Libreria Vecchia, 315, 651, 652, 679
Log-getta, 651
Madonna dell’ Orto, 669
Marcian Library, 387
Palace of the Doges (Palazzo Ducale), 293–294, 650, 651, 675–676, 679, 680, 682
Palazzo Foscari, 294
Piazza di San Marco, 40, 292–293, 651
Rialto, 282
San Giovanni e Paolo, 294, 295
San Sebastiano, 682
Scuola di San Marco, 669–670
Zecca, 651
Ventoux, Mt., 8
Verdelot, Philippe (d. before 1567), 603, 638
Vernias, Nicoletto (1480), 539
Verona, 15–16, 322–326
Palazzo del Consiglio, 322
Scaliger tombs, 322
Veronese (Paolo Caliari: 1528–88), 295, 324, 649, 650, 672, 678–683
Doges’ Palace frescoes, 682
Feast in the House of Levi, 681, 683
Family of Darius before Alexander, 681–682
frescoes in the Villa Barbaro, Macer, 679, 682
legends of the saints, 681
Marriage at Cana, 681
portraits, 679
Rape of Europa, 680
religious subjects, 680*
Triumph of Venice (Doges’ Palace), 682
Veronese, Carlo, see Caliari, Carlo
Veronese, Gabriele, see Caliari, Gabriele
Verrocchio (Andrea de’ Cioni: 1432–88), 131–133, 165, 197, 199–200, 204, 245
Colleoni, 132–133, 206
Vesalius, Andreas (1514–64), 529, 693
Vespasiano da Bisticci (c. 1421–98), 77, 83, 343, 377, 378
Vespucci, Amerigo (1451–1512), 135, 530
Vespucci, Simonetta (d. 1476), 124, 137
Vettori, Francesco (1513), 550, 568
Vicenza, 321–322, 652
Basilica Palladiana, 652
Victoria, Tomas Luis de (1540?-1611), 601
Vida, Marco Girolamo (1490–1566), 494
Vienne, Council of, 50, 55
Vigevano, 185–186
Vignola (Giacomo Barozzi: 1507–73), 713, 714, 719
Villani, Giovanni (1275–1348), 28–29
Villani, Matteo (d. c. 1363), 29, 30
Villiers de la Groslaye, Jean (1430–99), 466
Vincent Ferrer, St. (1350–1419), 362
violin, 604
viols, 604
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro: 70–19 B.C.), 5, 8, 9, 354, 355, 494–495, 696
virtù, 556, 559
Visconti, Bernabò lord of Milan (1355–85), 38, 57, 58, 61, 180
Visconti, Bianca Maria, Duchess of Milan (1423–68), 182, 183, 184, 185, 584, 610
Visconti, Filippo Maria, Duke of Milan (1412–47), 181–182, 183, 283, 349–350, 610
Visconti, Galeazzo II, lord of Milan (1355–78), 38, 42, 178, 179
Visconti, Gasparo (1461–99), 192
Visconti, Giangaleazzo, lord of Milan (1378–95) and Duke of Milan (1395–1402), 81, 178, 179–181, 186, 194–195, 280, 610
Visconti, Gianmaria, Duke of Milan (1402–12), 181
Visconti, Giovanni, lord of Milan (1349–54), 38, 39
Visconti, Matteo I, lord of Milan (1311–22), 37
Visconti, Matteo II, lord of Milan (1354–55), 38
Visconti, Valentina, Duchess of Orléans (1370–1409), 610, 614
Visconti, Violante, Duchess of Clarence (d. 1382), 38
Vite (Vasari), 67*, 704–705
Vitelleschi, Giovanni (d. 1440), 371
Vitelli, Vitellozzo (d. 1502), 421, 422, 423, 424, 569
Viti, Timoteo (1467–1523), 336, 452
Vitruvius Pollio (c. 25 B.C.), 129, 507
Vittoria, Alessandro (1525–1608), 650, 656, 679
Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446), 84, 249–251, 262, 269, 341, 571, 581, 600
Vivarini, Alvise (c. 1447-c. 1504), 302
Vivarini, Antonio (1415–70), 297
Vivarini, Bartolommeo (c. 1432-c. 1500), 301–302
Voltaire (François Marie Arouet: 1694–1778), 33, 558, 657
Volterra, 112
Volterra, Cardinal of, see Soderini, Francesco
voyages of discovery, 686, 688
Vulgate, 351
W
Wagner, Richard (1813–83), 295
Waldensians, 147
Waldseemiiller, Martin (c. 1470–1518), 530
war, 559, 562, 591
Watteau, Antoine (1684–1721), 683
wealth, 568
Webster, John (c. 1580-c. 1625), 698
wedding ceremonies, 579
Wenceslaus, Holy Roman Emperor (1378–1400), 181
Weyden, Rogier van der (1399?-1464), 134, 231, 241, 266
Whites, see bianchi
wife-beating, 582
Willaert, Adrian (1480–1562), 290, 601, 603
William III, King of England (1688–1702), 564
William of Occam (c. 1300–49), 363
Windsor, Treaty of, 624
witchcraft and witches, 526–527
Wittenberg, 688
Wolsey, Thomas (c. 1475–1530), 634
women, 568, 581–586
woodcarving, 314, 322
Wordsworth, William (1770–1850), 456
X
Xenophon (c. 435-c. 355 B.C.), 587
Ximenes (Francesco Jiménez de Cisneros: 1437–1517), 621
Y
Ysaac, Heinrich (c. 1450–1517), 602
Z
Zacearía, Antonio Maria, St. (1502–39), 574
Zenale, Bernardino (1436–1526), 205
Zeno, Battista (d. 1501), 429
Zuccaro, Taddeo (1529–66), 714
Zuccaro, Teberigo (1543–1609), 714
Zuccato, Sebastiano (15th cent.), 306
Zurbarán, Francisco de (1598–1664), 727
About the Authors
WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peter’s (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University. New York. For a summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament;, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry (1907–11). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (1911–13) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders.
Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupils—who had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898—resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Wood-bridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works.
The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume 2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq,
Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).
Mrs. Durant’s share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).
The publication of Volume 11, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at the age of 83 Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96. Their last published work was A Dual Autobiography (1977).
*An excellent translation by Joseph Auslander:
In what bright realm, what sphere of radiant thought
Did Nature find the model whence she drew
That delicate dazzling image where we view
Here on this earth what she in heaven wrought?
What fountain-haunting nymph, what dryad sought
In groves, such golden tresses ever threw
Upon the gust? What heart such virtues knew? —
Though her chief virtue with my death is fraught.
He looks in vain for heavenly beauty, he
Who never looked upon her perfect eyes,
The vivid blue orbs burning brilliantly—
He does not know how Love yields and denies;
He only knows who knows how sweetly she
Can talk and laugh, the sweetness of her sighs.5
*“A young woman is flighty, eager for many lovers; she rates her beauty beyond what the mirror shows; and is proud…. She knows neither virtue nor intelligence, always giddy like a leaf in the wind.”
*The term medieval is used in these volumes as denoting European history and civilization between A.D. 325 and 1492—between Constantine and Columbus.
*The Italians call the fourteenth century trecento, three hundred; the fifteenth century quattrocento, four hundred; the sixteenth century cinquecento, etc.
*The revolt of the Sienese workers in 1371, the Ciompi revolt in Florence in 1378, the almost simultaneous rebellion of Wat Tyler in England, and the uprisings in France about 1380 suggest a Continental wave of revolution, and a greater measure of intercommunication and mutual influence, among the working classes in Western Europe, than has generally been supposed.
*All three of these coins, prior to 1490, will be loosely reckoned in this volume as having the purchasing power of $25 in the currency of the United States of America in 1952; after 1490 at $12.50. A slow inflation cut the value of Italian currencies by approximately fifty per cent between 1400 and 1580.54a
* The Papal States may be listed under four provinces:
I. LATIUM, containing the cities of Tivoli, Civita Castellana, Subiaco, Viterbo, Anagni, Ostia, and Rome;
II. UMBRIA, with Narni, Spoleto, Foligno, Assisi, Perugia, and Gubbio;
III. THE MARCHES, with Ascoli, Loreto, Ancona, Senigallia, Urbino, Camerino, Fabriano, and Pesaro; and
IV. THE ROMAGNA, with Rimini, Cesena, Forlì, Faenza, Ravenna, Imola, Bologna, and Ferrara.
* Since 1274 it had been the custom to lock up the cardinals when they met in conclave (con clave, with a key) to choose a pope.
* Vasari, in his Vite de’ più eccelenti architetti, pittori, e scultori Italiam (1550), established the term Rinascita, and the French Encyclopédie of 1751–72 first definitely used the word Renaissance, to denote the flowering of letters and arts in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
* The origin of their name is a mystery. There is no evidence that they were physicians, though they may at one time have joined a medical guild in the loose way of Florentine guild demarcations. Nor do we know the meaning of their famous emblem, the six red balls (palle) on a field of gold. These balls, reduced to three, became the insignia of pawnbrokers in later times.
* Or San Michele, erected by Francesco and Simone Talenti and Benci di Cione (1337–1404), was the religious shrine of the Greater Guilds. Each guild was represented by a statue placed in a niche on the outer walls. Figures were contributed to this series by Ghiberti, Verrocchio, Nanni di Banco, and Gian Bologna.
* Cf. his busts of Marietta Strozzi in the Morgan Library, New York, and in the National Gallery at Washington.
* E.g., the Annunciation in San Lorenzo at Florence—a peasant girl in modest deprecation; the Virgin Adoring the Child (Berlin), rich in the blue of the Virgin’s gown and the green bed of flowers beneath the Child; a Madonna in the Uffizi, with grave blonde face, flowing veil, and beautifully drawn robe; the Madonna of the Pitti Gallery; the Madonna and Child of the Medici Palace; the Virgin and Child Between Saints Frediano and Augustine, in the Louvre; the Coronation of the Virgin, in the Vatican Pinacoteca; and the Coronation in the Uffizi, with its graceful auxiliary figures, and Filippo himself, kneeling in prayer, penitent at last.
* Pulci published first the cantos referring to Morgante; the completed poem was called Morgante maggiore—The Greater Morgante.
* Called II Cronaca from the lively record he wrote of his travels and studies.
* Crowe and Cavalcaselle have labored to restore Filippino’s legitimacy, but their argument reduces itself to a gallant wish.33
* The Church, to check false prophets, had pronounced such claims to be heretical.
* Such bonfires of vanities were an old custom with mission friars,
† A reference to Alexander VI’s candor about his children.
* So named from the avenging fates represented on the pedestal.
* Giangaleazzo, who had prayed to the Virgin for a son, was so grateful for his success in begetting one that he vowed that all his progeny should bear her name.
* A precious but untranslatable sample by Poggio about Filelfo: Itaque Chrysoloras, moerore corrfectus, compulsus precibus, malo coactus, filiam tibi nuptui dedit a te corruptam, quae si extitisset integra, ne pilum quidem tibi abrasum ab illius natibus ostendisset.23
* This portrait is by some students ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci, and may represent Franchino Gaffuri, a musician at Lodovico’s court.
* “And they will go wild for the things that are most beautiful to seek after, to possess and make use of their vilest parts….3 The act of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive that if it were not for the beauty of the faces, and the adornment of the actors, and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.”4
* The story may be a legend; we have only Vasari’s evidence for it. There is no evidence I against it except a tradition which reports that The Last Supper contained no likenesses of I living men.7
* In 1797 the lower panels were appropriated by French conquerors; the Garden of Olives and the Resurrection are in Tours, the Crucifixion is in the Louvre; good copies have replaced these originals in the Verona polyptych.
* The derivation and significance of this word are uncertain.
* Would that my fire might warm this frigid ice,
And turn, with tears, this dust to living flesh,
And give to thee anew the joy of life!
Then would I boldly, ardently, confront
The man who snapped our dearest bond, and cry,
“O cruel monster! See what love can do!”
* O God Redeemer! even while I sing
I see all Italy in flame and fire,
Brough by these Gauls who, spurred with courage high,
Advance to make a desert everywhere.
* Called “Door of the Paper” because on a bulletin board near it the Signory posted its decrees.
* Cf. the seed-sower on the title page of this volume.
* Cf. the honest portrait of Leonello d’Este (Bergamo);
the pensive Princess of the House of Este (Louvre), in a pretty entourage of flowers and shells; the Profile of a Lady (Washington); an impressive fresco, St. George, in St. Anastasia, Verona; and a striking study in light and shade, St. Eustachius (London).
* All these, with Ferrara and Ravenna, constitute the modern compartimento of Emilia. Southeast of Rimini are the Marches, or frontier provinces, of Pesaro and Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Ascoli Piceno.
* Says the judicious Roscoe: “His attachment to Vanozza appears to have been sincere and uniform; and although his connexion was necessarily disavowed, he regarded her as a legitimate wife.”6
* Cf. the admirable Creighton: “In the precarious condition of Italian politics allies were not to be trusted unless their fidelity was secured by interested motives; so Alexander VI used the marriage connections of his family as a means to secure for himself a strong political party. He had no one whom he could trust save his own children, whom he regarded as instruments for his own plans.”—M. Creighton, History of the Papacy During the Period of the Reformation, III, 263. The impartiality and learning of the Anglican bishop is matched in this field only by the scholarship and honesty of the Catholic Ludwig von Pastor’s History of the Popes. The existence of these two remarkable histories should long since have dissipated the mist of legend cast by partisan pamphleteering around the Renaissance popes.
* Pastor (V, 417n) accepts the evidence as conclusive of Alexander’s guilt; but the Pope’s character was so blackened by hostile gossip that charity may still suspend judgment.
* “The general tendency of investigation, while utterly shattering all idle attempts to represent Alexander as a model pope, has been to relieve him of the most odious imputations against his character. There remains the charge of secret poisoning from motives of cupidity, which indeed appears established, or nearly so, only in a single instance; but this may imply others.”—Richard Garnett in The Cambridge Modern History, I, 242.
* Cf. Cambridge Modern History, I, 239: “Nothing could be less like the real Lucrezia than the Lucrezia of the dramatists and romancers.”