Spenser`s Amoretti VIII and Platonic Commentaries on Petrarch

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SPENSER'S AMORETTI VIII AND
PLATONIC
COMMENTARIES
ON PETRARCH
By Jon A. Quitslund
of love and descriptions of beauty refined and spiritual
to
the epithet 'Platonic' are notoriously common in
attract
Declarations
enough
Renaissance poetry. It is also notoriously difficult to relate much of this
poetry directly to Plato's dialogues, or even to writings of the more serious
expositors of Platonic doctrine (e.g., Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola,
Leone Ebreo, Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, Louis Le Roy). More often
than not, the epithet is applicable only in the loosest sense, and a poet's
Platonism is to be traced no further than poetic fashion and the mixture of
extravagant compliment, refined sensuality, and earnest otherworldliness
inculcated by the popular conduct-books and trattatid'amoreof the period.
But if many poets were merely conventional, and many others pursued
aesthetic or moral ends which precluded serious concern with Platonic
doctrines, some poets consciously voiced sentiments and ideas which, in their
own minds at least, were distinctly Platonic.
Edmund Spenser was such a poet; in his Platonism he was more consistent
and, in the FowreHymnesat least, more learned than most. That he studied
discourses on love and beauty avidly and sensitively has been shown in
detail, with reference both to Castiglione's Courtierand to more theoretical
discussions of Platonic love. Less attention has been given to the influence
upon him of Italian and French poetry in which Platonic ideals can be found.
Study of other poets' Platonism probably did not suffice to establish in
Spenser's mind the idealistic attitudes and doctrines which are so prominent
in his poetry. It is possible, however, that his youthful reading of Petrarch and
the poets of the Pleiade was sufficient to interest Spenser in what were called
'Platonic sentiments', and to make him a curious and receptive reader of
treatises on love.
This article will explore one instance of Spenser's indebtedness to such
poetry. The poem which was published, perhaps fifteen years after its
composition, as the eighth sonnet in the Amoretti,bears a close and revealing
resemblance to one of Petrarch's Rime. The evidence I will present suggests
that behind Spenser's poem, among unknowable personal impulses, lay an
intention to express what would be recognized as Platonic sentiments. The
relationship between these sentiments and those we find in Petrarch's poem is
particularly interesting. To further our understanding of what Spenser found
in Petrarch'spoetry, and to explain why he followed and why he diverged from
his model, I will cite sixteenth-century comments and critical discourseswhich
argue that Petrarch was a philosophically learned poet, fond of Platonic
doctrines. I hope to illuminate a neglected aspect of the process by which
ideas about love and beauty stemming from Plato's dialogues, and from the
theories they stimulated in the Renaissance, came to be popularized and
combined with the conventions of a lyric tradition innocent of direct contact
with the Phaedrusand the Symposium.I will argue that Spenser was, early in
his career, significantly influenced by the revival of learned interest in Plato
256
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
257
and the Platonic tradition which was initiated by Marsilio Ficino and his
circle, and spread throughout Europe during the first half of the sixteenth
century.
Since the awkward terms 'Platonism' and 'Platonic' cannot be avoided,
I will specify the meaning I wish them to bear. I am concerned with only a
few of the doctrines and attitudes which were termed 'Platonic' in the sixteenth
century. Recognizing the difference between Platonic doctrines per se and
what seemed Platonic to Spenser and his readers, I am dealing primarily with
the latter category. For my purposes, the signs of a lyric poet's interest in
some form of Platonism are these:
i) praise of inner, spiritual beauty, and reference to the immaterial origin
of even physical beauty;
2) praise of the ennobling power of love of such beauty, contrasted to
desire for physical satisfaction, and the suffering entailed in its frustration;
3) assertion that such love is an affair of the mind or soul, rather than the
passions;
4) reference to the celestial origin and/or destiny of the beloved's soul or
beauty, and perhaps to her life prior to mortal birth;
5) worship or use of the beloved as a means of grace, devotion to her being
part of an ascent to perfection and knowledge of God.x
Anyone familiar with medieval poetry and thinking about love knows
that these themes were popular during centuries in which Plato's dialogues on
love and beauty were unknown in the West. With referenceto those centuries,
a poet's idealism should perhaps be termed 'Augustinian' or 'scholastic'
rather than 'Platonic'. In the fifteenth century, however, when the
other Platonic dialogues, and the works of the Neoplatonists were
Symposium,
recovered and translated, men were led by their two-fold enthusiasm for
Plato and the medieval love poets to impute direct knowledge of the
philosopher to their poets. Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, and Petrarch, who had
taken a lively interest in the Platonic tradition, were read in the Renaissance
as if they had enjoyed all the benefits of recent humanistic learning. The
great authority and appeal of medieval love-literature, in turn, both gave
impetus to the study of ancient Platonic and Neoplatonic texts, and affected
1 Though not relevant to the
poetry under
discussion here, the following characteristics
of a more learned Platonism are also to be
found in Spenser's and other Renaissance
poetry:
6) appeals to the intricate psychological and
cosmological theories which Ficino and
others built upon Platonic foundations;
7) precise use of philosophical terms such
as 'Idea';
8) allusion to specific Platonic images or
myths (e.g. assignment of souls to stars, and
their descent into bodies, Timaeus41d-42e;
the winged horsesand charioteer of the soul,
and the virtuous lover's flight heavenward,
Phaedrus246a-256e; the two Venuses and
Loves, Aristophanes's androgyne, Love's
birth in the garden ofJupiter, and the scala
amoris leading to the Idea of Beauty,
Symposium 18oc-i8ic,
189c-193d, 203b204a, 21oa-212a).
To my definition of Platonism in lyric poetry,
compare Robert Valentine Merrill, with
Robert J. Clements, Platonism in French
Renaissance
Poetry,New York I957, pp. 63-65
in particular. See also Paul N. Siegel, 'The
Petrarchan Sonneteers and Neo-Platonic
Love', Studies in Philology, xlii,
I64-82.
I945,
pp.
258
JON A. QUITSLUND
the development of the doctrines Renaissance thinkers based upon them.
Medieval love-literature, particularly the poetry of Petrarch, also contributed
during the later sixteenth century to the dilution of serious thought about
love with sentimentality.2 A poet of the late sixteenth century, then, was
potentially heir to many forms of thought and feeling which the age called
Platonism. 'Platonic love', as a poetic subject sanctioned by centuries of
medieval and modern vernacular literature, by the most revered of ancient
authorities, and by a school of contemporary thought at once venerable and
popular, was for all of these reasons congenial to Spenser. It is generally
agreed that Platonic idealism, whatever its precise sources and character,
called forth some of his finest and most characteristic love poetry.
I turn now to an early example of that poetry. Sonnet viii of the
Amorettistands out in the sequence as the only poem in Surrey's sonnet form.
It was apparently composed many years before Spenser devised his characteristic rhyme-scheme and conceived the Amorettisequence as we have it.
Several manuscript versions have been discovered and published, and from
the contexts in which the poem appears in manuscript miscellanies, it
appears virtually certain that Spenser composed one or more versions during
his association with Sidney, Dyer, and Greville, before his first departure for
Ireland in the autumn of I58o.3 The similarity of the poem to Greville's
Caecaliiii suggests that Spenser composed his sonnet in friendly rivalry with
Greville, as did Sidney on several occasions.4 Cummings argues convincingly
that Spenser was quite intimate, for a short but crucial period, with Sidney
and his courtly circle. In that environment, I believe, he became no less
aware than Sidney of the best in continental literary culture, and devoted
himself no less than Sidney to showing that an English poet could equal if not
surpass his Italian and French predecessors.
Amorettiviii is a small but revealing record of that awareness and dedication. Spenser presumably wrote other poems during his association with
Sidney, but they are not so easy to trace in his published works. Sonnets iii,
vii, and ix of the Amorettiare related by theme and language to sonnet viii,
and may have been composed with it. We know that The Faerie Queenewas
2 Giuseppe Toffanin discusses the coinci- Literature
(hereafter SEL), iv, 1964, pp. I25-35.
dence of Platonism and Petrarchism in I6th- See also The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed.
century Italy in Storia letterariad'Italia; I1 William A. Ringler, Jr., Oxford I962, pp.
Cinquecento,Milan 1929, pp. 134-46. See also xxxiii, 557-8.
4 It is possible that Sidney wrote Astrophel
Luigi Baldacci, II Petrarchismoitaliano nel
and Stella xlii with Spenser's sonnet in mind.
Cinquecento,Milan and Naples I957, pp. 86I I4; Sears Jayne, 'Ficino and the Platonism
Giinter Ahrends, Liebe, Schinheitund Tugend
in Sidneys 'Astropheland
of the English Renaissance', Comparativeals Strukturelemente
Literature, iv, 1952, pp. 214-38; and Merrill Stella' und in Spensers'Amoretti',Ph.D. disand Clements, Platonismin FrenchRenaissance sertation, Rheinische Friedrich-WilhelmsPoetry, pp. x-xi. Leo Spitzer, 'The Poetic Universitdit, Bonn 1966, pp. 200, 204-5,
Treatment of a Platonic-Christian Theme', suggests comparison of both Amorettivii and
viii to Astropheland Stella xlii, and finds the
ComparativeLiterature, vi, 1954, pp. 193-217,
gives an exemplary account of the mixture of parallel of viii to xlii 'besonders eng.' In my
Petrarchan with other influences evident in view, the various similarities and differences
several i6th-century poems.
suggest that Spenser's was the earlier poem.
3 L. Cummings, 'Spenser's AmorettiVIII: We cannot, of course, rule out the possibility
New Manuscript Versions', Studiesin English of a common source as yet undiscovered.
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
259
begun in England and encouraged by Sidney.5 In his praise of Belphoebe's
eyes (F. Q. II.iii.23), Spenser borrows at length from Amorettiviii. This fact
does not in itself date his development of Belphoebe's character and the
meaning she carries in The Faerie Queene,but the likelihood of allusion to
Alengon's courtship of Elizabeth in this episode suggests an early date and
possible connexion with Sidney. Amorettiviii by itself suggests that, some
time before Sidney developed his imitation, with a difference, of 'poore
Petrarkeslong deceased woes', Spenser was forming, on the basis of a different
aspect of Petrarchism, a firm grasp of the contemplative love at which
Astrophel tries and fails.
I will first quote and discuss Spenser's and Petrarch's sonnets. Here is an
emended text of the manuscript version which Cummings takes to be the
earliest:6
More than most fair, full of the living fire,
Kindledabove,the high creatornear,
No eyes, but joys with whom the fates conspire
That to the world noughtelse be counteddear:
Through your clear beams doth not the blinded guest
Shoot forthhis dartsto base affectionswound,
But angelscome to lead frail mindsto rest
In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound.
You move my thoughts, you fashion me within,
You stay my tongue and force my heart to speak,
You calm the storm that passion did begin,
Strong through your looks, but by your virtue weak.
Love is not known where your light shined never;
Thrice happy he that may behold you ever.
This confession of intellectual love, though it gives no evidence of familiarity
with either Plato or such Renaissance interpreters as Ficino, alludes to several
of the themes I have called Platonic. Some of his later sonnets and the first
two of the Fowre Hymnes display a much more technical and learned
Platonism; in this sonnet we may have the first fruits of an interest which
Spenser was to pursue more and more learnedly throughout his career. It is
also possible that, following the examples of Sidney and his friends, Spenser
chose to show much less learning than he possessed.
Spenser certainly was learned enough, and had a sure enough grasp of his
subject, to make inventive use of Petrarch'sconfessionsof love for Laura. Here
is Rime cliv, quoted from Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo's edition, which I
believe Spenser used :7
See W. L.'s contribution to the Com- plied modern spelling and punctuation.
mendatory Verses in the 1590 Faerie Queene SII Petrarchaconl'Espositionedi M. Giovanni
AndreaGesvaldo..., Venice: Gabriel Giolito,
(Variorum BookIII, p. i88).
6 For a transcript from Bodleian Rawlinson
I553, pp. 285-6. Spenser's indebtedness to
MS Poetry 85 (fol. 7v), in which the poem is Rime
cliv was suggested by W. L. Renwick:
attributed to Dyer, see SEL, iv, I964, p. I27. see Variorum Minor Poems, ii, p. 422. Renwick
I have followed Cummings's suggestions also noted the similarity of Amorettixxi to Rime
(p. 130) in emending the text, and have sup- cliv; Veselin Kosti6 discusses this pair of
1
260
JON A. QUITSLUND
Le stelle, e'l cielo, e gli elementi a proua
Tutte lor arti, & ogni estrema cura
Poser nel uiuo lume; in cui natura
Si specchia, e'l Sol, ch'altroue par non troua:
L'opra e si altera, si leggiadra, e noua;
Che mortal guardo in lei non s'assecura;
Tanta ne gliocchi bei fuor di misura
Par ch'amor e dolcezza e gratia pioua.
L'aere percosso da lor dolci rai
S'infiamma d'honestate; e tal diuenta,
Che'l dir nostro e'l pensier uince d'assai.
Basso desir non e, ch'iui si senta;
Ma d'honor, di uirtute. Hor quando mai
Fu per somma belta uil uoglia spenta?
The stars, and heaven, and the elements have competed and put all their arts and
the greatest care in the living light, in which nature is mirrored,and the sun, which
elsewhere finds no equal. This work is so magnificent, so graceful and new, that a
mortal glance upon her is unsure of itself, so extravagantly does Love seem to rain
both sweetness and grace in her beautiful eyes. The air struck by their sweet rays
is animated with virtue, and becomes such that it quite overcomes our speech
and thought. Base desire is not what is felt then, but desire for honor and virtue.
When has it ever happened that evil desire was extinguished by exceeding beauty?
Spenser's sonnet is by no means a translation of this poem, but there are
similarities of subject-matter, phrase, and organization sufficient to indicate
that he composed it with Petrarch's sonnet in mind. 'Living fire' recalls 'vivo
lume,' and the phrases are emphasized, though in different ways, in both
poems. Petrarch's first quatrain, an account of the heavenly agents or
influences which combined to make Laura's eyes the finest of created things,
is not paralleled in detail by Spenser, but his first quatrain has the beloved's
eyes 'Kindled above' and linked with the Fates, to be made the only dear
things in the world. Petrarch's summary statement, 'Basso desir non ',
ch'iui senta;/Ma d'honor, di uirtute' (I2-13), quite naturally becomes a point
of departure for Spenser, who makes a strong distinction between 'base
affection' and 'chaste desire' in his second quatrain. Description of the
physical/psychical effects of rays from the beloved's eyes, a theme which
Petrarch introduces in 1.7 and carries through his first tercet, forms the
heart of Spenser's poem. In describing how chaste desires take shape under
the beloved's influence, Spenser does not imitate specifically Petrarch's lines
on 'L'aere percosso da lor dolci rai' (9-10),
but he similarly attributes
physical impact to the 'living fire' of his lady's eyes. The effect of Laura's
larly Platonized his model. His concluding
tercet is, 'L'esprit par luy desira la vertu/
Fakultet Beogradskog Univerziteta Mono- Pour s'en-voler par un trac non batu /
grafije, xxx, Belgrade 1969, pp. 65-68. Jusqu'au giron des plus belles Idles.' See
Ronsard's 'Les Elemens & les Astres, a Les (Euvres de Pierre de Ronsard, Texte de 1587,
preuve', in Le Premier livre des Amours, follows ed. Isidore Silver, i, I966, pp. I63-4; Merrill
Petrarch's poem closely. I find no evidence and Clements, Platonism in French Renaissance
that Spenserhad Ronsard'simitation in mind, Poetry, pp. 45-46.
but it is interesting that the French poet simi-
sonnets, and Tasso's 'Non regna brama', in
Spenser's Sources in Italian Poetry, Filolowki
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIESON PETRARCH
261
beauty is such that it overcomes 'dir nostro e'l pensier' (i i); Spenser says, at
an analogous point in his sonnet, 'You move my thoughts, you fashion me
within,/You stay my tongue and force my heart to speak' (9-io). In
Petrarch we find 'per somma belta uil uoglia spenta' (14); in Spenser, 'You
calm the storm that passion did begin,/Strong through your looks, but by your
virtue weak' (11-12).
Taken together, Spenser's debts to Petrarch's sonnet are, I believe, unmistakable and significant, but his departures from his model are no less
important. Petrarch'spassionate and personal quality, particularly noticeable
in his concluding question, gives way in Spenser's poem to a more expository
presentation of ideals. Both the cause and the end of Spenser's love are of a
higher order than is evident in Rime cliv. His lady's eyes are not compared
to Nature and the sun, but were 'Kindled above, the high creator near,' and
his 'chaste desires' are not seeking worldly 'honor' and 'uirtute,' but are 'on
heavenly beauty bound.' 'Angels' take the place of Petrarch's 'amor,' whom
Spenser calls 'the blinded guest.' Where Petrarch confesses to being undone
by Laura's beauty, Spenser praises his lady for edifying him.
These differencesstand out in the midst of parallels between the two poems,
and reveal Spenser as an imitator with his own personality and ideals. To
what can we trace the independent character of Spenser's Petrarchism?
Many factors would have to be considered in a full account. I will explore
what seems to be a crucial one in this instance: the body of learned
commentary that surrounded Petrarch's poems in many sixteenth-century
editions, and the discourses on his poetry which were available separately. I
believe that this scholarly literature conditioned Spenser'sreading of Petrarch,
and contributed significantly to his ideas about love and love poetry.
Of all the editions of Petrarch with 'Espositioni' which were available in
Spenser's day, the fullest and from my point of view the most interesting was
Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo's, first published in 1533 and printed again in
1541, twice in 1553, in 1574, and in i581.8
Vellutello's edition was more
popular, but Gesualdo's cannot have been difficult for someone with
Spenser's interests and connexions to find. George Gascoigne's copy of
Gesualdo's Petrarch survives.9 That commentaries were read attentively is
evident from the title of one of Henry Constable's sonnets, 'To his Mistrisse
vpon occasion of a Petrarch he gaue her, shewing her the reason why the
Italian Commenters dissent so much in the exposition thereof.'1o I will first
8 There are
copies of these editions in the
British Museum. Inspection of several catalogues, including those of the Bibliotheque
Nationale and the Petrarch Collection in the
Cornell University Library, uncovered no
other editions of the Rime with Gesualdo's
commentary. His text of the vernacular
poems was used in the first collected edition to
include them, published by Henricus Petri,
Basle, 1554. Luigi Baldacci discusses I6thcentury commentaries on Petrarch in IIl
Petrarchismoitaliano nel Cinquecento,pp. 45-74;
on Gesualdo, see pp. 52-53, 62-64. Donald L.
Guss, 'Renaissance Practical Criticism-A
Polemical Survey', Papers of the Michigan
Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, lii, 1967,
pp. 337-44, also deals with Gesualdo among
other Petrarchan commentators.
9 See the photograph facing the title-page
of C. T. Prouty, George Gascoigne, Elizabethan
Courtier,Soldier, and Poet, New York 1942.
10 Sonnet I.iii.4, in The Poems of Henry
Constable, ed. Joan Grundy, Liverpool i960,
p. 133. Patricia Thomson has shown that
Wyatt's adaptations of Petrarch incorporate
suggestionsfrom commentaries: see Sir Thomas
Wyatt and His Background, London 1964, pp.
I9go-200. Sergio Baldi adds further evidence
262
JON A. QUITSLUND
discuss Gesualdo's comments on Rime cliv insofar as they are relevant to
Amorettiviii, and some other features of the commentary which probably
attracted Spenser's attention. This will lead to further discussion of lectures
and treatises which may have contributed to Spenser's understanding of
Petrarch's poetry.
In the section entitled 'L'Vtilita' which concludes Gesualdo's account of
Petrarch's life and literary achievement, having said that his poems offer
delight and consolation to the mind, and that they are models of Tuscan
eloquence, he adds, 'In conclusion, there is in him so much doctrine, that
every science has some place in his verses, as in my comments I will labor
to demonstrate. And who can say how many and what kind of sentiments
of divine and human philosophy remain hidden among his sweet and lovely
flowers'?11 Gesualdo leaves hidden nothing that he sees among Petrarch's
flowers; his exposition of Rime cliv amounts to about an octavo page of fine
print.12 His method is to begin with general remarks, placing the sonnet in
context in the sequence and explaining its content in a broad paraphrase;
then he takes it word by word, clarifying grammatical and linguistic
obscurities and attempting to explain, elaborate, and demonstrate by appeals
to principles and authorities, the meaning and value of each phrase.
Some of his comments strike me as closer to Spenser's thought in
Amorettiviii than Petrarch's poem itself. The remarksprompted by Petrarch's
reference to 'il cielo' in 1.1 are particularly interesting in relation to Spenser's
second line, 'Kindled above, the high creator near.' Gesualdo explains that
by heaven, 'the universal cause and principal maker, who destines how many
gifts are found under him, you may understand God, according to the Stoics'
opinion.'13 Following this, he quotes from 'le diuine Canzoni d'Orpheo' an
address to heaven as 'maker of all, beginning of all things, and of all things
the end.' Orpheus spoke to the stars as 'of all things ever the fatal parents,
signs of every fate, which govern the divine path of mortal men.'14 It seems
possible that Spenser, with these ideas in mind, sought in his referencesto 'the
high creator' and 'joys with whom the fates conspire' (2-3) to imitate not
Petrarch's words, but the deepest meaning of 'Le stelle, e'l cielo.' There is
more evidence that this was the case in Gesualdo's further comments on 'il
cielo.' He says that with the stars, the heaven signifies in Laura 'celestial and
divine beauty,' while the elements refer to her corporeal beauty.15 He then
12
Il Petrarcha, pp. 285-6. My quotations
are taken from p. 286.
13 'E'l
CIELO, come cagione uniuersale, e
principale autore, che destina quante gratie
si trouano sotto lui, potresti intendere Iddio,
see John Donne, Petrarchist:ItalianateConceits secondo ch' l'openione de li Stoici.'
14 'Ilquale al cielo
o
and Love Theory in 'The Songs and Sonets',
parlando disse,...
cielo di tutto fattore, principio di tutte cose, e
Detroit 1966, pp. 21-33, 124-38.
di tutte cose fine: & a le stelle, . .. O stelle di
'Al fine in lui 6 tanta dottrina, ch'ogni
11xx
scienza ne suoi uersi ha qualche luogo, si tutte cose mai sempre genitrici fatali, d'ogni
fato significatrici, lequali reggete la diuina
come ne le spositioni mi studier6 dimostrarui,
E chi puo dire quanti, e quali sentimenti de uia de li huomini mortali.' Ellipses indicate
la diuina e de l'humana philosophia si stanno omission of Greek quotations.
15 'Noi crediamo ch'el Poe.
tra quei soaui e leggiadri suoi fioretti occolti'?
per le stelle, & il
cielo
significasse in M. L. la belta celeste e
(Il Petrarcha, sig. ***2v).
in 'Sir Thomas Wyatt and Vellutello', English
Studies Today, fourth series, ed. Ilva Cellini
and Giorgio Melchiori, Rome 1966, pp. 121-7.
Donald L. Guss's discussions of Petrarchism
and allied theories of love are also relevant:
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIESON PETRARCH
263
defines beauty as more incorporeal than corporeal, saying in conclusion that
it is 'a certain light of the divine countenance diffused in the thing of
beauty, as Minturno argues in his Academia.'16These comments help us to
understand the insubstantial and celestial, even divine, character of the
beauties praised in Spenser's first quatrain.
Gesualdo's exposition of Petrarch's distinction between base desire and
his desire for honour and virtue similarly illuminates the second quatrain.
Laura's eyes inspire such love, he says, 'because true beauty, as the
Platonists say, inflames with divine love of it, calling to our minds the
celestial life, which here we study to obtain.'17 This statement, which is
unlike anything in Petrarch's poem, helps us account for the religious
character of Spenser's devotion, and particularly for 11.7-8, 'But angels come
to lead frail minds to rest/In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound.' The
metaphors are Spenser's own, but his statement of the contrast between 'base
affection' and 'chaste desires' is much closer to Gesualdo's Platonic doctrine
than to the worldly virtue of which Petrarch speaks.
If Spenser used Gesualdo's commentary, it is worth considering what,
besides its exposition of Rime cliv, contributed to his understanding of
Petrarch and Platonic love. We can safely suppose that he was thoroughly
familiar with the Rime. His first line, 'More than most fair, full of the living
fire,' seems not accidentally similar to 'L'alma mia fiamma oltra la belle
bella,' the opening line of Rime cclxxxix. (This sonnet, with its mention of
Laura's return to her star, seems deliberately Platonic,18and may have caught
Spenser's eye for that reason.) If he was reading Petrarch and Gesualdo
inquisitively, he may have turned from Rimecliv to the two canzonito which
the commentator refers for amplification of his remarks on true beauty,
divine love, and celestial life, 'Gentil mia donna. . .' (Rime lxxii) and 'Qual
antico mio dolce empio signore' (Rime ccclx). In the commentary on Rime
ccclx (pp. 525-34), he would have found 'l'amor Platonico' defined as an
experience limited to the higher senses (sight and hearing) and the mind
(p. 525), and a full, philosophical discussion (sounding very Ficinian) of
beauty as a divine attribute, and 'therefore the means which leads us to God'
(pp. 532-33)-
Rime lxxii has a more direct relevance to Amorettiviii, since its theme is
the beauty of Laura's eyes. Gesualdo frequently refers to 'Gentil mia donna'
in his expositions of other poems; he finds it concerned 'specialmente' with a
Platonic love which leads the lover heavenward (p. 32; cf. pp. 194, 344, 458,
533). I see no sure sign in Amorettiviii that Spenser studied the poem, but
there is a possible echo of Petrarch's reference to Laura's eyes as 'Vaghe
fauille angeliche' (st. 3, 1.7) in his reference to angels (1.3). Whether or not
diuina; e per li elementi la naturale, che ne i
corpi si uede.'
16 'La belth piu tosto incorporea che corporea dir si possa, o ch'ella proceda da
l'ordine, e dalla misura de le corpore e parti
ben collocate et acconciamente disposte,
ouero che sia certo lume del diuino uolto
diffuso ne le cose belle, si come il Minturno
ne la sua Academia ragiona.'
17 'La uera bellezza come dicono i
Platonici,
ne'nfiamma di diuino amore, ramentandoci
la celeste uita; laquale ci studiamo di conseguire.'
18Gesualdo discusses,
p. 458, Petrarch's
debt to the Timaeus,also citing the Phaedrus
and Dante (Paradiso iv).
264
JON A. QUITSLUND
one traces specific debts to it, 'Gentil mia donna' is important for the support
it offers to a Platonic reading of the Rime, and a brief account of what
Gesualdo calls its 'sentimento Platonico' (p. 133) will exemplify what passed
for poetic Platonism in Spenser's time.
Gesualdo finds 'beautiful and elevated Platonic sentiments' in the first
stanza, where Petrarch speaks of 'a sweet light which shows me the way that
leads to heaven,' 'a sight.., which leads me to the glorious end.' He paraphrases this last phrase as 'to immortal glory, which good works earn us, or
to God himself, the glorious end of all things, when the divine splendor which
is beauty, above all that of the soul, leads thence, as the Platonists teach
us.'"9 It is worth noting that Gesualdo treats the Christian tradition and
Platonic authorities as two distinct but complementary frames of reference,
and that he implies by the attention he gives them that the Platonists are more
directly relevant to Petrarch's lines.
In the second stanza, Petrarch's expression of longing for heaven while
closed in an earthly prison occasions these remarks: 'He has metaphorically
called the body the prison of the soul, in Platonic fashion. The soul would let
go the body, which holds it back, so that it cannot go freely heavenward. This
is that divine fury which, as the great Plato likes to say, beauty seen here
below creates in the soul of the lover. Therefore likewise it moves its wings,
thinking it will fly freely to heaven, but its bodily prison shuts the entrance to
the path which leads it upward.'20 Similarly, the humble, courtly attitude
that Petrarch adopts in the last stanza, resolving to earn Laura's esteem by
living virtuously, is 'one of his Platonic sentiments: that the lover studies to
be such as agrees with the nature of his beloved.'21
The examples I have given permit the observation that 'Platonic' is a
prominent and powerful term of praise in Gesualdo's critical vocabulary.
Plato and the Platonists are liberally invoked in many other espositioni,
wherever Petrarch praises beauty and virtue derived from heaven, or expresses
aspiration heavenward.22 Figures of speech and attitudes which we would
trace to medieval poetic conventions and Christian doctrine are explained as
if Petrarch, like his expositor, had had the benefit of studying Ficino's
on the Symposium,if not the Platonic corpusas a whole, and had
Commentary
written with the intention of presenting distinctly Platonic doctrines. These
21 'Et e questo vn de sentimenti Platonici:
'Al glorioso FINE, a la gloria immortale;
che bene oprando s'acquista; ouero ad esso che l'amante si studia esser tale, quale si
Iddio, ch'6 fine glorioso di tutte cose: oue lo conuiene a la natura del suo amato obbietto'
splendore diuino, cio e la bellezza, massi- (p.22132).
See in particular his comments on the
mamente quella de l'anima, ne scorge, come
canzonipreceding and following 'Gentil mia
ne'nsegnano i Platonici' (p. 129).
20
'Metaphoricamente il corpo chiamato ha donna', which stress the Platonic overtones
prigione de l'anima al modo Platonico, cio 6 of the praise Petrarch bestows on Laura's
lasci l'anima il corpo, che la ritiene, che non 'celestial and divine beauty' (pp. 120-8,
puo liberamente andare in cielo. Questo e 134-9); also, Rimelxxvii ('Per mirar Policleto
quello furore diuino, che, si come piace al a proua fiso', pp. 143-4), clix ('In qual parte
Gran Platone, la belth, che si vede qua giu, del cielo, in qual idea', pp. 290-I), cciv
crea ne l'anima de l'amante: ond'ella soura ('Anima; che diuerse cose tante', pp. 343-5),
non adopre',
l'ali si leua credendosi liberamente volare al cccxxv ('Tacer non posso; e temo
cielo: ma la prigione corporea le serra l'uscio pp. 489-96).
del camino, che la suso conduce' (p. 130).
19
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
265
assumptions are mistaken, of course, but given the popularity of Platonism in
Renaissance Italy they are easy to understand, and not entirely invalid. After
all, though Petrarch did not consider himself a philosopher, he was a great
admirer of Plato and a student of the Platonic tradition.23 If Gesualdo's
approach sometimes produces misreadings and promotes some fundamental
misconceptions, he at least brings learning and imagination to his reading,
and does Petrarch the honour of taking him seriously. At a time when he
was widely but shallowly esteemed as a master of diction and poetic
conventions, Gesualdo made Petrarch worthy of imitation by such a serious
and original poet as Spenser.
There is evidence in Gesualdo's dedicatory epistle and elsewhere in Il
Petrarchathat the inspiration for his Platonic reading of Petrarch, and
interpretations of many specific passages, came from Antonio Sebastiano
Minturno, his kinsman and mentor. Minturno gave a series of lectures on
Petrarch to the Academy which met in Naples at the house of the poet
Sannazaro.24 If Minturno's and Gesualdo's interest in Petrarch's Platonism
began around 1526, when Minturno returned to Naples, they and the others
who frequented the Academy there were among the first to study the Rimein
search of hidden philosophical significance. This approach soon became
institutionalized, however, as other academies were formed throughout Italy
and existing groups turned from concentration upon classical texts to include
discussion of Petrarch and the vernacular.25 Beginning in the 1540's, many
books and pamphlets promoted the academic approach to Petrarch. It is
possible that members of the informal academy which formed around Sir
Philip Sidney in the late 1570's knew of these treatises, and that they came to
Spenser's attention during his association with Sidney's circle.26 Setting aside
the question of specific influence, I wish to discuss a few representative
examples of this literature, as illustrations of the kind of Petrarchism with
which Spenser's poetry has deep affinities.
The first and perhaps the most prominent academician to publish lectures
on Petrarch was Giovam Battista Gelli (1498-1563), a prolific author in
23 See the discussion of Petrarch in
Raymond Lebegue, 'Le platonisme de P6trarque
'
Leon l'Hebreu', in the Association G. Bud6's
Actes du congris de Tours et Poitiers, 3-9
Septembre1953, Paris I954, PP- 293-312.
the Platonic element in
On
Petrarch's love for
Laura, see Hugo Friedrich, Epochen der
italienischenLyrik, Frankfurt am Main I964,
pp. 208-10.
24 For a detailed account of this background, see below, pp. 271-6.
25 Michele Maylender's Storia delle Acca-
demied'Italia, 5 vols., Bologna 1926-30, is a
storehouse of information about hundreds of
Italian academies, but it does not attempt to
give a historical account, or to estimate the
importance of these institutions and the
writings which emerged from them. There
are several brief discussions, of which the first
18
chapter in Frances Yates, TheFrenchAcademies
of theSixteenthCentury,Studies of the Warburg
Institute,
vol. I5, London
I947, pp. 1-13,
remains the best. Eric W. Cochrane, Tradition and Enlightenment
in the TuscanAcademies,
z690-z8oo00,Chicago 1961, pp. 27-31, discusses I6th-century academies, referring to
other scholarship. P. O. Kristeller, Studiesin
RenaissanceThoughtand Letters, Rome 1956,
pp. 293-4, gives particular attention to their
role in the popularization of Platonism, while
Luigi Baldacci, II Petrarchismoitaliano nel
Cinquecento,
pp. 75-85, is specifically concerned
with academic discussionsof Petrarch.
26James E. Phillips links Spenser with
Sidney's Areopagus and the thought of
continental academicians in 'Spenser's Syncretistic Religious Imagery', ELH, xxxvi,
1969, pp. 110o-30.
JON A. QUITSLUND
266
several kinds (comedy, dialogue, and philosophical as well as literary discourse) who was one of the founders of the Florentine Academy in 1542, and a
leader in its discussionsfor many years.27 His lectures on Petrarch and Dante
were collected in 1551; several had been published previously in 1548 and
1549.28
Gelli pays his respects to Gesualdo's commentary in several places,29
and the fact that he finds Petrarch's poetry 'pieni di altissimi & profondi
concetti di filosofia' (Lettione,p. 53) probably owes something to Gesualdo.
An outline of one of Gelli's lectures will serve to demonstrate what
relationship he saw between poetry and philosophy. His lecture on Rime
lxxvii and lxxviii, in which Petrarch praises Simone Martini's portrait of
Laura, begins with a discussion of the value of the arts of painting and poetry,
and their common basis in imitation (sigs. Z2v-Zsr); then he surveys the
history of painting in Florence from Giotto to Michelangelo, and discusses
Dante's and Petrarch's labours to improve the state of Latin and Italian
After this Proemium, and quotation of the two sonnets,
(sigs.
Z5v-Aalr).
that it is most difficult to understand them perfectly, without
Gelli asserts
knowledge of both Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.30 After discussing
Petrarch's debt to Dante in the first sonnet (sigs. Aa2v-Aa4r), he argues that
in Rime lxxvii Petrarch presented his praise of Laura's portrait in Platonic
terms, while in the second sonnet he chose to follow Aristotle. He did not
commit himself to either school, but in putting the Platonic argument first he
implied a preference for Plato (sigs. Aa4v-Aasr). There follows a learned
account of the Platonic doctrine of three principles (God, Matter, and Ideas),
developed with reference to Ficino's translation of Alcinous's De dogmate
Platonis,Boethius's De unitateet uno,Dante, and 'Bessarione Cardinale Niceno
The teachings of the Timaeus
Platonico eccellentissimo' (sigs. Aa5r-Aa7v).
to God are compared to
universe
and
its
relation
created
the
regarding
Christian doctrine. Against this background of ideas, Gelli discusses Rime
lxxvii line by line (sigs. Aa7v-Bb3v). Then, in relatively perfunctory fashion,
he explains Aristotle's theory of three principles (Form, Matter, and
Privation), and discusses Rime lxxviii (sigs. Bb4r-Cc3v).
The Lettioneare less interesting as criticism than as signs of the times.
They are to be understood as learned rhetorical performances; the fact that
Gelli used his Petrarchan texts as little more than hooks on which to hang
belletristic and philosophical discourses was probably understood and
appreciated by his auditors. His accounts of Platonic and Peripatetic
principles are not designed as part of a commentary on Petrarch's text; they
have independent value as popularized philosophy. On the other hand,
Gelli's display of learning was meant to be relevant to Petrarch's poetry. It is
27 There
is relevant information about
Gelli and the Florentine Academy in two
articles by Armand L. de Gaetano, 'Dante and
the Florentine Academy: The Commentary
of Giambattista Gelli as a Work of Popularization and Textual Criticism', Italica, xlv, 1968,
'Gelli's Eclecticism on the
pp. 146-70, and
Question of Immortality and the Italian
Version of Porzio's De humanamente',Philogical
Quarterly,xlvii, 1968, pp. 532-46.
28 Tutte le Lettionidi GiovamBattista
Gelli,
Fatteda lui nellaAccademia
Fiorentina,Florence:
[Lorenzo Torrentino], 1551. Of the twelve
lectures, seven are concerned with Petrarch.
29Lettioni, pp. 271, 381, 387-8.
30 'Et si
possono difficilissimamente intendere perfettamente, senza la cognitione
della Filosofia & Platonica & Aristotelica'
(sig. Aa2).
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
267
assumed that Petrarch was familiar with these philosophical doctrines, and
asserted that he cannot be understood without recourse to them. Part of
Petrarch's claim to greatness, in Gelli's eyes as in Gesualdo's, lies in his use
of learning, and in that learning the Platonic ingredient has pride of place.
There is a lesson in this for the student of Spenser. It is evident from his
poetry, and from what we know of his life and acquaintances, that Spenser
saw other poets' achievements as challenges to his own genius, and that he
studied to become a learned poet in the tradition of Virgil, Dante, Petrarch,
Chaucer, and Ariosto. His friend Gabriel Harvey wrote, in the spirit of the
Italian academicians, 'Other commend Chawcer, & Lidgate for their witt,
pleasant veine, varietie of poeticall discourse, & all humanitie: I specially
note their Astronomie, philosophie, & other parts of profound or cunning
art. Wherein few of their time were more exactly learned.' Though his
interests did not all run the same way as Harvey's, Spenser undoubtedly
shared his conviction that 'it is not sufficient for poets, to be superficial
humanists: but they must be exquisite artists, & curious vniuersal
schollers.'31 Given such ambitions, if Spenser came into contact with Gelli's
Lettionior similar treatises,32would he not have taken guidance from them,
even to the point of seeking out the authorities they cite?
Sebastiano Erizzo's little treatise on Petrarch's 'Three Sisters,' the
canzoni(Rimelxxi-lxxiii) to which Gesualdo gave such serious attention, adds
emphasis to the lesson I have drawn from Gelli's Lettioni. The praise of poetry
and the poet's excellence with which Erizzo opens his treatise rises, near its
end, to this declaration: 'No one can deny that one who studies to be a true
poet must undertake the studies of wisdom, which consist in the knowledge
of things divine and human. He must seek out the books of philosophers, and
be acquainted with those which treat of nature, the causes of things, first
principles, time, imperfection, the origin and movement of natural things,
the Soul, Heaven, divine Providence, men and their habits, virtue and the
vices.'33 Erizzo also observes that 'although philosophy and the arts are not
31 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed. G. C.
Moore Smith, Stratford-upon-Avon
1913,
pp. 16o-1. Cf. W. L. Renwick, Edmund
Spenser: An Essay on RenaissancePoetry, London
1925,
1964, pp. 26-33.
philosophical treatises; in Francesco de'
Vieri's Compendiodella Dottrina di Platone in
quello, che ella e conforme con la Fede nostra,
Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1576, Petrarch
and Dante are frequently quoted in the
32 Among the other lectures published after company of Platonists and sacred authors.
33
delivery in the Florentine Academy I would
Espositione. . . nelle Tre Canzoni di M. Franmention Pompeio della Barba's Espositione cescoPetrarca, Chiamatele tre sorelle . . ., Venice:
d'vn Sonetto Platonico, fatto sopra il primo effetto Andrea Arriuabene per Bernardino Fasani,
d'Amore che e il separare l'anima dal corpo de
156I, fol. 3r: 'Per6 che non e alcuno, che possa
l'Amante, douesi tratta de la immortalitade l'anima negare, che a colui, che si studia di farsi uero
secondoAristotile, e secondoPlatone . . ., Florence:
Poeta, non sieno necessarij gli studij della
[Lorenzo Torrentino], 1549, second edition sapientia, che si riuolgono intorno alla
1554; Simone della Barba's Nvova Spositione cognitione delle diuine, & umane cose. Sono
del Sonettoche cominciaIn nobil sangue uita humile, adunque da esserricercati i libri de' Filosofi, &
e' queta. . ., Florence: [Lorenzo Torrentino], da quegli si ha da imparar tutto quello, che
1554; Giovanni Cervoni, Sopra il Sonetto del della natura, delle cagioni delle cose, de'
PetrarcaAmor,fortuna, & la mia menteschiua . . ., principij, del tempo, del mancamento, dell'
Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, I550; and origine, & del mouimento delle cose naturali,
Lelio Bonsi, Cinqve Lezzioni . . ., Florence: I dell' Anima, del Cielo, del Mondo, della
Giunti, 156o. One also finds Petrarch cited in Diuina prouidentia, dell'huomo, de' costumi,
268
JON A. QUITSLUND
expressly apparent in a poem, as in a prose oration, it is nonetheless clear who
is acquainted with them, and who is ignorant.'34 Petrarch's works show that
he studied both moral and natural philosophy. Furthermore, 'among the
philosophers he chose Plato as his master, as is apparent in his works, which
followed Platonic and Socratic opinion, and which platonically exalt the
matter of love which he treats, declaring it with high Platonic sentiments, as
I will show clearly enough in my detailed discussion of these three splendid
canzoni.'35 Erizzo's detailed discussion of the 'Three Sisters' (fols. 18-51)
follows an intelligent account of Love and Beauty, heavily indebted to
on the Symposium.Both the philosophical and critical
Ficino's Commentary
sections of the treatise deserve more detailed discussion than is possible here.
Benedetto Varchi's Lezzioni provide some passages suitable for the
conclusion of this study. Varchi (1503-1565) was, after Gelli, the most
important lecturer in the Florentine Academy.36 Although he is often trivial
and never very interesting when dealing with philosophical matters, Varchi's
aesthetic sensitivity and deep familiarity with Petrarch and the Petrarchan
experience sometimes lead him to real insights. His lectures tend to be
broader in scope than Gelli's, and more directly pitched to the interests of an
ordinary man or woman of cultivated but not scholarly tastes. For several
reasons, then, his opinions are valuable.
Earlier scholars, for all their interest in the facts of Petrarch's life, had
tended to treat his poems as if they issued not from a man, but from a
conduit for ideas. Varchi has a clear image of the man and the poet, but still,
according to him, Petrarch owes his place in history to the fact that Love
taught him philosophy. He and Dante are the only writers on love worthy of
mention between Plato and Ficino (fol. 37); they belong in a tradition in
which Pico and Benivieni, Diacceto, Bembo, and Leone Ebreo are also
notable (fol. 37r-v), and Varchi interprets Petrarch's poems in the light of
that tradition. He explains the paradoxes of Rimecxxxii, 'S'Amor non e, che
dunque e quel, ch'io sento?', in terms of a scheme borrowed from Ficino's
on the Symposiumand somewhat elaborated. There are, he says,
Commentary
three types of love between human beings, involving bodies alone, souls
alone, and souls and bodies together. Of the third type, three kinds are
distinguished. There are those who love the soul first, and the body on its
account, but only through the contemplative senses of sight and hearing;
della uirt u, & del uitio si e trattato.' In this
passage Erizzo has translated and modified
slightly two sentences in Minturno's De
Poeta... libri sex, Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1559, p. 98. What Minturno had
said with reference to ancient poetry, particularly that of Virgil, Erizzo has applied to
a vernacular classic.
34 'Et cosi al Poeta 6 specialmente richiesto
l'essere intendente della Filosofia, & di tutte
le arti: & quantunque queste cose non si
ueggano in un poema cosi espresse, come
nella sciolta oratione, si conosce nondimeno,
chi di quelle sia partecipe, ouero ignorante'
(Espositione, fol. 2r).
35
'Fra i filosofi si elesse per suo maestro
Platone, il che si uede nelle opere sue, che fu
di opinione Platonico, & Socratico, & che
platonicamente inalza la materia amorosa, che
egli tratta, & quella illustra con alti, &
Platonici sentimenti, si come nella particolar
dichiaratione di queste tre ornate Canzoni
mostreremo assai chiaro' (Espositione, fol. 4v).
36 In addition to Baldacci's comments on
Varchi (cited above, n. 25), see John Charles
Nelson, Renaissance Theoryof Love: The Context
of Giordano Bruno's Eroici Furori, New York
1958, pp. 132-43. I will quote and refer to La
Florence: I.
Seconda Parte delle Lezzioni...,
Giunti, 1561.
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIESON PETRARCH
269
there are those who proceed to the other senses, but love body and soul
equally; finally, there are those who care for the body more than the soul.
Varchi terms these five kinds of love 'heavenly or divine, courtly or honest,
civil or human, vulgar or plebeian, and bestial or savage.'37
In Varchi's hands, Ficino's theoretical scheme becomes a description of
love as a psychological and social phenomenon, and it is in this human
context that he places Petrarch's poetry. Petrarch, he says, 'loved his most
beautiful and chaste Laura with three kinds of love at different times,
concerning which one finds his own record in the Canzoniere:with the first,
divine love; with the second, honest; and with the third too, which is
human.'38 The Rime deal, in an exemplary fashion, with the full range of
love which is noble and morally commendable. In a passage which reveals
a great deal about current attitudes towards Petrarch, Varchi opposes those
'who not only believe, but would have others believe, that Petrarch loved
with only a dishonest and lascivious love. They make the same error, but
much more basely, as those who are persuaded that Petrarch loved Madonna
Laura with divine love only.'39 Varchi cites and discusses briefly several
examples of each kind of love (fols. [I Iv]-[I3,
numbered I5]), before going
on to his analysis of 'S'Amor non e.'
That analysis, though an excellent piece of criticism (especially in its
discussion of the paradoxes so basic to the Petrarchan experience, and their
origin in man's passionate but spiritual nature), is not so relevant to my
subject as are Varchi's more general remarks. It should be noted, however,
that although he responds sympathetically to Petrarch's suffering in a love
that is only 'courtly and honest,' we are assured that only heavenly love offers
real satisfaction. 'Man is made man by his rational soul alone, and the
rational soul, being immortal, cannot take delight in mortal things. It follows
that whoever does not love intellectually, i.e., with heavenly and divine love,
never can be content, nay can be nothing but discontent.'40
If we set aside its trivialities and excesses, which undoubtedly seem greater
to us than they did to sixteenth-century readers, the literature I have been
discussing can be seen to have made a real contribution to the study of
Petrarch in its time. It is a varied literature. Gesualdo's detailed commentary clarified and enhanced the text of the Rime, and in its attention to
37La
9r-[IIr,
Seconda Parte delle Lezzioni, fols.
numbered
I3].
The terms I have
translated are 'celeste, 6 diuino; cortese, 6
honesto; ciuile, 6 humano; volgare, 6 plebeo;
bestiale, 6 ferino' (fol. [I Ir]. Cf. Ficino's
VI. viii.
Commentary,
38 'M. Francesco Petrarca am6 la sua
bellissima, e castissima M. Lavra di tre
maniere d'amori in diuersi tempi, secondo che
da lui medesimo si pu6 del suo canzoniere
trarre: del primo amore, cioe del diuino; e
del secondo, cio6 dell'honesto, e del terzo
Petrarca, si trouano nondimeno di coloro, che
non solo credono essi, ma vorebbono ancora,
che gl'Altri credessero, che il Petrarca solo
d'amore dis'honesto, e lasciuo amato hauesse,
i quali sono nel medesimo errore, anzi molto
piu biasimeuole, di coloro, che si fanno a
credere, che il Petra[r]ca solo d'amore diuino
madonna Laura amasse' (fol. [i ir]).
40 'L'huomo 6 huomo solo, come s'6 detto,
per l'anima intellettiua, e l'anima intellettiua,
essendo immortale non pu6 di cose mortali
dilettarsi; e di qui viene, che chi non ama
ancora cioe dell'humano' (fol. [ IIr]).
cio6 d'amore celeste, e
intellettiuamente,
39'E benche queste cose manifestissime diuino, non
puo mai essere contento, anzi non
siano a tutti coloro, che pure vna volta letto puo non essere discontento' (fol. 23r-v).
hanno, e considerato i componimenti del
270
JON A. QUITSLUND
the more spiritual and philosophical aspects of the sequence, it probably
stimulated thought in the Italian academies and elsewhere among serious
students of Petrarch. The published lectures which emerged from those
academies encouraged study and admiration of several kinds in his imitators.
According to Gelli and Erizzo, the reader of Petrarch, and most of all the poet
who wishes to follow in his footsteps, must make himself learned in the
various branches of philosophy. Varchi's Petrarch is perhaps a more
appealing, certainly a more human figure, but as an authority on love he is
still to be ranked among the philosophers, and the expressions of Platonic
love in the Rime are highly valued, though not discussed in detail.
The commentators all apply, without gross simplifications, the theories
of love and beauty developed by Ficino and his immediate successors, and
citations of ancient authorities are prominent in their arguments. One can
talk of the development, during the course of the sixteenth century, of a
'vulgar' Platonic literature quite remote in spirit from ancient Platonism and
that of the earlier Renaissance, but if the commentaries I have discussed
contributed to this vulgarization it was not because they lacked learned
content. In the hands of a serious reader, Gesualdo's edition or Erizzo's
treatise must have stimulated reflection along Platonic lines, and probably
led to further study. Finally, although it may not seem to the modern reader
that the authors I have discussed treated Petrarch's poetry as poetry, they did
recognize that philosophical and poetic discourse are different in kind.
Pedantic themselves at times, they do not make Petrarch a pedant, but a poet
concerned with ideas and high ideals. They observe that philosophical
doctrines are implicit in his writings, 'hidden among his flowers'; he has
expressed 'Platonic sentiments,' not fully articulated doctrines. So, while the
zealous imitator of Petrarch might study the Orphic Hymns, Plato, Alcinous,
Ficino, Cardinal Bembo and Leone Ebreo, the personal and poetic character
of Petrarch's use of learning, recognized and respected by the academicians,
remind the poet that he must assimilate what he reads, and fashion theories
into human truths.
I believe that the first part of this essay demonstrates satisfactorily that
Spenser patterned the sonnet which became Amorettiviii after Petrarch's
Rimecliv, and that some of his departures from his model were suggested by
Gesualdo's commentary on the sonnet. My discussion of Gesualdo and his
commentary, and of other products of Italian academicism, supports more
general reflections upon Spenser's relation to Petrarch and the Petrarchan
tradition. Spenser's sonnet is early but typical, to a surprising degree, of his
mature love poetry. It is fundamentally Petrarchan, yet unlike most of
Petrarch's poetry and that of his imitators. Spenser's steadfast devotion to
ideals of love and beauty freed him from the frustrations of the typical
Petrarchan lover. He wrote often of frustration, but always in the context of
final harmony and satisfaction. His experience, unlike Ralegh's, did not
discredit his devotion, and he possessed the imagination and earnestness
required for transforming his ideals into poetic statement and suggestion.
We cannot, of course, explain this achievement entirely in terms of
influences; other men's opinions are the stimuli, not the contents, of a vital
imagination and its response to experience. However, it is clear from Spenser's
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
271
poetry in general that Platonic doctrines and sentiments appealed to him, and
that it was partially with recourse to them that he comprehended and rose
above the dilemmas of the Petrarchan experience. When and in what form
he studied Platonic thought seriously has been much debated; lately, many
have accepted Robert Ellrodt's argument that Spenser's Platonism was, until
late in his career, unlearned, medieval, and free from the influence of the
Florentine school.41 I have sought to show that one of his earliest surviving
poems manifests a deep sympathy with values which were called Platonic in
the sixteenth century. Spenser could have developed this sympathy, and a
fairly sophisticated understanding of Platonic themes, without straying far
from the study of Petrarch. References to and borrowings from the
Florentine Platonists are prominent in the commentaries I have discussed,
however, and this fact leads me to question the validity of Ellrodt's emphasis
upon Spenser's affinities with medieval authors and attitudes. Spenser seems
to have read Petrarch in Renaissance, not medieval terms (to the extent that
distinctions can be made between two such broad and overlapping categories).
The Petrarchan commentaries provide one class of evidence, among several
that might be cited, of the pervasive influence of Florentine Platonism upon
belletristic and scholarly writings in the sixteenth century, and its relevance
to Spenser's poetry.
APPENDIX
G. A. GESUALDO,
A. S. MINTURNO, AND THE NEAPOLITAN
IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY
ACADEMY
In the course of studying Gesualdo'sedition of Petrarch'sRime,I discoveredfacts which
shed light upon the circumstancesattending the composition of his 'Espositioni', add
to our knowledge of the career and influence of the critic and poetic theorist Antonio
Sebastiano Minturno, and provide information about life in the courts of the kingdom
of Naples and literary activities in one of the most important Italian academies. The
material I have gathered in this appendix has little to do with Edmund Spenser, but
it may be of interest to specialists in Italian literary history, who are better equipped
than I to explore these subjects further.
I find very little recorded of Gesualdo's life beside what can be inferred from his
edition of Petrarch. He styles himself 'da Traetto', and Minieri-Riccio gives 1496 as
the date of his birth.42 The letter in which he dedicates the Rimeto Maria di Cardona,
Marchionessof Palude, yields some information about the circumstancesin which he
completed the commentary. He had been working on it in his hours of leisure, he says,
when Minturno, having returned from Tuscany and Rome to his native soil, and from
thence having come to Naples, took an interest in the project.43 Minturno's native
41 Neoplatonismin the Poetry of Spenser, Rime diverse. . .libro primo, ed. Lodovico
Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, xxxv, Domenichi, Venice: Gabriel Giolito, 1545,
Geneva 1960.
pp. 31-36, which seem to be the only surviving
Petrarchaconl'Espositionedi M. Giovanni traces of his literary activity apart from II
AndreaGesvaldo..., Venice: Gabriel Giolito, Petrarcha, yield no biographical information.
42 Il
1553, P- 552; Benedetto Croce, Poeti e scrittori
delpieno e del tardoRinascimento,ii, Bari 1945-52,
p. 93, cites the date from a biographical
notice which I have not seen. The eleven
sonnets published under Gesualdo's name in
43
1 quote here in full the passage of which
portions are paraphrased and translated in the
text: 'E gia questo era il mio lauoro, quando il
Minturno d'ingegno e di dottrina si pieno,
come le prose & i suoi uersi nell'antico e nel
JON A. QUITSLUND
272
soil was the town of Traetto, which now bears once more its ancient name of
Minturno;44 it lies not far north of Naples, near the coast. Gesualdo and Minturno
were not only from the same town, but related: Gesualdo gives 'certain blood ties
which bind me closely to him' as a reason for the interest which Minturno took in his
commentary. He not only thanks Minturno for his encouragement,but refersto him as
the inspiration for the commentary in its completed form, and the source of much of
the learning it contains.
After his return to Naples, probably in 1526, Minturno was an active participant in
the Academy which met at the house of Jacopo Sannazaro.45 In the activities of this
Academy, the oldest in Italy and in the first decades of the sixteenth century perhaps
the most important,46 we find the matrix in which Gesualdo'scommentary took shape.
moderno Idioma d'Italia ci dimostrano,
tornato di Thoscana e di Roma alla patria, &
indi giunto a Napoli poi, che di mia intentione
s'auuide per sua humanitate, e per quei
legami di sangue, che con lui mi stringono,
non solamente al uolonteroso mio corso
sproni m'aggiunse, ma sua merce, diro il
uero, ne mi pentiro darne laude a colui, che
per cui mi riconosco profitto, s'egli e profitto
alcuno hauer fatto, gran soccorso & a far
l'opra migliore, & a fornirla mi diede, Conciosia che a preghi d'alcuni gentili e ualorosi
spiriti, a iquali piace quell'ocio, oue la mente
non puo star ociosa, oltra quel, che de gli
antichi scrittori ne l'una e ne l'altra lingua
solea dimostrare, souente in laudare il Poe. &
in ragionare de leggiadri suoi detti ueniua:
iquali ragionamenti non che molti luoghi del
Poe. di celati & oscuri ci fecero chiari & aperti,
ma sospinsero lui stesso a scriuerne quel
Dialogo, che egli chiama Academia: nel quale
non pur commenda il parlar Thoscano, e
soura ogni cosa le rime del Poeta, ma dimostra
quanto e quale fosse lo'ngegno e l'arte di lui, e
di quanta dottrina in ogni scientia, e di quanti
ornamenti pieno il dire. Ma quando mi
credea hauer posto fine all'opra, ecco con
nuouo ordine nuoua spositione; che si come
mi rinouell6 la fatica, cosi, nol negher6, in
parte non m'6 stato disutile: percio che
trouandola spesse uolte da la mia differente,
tal hora conforme, perche 6 gran tempo, che
i ragionati fatti soura le cose del Poe. in piu
luoghi si sono per Italia e per Europa diffusi e
sparsi, Tal hora di si laudeuole intendimento,
ch'io affermo hauerne qualche cosa imparato,
stimai conuenirmisi per la commune utilitate.
Che s'astringer tutto cio ad alcuno parra
.*..
troppo lunga la spositione, rechisi, prego, a
mente prima che l'officio del buono spositore6
tale, massimamente in quella lingua, che ha
pochi scrittori, per non dir niuno: che benche
di Grammatica si sia scritto alcuna cosa, chi
u'ha insegnato anchora gli affetti che muoue,
e gli ornamenti che usa il Poeta e tanti e si
grandi sentimenti di Philosophia, che in lui si
stanno riposti? percio che l'Academia del
Minturno, che di tutti queste cose appieno
ragiona non e nelle uostre mani anchora
uenuta. E perche, sper6, ne uerra tosto, a lei
referendomene lieuemente le tocco' (II Petrarcha, sigs. *2v-*3r).
44 He was born there in 1502, according to
the generally accepted account: see Raffaele
Calderisi, AntonioSebastianoMinturno. . . vitae
opere,Aversa 1921, p. 7. A birthdate of
1502
is difficult to reconcile with his career as a
student and teacher in Pisa, beginning in
1519, and the position
of importance
he
enjoyed in Naples immediately upon his
return there.
45 Calderisi, Minturno, pp. 14-16.
During
the years of his absence from Naples,
Minturno had been active in academic circles
in Florence, Pisa, and Rome. The best
account of these years is Pier Giorgio Ricci,
'Antonio da Traetto, cio6 il Minturno',
Rinascimento(hereafter Rin.), vii, 1956, pp.
363-7. On his life and literary activities in
Naples, see Suzanne Therault, Un Cenacle
humanistede la Renaissanceautourde Vittoria
Colonnachdtelained'Ischia,Florence and Paris
1968, pp. 290-9.
Therault also provides a
detailed description of the ethos and dominant
personalities in Neapolitan court life during
the first half of the 16th century.
46 It was founded by Alfonso of Aragon in
1442, and met regularly under a succession of
leaders (Antonio Beccadelli called Panormita,
Giovanni Pontano, Pietro Summonte, Girolamo Carbone, Jacopo Sannazaro, and
Scipione Capece) until 1543, when Capece
was exiled for supporting the heretical views
of Bernardino Ochino. See Michele Maylender, Storia delle Accademied'Italia, iv, pp.
nel
327-37. Antonio Altamura's L'Umanesimo
mezzogiornod'Italia: storia, bibliografiee testi
inediti,Florence 1941, though it does not give
a connected account of the Academy, is full of
information on many of its members. Pierre
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
273
Both Gesualdo and Minturno are listed among its participants.47 With reference to
meetings of 'certain noble and worthy spirits' who sought edification in their hours of
leisure, Gesualdo tells us that his mentor, 'beyond the lectures it was his custom to give
on the ancient writings in Greek and Latin, often had occasion to praise Petrarch and
discuss the beauties in his works. These discourses not only made many hidden and
obscure places in the poet clear and open, but induced him to write that dialogue which
he calls Academia. In it he not only commends the Tuscan dialect, and above all
Petrarch's poetry, but shows how great were Petrarch's mind and art, and how full
were his writings of all kinds of learning, and many ornaments.'
It appears that Minturno's advice, and what he himself had to say about Petrarch,
induced Gesualdo to make his commentary more detailed than he had planned, taking
account of other commentators' opinions and giving more attention to the 'many and
great philosophical sentiments which have been hidden in Petrarch's works'. Gesualdo's
testimony of his debt receives corroboration in one of Minturno's letters. He refers to
the lectures on Petrarch which he gave to certain 'most noble spirits assembled, as it
were, in an Academy', and describes how these lectures were taken down by some of his
auditors, who afterwards moved Gesualdo to make a complete exposition of the
poems.48 Modesty probably prevented Minturno from giving an exact account of his
own involvement in Gesualdo's project, but his reference to transcripts shows what
materials Gesualdo probably had to work with, and how closely related the commentary is to Minturno's course of lectures. Justifying what might seem to be prolixity
in his exposition of Petrarch's 'many and grand philosophical sentiments', Gesualdo
notes that the subject has been neglected, and Minturno's Academia,'which fully treats
all these things', has not yet come into his patroness's hands. His many references to
the work seem designed both to borrow authority for what he wishes to say in passing,
and to stimulate a demand for the dialogue,49 but it seems never to have been
published.50
Gesualdo's Petrarch was first published in July of 1533.51 The extent of Minturno's
interest and involvement in the project can be judged from the letter which this edition
de Montera, L'humanistenapolitainGirolamo
Carboneet ses pode'sies
ine'dites,Naples 1935, pp.
lxviii-lxxxvii, provides some information on
the Academy in the years with which we are
concerned. On its history after the death of
Sannazaro, see Altamura, 'Per la biografia di
Scipione Capece', in Studi in onoredi Riccardo
Filangieri, ii, Naples 1959, PP. 299-315.
4 Maylender, Accademie
d'Italia, iv, p. 333.
48 'Onde uenni in Napoli, oue facendo
pruoua de le mie lunghe fatiche, e trouandoui
non pochi studiosi de la nuoua lingua, la
quale per tutta Italia celebrata 6 uenuta di
giorno in giorno si auanzando de gli ornamenti e de la dottrina che nulla o pocho homai
le bisogna alla somma de l'[e]loquentia.
Comminciai " ragionare con loro delle cose
del Petrarca: e non so come piacenda quei
ragionamenti, che tra gentilissimi spiriti
ragunati quasi in academia se ne faceano, fu
alcuno di si preste mano che in gran parte gli
not6 con la penna. Et i medesimi poi mossero
il mio Gesualdo di uirtute e d'ingegno ornato
a fare un'acconcia spositione, e tale: che
s'amore non me ne'engana (perche senza
dubbio l'amo assai) allegiara la faticha di
molti: che no[n] per le spositioni benche non
biasimeuoli de li altri anchora sene sono potuti
acquetare.' Letteredi MeserAntonioMinturno,
ed. Federico Pizzimenti, Venice: Girolamo
Scoto, 1549, fol. 16v.
49See II Petrarcha,pp. 119, I27, I28, 143,
145, 286, 532. Gesualdo also refers to
Minturno's Panegiricoin laude d'amore(published in Rimeet prose, 1559): see II Petrarcha,
pp. 51, 207, 283, 525.
50Calderisi refers to MS 'Ragionamenti
intorno al Petrarca, letti nell'Accademia in
casa del Sannazzaro', but gives no details
(Minturno,p. 41); he seems not to have seen
the manuscript. Minturno's De Poetais cast
in the form of discussions between members
of the Academy which met in Sannazaro's
house: see De Poeta... libri sex, Venice:
Francesco Rampazetto, 1559, pp. 6-7 et
passim.
51 The colophon is as follows:
'Stampato in
Vinegia per Giouann' Antonio di Nicolini &
fratelli da Sabbio, Nel anno di Nostro
Signore MDXXXIII del mese di Luglio.'
274
JON A. QUITSLUND
carries, addressed to Minturno by Giovambattista Bacchini da Modena, explaining
how it had been plagiarized by another commentator during the two years it was in a
printer'sshop awaiting publication.52 Also, it appearsfrom Minturno'scorrespondence
that he had recommendedGesualdoto the patronessesof his edition, Maria di Cardona,
Marchioness of Palude, and Susanna di Gonzaga, Countess of Colisano. They were
ladies whom Minturno knew well, with whom he felt free to promote his kinsman's
interests.53
Minturno's letters to the Marchioness of Palude (or Padula, as her domain is
generally styled in the Lettere) are full of the Petrarco-Platonic hyperbole which
Gesualdo treats so seriously in his commentary, and they allow us to glimpse how
elegantly intermingled were Petrarchan art, Platonic learning, and courtly life in
Renaissance Italy. These letters were esteemed even before publication as models in
their kind, a fact to which Federico Pizzimenti alludes in a very interestingintroduction
to them.54 He explains why they are so valuable: 'Since Minturno has undertakento
praise the supreme worth and singular beauty of this lady as the instrument and
means of raising the human mind to contemplation of the eternal beauty, that of God
himself, he has woven his letters so full of Platonic threads, that perhaps you will judge
his prose in no way inferiorto that poetry which Petrarchadorns with the same finery.'
He goes on to describe the benefits to be derived from a love 'not vulgar but rare, not
earthly but heavenly, not common to men and beasts but divine'. The conclusion of
Pizzimenti's sentence reveals a great deal about Gesualdo and the popularity of his
interpretation of Petrarch: 'How much profit and delight comes from such a love is,
I believe, so well known to anyone familiar, if not with what Plato wrote about it in
the Symposiumand the Phaedrus,then with what Petrarch sings in the "Three Sisters",
as Gesualdo expounds his meaning, that proof is unnecessary.'55 From these remarks
it appears that interest in Gesualdo's commentary was not confined to scholars in their
52
•l Petrarchacolla Spositionedi Misser Gio- erano quelle tenute da tutti coloro, che notitia
vanni Andrea Gesvaldo(1533), sig. a2V; cf. Mary n'haueano, e quanto desiderate da quelli, che
Fowler, Catalogue of the Petrarch Collection non l'haueano anchora lette m'auisai, ch'io
Bequeathedby Willard Fiske [to the Cornell farei cosa, laquale molto a grado esserui
University Library], London 1916, p. 95, and douesse, do u'io le ui dessi con l'altre a leggere'
Minturno's Lettere,fol. I6I V. The plagiarist (Lettere,fol. 125v)was Fausto da Longiano, whose edition was
55 'Conciosia ch'el Minturno hauendo preso
il sommo ualore, e la beltaisingulare
*a
lodare
Minturno's
in
Venice
in
published
I532.
letter also refers to another edition, Il Petrarca di quella Signora, come istromento e mezzo
. . ., da leuar la mente humana alla contemplacol Commentodi M. Sylvanoda Venaphro
Naples: Antonio Iouino & Matthio Canzer, tione de la sempiterna bellezza, ch'6 propria
1533, which took advantage of 'quelli scritti, d'Iddio, habbia le dette lettere di Platoniche
che sopra il Petrarca si scrissero, quando la fila si ben tessute, che per auentura queste
nostra Accademia fioriua in quella CittW'- prose niente cedere "aquelle rime, che de
an interesting testimony to the value attached medesimi fregi adornbil Petrarca,giudicarete.
Ma qual cosa e degna d'esser piu letta di
to Minturno's lectures.
53For his correspondence with them, most quella, che insieme e profitteuole, e diletta?
of it addressed to Maria di Cardona, see Quanto profitto, e diletto si p[r]enda de
Lettere, fols. 135r-85r. Gesualdo and his l'amor non uolgare, ma raro, non terreno,
edition of Petrarch form the subject of some ma celeste, non commune 'a huomini & alle
letters, fols. 16I v, I66v-9v; there are also bestie, ma diuino. .. Quanto profitto e
several to Gesualdo himself (fols. 69r-73v, diletto di questo Amor si prenda, 'achiunque e
o
I19v). See also fols. 31r-32r. Benedetto Croce noto non dir6 qual che Platone nel Simposio
discusses Minturno's Lettere, commenting in nel Phedro ne scrisse, ma cioche ne cant6 il
passing on his connexions with Gesualdo and Petrarca nelle tre sorelle, secondo ch'el
Maria di Cardona, in Poetie scrittoridelpienoe Gesualdo l'espone, credo sia si manifesto, che
non bisogna qui dimostrarlo' (Lettere,fols.
del tardoRinascimento,
ii, pp. 90-97.
54 'Percioche sapendo io di quanto pregio 125v-6r).
SPENSER AND COMMENTARIES ON PETRARCH
275
studies. Knowledge of Petrarch's poetry as he had interpreted it was applicable to life
in polite society.
Gesualdo, Minturno, and Pizzimenti provide documentation of an early stage in
the process by which the Platonic learning and ideals of the Florentine Platonists were
adapted to different circumstances and new uses. That process began in Florence:
interest in Petrarch's 'Platonic sentiments' was probably initiated and stimulated by
Cristoforo Landino, Ficino's close associate, who lectured on the Rime in the Florentine
Studio as early as 1467.56 During his long career (1458-97?) as Professor of Poetry and
Rhetoric in the Studio, Landino lectured on Petrarch and Dante as well as ancient
authors. As a teacher, and in his famous commentary on the Divine Comedy,he preceded Minturno in his application of humanistic standards and methods, and a
specifically Platonic bias, to the interpretation of the vernacular classics. In his
'Prolusione petrarchesca' Landino does not descend to discussion of specific 'sentenzie'
in Petrarch's poetry, but he does stress, following Cicero and citing Horace's Ars poetica
and Plato, that the poet should be learned in philosophy.57 Landino's influence was
probably very much alive in Tuscan academic circles when Minturno studied there;
that he had encouraged a Platonic approach to Petrarch is suggested by Giovambatista
da Castiglione's I Lvoghi difficilidel Petrarcha,a little book full of comments on Petrarch's
Platonic ideals.58
Minturno received his education in philosophy from Agostino Nifo (1470-1538),
with whom he studied, by his own account, for a period of eight years, first in Naples
and Sessa, then in Pisa, where Nifo held the chair of philosophy from 1519 to 1521.59
Nifo was educated in Padua, not Florence, and is best known as an interpreter of
Aristotle and Averroes, but he was a prominent figure in the courtly circles of Naples,
and at about the same time that Minturno and Gesualdo were involved in their study of
Petrarch, he composed a treatise Depulchroet de amore,in which the technicalities of philosophy are relieved, from time to time, by Petrarcho-Platonic compliments addressed to
Giovanna d'Aragona, the sister-in-law of Vittoria Colonna.60 For instance, the opening
chapters explore various sides of the question, whether beauty is to be found in rerum
natura; all doubts are resolved in chapter 5, 'Quod simpliciter pulchrum sit in rerum
natura, ex illustr. Ioannae pulchritudine hic probatur,' a long and charming blazon of
her beauties in soul and body (pp. 8-io).
The teaching and writings of Landino and Nifo exemplify a two-fold development
56 Roberto Cardini, 'Cristoforo Landino e
documentary evidence regarding Nifo's
l'umanesimo volgare', La Rassegnadellalettera- appointment. See also Edward P. Mahoney,
tura italiana (hereafter RLI), lxxii, 1968, pp. 'A Note on Agostino Nifo', Philological
267-96,
includes an annotated
text of the
'Prolusione' with which Landino began his
Quarterly,1, 1971, pp. I25-32.
60 1 have used Libri dvo, de pvlchro, primvs.
De amore,secvndvs,
Lyon: Godfrey & Marcellus
See also Cardini's 'La Critica del Landino Beringos, 1549; Nifo's conclusion, p. 277, is
dalla "Xandra" alle "Disputationes Camal- dated 3 November 1529. On this treatise, and
dulenses" ', Rin., Second Series, vii, 1967, Nifo's associations with noble women of
Naples, see Croce, Poetie scrittoridelpienoe del
pp. 177-234.tardo Rinascimento, iii, pp. ioi-io,
and
5 RLI, lxxii, pp. 294-95.-
course of lectures; for the date, see pp. 287-90o.
58 Castiglione
(or Chastiglione)
is termed
a 'gentil'huomo fiorentino' on the title page.
There may be some connexion between this
book and Gesualdo's Petrarcha: it was pub-
Therault, Un Cenacle humaniste, pp. 272-74,
309-12. A complete account of Nifo as a
courtier should include study of his treatise
De re avlica ad Phavsinamlibri dvo, Naples:
lished in Venice by G. A. di Nicolini e Joannes Antonius de Caneto Papiensis, 1534,
Fratelli da Sabbio in 1532, a year before the which is interesting as a philosopher's
contribution to the examination of court life,
same shop produced II Petrarcha.
59Ricci, Rin., vii, 1956, pp. 366-7, quotes the courtier, and the court lady.
one
of
Minturno's
letters
and
provides
JON A. QUITSLUND
which we see carried furtherin Minturno'sletters and literary criticism and Gesualdo's
Petrarcha.On the one hand, when Platonic ideals and humanistic methods were
applied to the poetry of Petrarch and other vernacular authors, that poetry came to
possess a great (not to say exaggerated) importance. Poetic statements were not only
explained by the ideas of philosophers,but used in turn in expositionsof philosophical
doctrines. On the other hand, when ideas which had been articulated with austere
precision within the Platonic Academy were applied to literature and the circumstances of courtly life, the weight and complexity of those ideas was inevitably reduced.
Still, these developments can be seen as adaptations of Platonic philosophy to the circumstancesof a world much larger than the court of Lorenzo, a world in the processot
change but anxious to maintain its hold on ideals of the past. From the point of view
of a literary historian, the positive contributions of Minturno and Gesualdo to the
serious study of Petrarch outweigh the simplifications and distortions which resulted
from their attempt to make Philosophy a handmaiden of Poetry.
276