Part
Two: The Afterlives of Mantuan
A
Carmelite Conversation conducted by Philip Harvey on Zoom on Wednesday the 1st
of March 2023
Mantuan
dies in Mantua on the 22nd of March, 1516, the year before the
outbreak of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. He himself represents the
reforming spirit within the church itself. His life is an example of reform coming
from within the institution, both the church and the Carmelite Order. He was not,
however, a quiet administrator, as is evidenced by the social criticism evident
in Eclogue IX:
Hoc
est Roma viris avibus quod noctua…
Rome
is among men what the owl is among birds. She sits on a tree trunk and, as if
she were the queen of birds, summons the multitude from afar with her haughty
commands. Ignorant of her deception, the crowd assembles. They wonder at her
large eyes and ears, foul head, and the hooked point of her menacing beak. And
while their nimble lightness bears them here and there on the trees’ twig
growth, a string ensnares the feet of some, twigs smeared with birdlime hold
fast others, and all become spoils to be roasted on willow spits.(Piepho1
85)
This
poem could easily have been penned by a radical Protestant and in fact Eclogue IX
was quoted by them in argument, Mantuan being adopted posthumously as one of
theirs, as a critic of church corruption. A picture is created in pastoral manner
of Rome being the cause of famine and drought, a desperate situation both
political and spiritual brought about by Rome’s insatiable centralisation of
power. The dialogue is contrived by a poet who knows well from experience the
state divisions of Italy and their continual conflicted relationship with the
Papacy. Magnify these perceptions to a European scale and we can see how the same
arguments applied for reformers of whatever stripe outside of Italy, as well.
Mantuan, meanwhile, appeals to the local for spiritual meaning and belonging.
Heu
pecus infelix, o laevo sidere pastor huc avecte…
Alas,
unfortunate flock! Oh, shepherd borne hither by an unlucky star! More excellent
far were it not to have known of this land, better to have passed my days
securely in my father’s house. Better to have grown old within the cool caves;
and on the banks of the Po or in Adige’s fields or where the Adda floats along
in its glassy course, better far to have settled down and pastured my flocks on
wholesome grass.(Piepho1
87)
Mantuan
seems to be speaking from experience. He, and some of his friends, have been
burnt by their encounters with Rome; he finds his meaning at home in the north
of Italy, an experience recorded all too frequently by Italians through time.
Faustulus responds to Candidus thus:
Te
tua credulitas, et me mea fallit in horae…
Your
credulity deceives you and mine deceives me from hour to hour. I myself have
seen men who used to dwell on fortune’s peak fall when they sought things of
praise and never rise from their troubles. Experience makes these men cautious.
They explore matters beforehand and follow everything that men don’t extol: for
those things that are better are wanting in praise.(Piepho1
87)
Another
reason to understand why Eclogue IX became a centrepiece of Protestant polemic
is found in its conclusion. After criticising various bad shepherds on grounds
of neglect, poisoning, and corruption, the poet presents the reader with “a
shepherd to help us” (“pastor adest quadam ducens”), a man who “exceeds other
Latians in every virtue as much as the Po exceeds the Tiber.” Very clearly
drawing on his predecessor and inspiration Virgil, Mantuan champions a figure
called Falco.
Hic
ovium custos ipse vigilantior …
This
guardian of the flock is more vigilant than Argus himself, more skilled not
only than Daphnis but him who is said once to have pastured Admetus’ flock in
the fields of Thessaly; worthy to watch over the whole flock of that master
from Jerusalem and to succeed that father of old who, forsaking his nets, was shepherd
of the Assyrian flock. This man has the power to protect the flock, dispel
sickness, moisten the ground, bestow pasturelands, release springs, appease
Jupiter, and keep away thieves and wolves. If he smiles with favour, stay. But
if he denies his favour, drive forth your flock, Candidus, and seek greener
pastures.(Piepho1
89)
Mantuan
draws strongly on the tone of Virgil, appealing to both Classical authority,
Argus, Daphnis and Apollo, and biblical authority, “the master of Jerusalem” (Solymi
magistri) being Christ and “the shepherd of the Assyrian flock”, the apostle
Peter, over the ways of the Curia at Rome.
We
cannot know which way Mantuan may have gone when the Reformation hit Europe,
but we can be sure he would have been deeply antipathetic to attacks on religious
life within the Orders. The Dissolution of the English monasteries in 1536, 20
years after his death, would have been for Mantuan an incomprehensible
travesty. Yet in 1541 we find the first evidence of the Archbishop of
Canterbury Thomas Cranmer’s introduction of Mantuan’s Eclogues into the
curriculum of the newly reinstituted cathedral schools of England, after the
Dissolution. In other words, Mantuan’s Latin poems came to be read for their
excellence, example, and clarity by everyone in schools across England right
through the 16th century, just as they were read in Europe across
the Protestant/Roman divide. This was the logical outcome of the classical
Humanist project that had made possible something like Mantuan’s Eclogues in
the first place. It’s why subsequent generations of English poets imitated him
both in English and Latin, his influence borne of instant familiarity.
Not
that everyone was thrilled with the fashion for just anyone copying Virgil. The
Venetian wit Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), in a celebrated letter to Lodovico
Dolce written in June 1537 describes the literary revolution that Mantuan
helped start, but then couldn’t stop:
“I
tell you plainly that Petrarch and Boccaccio are properly imitated by the
writer who expresses his ideas with the beauty and skill which they used to employ
when they so beautifully and skilfully expressed their own ideas, and not by
someone who plunders them not only for ‘hence’s’ and ‘thence’s’ and ‘ofttime’s’
and ’graciles’ but for whole verses.
“And
if it should happen that the devil tricks us into filching from someone else,
let’s make sure we behave like Virgil who looted Homer, and Sannazaro who
purloined from Virgil, who both paid their debt with interest; and then we’ll
be forgiven.
“But
our pedantic poetasters turn imitation into bombast, and when they screech about
what they’ve written in their notebooks, they change it into gobbledegook, as
they tart it up with their sickly platitudes. O you blind fools, I tell you
again and again that poetry is one of Nature’s joyful flights of fancy, and if
the vital poetic fury is lacking the poet’s song becomes a broken tambourine,
or a tower that’s lost its bell.
“It’s
for that reason that anyone not gifted with poetic talent when still in his
swaddling-clothes who yet wants to write verse is a complete numbskull. If you
won’t accept that, let the following convince you. The alchemists, using all
possible skill and effort to gratify their patient avarice, never made gold but
only what looked like gold. But Nature, without the least effort, brings forth
pure and beautiful gold.”(Aretino
102)
Pietro
Aretino is not attacking Mantuan, quite the opposite. The implications here are
that a poet like Mantuan often comes close to the Virgilian ideal, free of any bombast,
overblown language, or clichés. Mantuan spins something golden from his
materials But neither is Aretino as adulatory (we imagine) as the great Erasmus
of Rotterdam, who went so far as to dub Mantuan “Christianus Maro”, i.e. “the
Christian Virgil”. This is a title almost impossible to claim for anyone, and
some scholars conclude Erasmus is thinking of Mantuan’s that would be
impossible for almost anyone to claim.
Despite criticisms of his poetry, notably Scaliger’s
attack of 1561, Mantuan’s star continued to rise through the 16th
century. In 1567 the Eclogues were translated in full into English by George
Turberville and in 1579 ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’ was published by Edmund
Spenser, a series of pastorals in some ways a tribute to Mantuan and strongly
inspired by him.
Here
is Edmund Spenser writing, not of Roman clergy like Mantuan, but English
Protestant clergy in Elizabeth’s time. Spenser did not invent this kind of invective;
it is in fact taken directly from Mantuan’s example:
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I thought the soyle would have
made me rich;
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But nowe I
wote it is nothing sich.
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For eyther
the shepeheards bene ydle and still,
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And ledde
of theyr sheepe what way they wyll,
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Or they
bene false, and full of covetise,
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And casten
to compasse many wrong Emprise.
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But the
more bene fraight with fraud and spight,
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Ne in good
nor goodnes taken delight,
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But kindle
coales of conteck and yre,
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Wherewith
they set all the world on fire:
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Which when
they thinken agayne to quench,
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With holy
water they doen hem all drench.
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They saye
they con to heaven the high-way,
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But, by my
soule, I dare undersaye
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They never
sette foote in that same troade,
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But balk
the right way and strayen abroad.
(Spenser
282)
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Sometime
in 1594-95 William Shakespeare composes ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’. It is certain
that Shakespeare read Mantuan from an early age in the original at King Edward
VI School in Stratford, as part of the standard humanist coursework of his
time. It is this complete familiarity with the Italian poet that explains the cosy
reference to him in the play by Holofernes, a schoolteacher.
HOLOFERNES (to himself) ‘Facile precor gelida quando
pecas omnia sub umbra ruminat’, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak
of thee as the traveller doth of Venice:
Venezia, Venezia,
Chi non ti vede, chi non ti prezia.
Old Mantuan, old Mantuan –
who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. (He sings) Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa.
(To Nathaniel) Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? Or rather, as Horace
says in his – what, my soul – verses.
Holofernes
is daydreaming while Nathaniel prepares to read a love poem in a letter that
has fallen accidentally into the wrong hands. Of which more anon, but first let’s
look at this daydream. He quotes Latin, or rather misquotes the Latin, which
happens to be the very opening line of Mantuan’s Eclogues. All of the educated
members of the audience would have laughed at this misquote, because they all
knew the line, a line that took them back to their schooldays, a time of first
love, mad love, and conflicting feelings of the kind they first experienced at
school while reading about them in Mantuan’s poetry. That Holofernes misquotes
the line only shows up his pedantry and loose memory, a further cause for
hilarity.
Speaking
with fondness, he then paraphrases an Italian saying about Venice which in effect
means you cannot value Venice if you have not seen Venice, which he turns into
seeming praise of Mantuan, you cannot love him if you cannot understand him, a feeling
common to secondary school students of any time period or year level trying to
translate a difficult poem. It is not too far-fetched to imagine Shakespeare himself
recalling this humorous view of Latin class from his own schooldays. That he
puts the saying into the mouth of a Latin teacher this further compounds the
absurdity. Holofernes then sings the Solfège scale, a reminder of elementary
music training in such a school. All of Holofernes’ conversation is an over-the-top
satire of grammar school teaching in Elizabethan England, played to an audience
whose memories of those days are being prompted by the playwright. Holofernes
is, indeed, an archetype of the pedantic, otherworldly academic or schoolmaster,
lost in a maze of declensions and conjugations, mansplaining things in elevated
language that could be said much more simply, an accepted eccentric on the landscape
rather than in the Italian mode, a pitiable dottore or mere figure of
fun. This is because he represents the big world outside school for his
students.
Language
and how we use words is, in fact, a central preoccupation of ‘Love’s Labour’s
Lost’. Honorificabilitudinitatibus, the longest word in Shakespeare, appears in
this play, the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of the Elizabethan stage. The
play also has the longest speech and the longest scene (915 lines in the Clarendon
edition of 1986) in Shakespeare.
The
earliest known performance of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ is at Christmas in 1597,
at the Court before Queen Elizabeth. It was very much an entertainment to the
London elite, most all of whom would have recognised lines of Mantuan, direct
and indirect, so Shakespeare is also flattering their sense of being
well-educated.
At
that time (circa 1600) more than 600 editions of Mantuan’s works had been
published. He was a bestseller, and yet it is in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ that we
also identify the beginnings of his changes of fortune. First and foremost is
the gradually diminishing use of Latin in everyday life. Unlike in parts of continental
Catholic Europe, the liturgy of the church had changed from Latin to the vernacular,
with Thomas Cranmer instrumental in making English the language of the church. Although
Latin held sway as a language of the royal courts, it was increasingly the
language of gentlemen and diplomats. Writing poetry in Latin continued for centuries
as a feather in the cap of a practising poet, but it was not going to be his or
her first language. The poems written by the young lovers in the play are in an
elevated English. The way they speak the rest of the time, no such matter.
Then
there is the gradual transformation of pastoral poetry, right up into the 20th
century, that made redundant the mode of rustic shepherds discussing
philosophical truths in an orderly fashion. But that Shakespeare knew a little
Latin is seen and heard in the closing Winter song of the play, regarded as a
take from the opening of Mantuan’s Eclogue VI:
Ninget
hiems, mugit Boreas …
Winter’s
snows have come, the north wind is bellowing, and icicles hang from the roof.
Having bedded his oxen the plowman is resting, and the ground lies asleep. His
sheepfold shut up, the shepherd, snug in his cloak, idly beguiles the time, and
seated before the hearth, sooty Neaera is cooking polenta. Now we commend the
summer season, intolerable to us before; and wintertime, commended once in
summertime’s irksome heat, we now find displeasing.(Piepho1
49)
Which
Shakespeare, following Mantuan’s lead that “every season has its own delights
and joys” transforms into something new and very English, at the close of Love’s
Labour’s Lost:
When
icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And
Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When
blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then
nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-whit,
tu-whoo! – a merry note,
While
greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When
all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And
birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When
roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then
nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-whit,
tu-whoo! – a merry note,
While
greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(Shakespeare
346)
Shakespeare
dies exactly a century after Mantuan, in 1616, but it is John Milton, a Puritan
polemicist who wanted to latinize English, who is the last major influence we
hear today. Mantuan’s Latin verse and ideas are identifiably present throughout
Milton’s poetry, including ‘Paradise Lost’. The most overt example was written
in 1637, an eclogue soliloquy called ‘Lycidas’. The poem employs the requisite Virgilian
practice of shepherds sharing thoughts. Sometimes the levels of reference
become so elevated we need a handbook to decode them all and it must be
admitted that ‘Lycidas’ is a mysterious hybrid. A large part of the poem
describes a shipwreck in the Irish Sea, making it an English precedent for ‘The
Wreck of the Deutschland’. However Milton is not lamenting the loss of a group
of nuns, but his close friend the Reverend Edward King, an evangelical pastor.
While grief is a prevailing emotion of the poem, it turns at certain moments
into a polemical attack on church corruption. The irony of this attack is not
lost on historians, because while Mantuan’s Eclogue IX is written by a Carmelite
criticising Roman clergy, and Spenser’s ‘September’ is written by an Anglican
criticising other Anglicans, Milton’s eclogue ‘Lycidas’ is written by a Puritan
criticising Anglican clergy.
With
indignant fervour, Milton heightens his sense of personal loss by casting
stones at what he sees as the general corruption of the English clergy. Even St
Peter himself is enlisted to damn the Anglicans for some time to come. He is described
here not as the “shepherd of the Assyrian flock” but as the mitred “pilot of
the Galilean lake”. The poem recalls the Cambridge of his youth, that hotbed of
English religious difference before the Civil War:
Next
Camus, reverend sire, went footling slow.
His
mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought
with figures dim, and on the edge
Like
to that sanguine flower, inscribed with woe.
Ah!
who hath reft, quoth he, my dearest pledge?
Last
came, and last did go,
The
pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two
massy keys he bore of metals twain;
The
golden opes, the iron shuts amain:
He
shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:-
How
well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow
of such, as for their bellies’ sake
Creep,
and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of
other care they little reckoning make,
Than
how to scramble at the shearers’ feast,
And
shove away the worthy bidden guest!
Blind
mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A
sheephook, or have learn’d aught else the least
That
to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What
reeks it then? What need they? They are sped;
And,
when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate
on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw:
The
hungry sheep look up and are not fed;
But
swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot
inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides
what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily
devours apace and nothing sed:
But
that two-handed engine at the door
Stands
ready to smite once, and smite no more.
(Milton
612-614)
In
1656, Mantuan’s Eclogues were translated into English by Thomas Harvey. Although
this major pastoral form continues to be imitated, revived and revised, and
tested right up to this day in styles that include the anti-pastoral, Harvey’s
translation is the last flourish of the strict Mantuan method. Pastoral is famously
a form in 18th century Augustan verse, however the devoted copying
of the shepherd idyll as popularised by Virgil and then at the Renaissance by
Mantuan, goes out of fashion. The changes are rung by no less a figure than
Samuel Johnson, who is openly hostile to this outmoded manner of speech. He complains
that rustics do not discuss higher church politics and that this kind of verse
is unreal, a case of shepherds talking like priests. Johnson’s opinions reveal
how distant the Catholic Church had become from English life, but that he says
this at all indicates that Mantuan was
still being read in Latin classes well into the 18th century.
I
wish to conclude by identifying at least two other afterlives of the Carmelite
poet. The first is the actual legacy of spiritual writing, as distinct from
eclogues, that Mantuan left to the Order. Scholars are in agreement that it is
his religious verse, sermons, and discourses that prompted Erasmus to call him
the ‘Christian Virgil’, not simply the achievement of his Virgil-like poetry.
It is a corrective to everything said up to this point, for example, to listen
to Mantuan himself in De patientia speak of the Bible:
“You
will find that the reading of sacred scripture is a great and powerful remedy
against bodily suffering and depression of mind. In my opinion, thee is no
other writing, no matter how eloquent and stylish it may be, that can bring
such peace to our minds and so thoroughly dissolve our cares as sacred scripture
can.
“I
speak from personal experience: for there have been times when I was beset with
anxieties, the worst of which came from the experience of my own weakness, and
if on such occasions I sought relief in the scriptures, the hopes and desires
that led me there were never disappointed. The word scripture proved to be a
solid bulwark against my anxieties and a relief to my troubled spirit.”(Carmelite
quotes website)
Mantuan’s
Latin prose writings would have remained a regular source of inspirational
reading within the Order itself, whatever the fortunes of his poetry. We can
conclude that his writing continued to be read by Carmelites and non-Carmelites
even into the 20th century, anyone that is who had a good grasp of
Latin.
The
second afterlife is the enduring legend of Mantuan, especially in Italy and
within the Order, leading in 1890 to his beatification by the Church. There is
not opportunity to look at this in detail here, one reason being the great
store of information about his legend written in languages other than English.
Mantuan’s feast day was declared the 23rd of March. His remains are
held at St Peter’s Cathedral in Mantua, the town of his birth, life, and death.
