It is curious,
for instance, to notice how far Gioviano Pontano carried this
confusion. He speaks of a saint not only as 'divus,' but as 'deus'; the
angels he holds to be identical with the genii of antiquity; and his
notion of immortality reminds us of the old kingdom of the shades. This
spirit occasionally appears in the most extravagant shapes. In 1526,
when Siena was attacked by the exiled party, the worthy Canon Tizio,
who tells us the story himself, rose from his bed on the 22nd of July,
called to mind what is written in the third book of Macrobius,
celebrated Mass, and then pronounced against the enemy the curse with
which his author had supplied him, only altering 'Tellus mater teque
Jupiter obtestor' into 'Tellus teque Christe Deus obtestor.' After he
had done this for three days, the enemy retreated. On the one side,
these things strike us as an affair of mere style and fashion j on the
other, as a symptom of religious decadence.
Influence of Ancient Superstition
But in another way, and that dogmatically, antiquity exercised perilous
influence. It imparted to the Renaissance its own forms of
superstition. Some fragments of this had survived in Italy all through
the Middle Ages, and the resuscitation of the whole was thereby made so
much the more easy. The part played by the imagination in the process
need not be dwelt upon.
Pages:
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578