Note 850 — Chapter II · THE OUTWARD REFINEMENT OF LIFE.

Giraldi, Hecatommithi, Introduz. nov. 6. A few notices on the Germans in Italy may not here be out of place. On the fear of German invasion, see p. 91, note 2; on Germans as copyists and printers, p. 193 sqq. and the notes; on the ridicule of Hadrian VI. as a German, p. 227 and notes. The Italians were in general ill-disposed to the Germans, and showed their ill-will by ridicule. Boccaccio (Decam. viii. 1) says: ‘Un Tedesco in soldo prò della persona è assai leale a coloro ne’ cui servigi si mattea; il che rade volte suole de’ Tedeschi avenire.’ The tale is given as an instance of German cunning. The Italian humanists are full of attacks on the German barbarians, and especially those who, like Poggio, had seen Germany. Comp. Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 374 sqq.; Geiger, Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Italien Zeit des Humanismus in Zeitschrift für deutsche Culturgeschichte, 1875, pp. 104-124; see also Janssen, Gesch. der deutschen Volkes, i. 262. One of the chief opponents of the Germans was Joh. Ant. Campanus. See his works, ed. Mencken, who delivered a discourse ‘De Campani odio in Germanos.’ The hatred of the Germans was strengthened by the conduct of Hadrian VI., and still more by the conduct of the troops at the sack of Rome (Gregorovius, viii. 548, note). Bandello III. nov. 30, chooses the German as the type of the dirty and foolish man (see iii. 51, for another German). When an Italian wishes to praise a German he says, as Petrus Alcyonius in the dedication to his dialogue De Exilio, to Nicolaus Schomberg, p. 9: ‘Itaque etsi in Misnensi clarissima Germaniæ provincia illustribus natalibus ortus es, tamen in Italiae luce cognosceris.’ Unqualified praise is rare, e.g. of German women at the time of Marius, Cortigiano, iii. cap. 33.

It must be added that the Italians of the Renaissance, like the Greeks of antiquity, were filled with aversion for all barbarians. Boccaccio, De claris Mulieribus, in the article ‘Carmenta,’ speaks of ‘German barbarism, French savagery, English craft, and Spanish coarseness.’