Giorgio Vasari (1511-1571)

These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.

Books from Alibris: Giorgio Vasari

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

Books from Alibris: Alexis de Tocqueville

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life. . . . If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.

Books from Alibris: Teresa of Avila

Edmund Spenser (c 1552-1599)

For take thy balance if thou be so wise And weigh the wind that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow.

Books from Alibris: Edmund Spenser

John Skelton (1460-1529)

Old proverbe says, That byrd ys not honest That fyleth hys owne nest.


Books from Alibris: John Skelton

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

It's not enough to speak, but to speak true. - Mid N Dr, Act v, Sc.1

Books from Alibris: William Shakespeare

Francois Rabelais (c 1495-1553)

Time, which wears down and diminishes all things, augments and increases good deeds, because a good turn liberally offered to a reasonable man grows continually through noble thought and memory.

Books from Alibris: Rabelais

Thomas More (c 1478-1535)

Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.

Books from Alibris: Thomas More

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Each man calls barbarism what is not his own practice for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason that the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.

Books from Alibris: Montaigne

Michelangelo (Buonarroti) (1475-1564)

Quotation

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Books

Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Michelangelo. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Michelangelo.


Research

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Biographical

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564) was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet and architect.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6th, 1475, in Caprese, Tuscany, Italy. Michelangelo's father, Lodovico, was the resident magistrate in Caprese. However, Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later lived with a sculptor and his wife in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm.

Against his father's wishes, Michelangelo chose to be the apprentice of Domenico Ghirlandaio for three years starting in 1488. Impressed, Domenico recommended him to the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and during his stay, Michelangelo would be influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art and even his feelings about sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo created two reliefs: Battle of the Centaurs and Madonna of the Steps. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492, Piero de' Medici (Lorenzo's oldest son and new head of the Medici family), refused to support Michelangelo's artwork. Also at this time, the ideas of Savonarola became popular in Florence. Under these two pressures, Michelangelo decided to leave Florence and stay in Bologna for three years. Soon afterwards, Cardinal San Giorgio purchased Michelangelo's marble Cupid and decided to summon him to Rome in 1496. Influenced by Roman Antiquity, he produced the Bacchus and the Pieta.

Four years later, Michelangelo returned to Florence where he produced arguably his most famous work, the marble David. He also painted the Holy Family of the Tribune. Michelangelo was summoned back to Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. However, under the patronage of Julius II, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. The most famous of which was the monumental paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel which took four years (1508 - 1512). Due to these and later interruptions, Michelangelo would work on the tomb for 40 years without ever finishing it. In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the exterior of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly, but was unable to accomplish this feat (the church's exterior is unadorned to this day). Michelangelo came to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529 while the city was under siege. His fresco of the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Paul III almost 20 years later (1534-1541). Then in 1547, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Seven years later, on February 18th, 1564, Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89.

Controversy, Censorship and the 'Fig-Leaf Campaign'

When the work was finished on the Last Judgment in (October1541), Michelangelo was accused of intolerable obscenity for his depictions of naked figures showing genitals (and inside a church, and in St.Peter's, the most important one). A violent censorship campaign was organized by Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) to remove the frescoes, but the Pope resisted. In coincidence with Michelangelo's death, a law was issued to cover genitals (Pictura in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur). So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, covered with sort of perizomas (briefs) the genitals, leaving unaltered the complex of bodies. When the work was restored in 1993, the restorers chose not to remove the perizomas of Daniele; however, a faithful uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is now in Naples, at the Capodimonte Museum.

Censorship always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" (inventor of obscenities, in a sense that in Italian sounds like as if he had also created the form of... indecent organs).

The "fig-leaf campaign" of the Counter Reformation to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings and sculptures started with Michelangelo's works. To give two examples, the bronze statue of Cristo della Minerva was covered, as it remains today, and the statue of the naked child Jesus in Madonna of Bruges (Belgium) remained covered for several decades. In the 1970s, the Pietà , in St. Peter's first chapel at right, was assaulted by a mentally ill man, who seriously damaged it with a hammer.

Michelangelo the Man

Michelangelo, who was often arrogant with others and constantly unsatisfied with himself, thought that art originated from inner inspiration and from culture. In contradiction to the ideas of his rival, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo saw nature as an enemy that had to be overcome. The figures that he created are therefore in forceful movement; each is in its own space apart from the outside world. For Michelangelo, the job of the sculptor is too free the forms that, he believed, were already inside the stone. This can most vividly be seen in his unfinished statuary figures, which to many appear to be struggling to free themselves from the stone. He also instilled into his figures a sense of moral cause for action. A good example of this can be seen in the facial expression of his marble statue David. Arguably his second most famous work (after David) is the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel which is a synthesis of architecture, sculpture & painting. His Last Judgement, also in the Sistine Chapel, is a depiction of extreme crisis. Several anecdotes reveal that Michelangelo's skill, especially in sculpture, was deeply appreciated in his own time. It is said that when still a young apprentice, he had made a neoclassical statue (Il Putto Dormiente, the sleeping child) of such beauty and perfection, that it was later sold in Rome as an ancient Roman original. Another better-known anecdote claims that when finishing the Moses (Rome, San Pietro in Vincoli), Michelangelo violently hit the knee of the statue with a hammer, shouting: "why don't you speak to me?".

It has been claimed that Michelangelo was an abstinent bisexual that had very intense attraction for male beauty. In fact, Michelangelo developed romantic but apparently non-sexual relationships with at least one man, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, who was 23 years old when he met Michelangelo in 1532. Michelangelo wrote a series of romantic sonnets as a result of this apparent infatuation.

The homoeroticism of Michelangelo's poetry was obscured when his grand nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed. John Addington Symonds undid this change by translating the original sonnets into English and writing a two-volume biography, published in 1893.

The Catholic Biography (1908)

Italian sculptor, painter, and architect, b. at Caprese in the valley of the upper Arno, 6 March, 1475; d. at Rome, 18 February, 1564. Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of all times, came from a noble Florentine family of small means, and in 1488 was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandajo. While apprentice, he excited the admiration of his master by the life-like animation of this drawings, and upon Ghirlandajo's recommendation, and a the wish of Lorenzo the Magnificent, he received further training (1489-92) in the palace of the Medici, at the school of sculpture then under the direction of Bertoldo, one of Donatello's pupils. As student and resident of the palace, Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo's sons in the most distinguished society of Florence, and at this time was introduced by the poet Politian into the circle of the scholars of the Academy and to their learned pursuits. Meanwhile, Michelangelo was studying with marked success the frescoes in the Branacci chapel. After Lorenzo's death he passed his time partly at home, partly at the monastery of Santo Spirito, where he busied himself with anatomical studies, and partly in the house of Pietro de' Medici, who, however, was banished in 1494. About the same time Michelangelo left Florence for Bologna. He returned in 1495, and began to work as a sculptor, taking as his model the works of his predecessors and the masterpieces of classical Antiquity, without, however, sacrificing his individuality. In 1496 he went to Rome, whither his fame had preceded him, and remained there working as a sculptor until 1501. Returning to Florence, he occupied himself with his painting and sculpture until 1505, when Pope Julius II called him to enter his service. After this, Michelangelo was employed alternately in Rome and Florence by Julius and his successors, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III being his special patrons. In 1534, shortly after the death of his father, Michelangelo left Florence never to return. The further events of his life are closely connected with his artistic labours. Some weeks after his death his body was brought back to Florence and a few months later a stately memorial service was held in the church of San Lorenzo. His nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti, erected a monument over his tomb in Santa Croce, for which Vasari, his well known pupil and biographer, furnished the design, and Duke Cosimo de' Medici the marble. The three arts are represented as mourning over the sarcophagus, above which is a niche containing a bust of Michelangelo. A monument was erected in his memory in the church of the Santi Apostoli, at Rome, representing him as an artist in working garb, with an inscription: Tanto nomini nullum par elogium. (No praise is sufficient for so great a man.)

Michelangelo was a man of many-sided character, independent and persistent in his views and his endeavours. His most striking characteristic was a sturdy determination, guided by a lofty ideal. Untiring, he worked until far advanced in years, at the cost of great personal sacrifices. He was not, however, unyielding to the point of obstinancy. His productions in all departments of art show the great fertility of his mind. In literature he was a devoted student and admirer of Dante. A copy of the Divine Comedy, ornamented by him with marginal drawings, has unfortunately been lost. Imitating the style of Dante and Petrarch, he wrote verses, canzoni, and especially sonnets, which are not without value, and excite surprise by their warmth of feeling. Some of his poems give expression to an ideally pure affection. He never married. A stern earnestness is characteristic of the sculptor, but the tenderness of his heart is shown in his touching love and solicitude for his father and brothers. Although seemingly absorbed in his art, and often straitened in circumstances, he was ever ready to aid them by word and deed. "I will send you what you demand of me", he wrote, "even if I have to sell myself as a slave". After the death of his father he conceived a deep affection for a young Roman, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, and also entered into intimate friendship with the noble-minded poetess, Vittoria Colonna, then past her youth. With his pupils, Vasari and Condivi, he was on the most cordial terms, and a servant who was twenty-six years in his employ experienced his bounty. The biographies we have from the pupils just mentiond and the letters of Michelangelo himself testify to the gentler traits of his character. He gave younger artists generous aid by suggestions, sketches, and designs, among others to Sebastiano del Poimbo, Daniele da Volterra, and Jacopo da Pontormo. Michelangelo had few personal wants and was unusually self-denying in dress and diet. Savonarola's sermons, which he recalled even in his old age, probably influenced him in some degree to adopt this austerity of life. Moreover, the seriousness of his own mind caused him to realize the vanity of earthly ideals. His spirit was always absorbed in a struggle to attain perfection. Yet with all this he was not haughty; many of his sayings that have come down to us show him to have been unusually unassuming. The explanation of his unwillingness to have the aid of assistants must be sought in the peculiarity of his artistic methods. Michelangelo's life was one of incessant trials, yet in spite of an imperious temper and many bodily infirmities he showed remarkable composure and forbearance. No matter how much trouble was caused him by his distinguished patrons he seldom failed in loyalty to them. He was equally faithful to his native city, Florence, although the political confusion which reigned there wrung from him many complaints. It obliged him to spend half of his life elsewhere, yet he wished to lie after death in Florentine earth; nor could the most enticing offers induce him to leave Italy. A contemporary bestows praise which seems merited, when he says that Michelangelo in all the ninety years of his life never gave any grounds for suspecting the integrity of his moral virtue.

Sculpture - First Period

If the years before 1505, that is, before the summons by Julius II, be taken as Michelangelo's youth, it may be said that, even when a pupil in Bertoldo's school, he attracted attention not only by his work in clay and by the head of a faun in marble after a classical model, but especially by two marble bas-reliefs of his own design. The Madonna Seated on a Step, pressing the Child to her breast under her mantle, shows, it is true, but little individuality, grace, and tenderness, though perhaps for this very reason all the more dignity. Michelangelo's later style is more easily recognized in the Battle of the Centaurs, which represents a large group of figures, anatomically well drawn, engaged in a passionate struggle. It is said that in after years the artist, in referring to this group, expressed regret that he had not devoted himself exclusively to sculpture. He appears to have taken the conception for this work from a bronze relief of Bertoldo and to have imitated the style of Donatello. Michelangelo's work certainly recalls Donatello in the drapery of the Madonna above mentioned and in the realistic way in which the sentiment of this composition is expressed. After Lorenzo's death Michelangelo produced a marble Hercules of heroic size that was taken to Fontainebleau and has since disappeared. Thode, however, appears to have found the Crucifix which Michelangelo carved for the church of Santo Spirito. The body in this is almost entirely free from the cross; there is no intense pain expressed on the youthful face, and the hands and hair are not completely worked out. The St. John in the Wilderness, with the honeycomb, now at Berlin, is probably the San Giovannino that Michelangelo executed in Florence in 1495. The realistic modelling of the head and the beautiful lines of the body show a study of both classic and modern models. Shortly after this Michelangelo completed several figures for the shrine of St. Dominic which Niccolo dell' Arca had left unfinished. A figure of a pagan deity was the occasion of Michelangelo's first visit to Rome, and a statue of Bacchus carved by him on that occasion is extant at Florence. This work, which is the result of study of the antique, is merely a beautiful and somewhat intoxicated youth.

Far more important is the Pieta executed in 1499 for the French chapel in St. Peter's. A calm, peaceful expression of grief rests on all the figures of the group. The face of the mother has youthful beauty; the head is bowed but slightly, yet expressive of holy sorrow. Her drapery lies in magnificent folds under the body of the Saviour. The latter is not yet stiff and reveals but slight traces of the suffering endured, especially the noble countenance so full of Divine peace. Not the lips but the hand shows the intensity of the grief into which the mother's soul is plunged. When sixty years old Michelangelo desired to execute a Pieta, or, more properly, a Lamentation of Christ for his own tomb. The unfinished group is now in the Cathedral of Florence, and is throughout less ideally conceived than the Pieta just mentioned. The body of Christ is too limp, and Nicodemus and Mary Magdalen are somewhat hard in modelling. This Pieta was broken into pieces by the master, but was afterwards put together by other hands. Two circular reliefs of the Virgin and Child, one now in London and one in Florence, belong to the sculptor's youthful period. In the Florentine relief, especially, intensity of feeling is combined with a graceful charm. Mother and Child are evidently pondering a passage in Scripture which fills them with sorrow; the arms and head of the Boy rest on the book. A life-sized group of about the same date in the church of Our Lady (Eglise Notre-Dame) at Bruges shows the Madonna again, full of dignity and with lofty seriousness of mien, while the Child, somewhat larger than the one just mentioned, is absorbed in intense thought. In contrast to Raphael, Michelangelo sought to express Divine greatness and exalted grief rather than human charm. He worked entirely according to his own ideals. His creations recall classical Antiquity by a certain coldness, as well as by the strain of superhuman power that characterizes them.

Sculpture - Second Period

To Michelangelo's second creative period (beginning 1505) belongs the statue of Christ which he carved for the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It was sent to Rome in 1521 in charge of an assistant who was to add some last touches to the statue when it was put in position. The Saviour, a life-sized marble figure, holds the cross, sponge, and rod of hyssop. The face, earnest, almost hard, is turned to the left, as if saying: "My people, what have ye done to Me?" Properly however, the figure is not that of the suffering Saviour, but of the risen Saviour and therefore nude, according to the desire of the patron who have the commission. The age of the Renaissance, in its ardour for the nude, paid no regard to decorum. At a later date a bronze loin cloth, unfortunately too long, was placed on the statue. In conformity with the spirit in which the whole composition is conceived, the figure of Christ is not stiff and severe like the statue of an antique god, but expresses a resigned humanity. A youthful Apollo produced at about the same time has also little of the classic in its design. A dying Adonis comes nearer to classic models in its conception. But the gigantic David, the embodiment of fresh young daring, in reality a representation of a noble boy, resembles an antique god or hero. It can hardly be said that the colossal size, over twelve and a half feet, is suitable for a youth; however, the deed for which David is preparing, or more probably, the action which he has just completed, is a deed of courage. The right hand is half closed, the left hand with the sling seems to be going back to the shoulder, while the gaze follows the stone. The figure resembles that of an ancient athlete. The body is nude, and the full beauty of the lines of the human form is strikingly brought out. In 1508 Michelangelo agreed to carve the twelve Apostles in heroic size (about nine and a half feet high) for the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, but of the whole number only the figure of St. Matthew, a great and daring design, was hewn in the rough. Similarly, he executed but four of the saints which were to decorate the memorial chapel to Pius II and left the rest of the work unfinished. A bronze statue of David with the head of Goliath under his feet was sent to France and has since disappeared. A pen-and-ink sketch of this statue is still in the Louvre.

His powers fully matured, Michelangelo now entered the service of the popes and was entrusted with the carrying out of two great undertakings. In 1505 Julius II called him to Rome to design and erect for the pope a stately sepulchral monument. The monument was to be a four-sided marble structure in two curses, decorated with some forty figures of heroic size. Michelangelo spent eight months in Carrara superintending the sending of the marble to Rome. He hoped in carrying out this commission to execute a work worthy of classic times, one containing figures that would bear comparison with the then newly discovered Lacoon. His plans, however, were brought to nought by a sudden change of mind on the part of Julius, who now began to consider the rebuilding of St. Peter's after the designs of Bramante. Julius may be said to have driven Michelangelo from the Roman court. Fearful of the malice of enemies, Buonarroti fled in despair to Florence and, turning a deaf ear to the pope's entreaties to return to Rome, offered to go on with the work for the monument at Florence. To this, however, Julius would not listen. In his exasperation Michelangelo was on the point of going to Constantinople. However, at the invitation of the pope, in the latter part of 1506, he went to Bologna, where, amid the greatest difficulties and in straitened circumstances, he cast a bronze statue of Julius II, of heroic size. This effigy was destroyed during a revolt against Julius in 1511. Once more in Rome, he was obliged for the time being to abandon the scheme for the monument to Julius and, against his will, to decorate the Sistine Chapel with frescoes. Julius II lived only long enough after the completion of the frescoes to arrange for his monument in his will. After his death in 1513 a formal contract was made for the construction of the memorial. According to this new agreement the monument was no longer to be an independent structure, but was to be placed against the church wall in the form of a chapel. The plan for the structure was even more magnificent than the original design, but was in the end abandoned, both on account of its size and of other circumstances which arose. The new pope, Leo X, of the Medici family, was a friend of Michelangelo's youth and looked on him with much favour, but had new designs in reference to him. After Michelangelo had laboured for two years on the monument to Julius, Pope Leo, during a visit to Florence, commanded him, to construct a stately new facade for the church of San Lorenzo, the family burial place of the Medici. With tears in his eyes, Michelangelo agreed to this interruption of his great design. The building of the new facade was abandoned in 1520, but the sculptor returned to his former work for a time only. The short reign of Adrian VI was followed by the election to the papal throne of another early friend of Michelangelo, Giulio de' Medici, who took the name of Clement VII. Since 1520 Giulio de' Medici had desired to erect a family mortuary chapel in San Lorenzo. When be became pope he obliged Michelangelo to take up this task. The new commission was not unworthy of the sculptor's powers, yet an evil fate prevented this undertaking also from reaching its full completion. Michelangelo suffered unspeakably from the constant alteration of his plans; he was, moreover, beset by many detractors; the political disorders in his native city filled him with grief, and the years brought with them constantly increasing infirmities.

In 1545 the designs, some of which still exist, for the monument of Julius II were carried out on a much reduced scale. The monument is in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli; in the centre of the lower course of the monument between two smaller figures is placed the gigantic statue of Moses, which was originally intended for the upper course, where it would have made a much more powerful impression. When seen close by, the criticism may be made that the expression is too violent, there is no sufficient reason for the swollen veins in the left arm, the shoulders are too massive in comparison with the neck, the chin, and the forehead; that even the folds of the robe are unnatural. Yet, seen from a distance, it is precisely these features that produce the desired effect. The great statue, which is double life size, was intended to express the painfully restrained and mighty wrath of the leader of a stiff-necked people. It is plain that an allusion to the warlike prowess of Julius II was intended and that the sculptor here, as in many of his other undertakings, has embodied his own tremendous conception of force. The way in which the Tables of the Law are grasped, the bare arm and right knee, the heavy beard and the "horns" heighten the effect that is aimed at. The flanking figures of Rachel and Leah, symbols respectively of contemplative and active life, were carved by Michelangelo himself, but they are not as satisfactory as the Moses. The monument itself and the figures on the upper course were not executed by the great master, though they were worked out according to his suggestions. On the other hand, two shackled figures out of the series planned by the sculptor are in the Louvre, though incomplete. The Slaves were intended to typify the power of the pope in the domains of war and art, and were to stand in front of the hermae pillars, where the inverted consoles now are. In the Slaves in the Louvre the antithesis between resistance to the fetters and submission to the inevitable is expressed with remarkable skill. There are also in Florence some unfinished figures belonging to this monument, namely a victor kneeling on a fallen foe, and four other figures, which are merely blocked out. About the time of the completion of this monument Michelangelo carved a striking bust of Brutus as the hero of liberty. Michelangelo regarded the freedom of his native city as lost after the second return of the Medici from exile and the assumption of the control of affairs by Alessandro and Cosmo de' Medici. The sorrow this caused him suggested the bust of Brutus, and cast a shadow on the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici in the chapel spoken of above. The greater part of the work in the chapel, however, had been done before this time, and so the expression of embittered sorrow must be explained by the general depression of the artist not less than by his failure to realize his highest ideal, which also accounts for the gloom characteristic of his other creations.

Twelve figures included in the original design for the sepulchral monument of the Medici were never carved. According to Vasari's arrangement in 1563, a seated figure of Giuliano is placed in an upper niche of one of the monuments, while symbolical figures representing Day and Night recline on a sarcophagus below. If Michelangelo's words have been rightly understood, these symbolical figures are to be regarded as mourning for the untimely death of the duke, and as grieving that life for him had not been worth the living. "Not to see, nor to hear must be happiness for me", are the words attributed to Night, which is represented as a giantess sunk in heavy and uneasy slumber, and symbolized by a mask, an owl, and a bunch of poppy-heads. The other allegorical figure, Day, a man, is represented as having no desire to rouse himself to action. The plan of the second monument is similar to that of the one just described; the figures of Evening and Dawn make the same impression as those of Night and Day. The two Medicean dukes are ideally treated as ancient warriors, rather than portrayed as in life. In the statue of Giuliano it is the superb modelling of the different parts that delights the eye; in the statue of Lorenzo the charm lies in the pose and the way in which the face is shadowed by the helmet. This figure of Lorenzo bears the name of Il Penseroso (the Meditative). Against the wall of the chapel stands the unfinished and really unsuccessful Madonna and Child; the pose of the Madonna is unique.

Michelangelo once said that he was no painter; on another occasion he declared he was no architect, but in reality he was both. About 1503 he painted a Holy Family, now in Florence in which the Madonna holds the Child over her shoulder to St. Joseph who stands behind. In this canvas Michelangelo departs from the traditional representation of the Holy Family, by the quaint grouping of nude figures in the background even more than by the entirely new pose of the Mother and Child. An Entombment of Christ:, now in London, is unfinished. Like Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest painter of that period, Michelangelo made a large number of sketches. He also entered into competition with that famous artist by undertaking (1504) a battle-piece which was to adorn the wall opposite Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari in the great council chamber of the palace of the Signory, called the Palazzo del Priori, and now the Town-hall of Florence. As Michelangelo just at this date entered the service of the popes, the cartoon he prepared was never carried out and is now lost. After years of disagreement with Julius II the painting of the Sistine Chapel was begun in 1508, and in 1512 the ceiling was uncovered. Michelangelo, who was not a fesco-painter, exerted all his powers of mind and body, abandoning his preference for the effects of sculpture in order to express without assistance and in defiance of the envious, the full ideal of his conceptions in this unwonted medium. Creation, the Fall, and the preparation for the coming of the Redeemer form the subject of the fresco. The painter first divided and enclosed the ceiling with painted architecture which formed a fame for the frescoes; the cornice for this frame on the broad side of the chapel is adorned with the figures of naked youths. The nine fields of the smooth vault contain the history of the sinful human race as far as Noe. Around the dome, between the lunettes, are vaulted triangular spaces or pendentives; in these are placed prophets and sibyls, together with boy-angels, all pointing to the approaching redemption. In the lunettes over the windows and in the vaulted triangular spaces over the lunettes are represented the ancestors of Christ. The subject, arrangement, and technical excellence of these frescoes have always excited the greatest admiration. The Divine, the prophetic, and the human are here most happily expressed; the conception of the first is original; the prophets and sibyls have wonderful individuality, and great skill is shown in handling the drapery, while human beings are represented in animated action. The architect created the beautiful division of the space and the exact proportions, the sculptor produced the anatomically correct figures, and the painter knew how to blend forms and colours into perfect harmony. After the completion of the work Michelangelo could no longer regret that it had been forced upon him against his will. Equally famous is the great fresco of the Last Judgment which he painted upon the altar-wall of the chapel (1535-41). In this fresco, however, the nudity of the figures aroused objection, and they have been painted over by various hands. The Last Judgment has been more blackened and disfigured by time than the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Architecture

The commission given by Leo X for the rebuilding of the facade of the church of San Lorenzo, which has been already mentioned, ended in a bitter disappointment for Michelangelo. He produced very rapidly a fine design for the front and made the first preparations for the work. After four years (in 1520) the contract was rescinded without anything having been accomplished. However, the commission that Michelangelo received from Giulio de' Medidi, afterwards Clement VII, for a mortuary chapel for the Medici family was not revoked, and the chapel was completed in 1524. It is a simple building surmounted by a dome. Its only purpose is to hold the monuments. Michelangelos design for the enlargement of San Giovanni de' Fiorentini at Rome was never used. He also produced designs for the Piazza of the Campidoglio (Capitol) and the Porta Pia. It is a remarkable fact that the citizens of Florence in 1529 appointed him engineer-in-chief of the fortifications of the city. Of more importance was his appointment as chief architect for the reconstruction of St. Peter's by Pope Paul III, after the death of Sangallo (1546). He held this position seventeen years. Michelangelo carried out, with some changes, Bramante's plans for the new building and rejected those of Sangallo. His own work is notably the magnificent dome. He completed the drum, but not, however the upper dome. The clay model made by his own hands is still to be seen at the Vatican.

Death brought to an end a life filled with fame and success, but also replete with suffering and sorrow; a life on which a great genius made demands which could not be satisfied. The ambitions of Michelangelo were insatiable, not so much owing to his desire for renown, as to his almost gigantic striving after the absolute ideal of art. For this reason Michelangelo's creations bear the stamp of his subjectivity and of his restless efforts to attain the loftiest ideals by new methods. He accomplished much that was extraordinary in three or four departments of art, but at the same time broke through many limitations prescribed by the laws of beauty in all arts, wilfully disregarding, at times, in his modelling of the human figure, even that fidelity to nature which he esteemed so highly. The way he pointed was dangerous, inasmuch as it led directly to extravagance, which, though perhaps endurable in Michelangelo obscured even the fame of Raphael; he swayed not only his own age, but succeeding generations. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Michelangelo (Buonarroti). and Catholic Encyclopedia (1908)]


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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

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Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.


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Biographical

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was a celebrated Italian Renaissance architect, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter. He can be seen as the archetype of the Renaissance Man and has been defined as a genius. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite". Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore, his full name was 'Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci,' which means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself simply signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Presumably he did not use his father's name because he was an illegitimate child. The son of a wealthy landowner and a peasant girl, Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He became a painter's apprentice and later an independent painter in Florence. From 1482 to 1499 he worked for the Duke of Milan and maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. He returned to Florence, entered the services of Cesare Borgia (also called "Duca Valentino" and son of Pope Alexander VI) as military architect and engineer, and eventually (1506) returned to Milan. From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael and Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact with these artists however. In 1516, he entered the services of king Francois I of France at the Royal Chateau at Amboise. He died on May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France and is buried in the Chapel of St. Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Leonardo appears to never have had intimate relations with women. In 1476 he was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a 17-year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He was, together with three other young men, charged with homosexual conduct and acquitted because of lack of evidence. For a time Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of Florence's "Officers of the Night" - a kind of renaissance vice squad.

Leonardo is well known for his paintings, such as Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, now at the Louvre in Paris, France) and the Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan). Only seventeen of his paintings, and none of his statues, survive. He spent many years making plans and models for a monumental 8m high horse statue in bronze, to be erected in Milan. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. Based on private initiative, a similar statue was completed according to his plans in 1999 in New York, given to Milan and erected there. Maybe even more impressive than his artistic work are his detailed studies in anatomy, engineering, bird flight and many other areas. He recorded his results in detailed notebooks which combine art and science. He was left-handed and used mirror writing, indicating that his notes were intended for his own reference. His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. His notebooks contain drawings of several innovative machines, among them various flying machines, machine guns and a cog-wheeled device that has been interpreted as a mechanical calculator. Leonardo did not publish or otherwise distribute the contents of these notebooks. The notebooks remained obscure until the 19th century, and were not directly of value to the development of science and technology until that time. On this basis, L. Sprague de Camp, in his book, The Ancient Engineers, considered Leonardo not the first modern engineer, but "the last of the ancient ones", pointing out that after Leonardo's time the practice of disseminating and publishing scientific discoveries began in earnest. In 1994, one of da Vinci's notebooks was purchased by American entrepreneur, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, for US$25 million.

Detailed Biography

Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scholar, and one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance; born at Vinci, near Florence, in 1452; died at Cloux, near Amboise, France, 2 May, 1519, natural son of Ser Piero, a notary, and a peasant woman. He was reared carefully by his father, and was remarkably gifted and precocious. Few artists owed so little to circumstances and teachers. He was quite self-made. His work was small in bulk, and what remains may be counted on fingers of both hands. Few men had such varied talent and amassed such encyclopedic knowledge; his method as an artist was original with him, science was the measure of beauty, he combined fact with poetry and made use of both to carry on wide investigations in nature and to reproduce life according to the very laws of life. There are three periods in Leonardo's biography: The Florentine period (1469-82); the Milanese period (1483-99); the Nomadic period (1500-19).

I. THE ARTIST

Florentine Period (1469-82)

At an early age, doubtless about his fifteenth year, Leonardo entered Verrocchio's studio which about 1465 was the foremost in the city. Among his associates was Pietro Vanucci called Perugino. A sculptor and painter, Verrocchio was not an artist of the highest genius, but he played an important part in the history of art. The contemporary of Castagno and Pollaiulo, he centralized their labours, codified their efforts, and circulated the results of their studies; in a certain sense Florentine naturalism was organized in his studio. The work of both generations was summed up in a work common to master and pupil, Verrocchio's "Baptism of Christ", in the Academy of Florence, wherein Leonardo painted the face of one of the angels who hold the garments of Jesus. In the midst of a work which, although a conscientious study, is dull and prosaic this ravishing countenance shines with a divine life. Under these conditions young Leonardo acquired the technique of his craft, all the progress attained by the Florentine School about the middle of the fifteenth century, but he gave to it a new value and incomparable beauty. As Verrocchio's collaborator in all branches of art he assisted in the preliminary studies and the preparatory researches for the famous equestrian statue of the condottiere Colleone. He was also admitted to the celebrated garden of the Medicis, where they had gathered a collection of antiquities, then the foremost in the world, and which they had, moreover, made a museum and a school, or academy, of fine arts. The young artist nevertheless almost entirely escaped the superstition of Antiquity, and this is a clear proof of his wonderful independence. The artists of the next generation, especially Michelangelo, scarcely beheld life save through the marble veil of Graeco-Roman sculpture; Leonardo, on the other hand, borrowed almost nothing from the past; a few details in a candelabrum in the small "Annunciation" of the Louvre, rare sketches such as the "Dancers" of the Academy of Venice, a warrior's head at London (British Museum), these constitute nearly the whole of his debt to Antiquity. In this sense Leonardo is the first of the "moderns".

We possess very few of the works of his youth. Apart from the face of the angel in the "Baptism of Christ" spoken of above, we can ascribe to him with certainty only the delicate miniature "Annunciation" of the Louvre, the portrait of a young woman in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna, and two small terra-cottas in the South Kensington Museum, London; a "Madonna and Child", and a bust of St. John the Baptist. Drawings have preserved for us the traces of other projects, e.g., in "Adoration of the Shepherds" (drawing at the Louvre), but we have almost no information concerning this period. A landscape drawing dated 1573 and another study dated 1578 (Uffizi) are the first certain dates we encounter in his life. The following note has also been found: ". . . bre 1578 cominciai le due Madonne"; but no one knows what became of these Madonnas, nor even if they were executed. However, a great many studies, leaves covered with sketches, heads of young women, children playing with cats, etc., show the direction of his researches. He had already conceived this type of mother and child in which the divine expression results only from human race and the poetry of life carried to its highest degree. This was the formula of the Renaissance, of the Madonnas of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto, and which Leonardo himself soon applied in the immortal masterpieces, the "Virgin of the Rocks" and "St. Anne and the Blessed Virgin".

Milanese Period (1483-99)

In 1481 Ludovico il Moro assumed in the name of his nephew, Gian Galeazzo, the regency of the Duchy of Milan. He was one of the most remarkable princes in that age of tyrants of genius: clever, magnificent, ambitious, and cruel. A letter of which a copy forms part of the celebrated "Codex Atlanticus", in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, has preserved the terms in which Leonardo offered his services to this formidable lord; among other terms were read:

(1) I have a process for constructing very light, portable bridges, for the pursuit of the enemy; others more solid, which will resist fire and assault and may be easily set in place and taken to pieces. I also know ways of burning and destroying those of the enemy. . . (4) I can also construct a very manageable piece of artillery which projects inflammable materials, causing great damage to the enemy and also great terror because of the smoke . . . (8)Where the used of cannon is impracticable I can replace them with catapults and engines for casting shafts with wonderful and hitherto unknown effect; briefly, whatever the circumstances I can contrive countless methods of attack. (9) In the event of a naval battle I have numerous engines of great power both for attack and defense: vessels which are proof against the hottest fire, powder or steam. (10) In times of peace I believe that I can equal anyone in architecture, whether for the building of public or private monuments. I sculpture in marble, bronze and terra cotta; in painting I can do what another can do, it matters not who he may be. Moreover I pledge myself to execute a bronze horse to the eternal memory of your father and the very illustrious House of Sforza, and if any of the above things seem impracticable or impossible I offer to give a test of it in your Excellency's park or in any other place pleasing to your lordship, to whom I commend myself in all humility.

Leonardo was at this time thirty years of age and very handsome. He was an accomplished gentleman, and had a keen mind for the invention of fables. His contemporarie, for example the storyteller Bandello, relate the charms of his conversation. He was a musician, being given to improvising verses while accompanying himself on a lute of his own invention, shaped like a bucranium and possessing wonderful sonorousness. For the fetes, ballets, and amusements, and interludes of which the Renaissance was so fond, Leonardo was unequalled. At the time of Louis XII's entry into Milan a mechanical lion crossed the banquet hall, halted before him a shower of lilies. This machine Leonardo had invented. Such was Leonardo when towards the end of 1482 he entered the service of Ludovico il Moro. One of his earliest Milanese works was the delightful "Woman with a Marten", which is believed to be the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico's mistress, and which is now at Cracow, in the collection of Count Czartorisky. Unfortunately, the work has been much injured by restorations, but it is the first truly modern work of its kind, wherein feminine grace, subtlety of analysis, refinement of the moral personality, and not merely resemblance of features, constitute the subject of the picture. The pretty profile of "Beatrice d'Este" at the Ambrosian and the so-called "Lucrezia Crivelli" (also called "La Belle Ferroniere") of the Louvre have nothing in common with Leonardo.

At Milan, also, in the early years of his sojourn there, he completed his first large picture, the wonderful "Virgin of the Rocks". Besides copies there are two of these pictures in existence, differing somewhat in details, one at the Louvre and the other at the National Gallery. There have been endless discussions with regard to their authenticity. The truth is that they are both originals, the first in point of time being that of the Louvre, the execution of which, extremely minute in detail, still shows something of the somewhat dry methods of Verrocchio's studio. The other and somewhat later one repeats the same motif for the convent of San Francesco, Milan. On the side panels Ambrogio da Predis painted angels playing on musical instruments. These side panels are with the central picture at the National Gallery. But Leonardo did not finish the picture he had begun, its Madonna and the landscape are the work of a pupil and a mediocre pupil. On the other hand the angel kneeling behind the Infant Jesus whose attitude differs from that of the Paris Angel, is one of the artist's most perfect creations. Both pictures are poetical. The fantastic landscape, the dolomite grotto of prismatic rocks, the ineffiable art of the "pyramidal" grouping, the often copied triangle of which the base is formed by two beautiful children, and the summit of the head of a smiling virgin; the grace and life of the motif, the selection of the moment, the perfection of the model, the depth of the atmosphere, and even the smallest details of the herbs, the stones, the slight ripples in a surface of transparent water -- all this endows the "Virgin of the Rocks" with an imperishable charm, making it one of the works which open a new world to the imagination and fixing eternally the poetry of the subject. Without Leonardo Raphael's "Madonna", his "Belle Jardiniere" and "Madonna of the Goldfinch" would not exist and even their charm does not equal that of their sublime model.

Leonardo's most important work at Milan is his "Last Supper" which he painted in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie. This masterpiece is now little more than a ruin, the disaster being largely due to the painter's methods. Fresco seemed to him too summary and hurried a process and he painted in oil on the wall. Dampness soon soaked into and ruined the work, and as early as the middle of the sixteenth century the damage was irreparable. Vandalism did the rest. In 1652 a door was opened in the wall mutilating the feet of Christ and two Apostles. In 1726 and 1770 daubers wrought a masterpiece of injury with their restorations, and finally in 1797 a French army occupied the convent and made a stable of the refectory; even Bonaparte's orders could not prevent the men from mutilating the "Last Supper"; such was the long martyrdom of the masterpiece. Only in recent years have precautions been taken to preserve the remains; the wall has been separated and the hall dried but this tardy care threatens to complete the destruction of the picture. It is to be feared that it will scale and crumble to dust. However there exist /bin/bash: grpe: command not found memorials and copies of it. Few works have exercised a similar fascination and been as often reproduced from the beginning. Some of these copies have been collected in the refectory of Sta Maria delle Grazie; among them the best of all, which was formerly at Castellazzonear Milan, is believed to be by Solari. An excellent copy is preserved at Ponte Capriasca, a neighbouring parish of Lugano. The Academy of London has one, which was formerly at the Certosa of Pavia and attributed to Oggionno or to Gianpietrino. There are two at Paris, one at the Louvre, and the other at St. Germain l'Auxerrois. All there copies, which are fairly correct as regards the composition, vary in detail and especially show great difference of colouring.

Still more valuable are the separate studies of heads, although the most of them may be originals; the most important series are at Strasburg and Weimar. The famous head of Christ in crayon at the Brera seems to be a study of Sodoma or of Cesare da Sesto and to have no relation to the "Last Supper". None of these helps to the study of the masterpiece should be neglected, but despite its ruinous condition there are impressions which can only be given by the picture itself, which still preserves the atmosphere, the moving tonality, a peculiar pathos which seems the sorcery or presence of genius. Its extraordinary superiority is apparent when we compare it with all the extant "Last Supper" with those of Giotto, Castagno, or Ghirlandajo. The old representations become antiquated and obsolete and a new order of ideas is inaugurated. With regard to its subject the theme of the "Last Supper" may be divided into two distinct movements: the institution of the Sacrament and the "Unus vestrum". Leonardo has chosen the moment at which Christ declares that there is a traitor in the company. We are shown the effect of a speech on twelve persons, on twelve different temperaments: a single ray and twelve reflections (Burckhardt). The subject has been well analyzed by Goethe . It is clear that in a drama of this class, a kind of "seated" drama, of which the subject is interior disquiet, surprise, anguish, it suffices to show the persons at half length; busts, face, and hands suffice to manifest the moral emotion; the table with its damask cloth by almost completely concealing the lower limbs offered the ingenious artist a resource which he knew how to use. The difficulty under these conditions was to succeed in constituting a whole with these thirteen figures seated side by side; the greatest weakness of the old painters was composition; each table companion seemed isolated from his neighbour.

With an instinct of genius Leonardo divided his actors into two groups, two on each side of Christ, and he linked these groups so as to imbue the general outline with a certain continuity, animated by a single movement. The whole is like the successive undulations of a vast wave of emotions. The fatal word uttered by Christ seated at the middle of the table produces tumult which symmetrically repels and agitates the two nearest groups and which lapses as it is communicated to the two groups farther removed. The intimate composition of each group is no less wonderful. Stupefaction, sorrow, indignation, denial, vengeance, the variety of expression which the painter has gathered together in this picture, the depth of the analysis, the veracity of the types and physiognomies, the power and the accumulation of contrasts are without parallel in all previous art; the countless studies made for each piece denote in the author a world of new preoccupations. Each head is the "monograph" of a human passion, a plate of moral anatomy. It will be readily understood how such a work cost the artist ten years of preparation. None ever summarized in a single picture a similar total of life. The hands possess incomparable beauty and eloquence. Here for the first time and for the whole future was created the definitive formula of historic painting.

On the wall opposite the "Last Supper" Leonardo had painted (1495), in the great Montorfano Crucifixion, portraits of Ludovico il Moro, his wife Beatrice d'Este, and their sons Maximillian and Francesco. Only whitish traces and uncertain lineaments of these portraits remain. Finally in 1893 Professor Muller Walde discovered in the castle of Milan under a rough cast of the hall of the Torre delle Asse a whole decoration painted by Leonardo in 1498; it is a trellis of laurel, vines, and foliage. The artist conveyed the illusion of a hall of verdure. To this period likewise belong the studies of St. Anne. Together with the cult of the Immaculate Conception the end of the fifteenth century saw the rise of that of the mother of the Blessed Virgin. The work of the learned Trithmius, "De laudibus sanctissimae matris Annae", dates from 1494 (cf. Shankell, "Der Kultus der heilige Annas am susgange Mittelalters", Freiburg, 1893). Leonardo composed two different versions of this subject, one of them being now at the Louvre, the other at the London Academy. That of the Louvre is unfinished. The Virgin is only sketched, the head of St. Anne alone showing that modelling in which Leonardo is unrivalled. Art possesses few groups more charming than that of these two women, one seated on the other's knees. Together with the "Last Supper" Leonardo's greatest Milanese work must have been the equestrian statue of Ludovico il Moro, the famous "bronze horse" which he pledged himself to cast in the letter quoted above. He worked on this constantly for more than fifteen years (1483-99). A plaster model was cast in 1489, but the artist was dissatisfied within and made another which was moulded in 1493. He then turned his attention to preparations for casting. But the French came in 1499 and besides driving out the duke they broke the plaster model of his statue. We have only countless sketches, studies, and drawings of this masterpiece and Leonardo's books dealing with the anatomy and science of the horse.

Nomadic Period (1500-19)

By Ludovico's fall Leonardo was left unemployed, and he was in no hast to seek another position and there began for him a period of wandering. Completed works grow more and more rare, each of them showing traces of more complicated ambitions. From this period date most of his scientific works. After fifty he began to gather the elements of a new synthesis which was never completed. The last twenty years of his life were given to this activity and these experiences. From Milan, Leonardo went to Mantua where he sketched (1500) the portrait of the Marchesa Isabella d'Este, the cartoon of which is one of the wonders of the Louvre. Then he went to Venice (1501) and thence to Florence; from there he entered the service of Caesar Borgia as military engineer and head of the corps of engineers in his Romagna campaign. After Caesar's fall he returned to Florence and seems to have stayed there for three or four years. Then he began see-sawing between Florence and Milan, finally taking up his residence in the latter city where he was called by a law-suit concerning the property left by his father. In 1514 we find him at Rome, but at the end of the year he returned to Florence; in 1515 came journeys to Pavia, Bologna, and a last stay for some months at Milan. Finally in 1516 he accepted the invitation of King Francis I to come to France and left Italy, never to return.

During these wandering years there are only two places where we find undoubted proofs of his activity, at Florence (1501-06) and Milan (1506-13). At Florence he executed to of his most famous works now unfortunately lost of destroyed. The Seigniory of Florence had for the decoration of its council hall opened a contest for the portrayal of two patriotic subjects drawn from the annals of the Republic. One was an occurrence of the war against Pisa in 1304 and was confided to Michelangelo; the other commemorated the victory of Anghiari Maria Visconti. This was the subject treated by Leonardo. The rival cartoons were exhibited in 1505 and were an event in the history of the school. All the youth of the artist world hastened to copy them, but in the midst of all this Michelangelo was called to Rome and abandoned his work. Warned by his experience with the "Last Supper" Leonardo refrained from painting in oil, but would not be satisfied with fresco; he fancied some process of encaustic (one of the rare instances in him of the influence of the ancients). The attempt was unfortunate. The coat did not dry and the colours flowed together. But the artist was not discouraged and continued his work. The cartoon still existed in the eighteenth century; it is not known when it or that of Michelangelo disappeared. The latter is known only through a famous engraving by Marcantoni Raimondi. Leonardo did not fare so well. Apart from countless sketches there exists only a single group of his work, that of the knights of the "Battle of the Standard" which has been preserved by a drawing of Rubens (Louvre) and an engraving of Edelinck. Nevertheless there are few more important battle pieces in the art work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All the chasses of Rubens and the Flemish school are but variations and repetitions of this furious melee. The Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi is unfortunately only a sketch, a rough cartoon, chiefly interesting for the information it gives concerning the basis of Leonardo's painting and his manner of preparing a picture. It belongs to the same period (about 1505) as that work of the artists which is most popular, most complete, and most closely associated with his name as that which best sums up in a woman's face all the research, grace, and seductiveness of his genius. This is the portrait of Madonna (Monna) Lisa, wife of Ser Giocondo, and universally known as Jaconde (La Gioconda), and which, acquired directly from the artist by Francis I, and preserved for three centuries at Fontainebleau, disappeared, 21 August, 1911, under mysterious circumstances, from the Louvre, where it had been since 1793.

The numerous copies of this enchanting face, those of the museums of Madrid, Munich, Quimper, and St. Petersburg, the Torlonia Gallery at Rome, and the Mozzi Gallery, Florence, of the Villa Sommariva on Lake Lugano, of the Hume and Woodburn collections at London, can scarcely console us for the loss of the masterpiece. Leonardo never painted anything with more love. He devoted four years to this single face. Vasari relates what delicate care he took to amuse his graceful model during the sittings and to bring to her lips that imperceptible smile, which has been taken to mean such depth and perfidy and which is merely the serene expression of a harmonious soul, of moral peace and health, with a slight tinge of Florentine irony. Its place in the Louvre is occupied by another of Leonardo's works, one of the last really authentic of his productions, the enigmatic St. John Baptist. Here the depth and complexity of his intentions, above all the systematic use of chiaroscuro, lead to odd and equivocal results. But the spoiled work formulated the whole language of chiaroscuro, and fixed its laws with a clearness which has never been surpassed.

The following pictures preserve the memory of others of Leonardo's works of which the originals are lost. The St. John the Baptist or Bacchus full length, seated, amid a landscape; the picture belongs to a date previous to 1505 and is contemporary with the Giaconda. Ancient copies are at the Louvre and at Sant'Eustorgio, Milan. The Leda; same period; copy (by Bacchiacca?) at the Casino Borghese; others in the Ruble collection, Paris, and the Oppler collection, Cologne; drawing by Raphael at Windsor. The Resurrection at the Museum of Berlin is apocryphal. The famous wax bust required in 1909 by the same museum is the work of an English forger who worked about 1840. Finally the charming wax Head of the Wicar Museum, at Lille, belongs probably to the school of Canova, which robs it of none of its exquisite grace. The last picture of Leonardo's which we possess is the splendid sketch of St. Jerome in the desert in the collection at the Vatican. It dates from 1514. Leonardo spent the last three years of his unquiet life in France. The king gave him a pension of 7000 crowns and had given him a dwelling in the Chateau of Cloux near Amboise. At this period the master was very tired, and his faculties were declining. He was still engaged with the question of canalization and studied ways of regulating the course of the Loire and making it navigable. He died amid these occupations at the age of 67. A legend, popularized by Ingres's picture, relates that he passed away in the arms of Francis I; but on that day the king was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

II. THE SCHOLAR

Art represents only a small part of Leonardo's activity. Always and especially at Milan from 1506 his genius was absorbed in scientific matters, but these researches had begun in Verrocchio's studio, as is shown by the letter of 1482 to Ludovico il Moro. It is impossible to give here a detailed analysis even of his principal works, for his studies included all branches of knowledge. On the other hand their strictly personal nature, the secret and deliberately cabbalistic practices with which he loved to surround them, the methods of abbreviation and cryptography of which he made use in order to conceal his discourse (he wrote from right to left, in an inverted hand which could probably only be read with the aid of a mirror), all this mystery removes a great deal of interest from the treasures of observation which Leonardo consigned to countless manuscripts. In fact by refusing to disclose his discoveries, by wishing to retain the monopoly of his processes and secrets, he condemned this portion of his work to oblivion and sterility. However, his art is in so many ways connected with his science that the former cannot be known without an acquaintance with the latter. In his drawings of flowers, plants, landscapes, and in his studies of persons, it is impossible to say whether it is the botanist, the geologist, the anatomist or the artist who interests us most. In Leonardo, knowledge and art are never separate. The characteristics frequently seen in the men of the Renaissance, the encyclopedic turn of mind so striking in a Leone Battista Alberti, a Bramante, or a Durer, is never more brilliantly evident than in Leonardo da Vinci. His method is based exclusively on observation and experiment. He recognized no mistress save nature. Neither in science nor in art did he admit the authority of either the ancients or the scholastics.

Furthermore he clearly understood: (1) that science should be subject to formulation in mathematical laws; (2) that science has power over nature, and ability to foresee phenomena and at need to reproduce or imitate them. This granted, there were few questions which this tireless mind did not study, and to which he did not bring ingenious views and new solutions. Often he perceived truths established by modern science. Long before Bacon and with a far different range of application he invented the positive sciences. As a geologist, for example, he discerned that there was a "history of the earth", that the outside of the globe was not formed at a single stroke, and in this history, guided by studies of hydraulics, he successfully saw through the function of water. He divined the true nature of fossils. In botany he formulated the laws of the alternation of leaves, that of the eccentricity of trunks, and that of solar attraction. As an anatomist (he had dissected nine bodies) he gave figures concerning the insertion of the muscles and their movements which specialists still admire for their accuracy. He devised the earliest theories concerning the muscular movements of the cardiac valves. By his studies in embryology he laid the foundations for comparative anatomy. In mechanics he understood the power of steam and if he did not invent any action machines he at least made it an agent of propulsion, for he invented a steam cannon. He composed explosives and shells. But perhaps his most "modern" title to fame lies in his having laid down the principle of aviation, devoting years to this task. He foresaw nearly all the forms, parachute and montgolfier, but by boldly adhering to the "heavier than air" principle he constructed the first artificial bird. Long series of studies analyze with astonishing clearness the flight of the bird, the form and movement of the wing Leonardo distinguishes between the soaring flight and that made by successive flappings, in each case defining the action of the air and the part played by it; he understands that the bird rises obliquely on an aerial inclined plane, forming under it a kind of angle and that currents form in the concavity of the wing which serve it as momentary supports to recover its equilibrium, like the waves on which the car is rested to propel the boat.

Leonardo was more a scholar than a philosopher, nevertheless his wholly naturalistic science implies a certain philosophy, which if it is neither the kind of paganism nor the materialism in which the Renaissance so often resulted cannot be called truly Christian. Either through prudence or through scorn of abstract ideas Leonardo seems to have avoided declaring himself on this subject. Nevertheless it is easy to see that the idea of miracles is repugnant to his imagination. He admits or would logically admit only an immanent Providence, a God who refrains from intervention in the universe like to God of Lucretius or the Stoics. It is also certain, and he does not conceal it, that he did not like the monks. However, as an artist, he accommodated himself perfectly to the Christian tradition. His art, though not at all mystic, is in its forms certainly less pagan than that of Raphael or even Michelangelo. He died a very Christian death.

His manuscripts are now divided among several depositories. The most important are (1) the gigantic collection in the Ambrosian Library of Milan called the Codex Atlanticus consisting of 393 folio pages on which are pasted more than 1600 leaves of notes; (2) at Paris in the library of the Institut twelve manuscripts numbered from A to M; (3) at London three volumes at South Kensington, a manuscript of 566 pages at the British Museum, and at Windsor splendid anatomical plates and drawings. Other books are in the possession of Count Manzoni and the Earl of Leicester. The treatise on painting is his first work. It was printed at Paris in folio in 1651 in the Italian text by Raphael du Fresne and almost immediately translated into French by Freart de Chambray. More correct editions have since been issued, notably that of Manzi (1817), and thatof Ludwig made according to a Vatican manuscript (3 vols., at Vienna, 1883). Ventura compiled a memoir on Leonardo's scientific works properly so called which he presented to the Institute in 1797. He announced that this would soon be followed by the publication of original documents, but this promise was not kept. In 1872 the Italian Government issued a limited number of copies of a de luxe work, "Saggio dell' opere di L. da V.", containing extracts from the Codex Atlanticus with twenty-four facsimiles. In 1889 J.P. Richter issued at London, under the title "The Literary Works of Lenoardo da Vinci",two quarto volumes comprising more than 1500 extracts and fragments of manuscripts. Systematically classified, with beautiful reproductions.

However, Ravaisson-Mollier had undertaken the entire publication of the manuscripts of the Institut in a model edition with facsimiles of the original text, transcription in ordinary characters and French translation (6 vols. for., Paris, 1881-92). The example at Milan a manuscript of Leonardo's belonging to Prince Trivulzio. And since 1892 the Accademia dei Lincei has published completely the Codex Atlanticus. If the London manuscript were published we should have as complete knowledge as possible of this extraordinary man who united in himself the triple or quadruple genius of an Apelles, an Aristides, a Euclid, and an Archimedes. Mention must be made of Leonardo's artistic influence. His influence on painting was supreme; it has been shown above what paths his genius opened to historical painting, to portraiture, to scenes of sanctity, landscapes, and the art of chiaroscuro. But this general action, profound as it was, did not give rise to a school at Florence. Leonardo's pupils and imitators properly so called must be sought for at Milan. There were very numerous, and nothing enables us to judge better of his ascendency than the revolution of taste which his appearance determined in Milanese painting. The national school of Foppa, Zenale, Borgognone was suddenly cast into the shade, eclipsed by a host of disciples, among them Solario, Ambrogio da Predis, Cesare de Sesto, Marco d'Oggione, Boltraffio, some of them very gifted and talented men. To them we owe the multitude of copies which often take the place of lost works of the master; but only two or three pupils attained an absolute independent expression, and were other than reflections of Leonardo: these included the gentle and prolific Bernardino Luini and the troubled, passionate, and very unequal Sodoma. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Leonardo da Vinci and Catholic Encyclopedia (1912).]

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Malleus Maleficarum (c 1484)

Quotation

If a man has laid a charge of witchcraft and has not justified it, he upon whom the witchcraft is laid shall go to the holy river; he shall plunge into the holy river and if the holy river overcome him, he who accused him shall take to himself his house.

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Summary

The Malleus Maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witchcraft") was the classic witch-hunters manual, published in 1487. It was compiled by two Dominican friars, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, and prefaced by the papal bull Summis desiderantes that had been issued by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. The book begins with a discussion of the nature of witchcraft. Women, by their weaker nature and inferior intellect, were naturally more prone to the lure of Satan. Some things confessed by witches, such as animal transformations, were mere delusions induced by the devil to ensnare them; other acts were real, such as causing storms and destroying crops. On the question of whether demons could father children on witches, they came to an ingenious conclusion. Demons could not possibly father children themselves, but a demon in the form of a succubus could collect semen, which would then be used later by the same demon in a male form to impregnate the witch - demonic artificial insemination. The style is totally serious, and utterly humourless: one section quotes a story that is plainly an anti-clerical joke as if it were a real occurrence. The next section deals with the methods of dealing with witches. It covers how much belief to place in witnesses' testimonies, the need to eliminate malicious accusations, and the reassurance, that as representatives of God, the witch can have no power over the authorities investigating her. It covers details of how to elicit confessions, including the sequence of torture and questioning to be used. The book is notorious for its use in the witchhunts, but its main influence was as a codification of existing beliefs and practices.

Witchcraft

It is not easy to draw a clear distinction between magic and witchcraft. Both are concerned with the producing of effects beyond the natural powers of man by agencies other than the Divine But in witchcraft, as commonly understood, there is involved the idea of a diabolical pact or at least an appeal to the intervention of the spirits of evil. In such cases this supernatural aid is usually invoked either to compass the death of some obnoxious person, or to awaken the passion of love in those who are the objects of desire, or to call up the dead, or to bring calamity or impotence upon enemies, rivals, and fancied oppressors. This is not an exhaustive enumeration, but these represent some of the principal purposes that witchcraft has been made to serve at nearly all periods of the world's history.

In the traditional belief, not only of the dark ages, but of post-Reformation times, the witches or wizards addicted to such practices entered into a compact with Satan, adjured Christ and the Sacraments, observed "the witches' sabbath" - performing infernal rites which often took the shape of a parody of the Mass or the offices of the Church - paid Divine honour to the Prince of Darkness, and in return received from him preternatural powers, such as those of riding through the air on a broomstick, assuming different shapes at will, and tormenting their chosen victims, while an imp or "familiar spirit" was placed at their disposal, able and willing to perform any service that might be needed to further their nefarious purposes.

The belief in witchcraft and its practice seem to have existed among all primitive peoples. Both in ancient Egypt and in Babylonia it played a conspicuous part, as existing records plainly show. It will be sufficient to quote a short section from the recently recovered Code of Hammurabi (about 2000 B.C.). It is there prescribed,

If a man has laid a charge of witchcraft and has not justified it, he upon whom the witchcraft is laid shall go to the holy river; he shall plunge into the holy river and if the holy river overcome him, he who accused him shall take to himself his house.

In the Holy Scripture references to witchcraft are frequent, and the strong condemnations of such practices which we read there do not seem to be based so much upon the supposition of fraud as upon the "abomination" of the magic in itself. (See Deuteronomy 18:11-12; Exodus 22:18, "wizards thou shalt not suffer to live" - A.V. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live".) The whole narrative of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor (I Kings 28) implies the reality of the witch's evocation of the shade of Samuel; and from Leviticus 20:27: "A man or woman in whom there is a pythonical or divining spirit, dying let them die: they shall stone them: Their blood be upon them", we should naturally infer that the divining spirit was not a mere imposture. The prohibitions of sorcery in the New Testament leave the same impression (Galatians 5:20, compared with Apocalypse 21:8; 22:15; and Acts 8:9; 13:6). Supposing that the belief in witchcraft were an idle superstition, it would be strange that the suggestion should nowhere be made that the evil of these practices only lay in the pretending to the possession of powers which did not really exist.

We are led to draw the same conclusion from the attitude of the early Church. Probably that attitude was not a little influenced by the criminal legislation of the Empire as well as by Jewish feeling. The law of the Twelve Tables already assumes the reality of magical powers, and the terms of the frequent references in Horace to Canidia allow us to see the odium in which such sorceresses were held. Under the Empire, in the third century, the punishment of burning alive was enacted by the State against witches who compassed another person's death through their enchantments (Julius Paulus, "Sent.", V, 23, 17). The ecclesiastical legislation followed a similar but milder course.

The Council of Elvira (306), Canon 6, refused the holy Viaticum to those who had killed a man by a spell (per maleficium) and adds the reason that such a crime could not be effected "without idolatry"; which probably mens without the aid of the Devil, devil-worship and idolatry being then convertible terms. Similarly canon 24 of the Council of Ancyra (314) imposes five years of penance upon those who consult magicians, and here again the offence is treated as being a practical participation in paganism. This legislation represented the mind of the Church for many centuries. Similar penalties were enacted at the Eastern council in Trullo (692), while certain early Irish canons in the far West treated sorcery as a crime to be visited with excommunication until adequate penance had been performed.

Nonetheless the general desire of the clergy to check fanaticism is well illustrated by such a council as that of Paderborn (785). Although it enacts that sorcerers are to be reduced to serfdom and made over to the service of the Church, a decree was also passed in the following terms: "Whosoever, blinded by the devil and infected with pagan errors, holds another person for a witch that eats human flesh, and therefore burns her, eats her flesh, or gives it to others to eat, shall be punished with death". Altogether it may be said that in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era we find no trace of that fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses which characterized the cruel witch hunts of a later age. In these earlier centuries a few individual prosecutions for witchcraft took place, and in some of these torture (permitted by the Roman civil law) apparently took place. Pope Nicholas I, indeed (A.D. 866), prohibited the use of torture, and a similar decree may be found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. In spite of this it was not everywhere given up. Also we must notice that a good many suspected witches were subjected to the ordeal of cold water, but as the sinking of the victim was regarded as a proof of her innocence, we may reasonably believe that the verdicts so arrived at were generally verdicts of acquittal. On many different occasions ecclesiastics who spoke with authority did their best to disabuse the people of their belief in witchcraft. This for instance is the general purport of the book, "Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis" (Against the foolish belief of the common sort concerning hail and thunder), written by Saint Agobard (d. 841), Archbishop of Lyons (P.L., CIV, 147). Still more to the point is the section of the work, "De ecclesiasticis disciplinis" ascribed to Regino of Prüm (A.D. 906). In section 364 we read: This also is not to be passed over that "certain abandoned women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women and that in these silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, while on other nights they are summoned to pay her homage." And then he goes on to remark that if it were only the women themselves were deluded it would be a matter of little consequence, but unfortunately an immense number of people (innumera multitudo) believe these things to be true and believing them depart from the true Faith, so that practically speaking they fall into Paganism. And in this account he says "it is the duty of priests earnestly to instruct the people that these things are absolutely untrue and that such imaginings are planted in the minds of misbelieving folk, not by a Divine spirit, but by the spirit of evil" (P.L., CXXXII, 352; cf. ibid., 284). It would, as Hansen has shown (Zauberwahn, pp. 81-82), be far too sweeping a conclusion to infer that the Carlovingian Church by this utterance proclaimed its disbelief in witchcraft, but the passage at least proves that in regard to such matters a saner and more critical spirit had begun to prevail among the clergy.

The Decretum of Burchard, Bishop of Worms (about 1020), and especially its 19th book, often known separately as the "Corrector", is another work of great importance. Burchard, or the teachers from whom he has compiled his treatise, still believes in some forms of witchcraft - in magical potions, for instance, which may produce impotence or abortion. But he altogether rejects the possibility of many of the marvellous powers with which witches were popularly credited. Such, for example, were the nocturnal riding through the air, the changing of a person's disposition from love to hate, the control of thunder, rain, and sunshine, the transformation of a man into an animal, the intercourse of incubi and succubi with human beings. Not only the attempt to practise such things but the very belief in their possibility is treated by him as a sin for which the confessor must require his penitent to do a serious assigned penance. Gregory VII in 1080 wrote to King Harold of Denmark forbidding witches to be put to death upon presumption of their having caused storms or failure of crops or pestilence. Neither were these the only examples of an effort to stem the tide of unjust suspicion to which these poor creatures were exposed. See for example the Weihenstephan case discussed by Weiland in the "Zeitschrift f. Kirchengesch.", IX, 592.

On the other hand, after the middle of the thirteenth century, the then recently-constituted Papal Inquisition began to concern itself with charges of witchcraft. Alexander IV, indeed, ruled (1258) that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief (manifeste haeresim saparent), but Hansen shows reason for supposing that heretical tendencies were very readily inferred from almost any sort of magical practices. Neither is this altogether surprising when we remember how freely the Cathari parodied Catholic ritual in their "consolamentum" and other rites, and how easily the Manichaean dualism of their system might be interpreted as a homage to the powers of darkness. It was at any rate at Toulouse, the hot-bed of Catharan infection, that we meet in 1275 the earliest example of a witch burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor, who was in this case a certain Hugues de Baniol (Cauzons, "La Magic", II, 217). The woman, probably half crazy, "confessed" to having brought forth a monster after intercourse with an evil spirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal expeditions. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was unfortunately accepted by some of the great schoolmen, even, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.

Nevertheless within the Church itself there was always a strong common-sense reaction against this theorizing, a reaction which more especially manifested itself in the confession manuals of the close of the fifteenth century. These were largely compiled by men who were in actual contact with the people, and who realized the harm effected by the extravagance of these superstitious beliefs. Stephen Lanzkranna, for instance, treated the belief in women who rode about at night, hobgoblins, were-wolves, and "other such heathen nonsensical impostures", as one of the greatest of sins. Moreover this common-sense influence was a powerful one. Speaking of the synods held in Bavaria, so unfriendly a witness as Riezler (Hexenprozesse in Bayern, p. 32) declares that "among the official representatives of the Church this healthier tendency remained the prevalent one down to the threshold of the witch-trial epidemic, that is until far on in the sixteenth century". Even as late as the Salzburg Provincial Synod of 1569 (Dalham, "Concillia Salisburgensia", p. 372), we find indication of a strong tendency to prevent as far as possible the imposition of the death penalty in cases of reputed witchcraft, by insisting that these things were diabolical illusions. Still there can be no doubt that during the fourteenth century certain papal constitutions of John XXII and Benedict XII (see Hansen, "Quellen und Untersuchungen", pp. 2-15) did very much to stimulate the prosecution by the inquisitors of witches and others engaged in magical practices, especially in the south of France. In a witch trial on a large scale carried on at Toulouse in 1334, out of sixty-three persons accused of offences of this kind, eight were handed over to the secular arm to be burned and the rest were imprisoned either for life or for a long term of years. Two of the condemned, both elderly women, after repeated application of torture, confessed that they had assisted at witches' sabbaths, had there worshipped the Devil, had been guilty of indecencies with him and with the other persons present, and had eaten the flesh of infants whom they had carried off by night from their nurses (Hansen, "Zauberwahn", 315; and "Quellen und Untersuchungen", 451). In 1324 Petronilla de Midia was burnt at Kilkenny in Ireland at the instance of Richard, Bishop of Ossory; but analogous cases in the British Isles seem to have been very rare. During this period the secular courts proceeded against witchcraft with equal or even greater severity than the ecclesiastical tribunals, and here also torture was employed and burning at the stake. Fire was the punishment juridically appointed for this offence in the secular codes known as the "Sachsenspiegel" (1225) and the "Schwabenspiegel" (1275). Indeed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no prosecutions for witchcraft are known to have been undertaken in Germany by the papal inquisitors. About the year 1400 we find wholesale witch-prosecutions being carried out at Berne in Switzerland by Peter de Gruyères, who, despite the assertions of Riezler, was unquestionably a secular judge (see Hansen, "Quellen, etc.", 91 n.), and other campaigns - for example in the Valais (1428-1434) when 200 witches were put to death, or at Briancon in 1437 when over 150 suffered, some of them by drowning - were carried on by the secular courts. The victims of the inquisitors, e.g. at Heidelberg in 1447; or in Savoy in 1462, do not seem to have been quite so numerous. In France at this period the crime of witchcraft was frequently designated as "Vauderie" through some confusion seemingly with the followers of the heretic, Peter Waldes. But this confusion between sorcery and a particular form of heresy was unfortunately bound to bring a still larger number of persons under the jealous scrutiny of the inquisitors.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing that the importance attached by many older writers to the Bull, "Summis desiderantes affectibus", of Pope Innocent VIII (1484), as though this papal document were responsible for the witch mania of the two succeeding centuries, is altogether illusory. Not only had an active campaign against most forms of sorcery already been going on for a long period, but in the matter of procedure, of punishments, of judges, etc., Innocent's Bull enacted nothing new. Its direct purport was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisitors, to deal with persons of every class and with every form of crime (for example, with witchcraft as well as heresy), and it called upon the Bishop of Strasburg to lend the inquisitors all possible support.

Indirectly, however, by specifying the evil practices charged against the witches - for example their intercourse with incubi and succubi, their interference with the parturition of women and animals, the damage they did to cattle and the fruits of the earth, their power and malice in the infliction of pain and disease, the hindrance caused to men in their conjugal relations, and the witches' repudiation of the faith of their baptism - the pope must no doubt be considered to affirm the reality of these alleged phenomena. But, as even Hansen points out (Zauberwahn, 468, n. 3) "it is perfectly obvious that the Bull pronounces no dogmatic decision"; neither does the form suggest that the pope wishes to bind anyone to believe more about the reality of witchcraft than is involved in the utterances of Holy Scripture. Probably the most disastrous episode was the publication a year or two later, by the same inquisitors, of the book "Malleus Maleficarum" (the hammer of witches). This work is divided into three parts, the first two of which deal with the reality of witchcraft as established by the Bible, etc., as well as its nature and horrors and the manner of dealing with it, while the third lays down practical rules for procedure whether the trial be conducted in an ecclesiastical or a secular court. There can be no doubt that the book, owing to its reproduction by the printing press, exercised great influence. It contained, indeed, nothing that was new. The "Formicaris" of John Nider, which had been written nearly fifty years earlier, exhibits just as intimate a knowledge of the supposed phenomena of sorcery. But the Malleus professed (in part fraudulently) to have been approved by the University of Cologne, and it was sensational in the stigma it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy and in its notable animus against the female sex. The subject at once began to attract attention even in the world of letters. Ulrich Molitoris a year or two later published a work, "De Lamiis", which, though disagreeing with the more extravagant of the representations made in the Malleus, did not question the existence of witches. Other divines and popular preachers joined in the discussion, and, though many voices were raised on the side of common sense, the publicity thus given to these matters inflamed the popular imagination. Certainly the immediate effects of Innocent VIII's Bull have been greatly exaggerated. Institoris started a witch campaign at Innsbruck in 1485, but here his procedure was severely criticised and resisted by the Bishop of Brixen (see Janssen, "Hist. of Germ. People", Eng. tr., XVI, 249-251). So far as the papal inquisitors were concerned, the Bull, especially in Germany, heralded the close rather than the commencement of their activity. The witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were for the most part in secular hands.

One fact which is absolutely certain is that, so far as Luther, Calvin, and their followers were concerned, the popular belief in the power of the Devil as exercised through witchcraft and other magic practices was developed beyond all measure. Naturally Luther did not appeal to the papal Bull. He looked only to the Bible, and it was in virtue of the Biblical command that he advocated the extermination of witches. But no portion of Janssen's "History" is more unanswerable than the fourth and fifth chapters of the last volume (vol. XVI of the English edition, in which he attributes a large, if not the greater, share of the responsibility for the witch mania to the Reformers.

The penal code known as the Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the German empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the stake. In 1572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling. On the whole, greater activity in hunting down witches was shown in the Protestant districts of Germany than in the Catholic provinces. Striking examples are given by Janssen. In Osnabruck, in 1583, 121 persons were burned in three months. At Wolfenbuttenl in 1593 as many as ten witches were often burned in one day. It was not until 1563 that any effective resistance to the persecution began to be offered. This came first from a Protestant of Cleues, John Weyer, and other protests were shortly afterwards published in the same sense by Ewich and Witekind. On the other hand, Jean Bodin, a French Protestant lawyer, replied to Weyer in 1580 with much asperity, and in 1589 the Catholic Bishop Binsfeld and Father Delrio, a Jesuit, wrote on the same side, though Delrio wished to mitigate the severity of the witch trials and denounced the excessive use of torture. Bodin's book was answered amongst others by the Englishman Reginald Scott in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft" (1584), but this answer was ordered to be burned by James I, who replied to it in his Daemonologie.

Perhaps the most effective protest on the side of humanity and enlightenment was offered by the JesuitFriedrich von Spee, who in 1631 published his Cautio criminalis and who fought against the craze by every means in his power. This cruel persecution seems to have extended to all parts of the world. In the sixteenth century there were cases in which witches were condemned by lay tribunals and burned in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. Pope Gregory XV, however, in his Constitution, omnipotentis (1623), recommended a milder procedure, and in 1657 an Instruction of the Inquisition brought effective remonstrances to bear upon the cruelty shown in these prosecutions. England and Scotland, of course, were by no means exempt from the same epidemic of cruelty, though witches were not usually burned. As to the number of executions in Great Britain it seems impossible to form any safe estimate. One statement declares that 30,000, another that 3000, were hanged in England during the rule of the Parliament (Notestein, op. cit. infra, p. 194). Stearne the witchfinder boasted that he personally knew of 200 executions. Howell, writing in 1648, says that within the compass of two years near upon 300 witches were arraigned, and the major part executed, in Essex and Suffolk only (ibid., 195). In Scotland there is the same lack of statistics. A careful article by Legge in the Scottish Review (Oct., 1891) estimates that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "3400 persons perished". For a small population such as that of Scotland, this number is enormous, but many authorities, though confessedly only guessing, have given a much higher estimate. Even America was not exempt from this plague. The well-known Cotton Mather, in his "Wonders of the Invisible World" (1693), gives an account of 19 executions of witches in New England, where one poor creature was pressed to death.

In modern times, considerable attention has been given to the subject by Hexham and others. At the end of the seventeenth century the persecution almost everywhere began to slacken, and early in the eighteenth it practically ceased. Torture was abolished in Prussia in 1754, in Bavaria in 1807, in Hanover in 1822. The last trial for witchcraft in Germany was in 1749 at Würzburg, but in Switzerland a girl was executed for this offence in the Protestant Canton of Glarus in 1783. There seems to be no evidence to support the allegation sometimes made that women suspected of witchcraft were formally tried and put to death in Mexico late in the nineteenth century (see Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, XXXII, 1887, p. 378).

The question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment. In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied, but no one can read the literature of the subject without realizing the awful cruelties to which this belief and without being convinced that in 99 cases out of 100 the allegations rest upon nothing better than pure delusion. The most bewildering circumstance is the fact that in a large number of witch prosecutions the confessions of the victims, often involving all kinds of satanistic horrors, have been made spontaneously and apparently without threat or fear of torture. Also the full admission of guilt seems constantly to have been confirmed on the scaffold when the poor suffered had nothing to gain or lose by the confession. One can only record the fact as a psychological problem, and point out that the same tendency seems to manifest itself in other similar cases. The most remarkable instance, perhaps, is one mentioned by St. Agobard in the ninth century (P.L., CIV, 158). A certain Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, was accused, in the panic engendered by a plague that was destroying all the cattle, of sending men out with poisoned dust to spread infection among the flocks and herds. These men, when arrested and questioned, persisted, says Agobard, in affirming their guilt, though the absurdity was patent. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Malleus Maleficarum. and Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)]

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