ous prose composition. In that language the emperor wrote a treatise on falconry, and Michael Scott, at his command, an elaborate work on astrology. The earliest prose writings in the Italian language, such as the "Cento Novelle," the "Composizione del Mondo," the letters of Guittone d'Arezzo, and the translation of Brunetto Latini's " Tesoro (written in French), belong to the second half of the century. We propose to con. cern ourselves solely with the poets. It must further be observed that the poetry of the time is almost exclusively amorous.* That the Sicilian poets should have lim of the most friendly character on both | was exclusively employed by the learned sides. They discussed in Arabic, which men of Frederick's court, as generally Frederick spoke with ease, the mystical throughout Italy, for all purposes of seriphilosophy of the East. Frederick adopted the Saracen costume, and was charmed with a troupe of dancing-girls which the sultan sent him. At length a treaty was concluded by which, in consideration of the surrender of the whole of Jerusalem, except the actual precincts of the Mosque of Omar, which occupied the site of the Temple, Frederick agreed to withdraw his forces, and henceforth to respect and maintain the integrity of the Moslem do minions. The treaty was executed in February, 1229; a month later Frederick crowned himself (no priest venturing to perform the ceremony for him) King of Jerusalem. His return to Italy was has-ited themselves in this way is the more tened by the news that the pope had remarkable from the fact that the Proveninvaded Apulia. A few months of Fred- çal Troubadours, whom they largely imierick's presence, however, sufficed to force tated, by no means did so, much of the the pope to withdraw his troops and con- most characteristic poetry of the latter clude a treaty of peace (June 14, 1230). being political. The literature itself was Four years of peace followed, turned to without doubt inspired by the courtly and splendid account by the emperor in ad- conventional poetry of Provence, though ministration, legislation, and the encour- the tenzone attributed to Ciullo d'Alcamo, agement of literature and science. A which from internal evidence appears to high court of justice was established, to have been written at least as late as 1231, which all inhabitants of the realm Noras has been ably shown by Professor man and Saracen, Jew and Greek, alike were amenable; and a code of laws was framed for its guidance which, if not quite the perfection of reason, seems at any rate to have approached nearer to that ideal than any other legal system that has existed between the downfall of the Roman Empire and our own comparatively enlightened era. It is not, however, with Frederick as a statesman that we are here specially concerned, but with the powerful stimulus which he gave to the development of the Italian mind. To his splendid Apulian court flocked poets and men of learning from every part of Italy. Frederick was himself a poet, as also were his illegitimate sons, Enzo and Manfred, and his chancellor, Piero delle Vigne. We have placed these writers in the forefront not so much on account of the merit of their work as because of the conspicuous posi tions which they occupy in the history of their time. The extant poems which are attributed to Frederick are few in number, and strike us as inferior in quality to those of most of his contemporaries. But before examining in detail the literature of this epoch it will be well to say something concerning its general characteristics. It must, then, be premised that Latin d'Ancona, a spirited but unpleasant poem Rosa fresca aulentissima c' apar' inver la state, Per te non aio abento notte e dia See Dante's curious remarks on this fact (Vita Nuova, xxv.) metre in which the poem is written, using | society any woman who is known to have a structure of verse obviously modelled more than one lover." There is much upon the chanson or chansonnette of the plausibility in this theory, and its author Provençal poets; the ethical spirit of their is enabled, by her extensive and intimate work is totally different from the coarse acquaintance with mediæval literature, to and brutal cynicism which animates Ciul- adduce an imposing mass of evidence in lo's sprightly quintains. It may be, in- its support. deed, that the passion of which they sang Even, however, supposing it to be true was no purer, but it is saturated with that as regards France and Germany, it must peculiar chivalrous sentiment which, how-be observed that we have no evidence that ever it may have been associated, as the similar conditions existed in Italy and author of " 'Euphorion avers it was in Sicily. The hold of feudalism on the pethe majority of cases, with an irregular ninsula was always slight, and, though it and indeed immoral relation between the probably took stronger root in Sicily, we lover and his mistress, is in itself one of have no means of judging of the condition the noblest characteristics of the Gothic of sentiment in the island as regards adulspirit. The attitude of humility, of self- terous amours during the twelfth century, abasement, almost of worship, in which while in the thirteenth, society there, as the French and Provençal Troubadours in continental Italy, was in a process of and the German Minnesingers alike ap- swift transformation in the direction of proach the ladies of their hearts' desire democracy. There is indeed extant a we note as belonging also to the Sicilian canzone containing a very frank apology poets. The lover is the faithful vassal of for treachery and adultery, written in the his lady, her lowly servidore: and he Sicilian dialect, and ascribed by Trucchi sighs forth his soul in endless importunate and Professor d' Ancona to one "Re Giocanzoni, in which he extols her spiritual vanni." Who this King John may have no less than her physical qualities, her been is not clear, but if he was, as Trucchi conoscenza as well as her beltate, bewails conjectures, the Count of Brienne and the misery her hardness of heart occasions King of Jerusalem, whose daughter Yohim, but, though he hopes to have his re- lande Frederick married shortly before ward (guiderdone) at last, recognizes that setting out on his crusade, the poem in his duty is to be patient and loyal in all all probability was written either in the events. Vernon Lee, who has both a twelfth or early in the thirteenth century. taste and an undeniable aptitude for the- If, however, this poem is rightly ascribed orizing, maintains that the peculiar tone to King John, it cannot be accepted as which characterizes the bulk of the amor-evidence of Italian sentiment on the mat. ous poetry of the age of chivalry is due to the depraving influence of feudal society, the conditions of which hardly permitted of the existence of any romantic passion which was not at the same time both licentious and adulterous. She draws a dolorous picture of life in a feudal castle, the garrison composed of young knights, squires, and pages, almost as rigidly excluded from female society as if they had been so many monks, yet having constantly before their eyes a type of highbred grace and beauty in the young châtelaine, married for political or family reasons to a man many years older than her self, and whose acquaintance she had hardly made before her betrothal. Under conditions so unnatural, the moral sense (she argues) became altogether perverted, adultery coming to be recognized as a thing of course, and fidelity to the paramour taking the place of fidelity to the busband, the courts of love on the one hand affirming "amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas extendere vires," and on the other "solemnly banishing from ter; if it is by another and Italian hand, it must be regarded in common with the rest of the poetry of the period as representing a literary mode imported from abroad by a society which was rapidly losing its feudal character, but which was as yet unable to fashion for itself a really original literature. Provençal literature had already become conventionalized in the thirteenth century even in its native land, and it did not lose in conventionality by being transplanted to Italian soil. Except in a very few instances it is at first difficult to believe that the canzoni of the early Sicilian poets were addressed to individual ladies at all, and Piero delle Vigne's sonnet on Love makes one much inclined to doubt whether that learned jurist had ever experienced the tender passion. After mentioning that some people doubt the existence of the god of love, he explains that he is of the contrary opinion; because, though the god is invisible, yet he reveals himself in his works, as the virtue of the magnet is dis played in its attracting iron to itself. Nothing can be imagined more frigid than | determined to end his days, and having this the earliest extant sonnet, yet we find no weapon suitable for the purpose, he the same writer addressing his mistress took a course which reveals the unfalter in terms which, in spite of a certain affec-ing resolution of his character: he smote tation and conventionality, have yet the his head against the stone work of his ring of sincerity in them. dungeon until the skull was fractured, and so died. Dante has placed on record his conviction of his innocence, and refers his disgrace to the machinations of his enemies.* The history of this remarkable man is by no means lacking in a certain romantic interest - the interest that is excited by sudden and brilliant success followed by ruin no less unexpected and complete but we know next to nothing of his private life. Born at Capua in the last decade of the twelfth century, he appears to have studied law at Bologna with great distinction. Having returned to his native town about 1221, he was presented to the emperor at Naples, and entered the imperial service as notary. He was sub sequently raised to the bench, and played the part of Tribonian to Frederick's Justinian in the compilation of the Code to which reference has already been made, and which was published in 1231. He was subsequently (1234) sent to England to negotiate a marriage between Freder ick, whose wife Yolande had died in 1228, and Isabella, sister of Henry III. He reached London in 1235, and left in May, escorting the princess to Worms, where the marriage was celebrated with great state in July. Frederick had been summoned to Germany in the preceding year by the outbreak of a revolt raised by his son Henry at the instigation of the Guelf republics of Lombardy, Henry was arrested shortly before the emperor's mar riage, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment in a Calabrian dungeon. War with the Lombard cities followed, which, gradually growing into a struggle à outrance with the pope, who declared in their favor, and excommunicated the em peror in 1239, taxed Frederick's energies to the utmost for the remainder of his life, and hurled Piero delle Vigne, from the high position which he held as Frederick's most trusted confidant and councillor, into the ignominy of traitor's prison, whence he found escape only by suicide. In 1249 suspicion of treachery fell upon him whether well or ill founded remains to this day a matter of controversy. Fred erick, however, was convinced of his guilt, and, as his habit was, took a ruthless vengeance. The chancellor's eyes were put out, and, seated on an ass, he was paraded through the streets of Pisa, and then thrown into prison. There, being The facts stated in the text will be found in Huillard-Bréholles's "Vie et Correspondance de Pierre de la Vigne" (Paris, 1865). Frederick did not long survive his chancellor. He died of a fever, occasioned by agitation of mind and excessive exertion, on December 13, 1250, at Firenzuola, in the neighborhood of the Abruzzi, thus fulfilling as nearly as could be reasonably eqpected the prophecy of an astrologer which had fixed Florence (Firenze) as the place of his death. As regards Frederick's character, the judgment of a contemporary chronicler, Fra Salimbene, may probably (due allowance being made for the strong Guelfic and clerical prejudices of the writer) be accepted as fairly truthful. He also tute, subtle, greedy, luxurious, choleric, mali- 66 Matthew Paris doubtless expresses the sentiment of universal Christendom when he emphatically designates the emperor stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis." † The atheism with which Frederick was credited by his contemporaries probably had no existence in fact, but there is little reason to suppose that he possessed any distinctively Christian faith. His toleration of the Jews and the Saracens, his employment of the latter in his wars with the pope, to say nothing of the various profane jests which are attributed to him, seem to evince a certain laxity of religious belief, while the energetic measures which he took to suppress schism within the Romish Church were probably dictated by political considerations. *Inf. xiii. 64-75. Of Frederick's verse little is extant, | Bologna. To a crowd of rhymers of less and that little, as has already been re- social distinction fortune has been less marked, is disappointing. The sceptical unkind; for, as we have no biographical criticism of our time has cast doubts upon knowledge of any of them, it is hardly the authenticity of most of the few poems worth the while even of a German Dryasthat have heen attributed to him. Both dust to dispute the authenticity of the the tenzone beginning "Dolze meo drudo work which passes under their names, of e vattene," published in the first volume which there is a considerable mass. It of D'Ancona and Comparetti's edition of must be owned that on the whole these the "Libro Reale" (Vat. MS. 3793), and poems are apt to be rather tedious reading, the canzone published by Carducci ("Di owing to the iteration of almost identical dol mi convien cantare") in his "Canti- sentiments, images, and modes of expreslene e Ballate Strambotti e Madrigali nei sion which characterizes them; nevertheSecoli XIII e XIV," present a marked less, Rinaldo d' Aquino's lament of a lovecontrast in point of style to the undoubt- lorn maiden, which from internal evidence edly genuine productions of the Sicilian would seem to have been written about court-poets. Both have the directness the time of Frederick's expedition to the and simplicity which characterize Ciullo Holy Land, and the canzone by Odo delle d'Alcamo, Ruggieri Pugliese, and Ciacco Colonne, in which a lady half indignantly, dell' Anquillara, whose work the first half plaintively, reproaches her absent mentioned poem also resembles in being lover with neglect, are written with unof an amœbean character. Four other deniable grace and a certain (very superfi poems ascribed to Frederick will be found cial) pathos. in Valeriani's collection, "Poeti del Primo Secolo." They have little or no merit. The same year that was so disastrous to Piero delle Vigne saw Frederick's natural son, the gallant Enzo, king of Sardinia, a prisoner at Bologna. Taken in a skirmish before the walls of the city, he was barbarously sentenced to imprisonment for life. All offers of ransom were rejected, and various plans of escape, contrived, it is said, by Lucia Biadagioli, a young Bolognese lady, whose heart was touched with pity for the beautiful and brilliant captive, were frustrated by the vigilance of the gaolers. Enzo, after languishing in prison for twenty-three years, died of a broken heart in 1272, the city which had used him so shamefully during his life honoring his remains with a magnificent funeral. Rugierone de Palermo's lament of a Crusader who has left his lady behind him, and who remembers in Syria her "dolze compagnia" and "dolze segnamento," is really touching in its simple naturalness of sentiment. And when the stern reality of death abruptly challenges the attention of that lightly dallying, idle knight, Giacomino Pugliesi da Prato, the naïve sincerity of his almost childlike grief finds expression in language which goes straight to the heart. Solea aver sollazzo e gioco e riso E dolce compagnia, Ch' io m' avea degli amanti. Or non la veggio, nè le sto davanti, Three canzonets and a sonnet are ranked under the name of Enzo in Valeriani's collection. The sonnet has been trans. lated by Rossetti in his "Dante and his The most prolific writer of this period Circle." It is a variation upon the theme appears to have been Giacomo da Lentiof the preacher, "To everything there is no; at any rate, more work of his than of a season, and a time to every purpose any of his contemporaries has been preunder heaven," and is interesting as show- served. He wrote both sonnets and caning how early the capabilities of the son-zoni, and is recognized by Dante (De net as a vehicle of sententious moralizing were recognized. As a work of art it is not of a high order. The canzonets, on the other hand, are written in a graceful and almost natural 'style a refreshing contrast to that of the emperor. One of them, however, is now assigned by D'Ancona, on the authority of the Vatican MS. 3793, to Sir Nascimbene da Vulg. Eloq. i. cap. xii.) as having exercised a refining and ennobling influence on Italian style. From the point of view of mere diction, with which in that treatise Dante was exclusively concerned, the praise is probably deserved; but as a poet his merits are by no means extraordinary. His imaginative faculty moves within the narrowest limits, a few figures, such as the basilisk, the phoenix, the salamander, | learn from Nannucci or Gaspary † that comprising almost the whole of his available stock in trade; and when he essays a flight beyond, he is apt to fall into some peculiarly frigid conceit, as when he compares himself to a ship, his lady to the tempestuous ocean, and his sighs and melodious wailings to the jettison by which the ship is lightened, or elaborating the commonplace by which the lady is said to hold her lover or his heart in balia (a hardly translatable expression), insists in the most absurdly explicit way that his heart is no longer in his body, but in the custody of his lady, just as though that important part of his anatomy might be seen any day on her premises by any lady or gentleman that might choose to pay a visit to Lentino. So also in one of his sonnets he does his best to exhaust the catalogue of precious stones known to the lapidary, in order to exalt Madonna's virtues above theirs, and in another gravely propounds the question Or come puote si gran donna entrare It was doubtless this vicious manner of writing, at once frigid and extravagant, that induced Dante to class him with Guittone d'Arezzo and Buonaggiunta Urbiciani da Lucca (Purg. xxiv. 56), as one of those who sought to eke out their poverty of imagination by inappropriate embellishment. Vernon Lee discovers in him a tendency to Platonism. Platonic love is an expression to which it is very difficult to attach a definite signification; but we own we are at a loss to understand in what sense the term can be used in connection with Giacomo da Lentino. If Platonic love implies indifference to sensual pleasure, we fail to see any trace of such a disposition in the notary. We suspect that Vernon Lee has been misled by the frigidity of the man's style into cred iting him with a corresponding quality of sentiment which probably did not belong to him. The vices of the notary's style are, however, by no means peculiar to him. In a greater or less degree they are characteristic of the majority of his contemporaries. To say a thing naturally would seem to have been thought by them beneath the dignity of poetry; their range of ideas is limited in the extreme, and too often when in reading them we have chanced upon something which is imaginative and seems original, we are disappointed to it has been said before by some Proven- name. 66 Dante (De Vulg. Eloq. i. cap. xii.) fully acknowledges the importance of the part played by the Sicilians in the development of Italian poetry, observing that, so pow. erful was the influence exerted by them, even in his own day, "quicquid poetan. tur Itali Sicilianum vocatur," which seems to imply that it was the custom to use some such expression as uno Ciciliano," as a generic term for a poem, whether written in the Sicilian dialect or not. At what rate the movement began to spread northward cannot be decided with precision, nor the route which it traversed. The older Italian critics fixed the date of a canzone by a Sienese poet, Folcachiero de' Folcachieri, about the year 1177, on the strength of its first line, "Tutto lo mondo vive sanza guerra," which was supposed to refer to the peace concluded in that year between Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III. As, however, we now know that the canzone was invented by the Sicilians, and not earlier than the second quarter of the thirteenth century, some other period of general peace must be sought, if we still suppose the line to contain a reference to historical fact. A similar expression occurs in a poem by Rinaldo d'Aquino, already referred to. Lingua Italiana. Firenze. 1874. Manuale della Letteratura del primo secolo della † Die Sicilianische Dicterschule. Berlin. 1878. |