In the fifteenth century,
Politian and Ermolao Barbaro made a conscious and deliberate effort to
form a style of their own, naturally on the basis of their
'overflowing' learning, and our informant of this fact, Paolo Giovio,
pursued the same end. He first attempted, not always successfully, but
often with remarkable power and elegance, and at no small cost of
effort, to reproduce in Latin a number of modern, particularly of
aesthetic, ideas. His Latin characteristics of the great painters and
sculptors of his time contain a mixture of the most intelligent and of
the most blundering interpretation. Even Leo X, who placed his glory in
the fact, 'ut lingua latina nostro pontificatu dicatur facta auctior,'
was inclined to a liberal and not too exclusive Latinity, which,
indeed, was in harmony with his pleasure-loving nature. He was
satisfied if the Latin which he had to read and to hear was lively,
elegant, and idiomatic. Then, too, Cicero offered no model for Latin
conversation, so that here other gods had to be worshipped beside him.
The want was supplied by representations of the comedies of Plautus and
Terence, frequent both in and out of Rome, which for the actors were an
incomparable exercise in Latin as the language of daily life. A few
years later, in the pontificate of Paul II, the learned Cardinal of
Teano (probably Niccolo Forteguerra of Pistoia) became famous for his
critical labors in this branch of scholarship.
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