Francesco Filelfo
Encyclopedia
Francesco Filelfo was an Italian
Renaissance humanist
.
, in the March of Ancona
. He is believed to be a third cousin of Leonardo Da Vinci. At the time of his birth, Petrarch
and the students of Florence had already brought the first act in the recovery of classic culture to conclusion. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had rediscovered many important Roman
authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the restrictions of earlier periods. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the field of Latin literature
, and to be an important agent in the still unaccomplished recovery of Greek culture.
His earliest studies in grammar
, rhetoric
and the Latin language were conducted at Padua
, where he acquired so great a reputation for learning that in 1417, when he was eighteen, he was invited to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice
. According to the custom of that age in Italy, it now became his duty to explain the language, and to illustrate the beauties of the principal Latin authors, Cicero
and Virgil
being considered the chief masters of moral science and of elegant diction.
Filelfo made his mark at once in Venice. He was admitted to the society of the first scholars and the most eminent nobles; and in 1419 he received an appointment from the state, which enabled him to reside as notary and chancellor to the Baile of the Venetians in Constantinople
. This appointment was an honour for Filelfo as a man of trust and general ability, and gave him the opportunity of acquiring the most coveted of all possessions at that moment — a scholar's knowledge of the Greek language
. Immediately after his arrival in Constantinople
at end 1420, Filelfo placed himself under the tuition of John Chrysoloras
, whose name was already well known in Italy as that of his uncle Manuel Chrysoloras
, the first Greek to profess the literature of his ancestors in Florence.
As the same time he assumed his charge of chancellor for the bailo Benedetto Emo (summer 1421-summer 1423), with diplomatic missions : at end 1421 he accompanied Emo during an embassy to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, who was the candidate supported by Venice for the succession of the late Sultan Mehmed I, the Byzantines, by contrast, supporting the pretender Mustafa. This would have been difficult for the pupil of John Chrysoloras. The final victory of Murad II resulted in the siege of Constantinople in spring 1422. It was during the great assault of 22 August 1422 that his professor, mortally ill, dictated to him his will. Nominated executor of this will with the widow of the dead, Manfredina Doria, he was certainly also designated tutor of Chrysoloras'girls. After his completing his term as chancellor in July 1423, he entered the service of the emperor John VIII Palaeologus who sent him immediately to Sigismond, king of Hungary. Before his departure, his marriage with Theodora, the daughter of John Chrysoloras, was decided, and was concluded when he returned from Hungary after sixteenth months of absence (end October 1424). With a new teacher, Chrysococes, he had now acquired a thorough knowledge of Greek
, and had formed a large collection of Greek manuscripts. There was no reason why he should not return to his native country. Accordingly, in 1427 he accepted an invitation from the republic of Venice, and set sail for Italy, intending to resume his professorial career. From this time forward until the date of his death, Filelfo's biography consists of a record of the various towns in which he lectured, the masters whom he served, the books he wrote, the authors he illustrated, the friendships he contracted, and the wars he waged with rival scholars. He was a man of vast physical energy, of inexhaustible mental activity, of quick passions and violent appetites; vain, restless, greedy of gold and pleasure and fame; unable to stay quiet in one place, and perpetually engaged in quarrels with his peers.
When Filelfo arrived at Venice with his family in 1427, he found that the city had almost been emptied by the plague
, and that his pupils would be few. He therefore moved to Bologna
; but the city was too much disturbed with political dissensions to attend to him; so Filelfo crossed the Apennines
and settled in Florence
. At Florence began one of the most brilliant and eventful periods of his life. During the week he lectured to large audiences of young and old on the principal Greek and Latin authors, and on Sundays he explained Dante
to the people in the Duomo.
In addition to these labours of the chair, he found time to translate portions of Aristotle
, Plutarch
, Xenophon
and Lysias
from the Greek. Nor was he dead to the claims of society. At first he seems to have lived with the Florentine scholars on tolerably good terms; but his temper was so arrogant that Cosimo de' Medici
's friends were not long able to put up with him. Filelfo hereupon broke out into open and violent animosity; and when Cosimo was exiled by the Albizzi
party in 1433, he urged the signoria
of Florence to pronounce upon him the sentence of death. On the return of Cosimo to Florence, Filelfo's position in that city was no longer tenable. His life, he asserted, had been already once attempted by a cut-throat in the pay of the Medici; and now he readily accepted an invitation from the state of Siena
. In Siena, however, he was not destined to remain more than four years. His fame as a professor had grown great in Italy, and he daily received tempting offers from princes and republics. The most alluring of these, made him by the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti
, he decided to accept; and in 1440 he was received with honour by his new master in the capital of Lombardy
.
Filelfo's life at Milan
curiously illustrates the multifarious importance of the scholars of that age in Italy. It was his duty to celebrate his princely patrons in panegyric
s and epic
s, to abuse their enemies in libels and invective
s, to salute them with encomiastic ode
s on their birthdays, and to compose poems on their favorite themes. For their courtiers he wrote epithalamial and funeral orations; ambassadors and visitors from foreign states he greeted with the rhetorical lucubrations then so much in vogue. The students of the university he taught in daily lectures, passing in review the weightiest and lightest authors of antiquity, and pouring forth a flood of miscellaneous erudition.
Not satisfied with these outlets for his mental energy, Filelfo went on translating from the Greek, and prosecuted a paper warfare with his enemies in Florence. He wrote, moreover, political pamphlets on the great events of Italian history; and when Constantinople was taken by the Turks
, he procured the liberation of his wife's mother, Manfredina Doria, by a message addressed in his own name to the sultan
. In addition to a fixed stipend of some 700 golden florins yearly, he was continually in receipt of special payments for the orations and poems he produced; so that, had he been a man of frugal habits or of moderate economy, he might have amassed a considerable fortune. As it was, he spent his money as fast as he received it, living in a style of splendour and self-indulgence. In consequence of this prodigality, he was always poor. His letters and his poems abound in demands for money from patrons, some of them couched in language of the lowest adulation, and others savouring of literary brigandage.
During the second year of his Milanese residence Filelfo lost his beloved first wife,the Greek Theodora. He soon married again; and this time he chose for his bride a young lady of good Lombard family, called Orsina Osnaga. When she died he took in wedlock for the third time a woman of Lombard birth, Laura Magiolini. To all his three wives, in spite of numerous infidelities, he seems to have been warmly attached; and this is perhaps the best trait in a character otherwise more remarkable for arrogance and heat than for any amiable qualities.
On the death of Visconti, Filelfo, after a short hesitation, transferred his allegiance to Francesco Sforza, the new duke of Milan; and in order to curry favor with this parvenu
, he began his ponderous epic, the Sforziad, of which 12,800 lines were written, but which was never published. When Sforza died, Filelfo turned his thoughts towards Rome
. He was now an old man of seventy-seven years, honored with the friendship of princes, recognized as the most distinguished of Italian humanist
s, courted by pontiff
s, and decorated with the laurel wreath and the order of knighthood by kings.
Crossing the Apennines and passing through Florence, he reached Rome in the second week of 1475. Pope Sixtus IV
now ruled in the Vatican
; and Filelfo had received an invitation to occupy the chair of rhetoric
with good emoluments. At first he was vastly pleased with the city and court of Rome; but his satisfaction turned to discontent, and he gave vent to his ill-humour in a venomous satire on the pope's treasurer, Milliardo Cicala. Sixtus himself soon fell under the ban of his displeasure; and when a year had passed he left Rome never to return. Filelfo reached Milan to find that his wife had died of the plague in his absence, and was already buried. His own death followed speedily. For some time past he had been desirous of displaying his abilities and adding to his fame in Florence. Years had healed the breach between him and the Medicean family; and on the occasion of the Pazzi conspiracy against the life of Lorenzo de' Medici
, he had sent violent letters of abuse to his papal patron Sixtus, denouncing his participation in a plot so dangerous to the security of Italy. Lorenzo now invited him to profess Greek at Florence, and thither Filelfo journeyed in 1481. But two weeks after his arrival he succumbed to dysentery
, and was buried at the age of eighty-three in the Church of the Annunziata
.
Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance
, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. His erudition was large but ill-digested; his knowledge of the ancient authors, if extensive, was superficial; his style was vulgar; he had no brilliancy of imagination, no pungency of epigram
, no grandeur of rhetoric. Therefore he has left nothing to posterity which the world would not very willingly let die. But in his own days he did excellent service to learning by his untiring activity, and by the facility with which he used his stores of knowledge. It was an age of accumulation and preparation, when the world was still amassing and cataloguing the fragments rescued from the wrecks of Greece and Rome. Men had to receive the very rudiments of culture before they could appreciate its niceties. And in this work of collection and instruction Filelfo excelled, passing rapidly from place to place, stirring up the zeal for learning by the passion of his own enthusiastic temperament, and acting as a pioneer for men like Angelo Poliziano and Erasmus.
A complete edition of Filelfo's Greek letters (based on the Codex Trevulzianus) was published for the first time, with French translation, notes and commentaries, by Emile Legrand in 1892 at Paris (C. xii. of Publications de l'école des lang. orient.).
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Renaissance humanist
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
.
Biography
Filelfo was born at TolentinoTolentino
Tolentino is a town and comune of about 20,000 inhabitants, in the province of Macerata in the Marche region of central Italy.It is located in the middle of the valley of the Chienti.-History:...
, in the March of Ancona
March of Ancona
The March of Ancona or marca Anconitana was a frontier march centred on the city of Ancona and, then, Macerata in the Middle Ages...
. He is believed to be a third cousin of Leonardo Da Vinci. At the time of his birth, Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
and the students of Florence had already brought the first act in the recovery of classic culture to conclusion. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had rediscovered many important Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the restrictions of earlier periods. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the field of Latin literature
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
, and to be an important agent in the still unaccomplished recovery of Greek culture.
His earliest studies in grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and the Latin language were conducted at Padua
University of Padua
The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...
, where he acquired so great a reputation for learning that in 1417, when he was eighteen, he was invited to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. According to the custom of that age in Italy, it now became his duty to explain the language, and to illustrate the beauties of the principal Latin authors, Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
being considered the chief masters of moral science and of elegant diction.
Filelfo made his mark at once in Venice. He was admitted to the society of the first scholars and the most eminent nobles; and in 1419 he received an appointment from the state, which enabled him to reside as notary and chancellor to the Baile of the Venetians in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
. This appointment was an honour for Filelfo as a man of trust and general ability, and gave him the opportunity of acquiring the most coveted of all possessions at that moment — a scholar's knowledge of the Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. Immediately after his arrival in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
at end 1420, Filelfo placed himself under the tuition of John Chrysoloras
John Chrysoloras
John Chrysoloras was a relative of Manuel Chrysoloras, who like him had studied and taught at Constantinople and then migrated to Italy. There he was influential in spreading Greek letters in the West. He was a patron and teacher of fellow Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo whom his daughter...
, whose name was already well known in Italy as that of his uncle Manuel Chrysoloras
Manuel Chrysoloras
Manuel Chrysoloras was a pioneer in the introduction of Greek literature to Western Europe during the late middle ages....
, the first Greek to profess the literature of his ancestors in Florence.
As the same time he assumed his charge of chancellor for the bailo Benedetto Emo (summer 1421-summer 1423), with diplomatic missions : at end 1421 he accompanied Emo during an embassy to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, who was the candidate supported by Venice for the succession of the late Sultan Mehmed I, the Byzantines, by contrast, supporting the pretender Mustafa. This would have been difficult for the pupil of John Chrysoloras. The final victory of Murad II resulted in the siege of Constantinople in spring 1422. It was during the great assault of 22 August 1422 that his professor, mortally ill, dictated to him his will. Nominated executor of this will with the widow of the dead, Manfredina Doria, he was certainly also designated tutor of Chrysoloras'girls. After his completing his term as chancellor in July 1423, he entered the service of the emperor John VIII Palaeologus who sent him immediately to Sigismond, king of Hungary. Before his departure, his marriage with Theodora, the daughter of John Chrysoloras, was decided, and was concluded when he returned from Hungary after sixteenth months of absence (end October 1424). With a new teacher, Chrysococes, he had now acquired a thorough knowledge of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, and had formed a large collection of Greek manuscripts. There was no reason why he should not return to his native country. Accordingly, in 1427 he accepted an invitation from the republic of Venice, and set sail for Italy, intending to resume his professorial career. From this time forward until the date of his death, Filelfo's biography consists of a record of the various towns in which he lectured, the masters whom he served, the books he wrote, the authors he illustrated, the friendships he contracted, and the wars he waged with rival scholars. He was a man of vast physical energy, of inexhaustible mental activity, of quick passions and violent appetites; vain, restless, greedy of gold and pleasure and fame; unable to stay quiet in one place, and perpetually engaged in quarrels with his peers.
When Filelfo arrived at Venice with his family in 1427, he found that the city had almost been emptied by the plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
, and that his pupils would be few. He therefore moved to Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
; but the city was too much disturbed with political dissensions to attend to him; so Filelfo crossed the Apennines
Apennine mountains
The Apennines or Apennine Mountains or Greek oros but just as often used alone as a noun. The ancient Greeks and Romans typically but not always used "mountain" in the singular to mean one or a range; thus, "the Apennine mountain" refers to the entire chain and is translated "the Apennine...
and settled in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. At Florence began one of the most brilliant and eventful periods of his life. During the week he lectured to large audiences of young and old on the principal Greek and Latin authors, and on Sundays he explained Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
to the people in the Duomo.
In addition to these labours of the chair, he found time to translate portions of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
and Lysias
Lysias
Lysias was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BC.-Life:According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the author of the life ascribed to...
from the Greek. Nor was he dead to the claims of society. At first he seems to have lived with the Florentine scholars on tolerably good terms; but his temper was so arrogant that Cosimo de' Medici
Cosimo de' Medici
Còsimo di Giovanni degli Mèdici was the first of the Medici political dynasty, de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance; also known as "Cosimo 'the Elder'" and "Cosimo Pater Patriae" .-Biography:Born in Florence, Cosimo inherited both his wealth and his expertise in...
's friends were not long able to put up with him. Filelfo hereupon broke out into open and violent animosity; and when Cosimo was exiled by the Albizzi
Albizzi
The Albizzi family was a Florentine family originally based in Arezzo, who were rivals of the Medici and Alberti families. They were at the centre of Florentine oligarchy from 1382, in the reaction that followed the Ciompi revolt, to the rise of the Medici in 1434...
party in 1433, he urged the signoria
Signoria
A Signoria was an abstract noun meaning 'government; governing authority; de facto sovereignty; lordship in many of the Italian city states during the medieval and renaissance periods....
of Florence to pronounce upon him the sentence of death. On the return of Cosimo to Florence, Filelfo's position in that city was no longer tenable. His life, he asserted, had been already once attempted by a cut-throat in the pay of the Medici; and now he readily accepted an invitation from the state of Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
. In Siena, however, he was not destined to remain more than four years. His fame as a professor had grown great in Italy, and he daily received tempting offers from princes and republics. The most alluring of these, made him by the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti
Filippo Maria Visconti
Filippo Maria Visconti was ruler of Milan from 1412 to 1447.-Biography:Filippo Maria Visconti, who had become nominal ruler of Pavia in 1402, succeeded his assassinated brother Gian Maria Visconti as Duke of Milan in 1412. They were the sons of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Gian Maria's predecessor, by...
, he decided to accept; and in 1440 he was received with honour by his new master in the capital of Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
.
Filelfo's life at Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
curiously illustrates the multifarious importance of the scholars of that age in Italy. It was his duty to celebrate his princely patrons in panegyric
Panegyric
A panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...
s and epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
s, to abuse their enemies in libels and invective
Invective
Invective , from Middle English "invectif", or Old French and Late Latin "invectus", is an abusive, reproachful or venomous language used to express blame or censure; also, a rude expression or discourse intended to offend or hurt. Vituperation, or deeply-seated ill will, vitriol...
s, to salute them with encomiastic ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
s on their birthdays, and to compose poems on their favorite themes. For their courtiers he wrote epithalamial and funeral orations; ambassadors and visitors from foreign states he greeted with the rhetorical lucubrations then so much in vogue. The students of the university he taught in daily lectures, passing in review the weightiest and lightest authors of antiquity, and pouring forth a flood of miscellaneous erudition.
Not satisfied with these outlets for his mental energy, Filelfo went on translating from the Greek, and prosecuted a paper warfare with his enemies in Florence. He wrote, moreover, political pamphlets on the great events of Italian history; and when Constantinople was taken by the Turks
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, he procured the liberation of his wife's mother, Manfredina Doria, by a message addressed in his own name to the sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
. In addition to a fixed stipend of some 700 golden florins yearly, he was continually in receipt of special payments for the orations and poems he produced; so that, had he been a man of frugal habits or of moderate economy, he might have amassed a considerable fortune. As it was, he spent his money as fast as he received it, living in a style of splendour and self-indulgence. In consequence of this prodigality, he was always poor. His letters and his poems abound in demands for money from patrons, some of them couched in language of the lowest adulation, and others savouring of literary brigandage.
During the second year of his Milanese residence Filelfo lost his beloved first wife,the Greek Theodora. He soon married again; and this time he chose for his bride a young lady of good Lombard family, called Orsina Osnaga. When she died he took in wedlock for the third time a woman of Lombard birth, Laura Magiolini. To all his three wives, in spite of numerous infidelities, he seems to have been warmly attached; and this is perhaps the best trait in a character otherwise more remarkable for arrogance and heat than for any amiable qualities.
On the death of Visconti, Filelfo, after a short hesitation, transferred his allegiance to Francesco Sforza, the new duke of Milan; and in order to curry favor with this parvenu
Parvenu
A Parvenu is a person who is a relative newcomer to a socioeconomic class. The word is borrowed from the French language; it is the past participle of the verb parvenir...
, he began his ponderous epic, the Sforziad, of which 12,800 lines were written, but which was never published. When Sforza died, Filelfo turned his thoughts towards Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. He was now an old man of seventy-seven years, honored with the friendship of princes, recognized as the most distinguished of Italian humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
s, courted by pontiff
Pontiff
A pontiff was, in Roman antiquity, a member of the principal college of priests . The term "pontiff" was later applied to any high or chief priest and, in ecclesiastical usage, to a bishop and more particularly to the Bishop of Rome, the Pope or "Roman Pontiff".-Etymology:The English term derives...
s, and decorated with the laurel wreath and the order of knighthood by kings.
Crossing the Apennines and passing through Florence, he reached Rome in the second week of 1475. Pope Sixtus IV
Pope Sixtus IV
Pope Sixtus IV , born Francesco della Rovere, was Pope from 1471 to 1484. His accomplishments as Pope included the establishment of the Sistine Chapel; the group of artists that he brought together introduced the Early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpiece of the city's new artistic age,...
now ruled in the Vatican
Vatican City
Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
; and Filelfo had received an invitation to occupy the chair of rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
with good emoluments. At first he was vastly pleased with the city and court of Rome; but his satisfaction turned to discontent, and he gave vent to his ill-humour in a venomous satire on the pope's treasurer, Milliardo Cicala. Sixtus himself soon fell under the ban of his displeasure; and when a year had passed he left Rome never to return. Filelfo reached Milan to find that his wife had died of the plague in his absence, and was already buried. His own death followed speedily. For some time past he had been desirous of displaying his abilities and adding to his fame in Florence. Years had healed the breach between him and the Medicean family; and on the occasion of the Pazzi conspiracy against the life of Lorenzo de' Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets...
, he had sent violent letters of abuse to his papal patron Sixtus, denouncing his participation in a plot so dangerous to the security of Italy. Lorenzo now invited him to profess Greek at Florence, and thither Filelfo journeyed in 1481. But two weeks after his arrival he succumbed to dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
, and was buried at the age of eighty-three in the Church of the Annunziata
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze
The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata is a Roman Catholic minor basilica in Florence, Italy, the mother church of the Servite order. It is located at the northeastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata....
.
Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. His erudition was large but ill-digested; his knowledge of the ancient authors, if extensive, was superficial; his style was vulgar; he had no brilliancy of imagination, no pungency of epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
, no grandeur of rhetoric. Therefore he has left nothing to posterity which the world would not very willingly let die. But in his own days he did excellent service to learning by his untiring activity, and by the facility with which he used his stores of knowledge. It was an age of accumulation and preparation, when the world was still amassing and cataloguing the fragments rescued from the wrecks of Greece and Rome. Men had to receive the very rudiments of culture before they could appreciate its niceties. And in this work of collection and instruction Filelfo excelled, passing rapidly from place to place, stirring up the zeal for learning by the passion of his own enthusiastic temperament, and acting as a pioneer for men like Angelo Poliziano and Erasmus.
A complete edition of Filelfo's Greek letters (based on the Codex Trevulzianus) was published for the first time, with French translation, notes and commentaries, by Emile Legrand in 1892 at Paris (C. xii. of Publications de l'école des lang. orient.).