penitential garb and spirit to Can-ossa, and Gregory 
was able to formulate a policy for the Church that has main- 
tained itself and has done more to keep secular abuses out of 
Christianity than anything that ever was done. He ascended 
the Papal throne with fear and trembling that he would not be 
able t-o accomplish the great reforms that he saw necessary, 
but he succeeded beyond all expectations. Like all really 
great men he has been profoundly misunderstood. It is an 
321 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
index of his greatness, but there is no doubt of the breadth 
and depth and enduring quality of his influence. 
It would be quite impossible in the brief space at our 
command to give a list of the famous Italian popes who 
stamped their personality so deeply on their own time that 
its impress has lasted on all the generations since. Some 
idea of the place in history of the Popes born in Italy may 
be given in very brief form by taking even the Popes of the 
name of Gregory, whose influence is still felt in the after time. 
The first Pope of the name Gregory the Great, Saint and Doc- 
tor of the Church ‘ ‘ is certainly one of the most notable figures 
in ecclesiastical history. He has exercised in many respects 
a momentous influence on the doctrine, the organization and 
the discipline of the Catholic Church.” (F. H. Dudden, 
Gregory the Great.) He reformed the Roman Liturgy, and 
had much to do with the introduction of Plain Chant which 
for that reason is often called Gregorian. He is perhaps even 
more famous in the aftertime for having sent St. Augustine 
to England for the conversion of the English. When he be- 
came pope the patrimony of the Church had become very 
large because of gifts and accumulations, and living at a time 
when widespread disaster from floods, pestilence and famine 
affected Italy, he emptied the treasury of the Church for those 
in need. 
The next Gregory, 715-731, aroused Christendom to the 
Moslem danger and resisted the innovations especially with 
regard to images which the Eastern emperors were trying to 
introduce into the Church. Pope Gregory VII has been men- 
tioned. Gregory IX was one of the very prominent men of 
his time and that that very great time, the Thirteenth Cen- 
tury, who came to occupy an important place in the life of one 
of the world’s most significant eras. It was he who raised St. 
Francis of Assisi, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Dominic and St. 
Elizabeth of Hungary to the dignity of sainthood, and thus 
gave a great impetus to social work and education for the 
poor. Pope Gregory X was another one of the great Popes 
of the thirteenth century, and he accomplished much in set- 
322 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
tling the factional wars in Italy and in bringing about a union 
between the Eastern and Western Churches, though for poli- 
tical reasons it did not last long. Pope Gregory XI brought 
the papacy back from Avignon to Rome. Pope Gregory XIII 
is famous for securing the correction of the calendar. Pope 
Gregory XIV has now come to be a prominent figure for us 
in the United States, because in 1591 he ordered reparation 
to be made to the Indians of the Phillippines by their con- 
querors wherever it was possible, and commanded under pain 
of excommunication that all Indian slaves in the Islands 
should be set free. Pope Gregory XY reformed the mode of 
electing to the Papacy, created the permanent congregation 
of the Propaganda to which was given control of all foreign 
missions. This is the greatest missionary society in the history 
of the wmrld, whose work has been so quietly done that it is 
only now coming to be properly appreciated. Gregory suc- 
ceeded in arbitrating some extremely difficult political prob- 
lems in his time and in several instances averted what seemed 
inevitable wars. Appreciation for his services as arbitrator 
led to presents of books and manuscripts which greatly en- 
riched the Vatican library. 
If mention of distinguished Popes bearing other names, 
as for instance Leo, of whom there were thirteen, or Pius (ten) 
or John (twenty-three) or Benedict (fifteen) most of whom 
were born in Italy, were to be made, a whole volume would 
be needed, to treat, even cursorily, of their great influence on 
their generation. At least as large a proportion of them as of 
the Gregories would be found to have been men of distinction 
whose personalities impressed themselves for good on their 
own generation as well as on many of those which followed. 
Many of them initiated movements of various kinds or 
encouraged the extension of them in such a way that these still 
continue to be of very great service to mankind. Pope Leo I 
for instance, known as the Great, turned Attila back from 
devastating Italy, and was a patron of the arts to whom we 
owe much, and a doctor of the Church, while the last of the 
323 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
name was Leo XIII of precious memory, and one of the Leos 
was Pope Leo X whose name is famous in the age of Leo X. 
One of the great Italians who belongs to the world almost 
more than he belongs to Italy itself is Lorenzo de’ Medici, 
whom historians have ventured to call Lorenzo the Magni- 
ficent. It is not usually realized that Lorenzo and his family 
held no formal office in Florence, at least until after the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth century, yet they practically ruled 
the city by their genius for administration and the many 
friends they made because of their evident good purpose to 
benefit their fellow citizens. Lorenzo was only twenty when, 
on the death in 1469 of his father Piero, known as Pater 
Patriae because of his benefactions to his native city, he suc- 
ceeded to the immense wealth and political power of his fam- 
ily. Lorenzo died when he was scarcely more than forty, and 
yet he had proved such a magnificent and munificent patron 
of arts and letters, and such a source of incentive and encour- 
agement for artists and scholars and literary men, that his 
name will forever be associated with the fame of the men whom 
he helped to make their careers. Roscoe’s great life of 
Lorenzo The Magnificent, is the historical tribute that made 
the Western world appreciate him properly. Some of his 
own writing in prose and poetry shows that he was much more 
than a mere politician or even a statesman, he was a serious 
thinker of good taste and scholarship, a poet of no mean rank 
even among Italian poets, and an appreciative critical con- 
noisseur of beauty in all its modes of expression among men. 
His second son, Giovanni de’ Medici, who became Pope 
as Leo X in 1513, worthily carried on the tradition of his 
family so that the great period of the later Renaissance used 
to be spoken of as the Age of Leo X. Until a century ago 
this was considered one of the great epochs in the intellec- 
tual and artistic history of the world, an era of achievement 
in arts and letters worthy to be placed beside the Periclean 
age at Athens or the Augustan in Rome. Against this exag- 
geration of favorable estimation there came, as might be ex- 
pected, a reaction which led to over depreciation. This has 
324 MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
now been yielding to saner criticism during the past gener- 
ation and we are beginning to recognize the Age of Leo X 
once more as indeed a very great period of human history, 
worthy of the study and admiration of the men of every gen- 
eration in every country. Besides his patronage of arts and 
letters Pope Leo X did much to solve political problems in 
Italy by expelling the petty tyrants from the ecclesiastical 
states and making it possible for Perugia, Sinigaglia, Fermo, 
Parma and Piacenza to have liberal government. 
An Italian who deeply impressed himself on the men 
of his time and has occupied no little attention in the edu- 
cated world at least, in the after time even more so than in 
the past generations, is Jerome Savonarola who was put to 
death at Florepce in May, 1498, at the age of 46. He was a 
member of the Dominican Order, distinguished for his care 
for others, his self denial and his piety. His preaching won 
many new members to the Order and the example of his 
own life of strict mortification, while he lived in a small, 
poor cell on simple, scanty food, dressed in coarse clothing, 
added weight to his words. When he preached in that city 
of ample churches, no Church was large enough to hold his 
audiences. His success may be judged from the story of 
the great reformation in the morals of Florence which has 
come down to us. Unfortunately political motives, actuated 
some of his followers and political disturbances in Florence 
hampered his work. He brought about a great social re- 
form, but political complications caused his condemnation to 
death. It gave him the prestige of a martyr, however, and 
heightened and deepened his influence so that there are few 
men with regard to whom more has been written than this 
martyred Dominican. His influence did much to prevent 
the deterioration of Christian ideals, which was taking place 
under the stress of pagan teachings in connection with the 
New Learning in his time. One of the greatest of modern 
Popes is said to have declared that one of the first of the 
immortals he hoped to greet in heaven was Savonarola and 
one of the first of earthly mysteries he hoped to have solved 
325 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
for him was the condemnation of so saintly a character at 
the hands of ecclesiastics. 
Another of the great Italians of influence that was pro- 
found in his own time and has lived on so that it promises 
to be undying is Philip Romolo Neri who is better known as 
St. Philip Neri. His place in our world of today will per- 
haps be best appreciated by the average man from the fact 
that Cardinal Newman loved to call him his “beloved 
Father Philip” though their lives were 300 years and their 
environments 1,000 miles apart. Such distinguished Eng- 
lish literary men as Father Faber, the poet, Father Bowden, 
the Dante scholar, and Cardinal Newman’s great friend, 
Father Ryder, were members of the Oratorians, that is the 
religious order founded by St. Philip. They tried in the 
later nineteenth century as far as possible to model their 
lives on that of their loved founder. Like St. Francis of 
Assisi, he had profound contempt for worldly possessions. 
When as a young man he was shown his pedigree for he 
was of noble descent, he tore it up. The burning of his 
father’s house left him unconcerned. After this, he became 
associated with a cousin in business and applied himself 
with so much industry and success that his relative wished 
to give him a partnership and make him his heir. Philip, 
like our American Thoreau, felt, however, that he did not 
“have time to make money.” He made his way to Rome in 
absolute poverty, in order to help others. He became a tutor 
for a time and deeply influenced everyone with whom he 
came in contact by his quiet, gentle ways, his supreme 
thoughtfulness for others and his forgetfulness of himself 
in his readiness to take trouble for the benefit of others. 
He occupied some of his leisure in visiting the hospitals 
and before long there gathered around him a group of 
young men who shared his self appointed task. He invited 
a number of them to his room and helped to provide occupa- 
tion of mind and entertainment for them, apart from the 
allurements of the city life around them. He became a close 
friend of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and not 
326 FILIPPINO LIPPI, MADONNA WITH FOUR SAINTS MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
a few of St. Philip’s young friends entered this new order. 
After a time he gathered round him a group of men who 
came to be known with the simplicity characteristic of their 
founder, as the Brotherhood of The Little Oratory. The main 
purpose of this was to interest young men and boys in the bet- 
ter things of life. His next foundation was the Confraternity 
of the Most Holy Trinity whose purpose was to care for 
pilgrims and strangers in the city and for convalescents. 
Philip simply gave himself up to these works of helpfulness 
for others and won all hearts by his sincere and kindly ways. 
He was thirty-six years of age before he would consent 
to become a priest, and then devoted all his time to prayer 
and the care of others. All his morning hours were taken 
with hearing confessions, receiving the confidences of those 
in trouble, giving advise and assistance as needed, All his 
afternoons were spent with young men and boys, interesting 
himself in their amusements, helping them by his council 
and above all lifting them up to what was the highest in 
them. Few men have ever been so deeply loved by those 
around them as Philip Neri. He came to be known through- 
out Rome as the dear Father Philip. The Little Brotherhood 
of The Oratory, so called because their original meeting 
place was St. Philip’s little room called the Oratory, now 
expanded, and there gathered around him a group of schol- 
ars, preachers, organizers of social improvement of all kinds, 
who accomplished ever so much good. It was of this brother- 
hood, called the Oratorians, that John Henry Newman be- 
came a member some 300 years later and found a congenial 
sphere for his life work in the Catholic Church. Among 
the early Oratorians were such men as Baronius, the great 
Church historian, one of the greatest scholars of the time 
(see chapter Italian Scholarship), Bozio Tommaso the author 
of many learned works and others well known to the Italians 
at least. 
Literally dozens of lives of St. Philip Neri have been 
written and his institute lives on in spite of the vicissitudes 
of time, suppression under Napoleon, spoliation by the WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
government, with its work ever successful just in proportion to 
the imitation of the spirit of dear Father Philip. He came 
to be known as “the lovable saint” and while his life is full 
of self denial and prayer, the supremely noteworthy feature 
of it is his utter devotion to others and forgetfulness of 
self. 
A great friend of Philip Neri’s was another of the men 
whose influence seems destined not to die. At least it has 
lived on for something more than three centuries and is still 
a very living force. This was Charles Borromeo the Arch- 
bishop of Milan. His Father was Count Borromeo and his 
mother was Marguerite de Medici. Her younger brother 
was Giovanni Angelo, Cardinal De’Medici who became Pope 
in 1559 as Pius IV. After his studies at the University of 
Pavia, young Charles Borromeo showed that he had good 
business ability so that though he was the second son, his 
elder brother entrusted the fortunes of the house to him. 
His uncle when he became Pope, made him administrator of 
the Papal States. Here he showed his genius for adminis- 
tration. While occupying this important post and also at- 
tending to his family concerns, he was still able to give time 
to study and to recreations, he could play the lute and the 
violoncello and even found time and inclination to indulge 
occasionally in a game of ball. He was, as may be well 
imagined then, entirely human and eminently sympathetic 
to every human interest, but he gave himself with great earn- 
estness to whatever represented duty. He succeeded in 
bringing about a reassembling of the Council of Trent and 
suggested many of the reforms that were put into effect 
by the council. 
Above all he brought about the organization of religious 
instruction for both the clergy and the laity. He is recog- 
nized by all the world, Protestant as well as Catholic, as the 
first organizer of what are known as Sunday Schools and a 
tablet recording that fact is one of the surprises for the visi- 
tor to the Essex Unitarian Church, Kensington, London. 
Charles was made a Papal Legate and succeeded in his jour- MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
neys over Europe in bringing about reforms in many dioceses 
and churches. He was very much interested in music and 
brought about a much needed reform in Church music. He 
encouraged Palestrina and above all helped to retire from 
ecclesiastical use the figured music which rather distracted 
than served to aid in devotion. It had become quite impos- 
sible to understand what was said by the singers and condi- 
tions were getting worse, so that it looked almost as though 
music might have to be abandoned as an accessory of 
religious ceremonials, when Borromeo’s influence brought 
about the reform. 
In his own Archdiocese of Milan he introduced many 
reforms, organized charity, often visited the sick in the hos- 
pital himself, corrected abuses and encouraged that thought- 
ful care of others that meant so much. When the plague, the 
Black Death, that had so often ravaged Italy and caused 
such fearful mortality, appeared in Milan, Charles was ab- 
sent, but he returned to encourage his flock to visit the ailing 
and above all, to help people to put off the scare that had 
come over them as a consequence of their dread of the 
disease. Even many priests and physicians were preparing 
to flee from the city when Charles’ example touched them 
and his words encouraged them to remain and the conse- 
quence was that the city was able to fight the plague to 
much better advantage. 
His position in Europe came to be very remarkable. All 
the Popes under whom he lived, turned to him for advice 
and confided the most important offices to him. The sov- 
ereigns of Europe, Henry III of France particularly, and 
Philip II and Mary Queen of Scots, wrote many letters to 
him and showed how much they valued his influence. Car- 
dinal Baronius, the great Church historian, who knew him 
personally said that he was a second Ambrose. There are 
five volumes, octavo, of his works that are still read very 
faithfully by at least the clergy who are interested in the 
good of the Church. Catholic Seminaries for the instruction 
of priests, owe much to his genius for organization in educa- WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
tion and to the spirit that he infused into that work. It 
is in this and in the Sunday schools that his influence lives 
and that his name is mentioned over and over again now 
more than three centuries after his death. 
This volume is full of short sketches of the lives or 
references to the careers of other Italians whose word will 
probably never be permitted to die and who in every cen- 
tury have had an abiding influence. Italy’s fertility in great 
men did not stop with the Kenaissance. A period of de- 
cadence set in during which fewer great men made their 
appearance, but every century saw the birth of an Italian 
of world wide influence. After the great discoverers and 
explorers of the sixteenth century, came the pioneers in 
modern science of the seventeenth century, and the ground 
breakers in the biological as well as the physical sciences of 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Down to 
our own time, Italy has continued to produce men whose 
personalities were dominant in world affairs. 
One of the greatest of Italians in his influence on the 
world of his time, who changed the course of modern his- 
tory for a generation at least more than any other, was 
Napoleon Bonaparte. Ordinarily he is presumed to have 
been French, but of course his family name was not Bona- 
parte but Buonaparte. He was born in Corsica of the purest 
Italian stock. He is often thought of as merely a great 
military leader with a new formidable tactic by which he 
cut his ways through the armies of the rather slow-witted 
generals of his time. His military success enabled him to 
create an empire for himself on the ruins of the French 
Bepublic, which had theorized itself to pieces, and the old 
monarchies of Europe. He is, however, much more than 
this, a great administrator, a law maker of profound in- 
sight and knowledge of human nature, as the Code Napoleon 
testifies, a wonderful judge of men, an able writer of French, 
though it was his adopted tongue, a great organizer in edu- 
cation and a man who in every phase of life deeply impressed 
himself on the humanity of his time. His career began within MEN OF WORLD INFLUENCE 
a decade after Gibbon had declared that it was quite im- 
possible that anyone should ever again by military prowess 
create such an empire as Alexander had made for himself 
or be a miltary conqueror like Julius Caesar. Napoleon not 
only rudely overturned these prophesies of a man whose 
long occupation with history was presumed to have given 
him a right to an opinion in the matter, but he demon- 
strated that genius can at any time, even in ours, upset all 
the calculations of average men and carve out an apparently 
impossible career for itself in spite of what seem to other 
men insuperable obstacles. 
One of the most influential men of modern times was 
that distinguished Italian Pope Leo XIII. Few men more 
deeply influenced their generation. When he became Pope 
the papacy as the result of the civil disturbances in Italy 
and practical eonfinment of the Pope in the Vatican as a 
prisoner was considered to have lost its prestige to a great 
extent and indeed there were many quite ready to prophecy 
that it would never again attain the position of prominence 
that it had held for so long. Pope Leo lived to abrogate the 
very prevalent impression that no one would ever live to 
the years of Peter and at the time of his death was looked 
up to as one of the profound thinkers on all social and 
ecclesiastical questions, as one of the world’s greatest ad- 
ministrators, as a man whose irenic genius had won the 
respect and reverence of those not of the household of the 
faith and who was universally voted as one of the world’s 
greatest men in our time. His choice as arbitrator in the 
contention between Spain and Germany over the Caroline 
Islands showed very well the place that he had acquired for 
the Pope in the modern world. 
Some of his formal documents as Pope and especially 
his encyclicals are enduring monuments in the history of 
sociology and political science. His Latin poems stamp him 
as a man of real poetic genius with a marvelous command 
over the niceties and elegancies of the old Roman tongue. 
His restoration of Aquinas to the supreme place of honor WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
in Catholic colleges and universities is a tribute to his philos- 
ophic insight. His handling of all the thorny questions, 
social and ethical that came up for discussion during his 
long and troubled pontificate as enshrined in the Papal 
documents, reveal a man of thoroughly practical intellect 
and his writings are a monument to the breadth of his 
genius. 
When as an old man of ninety-three he came to die, 
there were tributes to him from all the great men of his 
time and there was scarcely an important pulpit in Christen- 
dom, even among those who did not acknowledge his spir- 
itual authority that failed to pay a reverend tribute to the 
saintly old man who for some thirty years had ruled the 
Christian world and under the most trying conditions suc- 
ceeded in securing for the Papacy the respect and admira- 
tion of mankind. Few men have ever been born at more 
trying times and yet have not only lived through them and 
weathered the storms, but have actually demonstrated that 
storms, instead of hindering, helped their progress. 
The claim then that Italy has produced more men of 
world influence whose personalities live on after their time 
than any other country can, I think, be taken as proven. 
At times other countries have produced men who influenced 
their own times more profoundly, but it is the enduring 
character of the achievement of the Italians, especially in 
the moral order as well as in the artistic and intellectual 
world that has made the debt of civilization to Italy for 
her great men and women so large. GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
TO THOSE who think of women as not allowed a proper 
chance for intellectual development before our time and 
above all as refused the opportunity for the higher education 
and hence deprived almost inevitably of any proper field 
for the exertion of their influence until now, it must seem 
as though at least in all that concerns feminine achievement 
Italy can have no special claims for credit due to it from 
civilization. As a matter of fact, however, there is no more 
striking contradiction of the utterly false though extremely 
prevalent impression that this is the first time that women 
have ever had the opportunity to develop their intellects 
than the fact that the story of the Great Women of Italy is 
an extremely difficult one to compress to the limit neces- 
sitated in such a work as this, and that there is bound to be 
a sense of inadequacy in any treatment of the subject within 
the narrow bounds necessarily set for a single chapter. In- 
deed as has ever been the case in history, the women of Italy 
quite measure up to the men of their country. They made 
lasting impressions on many generations and the influence 
of many of them is still a great living force in the world 
which we are only just beginning to appreciate properly in 
our time when woman has come into her rights in the Western 
countries. 
It is true that the Italian women have not often shown 
themselves capable of high intellectual or artistic accomplish- 
ment. Nowhere perhaps is it so well illustrated as in the 
history of Italian accomplishment that woman’s sphere is 
peculiarly ethical and man’s intellectual. Noble women 
have lifted men up to their highest achievement and above WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
all have helped those who most needed aid and have finely 
organized the means by which life was made ever so much 
more happy for almost countless numbers of people who 
would otherwise have been quite without happiness. The 
women whose names we know the best in Italy, are those 
who completely forgetting themselves were deeply thought- 
ful of others and especially of those who needed most that 
others should think and care for them. Italian women have 
above all maintained high ethical standards and under cir- 
cumstances that often made such maintenance extremely 
difficult have lifted their generation up to its best humani- 
tarian achievement. Great good women in Italy have been 
the inspiration of artists, the stimulus for those around them 
to do the best that was in them, the encouragers of active 
unselfishness and the finest illustrations of the goodness that 
lies deep in the heart of humanity. 
Indeed it is rather surprising that in the great awaken- 
ing of interest in everything feminine in our time, the story 
of the Italian women and their influence is not better known. 
Certain chapters of this history of feminine accomplishment 
have been, it is true, faithfully studied in recent years. The 
story of the women of the Italian Renaissance is now quite 
familiar at least to all those who have been interested in the 
woman movement, but comparatively little is heard of the 
great women of the early Italian universities and of their 
place in that magnificent development of the higher educa- 
tion for women, which beginning at Salerno, where the de- 
partment of women’s diseases seems to have been in the 
hands of women, followed this up with similar feminine 
privileges in every University in Italy during succeeding 
centuries. As a matter of history, there is not a century 
since the eleventh during which there have not been women 
professors at Italian universities and many of them have 
done epoch making work. Italy’s place in feminine educa- 
tion is, however, reserved for a special chapter. 
What is above all of interest to our generation is the 
careers of the great Italian women organizers of the solutions GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
of social problems. It would be almost incomprehensible that 
this chapter of feminine achievement has been so little known 
and indeed so sadly neglected until our own time, only that we 
have come to realize in our generation that the lowest period 
of interest in social service occurred during the one hundred 
years immediately before the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Only quite recently has Catherine of Siena come 
to be known and recognized as she deserves to be for her social 
work. While the revival of interest in St. Francis has led to 
a corresponding revival of the desire for knowledge with 
regard to St. Clare there are many women, such as Catherine 
of Bologna and still another, Catherine of Genoa, Angela 
Merici and a host of other names of women deserving of men- 
tion who, forgetting themselves, accomplished things which 
though they may have been partially lost sight of or not 
properly appreciated for a time, the world will never willingly 
forget. Their memories are still cherished not alone in their 
own Italian cities as well as everywhere throughout the Catho- 
lic Church, which conferred the highest title of honor on them 
in her attribution of the name of saint to them, but also 
wherever Italian history is known. Now that interest in the 
solution of social problems has become the keynote of pro- 
gress, these great Italian women are at last coming into their 
own meed of recognition and proper appreciation. Indeed, 
when the history of the women of Italy is told, even with the 
compression necessary in a book of this kind, it makes an 
extremely important chapter in human progress at its best. 
In this chapter, as in others, the story of the women of 
Rome, though they too are natives of the peninsula, and the 
ancestors of many whom we now call Italians will not be dwelt 
on more than in passing. They would require a chapter for 
themselves and that would have to be very much compressed. 
The old Roman matrons whose fine influence meant so much 
at Rome could scarcely be adequately treated in an ample 
volume. Their disappearance and replacement by the wealthy 
heads of luxurious houses without children, or with but one or 
two and little regard for their homes, some of them counting WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
their years by their divorces, as one of their own historians 
said, living idle lives centred in themselves, or fussy trivial 
existences absorbed in what we have come to call “society”—■ 
which they had invented — brought decadence to Rome in 
spite of its world power and genius for government. Some of 
those old-fashioned Roman mothers and wives are among the 
greatest women of history. Cornelia, whose “jewels” were 
her sons and who was ready to send one and then the other 
to death for the sake of the rights of the Roman people, is a 
striking example of the Roman matron at her best, a worthy 
successor of the wife and mother of Coriolanus. Julia, the 
daughter of Caesar and the wife of Pompey, of whom the 
Romans deservedly thought so much that when she died un- 
timely and Pompey would have built an imperial mausoleum 
for her on his estate outside of Rome, the citizens said “No! 
Bury her in the Campus Martius with our heroes, ’ ’ is another 
striking example. Octavia, who in spite of ill concealed 
sneers and the scandal she knew was everywhere bruited 
about, tried to maintain peace between her husband Antony 
and her brother Augustus, in the midst of the only too well 
founded rumors of Cleopatra’s conquest of him that were 
common property, was another of the noble Roman women 
who were also Italians. Quite needless to say there were 
many others deserving of mention. 
In the very early days of Christianity the order of deacon- 
esses was established in Rome and after the persecutions 
ceased and Christians could do their good works in public, 
Fabiola founded the first public hospital. While it has come 
to be the custom in recent years for certain writers to mini- 
mize what Christianity accomplished for hospitals, it must 
not be forgotten that this attitude of mind is assumed by 
those whose own often recently acquired opposition to religion 
has tempted them to find any reason for belittling Christian 
influence. Virchow, who knew the history of hospitals better 
than any other declared emphatically that it was reserved 
for the Roman Catholic Church to establish institutions for 
the care of those suffering from disease. The great German GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
pathologist and medical editor quotes unquestioningly Herter, 
who in his life of Pope Innocent III declared: 
“All benevolent institutions which the human race still 
enjoys all care for the deserted and needy through every 
stage of suffering from the first moment of birth to the return 
of the material part to earth, have had their origin in the 
church. Some of them directly, some of them indirectly 
through the sentiments and feelings which she aroused, 
strengthened and vivified into action. The church supplied 
for them the model and sometimes even the resources; that 
these great humanitarian needs were not neglected and their 
remedies not lacking in any respect is essentially due to the 
Christian Church’s influence on human character.” 
The achievements of Christian charity thus amply recog- 
nized by Virchow following Herter, are practically all due to 
the initiative and power of organization of Christian women. 
The first important successful works of charity in this direc- 
tion were achieved by the women of the Italian peninsula. 
Some of these women of the early Christian times became 
famous also for intellectual accomplishment. St. Jerome’s 
association with Eustochium and Paula is well known. 
Eustochium spoke Latin and Greek with equal ease and was 
able to read the Holy Scriptures in the Hebrew text. Many 
of St. Jerome’s biblical commentaries owe their existence to 
her influence, as he himself has told, and to her in recogni- 
tion of all that her influence meant in this regard for him he 
dedicated his commentaries on the prophets Isaias and 
Ezekiel. She founded in conjunction with her mother Paula 
a series of nunneries in Palestine where a large number <of 
women spent their time in prayer and in the study of Holy 
Scripture. Undoubtedly their presence had much to do with 
the wide diffusion in a short time of St. Jerome’s Latin 
translation of the Scriptures, the Vulgate, which is still 
acknowledged by all as the most important text of the Sacred 
Writings. When Eustochium died she was succeeded in the 
superiorship of the nunneries in Palestine by her niece, the 
younger Paula, whose reputation for scholarship and piety WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
and deep intellectual and personal influence over her gener- 
ation is scarcely less than that of her aunt. 
With the spread of Christianity in succeeding centuries 
and the development of the problem of lifting up into Chris- 
tian civilization the large numbers from Northern Europe 
who had migrated into Italy as well as properly elevating 
these peoples in their Teutonic homes, another kind of femi- 
nine influence besides the intellectual was needed. As I have 
said in the chapter on Feminine Education, when St. Benedict 
founded The Monks of The West, his sister St. Scholastica 
founded the Benedictine nuns. These nunneries became 
homes of the intellectual and spiritual life to which women 
who felt no call to the ordinary marital existence and its 
domestic cares might retire with the confidence that they 
would have a pleasant environment all their lives, an assured 
refuge in declining years. In every century of the Middle 
Ages these Benedictine nuns were occupied in work of the 
highest influence for the peoples around them. Like the 
Benedictine monks they copied books for their libraries — 
we have some of the catalogues of them — did beautiful decor- 
ations for ecclesiastical books and fine needlework and other 
decorative arts and crafts for their houses and churches, 
besides taking an important part in the solution of social 
problems around them. Volumes of chronicles and histories, 
of medical writings for the direction of infirmarians, of poems, 
hymns, prayers, even of dramas, written by these Benedictine 
nuns have been preserved to us in spite of the vicissitudes of 
time. They must have had a most intense, intellectual and 
spiritual life, and they must have accomplished an immense 
amount of good during these troublous times. 
But Italian women could, when occasion offered, be much 
more than the retiring religious, and some of them demon- 
strated the possession of administrative ability even in poli- 
tical affairs that places them high in history. One of the 
great women rulers of history is Matilda of Canossa, Countess 
of Tuscany. Born before the middle of the eleventh century 
it might be expected that she would have comparatively little GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
education, and would owe all her place in history to her native 
genius. As a matter of fact, she was finely educated, knew 
Latin well, read much and was very fond of serious books. 
Her life was cast in troublous times, and she had to exercise 
administrative ability of a very high order to maintain her 
position as the heiress of the Marquess Boniface of Tuscany 
and his successor in the principality. At twenty-five Matilda 
entered upon the government of one of the most important 
independent principalities of the time whose territory in 
middle and upper Italy, during the constant wars of the time, 
lay directly in the path of the armies of Germany and Italy. 
She cast in her lot with the Pope against the German Em- 
peror and more than any other single factor, her aid, en- 
couragement and constant fidelity, enabled Pope Gregory YII 
to accomplish his great work of freeing the Church from secu- 
lar domination. 
In spit of the severest trials Matilda remained faithful 
to the successive Popes of the time, and her life stood for the 
great national principle of an Italy for the Italians that makes 
her a significant figure in history. 
“The Great Countess,” as Matilda has been deservedly 
called in history is almost as noted for her intellectual attain- 
ments as for her administrative ability. Mrs. Huddy in 
“Matilda Countess of Tuscany” gives the list of Matilda’s 
almost fabulous acquirements. Her tutor and chaplain, 
Domnizo, himself a poet of no mean distinction whose poems 
are often quoted as specimens of early Italian, wrote of her 
as the joy of her race. He said of her for instance, empha- 
sizing first her cheerful kindness to those around her: 
“To all she spoke even to the meanest without a murmur; 
Gentle, joyful and of a happy frame of mind 
She dictated books, she spoke the Teutonic language, 
In French also she was very well versed. 
None more studious than she and fond of books WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Of which she abounded and of all arts and sciences 
In the midst of her many labors and in mind happy.”* 
Succeeding centuries have paid their tributes to her each 
in its 'own way down to our own time. Cimabue painted her 
as the virgin in martial array. Dante, as commentators agree, 
so far as commentators ever do, has chosen her name as the 
symbolic coordinate of Beatrice, the type of action as Beatrice 
was of philosophy, doubtless with the memory of what Ma- 
tilda, the Countess, accomplished in his mind. Tasso has paid 
her high compliment and in the seventeenth century a mag- 
nificent monument was erected to her in St. Peter’s at Rome 
with the inscription “a woman worthy of eternal praise.” 
Mrs. Huddy has emphasized Matilda’s goodness of heart and 
her care for her people and her fine womanly solicitude for 
the happiness of those around her. To quote her words: 
“Matilda lived longest and best in the hearts of her 
people, more especially the poor, for whose happiness she 
labored and on whom she spent the greater part of her vast 
revenues.” 
Probably Matilda’s greatest work for her own and suc- 
ceeding generations must be considered to be her encourage- 
ment of Irnerius in legal studies and the patronage of his work 
as a teacher of law. Irnerius’ lectures attracted attention 
and brought about the development of a law school, and then 
in connection with this law school the university of Bologna 
came into existence, so that Matilda must be recognized as at 
least the grand parent of the University of Bologna. It is 
not surprising that with Matilda’s influence meaning so much 
for the new school Irnerius’ daughter, Irneria, when she showed 
a predilection for law studies -was encouraged to take them 
up, and subsequently became a teacher in the law school foun- 
ded by her father. At Bologna then, as at Salerno, it was the 
influence of women themselves that had most to do with the 
She probably could not write, though she. dictated freely, but it is easier 
to understand that, since the typewriter came in for many who dictate can not 
use “the machine’’ and the mere mechanics of writing was viewed from a 
similar standpoint at that time. GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
obtaining of opportunities for the higher education for their 
sex. 
The later middle ages were to see many women of great 
broad influence, most of whom did not owe their position to 
any incidental circumstance of rank or noble birth. Just as 
St. Scholastica, working beside St. Benedict did so much for 
the women of her own and subsequent generations, so St. 
Clare, who at the age of seventeen had been taken with the 
thought of following the beautiful simple life of St. Francis, 
accomplished similar good for the women of her time, and her 
work lives on in its influence even in our time. What a brave 
fine story is that of this little maid of Assisi! With what calm 
fortitude she maintained herself against the opposition of her 
family, conquering them completely in a few years, so that her 
mother and sister eventually died in the convent with her! 
How courageously she upheld her institute in spite of eccles- 
iastics who would not or perhaps could not understand what 
she saw so clearly, even overcoming the opposition of Car- 
dinals and a Pope who could not be brought to see at first how 
well she had thought out her rule before formulating it! How 
manly was the courage with which she repelled the Saracens 
from the walls of her Convent! When toward the end of her 
life St. Francis’ work was being marred to some degree by 
the pernicious activities of some of his followers, how staunch- 
ly St. Clare guarded it! Even years after her death a precious 
copy of the original Franciscan rule was found just at a time 
when it was most needed, in the coffin with her. With all this 
in mind, it is easy to understand what a wonderful influence 
this little woman of the Hill Country had over her own and 
succeeding times. She has shared in the revival of interest 
in everything relating to St. Francis and her work has re- 
ceived a new glory in the attention paid to the time. Her 
Poor Clares are in every civilized country on the globe now 
nearly seven centuries after her death, and seem destined to 
live as long as this stage of our civilization. 
Greater even than Clare in her influence more than 500 
years after her death, is the maid of Siena who 100 years later WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
in the fourteenth century illuminated her generation by her 
forgetfulness of self and devotion to others. St. Catherine of 
Siena, Catherine Benincasa, as she was known to her con- 
temporaries, was only a dyer’s daughter, the 26th child of 
her mother, with the very limited opportunities for education 
and intellectual development that could be afforded in such 
a crowded family in moderate circumstances. Even in early 
childhood she became preoccupied with doing good for others. 
As soon as her family would permit, she was but twelve years 
of age, she took up seriously the duty of caring for the ailing 
poor in the hospitals of her native town, paying particular 
attention to those that had the most loathsome diseases. When 
they wanted her to marry before she was fifteen, as was the 
custom of the time, she said that she preferred not to, but 
would like to work for others. They then gave her a trial 
of the life of toil by allowing her to do all the work of her 
home where there must have been no end of labor with so large 
a family, and she did it so joyfully and whole heartedly and 
withal so efficiently that they took pity on her and allowed 
her to devote herself to whatever seemed good to her. 
After a time she asked t-o be allowed to live in the hos- 
pital and at the age of fifteen this privilege was accorded to 
her. Even the work of the hospital did not satisfy the ardent 
zeal of this young girl to spend herself for others. She visited 
the ailing in their homes and organized a band of helpers 
who brought many sufferers to the hospital and who visited 
and cared for others. She was yet but a young woman 
scarcely out of her ’teens when she came to be looked up to as 
the greatest force for good in the city. Siena was sadly rav- 
aged by feuds which led to faction fights on the streets in 
which serious wounds were inflicted and even fatal quarrels 
were not infrequent. Catherine took on herself the recon- 
ciliation of these quarrels and succeeded beyond all expecta- 
tions. So great was the reverence for her because of her utter 
self forgetting devotion to others, and so little did anyone 
want to hurt the feelings or disappoint the efforts for the com- 
mon good of this servant of the people, whom all had come GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
to look upon as a being almost of different clay from those 
around her, that it would have seemed an act of special 
malice not to yield to her plea for peace. Once when a crim- 
inal was to be beheaded she accompanied him at his urgent 
request to the scaffold to support him through the dread 
ordeal and though all her life she had sickened at the sight 
of blood, she accomplished her task of charity to the end, 
receiving his head as it fell. No wonder the people of Siena 
almost worshipped her. 
In her early twenties her prestige had grown so that her 
powers of reconciliation were invoked not only as to differ- 
ences between individuals and the settlement of family feuds, 
but also the appeasing of quarrels between cities. She was 
chosen as the arbitress for peace between Florence and Siena. 
She came to be the best known individual in this part of Italy. 
After a time she recognized that many of the sad evils and 
civil dissensions which were rending the heart of Italy were 
directly due to the absence of the Popes in Avignon. A cen- 
tral authority in the peninsula commanding respect was 
needed. She had been asked to make peace between the 
people of Bologna and the Pope, some of whose ambassadors 
had been put to death by the Bolognese. During the course 
of the negotiations she visited not only Rome but Avignon, 
and succeeded in making the Pope understand the necessity 
for his return to his former capital, in spite of all the political 
disturbances that were rife in that city. Finally he consented 
to return on the condition that she would go with him and 
remain at Rome, because he felt that only her marvelous 
influence would suffice to quell the disaffection and disturb- 
ances in his capital city. 
She submitted to his desire in the matter unwillingly 
enough, for she detested the publicity it brought, and she 
would have preferred her home and the hospital at Siena. 
Unfortunately overborne by labors and the hardships of travel 
in that rude time, she fell ill and died not long after her 
arrival in Rome. She was only thirty-two, having run a long WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
course in a short time. Her body, still incorrupt, is the chief 
treasure of the great Gothic Church of the Minerva in Kome. 
Her monument is the beautiful hospital at Siena rebuilt 
in her honor and which shows at once the veneration of her 
townsmen and the height to which hospital organization and 
construction had reached in that time, when most people 
would be likely to think that such structures were mean and 
contemptible. According to her biographers St. Catherine 
did not learn to read until she was twenty-five, nor to write 
for several years after that, though in the meantime she had 
dictated many letters. In spite of this limitation of educa- 
tion, which would seem to preclude all possibility of her ever 
influencing subsequent generations by her writings, the intel- 
lectual remains that we have from her reveal her genius very 
clearly. Her Italian style, in the pure Tuscan of Siena, is 
a landmark in the history of the language and any word 
used by her is called a Catharinian word and finds its place 
in the Academy dictionary as classic. Her letters in five 
volumes represent the work of a great simple practical spirit, 
viewing the problems of life absolutely unselfishly, but with 
a clear eyed vision of realities that is never deceived. 
In recent years Miss Vida Scudder has issued an edition 
of her letters in English because they represent a real con- 
tribution to the thought and literature of humanity. Lives 
•of her have been written in every important language of 
Europe in our generation and many articles devoted to her. 
Gardner’s life of her gives a very full idea of her influence 
and its causes.* In his bibliography he mentions nearly one 
hundred important works about her including editions of her 
writings, some 'of them in many volumes, and Catherine must 
undoubtedly be recognized as one of the great women of all 
time. She was a member of the third order of St. Dominic 
and is looked up to as the special patroness of the many thou- 
sands of women who all over the world under the Dominican 
rule are doing great, good work of many kinds. She is even 
in -our time the favorite patroness and the beloved resource 
* Saint Catharine of Siena Edmund G. Gardner, New York, Dutton, 1907. GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
for strength and help in times of trial of the doers of the 
most varied works of service for humanity. Here in distant 
America six centuries after her time her name is in benedic- 
tion in the Dominican colleges for women at Santa Clara, 
Sinsinawa, Wis., or St. Mary of the Springs, Columbus, Ohio, 
and Caldwell, N. J., in the houses of the Visiting Sisters of 
the Sick Poor who accomplish so much good in the crowded 
tenements of New York City, and in the hospitals of Mother 
Alphonsa Hawthorne Lathrop’s (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fav- 
orite daughter Rose) Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer, 
who are nursing patients suffering from incurable cancer 
after physicians have declared it impossible to do anything 
more for them and only death must be awaited. It is clear 
then how vividly her influence lives on five centuries after 
her death, for her life is the special study and her example 
the emulation of these and thousands of other women through- 
out the world. 
The succession of immortal women in Italy is almost 
never broken for the last thousand years. Catherine of Siena 
died 1380. The next immortal was born in 1363. She is 
Christine de Pisan, who must be credited to Italy, as her last 
name indicates, though because she wrote in French and 
lived most of her life in France she is usually thought of as 
French. She was born in Venice but at the age of five went 
to Paris with her father, who had been appointed astrologer 
and secretary to King Charles V. At that time astrology 
represented, as its name properly indicates, the sciences that 
we now call astronomy. Even its serious students of that time 
assumed a knowledge of the influence on the stars on human 
constitutions, that was accepted also more than two centuries 
later by such distinguished scientists as Galileo and Keppler. 
To be an astrologer then was not the charlatan it might be 
supposed to be from the present day connotation of the word. 
Christine’s father Thomas de Pisan was a scholar, a mathe- 
matician, an astronomer and distinguished product of Italy’s 
great schools. At this time all the world was looking to Italy 
for leadership in the intellectual life. His daughter Christine WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
married early, probably before fifteen, and yet somehow suc- 
ceeded in obtaining an excellent education in the ancient 
languages and literature. When her husband died she was 
only twenty-five years of age and the death of her father 
leaving her a widow with three children, in straitened circum- 
stances, she perforce set about making her own living, and 
her only resource was her pen. In six years between 1397- 
1403 she wrote according to her own account ‘‘fifteen impor- 
tant books without mentioning minor essays which compiled 
make seventy large copy books. ’ ’ 
This is the sort of vocation for women that we are in- 
clined to think of as reserved for our time. Mrs. Olyphant 
is often supposed to have been a pioneer in the creation of 
it. What wonder that the young widow who succeeded so 
well was a champion of her sex and wrote many of her books 
to rehabilitate the character of women and vindicate their 
talents against some of the defamations or at least innuendos 
of the poets. She wrote an elaborate biography of King 
Charles of France, who had been the protector of her father 
and her own early patron, but the effort of gratitude to make 
an ambitious literary work of it led to a display of erudition 
and a diffuseness of style that are unfortunate. Her poetical 
works consist mostly of long poems, one “On the Mutations 
of Fortune” with regard to which doubtless she could draw 
ready inspiration from her own experience, and another “The 
Road of Long Study” of which she had also intimate personal 
experience. A series of books and articles have been written 
with regard to her in the last twenty-five years and a complete 
edition of her works is being prepared. She was thoroughly 
French in education and mode of expression, yet her Italian 
origin must not be forgotten and none of the French women 
of the time, though with similar opportunities, and even with 
the incentive of her example and her success, are found to 
rival her. 
Catherine of Siena filled the latter half of the fourteenth 
century with her work, Christian de Pisan influenced the first 
half of the fifteenth, and the latter half of the century was GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
the scene of the labors of another great Catherine in Italy, 
Caterina Fiesco, the daughter of Conte Giacomo Fiesco, who 
was Viceroy of Naples and Papal Chamberlain during the 
first half of the fifteenth century. Caterina was born in 1447 
and being the third daughter was rather encouraged in the 
idea which she began to cherish very early of leaving the 
world and being a religious. The Vice Regal Court of Naples 
was not particularly noted for its purity of manners or morals, 
and so her parents sent her when she was fourteen to the care 
of their cousin, Giorgio Fiesco, Archbishop of Genoa, in order 
that she might be out of the atmosphere of courtly intrigue. 
At Genoa she was seen in Church by a son of the Doge, 
Giuliano Adorno, one of the handsomest of the young men of 
the “Proud City” -of Genoa where wealth and luxury meant 
so much. He was known to be rather dissolute in his habits, 
a gambler, and a sower of wild oats, but of this Catherine 
knew nothing at first. Caught by her girlish fresh beauty 
and untarnished innocence he fell desperately in love with her 
and quite carried her away with his ardor. When the Doge 
in person came to plead with the Archbishop for her hand the 
marriage of the young folks was arranged. 
In the meantime Caterina learned of the true character of 
her intended and refused point blank to marry him. She did 
not fancy taking up as a wife the role of reformer of a rake, 
though so many young women before and since seem willing 
to undertake it. Very sensibly she doubted her ability to 
accomplish the task. Pressure was brought to bear upon her 
however, for the union of the two houses would do much to 
simplify the politics of Genoa and her fiance urged and 
promised until finally she yielded consent, but instead of 
being married in the customary crimson velvet robe with 
lavish ornaments of gold and jewels which every noble 
Genoese bride wore, she insisted on being married in a 
black gonella with a white Genoese lace veil. Her mourn- 
ing robes were a true portent for her worst apprehensions were 
soon fulfilled. Giuliano neglected his home and his wife after 
five years of embittered disenchantment Madonna Caterina WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
betook herself to the convent of the Ladies of Grace. This 
was the Genoese refuge for unhappy married women and one 
of her sisters was already there. The world always needs such 
refuges, perhaps never more than now, but they are not always 
so ready at hand as in those days, when Italian social prevision 
provided them. Caterina proposed to remain in the convent 
and dedicate her life to the service of suffering and poverty. 
It was not long before she came to be known throughout 
the city as a very angel of devotion to those most in need. 
Her husband’s evil habits led him to sink ever lower and 
lower until at last Caterina found him in the slums, and then 
superhumanly took up life with him again and lifted him up 
to what was better in him. She rescued him completely from 
his evil habits and their home came to be a refuge for the 
afflicted. Five peaceful years were thus passed and when her 
husband died he was, thanks to Catharine’s example and 
help, looked up to as one of the great doers of good of the 
city. His death only provided for his wife a freer oppor- 
tunity to extend her works of charity further and she 
gathered around her a devoted band of women in a nursing 
order which she founded, who cared for every form of 
suffering and need. She was elected Prioress of the women’s 
department of the Hospital and organized the charities of 
Genoa. She found time, however, to do writing that 
attracted great attention in her own time and that has not 
lost its significance since. Her book on Purgatory published 
in 1502 has been translated into every modern language and 
is to be found in every important Catholic library. Besides 
she wrote a series of dialogues upon religious questions 
which have continued to be popular in Italy and are often 
used as a sort of dramatic interlude in the churches. 
After this comes the Renaissance and its influence in 
affording opportunities for women to secure intellectual 
development is well known. The typical example of the 
Ladies of the Italian Rennaissance, famous for their own 
intellectual development and for their influence over the men 
of the time, is Vittoria Collona. Probably the name of no 
348 PIETA (MICHELANGELO) GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
woman whose fame was not spread by some movement with 
which she was connected and who owed her reputation to 
her personality alone, has ever been more widely known 
than that of this member of the Italian nobility famous for 
her beauty, her influence for good, her charming simplicity 
of life and her power to inspire those around her to the 
accomplishment of what was best in them. 
The group of ladies who lived around her at this time 
have been the subject of study from many respects in our 
own time. Their influence extended far beyond their own 
generation and is now being revived with wonderful results. 
The place of these educated women, educated in the best 
sense of the word, as not mere knowers of books, but with 
finely developed taste and interest in art, literature, archi- 
tecture, landscape gardening in connection with their 
homes, beautiful interior decoration and the collection of art 
objects for their houses, is only coming to be properly recog- 
nized by the modern world as our own intellectual develop- 
ment leads to the evolution of similar interests and that 
imitation which is the sincerest flattery. 
It is not surprising to learn of the deep influence of so 
sterling a character as Vittoria Colonna over Michelangelo. 
After her husband’s death she had been inconsolable and 
spent much of her time for years in convents, in prayer and 
the writing of religious poetry. While living at Rome she 
came in contact with Michelangelo the great architect sculp- 
tor and the beauty of her character fascinated him. He is 
probably the most gifted man who ever lived. He thought 
that he had found in her a woman so far above him that 
all he could do was worship her at a distance. She suggested 
subjects for certain of his great sculptures and he wrote 
sonnets for her that tell us something of the wondrous 
adoration, there is no other word to express his feeling and it 
must be used in its highest possible sense, that he had for 
her. One of them, because it expresses better than any- 
thing that might be said the character of Vittoria and the 
beauty of her influence as it appealed to the greatest of 
349 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
sculptors, greatest of decorative painters and architects and 
one of the greatest poets of all time, is given in a note.* 
When Vittoria came to die she asked to be buried in the 
simple garb of a nun of the convent in which she was living 
and among the sisters with unmarked grave and without 
ceremonial. As a result we have now no trace of where her 
body was laid and her charming character completed its 
modest influence by this last act of hers. She had been the 
friend and correspondent of many of the distinguished 
women scholars of the time, made an interesting interchange 
of letters with Marguerite of Navarre, the distinguished 
French writer of the time and with Renee of Anjou, the wife 
of one of the D’Estes. She was a patron of literature as 
well as of art, herself a writer of religious poetry that 
is still in honor, but what has lived on is not her intellectual 
work but her ethical influence and the inspiration that came 
from a character like hers. In this, however, she is only a 
striking example of the women of the Italian Renaissance 
of whom Burckhardt in his work on the Italian Renaissance 
has summed up the place in life and the influence, in words 
that are especially applicable to Vittoria and her acquain- 
tances. “Their distinction consisted in the fact that their 
beauty, disposition, education, virtue and piety combined 
to make them harmonious human beings.” As Burckhardt 
is one of the greatest students of this time his opinion may 
well be accepted as final. 
The D’Estes were famous and deservedly so. How few 
there are who realize, however, that Beatrice D’Este for all 
her fame was but just entering on her twenties when she 
* ‘ ‘When she who was the source of all my sighs 
Fled from the world, beyond my straining sight, 
Nature, who gave us that unique delight, 
Was sunk in shame, and we had weeping eyes. 
Yet shall not vauntful Death enjoy the prize, 
This sun of suns which then he veiled in night; 
For Love hath triumphed, lifting up her light 
On earth and ’mid the saints in Paradise. 
What though remorseless and impiteous doom 
Deemed that the music of her deeds would die, 
And that her splendor would be sunk in gloom ? 
The poet’s page exalts her to the sky 
With life more living in the lifeless tomb, 
And Death translates her soul to reign on high.” 
350 GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
died. She and her sister Isabelle were tenderly attached to 
each other and grew up together in the D’Este palace at 
Ferrara and surprised everyone by the marvelous facility 
with which they acquired Latin and some Greek as well as 
their own Italian. Besides these studies they read all the 
poetry and literature within their reach in various modern 
languages, and became excellent musicians learning to 
accompany their singing on the lute. They even found time 
to become proficient in design and embroidery. The two 
girls were bethrothed to Francesco son of the Marquis of 
Mantua and to Lodovico Sforza Regent of Milan. The beau- 
tiful tomb of Beatrice in the Certosa near Pavia is a tribute 
of a husband’s love, but an index also of the esteem in 
which she was held by all who knew her. 
That is the most interesting phase of the lives of these 
women of the Italian Renaissance. All of them almost with- 
out exception had tender lovable characters and we have 
some of the most emphatic expressions as to their personal 
charm from their contemporaries. Beatrice’s death was fol- 
lowed by expressions of sorrow that are deep and heartfelt 
from all those who had known her. After Isabella’s mar- 
riage and departure from her old home to live at Mantua, 
she was so much missed that one courtier writes “even the 
tricks and jests of the dwarfs and clowns fail to make us 
laugh.” While Isabella was famous for her interests in art 
and letters and had inherited from her father an absorbing 
love of travel, there is abundant evidence of her tender care 
for those who needed it and especially among her own 
people. When the French invaded Italy and captured Rome 
in 1527, Isabella in her home in the Colonna Palace on the 
Quirinal furnished a refuge for a great many of the nobility. 
Her friends in the invading army enabled her to do this, 
but it must have been a most trying time. When she re- 
turned to Mantua she found it ravaged by famine and 
plague, which spread all over Northern Italy. She pledged 
her jewels of which she had a magnificent collection and did 
all in her power to help the poor people, though in spite of 
351 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
all her solicitude and care nearly one third of them fell 
victims to the pestilence. 
The intimate friendship which grew up between Isabella 
D’Este and Lucretia Borgia is the best possible evidence that 
the slanders against the lady of that unhappy name are with- 
out foundation. To some people it seems that while the 
Italian ladies of the Renaissance furnished bright examples 
of successful interest in arts and letters and not a few of 
them were deeply charitable, they also provided, however, 
many proofs that the spirit of paganism was rife and that 
men and women cared not what they did, provided only they 
accomplished their purpose. Poisonings are supposed to 
have been common and Lucretia Borgia has been held up as 
a very paragon of malice and evil. Her most recent 
biographers have not only defended her, but made it very 
clear that the accusations against her all come from the 
enemies of her house. The Borgias were a Spanish family 
making their way in Italy and nearly every Italian’s hand 
was against them. The scandals told of her represent noth- 
ing more than the backstairs gossip of the time, which quite 
without any justification in history have come to represent 
the popular historical view with regard to this lady. 
There is no doubt that during the last twenty years of 
her life while at Ferrara, Lucretia Borgia, who at the age 
of only twenty-one became the wife of the Duke of D’Este, 
was a woman of deep intellectual quality, of excellent taste, 
and withal of profoundly charitable disposition. She was a 
judicious patron of arts and letters, a model wife and mother, 
and above all a wise and beneficent ruler of her people on 
many occasions. Over and over again she was left in charge 
of the government while her husband was absent traveling or 
on the many military expeditions of the time, and she was 
famous for her thoughtful care of her subjects. First of 
all the rulers of this time she lifted the political disabilities 
of the Jew and she made it ever her first duty to care for the 
poor and the ailing. When she died untimely at the age of 
forty, she was followed to the tomb literally by all of the 
352 GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
people of Ferrara who spoke of her as a Saint because of 
her goodness and unselfishness. The supposed poisonings 
with which her name is associated have disappeared before 
the bar of modern historical research and scientific history.* 
To show that the women of Italy were not without 
interest or successful achievement in education in the cen- 
turies after the Renaissance we have a number of examples. 
Perhaps the most striking is that of Helen Lucretia Cornaro 
Piscopia. Because of her mastery of seven languages she 
received the title of Oraculum Septilingue. She was dis- 
tinguished for her knowledge of mathematics, philosophy, 
and even theology. After a brilliant course of study the 
degree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred upon her by 
the University of Padua, in the presence of many persons 
eminent in the educational world of the time. She became a 
Benedictine Oblate, a sort of third order of Benedictines, 
who are religious without wearing the habit. She continued 
her intellectual career, being made a member of a number 
of academies and becoming very well known throughout all 
the Latin countries at least. A statue of her was placed in 
the University, and in 1685 the year after her death, the 
University of Padua caused a medal to be struck in her 
honor. Her published works (Parma 1688) include academic 
discourses, translations and devotional treatises. 
She was a descendant of the famous Cornaro family 
best known to visitors to Venice from the Cornaro palace 
now known as the Loredano, her father was procurator of 
St. Marks and the members of the family had been prominent 
in the life of Venice for many years. Though thus highly 
connected and with so many intellectual interests Helen 
Cornaro was more famous toward the end of her life for 
her charity and care for those who were suffering than for 
anything else. Fresh interest was awakened in her life by 
the feministic movement of the modern times and lives of 
her have been published in Rome by the Abbess Pynsent of 
* See Proceedings Section on History of Medicine, Eighteenth International 
Medical Congress, 
353 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the English Benedictine nuns (Rome 1896) and by De Santi 
(Rome 1899) and a series of articles were published with 
regard to her in the Civiltd Cattolica and in the American 
Catholic Quarterly Review during the last years of the nine- 
teenth century. This daughter of the Doges showed that 
Venice looked upon as commercial could furnish a striking 
example of feminine interest in the intellectual life. Her 
career is paralleled by that of Maria Agnesi which is referred 
to in the chapter on Feminine Education. 
A very distinguished Italian woman scientist and teacher 
of the eighteenth century was Laura Bassi. Born in Bologna 
in 1711 at the age of twenty-one she took part in a public 
disputation on philosophy from which she came off with such 
distinction as to attract the attention of the whole city as 
well as the University. A month later she received the 
doctorate in philosophy from Bologna and then was made 
professor there. The Senate of Bologna conferred a medal 
on her and she soon began to attract the attention of the 
intellectual world of Europe. She was in correspondence 
with many of the most distinguished men of her time and 
while she was devoted particularly to physical sciences and 
mathematics she did not give up her interest in literature 
and kept up her knowledge of Greek very carefully. She 
was the mother of twelve children and according to tradition 
devoted to her domestic duties and closely united in affection 
with her husband and her children. It seems hard to credit 
that she was as much at home with the needle and the 
spindle as she was with her books and the apparatus of her 
laboratory, but this only confirms the idea that genius has 
energy to spare even for the ordinary duties of life while 
accomplishing the extraordinary. 
It is not unusual to find in Italy that distinguished men 
are quite ready to confess how much they owed to women 
for encouragement and assistance in their work. A typical 
instance of this is Abbe Spallanzani the distinguished bio- 
logical scientist who was one of the world leaders in every 
department of science toward the end of the eighteenth 
354 GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
century. His scientific career began at the University of 
Bologna under the inspiration of his cousin Laura Bassi, the 
famous woman professor of natural philosophy and mathe- 
matics. The latter part of his life he was greatly assisted by 
his sister Mariana who in order to help him in his scientific 
work devoted herself with so much assiduity to his interests 
that she herself became a distinguished naturalist. Many 
of those who came to consult her distinguished brother 
found that his sister could supply them with details of in- 
formation quite as well and she came to be looked upon as 
one of the prominent scientific students of this time. 
Spallanzani himself consulted her always with regard to 
certain questions and considered her opinion of more worth 
than his own. 
Not long after the death of Laura Bassi two other Italian 
women reached the distinction of professorships at Bologna. 
These were Maria dalle Donne for whom a special chair of 
obstetrics was established and the other Clotilda Tambroni, 
a professor of Greek of whom a well known Greek professor 
of her time declared that there were only three persons in 
Europe who were able to write Greek as well as she could 
and not a score who were capable of appreciating her 
scholarship as it deserved. Maria dalle Donne was the 
daughter of poor peasants living near Bologna, but succeeded 
in obtaining a thorough education and secured from the 
University uf Bologna maxima cum laude, the degree of 
doctor of philosophy and medicine. Because of her knowl- 
edge and thoroughly practical experience she was put in 
charge of the Bologna School of midwives. Afterwards, as 
we have noted, a special chair of obstetrics was established 
for her at the University of Bologna. She held this position 
with great credit until her death in 1842. 
Nor did the women of Italy fail to seek and secure 
intellectual advantages in the time nearer our own. For 
instance a number of recent Italian women reached distinc- 
tion in astronomy. Celsus, the celebrated professor of 
astronomy at Upsala when he went to be assistant at the 
355 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
University of Bologna found that the director of the observa- 
tory had two sisters Madelina and Teresa who collaborated 
with him in the Ephemeris of Bologna. Another distin- 
guished Italian woman in astronomy was Catarina Scarpel- 
lini, the niece of Professor Scarpellini, the restorer of the 
Accademia dei Lyncei and founder of the Capitoline Observa- 
tory. She organized the Stazione Meteorologico Ozono- 
metrico in Rome and edited its Monthly Bulletin. She was 
very much interested in shooting stars and prepared the 
first catalogue of those observed in Italy. In 1872 the 
Italian government conferred a gold medal on her for her 
statistical work in science and a statue has been erected to 
her since her death. 
A distinguished woman archaeologist of Italy in the 
nineteenth century is Donna Ersilia Caetani-Bovatelli the 
daughter of the famous Dante scholar Duke Michelangelo 
Caetani-Sermonetta. Coming of a distinguished noble family 
famous since the thirteenth century for its scholarship and its 
interest in art and culture, Donna Ersilia early acquired a 
taste for archaeology until she became an authority in it. Her 
salon in Rome attracted such distinguished historical students 
as Gregorovius, Theodor Mommsen and De Rossi. The pro- 
fessors and students in the schools of archaeology of the 
various nations at Rome often met here to discuss archaeo- 
logical subjects. As the Dean of the department of 
archaelogy of the Accademia dei Lyncei she often presided 
over important meetings in the academy. She was a frequent 
contributor to the Nuova Antologia and has written a series 
of books on the ancient monuments of Italy and Greece. 
The contrast between the position of women in Italy 
and in other countries is very well illustrated not only by 
the history of the past but by some quite recent incidents. 
Undoubtedly one of the eminent scientists of our time in 
England was Mrs. Ayrton, the wife of the late Professor W. 
Ayrton the well-known English investigator in electricity. 
She did some remarkable work on the electric arc and re- 
356 GREAT WOMEN OF ITALY 
ceived the first medal ever awarded to a woman by the Royal 
Society for her observation on the sand ripples by the sea 
shore. When some years ago she was formally nominated 
for fellowship in the Royal Society, however, it was dis- 
covered that the society had no legal power to elect a mar- 
ried woman to this distinction. In France Madame Curie 
has twice received the Nobel Prize (from Sweden) once with 
her husband for physics and once for herself for chemistry 
and has been awarded a number of other scientific prizes. 
When there was question of her being elected to the French 
Academy, the old prejudice against women asserted itself 
and though she is undoubtedly the greatest of living French 
scientists there is no place for her in the French Academy of 
Sciences. In Italy, however, there has been no distinction 
of sex in the conferring of degrees, the giving of recognition 
by professorships or memberships in academies for all the 
centuries of modern history. 
Properly to appreciate the women of Italy one needs 
only read with attention what the great poets of the country 
have said of their women. There probably never was a finer 
bouquet of poetic flowers of women’s praise to be gathered 
in any world literature. Dante has made a woman the cen- 
tral idea of his greatest of epic poems. It was literally a 
declaration from the greatest seer that mankind has ever 
had, viewing human life not only here but hereafter, that 
the “eternal womanly” lifted man up, as well as led him on 
and did more to bring out what was best in him than any- 
thing else in the world. Dante’s great poetic successors, 
however, were scarcely less laudatory of the eternal femi- 
nine than the prince of Italian poets himself. Petrarch’s 
beautiful sonnets represent not only a tribute, but they were 
a model which was followed in the development of modern 
literature by the nations of Europe in the praise of womanly 
Influence. Tasso, the Rennaissance epic poet, has given 
woman a prominent place in his great poem and is indeed 
what might be called a feminist. It has been said that if 
357 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
one wants to know the opinion that men have had of women 
one must consult their poets; the Italian poets have indeed 
been unstinted in their praise and recognition of woman in 
life and in poetry. BRONZE HORSES, ST. MARK’S, VENICE, ITALIAN CITIES 
rp\HE STORY of culture in mankind is a history of cities. 
We have made formal history the weaving together of 
facts with regard to states and nations, but that is because 
the historians as a rule were seeking the favor of those in 
political power. In ancient times civilization centers around 
Memphis and Babylon, Jerusalem and Athens. Human pro- 
gress, such as it is, is registered in the story of the municipal 
life of these cities and the doings of their citizens. It might 
possibly be thought that this limitation of the history of 
culture wmuld be true only in the older time when there was 
less of diffusion of cultural ideas, but to think so is to ignore 
the course of human history in what are called modern times 
for the centers of interest in the modern history of the 
humanities are Rome, Florence, Paris, London and other 
great capitols in so far as they deserve a place in this cata- 
logue of foci of human intellectual achievement. Indeed 
more of the progress of mankind is intimately concerned 
with the four cities, Athens, Rome, Florence and Paris, than 
all the rest of the world put together. 
When the history of cities is written those of Italy 
stand out with a distinction that puts them far ahead of the 
cities of any other nation of the world. The mere fact that 
the peninsula contains two of the four cities that are the 
most famous in history, Rome and Florence, the centres of 
more human interest than any others, almost even than of 
Athens, is of itself sufficient to give more than a hint of the 
genius of the people among whom these cities arose. As a 
matter of fact there is scarcely a city of any considerable 
size in Italy that has not some special distinction in the 
359 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
history of culture and there are literally dozens of them 
whose names are known far beyond the confines of their 
own country and who are recognized by the civilized world 
as representing some fine distinctive phase of the power of 
human expression. When one looks at such a list apart from 
Rome and Florence, as Venice, Naples, Bologna, Padua, 
Genoa, Pisa, Siena, Milan, to say nothing of such less well 
known towns as Perugia, Assisi, Salerno, Ravenna, Mantua, 
Ferrara and Ancona it will be readily appreciated how im- 
portant in the history of mankind is the story of Italian 
municipalities. 
There is scarcely one of these towns which has not some 
unique distinction to its credit, some important individual 
phase of development in art or letters, in mode of govern- 
ment, in education, in the story of its great citizens, or the 
history of the municipality, that is of enduring interest. 
Usually a number of books have been written about each of 
them and they are the Mecca for visitors in large numbers, 
even from distant countries. Indeed visitors from abroad 
represent an important source of income for all of these 
towns in the modern time because of the appeal of their art 
treasures or the interest of their remains of previous stages 
of culture in mankind. They are like the cathedral towns 
in England, their artistic relics of long preceding centuries 
are more valuable to them as money makers than would be 
a great smoky factory with its slums and smudgy employees 
in the modern time. More books are written about these 
Italian cities in our time than ever before. Formal guide 
books have now given way to monographs of various kinds 
while scarcely any writer who has visited them fails to 
record in his subsequent writing the influence that was ex- 
erted upon him and not infrequently novels and other books 
are created around the impression produced by some Italian 
city. There was a time not so long ago when we affected 
more or less to despise these smaller Italian towns and 
tourists confined their visits to the more important centres 
of population and old time culture. Just in proportion how- 
360 ITALIAN CITIES 
ever as we in our generation have refined our taste, broad- 
ened our interests, deepened our culture, we have come more 
and more to visit these smaller towns. Often indeed the 
opportunity presented to see art objects in the environment 
for which they were created, rather than crowded together 
in museums and academies, has proved an invaluable addi- 
tion to the educational value of such visits. 
The names of even smaller Italian cities of a few thous- 
and inhabitants have become household words in the fami- 
lies of educated people all over the world. Not to know 
something of Pisa, of Siena, of Assisi, of Mantua, of Ferrara, 
towns never of more than a few thousand inhabitants— 
think of it in this day of the worship of the great city! is to 
set oneself down as quite unknowing in the real history 
of the progress of humanity. We in our time speak con- 
temptuously of any city of less than 100,000 and think any 
place with less than half a million as scarcely worthy of 
consideration, yet these little Italian towns are forever 
famous in the history of humanity as centres of attraction 
for all really educated people. This is much truer now than 
it was a generation ago and much more noticeable as a 
criterion of education than it was several generations ago. 
The Italian cities have grown ever more in favor in proportion 
as modern judgment has developed and modern taste been 
properly educated and even while the cult of the great city 
is ever more in the ascendant. 
Of Rome in the older time, that is the classic period, 
little need be said here. It must not be forgotten, however, 
that what Rome accomplished constitutes an important part 
of the debt of civilization to Italy. What is most interesting 
to realize here is, that while Rome is usually thought of as 
the source of all initiative and the centre of the intellectual 
life of this earlier period, most of the men whose names we 
know because they did distinguished work at Rome were 
born outside of the city. Their birth places attest the height 
and breadth and distinction of culture in the smaller towns 
of the peninsula at this time, though the ordinary student of 
361 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
history scarcely thinks of them in that way at all. Scarcely 
one of the men whose names we know as great writers at 
Rome were born in the city itself. The capital sucked them 
in, as do the large cities in the modern time the budding 
geniuses of our smaller towns and then calmly assumed the 
credit for their work. 
The history of these Italian towns furnishes not only 
great traditions of art development and they present beauti- 
ful art treasures, but their story is full of interest because of 
the lessons in government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people in all the forms from pure democracy through 
all phases of republicanism to oligarchy and the various 
modes of aristocratic government to pure despotism or at 
least absolute autocracy. There is no richer field for the 
student of political history than the rise, and progress and 
vicissitudes and frequent falls of these Italian municipalities. 
They are interesting mainly because of the depth of human 
nature which they display, but above all because they thus 
illustrate almost poignantly the fact that men go on doing 
things over and over again in about the same way, thinking 
all the time that they are accomplishing purposes that men 
scarcely ever dreamt of before, having complacent visions of 
marvelous progress and yet only repeating old time history 
and anticipating the modern. 
Florence is the most important city in Italy for the for- 
eign visitor who is more interested in modern than in classi- 
cal accomplishment. It is in this respect the most interesting 
city in the world. To follow the footsteps of Florence’s 
great men either born there or doing their best work in the 
city by the Arno, Dante, Giotto, Arnolfo del Cambio, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Donatello, Bruneleschi, Luca della 
Robbia, Ariosto, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo 
da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, not to mention the 
many other names of real distinction that come crowding to 
the tongue, and to trace the influence of the Medici for good 
and ill, is the most fascinating chapter in human history. 
Florence’s great art treasures now so admirably displayed 
362 BRONZE DOOR, BAPTISTRY, FLORENCE. ITALIAN CITIES 
in her museums mean more than anything else. Her 
churches, in spite of the development of her museums, still 
retain their attractiveness as in the old time and are among 
the most interesting ecclesiastical edifices in Europe. Her 
situation in the valley of the Arno is full of interest and the 
constant reminder of episodes in her history as one wanders 
along her streets is the source of more pleasure for the 
scholarly visitor than he can find in the same compass, any- 
where else throughout the world. Even Athens and Rome 
have not preserved in anything like the same way the memo- 
ries of their Golden Ages as Florence has. Her Tuscan 
people are among the most charming in the world and the 
tourist who comes with the sordid memories of many another 
European town still fresh has one of the most agreeable 
experiences of life in Florence. 
Florence’s political history like that of Venice is a 
never-ending source of lessons for mankind. During most 
of her history Florence was as her people thought a pure 
democracy. They had elections every sixty days in order to 
be sure that no political clique and above all no political 
leader should gain control of the city government. They 
feared a tyrant almost as they would personal injury and 
yet in spite of all these apparently efficient safeguards the 
Medici without holding any formal office in Florence prac- 
tically ruled the city for many generations. From apothe- 
caries dealing in drugs and spices and perfumes and rich 
tissues from the East they had gradually become bankers 
and used their wealth with munificent liberality, yet with 
canny attention to the family political interests. Their posi- 
tion and ambitions made them the political bosses of 
Florence. They practically dictated the officers that should 
be elected. It was when their power was highest that 
Florentine art flourished the most. The great art of Venice 
and Florence coming under an oligarchy in the one city and 
under a self appointed autocrat in the other, give rise in- 
evitably to some very interesting reflections on the political WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
significance of the expression that men are best ruled for 
their own happiness by a beneficent autocracy. 
Bologna’s fame is centered much more in education than 
in art. The only rival in interest of the university of 
Bologna is that of Paris and there are not many who would 
not place the Italian institution ahead of its rival. In spite 
of this academic fame the great reason why the word 
Bologna is well known is because of the prepared food 
named after the town, which is still a popular viand. It has 
sometimes been said that the anticipation of the delicatessen 
stores of our time came when the women were obtaining 
opportunities for the higher education and neglecting kitchen 
duties. There is a bologna pudding, very well known in 
Italy at least, which together with the sausage might have 
made a reasonably complete meal and the two are an index 
of the very practical character of its inhabitants and their 
inventive genius. Anyone who visits Bologna and sees its 
great museum of antiquities in connection with the university 
as well as its botanical garden will know that Bologna de- 
serves the reputation for interest in the things of the mind 
acquired in the long ago and that that interest has not died 
out. The Accademia delle Belle Arte has a very precious 
gallery of paintings chiefly by native artists which furnishes 
abundant proof of the high artiste talent of Bolognese 
painters, though none of them were of great genius. 
Domenichino, Guido Reni, the Caraccis, and Guercino would 
more than satisfy the ambition of any modern large city to 
have painters of her own. They came when painting was 
already decadent in Italy and upheld the tradition the 
longest. They were esteemed beyond their real value until 
the last generation and the reaction in favor of earlier art 
has gone to the other extreme, but these Bolognese painters 
deserve to have a distinct appeal. Francia and Lorenzo 
Costa had painted there in the fifteenth century so that the 
citizens of Bologna manifestly appreciated good art. 
The city itself has a place in history for it was founded 
by an Etruscan king, became a Roman colony under the ITALIAN CITIES 
name of Bononia, figured largely in the civil wars of the 
republic, was an imperial residence under the Empire, was 
able to resist the forces of Alaric, became a free imperial 
city under Charlemagne, an independent republic with ex- 
tensive commerce and a powerful army in the tenth century. 
The Bolognese took an active share in the Crusades, but 
became involved in the civil wars of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries, passing from one powerful Italian family 
to another, Pepoli, Bentivolgi, Visconti, until incorporated 
with the Papal States at the beginning of the sixteenth 
century. The town with its arcaded streets is literally full 
of interest, academic, artistic, historic. 
Padua is Bologna’s greatest rival in Italy as a university 
town. In the chapter on education a partial list of some of 
the students from foreign countries who went to Padua may 
be found, for it proved to be a Mecca for those in foreign 
countries who wanted to get a better opportunity for the 
higher education than they could secure at home. Padua, 
like Bologna, however, is ever so much more than a univer- 
sity town. Its history is very old and indeed it claims to 
be the oldest city in north Italy. The original inhabitants 
were either Paphlagonians or Etruscans. It fought for the 
Romans against Hannibal at Cannae and the city became so 
powerful that it was reported able to raise an army of 
200,000 fighting men. It suffered severely in the times of 
the Huns and the Goths and then in the Middle Ages from 
the internal quarrels in Italy and the tyrants from various 
powerful families. Probably nowhere better than in the 
annals of Padua can a good eross-section of the vicissitudi- 
nous history of the north Italian peninsula be found. 
The presence of the university attracted many distin- 
guished artists. Giotto’s paintings in the Arena are now a 
source of attraction for more artists than almost any other 
set of paintings in Italy. 
Fra Lippo Lippi worked here and many examples of 
his art may be seen and Donatello’s great masterpiece, the 
magnificent equestrian statue of Erasmo da Narni, known as WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the Gatamelata is thought so much of by art lovers that 
copies of it exist in many of the important museums of the 
world. Padua’s greatest artist is Mantegna of the school of 
Squarcione, whose “firm and sculpturesque drawing is com- 
bined with great beauty of color and genius of expression.” 
To him probably more than to anyone else the early Renais- 
sance in Italy owes the precious discipline of fine example 
in drawing. 
Padua possesses in the church of the beloved San 
Antonio to whose name that of the city has now become in- 
separably attached, one of the most fervently visited shrines 
in Italy. The spirit of St. Anthony and above all his intense 
devotion to the care of the poor and those in suffering have 
always affected deeply the social life of Padua and have 
made it one of the cities where social service in our modern 
sense of that term has been rather well organized. Many of 
these old Italian cities have quaint customs of caring for 
the poor and visiting the sick and burying the dead which 
made life ever so much more livable for a great many of the 
poorer classes. Padua had been a leader in this, largely be- 
cause of devotion to St. Anthony. 
Venice has of course a distinctive interest of its own 
from its situation among the lagoons and its absence of 
streets with all the annoyances that go with them. There is 
much more than this however in Venice that has served to 
attract the cultured people from all over the world. There 
are few cities indeed which contain so much that is of endur- 
ing interest for educated men at all times. St. Mark’s it- 
self is a monument in the history of human culture that no 
one can afford to be ignorant of. In politics the oligarchy 
that ruled Venice for so long and brought so much of patron- 
age to the city and so much of prosperity at least if not al- 
ways happiness to the people, while at the same time it en- 
couraged all the arts so well, has been a favorite topic of 
study for students of political history at all times and never 
more than our own. An ex-Mayor of New York deemed it 
worth while even in the twentieth century to make a special ITALIAN CITIES 
study of the history of the Venetian government not merely 
as an interesting historical document, hut because of the 
valuable lessons for our own time which the history of Venice 
presents. 
These are however, only the least interesting features 
presented by Venice for most people. Venetian art is one 
of the marvels of the world. It developed quite naturally 
out of Venice’s artistic glass making. The charming colors 
of wondrously enduring quality which Venetian artists 
learned to use with so much success were a precious heritage 
from the glass-makers. How large and unfillable a gap 
there would be in the history of art if the names of the 
Venetian artists the Bellinis, the Vivarinis, Giorgione, Palma 
Vecchio and Giovane, Carpaccio, Titian and Tintoretto, not 
to mention many others, were to disappear from it. How 
strange it seems to us that some of these men were house 
painters as well as painters on canvass, yet how supremely 
we have learned to honor them in the modern time. Venice 
is a wealthy city, yet these men worked for very little money, 
but for the love of the working and quite as in our own 
time arrangements had to be made to provide even the 
small amounts paid to them out of certain public funds more 
or less surreptitiously. The great John Bellini became the 
offiicial painter of Venice by holding the office of a city 
broker and receiving the stipends while someone performed 
the duties. After much bickering Titian stepped into 
Bellini the broker’s shoes. Venice has its lessons of little- 
nesses for the after time quite as much as its greatness. 
The oligarchy succeeded in making a “city beautiful,” 
supremely so indeed, in many ways, working for the honor 
of their old noble families and intensely proud of their 
blood and their exclusiveness and yet they had the good 
sense not to disdain to accept the old burgher families of 
the Island of Murano, workmen engaged in glass making, as 
of noble rank. The names of these craftsmen were written 
in the great book of the noble families of the republic and their 
daughters were sought in marriage by Venetian patricians’ WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
sons without a shade of thought of mesalliance. Venice 
has a reputation for cruelty and secrecy in punishment of 
political offenders that is mainly romance scarcely at all 
justified by history. Her dungeons, the piombi under the 
leads were not nearly so bad as the damp, dark dungeons of 
most of the prisons of Europe at the same time. Her “bridge 
of sighs’’ has achieved a sentimental fame though perhaps 
never a condemned criminal crossed it, at most but very few, 
but there was many another veritable bridge of sighs 
throughout Europe, though none so beautifully made. Venice 
encouraged education at Padua, was herself the city of 
the most famous travelers of Europe from Maco Polo down 
and some of her dramatists, above all Goldoni, are among the 
greatest of Italian writers of plays. The amusements pro- 
vided for the people by the oligarchy kept public entertain- 
ments from degenerating to that depth of triviality, when 
not worse, to which public entertainment has always come 
to be reduced whenever it becomes a source of profit to the 
purveyors of it. 
Over on the opposite side of the peninsula is Genoa, in 
Latin Janua, the gateway of the North of Italy. Like Venice 
it owed its prominence to its trade with distant countries and 
especially the East, rivaling Venice in this very seriously at 
many times and going to war with the Queen of the Lagoons 
over and over again in jealous commercial rivalry. In 
spite of this similarity of the source of the incomes of the 
citizens and prestige of the cities, how different is Genoa 
from Venice, and yet it too is a wonderful city of palaces 
and its greatest men were seafarers and among its great 
houses of the famous Libro d’Oro were traders who did not 
disdain however to count among their equals in social sta- 
tion some of the handworker makers of beautiful things in 
their city. Genoa, the Superb, or the Proud, came to be its 
favorite title. For Americans it has the distinction of 
being the birthplace of Columbus, but Americans who stop 
off for Columbus’ sake often stay over for the many interests 
of other kinds the city has. Genoa is rather famous for her ITALIAN CITIES 
solution of social questions, for the liberal and munificent 
donations of her citizens to charity and for the devotion of a 
number of the daughters of famous houses of the city to the 
work of caring for the ailing poor and needy. The banker 
finds the history of Genoese banking of supreme interest be- 
cause very early in modern history Genoa became the banker 
of Europe and in Michelet’s phrase “Genoa was a bank be- 
fore it was a city.” The Bank of St. George founded in 1407 
was one of the most ancient and celebrated banks of circula- 
tion and deposit in Europe. 
Students of architecture find the old palaces of the 
Genoese nobility well worthy of study in spite of the fact 
that they were as a rule constructed only of brick covered 
with stucco. Their architects used these humble materials 
to wonderful effect. Genoa has always been famous for her 
harbor improvements and the old pier Molo Vecchio is nearly 
1,000 years old. The Duke of Galliera by his vast bequests 
enabled the authorities thoroughly to modernize the port 
equipment, adding warehouses and every facility for the 
transfer of goods, so that Genoa might become a great world 
port. This Italian set a fine example for the wealthy of every 
land in the cause of the community. The nobility of Genoa 
have always been famous for their generosity to public ser- 
vice of every kind. Many of their palaces are filled with 
magnificent collections of artistic treasures and their libraries 
are well known for the number and great value of their con- 
tents especially in manuscript works and codices of various 
kinds. For long Genoa has had a law forbidding the removal 
from the city or province of any object of ancient art with- 
out the sanction of a commission under the presidency of 
the Prefect. Genoa has always been famous for her theatre 
and for the devotion of her citizens to music. 
Another of the distinctive North Italian towns is Milan 
built around its great Cathedral as a centre and containing 
a number of interesting features which have attracted the 
attention of tourists of all times. After St. Peter’s at Rome 
and the Cathedral of Seville in Spain the Duomo of Milan WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
is the largest Church in Europe. Its roof is supported by 
fifty-two columns with canopied niches for statues instead 
of capitals and with emplacements for statues everywhere 
until there are some 2,000 of them in the Cathedral. Even 
more interesting for the historical student is the Church of 
San Ambrosio the oldest of Milan’s churches founded by St. 
Ambrose in the fourth century. Bramante’s little church of 
San Satiro and especially its sacristy are among the great 
master’s finest works. 
That Milan has still further supreme interests in 
ecclesiastical architecture is evidenced by the fact, that when 
the directors of the art museum of South Kensington in 
London determined to reproduce accurate models on, a 
sufficiently large scale for technical study of portions of the 
interior decorations of certain notable buildings in Italy, 
they turned to Milan for the first building to put on exhibi- 
tion. This was Luini’s Chapel of St. Catharine in the Church 
of San Maurizio, otherwise the Monasterio Majori at Milan. 
A second example for reproduction was also chosen from 
Milan, the Chapel of St. Peter Martyr, or as the Italians 
know it the Portinari Chapel behind the church of Sant’ 
Eustorgio. As less than a dozen models of Italian structures 
and rooms were made altogether, it is easy to see how much 
of interest centred in Milan since the originals of two of the 
models were sought for there. 
The city is rich in works of art and the Brera Gallery 
contains one of the finest collections in Italy, that is to say 
in Europe. Under Lodovico Sforza, Leonardo da Vinci, 
Luini, Beltraffio and Bramante the architects were at work 
there. While famous for interest in art it is almost more 
worthy of note for its care for the poor and ailing. The 
great hospital L’Ospedale Maggiore is one of the finest in 
Europe. Some of the best architectural portions of it date 
from the fifteenth century and one of its beautiful courts 
was probably designed by Michelangelo himself though 
Bramante’s work has probably also been traced in portions 
of the structure. Probably the best known of Milan’s great 
370 ITALIAN CITIES 
men is St. Charles Borommeo distinguished for his devotion 
to the ailing poor, to the education of all classes and his 
personal sacrifices for the care of the needy. The city has 
always been famous for its attention to the entertainment of 
its people and the musical taste of the Milanese citizens in 
general is probably the best in Europe. Their great theatre 
La Scala, the largest theatre in Europe with the single ex- 
ception of San Carlo at Naples, is the crucial testing place 
for Italian opera. To succeed there is to be assured of suc- 
cess elsewhere. Ever since the latter part of the fifteenth 
century Milan has been famous for its devotion to music. 
In recent years Milan set the fashion of building great 
galleries in cities by constructing the Galleria Vittorio 
Emmanuele, a graceful glass roofed structure nearly 1,000 
feet long, some eighty feet wide and nearly 100 feet high, 
built in 1865-67 and connecting the Cathedral square with 
that of the theatre of La Scala. 
A little town like Assisi is a typical example of how 
much of interest can centre around a place so small in the 
number of its inhabitants as apparently to be quite negli- 
gible, yet which bulks large in the space it occupies in the 
mind of humanity. Probably never containing more than a 
few thousand inhabitants it has been almost as much written 
about as towns many times its size even in Italy and has 
attracted more attention from mankind generally than some 
of the very large cities. We think of it now as the home of 
St. Francis of Assisi and as some thirty lives of the saint 
have appeared even in our generation many of them in 
English, Assisi has become a veritable focus of attraction. 
It is scarcely less a centre of attention because of the 
career of St. Clare that marvelous woman friend of St. 
Francis whose life meant so much for the master’s great 
foundation after his death. It has ever since been a place of 
pilgrimage even from distant lands for the sake of these 
two unworldly beings. St. Louis of France went there 
shortly after Francis’ death and many a nobleman has 
371 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
stopped there since and the place has been a favorite haunt 
for painters and poets and scholars. 
And Assisi deserves all this. Giotto went there shortly 
after the Saint’s death and did some of his wondrous paint- 
ing in the Church of San Francesco. Cimabue had preceded 
him. Between them they made the little Hill Town a mecca 
for artists for all the after time. The Portiuncula made it a 
great place of pilgrimage for the sake of the indulgences 
and San Damiano became an attraction for those who were 
interested in the fact that the simple beautiful life of “the 
little poor man of God” had opened a career for women as 
well as for men. Assisi has other attractions however. 
When Goethe visited the town more than a century ago he 
did not have any interest in St. Francis and did not even 
deign to go out to see the great Church of San Francesco. 
As I have said in the chapter on Painting, the German poet 
wanted to view the facade of the Temple of Minerva in the 
Market Place of Assisi which is one of the most beautiful 
of the remains of the Roman architecture of the Roman 
empire, so many exquisite examples of which, though none 
of them perhaps quite so perfect as this facade, may be found 
in the neighborhood of Perugia, Orvieto and other places in 
the Hill Country. 
Another of Italy’s small but very interesting cities not 
far from Assisi is Perugia. It has the remains of four great 
stages of civilization. On its site there was an old Etruscan 
city 700 and more years before Christ. In the time of 
the Romans as Augusta Perusia it was one of the important 
Italian cities and was the site of some of the most beautiful 
Roman art. All down the centuries it maintained its good 
taste in art. It possesses some beautiful Gothic remains 
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries notably the great 
marble fountain erected about 1277 by Bevignate, the 
brother of Alberto (both Perugians) and Buonsegna (from 
Venice) and adorned with sculptures by the Pisani. Two 
centuries later, the Renaissance time, Pietro Vannucci, 
Perugino, as he is known, did his painting here and had a 
372 ITALIAN CITIES 
group of great students around him among whom was 
Raphael. Perugino was one of the first great Italian oil 
painters. His decorations of the Sala del Cambio or Old 
Exchange of Perugia is one of the most interesting sets of 
decorations in all the world. 
Besides its place in the history of art and in four great 
periods of human culture (see the chapter on Painting) 
Perugia has a distinct place in the history not only of 
Etruria and of Rome but of the Middle Ages and of the 
modern time. It was recovered from the Goths by Belisarius 
in 537, it suffered from protracted siege and sack by Totila 
in 549, it was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narcize in 
552 and was occupied by the Lombards until the ninth 
century when through Charlemange and Louis the Pius it 
passed under the control of the Popes. On a number of 
occasions when there were serious political difficulties in 
Rome the Popes found a personal asylum within its walls and 
it was the meeting place of the conclaves which elected 
Pope Honorius II, 1124, Honorius IV, 1285, Celestine V, 1294 
and Clement V, 1305. In return for the loyalty of its citizens 
the Popes fostered education there and the University of 
Perugia had a reputation in Italy far beyond what the size 
of the city might seem to demand for it. Pope John XXII 
issued a well known Bull establishing the medical school 
of the city of Perugia and requiring the maintenance of the 
standard of three years of preliminary study at the univer- 
sity four years at medicine and a year of practice with a 
physician before the license to practice might be given. The 
Baglioni family ruled for several centuries and though they 
had no legal position as rulers or magistrates defied all other 
authority and filled the streets of the city with their broils 
and butcheries. The Pope succeeded in freeing the people 
from the tyranny of the Baglioni, but Perugia continued to 
have a history full of vicissitudes. 
Another small town which occupies much more space in 
human interest than apparently the size of it would seem to 
demand is Mantua. Here Vittorino da Feltre opened the first 
373 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
important school of the New Learning and insisted that char- 
acter must be trained as well as the intellect stored with learn- 
ing for any true education, that poor scholars must have their 
opportunities and that the girls who wanted a chance to study 
must have it as well as the hoys. If Mantua had done noth- 
ing else but provide an opportunity for this marvelous new 
growth in all the most important phases of education, it would 
be a worthy place of pilgrimage for educators. But besides, 
not far away from it is the birthplace of Virgil, and here are 
to be seen the beautiful rooms decorated for Isabella D’Este, 
one at least of which has been copied for the South Kensing- 
ton Museum, London, and the air is redolent of women of the 
Renaissance and of the influence that they exerted. Isabella 
had at her hand Mantegna to select antiques for her. She 
had Leonardo da Vinci for her consulting architect and deco- 
rator and Titian for her portrait painter. She had recognized 
and appreciated the talent of Correggio, when many of the 
men around her supposed to be such thorough connoisseurs 
passed him by unheeding. She entrusted to Perugino the 
making of the wall panels of her Grotta, she sent to Aldus 
for new editions as he printed them, complaining sometimes 
that the prices were too high, read the first printed edition 
of the Decameron and was the patroness of Ariosto and Cas- 
tiglione. Is it any wonder that the scene of all these tri- 
umphs of charming princely patronage and intimate associa- 
tions of the nobility with the world of art and letters should 
retain a lasting interest for all those who have a soft place in 
their hearts for what is cultural in the history of mankind. 
One of the extremely interesting cities of Italy, much 
more rarely visited than most others, partly because its loca- 
tion over on the Adriatic together with the inadequate railway 
communication have deterred tourists, is Ravenna. Dante 
students go there because it contains the tomb of the Master 
poet, students of architecture are attracted by its fine 
Churches, built from the fourth to the eighth century which 
represent the beginnings of Byzantine art. Outside they are 
unattractive, but they are all glorious within. The whole 
374 TOMB OF DANTE, RAVENNA, ITALY ITALIAN CITIES 
plan of these buildings allows for ample wall spaces, but 
these are filled up by the wonderful mosaic decorations which 
‘‘look down upon us as fresh as they did 1300 years back.” 
They were older when Giotto painted his first fresco than 
Giotto’s frescos are now, but they look as a rule almost as if 
they had been put up last year. How well these early Chris- 
tians solved the problem of making so absolutely enduring as 
to be quite permanent their beautiful artistic decorations. 
We used to think little of them when our own decorative art 
was undeveloped, but they are growing in estimation with the 
growth of true artistic appreciation in modern times. 
For the student of history Ravenna is interesting because 
for so long it was the seat of the Western Empire, and 
Odoacer, when he became supreme ruler of Italy like the 
Emperors before him, made Ravenna his chief place of resi- 
dence. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, laid siege to the place and 
after three years captured the city, broke the treaty, slew 
his rival at a banquet in a palace at the laurel grove and 
reigned here for thirty-three years in the greatest splendor. 
The city continued to be a centre of authority and of attrac- 
tion for the rulers of Italy and the East for centuries after- 
wards. It formed part of Charlemagne’s donation to the 
Pope in the middle of the eighth century. Charlemagne him- 
self carried off the brazen statue of Theodoric and the marble 
columns of the King’s Palace to his own new palace at Aix 
la Chapelle. There are a dozen of churches that contain 
memorials of these centuries and Ravenna is thus one of the 
most interesting cities, full of old time remains and human 
documents that the world knows. 
Almost more interesting than any other of the cities of 
Italy is Naples, the capital of the rulers of the South. Its 
neighborhood is intensely interesting both historically and 
naturally. In the vicinity are Pompei, the tomb of Virgil, 
Herculaneum and the not distant Capri, while Paestum and 
other well known tourist features bear evidence of its attrac- 
tiveness. It was the capital of Magna Graecia in the older 
times, retained its Greek culture the longest and was the first 
375 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
to awaken at the Renaissance. The neighboring University 
at Salerno was the first institution of the higher education 
in modern times and for centuries Naples and its vicinity rep- 
resented all that was highest in culture in Europe. 
Its museums are famous, its great theatre of San Carlo 
was for long the largest in Europe, the dramatic and musical 
taste of its people made the trying out of literary and musical 
compositions here one of the tests of merit. The magnificent 
collections in the Museo Borbonico have attracted attention 
more and more as they are better known. For Etrusco- 
Grecian relics and Italo-Grecian or pure Greek remains it is 
unsurpassed and is besides unique as a treasure house of 
Roman and early Italian antiquities from Herculaneum 
Pompeii, Puteoli, Paestum, Stabiae and many other places. 
Such monumental works as the Farnese Bull, the Farnese 
Hercules, the Dancing Fawn, the Statues of the Balbi deserv- 
edly give it almost first rank in the estimation of the sculp- 
tors of the world. Naples is famous for its libraries and in 
recent years for the magnificent biological laboratory at Santa 
Lucia. 
When to all this is added the interest of the vicissitudes 
of its history, the opportunity to study the intermingling of 
races Greek, Italian and many others from all over the shores 
of the Mediterranean, no wonder that Naples has been a 
favorite subject of study though our knowledge is by no 
means exhausted. It is undoubtedly one of the most inter- 
esting towns in Europe. 
Pisa of the Leaning Tower, the Campo Santo and the 
Cathedral with Galileo’s swinging lamp by which all the pen- 
dulums of the world were set swinging, where the Pisani did 
their wonderful work in sculpture and where is the original 
of the beautiful pulpit which so many of the greatest museums 
of the world have thought it worth while to have a copy of, has 
always been an interesting old town. The hunger tower, im- 
mortalized by Dante, shows how bitter were the civic feuds 
of the older time. There have been centuries when the Univer- 
sity of Pisa has been the serious rival of Bologna and Padua 
376 ITALIAN CITIES 
and the town has always had a magnificent development of 
the intellectual life. Situated, when we think of our magnifi- 
cent distances in America, only a few miles away from a num- 
ber of other Italian towns which deservedly attracted wide 
attention, Pisa has always had a distinctive individuality of 
her own that impresses itself upon the traveler and makes 
him recall her special features as he does not at all the many 
modern towns ever so much larger and apparently more 
important through which he has to pass. 
Yerona would seem to have only the adventitious inter- 
est of having been the scene of the tragedy of Romeo and 
Juliet, but even the casual visitor finds ever so much more 
to interest him. The great monument to Can Grande della 
Scala reminds him of this excellent friend of Dante and 
that in this town many years -of Dante’s exile were passed 
and probably more of the Divine Comedy written than any- 
where else. It is something to have been the refuge of the 
poet whose poem is said by many to be the greatest ever 
written. Yerona has a distinction in the material as well 
as the intellectual order. Probably nowhere did the early 
Renaissance develop such beautiful building as in this little 
town. Fra Giocondo (1435-1514) ornamented his native 
town beautifully and rose to great celebrity as an architect 
until he was asked to design buildings even in distant 
France. In the next stage of the Renaissance Sanmichele, 
who besides being a great architect, was distinguished as a 
military engineer, designed a large number of magnificent 
palaces for Verona wdiich reveal at once the taste and the 
opulence associated with liberality which characterized the 
great merchants of the little town. 
Another one of these little Italian towns forever famous 
for great work done in it and containing some magnificent 
examples of that work which still attract architectural stu- 
dents from all over the world is Vicenza. Many of its fine 
public buildings, of which it has a large number, were de- 
signed by Palladio one of the very greatest designers of non- 
ecclesiastical architecture that the world has known. There 
377 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
arise in these narrow irregular streets magnificent monu- 
ments created by this genius of the later Renaissance which 
have often been the subject of that sincerest flattery, imita- 
tion, in our own day, since we have wakened up to the idea of 
making our cities beautiful. The Barbarano Palace and the 
Chiericate have deeply influenced visiting architectural stu- 
dents and while Palladio is not now as enthusiastically 
worshipped as at one time, there is no doubt at all about his 
power to build effectively with an exquisite proportion of 
parts, and as Ferguson suggested “an undefinable eloquence 
of detail which disarms the critic of Palladio’s work.” 
Vicenza had the good taste to appreciate the painters of 
neighboring Venice and so the city possesses a collection of 
paintings by the great Venetians that add to the interest of 
the visitor. 
Probably the most interesting feature of the history 
and culture of all these Italian towns is their eminent in- 
dividuality. Not only are no two of them alike, but they 
present the most interesting contrasts in their art and 
architecture, their modes of government, their popular litera- 
ture, their amusements, their social life; all these have dis- 
tinctions that not only differentiate them, but make them 
intensely fascinating, we may well say by their variety. There 
is probably no country in the world whose cities present in 
their history and monuments so many complete contrasts 
with each other. This is of course what adds greatly to the 
attraction which Italian cities have for tourists and espe- 
cially for educated students of human history, who knowing 
much already find their interest enhanced by all that can be 
added to their information by intimate contact with these 
Italian municipalities. Most scholars have favorite cities, 
or some one mistress of their hearts among these Italian 
municipalities and find marvelous renewal of pleasure on 
revisiting scenes tliat were full of surprise on their first 
visit. 
378 AMERIGO VESPUCCI DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
THE FACT that Columbus, best known at least of the 
great geographical discoverers of modern times, was an 
Italian is familiar to everyone, but seems to be considered 
by most people as one of the quite fortuitous accidents of 
wdiich human history is so full. Certainly there is a very 
general impression that while the Spaniards and Portuguese 
are deservedly well known for their magnificent work in 
exploration and discovery, the Italians, absorbed in their 
commercial trading in the Mediterranean, accomplished 
very little. A supreme surprise is in store then, for those 
who review the names of the most successful discoverers and 
explorers of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that 
time of immense world expansion, and find how many of the 
most distinguished of them were of Italian birth. They are 
so numerous and wrere so much in advance of men from 
other nations, even from maritime Spain and Portugal that 
only a brief enumeration of their acheivements is needed to 
make it clear beyond a doubt that civilization’s debt to 
Italy in this field of human accomplishment is scarcely less 
noteworthy than that in the departments of art and 
aesthetics. 
Columbus is sometimes said to have been cheated of his 
rights as the original discoverer of this Continent when the 
Western hemisphere was named America after Amerigo 
Vespucci, an Italian compatriot who did not cross the Atlan- 
tic until five years after Columbus’ first voyage. Careful 
studies in recent years, however, have made it very clear 
that with all due credit to Columbus for his priority as a 
daring sailor, Vespucci well deserved that the American 
379 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Continent should be named after him, for he touched the 
mainland at least a year before Columbus and he furnished 
the details of accurate information by which maps were made 
that brought definite knowledge of the American Continent 
to all European scholars. Waldseemiiller’s suggestion of the 
name of America for the New World then, was not a robbing 
of Columbus of any glory, that should be his — that would 
have been impossible — but an attribution to a great daring 
discoverer and explorer of a due reward for his achievements. 
Vespucci’s merits and his thoroughly straightforward hon- 
esty, and simplicity with lack of anything like jealous claims 
for priority for his discoveries are coming to be recognized 
more and more. When the Numismatic and Archaelogical 
Society of New York resolved to strike a medal each year 
commemorative of some benefactor of America, it was wisely 
decided that the first of these medals should be coined in 
honor of Amerigo Vespucci. 
Vespucci visited this country not once but several times. 
In his very first voyage in 1497 he coasted along the Northern 
shore of South America the very first to reach the continent, 
and sailed farther into the Gulf of Mexico. In 1499 he went 
out with a second fleet and taking his former course entered 
the mouth of the Orinoco River, and secured some idea of the 
immensity of the continent from which such a river flowed. 
He stayed for months, returning to Cadiz in the following 
year. After an interval of over a year he made a third 
voyage and reached as far South as 52° latitude, to within 
four degrees of Cape Horn. Even all this did not satisfy 
this venturesome navigator and a fourth voyage was under- 
taken the following year on which Vespucci explored por- 
tions of the coast of Brazil. It is easy to understand then 
that the reports of his discoveries attracted wide attention. 
He was the first of the great discoverers to secure a place in 
European literature. In the Four Elements, one of the Mo- 
rality Plays written during the first decade of the sixteenth 
century, there is a reference to America, but the passage 
shows that the author had been caught by the account of 
380 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
Amerigo’s (in Latin Americus’) discovery of the Continent 
and not Columbus ’ voyages. The complete passage is: 
‘‘Till now, within this twenty years, 
Westward he found new lands, 
That we never heard tell of before this 
By writing nor other means. 
But these new lands found lately 
Been called America, because only 
Americus did first them find.” 
When More in the introduction to Utopia wishes to ac- 
count for his discourse on this wonderful land over the seas, 
he tells us about meeting Ralph Hythloday, his reference is 
to the voyages of Amerigo and not to those of Columbus. He 
tells us that Ralph “was so desirous of seeing the world that 
he divided his estate among his brothers, ran the same 
hazzard as Americus Yesputius and bore a share in three of 
his four voyages that are now published; only he did not 
return with him in his last but obtained leave of him almost 
by force that he might be one of those twenty-four who were 
left at the farthest place at which they touched in their last 
voyage to New Castile.” It was in his wanderings from this 
point that he came upon Utopia and is supposed to have 
brought back the information with regard to it which Sir 
Thomas More by fiction makes use of in picturing his ideal 
republic. The Utopia was first published at Louvain late in 
1516 under the editorship of Erasmus and Peter Giles and 
had probably been finished in 1515, that is within eight years 
of the first publication of Vespucci’s account of his dis- 
coveries in 1507. 
What Amerigo Vespucci did for South America the 
Cabots, John and Sebastian, accomplished for North America. 
The name Cabot has now become so familiar to us here in 
America particularly, that very few «of us recall at all the 
Italian origin of the family. The man whom we know as 
John Cabot was really Giovanni Cabotto, a Genoese who after 
381 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
fifteen years of residence in Venice took np his citizenship 
in that city in 1476 and is consequently usually spoken of as 
a Venetian. He and his son Sebastiano Cabotto established 
themselves in Bristol in England. Hearing of the voyages 
to the Indies by sailing westward, made by their distin- 
guished compatriot, Columbus, they set out and reached the 
Continent of North America and explored the coast for a 
considerable distance bringing back an account of the lands 
which they touched and arousing deep interest in England 
by their discoveries. It was on the strength of their expedi- 
tions that England based its claims to the North American 
portion of the hemisphere. It may be said, however, that it 
was a long time before Englishmen ventured to make this 
long difficult voyage which the hardy Venetians had accom- 
plished. The first successful English settlement was not made 
in this country until more than a century after the venture- 
some expedition of the Cabots.* 
Just as the Cabots, Italians in the service of England 
made their expedition to North America, so Verazzano 
another Italian in the service of the French made the first 
voyage for that country, the one indeed on which France 
based its claims ultimately to the possession of Canada. 
Verazzano in 1524 sailing along the coast of what is now the 
Eastern United States, entered the harbor of New York, 
sailed up the Hudson River and probably even landed with 
some of his men on Manhattan Island where a religious ser- 
vice, probably as Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix suggested, the Mass 
was celebrated. The account of Verazzano’s discoveries at- 
tracted as much attention in France as those of Columbus 
in Spain and the Cabots in England. The pioneer navigators 
for practically all of these Western countries of Europe with 
the sole exception of Portugal was always an Italian. Their 
countrymen were not destined to profit much by their dis- 
coveries, but that represents all the more reason why their 
* Italians found their way to England rather frequently or at least not 
nearly so rarely as has sometimes been thought, even three and four centuries 
ago. It is said, for instance, that the direct ancestors of John Bunyan were 
Italians and the name of the grandfather of the distinguished English writer, 
is said to be set down in the parish register as Giovanni Bognoni Lombard. 
382 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
claims to priority of discovery should be given full recog- 
nition. 
When Magellan, as we know him, sailed round the 
world for the first time he was of course a Portuguese in the 
service of Spain. One of his companions on the expedition, 
however, was Pigafetti, an Italian and it is to him that we 
are indebted for an account of the expedition. When 
Magellan sailed on the Pacific for four months without 
seeing any inhabited land the trials of himself and his 
companions rose to a climax. Their provisions ran out and 
they were compelled to eat even the skin and leather where- 
with their rigging was bound and to drink water which had 
become putrid. Pigafetti tells how Magellan shed tears of 
joy when he beheld the immense expanses of the new ocean 
and found it so calm that he gave it the name it has borne 
ever since of Pacific. He was destined to find it treacherous 
beyond measure in its power to feed men on hope and dash 
their hopes by its unending space. Pigafetti was one of 
those who stood by him when his crew almost to a man were 
ready to mutiny against him. In fact it is not quite sure 
whether his death was due to the natives of the Spice Islands 
or to his own men who knew his indomitable character once 
his mind was made up and dreaded his intensity of purpose 
to circumnavigate the globe, for they were well aware that 
no dangers or hardships would deter him and they feared 
the whole expedition might be lost through his obstinate 
determination to accomplish the aim with which he set 
out. Pigafetti, after his commander’s death brought the 
expedition successfully through to its end. 
Very similar to the case of Magellan was that of La 
Salle who in 1678 explored the Mississippi from Canada by 
way of the Illinois down to its mouth. His second in com- 
mand on this expedition, usually spoken of as Henry de 
Tonty, was an Italian whose real name was Enrico Tonti. 
How much the Italian meant for the expedition will probably 
be best realized from the quotation from Hart’s History of 
the American Nation in which he says: “Even better than 
383 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
the King’s patent was his (La Salle’s) acquisition of a 
lieutenant in Henry de Tonty, a young Italian soldier of 
fortune, who had served as an officer in the French array but 
lost his right hand at the battle of Libisso. La Salle found 
in Tonty a nature as bold and adventurous as his own, and 
possessing the tact and kindliness in which he himself was 
conspicuously lacking . . . When La Salle, after his ex- 
pedition in Illinois, returned for naval supplies to Fort 
Frontenac, he left Tonty at the Peoria Lake entrenched in a 
palisade which was named Fort Crevecoeur. Tonty, now in 
charge, occupied Starved Rock, a steep, high cliff on the 
banks of the Illinois, and built thereon Fort St. Louis. Dur- 
ing the spring and summer most of his men deserted—for 
the employment was not popular, and rival fur-traders were 
continually trying to seduce Tonty’s following; so that, 
when, in September, the Illinois were attacked by an Iroquois 
war-party, Tonty and his four remaining companions re- 
treated northward out of harm’s way! When La Salle met 
with his tragic end, Tonty twice went in search of him.” 
Before this magnificent epoch of discovery which came 
at the time of the Renaissance and indeed is declared by many 
to have been one of the great incentives to that marvelous 
expansion of the human mind which developed at that period, 
Italy had proved a bold, hardy pioneer in the work of en- 
larging geographical knowledge and making distant expedi- 
tions which brought to Europe not only acquaintanceship 
with, but a vast amount of detailed information as to even 
the most distant lands. 
The great travelers and geographic discoverers of the 
Middle Ages were the Venetians. These hardy adventurous 
inhabitants of the marshy islands of the lagoons along the 
northwestern shores of the Adriatic, who had withdrawn to 
this inaccessible location as a retreat from barbarian invasion, 
succeeded in making themselves a world power by their bold 
navigation and their venturesome maintenance of communi- 
cation with distant places. They not only maintained their 
own independence, but they sent their fleets to distant shores, 
384 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
made their neighbors their tributaries, controlled the des- 
tiny of empires and became themselves a striking example of 
sea power in history. They formed the centre of trade with 
the Near East and became the purveyors of Oriental luxuries 
to Europe to their great profit. They voyaged all over the 
Mediterranean and came to know every portion particularly of 
the great inland sea and so it is not surprising that from 
among them came the great travelers of the Thirteenth 
Century. The Venetians more than any other people in 
Europe were familiar with distant countries and Eastern 
languages and Oriental ways until nothing deterred their 
enterprise for exploration and commercial development. 
One of the greatest of the travelers and geographical 
discoverers of all time is Marco Polo, the Venetian, who in the 
Thirteenth Century wandered into Asia, penetrating as far 
as China, succeeded in finding his way into Thibet and brought 
back with him even some definite knowledge of the Christian 
kingdom of Abyssinia. As a matter of fact there was scarcely 
an interesting country of the East of which Marco Polo did 
not have something to relate from his personal experiences. 
He visited such cities in Eastern Turkistan as Kashgar, 
Yarkand and Khotan which have been the subject of no little 
curiosity that has been satisfied only in comparatively recent 
years. He told of Burmah, of Siam, of Cochin China, of 
Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and of other islands of the great 
Archipelago, of Ceylon and of India. He had heard and 
could tell much, though his geographical information was 
rather vague and legendary, of the coast of Zanzibar, of the 
vast and distant Madagascar, and in the remotely opposite 
direction of Siberia, of the shores of the Arctic Ocean and of 
the curious customs of the inhabitants of these distant coun- 
tries. 
After Venice the most important of the great commercial 
cities of Italy was Genoa, which became the rival of its Adri- 
atic predecessor. The Genoese too wandered to the distant 
cities of the East, so much farther comparatively than any 
commercial voyages now, and succeeded in making their city 
385 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
one of the great world centres of commerce and communica- 
tion. The daring enterprise of its navigators is thoroughly 
exemplified by what Christopher Columbus accomplished, but 
many another adventurous spirit whose name has not Colum- 
bus’ fame went out from this north Italian city which vindi- 
cated for itself the name, Genoa the Superb. With the possible 
exception of Venice, there is no town in history which 
accomplished so much for bringing the outlying portions of 
the world nearer to each other and into direct communication 
for commercial and civilizing intercourse than Genoa. 
These great explorers often found on their return home 
that their stories, instead of being readily accepted and they 
themselves welcomed and honored as extenders of human 
knowledge, both they and their stories were often scouted as if 
they had invented the tales of what they had discovered. 
Indeed it is very probable that the contemptuous note which 
has come to be associated with the phrase “travellers’ tales” 
came into existence at this time. They were all thought to be 
drawing the long bow, especially at the beginning when there 
was no one to confirm their stories. 
Marco Polo, for instance, shares the fate of Herodotus in 
having the information which he was at so much pains to 
collect distrusted and even scoffed at as imaginative. Just 
inasmuch as our geographical knowledge has grown in definite- 
ness and detail Marco Polo has been vindicated. In his Lives 
of Celebrated Travellers, James Augustus St. John, states the 
change of mind that has taken place with regard to Marco 
Polo and makes clear the significant position he has come to 
occupy in the modern world. 
“When the travels of Marco Polo first appeared, they 
were generally regarded as fiction; and this absurd belief had 
so far gained ground, that when he lay upon his death-bed, his 
friends and nearest relatives, coming to take their eternal 
adieu, conjured him as he valued the salvation of his soul to 
retract whatever he had advanced in his book, or at least many 
such passages as every person looked upon as untrue; but 
the traveler, whose conscience was untouched upon that score, 
386 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
declared solemnly, in that awful moment, that far from being 
guilty of exaggeration, he had not described one half of the 
wonderful things which he had beheld. Such was the recep- 
tion which the discoveries of this extraordinary man exper- 
ienced when first promulgated. By degrees, however, as 
enterprise lifted more and more the veil from Central and 
Eastern Asia the relations of our traveler rose in the esti- 
mation of geographers; and now that the world — though con- 
taining many unknown tracts — has been more successfully 
explored, we begin to perceive that Marco Polo like Herodo- 
tus, was a man of the most rigid veracity, whose testimony, 
presumptuous ignorance alone can call in question.” 
Marco Polo was not the only Italian who traveled 
extensively in the East at this time. After the Venetian un- 
doubtedly the most enterprising explorer and geographical 
discoverer was John of Carpini, the author of a wonderful ser* 
ies of descriptions of the marvelous things that he had seen in 
Northern Asia. John was a Franciscan friar, one of the early 
companions and disciples of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he 
joined when he was but a very young man. He rose to be one 
of the most prominent men in the Order, going on distant 
organizing expeditions for the propagation of the Franciscans 
among the Northern nations of Europe and had become famil- 
iar with many races and peoples and many tongues, having 
held positions of authority in Saxony, in Northern Germany, 
in Spain and even on the Barbary Coast. It is scarcely sur- 
prising then that when in 1245 Pope Innocent IV, disturbed 
by the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe which threatened 
European civilization and Christianity, resolved to send a 
mission to the Tartar monarch, John of Carpini was selected 
for the dangerous and important task. Though Friar John 
was more than sixty years of age he accepted the mission with 
alacrity. 
The first stage of his journey took him as far as Kiev in 
Russia and from here having crossed the Dnieper and the Don 
to the Volga he traveled down that river to the camp of Batu, 
at this time the senior living member of Jenghis Khan’s 
387 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
family. After an exchange of presents Batu allowed the 
friar and his companions to proceed to the Court of the 
Supreme Khan in Mongolia. Colonel Sir Henry Yule, him- 
self a great traveler and an important authority on the liter- 
ature of exploration and geography, tells how the stout hearted 
old man rode on horseback something like 3,000 miles in the 
next hundred days. I have told some of the story in my 
book on The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries. The bodies 
of himself and companion had to be tightly bandaged to 
enable them to stand the excessive fatigue of this enormous 
ride, which led them across the Ural Mountains and River 
past the northern part of the Caspian, across the Jaxartes, 
whose name they could not find out, along the Dzungarian 
Lakes till they reached the imperial camp, called the Yellow 
Pavilion, near the Orkhon River. There had been an inter- 
regnum in the empire which was terminated by a formal 
election while the friars were at the Yellow Pavilion, where 
they had the opportunity to see between three and four thou- 
sand envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and Eastern 
Europe, who brought with them tributes and presents for the 
ruler to be elected. 
It was not until three months after this, in November, 
that the Emperor dismissed them with a letter to the Pope 
written in Latin, Arabic, and Mongolian, but containing only 
a brief imperious assertion that the Khan of the Tartars was 
the scourge of God for Christianity, and that he must fulfill 
his mission. Then sad at heart, the ambassadors began their 
homeward journey in the midst of the winter. Their suffer- 
ings can be better imagined that described, but Friar John 
who does not dwell on them much tells enough of them to 
make their realization' comparatively easy. They reached 
Kiev seven months later, in June, and were welcomed there 
by the Slavonic Christians as though arisen from the dead. 
From thence they continued their journey to Lyons, where 
they delivered the Khan’s letter to the Pope, who was in atten- 
dance at the Council there. 
Friar John embodied the information that he had ob- 
388 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
tained in this journey in a book called Liber Tartarorum (The 
Book of the Tartars or according to another manuscript, 
History of the Mongols whom we call Tartars.) Col Yule 
notes that like most of the other medieval monks’ itineraries, 
Friar John’s hook shows an entire absence of that character- 
istic traveler’s egotism with which we have become abundantly 
familiar in more recent years and contains very little per- 
sonal narrative. We know that John was a stout man and 
this, in addition to his age when he went on the mission, can 
not hut make us realize the thoroughly unselfish spirit with 
which he followed the call of duty, to undertake a work that 
seemed sure to prove fatal and that would inevitably bring 
in its train suffering of the severest kind. A good idea of the 
critical historical value of his work can be obtained from the 
fact that half a century ago an educated Mongol, Galsang 
Gombeyev, in the Historical and Philological Bulletin of the 
Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, reviewed the book and 
bore testimony to the great accuracy of its statements, to the 
care with which its details had been verified, and the evident 
personal character of all its observations. 
Friar John’s book attracted the attention of compilers 
of information with regard to distant countries very soon 
after it was issued, and an abridgement of it is to be found 
in the Encyclopedia of Vincent of Beauvais, which was writ- 
ten shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. At the 
end of the sixteenth century Hakluyt published portions of 
the original work, as did Borgeron at the beginning of the 
seventeenth century. The Geographical Society of Paris 
published a fine edition of the work about the middle of the 
nineteenth century, and at the same time a brief narrative 
taken down from the lips of John’s companion, Friar Bene- 
dict, the Pole, which is somewhat more personal in its charac- 
ter and fully substantiates all that Friar John had written. 
Another famous Franciscan friar traveler was Odoric of 
Pordenone, who after having travelled over most of Asia dic- 
tated an account of his travels, and notes were made of his 
descriptions of various places and published. As might well 
389 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
be expected this mode of publication was too loose to assure 
reliability and so Odoric is credited with many fabulous 
stories. His work was plagiarized to a great extent by Sir 
John Mandeville and this still further discredited portions of 
it. For a time it was doubtful whether Odoric had really 
visited all the places that he is said to have reached, but Sir 
Henry Yule has completely vindicated him, and even a brief 
account of his travels shows what a daring explorer he was. 
He anticipated the travels of many men who even in the last 
few years have secured fame by writing descriptions of their 
sojourns in certain Asiatic countries, for Odoric was at Nan- 
kin, in Malabar, in Calcutta proceeding thence apparently to 
Ceylon and to the Shrine of St. Thomas at Mailapur near 
Madras, as well as through Persia, Southern Russia and 
Tartary. 
Even more interesting than his travels in India, how- 
ever, are those in China. He sailed from the Hindustan 
Peninsula in a Chinese junk to Sumatra, visiting various 
ports on the northern coast of that island and telling some- 
thing about the inhabitants and the customs of the country. 
According to Sir Henry Yule he then visited Java and it 
would seem also the coast of Borneo, finally reaching 
Canton, at that time known to Western Asiatics as Chin 
Kalan or Great China. From there he went to the great 
ports of Fuhkeen and Schwan Chow, where he found two 
houses of his order, then he proceeded to Fuchau from which 
place he struck across the mountains into Chekaeng and then 
visited Hang Chow at that time renowned under the name 
of Cansay. Modern authorities in exploration have sug- 
gested that this might be King Sae, the Chinese name for 
Royal Residence, which was then one of the greatest cities 
of the world. Thence Odoric passed northward by Nan- 
king, and, crossing the great Kiang, embarked on the Grand 
Canal and traveled to Cambaluc or Pekin, where he re- 
mained for three years and where it is thought that he was 
attached to one of the churches founded by Archbishop 
390 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
John of Montecorvino, who was at this time in extreme old 
age. 
The most surprising part of Odoric’s travels were still 
to come. When the fever for traveling came upon him 
again he turned almost directly westward to the Great Wall 
of China and through Shenshua. From here the adven- 
turous traveler (we are still practically quoting Sir Henry 
Yule) entered Thibet and appears to have visted Lhasa. 
Considering how much of interest has been aroused by 
recent attempts to enter Lhasa and the surprising adven- 
tures that men have gone through in the effort, the success 
of this medieval monk in such an expedition would seem in- 
credible, if it were not substantiated by documents that 
place the matter beyond all doubt even in the minds of the 
most distinguished modern authorities in geography and ex- 
ploration. How Odoric returned home is not definitely 
known, though certain fragmentatory notices seem to indi- 
cate that he passed through Khorasan and probably Tabriz 
to Europe. 
Sir Henry Yule summed up his opinion of Odoric in the 
following striking passage which bears forcible testimony 
also to the healthy curiosity of the times with regard to all 
their original sources of information which were recognized 
as valuable because first hand: 
“The numerous MSS. of Odoric’s narrative that have 
come down to our time (upwards of forty are known) chiefly 
from the fourteenth century, show how speedily and widely 
it acquired popularity. It does not deserve the charge of 
general mendacity brought up against it by some, though 
the language of other writers who have spoken of the 
traveler as a man of learning is still more injudicious. Like 
most of the medieval travelers, he is undiscriminating in ac- 
cepting strange tales; but while some of these are the 
habitual stories of the age, many particulars which he re- 
cited attest the genuine character of the narrative, and some 
of those which Tiraboschi and others have condemned as 
mendacious interpolations are the very seals of truth.” 
391 WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Another of the distinguished travelers in the thirteenth 
century was the Archbishop John of Montecorvino who be- 
cause of the wonderful power of organization and adminis- 
tration displayed during his earlier careers as a missionary 
had been made Archbishop of Kambaluc or Pekin. The 
story of this grand old man of the early Franciscan Missions 
is another one of the Romances of Italian travel and ex- 
ploration though he himself was apparently ever too busy 
in doing to be able to take the time to write any lengthy ac- 
count of his experiences. But for the casual mention of 
him by others the records of his deeds would be found only 
in the dry summary of the ecclesiastical records of his time 
and his work would now be known to the Master alone for 
whom it was so unselfishly done. John was born at Monte- 
corvino in 1246. He had been a Missionary in the near East 
for many years when in 1286 a request was forwarded to Rome 
to send Catholic Missionaries to the Court of the great Chinese 
Emperor Kublai Khan who was said to be well disposed 
toward Christianity. Pope Nicholas IV entrusted this im- 
portant mission to farther China to John of Montecorvino 
because of his long years of experience as a traveler in the 
East. 
Friar John went through Persia and thence by sea to 
India and then traveled again by sea from Meliapur to 
China. It was three years, however, before his voyage was 
completed because he had taken advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to do missioary work on the way and almost needless 
to say travel was not easy. When he reached China in 1294, 
Kublai Khan had just died and Timurleng often known in 
English as Tamurlane had succeeded to the throne. Timur- 
leng was not ready to embrace Christianity as his predeces- 
sor is said to have been, but he gave full opportunity to the 
missionaries. In 1299 he built a Church at Pekin and in 
1305 a second opposite the Imperial Palace and opened a 
series of schools for instruction in Latin and Greek and in 
the arts and crafts. In 1307 Pope Clement V, highly pleased 
with the missionary’s wonderful work and the deep im- 
392 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
pression that he had produced on the Chinese people, sent a 
deputation to Pekin to consecrate John as the Chief Arch- 
bishop of these countries. He was to have seven suffragan 
Bishops who were to be disposed among the important 
centres of population that John deemed worthy of this dis- 
tinction. 
The Italians of these early times were not only adven- 
turous travellers on land, but also by sea. About the time 
that Marco Polo and the missionaries were wandering over 
Asia and bringing back accounts of their travels that modern 
geographic authorities have come to recognize as represent- 
ing a very careful observation, other Italians were sailing 
westward even beyond the pillars of Hercules, adding to the 
geographic knowledge of mankind in the Atlantic Ocean. 
In 1270 Lancelotto Mellocello re-discovered what the an- 
cients used to call the Fortunate Isles, that is what we know 
as the Canaries. Some twelve years later in 1291 two 
Genoese Tedisio Doria and Ugolino Vivaldi, with two galleys 
sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar and turned south- 
ward with the intention of reaching India, but unfortunately 
were never heard of again. Their venture shows that men 
were thinking already of the way to India and were ready, 
at least the Italians were, to take great risks to find it. It 
was an Italian, Antonio de Noli, who discovered the Cape 
Verde Islands and it is of course to them that men owe the 
description of many parts of the Mediterranean hitherto 
unknown or that had been forgotten since the time of the 
ancients. 
After the earlier renaissance with its fine harvest of dis- 
coveries in Asia and the Mediterranean as well as the near 
Atlantic and the Age of Discoverers as Columbus Century 
has been well called, which added so much to our knowledge 
of the rest of the world, Italians continued in every century 
to be pioneers in the great work of making distant countries 
known and still better known to Europe. In the seventeenth 
century came Pietro della Valle to whom we owe one of the 
best books of Eastern travel. The idea of travel in the East 
393 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
is said to have come to him after a disappointment in love 
as an alternative to suicide. It might possibly be expeeted 
that under these circumstances the story of his travels would 
be of very little serious value to humanity, yet it has con- 
tinued to be printed in new editions in succeeding centuries 
and has appeared in translations in most of the modern 
languages. The first part of his letters describe his travels 
in Turkey, the next two parts his travels in Persia and the 
fourth part in India. His travels began with a pilgrimage to 
the Holy Land in accomplishment of a vow, but sailing from 
Venice he stopped at Constantinople for a year and acquired 
a good knowledge of Turkish and some Arabic and then went 
to Alexandria and Cairo and thence to Jerusalem. He after- 
wards visited Damascus and Bagdad and in spite of the 
fact that there was a war between Persia and Turkey he 
stole out of Bagdad on a visit to Persia, proceeded by 
Hamadan to Ispahan and was with Shah Abbas in his 
campaign in Northern Persia in the summer of 1618. 
In spite of his close relations with the Persians and oc- 
cupation with various political schemes to help Persia by 
European alliances, he continued his Oriental studies with 
ardor and wrote out his observations on the people and the 
country. He was some three years in Persia and then spent 
nearly two years in India. He returned by way of Aleppo, 
made a visit to Antioch, touched at Cyprus and Malta and 
reached Rome. For the next twenty-five years he was 
looked upon in the literary and scientific circles of Rome 
where he was enthusiastically welcomed, as the authority 
on Oriental subjects. The account of his travels though it 
lacks literary quality and he himself seems to have been 
totally devoid of humor, is still often referred to because 
the author was so clear and exact in his details and well in- 
formed on all subjects about which he wrote. 
James Augustus St. John in The Lives of Celebrated 
Travelers declares that “as a traveler Della Valle possessed 
very distinguished qualities. He was enthusiastic, romantic, 
enterprising. He had read if not studied the histories of 
394 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
the various countries through which he afterward traveled; 
and there were few dangers which he was not ready cheer- 
fully to encounter for the gratification of his curiosity. 
Gibbon complains of his insupportable vanity and prolixity, 
With his vanity I should never quarrel as it only tends to 
render him the more agreeable. Nevertheless it is impossible 
to peruse his works without great instruction and delight; 
for his active and vigorous and observant mind continually 
gives birth to sagacious and profound remarks; and his ad- 
ventures, though undoubtedly true are full of interest and 
the spirit of romance.” He is very like the successful writer 
of travels at all times and the prototype of many of the 
travelers who have gained prestige in our own day. He 
anticipated them by centuries and his priority will doubtless 
keep him the classic that he has been, when our modern 
books of travel though so widely read in their own day 
have been relegated to oblivion. 
The man to whom the modern world owes its introduc- 
tion to Egyptian exploration, one of the most enterprising 
and successful Egyptian explorers, was another Italian 
Giovanni Battista Belzoni who made his living for some 
years after having been driven from Rome by the French 
occupation of that city, as a wandering gymnast, exhibiting 
feats of agility and strength on the streets. Seeking curiosi- 
ties to exhibit he went down to Egypt and took up the ex- 
cavation of the old-time wonders of Egyptian civilization. 
It was he who shipped to England the colossal statuesque 
head commonly called young Memnon which he removed 
with great skill from Thebes. He investigated the great 
temple of Edfoo, discovered the temple of Abusimbel, made 
excavatiaons at Karnak, visited Assouan, Elephantina and 
Philae and went far up the Nile. He was the first to pene- 
trate into the second great pyramid of Ghizeh. He returned 
to England to publish a most stimulating account of his 
travels and discoveries and to exhibit Egyptian curiosities 
and models of some of the Egyptian tombs. His Wanderlust 
would not permit him to remain long settled however, and 
395 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
be planned another expedition to Africa with Timbuetoo as 
his objective, but unfortunately died on the way. 
Belzoni’s account of his travels and his vivid descrip- 
tions of the magnificent monuments that he had seen in 
Egypt awakened interest very widely. “It is absolutely 
impossible” he said, describing his first impression of 
Thebes, “to imagine the scene displayed without seeing it. 
The most sublime ideas that can be formed from the most 
magnificent specimens of our present architecture would give 
a very incorrect picture of these ruins; for such is the differ- 
ence, not only in magnitude, but in form, proportion and 
construction that even the pencil can convey but faint idea 
of the whole. It appeared to me like entering a city of 
giants who after a long conflict were all destroyed, leaving 
the ruins of their various temples as the only proof of their 
existence.” It need only be added that his explorations 
were successfully conducted in spite of grave danger from 
the unsettled political state of the country as well as the 
jealousies of rivals and the most serious risks from con- 
tagious diseases, for even the plague was raging when he 
first landed. There was besides the unkown dangers of 
penetrating these old tombs, dark, dismal, with a strong 
effluvia of decomposed bodies and the dust of decayed 
mummies so fine that it penetrates the lungs and soon causes 
difficulty of respiration. Nothing deterred him. He had 
the true spirit of the born explorer. 
In our own time the Italians have not been without 
world distinction as pioneers in travel and exploration. The 
Duke of the Abruzzi led a North Pole exploring party a few 
years ago which for a time held the record of the “farthest 
north.” A few years later the same brave enterprising 
traveler went down into South Africa and climbed some of 
the higher mountains of the country, adding greatly to our 
positive information with regard to central Africa. His 
accounts of his travels near the Pole and at the Equator 
were translated into most of the modern languages and 
deservedly attracted the attention of travelers, explorers, 
396 DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS 
and writers on these subjects all over the world as well as 
of the readers who delight in real adventure and who 
found in the young Italian scion of royalty a character 
they could admire and appreciate for he could write as well 
as he could do. 
Another Italian who in our time has done much for 
the increase of information with regard to subjects and 
places hitherto little known is the Prince of Monaco. He 
has used the large income of his princely house for studies of 
life in the Mediterranean and in recent years has been en- 
gaged in Oceanographic studies in many parts of the world. 
While Monaco is sometimes thought of as French from its 
position on the coast of the French Mediterranean, the 
Prince is himself a member of the distinguished old Italian 
family of Grimaldi which has always remained intensely 
Italian in its spirit and temperament. Few men of the 
present time have done so much for studies of life in the 
sea and ocean as this Italian prince, who might after the 
frequent custom of such men have taken up a life of idle- 
ness and ease or occupied himself with some merely trivial 
perhaps thoroughly unsocial devotion to pleasure as a 
means of passing time. It is something to make one think 
of other possibilities as to how the income derived from the 
gaming tables at Monte Carlo might be spent, to reflect 
how well the head of the house of the Grimaldi has turned 
it to the account of the accumulation of human knowledge 
in some of its least developed aspects. 
In the history of nearly 1000 years Italians have been 
the leaders in geographic discovery and exploration. Their 
peninsular position with the great majority of the people 
living near the seashore has made them familiar with and 
contemptuous of the dangers of the sea which deterred 
others from undertaking distant voyages. But besides this 
the heart of the people has been attuned to high adventure 
and far-reaching accomplishment and so they achieved the 
rank in discovery and exploration that is willingly accorded 
to them in so many other fields of human effort. 
397 INVENTIONS 
ITALY is conceded by all to have done supremely wonder- 
ful work in the arts and at least those with such literary 
attainments as have carried their interests beyond the narrow 
bounds of their native tongue in search of great thought and 
its expression, know the value of Italian literature. In recent 
years with the development of the history of science her high 
place as a contributor to scientific knowledge has come to be 
better appreciated, but in spite of all this there remains, in the 
minds of most people outside of Italy who think they know 
Italians the best, the thought that the natives of the peninsula 
are, after all, an impractical people in the sense of having no 
great facility in applying their knowledge and their genius 
to the ordinary affairs of life. As not a few in our time seem 
inclined to think that the measure of a nation’s progress can 
be estimated by the number of inventions, that is, ingenious 
applications in scientific knowledge or clever mechanical de- 
vices for the comfort or convenience of mankind which its 
people may arrive at, Italy has been pushed into the back- 
ground. So far as this mode of human ability is concerned, 
they are persuaded that Italy has shown very little power of 
achievement. 
They would be quite willing, most of them, to confess 
that under the circumstances, occupied as her people were 
with great art and the finest arts and crafts, as well as with the 
discovery of great principles in science and with the discus- 
sion and solution of deep problems in philosophy and educa- 
tion, Italy was not so much to blame for her failure in this 
practical department of human life, but at least they would 
ask for the admission of this failure as representing the im- 
398 Raffael in Vatican 
FORTITUDE, TRUTH AND TEMPERANCE INVENTIONS 
practical nature of the people, or as surely arguing a certain 
impractical strain in them which set them definitely behind 
most modern peoples. It is as if the finer qualities had been 
developed at the expense of some of the coarser fibres of 
humanity, though these latter are extremely important for the 
great mass of humanity. They would have the feeling that 
Italy has a certain lack of up-to-dateness, as it were, that indi- 
cates imperfect evolution into modern ways, and therefore a 
failure of her people to take the place in the modern world 
which they had so richly deserved in the older time, when men 
were more interested in art and aesthetic achievements gen- 
rally than they are at the present time. 
The surprise for anyone who delves even a little into the 
history of inventions is to find that in spite of Italy’s pre- 
occupation with so many other higher and more important 
interests, Italians must be credited with more inventions that 
have been extremely useful to mankind than any other people. 
In every department of science and in every phase of life 
there are marvelously useful instruments and universally 
appreciated appliances in use which we owe to Italians. Some 
of these are now so commonly employed and have been with 
us so long that we do not think of them at all as inventions, 
or -of their discoverers as inventors. These facilitations of 
human energy have become, as it were, a portion of the uni- 
versal heritage of mankind. It would be futile to hope to 
make a full list of these and space would not permit it, but the 
mere mention of even a few of the things that Italians have 
devised for the benefit of the race will make it clear how 
substantial is their claim to be the most inventive of peoples. 
The inhabitants of the Italian peninsula began very early 
to make useful inventions. We do not know much about the 
old Etruscans, the earliest inhabitants of the central portion 
•of the Italian peninsula, of whom we have definite records, 
but there has been dug up from their tombs some striking 
evidence of their inventive ability. Their pottery and its 
forms and the designs for its decoration, as well as the decor- 
ation of their tombs is eminently original and beautiful. Some 
399 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
of the most beautiful jewelry ever seen has also come from 
these tombs. In our time what is called jewelry consists 
almost exclusively of precious stones. This is not jewelry at 
all for jewels are objects of art, fashioned by the hand of man 
in precious metals or in a combination of metals and precious 
stones until they have become things of beauty and sources of 
joy by their artistic quality. Our so-called jewelry is meant 
to produce envy, not pleasure, in the beholder. What has been 
found in the Etruscan tombs is genuine art jewelry. An even 
greater surprise for the modern time is the remains of the 
dentistry of the Etruscans. They did fine bridgework in 
gold, cut from the jaws of young calves the as yet unpro- 
jected teeth in order to secure unworn artificial teeth of 
suitable size, and generally did cosmetic work of great value 
in a very practical way on the teeth. All this some six or even 
seven centuries before Christ. 
The Romans have left us a series of inventions that are 
of great significance. Like the Etruscans they too did much 
more dentistry than we are apt to think of as possible so long 
ago. Only that we have specimens of gold caps for teeth and 
other prothetic dental work in gold in the Italian museums, 
it would be extremely difficult to convince our generation that 
the inventive enterprise of our dentists had been anticipated 
so long ago. One of the Laws of the Twelve Tables at Rome 
forbade the burying of gold with a corpse. Gold was scarce 
at Rome and the Romans were maintaining in quite modern 
fashion their gold reserve. A special exemption was made of 
such gold as was fastened to the teeth, showing how common 
must have been prothetic dentistry in this metal. We have 
the story a little later in Roman history of the transplantation 
of teeth from the mouths of slaves to their mistresses, and a 
number of instruments of various kinds for the cleaning of the 
teeth, as well as formulas for tooth powders and washes have 
come down to us. One of the great surprises for modern 
times that came with the excavation of Pompeii was the dis- 
covery of a series of surgical instruments, most of them made 
400 INVENTIONS 
on principles that were thought to be distinctly modern, and 
to represent inventions of very modern times. 
The Roman use of cement in its best form, some of their 
constructions remaining down to our time in spite of all sorts 
of vicissitudes and their effective structural work generally, 
shows their very practical quality. The rivers of Italy are 
especially treacherous yet. From the earliest times there is 
the history of bridges spanning them, some of which were 
very beautiful in their construction, often lasting for many 
centuries. The Roman aqueducts still stretch across the 
Campagna in spite of the vicissitudes of time and exposure, 
as well as the effects of human destructiveness at many times. 
Twenty centuries have not buried their handiwork or pulled 
it apart, showing how thoroughly they had solved the problems 
of mortar and cement. Some of their tunnels are triumphs 
of inventive constructiveness. 
Passing over these for the moment because as a rule they 
are not thought of as Italian, though at least so far as regards 
the Romans they are to all intents and purposes the same 
people as those who now inhabit the peninsula, we find that 
with the birth of modern Italy there is a wealth of inventions 
that have greatly facilitated the accomplishment of many 
things and added certainly to the convenience, and supposedly 
at least, to the happiness of mankind. 
By far the greater part of all the most important inven- 
tions in the department of optics are due to Italians or were 
developed by them. To them we owe the invention of spec- 
tacles for common use, an invention that was made toward the 
end of the thirteenth century. Lenses had been known for 
many centuries among the Greeks and Pliny even mentions the 
fact that the Roman Emperor Nero used some sort of a con- 
trivance by which the combatants in the amphitheatre were 
brought close up to him, representing as Wendell Phillips em- 
phasized in his oration on The Lost Arts an anticipation of 
our opera glass. During the Thirteenth century Roger Bacon 
developed the theory of lenses and pointed out some of their 
applications, but it was a Florentine Salvino de Armati, who 
401 WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
near the end of the century put the rims on lenses and in- 
vented the frames by which they are held before the eyes. 
Here was a very simple invention which meant so much for 
mankind that it is very hard to understand now how the 
world ever got on without them. More than one half of those 
who are above forty years of age would be able to read only 
with the greatest of difficulty if they had no spectacles. Not 
a few younger people would be seriously affected in their 
power to study, and with advancing years most men and 
women of the world would be deprived of all the consolations 
of books and not a little of the pleasure of the intellectual 
and artistic life only for this Italian invention, so simple as 
to be obvious once it was made, and yet though conferring 
lasting benefit of the highest sort on men had never been 
thought of before. The new invention rapidly spread, as 
might have been expected, and we find Arnold of Yillanova 
and Guy de Chauliac, both of whom had studied down in 
Italy, recommending in the next generation spectacles to their 
patients. 
Other inventions in optics are scarcely of less significance. 
The Camera Obscura is commonly said to have been invented 
by Leonardo da Vinci, and was certainly perfected so as to 
be quite ready for application to the uses of photography by 
Giovanni Battista della Porta of Naples, who also anticipated 
the opera glass, 1590. To Italy also we owe the stereoscope, 
by means of which the solid and spacial vision of the two 
eyes is so closely simulated. In connection with this also in 
Italy came the invention of the reflecting stereoscope, the so- 
called magic lantern. 
The greatest of Italian inventors is that marvelous prac- 
tical genius who is at the same time almost the greatest of 
artistic geniuses that the world has ever known, Leonardo da 
Vinci. In every mode of activity that he took up, he left 
behind him facilities by which others would be able to accom- 
plish ever so much more easily than before, operations that 
he had found difficult until he set to work to simplify them. 
The famous letter from him in which he advertises his talents INVENTIONS 
to the rulers of his day shows that he thought of himself as 
an engineer rather than as an artist. He was given a contract 
for digging canals and proceeded to revolutionize the modes 
of excavation that had been in use up to that time. The old 
method of carrying dirt out of excavations in baskets on the 
shoulders of men was entirely too slow for him, so he invented 
the wheelbarrow. When his cuttings became deeper and rock 
had to be excavated the wheelbarrow was of little use, so he 
invented the moveable derrick and later the self dumping 
derrick. He then invented locks for canals and we have from 
him the sketch of a scheme by which the water in rivers, very 
low during the summer time might be maintained high in a 
channel for navigation purposes. He invented various instru- 
ments of war, scaling ladders and means of repelling besiegers 
and a tread mill catapult for firing a rapid succession of 
heavy missiles and various arrangements for throwing down 
scaling ladders. He is said to have been the first, at least in 
modern times, to use a cofferdam for building foundations at 
the edge of the water, and announced his ability to obtain a 
secure foundation for fortifications in this way. Some of his 
under water structures are said to be still in existence. 
He improved nearly all the technical modes in the arts in 
which he engaged. He boasted of being able to cast anything 
in bronze and he certainly simplified a number of the pro- 
cesses. The machine for sawing marble, which is still used 
at the great marble quarries of Carrara was invented by him. 
He invented machines for lifting large monolithic pillars and 
statues and setting them in place. Various improvements in 
the mixing of colors are attributed to him and he experimen- 
ted with various cleansing agents for brushes and made a 
special kind of strong lye. There was evidently nothing in 
construction work that he was not quite sure that he could do, 
and when it is realized that he had none of the modem mechan- 
ical means which facilitate the lifting and placing of building 
materials, it will be readily understood what difficult prob- 
lems the architectural engineer of that time had to face. 
The Italians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
were quite capable of building structures of the largest and 
most imposing kind by the simplest means. It was at this 
time that the form of scaffolding, fastened together by ropes 
which has been used in European countries ever since came 
into existence. Michelangelo declared that he could build 
anything that he could plan, and it needs only a glance at 
some of the finished structures to realize that this was no 
idle boast. The story that is told of him with regard to St. 
Peter’s when the Pope insisted that Michelangelo should take 
over the completion of the Basilica may be apochryphal, but 
if it is not true it expresses exactly Michelangelo’s confidence 
in his own constructive ability. The Pope said that he wanted 
to have in St. Peter’s a great Christian monument more im- 
posing than any which the imperial Romans had left at the 
height of their power, and Michelangelo is said to have de- 
clared that he would put the Pantheon on top of the Colosseum 
thus combining the two greatest Roman monuments. That is 
literally what St. Peter’s is, and the dome of it is one of the 
greatest monuments of constructive ability that has ever been 
raised. 
Nearly all the inventions in art come from the Italians. 
Fresco painting was developed by them and they worked on* 
the materials for colors. Oil painting probably was origin- 
ated in the Netherlands, but was magnificently developed in 
Italy. What they accomplished for color work <of all kinds 
can only be properly appreciated if the whole round of the 
arts and crafts in which color is used is studied. What the 
Venetians did in the enduring coloration of glass has remained 
unrivalled in the history of the world. It is no wonder that 
the Venetian painters accomplished so much in colors. The 
illumination of books, the dyeing of textiles, the use of color 
in needlework and in decorations of all kinds, all these we 
owe more to the Italians than to any other nation, and their 
taste in color composition in contrast was unfailing. It is 
almost literally true that some of these wonderful inventions 
of the medieval period in Italy must be counted among the 
“lost arts.” They knew how to burnish gold leaf as applied INVENTIONS 
to manuscript so that it maintains its brightness m a way 
that we can not do at the present time, and some of their 
colors for illumination work, notably their blues, retain their 
pristine beauty though ours so soon fade. Italian glass color- 
ation had secrets in the older time that had been lost, and 
have not as yet been recovered in spite of extensive experi- 
mentation in the modern time. 
To Galileo is usually attributed the invention of the 
telescope. Some serious doubts have been thrown during the 
past generation on his priority in the use of the telescope, and 
perhaps the original idea is due to a Hollander. There is no 
doubt at all however, that Galileo had never seen a telescope 
as made by anyone else, that at most he had heard in a general 
way of what had been done in the Netherlands when on the 
strength of his knowledge of optics he took two lenses, ar- 
ranged them so as to give magnification and apparent ap- 
proximation of distant bodies. He must above all be given 
due credit for the invention, because he worked out all the 
problems in the practical application of this new instrument 
to astronomy, while those who anticipated him scarcely dreamt 
of its possibilities in this way. Before his time the telescope 
had been scarcely more than a toy; in his hands it became a 
great scientific instrument, by which the distant portions of 
the universe were brought so close to man that his study of 
them was greatly facilitated. 
The story with regard to the microscope is very similar 
to that of the telescope. The compound microscope was in- 
vented in the Netherlands, but an Italian, Father di Torre, 
showed how much could be accomplished by means of the 
simple microscope when skillfully made. He employed 
globules made by fusing the ends «of thread of spun glass as 
lenses. Later on many of the improvements that made the 
compound microscope the marvelous instrument that it is at 
present came from the Italians. Professor Amici of Modena 
made the first attempts at the achromatization of microscopic 
objectives and laid down the theory by which this might be 
successfully accomplished. To Amici also we owe the WIIAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
introduction of the immersion system in microscopic observa- 
tion. He pointed out that “the introduction of a drop of water 
between the front surface of the objective and either the object 
itself or its covering glass would diminish the loss of light 
resulting from the passage of the rays from the object or its 
covering glass into air and from air into the front glass of the 
objective. It was found on applying this principle of the 
immersion lens that not only was the great loss of light ob- 
viated, but further the immersion system allows of a greater 
working distance between the object and the objective than 
can be attained with a dry or air objective having the same 
angular apperture; and this increase affords not only a greater 
freedom of manipulation, but also a greater range of pene- 
tration or focal depth, and the observer is rendered much less 
dependent upon the exactness of his over correction.’’ (Car- 
penter.) In a word these two suggestions of Amici, achroma- 
tization and lens immersion have done most to make the com- 
pound microscope the practical scientific instrument it now 
is, especially as regards the use of the higher powers. 
Above all it is to Italians that we most for the 
application of the microscope to the most important human 
problems, those relating to the constitution of the tissues of 
mankind. Malpighi after having studied the composition 
of plant tissues, studied the cells of plants and set him- 
self to the microscopic investigation of human tissues and dis- 
covered the Malpighian bodies in the spleen and kidneys, 
described the capillaries and laid the beginnings of com- 
parative physiology. As a result his name is, as we have 
said, deservedly attached to more structures in the human 
body than that of any other. Father Kircher in Rome was 
led by the use of the microscope to divine the existence of 
microbes and gave us the first scientific ideas with regard 
to the prevention of epidemic disease. Father Kircher 
himself invented the magic lantern and a whole series of in- 
teresting instruments for demonstration purposes in the 
teaching of the science. 
Italy has been especially prolific in the invention of INVENTIONS 
facilitations for education. The astronomical clock was 
invented in Italy and various combinations of mechanical 
moving spheres to illustrate astronomy. Father Kircher’s 
works, and he published textbooks in nearly every depart- 
ment of science, On Magnetism, On Light and Shadow, on 
Music, On Sound, On the Art of Harmony and Discord, On 
Astronomy, On Geology as well as on other phases of science 
are full of most ingenious inventions illustrated by sketches 
to help the teacher to demonstrate scientific principles. It 
was he who invented the idea of having a scientific museum 
and making collections of all sorts of objects for scientific 
teaching purposes. The great Kircherian Museum is still 
in existence, though it has suffered much from political 
vicissitudes in Italy and especially those by which his 
order (the Jesuits) was suppressed and driven out at various 
times, it still enables us to understand the wonderful prac- 
tical genius of this man of science. He was not himself an 
Italian but a German, but all his work was done down in 
Italy with Italian encouragement and patronage. 
The Italians have given the world more suggestions for 
important scientific instruments than all the other nations 
of Europe put together. Most of the physical instruments 
for the exact measuring of natural phenomena of various 
kinds are Italian in origin. It is to them that we owe the 
invention of the thermometer, and to them also the barom- 
eter must be ascribed. In connection with the barometer 
came the invention of the first air pump and the detailed 
study of the Toricellian vacuum with all its significance 
for the measurement of air pressure.* 
* The barometer is an invention of Toricelli and the hint for its invention 
came in a very interesting way, which illustrates the practical inventiveness 
of the Italian mind. A very deep well near Florence had been fitted with a 
pump, but it was found that in spite of the most careful fitting of piston and 
valves the water could not be made to rise higher in the tube than thirty two 
feet. Toricelli who was official scientist to the court was asked to explain 
this surprising paradox, for everyone thought that suction, as it was called, 
if only exerted with force enough could raise water to any height. “Nature 
abhors a vacuum,’’ it was said, and water would rush in to fill any space 
out of which air was taken. Toricelli reached the conclusion that the air 
had a definite pressure and that it was this which caused the water to rise 
but only to the extent of the pressure of the air. He demonstrated this by 
sealing one end of a tube filling it with mercury and then being careful to 
exclude all air he inverted it in a basin containing mercury. The mercury in 
the tube instantly sank to a level of about thirty inches above the level of WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
Galileo’s inventions alone would do credit to any coun- 
try. He observed the oscillations of the swinging lamp in 
the Cathedral of Pisa and utilized the isochronism which he 
noted for an astronomical clock. He suggested its use for 
the measuring of successive intervals of time and his studies 
on the pendulum led to its employment for many scientific 
purposes. He threw out a hint for the study of the human 
pulse hy it, an important factor for modern medicine. He 
established the laws of falling bodies as they are still 
formulated, demonstrated the laws of projectiles, and 
largely anticipated the laws of motion as finally established 
by Newton. We have from him a series of telescopic dis- 
coveries and inventions relating to astronomy. He could 
have accomplished all this only in the midst of encourage- 
ment and liberal patron-age and quite contrary to the usually 
accepted notion of bitter persecution “Galileo’s long life” 
as Bertrand the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy 
of Sciences declared, “must when considered as a whole be 
looked upon as one of the most serene and enviable in the 
history of science.” 
It is to a great worker in science in Italy that we owe the 
invention of the vernier, the important little instrument 
without which it would be so difficult to make many of the 
exact observations of all kinds in laboratories. Until com- 
paratively recent years the invention of this extremely use- 
ful appliance has been attributed to Vernier the French- 
man after whom it is named, though the claims of Nonius 
have been insisted on. Brencing has, however, recently 
pointed out in the Astronomische Nachrichten (Vol. XCVI 
p. 131) that “we are indebted to no other than Clavius the 
papal astronomer who corrected the calendar for Pope 
the mercury in the basin. This left above the column of mercury in the top 
of the tube a vacuum which is the most perfect that can be obtained. He at 
once demonstrated a great principle, corrected a false scientific conclusion and 
invented a most useful instrument for measuring the weight of air, for this 
simple apparatus needs only a scale to be a perfect barometer. How much 
this instrument has meant for mankind in all the 270 years since its invention I 
need scarcely say. We are rather proud of the saving of life and property 
by weather reports in our time, but these are all founded on the information 
obtained from the barometer. The additional information obtained from the 
thermometer is also due to an Italian invention. INVENTIONS 
Gregory XIII for the theory of Vernier subdivision as well 
for linear as for circular measurement.” He then quotes 
in full the passages in Father Clavius’ works which prove 
his assertion and which in some inaccountable way have 
been overlooked. Clavius was of course a German by birth, 
but he did all his important work in Italy, finding down 
there the encouragement and patronage which enabled him 
to accomplish to best advantage the great achievements his 
genius suggested. 
Nearly all the accessories of the modern theatre were 
invented by the Italians. In the chapter on architecture the 
story is told in some detail. The Venetians first constructed 
the theatre with two tiers of boxes arranged circularly 
round a pit sloping backwards as at present and Fontana, 
a generation later, invented the horseshoe form. Baldassare 
Peruzzi at Rome had invented the painted moveable scenes 
and then added the recessed stage with the frame around it 
which makes the representation a picture as it were. A 
great many stage effects were introduced by the Italians, 
storms and wind and rain and snow, and we hear even of 
a very lifelike earthquake being represented before the end 
of the fifteenth century. Nearly all of the picturesque 
elements in theatricals come from Italian sources. They 
solved the problems of how to have as large a number as 
possible in a theatre to hear the human voice and see the 
human countenance and yet seat them in reasonable comfort. 
La Scala at Milan, built by Piermarini nearly 150 years ago, 
is thought by some authorities to be the best made theatre 
in existence. The San Carlo at Naples built nearly 200 
years ago and rebuilt in its original plan about 100 years 
ago was the model for the Scala and for many other theatres 
in Europe. 
Most people know that we are indebted for a great many 
of the developments in music to the Italians, yet few realize 
how many epoch-making inventions and discoveries relating 
to music come from Italy. The scale was invented down 
there and almost needless to say this represented a cardinal WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
discovery for the evolution of music. Plain chant is of 
Italian origin and literally thousands upon thousands of 
melodies of all kinds, that is successions of single notes that 
for some reason not easy to understand appealed to the 
human ear have been there arranged. Harmony and counter- 
point were developed in Italy, oratorio and opera were in- 
vented, comic opera and musical comedy received their 
development and opera houses suitable for the production 
of these various kinds of musical dramas constructed. Musi- 
cal instruments were improved, the orchestra received its 
evolution until there is scarcely a department of music of 
any kind in which Italians are not the most significant 
pioneers. 
As might well be expected from what they accomplished 
for music in other ways the inventions of Italians in musical 
instruments are many and various and most important. The 
violin in the form in which we have it comes entirely from 
their hands and it is besides to Italian makers that we owe 
the perfection of these instruments. The violins of Guarnieri 
and above all of Stradivari have never been excelled. In- 
deed a Stradivarius remains a most precious treasure at the 
present day, two centuries after its manufacture, not be- 
cause of its antiquity, but for its marvelous perfection of 
tone. In the piano the most important mechanical device is 
the hammer action which changed the old spinet into the 
modern piano. This hammer action was first constructed 
by Bartolommeo Cristoforo in 1711. 
We are prone to think of electricity as a modern devel- 
opment in applied science and unless we have some special 
knowledge of the history of science are not likely to think 
of the Italians as having been an important factor in its evo- 
lution, yet it is probably not too much to say that in elec- 
trical inventions Italy leads the world. Father Beecaria 
was the first to invent a series of electrical instruments that 
demonstrated how well the energy might be applied which 
up to this time seemed scarcely more than a mode of physical 
activity to be employed in toys. Priestley, the well known INVENTIONS 
English discoverer of oxygen, in his History of Electricity 
has praised Beccaria’s ingenuity and has described some 
of these rather striking instruments. Galvani demonstrated 
Galvanism and opened up a whole new vista in science. Yolta 
invented the Voltaic pile, the first continuous source of 
electricity that men ever had and for that reason some- 
times spoken of as a greater invention than the steam engine. 
In the light of modern developments in electricity in the 
mechanical world, this expression now seems to have much 
more truth than when it was originally uttered. Yolta also 
invented the gold leaf electroscope and a number of very 
ingenious instruments for the demonstration of certain 
physical phenomena. Nobili invented the thermopile and 
the thermo-electroscope, while at the end of the nineteenth 
century the Italian Marconi had the practical inventive 
genius to bring together a series of discoveries that had 
been made by others and combine them in such a way as 
to make wireless telegraphy with its wonders possible. 
While the Italians are not usually associated with 
modern naval development some of the most important 
evolutions in naval vessels have been suggested from Italy. 
In the mid eighties they made the first very large iron clads 
of the Dandolo type. In the late nineties Cuniberti con- 
ceived and designed the battle cruiser type with unit calibre 
guns in the main battery and with subsidiary batteries and 
high speed. It was he who also suggested the further devel- 
opment of this into the “dreadnought” and actually went 
to England with the permission of the Italian government 
to direct in building the first one of these vessels that was 
laid down some fifteen years ago. What is now called the 
Whitehead torpedo, that is the type of torpedo self moving 
under its own power and dirigible, was invented by an Italian 
naval officer whose ideas were developed by Whitehead 
working at Fiume among an Italian people, as recent his- 
tory proclaims them. 
Italy must yield to Germany’s claim for priority in the 
invention of printing, but while the Germans invented, no WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
nation did so much as Italy for the diffusion of printing, for 
the development of the art—the real art it very soon became 
in their hands—and for the encouragement of every detail 
of fine bookmaking that came with it. Above all Italy was 
the fruitful mother of inventions that made the printing 
art of immensely greater value to mankind than it was as it 
came from the hands of the original Teutonic inventors. 
Henry Louis Bullen in his articles on the literature of typog- 
raphy makes this very clear. As Mr. Bullen is the curator of 
our finest museum of typography and as he knows his sub- 
jects as no one else at least in America, his paragraph with 
regard to printing in Italy during the half century immedi- 
ately after the invention of printing is the best possible 
tribute to the Italians and their fine workmanship and in- 
ventive genius in all that regards printing that we have. 
He said in The Inland Printer (November 1914) : 
“From 1465 to 1501—thirty-five years—printing wras 
established in seventy-three Italian cities. Each printer had 
to make his own presses and types and cases and other ap- 
pliances; there were no manufacturers or merchants making 
or selling these necessaries. Sixteen hundred and eighty 
(1,680) distinct type-faces have been identified as the pro- 
duct of the Italian printers in that brief period, including 
the most beautiful Roman and Text types ever used, and 
the first Italic. Was ever a greater boon in the printing 
industry? Was ever an art more eagerly adopted? Printers 
outside of Germany have been influenced more by the early 
Italian workmanship than by the German. Every printer 
or typefounder among us is the debtor of the earlier Italian 
printers, none the less so if unconscious of the obligation 
and ignorant of the benefactors.” When William Morris, 
in the last generation, set himself to redeem the modern 
time from the disgrace of being the makers of the ugliest 
books ever made, he went back to the work of the early 
Italian printers for the models for his bookmaking. Any- 
one who knows how revolutionary was the work of Morris 
himself will realize how much of influence this reversion INVENTIONS 
to the Italian printing meant. Anyone who has tried to pur- 
chase a volume printed at the Kelmscott (Morris’) press 
will be brought to the recognition of how much our genera- 
tion learned to appreciate in the very practical way of pay- 
ing high prices for them, Morris’ imitations of the work of 
the printers of Italy of the very first generation of printing. 
Bullen says further “We owe to Italy the first books in 
Greek and Hebrew types. The first complete fonts of 
Greek types were used in Home in 1465 and in Venice in 
1472, as quotations in Latin text. The first book in Greek 
was printed in Milan in 1476. Before Aldus’ first book in 
Greek (1495), thirty-four Greek books had appeared in Italy. 
Aldus gave us the cursive model of Greek types that has 
generally prevailed until our time; prior to his types the 
Greek models were crude. The first books in Hebrew ap- 
peared in Italy in 1475.” Almost needless to say these repre- 
sent inventions in the making of types which were to influ- 
ence deeply all the after time. 
Some idea of their practical genius in printing may be 
obtained from the fact that they invented paragraphing in 
print as we now have it, introduced pagination, invented 
capital letters, first arranged punctuation and added all 
those features which make the modern printed book so 
much more easy to understand than the old manuscripts or 
even the first books that were printed. To them too we 
owe the title page with the information that it now conveys 
at a glance and many other features that are real discoveries. 
Paper was not invented by the Italians, but by the 
Orientals, but its manufacture was greatly developed and 
improved by them and furnished an extremely important 
adjuvent for the art of printing. Paper made from cotton 
was invented in Asia, but the oldest document written on 
eotton paper extant is a deed of King Roger of Sicily of the 
year 1102. Certain of the records of the Venetian govern- 
ment were kept on cotton paper early in the thirteenth 
century. There is an example of a manuscript in the British 
Museum written on an excellent paper in an Italian hand WHAT CIVILIZATION OWES TO ITALY 
in the first half of the thirteenth century. Fabriano of 
Ancona made excellent paper early in the fourteenth century 
and the extant manuscripts on Italian paper from that 
period excite admiration for its good quality even in our 
day. Most of the North Italian cities took up the manufac- 
ture of paper about this time and their product became 
famous all over Europe. It was they who developed the 
making of rag paper and also linen paper. About the middle 
of the fourteenth century the use of paper for all literary 
purposes became well established in Italy and gradually 
spread all over Europe. 
What needs to be well recognized, however, is the fact 
that Italy’s inventions were not limited in any way to merely 
material things. There are a great many inventions which 
represent short cuts of various kinds for the accomplish- 
ment of mental processes and in facilities of this kind the 
practical genius of the Italians has been particularly fruitful 
It was they who invented the various processes in arithmetic 
that have so simplified calculations. Anyone familiar with 
the older processes will realize indeed that these were great 
time saving inventions. It is to them also that we owe as is 
made clear in the chapters on Mathematics and Astronomy 
the algebraic solutions of equations of various kinds that 
had seemed impossible or could be done only by long time 
taking guess work before the Italian mind ordered them. Index Index 
A 
Alexander, 331,153 
Alexander of Hales, 171 
Alfieri, xiv, 94 
Alfred, King, 166 
Alhambra, 36 
Allbutt, Prof., 272, 293 
Almagest of Ptolomy, 214 
Alma mater, Italy, 203 
Alpin, 305 
Alpini, 284 
Amati, 58 
Ambrose, a second, 329 
Ambrose, St., 47, 77, 78, 167, 189 
Americus, 380 
Amerigo Vespucci, 379, 380 
Amici, Prof., 405 
Ammanati, 28 
Ampere, ix 
Anaesthesia, 289 
Anatomical names, Italian, 248 
Anatomists, Renaissance, 245 
Ancona, 360 
Anderson, 106 
Andrea de Cione, 26 
Angelo, Fra, xi, 14, 139, 362 
Anguilara, 262, 284 
Animuccia, 51 
Annales Ecclesiastici, 147 
Anselm, xv, 80, 169, 227 
Antelminelli, 260 
Anthemius, 188 
Anthony, 336 
Anthony of Padua, 318, 322, 366 
Anthropometria, 254 
Antioch, 394 
Antiphonal psalmody, 48 
Antiquitates Italicae, 157 
Anti- Semitism, 192 
antisepsis anticipated, 293 
apartment of Isabella D’Este, 72 
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, 305 
Aphorisms of Static Medicine, 303 
Apothecaries and physicians, 196 
Aquaviva, 115 
Aqueducts, Roman, 226, 401 
Aquilana, 250 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, xv, 78, 80, 110 
168, 171, 172, 182, 227, 321 
Arabian culture, 267 
Abaci Liber, 205 
Abacus, 204 
Abbesses in parliament, 123 
Abelard, 128 
Abella, 129 
Abellino, 160 
ability, inventive, 399 
Abruzzi, Duke of, 396 
Abruzzi, farthest North, 396 
Abusimbel, 395 
Abyssinia, 385 
Academia, della Crusca, 150 
Academies, 110 
Academies, Italian, 148 
Academy, French, 357 
Academy of the Lincei, 150 
Academy, Roman, 
Accademia dei Lyncei, 356 
Accademia delle Belle Arte, 364 
accomplishment, feminine, 334 
achievement and leisure, 187 
Achilles Statius, 155 
Achillini, 242, 249 
Addison, 272 
Adorno, Giuliano, 347 
Aeneas, Sylvius, 140, 156 
Africa, 396 
Age, Augustan, 324 
Age of Leo X, 324 
Age, Periclean, 324 
ages, “dark,” “bright,” 109 
Ages, Golden, 363 
Agnesi, Maria Gaetana, 211, 354 
Aida, 56 
Aix, 38 
Alaric, 365 
Albategnius,’ Astronomy, 214 
Alberti, Leon Battista, 142, 152, 
Albertoni, 261 
Albertus Magnus, 110, 174, 321 
Albigenses, 319 
Aldi, Neacademia, 144 
Aldrovandi, 280 
Aldus, 374, 413 
Alduses, 134 
Aldus Manutius, 144 
Aleppo, 394 INDEX 
Arabian polypharmacy, 267, 284 
Arabisms, 290 
Aranzi, 245, 272, 295, 302 
Arbitrator, Pope Leo XIII, 331 
Arcadelt, 47 
Archimedes, 233 
Architecture, French, 45 
“ History of Modern, 43 
“ Italian Renaissance, 45 
“ Spanish American, 45 
“ theatre, 42 
Arcolani, 272 
Arculanus, 296, 298 
Arena at Padua, 12 
Aretino, Guido, 49 
Aretino, Spinello, 14 
Arezzo, Cathedral of, 25 
Arezzo, Guy of, 49 
Argelata, 296 
Arianna, 52, 53 
Ariosto, xiii, 90, 362, 374 
Aristotle, 84, 175, 182 
Aristotle, ethics of, 140, 227, 264 
Arithmetic, 206, 211 
“ commercial, 212 
Arithmetica, Institutio, 204 
“ Summa de, 207 
Arnold of Villanova, 402 
Arnold, Matthew, 314 
Arnolfo del Cambio, 26 
Arrian, 114 
Art Byzantine, 24, 374 
“ public, 111 
“ sense, 70 
Arts, Lost, 226, 401, 404 
Arts and Crafts, 60 
Ascoli, 159 
Ascoli, Cope of, 65 
Asepsis anticipated, 301 
Assissi, 34, 314, 360, 371 
“ maid of, 341 
“ St. Francis of, 3 
“ Market Place, 372 
Assouan, 395 
Astronomical clock, 408 
Astronomy, Albategnius, 214 
Athens, 359 
Athletics, 113 
Attila, 323 
Augusta Perusia, 372 
Augustan age, 324 
Augustine St., 77, 92, 165, 167, 322 
Augustine St. of England, 48 
Augustus, 336 
Aurispa, 137 
Ausonius, 142 
Author vocation, 346 
Autocracy, 362 
Autocrat, 363 
Avignon, 343 
Avignon to Rome, 323 
Avogadro, xvii, 237 
Ayala, 274 
Ayrton, Mrs., 356 
Ayrton, Prof. W., 356 
B 
Babylon, 359 
Baccio, Bandinelli, 28 
Baccius, 275 
Bacon, Francis, 91, 178, 229 
Bacon, Roger, 110, 204, 315, 401 
Badia, 253 
Baer, Von, x 
Bagdad, 394 
Baglioni, 373 
Bailie, 272 
Balbi, Statues of, 376 
Balduccio, de Pisa, 27 
Ball, 212 
Bank of St. George, 369 
Bannerman, 106 
Banti’s Disease, 285 
Baptistry of Florence, 26, 64 
Barbarano Palace, 377 
Barberini, Cardinal, 181 
Barbieri, 44 
barometer, 407 
Baronius, 147, 327, 329 
Bartoletti, 277, 278 
Bartolommeo, Fra, x, 14, 362 
Basedow, 285 
Basilica of Constantine, 35 
Bassi, Laura, 211, 354 
Bateson, Miss, 124 (note) 
bathing bag, 305, 
Beatrice, 340 
Beatrice D”Este, 350 
Beauty defined, 51 
Bee, monastery of, 170 
Beccaria, xvii, xviii, 235, 410 
Begarelli, 30 
Belisarius, 373 
Bellarmine, 148 
Ballarmino, 147 
Bellingham, 278 
Bellini, 367 
Bellini, John, xi, 19, 
Bellini, Vincenzo, 56, 74 
Beltraffio, 370 
Belzoni, Giovani Battista, 395 
Bembo, 236 
Bembo, Cardinal, 131, 141, 
Benedetti, Alexander, 242, 272 
Benedetto da Maiano, 28 
Benedictine nunneries, 100, 122 
Benedictine nuns, 310 
Benedictines now, 312 
Benedict, Friar, 389 
Benedict XIV, Pope, 158, 211 
Benedict of Nursia, 122, 309 
Benedict, St., 99, 338 
Benivieni, 272, 278 INDEX 
Benozzo Gozzoli, xi, 14, 16 
Bentivolgi, 365 
Benvignate, 372 
Beowulf, 166 
Berengar of Carpi, 240, 272, 296 
Berenson, 11 
Bernardino of Feltre, 317 
Bernardino of Sienna, 317 
Bernini, xii, 32 
Bernouilli, 210 
Berry, 218 
Bertrand, 408 
Bessarion, Cardinal, 169, 216 
Biancia 6 Fernando, 56 
Biela’s comet, 222 
Bindings, Italian, 66 
biology, Italian, 238 
biology, Pliny, 227 
Biondo, 301 
Bishops’ Schools, 101 
Black Death, 329 
Blake, Wm„ 85 
Blondus, 301 
Bobbio, 158 
Boccaccio, 88, 89, 137, 362 
Boccalino, 274 
Bode, 221 
Boerhaave, 264 
Boethius, 135, 165, 204 
Bognoni, Bunyan, 382 
Bologna, 136, 343, 360, 364 
bologna pudding, 364 
Bologna, University, 105 
Bologna, women students, 130, 340 
Bombelli, Raphael, 208 
Bonagentibus, 274 
Bonaventure, xv, 110, 176, 315 
Bondi, Flavio, 137 
Boniface VIII, 194 
Boniface of Tuscany, Marquis, 339 
Boniface, VIII Pope, 84 
Bononia, 365 
Books of Hours, 65 
Borelli, 253 
Borgeron, 389 
Borghesi, 160 
Borgia Lucretia, 74, 352 
Borgia, Lucretia, saint, 353 
Borneo, 390 
Borommeo, St. Charles, 327, 371 
Boscovich, 220 
Bosio, Antonio, 161 
Boston Public Library, 5, 42, 63 
Botallo, 248, 295 
Botanical Gardens, 283 
Botanic Gardens, 261 
Botany, Italian, 255 
Bothriocephalus latus, 281 
Botticelli, xi, 14, 50 
Boucaud, Prof., 189 
Bowden, Father, 326 
Bozio Tommaso, 327 
Bracciolini, Poggio, 137 
Bramante, 370 
Branca, 298 
Brencing, 408 
“bridge of sighs,’’ 368 
Bright, 272 
“bright ages,’’ 109 
Brigid St., 121 
Brownson, Orestes, 168, 171 
Brunelleschi, 139, 362 
Brunetto Latini, 81 
Brunfels, 255 
Bruni, Leonardo, 137 
Bruno, 292 
Bruno, Giordano, 179, 180 
Bruzza, 160, 161 
Budaeus, 154 
Bullen, Henry Louis, 412 
Bunyan, John, Italian descent, 382 
Buonaparte, 330 
Buoncompagni Ludovisi, 207 
Buonsegna, 372 
Burckhardt, 350 
Burmah, 385 
Byron, 94 
Byzantine, 24 
“ art, 374 
decoration, 163 
“ style, 36 
Byzantium, x, 4 
C 
Cabeo, 236 
Cabots, John & Sebastian, 380 
Cabotto, Giovanni, 380 
Cabral, 296 
Cabrini, Mother, 132 
Caccini, 52 
Caesalpino (see Caesalpinus) 
Caesalpinus, 245, 251, 256, 295 
Caesar, 336 
Caetani Bovatelli, Ersilia, 356 
Caetani, Sermonetta, Duke Michelan- 
gelo, 356 
Caius, v, xviii, 116, 141 
Cajori, 205 
Calcar, 245 
Calcutta, 390 
Caldwell, 345 
Calenda, Constanza, 129 
Calendar, correction of the, 323 
Calepino, Ambrogio de, 151 
Callahan, 106 
Cambaluc, 390 
Cambio, Arnolfo del, 362 
Cambio, Sala del, 373 
Cameos, Rennaissance, 71 
Camera Obscura, 402 
Camerini of Isabella D’Este, 74 
Camoens xiii 
Campanella, 179, 181 INDEX 
Campbell, 106 
Campo Santo, 14, 376 
“ “ in Pisa, 68 
Campus Martius, 336 
Canaletto, 21 
Canalis, 261 
Cananus, 250 
Canaries, 393 
Cannae, 365 
Canon Law, 193 
Canossa, 321 
Canossa, Matilda of, 336 
Cauova, xii, 32 
Cansay, 390 
Canton, 390 
Cantor, 207 
Capobianco, 261 
Carracci, 364 
Caravaggio, 20 
Cardan, Jerome, 208, 230, 254, 274 
Cardano, 179 
Carducci, 95 
Carissimi, Giacomo, 53 
Carlyle, v, xiii, 86 
Carmichael, Prof., 179, 230 
Carpaccio, Vittore, 19 
Caroline Islands, 331 
Carpi, 375 
Carpenter, 406 
Carracci, 20, 364 
Carrara, 403 
Cartesianism, 168 
Carthage, 62 
Cartoons, Raphael’s, 71 
Caspian, 388 
Casserian perforating, 248 
Casserio, 247 
Cassini, 220 
“ division, 220 
Cassidorus, 135, 166, 204, 265 
Castellani, 286 
Castelli, 232, 257 
Castiglione, Baldassare, 92, 374 
Castile, New, 380 
Catarina Scarpellini, 356 
Catherine Benincasa, 342 
“ of Bologna, 335 
“ of Genoa, 335 
“ of Pisa, 345 
“ Saint of Siena, 335, 342, 345 
“ word, 344 
Cato, the elder, 76 
Cattolica Civilta, 354 
Catullus, 76, 145, 155 
Cavalari, 160 
Cavalcanti, Guido, 81 
Cavalcaselle, 17 
Cavalieri, S. J., 209, 210 
Cavalieri, 261 
Cavalleria Rusticana, 57, 96 
Cavedoni, 160 
Cecco D’Ascoli, 215 
Celestine V., 373 
celibacy, 190 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 28, 30, 70, 92, 254 
Celsus, 142, 226, 355 
cement, Roman, 401 
Centuries, Thirteenth, Greatest of, 388 
Certosa, 351 
Ceylon, 385, 390 
chalices, 67 
Challenger, expedition, 260 
Chant, Plain, 40, 322, 410 
Charlemagne, 365, 373, 375 
Charity, Christian, 337 
Charity, Institute of, 160, 183 
Chaucer, 166 
Chaulic, Guy de, xviii, 116, 129, 240 
294, 402 
Chauvinism, 244 
Chekaeng, 390 
Chicheley, Reynold, 156 
Chiericate, 378 
Christ, The Imitation of, 321, 
Christian, Slavonic, 388 
Christofori, Bartholomeo, 59 
Chrystal, Prof., 235 
Church, attendance, 69 
Church, Dean, 87 
Churches art museums, 69 
ciboria, 67 
Cicero, 77, 97, 114, 136, 164 
Cicero’s Hortensius, 165 
Cimabue, x, 3, 340 
Cimarosa, 55 
Cino da Pistoia, 81 
Circulation, Italian, 250 
Ciriaco, 137 
cities, Italian, 361 
“city beautiful,’’ 367 
Clare, St., 321, 335, 341, 371 
Claudio, Monteverde, 52 
Clavius, S. J., Father, 408 
Clement, V., 373, 392 
Clement VIII, Pope, 146 
Clement XIV, Pope, 158 
Cleopatra, 336 
Clyster apparatus, 305 
Cochin China, 385, 
Code Justinian’s, 84 
Code Napoleon, 199, 330 
Codice Irlandese, 159 
Codronchi, 305 
Coimbra, University of, 155 
Cole, Timothy, 9, 15 
Coleridge, S. J., 86 
Colet, Dean of St. Paul, 141, 156 
Colla, 208 
college, Roman, 115 
Colleoni at Venice, 29 
Colonna, Vittoria, 349 
Colosseum, 34, 40, 404 
Columbus, 229. 245, 273, 379, 382 
Columbus and Toscanelli, 229 INDEX 
Columbus Century, 393 
Columbus Hospital, 133 
Colzi, 260, 261, 
Comedy, Divine, xiii, 166 
Comedy, musical, 410 
comet, 223 
Competetti, 160 
conservation of energy, 228 
Constantine, 4, 186, 266 
Constantine Africanus, 103, 289 
Constantinople, 319 
Contagion development, 274 
contagium animatua, 281 
Contagium vivum, 274 
Conti, 318 
convents, coordinate, 127 
Convito, Dante’s, 166 
Conway, Sir Martin, 36, 191 
Copernicus, v, x, xvii, 116, 216 
Cordonedi, 261 
Cordus, 255 
Corelli, 59 
Coriolanus, 61, 336 
Cornaro, 353 
Cornelia Gracchus, 119, 336 
Cornelius’ Law, 87 
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 160 
Corpus Juris Civilis, 191 
Corregio, xi, 20, 50, 374 
Corsi, 261 
Corsini, 157 
Cortesi, 305 
Corti, Marquis of, xxi, 248 
Cortona, Pietro da, 20 
Cosimotura, 19 
Costa, Lorenzo, 19, 385 
Cotugni, 248 
Counterpoint, 50, 410 
“Countess, The Great,’’ 339 
Cowley, 93 
Cram, Ralph Adams, 811, 
Crashaw, 93 
Creighton, 113 
Cremonensis, 205 
crew, 231 
Criminal Science Series, 200 
Criticism, higher, x 
Crivelli, 19 
Cruets, 67 
Culture, defined, 60 
Cuneo, 299 
Cuniberti, 411 
Cur Deus Homo, 81, 170 
Curie, Madame, 358 
Cycloid curve, 208 
Cyprus, 394 
Cytoryctes variolae, 286 
D 
Dafne, 52 
Damascus, 394 
D’Annunzio, xiv, 95 
Dante, xiii, 85, 136, 193, 214, 315, 
340, 357, 362, 374 
Dante and St. Thomas, 173 
Dante da Maiano, 81 
Dante’s Convito, 166 
Dante, science, 215 
Dastre, Prof., 260 
David, Michelangelo’s, 29 
Davidson, Thos., 117, 183 
Da Vinci (see Leonardo) 
“dark ages,’’ 109 
Deaconesses, 121 
debtors’, prison, 318 
Decameron, 374 
De Lugo, Cardinal, 182 
democracy, 361 
Democritus, evolution, 175 
Demosthenes, 114 
De Noailles, 181 
dentistry, Etruscan, 400 
“ Italian, 298 
11 prothetic, 400 
Denza, 222 
De Renzi, 128, 242, 250, 290 
De Rossi, 160, 356 
derrick, moveable invention, 403 
De Santi, 354 
Descartes, 168, 171, 178, 182 
Desiderius, Abbott, 104 
despotism, 362 
D’Este, Duke of, 352, 
D’Este, Isabella, 72, 74, 351, 374 
De Vico, 223 
De Vinne, Theo, Low, 144 
De-Vit, 160 
Dies Irae, xiii, 49, 77, 81 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 159 
Discoverers, Age of, 393 
“Disease, The Seats and Causes of,’’ 
271 
dissecting room, laboratory, 243 
dissection artists, xix, 240 
dissection, prohibition of, xix, 
Divine Comedy and Sumna, 175 
Divina Commedia, xiii, 166, 377 
division, 212 
Dixon, 106 
Dix, Rev. Dr. Morgan, 382 
Dnieper, 387 
Doge, Adorno, 347 
Doge, Genoa, 347 
Dolci Carlo, xi, 20 
Domenichino, xi, 20, 364 
Dominic, St., 321, 322 
Dominic, St., Third Order, 344 
Domnizo, 339 
Don, 387 ' 
Donatello, viii, xii, 28, 362, 365 
Donizetti, 57 
Donne, Maria dalle, 355 
Don Pasquale, 57 
Donzellino, 274 INDEX 
Doria Tedisio, 393 
Dosso Dossi, 19, 74 
Drama Italian, xiv 
dramatists, Greek, 114 
“dreadnought,” 411 
Dryden, 93 
Duccio, x, 5, 9 
Dunnan, F. H., 322 
Duns Scotus ,110, 171, 315 
Dunus, 281 
Duomo at Prato, 17 
Duomo of Milan, 369 
Durante, 306 
Duse, Signora, 94 
E 
earth shine, 216 
Ecce Homo, 20 
Eckstein, Lena, 124, 
Edfoo, temple, 395 
education, facilitations, 407 
feminine, 113, 118, 334 
“ graduate, 104 
“ Jesuit, 115 
“ monastic, 98 
“ popular, 101 
“under the crozier,” 119 
effluvia, organic, 277 
Egypt museums, 396 
electricity, history of, 235 
electroscope, 411 
Elephantina, 395 
Elizabeth of Hungary, 315, 321 
Elsholz, Sigusmond, 254 
Encke, 222 
energy, conservation of, 228 
England, Renaissance, 155 
English students in Italy, 115 
Ennius, 76 
equations, cubic, 208 
Erasmus, 141, 148, 153, 308 
Ercole Grande, 19 
Escorial, 70 
Ethics of Aristotle, 140 
Etruscans, 2, 372, 399 
dentistry, 400 
pottery, 400 
jewelry, 60, 400 
Eugene II, Pope, 101 
Euridice, 52, 
Eusebius, 147 
Eustachius, 245, 249, 268, 272 
Eustochium, 121 
evolution, 165 
Aristotle, 175 
Democritus, 175 
Evora, 155 
exchange royal, 42 
explorers, Rennaissance, 384 
Exultet, 49 
F 
Faber, Father, 326 
Fabiola, 336 
Fabretti, Raphael, 156, 160 
Fabricius da Aquapendente, 243, 295 
297 
Fabricius inventions, 247 
Facciolati and Forcellini, 151 
facilitations of human energy, 399 
faction fights, 342 
faculty, organization of the, 108 
fairs, 311 
Fallopius, 245, 268, 275, 295, 296, 297 
Falstaff, 56 
Fano, 261 
Fasti Consulares, 160 
Farnese Bull, 376 
Favaro, Prof. Antonio, 231 
Fawn Dancing, 376 
Fen Country, 311 
Ferdinand III, St., 195 
Ferguson, 43, 378 
fermentation, 275 
“ferments,” 277 
Fermo, 325 
Ferrara, 13, 19, 305, 352, 360 
Ferri, Prof. 200 
Ferro, Scipio, 208 
Festus, 143 
feuds, 342 
Fiammetta, 89 
Fichte, 178, 182, 184 
Ficino, 142, 168 
Fiesco, Catherina, 347 
“ Conte Giacomo, 347 
Filangieri, 199 
Filefo, 137 
Filicaja, 2, 93 
Fink, 206 
Fioravanti, 296 
Fiorelli, 160 
Fisher, Bishop, 156 
Fitting, 193 
Flajani, 285 
Florence, 13, 359, 343, 362 
“ Baptistry, 26, 64 
“ Schools, 101 
Fontana, 248, 409 
“form”, 227 
formula for happiness, 309 
Fortunate Isles, 393 
“Fortune, On the Mutations of”, 346 
Forum Judicum, 195 
Foscolo, Ugo, 94 
fossils in true light, 273 
Foster, Prof., 251, 253, 258 
foundations, pious, 190 
Fra, (see name) 
Fracastorius, 217, 273 
Fracture contrecoup, 291 
Francia, 19, 364 INDEX 
Francis, I, 154 
“ poetic genius, 314 
“ Saint, Life of, 79, 309, 312, 
321, 322, 335, 371, 387 
“ Saint, Little Flowers of, 79 
“ Saint, Third Order, 315 
Franciscan Rule, 341 
Franciscans, 313, 316 
Free, Dr. John, 155 
Freeman, 171 
Frederick, Duke of Urbino, 138 
Freind, 295 
Friars Minor, 315 
Frigimelica, 250 
Friuli, 24 
Frontenac, 384 
Fuchs, 255 
Fuhkeen, 390 
Fulvio, 146 
G 
Gaddi Taddeo, x, 14 
Galen, 264 
Galileo, x, vi, 182, 208, 217, 231, 280 
“ long happy life, 408 
“ swinging lamp, 276 
Galla Placidia, 5, 35, 63 
Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, 371 
Gallery Brera, 370 
Galliera, Duke of, 369 
Galuppi, 55 
Galvani, xvii, 130, 234, 411 
Gamut, 49 
Ganganelli, Cardinal, 158 
Gardens, Italian, 75 
“ monastery, 283 
Gardner, 344 
Garnet, 92 
Garofalo, Baron Raffaelle, 19, 200 
Garrison, F., 273, 279, 286 
Garrucci, 160 
Gassendi, 180 
Gattamellata, 28, 366 
Gavassetti, 305 
gems, Renaissance, 71 
Genoa, 360, 368 
“ music, 369 
Gentile da Foligno, xi 
Geoffroy, ix, 
Geometrica, 204, 206 
Gessner, 255 
Gherardo of Cremona, 205, 215 
Ghiberti, xi, 27 
Ghini, Prof. Luca, 256 
Ghirlandajo, 14, 80 
Ghizeh, pyramid, 395 
Giacomo da Filelfo, 250 
Giacomo della Porta, 28 
Giannone, 199 
Gibbon, 331, 395 
Gibraltar, 393 
Giles, Brother, 315 
Giles, Peter, 381 
Gilii, xvii, 
Giocondo, Fra, 377 
Giordana, Luca, 20, 179 
Giotto, x, 3, 11, 315, 362, 372, 375 
“ Campanile, 26 
Giovanni, Lothario, 318 
Girald of Cremona, 205 
Girolemo Lombardo, 31 
Gladstone, ix, 85, 164 
Glass, Venetian, 63, 74 
Gley, 260 
Glisson, 249 
Gnomon of Santa Maria, 228 
God intoxicated man, 180 
God, Little Poor Man of, 315 
God, Scourge of, 388 
Goethe, 3, 41, 61, 94, 372 
Goldoni, 94 
Golgi, xxi 
Goodell, 311 
Gosse, Edmund, 89, 93 
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 139 
Goudimel, Claude, 47 
Goujon, Jean, 32 
Gothic Architecture, 39 
Graechus, Cornelia, 119 
“ Gains, Tiberius, 120 
Graecia, Magna, 375 
Graecisms, 193, 290 
Graffiti di Pompei, 160 
Gratian, 193 
Gravity, 231 
Graves Disease, 285 
Greece captive, 62 
Greek masters, 265 
“ type, 413 
“ in origin, ix 
Green, Edward Lee, 255 
Gregorian Chant, 322 
Gregory II, Pope, 322 
“ VII, Pope, 101, 321 
“ XIII, Pope, 323, 409 
Gregorovius, 356 
Grentemesnil, 274 
Grew, Nehemiah, 255 
Grey, Lord, 155 
Grimaldi family, 397 
Grimm, 20 
Grocyn, 142, 156 
Guarna, Rebecca, 129 
Guarnieri, 58 
Guercino, 20 
Guerini, history of dentistry, 299 
Guido, Aretino, 49 
Guido Cavalcanti, 81 
Guido Reni, 20 
Guilds Academic, 108 
Guittone Era, 49 
Gurlt, 247, 289, 291, 294 
Guy de Chauliac, xviii, 116, 129, 240 
294, 402 
Guy of Arezzo, 49 INDEX 
Hungary, Golden Bull, 195 
Huxley, xv 
hydrostatics Roman, 225 
Hymn to the Creatures, 313, 316 
Hythloday, Ralph, 380 
I 
Ignatius Loyola, Saint, 115, 132, 326 
Illinois, 384 
immersion lens, 406 
independence, conventual, 126 
indestructibility of matter, 228 
India, 385 
Ingeborga, 320 
Inghirami, 222 
Ingrassias, 248, 274 
Innocent III, Pope, 194, 318, 337 
“ IY, “ 387 
Institute of Law, 197 
Institutio Aritmethica, 204 
Institutions, Christian, benevolent, 337 
Lending, 317 
Intermezzo, 54 
Inventions of musical instruments, 58 
printing, 412 
wealth of, 401 
Irish Codex, 159 
Irneria, 340 
Irnerius, 193, 197, 340 
iron clads, 411 
Isabella D’Este, 351, 374 
apartment of, 72 
“ camerini, 74 
Islands, Cape Verde, 393 
Isocrates, 114 
Ispahan, 394 
Italian academies, 148 
“ gardens, 75 
“ paper, 414 
‘ ‘ theatre modern, 409 
“ scholarship, 134 
“ women, 333 
“ world wide influence, 330 
Italics, 412 
J 
Jacobi, 178 
Jacopone da Todi, 78 
Jansenius, 169 
Japan, 385 
Java, 385, 390 
Jenghis, Khan, 387 
Jerome, St., 121, 167 
Jerusalem, 359 
Jew, political disabilities, 352 
jewelry, artistic, 71, 400 
“ Etruscan, 60, 400 
Jocelyn of Brakeland, v 
John XXII Pope, 373 
John of Arcoli, 298 
John of Bologna, xii, 28, 30 
John of Carpini, 387 
Guy of Montpellier, 320 
Guzman, 154 
H 
Hakluyt, 389 
Hall, Pres. Stanley, 108, 178, 197 
Haller, 243 
Hamadan, 394 
Handel, 53 
Hang Chow, 390 
Hankel, 205 
Hannibal, 365 
happiness, 309 % 
harmony, 410 
Harriot, 218 
Harvey, vi, x, xviii, 106, 116, 245, 
246, 250 
Hawthorne, Mother Alphonsa, 345 
“Health Rule of,’’ Salerno, 279 
Hebrew in origin, ix 
“ type, 413 
Hegel, 171, 184 
Helferich, 296 
Helmholtz, x 
Hfiloise, 128 
Helvetius, 169 
Henry III, of France, 329 
Henry de Tonty, 383 
Herbularia, 283 
Herculaneum, 62, 375 
Hercules, Farnese, 376 
Herodotus, 91, 114, 386 
and Marco Polo, 387 
“ of art, 92 
Herschel, Sir John, 221 
Herter, 337 
Hesiod, 114 
Hilaire, St. Geoffrey, IX 
Hildebrand, 321 
Hill Country, 2, 34, 341, 372 
Hippocrates, 264 
Historia, Naturalis, 226 
Hobbes, 185 
Holmes, O. W., 86, 245 
Holy Ghost, hospitals of the, 319 
Holy Spirit, “ “ “ 319 
Holy Trinity Church in Boston, 38 
Homer, xiii, 114 
Homericus Juvenis, 143 
Horace, 22, 76, 114, 145 
Honorius II, 373 
“ IV, 373 
Hortensius, Cicero’s, 165 
Hospital, Christian, 337 
“ Columbus, 133 
“ first public, 336 
“ German, 319 
“ helpers, 342 
Hroswitha, 124 
Hubert, 15 
humanities, 98 
Humboldt, Alexander von, 214 
Hume, David, 217 INDEX 
John, Saint, 386 
Josquin of Hainault, 47 
Jovinian, 169 
Julia, 336 
Julian the Apostate, 190 
Julius Caesar, 331 
Julius II 
Jupiter, satellites of, 218 
“ rotation, 220 
Justinian Code, 84, 197 
* * Emperor, 190 
Juvenal, 114 
K 
Kambaluc, 392 
Kant, 171, 182, 184 
“ Anticipated, 175 
Karnac, 36, 395 
Kashgar, 385 
Kelmscott Press, 66 
Kelvin, Lord, 235 
Keppler, 221 
Khan of the Tartars, 388 
Khorasan, 391 
Khotan, 385 
Kiev, 387 
Kildare, 121 
Kircher, S. J., 219, 233, 406 
“ Text Books, 233 
“ corpscula, 276 
Kircher’s Museum, 110, 407 
Kreisler, Fritz, 59 
Kublai Kahn, Emperor, 392 
Kuhns, Dr. L. Oscar, 215 
L 
labor, dignity of, 310 
laboratories, 408 
laboratory dissecting room, 243 
Ladies of Grace, 348 
“ “ the Italian Renaissance, 348 
Lady Poverty, 313, 316 
Laennec, ix 
La Favorita, 57 
La Figlia del Reggimento, 57 
La Fille du Regiment, 57 
Lagoons, Queen of the, 368 
La Grange, 209 
Lamarck, ix 
Lamari, 261 
Lancisi, 248, 276, 278 
Landino, 142 
Landmarks of Botanical History, 255 
Landriani, 137 
Landsmannschaften, 108 
Lanfranc, xv, xx, 80, 170, 292, (Lan- 
franclii) 
Lanzi, Loggia dei, 30 
Laocoon, 23, 61 
La Salle, 383 
La Salle and Tonti, 383 
La Scala, 44, 59. 371, 409 
La Somnambula, 57 
Lateran synod, 101 
Latin Empire, 318 
Latin folk poems, 77 
Latin hymns, 48, 77 
Latini, Brunetto, 81 
Lauda Sion Salvatorem, 49, 177 
Law, abstract rules, 194 
“ Roman, 185, 198 
“Laws, doctor of”, 195 
Learning, New, 153, 325 
Lebrixa, Antonio of, 154 
lectus artificiosus, 305 
leisure of the Middle Ages, 187 
“ and great achievement, 187 
Leith, 106 
L’Elisire d’Amore, 57 
lending houses, 317 
lens, immersion, 406 
Leo I, Pope, 323 
“ X, Pope, 141, 154, 236, 324 
“ XIII, Pope, 132, 173, 176, 324, 
331 
Leo X, Age of, 324 
Leo XIII, pulpits of world, 332 
Leo, Emperor, 188 
Leonard of Pisa, xvii, 205, 214 
Leonardo da Vinci, xi, xii, xviii, 28, 
50, 152, 374, 402 
Leonardo of Pisa, 205 
Leone, Oarcano, 299 
Leopardi, 28, 95 
Lessing, 61 
levity, 231 
Lhasa, 316, 391 
Liber Simplicis Medicinae, 127 
Liber Tartarorum, 389 
libraries, monastery, 310 
library, Vatican, 323 
Libro d’oro, 368 
Liebig, x 
Liebnitz, 182 
life from horizontal, 313 
“ simple, 279 
“ “under the crozier”, 310 
“ values in, 309 
Lignamine, 250 
Ligorio, 146 
Linacre, x, xviii, 106, 116, 141, 142, 
148, 203 
Lincoln Cathedral, 311, 
Linnaeus, 256 (Linne) 
Lipinska, Mdlle., 129 
Lippi, Fra, Filippo, 14, 16, 18 
Lippi, Lippo, 12, 365 
Lisbon, 155 
Lister, 293 
“little ease’ ’, 198 
“little poor man of God”, 315 
Livini, 261 
Livy, 76, 114 
Loggia Dei Lanzi, 27 
Loire, Chateaux, xii 
Lombard, Peter, xv, 80, 172, 227 
Lombardi, Antonio, 74 
Lombards, 373 
Lombroso, 200, 254, 285 INDEX 
London, 359 
Longroscino, 55 
Loredano, 246, 353 
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 12 
Lorenzo di Credi, 14 
Lorenzo de’ Medici, 324 
Lorenzo The Magnificent, 324 
Loretto, Holy House at, 31 
Ii’Ospedale Maggiore, 370 
Lotto, Lorenzo, 19 
Louis IX, of France, Saint, 195, 315, 
321, 371 
“ XIII, 181 
Louis the Pius, 373 
Louvre, 1, 
Lowell, J. R., 86 
Lucan, 114 
Lucas, E. V., 36 
Lucia di Lammermoor, 57 
Lucretius, 142, 165 
Lucri neglecti lucrum, 246 
Luini, 370 
Luzzato, 261 
M 
Macaulay, 85 
Macchiavelli, xv, 90, 182, 362 
Madagascar, 385 
Madras, 319 
Magati, 305 
Magellan, 383 
Maggi, 300 
Magna Charta, 195 
Magnetica De Arte, 234 
Magnus, Albertus, 110, 174 
Mai, Angelo, S. J., 158 
Maiano Dante da, 81 
Mailapur, 390 
Maine, Sir Henry, vii, 164 
Mainz, 38 
Maioli, Thos., 66 
Malabar, 390 
malaria, 282 
Malebranche, 168 
Malgaigne, 272 
Malpighi, xviii, 248, 254, 268, 277, 
406 
Mandeville, 390 
Manetti, 137 
Manning, Cardinal, 3, 83 
Mantegna, xi, 18 
Mantua, 360, 373 
Manzolini, Madame, 130 
Manzoni, xiv, 94 
Maratta, Carlo, 20 
marble sewing, 403 
Marcellus theatre, 34 
March, Prof. 77 
Marco Polo, 368, 385 
Marconi, xvii, xxi, 236 
Margaret of Navarre, 154, 350 
Maria Theresa, 211 
Marino, 92 
Marliani, 146 
Marquis of Mantua, 351 
Mars rotation, 220 
Marseppini, 137 
Martino Simone di, 12 
Massachusetts Agricultural College, 
311 
Mascagni, 57 
Massaccio, xi 
Massaglia, 261 
Masters, The Four, 290 
Matilda of Canossa, 338 
Matilda Countess of Tuscany, 193 
materia prima, 227 
matter, indestructible, 228 
Matthews Brander, 36 
Matthioli, 274 
Maurice, F. D., 83, 171 
Maximilian II, 303 
Mary Queen of Scots, 329 
Mazziotti, 261 
Medici Cardinal de’, 328 
‘‘ Cosimo de’, 138 
“ Giovanni de’, 324 
“ Lorenzo de’, 142, 324 
medicine, Italian, 263 
“ legal, 292 
practice of, 195 
Medusa, Head of, 30 
Mellocello, Lancelotto, 393 
Melloni, xvi, xxi, 236 
Melozzo da Forli, xi 
Memmi, 12 
Memphis, 359 
Mendel, 283 
Menghini, 53 
mensuration, running water, 232 
Mercier, 184 
Mercuriade, 129 
Mercurialis, 250 
Merici, Angela, 131, 335 
Messina, 136 
meteorologico agricola, 229 
Mezzofanti, Cardinal, 161 
Michelangelo, viii, xi, xii, 28, 41, 50, 
151, 241, 349, 362, 370, 404 
Michelozzo, 139 
microscope, invention, 405 
Milan, 360, 369 
“ Cathedral, 40, 158 
Milky Way, 218 
Millet, 6, 51 
Milman, Dean, 82 
Milton, v, xiii, 149 
Milvian Bridge, battle, 186 
Minerva, Church, 40, 344 
“ temple, 2, 372 
Mino da Fiesole, 28 
missals, illuminated, 65 
Mistichelli, 253 
Molo vecchio, Genoa, 369 
Mommsen, 356 
Monaco, Prince of, 397 
Monastery, libraries, 310 
“ service, 311 
monasticism, 98 
Mondino, 239 INDEX 
money, time, 326 
Mongolia, 388 
monks, Bendictine, 338 
monologium, 170 
Montagnana, 272 
Monte Carlo, 397 
Monte Cassino, 102, 126, 265 
Montecorvino, John of, 391 
Montelupo, 28 
Montessori, Madame, 117 
Monteverde, Claudio, 52 
More, Sir Thomas, 114, 142, 380 
Morel, 260 
Morgagni xviii, xxi, 242, 248, 259, 
278, 281, 282 
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 65 
Morris, William, 60, 66, 142, 412 
mosaic, 63 
Moses, Michelangelo, 29 
Miiller, Johann, 316 
multiplication, invention, 212 
Mundinus, 239 
mundus subterraneus, 234 
municipalities, Italian, 362 
Murano, 19, 367 
Muratori, 157, 305 
Muretus, 145 
Murillo, xi 
Murphy button, anticipated, 298 
Murri, 254 
Museo, Borbonico, 376 
museum, Egypt, 396 
“ South Kensington, 71, 374 
“ Kircher, 110 
• ‘ Metropolitan, 69 
museums, chureh, 110 
music, terms, Italian, 46 
Musurgia, 234 
“mystics, prince of,’’ 176 
N 
Nageli, x 
Naldi, 275 
Nankin, 390 
Naples, 360 
Napoleon Code, 199, 330 
Napoleon Italian, 230 
Narcize, 373 
Narni, Erasmo da, 365 
“nations’’, 108 
“Nature abhors a vacuum’’, 407 
Nature in Dante, 215 
Navarro, an Italian, 286 
Nazarius, 186 
Nepos, 119 
Neri, see Philip Neri 
Neuberger, 241 
Newman, Cardinal, 83, 326 
New York Public Library, 42 
Nicaise, 129 
Nicholas IV, 392 
Nicholas V., Pope, 138, 140, 155 
Nicholas of Cusa, v, xvii, 116, 208, 
216, 280 
Nicolo of Brescia, 208 
Nizzoli, 145 
Nobel Prize, 357 
Nobili, 236, 411 
Noli, Antonio de, 393 
Norma, 57 
North America, claims to, 382 
North Pole, 396 
Norton, Chas. Eliot, 85, 86 
Notker, 166 
Novaro xvii, 216 
Novum Organum, 84 
nunneries, Benedictine, 100, 122 
nuns, Benedictine, 100, 310, 338 
“ English Benedictine, 354 
“ in literature, 125 
“Nuremberg, Virgin of’’, 198 
O 
Occupation diseases, 286 
Oceanography, 397 
Ockenheim, 47 (Okenhem) 
Odoacer, 375 
Odoric of Pordenone, 389, 391 
O’Grady Standish, 187 
oligarchy, 363, 366 
Olyphant, Mrs., 346 
onomatology, xxii 
opera, buiffa, 55 
“ bouffe, 55 
“ comic, 54, 410 
operas, xiv, 52 
Oraculum Septilingue, 353 
Oratorians, 327 
Oratorio, 52, 410 
Oratory, The Little, 327 
Orcagna, 12, 26 
Order Third, 315 
Orecchia, 261 
Orfeo, 52 
Oriani, Father, 221 
Orkhon River, 388 
Or San Michele, 27 
Orsini, 146 
Orvieto, 3, 34, 372 
Osier, 273 
ostensoria, 67 
Ovid, 77, 114, 142 
Oxford, P., 105 
P 
Pacchionian bodies, 248 
Pacini, 248 
Paciolo, 207, 213 
Padua, 105, 136, 360 
“ in law, 195 
Paestum, 376 
Pagel, 266 
Paginini, 59 
painting, Fresco, 404 
“ oil, 404 
Paisello, 55 
Palestrina, 50, 329 
Palladino, 41, 377 
Pallavieini, Cardinal, 181 INDEX. 
Palma Giovane, 20 
Palma Vecchio, 19 
Palmieri, 236 
Panaroli, 281 
Pandects, 197 
Pange Lingua, 177 
Pannine, Paolo, 20 
Pantheon, 34, 404 
Panvinio, 145 
Papal prestige, 331 
Paper, cotton, 413 
“ Italian, 414 
Paphlagonians, 365 
Paradise Lost, 272 
Parathyroids, 260 
Paris, 105, 359 
“ University of, 128 
Parma, 20, 325 
Parmigiano, 20 
Parron, Amadeo, 159 
Parthenon, 84 
Passage of Victor Emmanuel, 44 
Passaro, 305 
Pater Juris, 194 
Pater, Walter, 89 
Pathology, Father of Modern, 259 
Pathology, Italian, 269 
patricians, Venetian, 367 
Patrick, St., 121 
Patrizzi, 146 
Paul III, Pope, 131 
“ V, Pope, 181 
“ Saint, 187 
Paula, 121 
Pavia, Certosa of, 28, 351 
Pecetti, 305 
Pekin, 390, 392 
Pellico, Silvio, xiv, 95 
Pennsylvania Station, 42 
Pentaestheseion, 247 
Pepoli, 365 
Pergolese, 55 
Peri, 52 
Periclean age, 324 
Persius, 77 
Perugia, 3, 13, 34, 325, 360, 372 
Perugino, xi, 372 
Peruzzi Baldassare, 43, 409 
Pesaro, The Swan, 56 
Pestalozzi, 117 
Pestis scrutinium, 281 
Petrarch, 88, 136, 150, 182, 357, 362 
Petronius, 250 
Pezzi, Domenico, 159 
Philae, 395 
Philip II, 147, 329 
“ Father, 327 
“ Neri, St., 51, 147, 326 
“ Romolo, 326 
Phillippines, Indians of the, 323 
Phillips Wendell, 226, 401 
Philosophes, Les Grands, 183 
Philosophia Magnetica, 236 
“ Universalis, 182 
Philosophiae, De Consolatione, 165 
Philosophy, Consolations of, 135 
“ Italian, 252 
“ scholastic, 177, 253 
physicians and apothecaries, 196 
Physick, Garden, 283 
Piacenza, 325 
Pianoforte, 58 
Piazzi, xvii, xxi, 221 
Piccini, 55 
Piccolomini, 249 
Pico della Mirandola, 142 
Piermarini, 44, 409 
Pieta, Michelangelo’s, 29 
Pigafetti, 383 
Pilgrim’s Progress, 272 
Pilon, Germain, 31 
Pindar, 114 
Pinturricchio, xi, 317 
Piombi, 368 
Piranesi, 157 
Pisa, 360, 376 
“ Baptistry at, 25 
“ Campo Santo, 68 
Pisan, Christine de, 345 
“ Thos., de, 345 
Pisani, xi, 372 
Pisano, Andrea, 26 
“ Giovanni, 25 
“ Niccolo, 25 
Piscopia, Helen Lucretia Cornaro, 353 
Pissini, 277, 278 
Pitti, palace, 40 
Pius II, Pope, 140, 156 
“ IY, Pope, 328 
Pizzicolli, 137 
Plain Chant, 48, 410 
planets, inhabitable, 219 
plants, sex in, 256 
“ vascular system, 257 
Plantus, 76 
Plasmodium malariae, 285 
Platina, 141 
Plato of Tivoli, 205, 214, 224 
Plattus, 159 
Plazzoni, 305 
“Pleasant House’’, 113 
Pleiades, 218 
Pliny, 76, 226, 401 
Plotinus, 142 
Plutarch, 114 
Poggendorf, 232 
poisonings in history, 353 
Politian, 137, 142 
polypharmacy, Arabian, 267, 284 
polyphony, 50 
Pompei Graffiti di, 160, 375, 400 
Pompeii, 62 
Pompey, 336 
Pompey’s Theatre, 34 
pons Varolii, 248 
Poor Clares, 341 
Porta, Giovanni Battista della, 402 
Portinari Chapel, 370 
Portiuncula, 372 
Portugal, 155, 382 INDEX 
Portugal, Renaissance, 155 
postgraduate education, 270 
pottery, Etruscan, 400 
Poverello di Dio, 315 
“Poverty, the Lady, 313, 316 
practice, medical regulation, 195 
prescriptions, “calendar’’, 284 
“ “gunshot’’, 284 
prestige, Papal, 331 
Priestley, 410 
“prime matter’’, 227 
Principe, II, 91 
Principia, 84 
Printer, The Inland, 412 
printing, inventions, 412 
“ Italian, 134 
prison debtors, 318 
propaganda, 323 
Propertius, 142, 145 
Proslogium, 170 
Protlietic dentistry, 400 
public art, 111 
Puccini, 57 
pulse, classification, 278 
“ clock, 280 
“ human, 408 
pulsilogium, 280 
Punch and Judy shows, 54 
Purbach, 215 
Purgatory, 348 
Puschmann, 244, 253, 277 
Puteoli, 376 
Putnam, Mrs. Emily Jas., 120, 125 
Pynsent, Abbess, 353 
Q 
Quintillian, 97, 143 
R 
Rabelais, 154 
Raffaele, 160 
Ramazzini, 287 
Ramsey, 106 
Raphael, xi, 3, 50 
“ cartoons, 71 
Ravenna, 5, 23, 35, 360, 374 
Raymond of Pennafort, 194 
Redi, biologist, poet, 93, 258 
Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, 279 
Regiomontanus, v, xvii, 116, 216, 228 
Rembrandt, xi 
Renaissance, 136 
“ anatomists, 245 
“ cameos, 71 
“ earlier, 193 
“ explorers, 384 
“ gems, 71 
“ medicine, 279 
“ philosophy, 253 
“ Spanish, 154 
“ women, 334 
Renan, 314 
Renee of Anjou, 350 
Reni, Guido, 20, 364 
Resende, 155 
Reuchlin, v 
Riccardi, 139 
Ricci, 20 
Richardson, 271 
Richelieu, 181 
Rinuccini, 52 
Rivini, 248 
Robbia, Luca della, xii, 30, 68, 362 
“ terra cottas, 30 
Roberttelli, 145 
Robertson, 106 
Rocca Bartolomeo, 250 
Roger, 290 
“ of Sicily, 413 
Rolando, 248, 290 
Roma Sotteranea, 161 
Roman, aqueducts, 401 
“ cement, 401 
“ College, 115 
“ fever, 282 
“ matrons, 335 
“ mothers, 336 
“ tunnels, 401 
Romanesque, 36, 37 
architecture, 38 
Romano Giulio, xi 
Rome, 359, 136 
Romeo and Juliet, 377 
Roper, 106 
Rosa, Salvator, 20 
Rosmini, 160, 168, 171, 183 
Rospighi, 223 
Rosselli, 18 
Rossellini, 28 
Rossetti, Christian, 89 
“ Gabriel, 89 
“ W. H„ 30, 89 
Rossi, 305 
Rossini, 55 
Rota, 278 
Rousseau, 92 
Rubens, xi, 
Ruccellai, chapel, 7 
Ruffini, 248 
Rufinus, 169 
Ruggiero, 128, 290 
Ruini, 252 
Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain, 311 
Ryder, Father, 326 
S 
Sabatier, Paul, 314 
sabbath, rest, 192 
Sadoleto, 141 
St. Angelo, Castle, 34 
“ Gall Monastery of, 283 
‘ ‘ Genevieve, Library of, 42 
“ John, J. A., 394 
“ John the Divine, 38 
“ Mark’s, 5, 37 
“ Mary of the Springs, 345 
“ Peter’s in Rome, 36, 84, 369, 404 
“ Peter Martyr Chapel, 370 INDEX 
Saintsbury, Prof., 78 
838 ‘..aiqtJAOi oq* ‘imus,, 
Salerno, xx, 102, 103, 126, 136, 265, 
334, 360, 376 
“ Robt., Duke of, 266 
“ school of, 128, 340 
Salo, 274 
Salvio, Alponso de, 231 
San Ambrosio, 370 
“ Antonio, 366 
“ Appolinare in Nuovo, 35 
“ Carlo Theatre, 44, 370, 376, 409 
“ Damiano, 372 
Sandstroem, 260 
Sandys, Prof., 113, 146, 148, 159 
San Francisco, Church of, 370 
“ Lorenzo at Rome, 35 
San Marco, 15, 139 
“ Martino at Lucca, 25 
" Maurizio, 370 
Sanmichele, 377 
Sanquirico, 261 
San Satiro, 370 
Santa Clara, 345 
‘ * Croce, 40 
“ Lucia, 376 
“ Maria della Spina, 26 
“ Maria Novella, 13 
“ Sophia, 36 
Santini, 222 
Santorini, 248 
Santorio, 278, 280, 305 
“ inventions, 280 
Santo Spirito Hospital, 320 
San Vitale, 35 
Sappho, 120 
Saracens, 274 
Sargent, 5, 63 
Sarpi Paolo, 252 
Sarto, Andrea del, 14 
Sassoferrato, 20 
Saturn, planet, 218 
Savigny, 197 
Savonarola, 272, 296, 325, 326 
scaffolding, 404 
Scala, Can Grande della, 377 
Scale, musical, 409 
Scaligers, 154 
Scarlatti, 53 
Scarpa, 248 
“scavenger’s daughter’’, 198 
SchafE, Philip, 167 
Schemer, Christopher, 219 
Schelling, 182 
Schiapparelli, xvii, xxi 
Schliemann, 137 
scholarship, Italian, 134 
Scholastica, 99, 122, 338 
Schools, Bishops’, 101 
‘ ‘ elementary, 101 
“ Florence, 101 
“ medical, at Salerno, 103 
“ Sunday, 328 
“ town, 101 
Schultheis, 249 
Schwan Chow, 390 
Schwann, Theodor, x 
science, Italian, 225 
sciences, biological, 238 
Sciolla, 261 
Scott, Sir Walter, 94 
Scotus, Duns, 110, 171 
Scribe, 94 
Scriptores Rei Rusticae, 143 
Scudder, Miss Vida, 344 
sculptors, Byzantine, 23 
sculpture, Roman, 22 
Scultetus, 249 
Secchi, xvii, 222 
seeds of disease living, 274 
Segonio, 145 
selection, natural, 175 
Selling, William, 156 
Seminar, 111 
Sentences, Book of, 172 
Sentences, Master of, xv 
Serlio, 43 
Servants of Relief for Incurable Can- 
cer, 345 
service, monastery, 311 
“ public, 369 
" social, 366 
Settala, 305 
Seville, Cathedral of, 369 
sex in plants, 256 
Sforza, Lodovico, 370 
“ Regent of Milan, 351 
Sgambati, 59 
Sgobbo, 261 
Shah Abbas, 394 
Shakespeare, xiii 
Sheldon, 109 
Short, 106 
Shot, experiments, 300 
Siam, 385 
Siberia, 385 
Sick Poor, Visiting Sisters of, 345 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 92 
Siena, 25, 343, 360 
Signorelli, x, 15 
Signoria, Piazza della, 27 
Silvatico, 305 
Singer, Dr. Chas., 274 
“ Mrs. Dorothea, 274 
Sinigaglia, 325 
Sinsinawa, 345 
Sistine tapestries, 70 
Sixtus, iv, Pope, 141 
Societa Palatina, 157 
Society, Numismatic and Archaelogical 
of N. Y„ 380 
solstices, altitudes of the, 229 
Sordello, 31 
Scrutinium Pestis, 281 
South Kensington, 379 
“ Museum, 374 
Spallanzani, Abbe xviii, xxi, 259, 354 
“ Mariana, 355 
spectacles, invention, 402 
spectra of stars, 223 INDEX 
Spencer, Herbert, 174 
Speyer, 38 
Sphaerica of Theodosius, 205 
Spicilegium Romanum, 159 
Spieghel, 249 
Spigelius, 249 
Spinoza, 180, 182 
Squarcione, 366 
Stabat Mater, 49, 56, 77 
Stabiae, 376 
Statius, 142 
Stefano degli Angeli, 209 
Steno, v, x, xviii, 106, 153, 248, 253 
Stillman, W. J„ 8, 15 
stones, precious, 71 
Strada, Father, S. J., 156, 236 
Stradella, 53 
Stradivari, 58, 410 
Stradivarius, 410 
Strambotto, 73 
Stubbs, Henry, 252 
students, English in Italy, 115 
“ poor, 112 
substances, elementary, 228 
Sumatra, 385, 390 
Summa and Divine Comedy, 175 
Summa Codicis, 193 
sun spots, 223 
surgical instruments, Pompeii, 400 
“ bed, 305 
surgery, xix 
“ plastic, 297 
Sydenham, 264 
Symonds, John Addington, 182 
Symphony Society New York, 59 
Syon, catalogue, 124 
syphilis, 273 
T 
Tabriz, 391 
Tacitus, 82, 91, 165 
Tagliacozzi, 298, 302, 305 
Taj Mahal, 36 
“tales travellers’’, 396 
Tambroni, Clotilda, 355 
Tamurlane, 392 
Tantini, 59 
tapestries, Sistine, 70 
Tartaglia, 208 
Tartarorum Liber, 389 
Tartars, Book of, 389 
Tasso, xiii, 90, 340, 357 
teeth, filling of, with gold, 298 
telegraph, wireless, 411 
telescope, 231 
“ invention of the, 405 
Telesio, xv, 146, 179, 230 
Tenebrae, 49 
Terence, 124, 142, 145, 159 
Teresa, St., 122 
text books of Kircher, 233 
texts scholarly, 143 
theatre, architecture, 42 
“ La Scala, 44, 59, 370, 409 
“ modern Italian, 409 
“ San Carlo, 44, 370, 376, 409 
Theatro, Olympico, 43 
Thebes, 396 
Thebesio, 248 
Theodoric, xx, 265, 292, 293, 375 
Theodosius II, Emperor, 189 
Sphaerica, 205 
therapeutics, Italian, 269 
thermo-electroscope, 411 
thermometer, 231, 408 
Thibet, 316, 385 
Thomas of Cantimprato, 79 
“ Celano, 77 
Thompson, Gilman, 286 
Thoreau, 326 
Thorwaldsen, xii, 32 
Thucydides, 91 
Tibullus, 145, 155 
Tiburtinus, 205 
Tiepolo, 21 
Timbuctoo, 396 
time, money, 326 
Timurling, 392 
tin in dentistry, 298 
Tintoretto, xi, 19 
Tiptoft, John, 156 
Tiraboschi, S. J., Father, 158, 391 
Titian, xi, 19, 50, 74, 245, 367, 374 
Titianesque, 10 
Tizzoni, 260 
Tommasio, 250 
Tonti, Enrico, 383 
“ and La Salle, 383 
Toply, 195 
Tordinoni, 43 
Toricelli, xvii, 209, 231, 407 
torpedo, Whitehead, 411 
Torre, Father di, 405 
torture, 198 
Toscanelli, xvii, 228 
Totila, 373 
town university, 365 
Tragus, 255 
Travelers, Lives of Celebrated, 394 
“travelers’ tales’’, 396 
Traversari, 137 
Trent, Council of, 327 
trephining, 291 
Trevi, Fontana, v 
Trincavalla, 303 
Trocar and Canula anticipated, 304 
Trotula, 128 
Troubadours, 81 
Trouessart, 217 
Trovatore, 81 
trypanosomes, 286 
tuberculosis, contagious, 281 
Tufnel, 278 
tunnels, Roman, 401 
Tuscan of Siena, 344 
Twelve Tables, Laws of the, 400 
Tycho Brahe, 217 
type, Greek, 413 
“ Hebrew, 413 
“ Italic, 412 INDEX 
U 
Uffizzi, 40 
Ughetti, 260 
Ugo of Lucca, xx, 292 
Unitarian Church, 328 
University, Bologna,105 
“ features, 107 
“ first modern, 102 
“ medieval, 108 
“ Oxford, 105 
“ Padua, 105, 195 
“ Paris, 105, 195 
“ Salerno, 376 
Ural mountains, 388 
Urban VIII, Pope, 181, 232 
Ursulines, 132 
Utopia, 380 
V 
Vacuum, 231 
Vacuum Torricellian, 232 
Valens, Emperor, 188 
Valentinian, 188, 189 
Vallauri, Masso, 159 
Valle, Pietro della, 393 
Vallisnieri, 259, 276, 281 
Valsalva, 248, 278 
values in life, 309 
Van der Weyden, 15 
Van Eyck, Jan., 15 
Vannucci, Pietro, 372 
Varolius, 245, 268 
Vasari, 17, 91, 92 
Vatican, 153 
“ library, 140, 162, 323 
Venetians, 385 
Venice, 360, 366 
“ stones of, 41 
Verazzano, 382 
Verde, Cape, Islands, 393 
Verdi, 56 
Vergerio, 137 
Verona, 377 
Veronese, xi, 19 
Verrochio, xii, 14, 28 
Vesalius, v, x, xviii, 106, 116, 153, 
241, 244, 273 
Velasquez, xi 
Vernier, 408 
Vespasiano da Bisticci, 138 
Vespucci, Amerigo, 379, 380 
Vesputius, 380 
Vesuvius, 226 
Vicenza, 377 
Vico, 198 
Victima Pascliale, 49 
Victor III, Pope, 104 
Vida, 141 
Vidian Canal, 248 
Vierordt, 277 
Vigilantius, 169 
Vigo, 296 
Viliam, 101 
Vincent of Beauvais, 389 
Vincenzo di Rossi, 38 
Vinci, (see Leonardo) 
violin developed, 58 
Virchow, x, 271, 318, 336 
Virgil, 22, 76, 114, 136, 374, 375 
Visconti, 365 
Vita sobria, 279 
Vitelleschi, 115 
Vittoria Colonna, 349 
Vottorino da Feltre, 112, 130, 137, 
373 
Vivarinis, xi 
Vivianai, Vincenzo, 208 
vivum ex vivo, 281 
Vivaldi, Ugolino, 393 
Volta, xxi, xvii, 234 
Voltaic pile, 235, 411 
W 
AValdseemiiller, 380 
Warham, Bishop, v 
Wenceslas, Emperor, xx 
West, Monks of the, 338 
Wharton, 242, 249 
wheelbarrow, invention, 403 
White, Pres., xx 
Whitehead, torpedo, 411 
William of Salicet, xx, 292, 293 
William Tell, 56 
Winckelmann, 23 
Windsor Castle, 70 
wireless, xvii 
Woman’s sphere, ethical, 333 
Women, celibates, 123 
“ Christian, 337 
“ of Two Republics, 119 
“ of Italian Renaissance, 334 
“ religious, 126 
“ students, Bologna, 130 
“ under monasticism, 124 
“ “worthy of eternal praise”, 
340 
Worcester, Earl of, 156 
World, garden of the, 311 
Worm, Olaus, 249 
wounds, gunshot, 300 
X 
Xenophon, 114 
Y 
Yarkand, 385 
Yeats, the Irish poet, 60 
Yule, Sir Henry, 388 
Z 
Zanda, 261 
Zanzibar, 385 
Zecchia, 305 
Zenone, 250 
Zuccherelli, 21