CAMDEN, WILLIAM
(1551-1623). English antiquary and educator. After study at St. Paul’s school and Oxford, he became a teacher and headmaster at Westminster School. In 1597 he became a herald. His employments provided leisure for the antiquarian researches into the English past which produced Britannia (1586), an influential topographical survey of the country, and Annales (1615), a history of the reign of Elizabeth I down to 1588.
CAMOENS, LUIS VAS DE
(1524/5-1580). Portuguese soldier and poet. Although he produced Portugal’s greatest epic poem, The Lusi-ads (1572), and a body of lyric poetry, relatively little is known of his life except that after involvement in a street brawl he was imprisoned and sent as a soldier to India, where he spent nearly 20 years. His epic poem is modelled on the Aeneid of Vergil and traces the rise of Portuguese nation to greatness, culminating in the heroic exploits of its explorers and soldiers.
CAMPANELLA, TOMMASO
(1568-1639). Italian philosopher, poet, and utopian political theorist. He entered the Dominican order in 1582. He was a brilliant student but soon turned against the dominant position of Aristotle in philosophy. His discovery of the anti-Aristotelian "nature-philosophy" of Bernardino Telesio led him to write several works defending Telesio from his critics. This got him in trouble not only with his order but also with the Inquisition. In 1594 at Rome, he was compelled to recant his errors. Sent back to his friary in Calabria, Campanella became involved in a popular uprising against Spanish rule and was arrested in 1599 and condemned to death on charges of both heresy and treason. Since the church’s law forbade execution of mentally ill people, he successfully pretended to be insane, but he was held in jail for nearly 30 years. During this period he wrote most of his important books and poems. In 1626, having attracted the sympathy of Pope Urban VIII, Campanella was freed and permitted to go to Rome. In 1634, fearing that the pope had turned against him, he fled to France. He was cordially received by Cardinal Richelieu, the king’s chief minister, and given a small pension. He lived in Paris for the remaining years of his life.
The philosophical principles expressed in works like Philosophia sensibus demonstrata /Philosophy Proved from the Senses (1591) derived in part from Telesio’s efforts to found a new philosophy based on sensory knowledge rather than abstract reason. But Campanella’s philosophical system was complex. It attempted to construct a picture of the real world that corresponded with the trinitarian nature of God. Ultimate reunion of the soul with God was the supreme goal of life. Some aspects of his thought suggest animism, the belief that all things in the universe have souls; at other times, he seems inclined to pantheism, the belief that all things are part of the divine essence. An affirmation of occult forces (magical and astrological) is implicit in his view of reality.
Yet none of the theoretical parts of his philosophy was so radical as his social and political philosophy, expressed in his most famous book, La Città del sole / The City of the Sun (written in 1602, published in 1623). Even though the Catholic church and the Spanish monarchy were responsible for persecuting him, Campanella’s ideal human society was an absolute and autocratic world-monarchy ruled by a just and philosophical pope. This ruler would rigidly discipline every aspect of life, imposing communism of property, obligation to labor, and strict regulation of sexual practices. His ideal society would be based solely on merit. Even women would be eligible for every office not requiring physical strength beyond their ability. The stability and prosperity of this society would be based on education, natural science, and technology. Campanella also wrote many poems, and a number of these were published.
CAMPIN, ROBERT
(documented, 1406-1444). Leading painter of the city of Tournai in Flanders, usually regarded as identical with the so-called "Master of Flémalle," creator of an outstanding painting, the Merode Altarpiece (ca. 1425) that marks a significant breakthrough from the Flemish paintings of the late-medieval International Gothic style to the mature Franco-Flemish style of the 15th century. The work is also notable for its depicition of prosperous burghers rather than great aristocrats, its sympathetic depiction of St. Joseph as a simple craftsman, and its pioneering use of oil paints instead of the tempera medium typical of medieval painting.
CAMPION, THOMAS
(1567-1620). English poet and composer. His devotion to ancient Roman prosody appears in his Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602), which attacks the medieval use of rhyme and urges modern poets to follow classical practice. On this issue he engaged in a literary duel with a rival poet, Samuel Daniel, author of A Defence of Ryme (1603). His own poetry, however, only occasionally abandons the use of rhyme and accentual meter. He also wrote four books of Ayres, in which he created both lyrics and music. He was one of the leading composers of the masques that were fashionable in his time, and he published five books of airs for the lute.
CAPITANO DEL POPOLO
An official elected in many Italian communes of the 13 th and 14th centuries, normally acting as the chief executive of the combined local guilds in opposition to the old patrician families that dominated the government of most cities in the early period of the independent communes. The capitano del popolo assumed a mediating role in relations between various guilds, acquired informal extra-legal powers in order to restrain the disfranchised noble clans (the grandi), and in many places ended by becoming the signore, or dictator, of the city. Examples of the ascension of capitani del popolo to hereditary rule include the Carrara dynasty at Padua, the della Scala at Verona, the Gonzaga at Mantua, and the Della Torre and Visconti families at Milan. At Florence, however, which was exceptional in its successful resistance to the rise of a dictatorship, the power of the capitano was restrained by a requirement to have his decrees ratified by a council of citizens.
CARAVAGGIO
One of the leading figures of early baroque painting at Rome. His proper name was Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), but he was called Caravaggio after his home town near Milan. He received his early training under a Milanese master, but he developed a highly personal style notable for its naturalism and its dramatic contrasts of light and darkness. Some of his best early work was done in a chapel of the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi, notably The Calling of St. Matthew, which shows traits of both the older mannerist and the new baroque style. This presentation of a scene from the New Testament in terms that reflect the life of the lower classes shocked many contemporaries, who found it irreverent. In his own time, Caravaggio’s paintings were regarded highly by other artists and sophisticated patrons but not widely appreciated by the general public. He worked in Rome from about 1593 to 1606, when he fled from Rome after committing murder. He spent most of the rest of his life in Naples and Malta. Though known to be a fugitive, he retained the favor of the highest ranks of society.
CARDANO, GIROLAMO
(1501-1576). Italian physician, mathematician, and natural philosopher. Born in Pavia and educated there and at Padua, he supported himself during his student years as a gambler. One of his later writings, Liber de ludo aleae / Book on Games of Dice, presented a sophisticated discussion of the mathematics of probability, though it had little influence since it was not published until the following century. After graduation, he practiced medicine near Padua and in 1534 moved to Milan, first as a teacher of mathematics and later as a medical practitioner. From 1543 to 1560 he was professor of medicine at the University of Pavia. Car-dano’s interests extended to many branches of natural philosophy, including mechanics, geology, and hydrodynamics. He realized that the trajectory of a projectile is a parabola; he noted that the presence of marine fossils on dry land proves that mountainous regions had once been ocean floor; he suggested that the earth’s water is constantly recirculated from rain to rivers to oceans to clouds and back to rain.
Cardano was especially gifted as a mathematician. His first mathematical publication, Practica arithmeticae / Arithmetical Practice (1539), showed great skill in manipulating equations. He was one of a number of contemporaries who studied quadratic equations, and his book Ars magna / The Great Art (1545) summarized his own work and that of several others on that topic, though it also involved him in a bitter controversy with Niccolò Tartaglia even though he gave Tartaglia full credit for his pioneering contributions. In 1560 Cardano moved from Pavia to Bologna. There he was imprisoned in 1570 by the Roman Inquisition on suspicion of heresy, but he was released and spent his final years at Rome, supported by a papal pension.
CARRACCI
Family of Bolognese artists active in the late 16th and early 17 th centuries. They led a rebellion against the style known as mannerism and developed a more naturalistic style subsequently labelled baroque. The family is also important because they founded the Accademia dei Caracci, inspired by the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, the first officially recognized school for educating artists. Ludovico (1555-1619) and his cousins Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609) were the first of the family to become painters and achieved great fame both through paintings done separately and through collaborative projects including a series of much-admired paintings in the Farnese Palace at Rome.
CARVAJAL Y MENDOZA, LUISA DE
(1566-1614). Spanish religious poet. Born into the powerful Mendoza family and reared by relatives after she was orphaned, she felt a strong calling to religious work but was not willing to become a nun. Instead, she lived an austere single life and ministered to the poor. Distressed by the loss of Christian unity, she decided to travel to England and work for the reconversion of the English to the Catholic faith, a plan that she carried out beginning in 1605, with the encouragement of the Jesuit order. She was twice imprisoned for preaching in the streets and attempting to form a convent in her home but managed to remain in England until her death. Her religious poetry, published posthumously, includes sonnets and ballads and often took the form of dialogues.
CASAUBON, ISAAC
(1559-1614). French classical scholar, regarded as the most skilled Hellenist of his time. A Protestant in religion, he taught Greek in Geneva and at the University of Montpellier and in 1600 was invited to the French court, where he became keeper of the royal library but disappointed the hopes of King Henry IV by refusing to convert to Catholicism. He began as primarily a student of classical antiquity but gradually shifted his interests to early Christian history. He spent the last period of his life at the court of James I of England, who had him write polemical works in defense of the Anglican religious settlement. Casaubon published several critical editions of Greek authors but was best known for his last publication, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes / Exercises on Sacred and Ecclesiastical Matters (1614). This work attacked the strongly Catholic account of early church history in the Annales of Cardinal Cesare Baronio. Its most famous topic demonstrated that the Hermetic texts which Renaissance Platonists attributed to a divine revelation made to the Egyptians long before the birth of Christ were a series of forgeries made in the late classical period.
CASTAGNO, ANDREA DEL
(ca. 1423-1457). The most talented Florentine painter of the generation following Masaccio, whose style influenced him greatly. He thoroughly assimilated the techniques of perspective defined by Filippo Brunelleschi and first successfully applied to painting by Masaccio. The technical mastery demonstrated in his Last Supper (ca. 1445-1450) was confirmed by his David, completed about five years later.
CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARE
(ca. 1478-1529). Italian writer and diplomat. The son of a professional soldier who served the marquis of Mantua, Castiglione received a humanistic education but began his career as a military officer and diplomat. In 1504, having met Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino while visiting Rome, he entered the service of that prince and went on embassies to England, Milan, France, and Rome.
Castiglione was a skilled practitioner of courtly poetry and was active in organizing performances of plays at court. But his literary masterpiece was The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. The book is a series of imaginary dialogues set at the court of the duke and duchess of Urbino, where he had spent much of his early adult life. It reflects the elegant and highly intellectual court, and many of the interlocutors are real people he had known there. Both men and women participate in the witty discussions held as an amusement for the courtiers during long evenings together. The game is to define the characteristics of the perfect courtier and the perfect court lady. The imaginary pictures of both gentleman and lady represent a high ideal of aristocratic life, with emphasis on development of a broad range of skills, not only physical and artistic but also poetic and intellectual. The final topic of conversation is the proper conduct of the courtier in matters of love, and this discussion culminates in the explanation of the ideal of Platonic love by Pietro Bembo, who in real life had articulated that ideal. Castiglione’s book was a great literary success. It was translated into Latin and nearly all of the major European languages, largely because its portrait of the ideal courtier and court lady served as a book of manners for aspiring aristocrats.
CATHERINE OF SIENA, SAINT
(1347-1380). Italian mystic, daughter of an influential Sienese family, canonized in 1461 and declared to be a doctor of the church in 1970. From childhood she was deeply spiritual, and at age 16 she became a Dominican tertiary, living in self-imposed solitude for three years and then becoming active in ministry to the sick and poor. She experienced a spiritual marriage to Christ and in 1375 received the stigmata, signs of Christ’s wounds.
Deeply devoted to the church and to the papacy and distressed by the frequent wars among Italian cities, she went to Avignon to visit Pope Gregory XI, and in response to her prophecies he returned to Rome. Her influence extended far beyond Siena. Many people, both men and women, acknowledged her holiness and looked to her for inspiration. She became a trusted adviser to Pope Urban VI. Catherine’s great popularity is reflected in the many Renaissance paintings depicting events in her life. She is recognized as the first female author to write in the Tuscan dialect. Her surviving writings include several hundred letters to popes, secular princes, and prisoners; an influential mystical treatise, Il libro della divina dottrina /A Treatise on Divine Providence (1377-1378); and a collection of prayers. Despite her lack of formal schooling, she was familiar with the Bible and the works of such doctors of the church as Saints Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas. Her letters, which addressed contemporary religious and political problems, including the need for reform of the church, were published in 1500 by the Venetian humanist and printer Aldus Manutius.
CAXTON, WILLIAM
(ca. 1422-1491). The first Englishman to practice the new art of printing. A native of Kent and a member of the Mercers’ Company of London, he spent many years living abroad, chiefly at Bruges in the Netherlands. In 1470 he moved to Cologne and took charge of a printing firm. After printing several books there, he returned to Bruges and founded a new printing shop. About the end of 1473, he brought out the first book printed in English, a translation of a French historical romance, Recuyell of the Histories of Troy. In 1476 Caxton moved back to England and set up shop at Westminster, near the royal court. There he printed about a hundred titles, of which the most famous is the first edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1477); but his products also included works of religious edification, English translations of lives of the saints (notably the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine), a book on chess, Aesop’s Fables, and Reynard the Fox. At the very end of his life, he translated into English a book of the lives of the ancient Christian Desert Fathers, published by his successor Wynkyn de Worde.
CELLINI, BENVENUTO
(1500-1571). Florentine sculptor and goldsmith, now best known for his Autobiography, first published in 1728. Apprenticed as a goldsmith in Florence, he had a brilliant but unstable career, largely because of his own moral irregularities, which he admitted, often boastfully, in his autobiography. He is commonly regarded as one of the greatest sculptors who worked in the mannerist style. As early as 1516 Cellini had to leave Florence and move to Siena because of his involvement in a brawl, and his autobiography describes his many acts of violence, including murder. He worked for several years in several Italian cities, including Rome. He left Rome after it was looted by the imperial army in 1527 but later returned and worked in the papal mint on the design of commemorative medals. Although he was charged with the murder of another goldsmith, Pope Paul III pardoned him. Cellini fled Rome in 1535 to escape arrest, worked in several Italian cities, visited France, was arrested while back in Rome, but escaped and eventually moved to France.
There he won the favor of King Francis I and created a grand-scale bronze sculpture of a nymph for the palace at Fontainebleau, his earliest surviving large-scale work. Also from this period is his gold saltcellar, an elegant example of his work as a jeweller. In 1545 Cellini returned to Florence and created for Duke Cosimo I a grand-scale bronze statue of Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa, probably the finest of his large works. He also demonstrated his mastery of carving in marble by incorporating an ancient marble torso belonging to the duke into a statue of Ganymede.
Cellini’s difficult personality and disorderly life, as well as the changing tastes of his patron, caused him to lose favor at court, and although his life-size Crucifix (1562) again demonstrated his mastery of work in marble, he never regained the generous patronage he enjoyed in his early career. He was an overwhelming personality. That personality is reflected in all of Cellini’s literary work, which included the only two of his works published in his own lifetime, treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture, as well as a substantial body of poetry, not published until modern times, and his famous Autobiography (1728), which was widely translated into other languages. This work contributed significantly to the exaggerated idea of undisciplined individualism, violence, sexual irregularity, and irreligion that dominated much writing about Renaissance Italy during the 18th and 19th centuries.
CELTIS, CONRAD
(1459-1508). German humanist and Latin poet. Born near Wurzburg to a peasant family, he acquired a university education despite his poverty, receiving a B.A. degree at Cologne (1479) and an M.A. at Heidelberg (1485), where he was attracted by the presence of Rudolf Agricola. He then taught poetry for brief periods at Erfurt, Rostock, and Leipzig, publishing his first work, Ars versificandi/ The Art of Versification, at Leipzig in 1486. Celtis spent the years 1487-1497 travelling, the first two years in Italy, where he met important scholars such as Marsilio Ficino at Florence and Pomponio Leto at Rome. In 1489 he went to the University of Cracow to study natural philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics.
Beginning in 1492, Celtis taught at the University of Ingolstadt, where his inaugural lecture, published in 1492, laid out his program of reforming German education by emphasizing humanistic studies over traditional scholastic learning. His avowed goal was to make Germany, rather than Italy, the center of humanism. His criticism of the traditional university curriculum irritated many faculty colleagues, but they were probably more alienated by his habitual drunkenness, his numerous love affairs (reflected in his poems), and his frequent absenteeism. Despite his personal faults, his reputation as a scholar and a talented poet won him a professorship at the University of Vienna in 1497, and he remained there until his death, working to carry out the plan of the Emperor Maximilian I to support humanistic studies by founding a new academic unit, the College of Poets and Mathematicians. Maximilian’s goal, shared by Celtis, was to create a new elite of young humanists to administer a revitalized German monarchy.
Celtis published a book of love poetry, the Amores, in 1502. He also discovered an important text that demonstrated the presence of classical learning in medieval Germany, the six Latin dramas written by a 10th-century German nun, Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, and in 1500 he published the Germania of the Roman historian Tacitus, which extravagantly praised the ancient Germans. Celtis dreamed of publishing a comprehensive historical and geographical survey of all of Germany, but he completed only one part, a description of the city of Nuremberg (1502). After his death, his students published a collection of his odes (1513).
Celtis’ greatest importance is his association of the past and future greatness of Germany with his enthusiasm for the study of classical languages and literature. In pursuit of this goal, he promoted the founding of humanist sodalities at several places in southern and southwestern Germany. These sodalities did much to promote the study of humanistic subjects in German schools and universities, and their positive early response to the teachings of Martin Luther was one reason for the rapid diffusion of the German reformer’s ideas among educated Germans.
CERETA, LAURA
(1469-1499). One of the rare female humanists and authors of Renaissance Italy. She was born to a prominent family of Brescia and educated at home and in a convent school. As was customary for women of her class, she married at age 15 but was left a childless widow when her husband died of plague. She devoted her life to study and writing. She met many of the humanists who lived in and near Brescia and addressed to them and others a series of letters discussing literary topics. Many of the men to whom she wrote refused to reply to her letters. She also attempted to meet and encourage other educated women. Her letters to humanists were often autobiographical, revealing her desire for a respected place in the allmale world of learning. She sought to establish a social environment in which educated women could participate without risking their reputation for moral uprightness.
CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE
(1547-1616). With the possible exception of the dramatist Lope de Vega, Cervantes was the greatest literary figure of the Golden Age of Spanish literature. He is world famous as the author of the two-part comic novel, Don Quixote (1605, 1615). Although born in the university town of Alcalá de Henares, he was unable to secure a higher education because of his family’s poverty. In 1569 Cervantes fled to Italy in order to avoid having a hand amputated as punishment for involvement in a brawl. He became a member of the household of a Spanish cardinal at Rome and in 1570 enlisted in the Spanish army. He fought heroically in the famous naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto (1571) but was wounded and lost the use of his left hand. Returning to Spain by sea in 1575, he and his brother were captured by Moorish pirates and sold into slavery at Algiers. He had to remain in captivity until 1580, when he finally was able to purchase his liberty. He started writing toward the end of his captivity, producing a memoir of his resistance and his attempts to escape. Eventually he won appointment to the unglam-orous job of tax collector, a difficult task that twice got him arrested on suspicion of embezzlement.
Cervantes began writing plays and in 1585 published a pastoral romance, La Galatea. He married in 1584 but had no legitimate children, and his effort to secure a government position in the American colonies failed. Not until 1605, when he published the first part of Don Quixote at age 58, did Cervantes win recognition as an author. He followed the royal court to Madrid in 1606 and spent the rest of his life there. He published many works during this period, including a dozen short prose narratives, a long autobiograpical poem, eight plays and eight interludes (none of which were produced on stage), and the second part of Don Quixote. His widow published his romance Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda in 1617.
Don Quixote was by far Cervantes’ most successful work, a favorite among Spanish readers for many centuries, and later translations won an international following. Its satirical attacks on the fashion for preposterous tales of chivalry, its memorable characters (especially Don Quixote himself and his squire Sancho Panza), its varied pictures of the life of Spanish people, and its long series of amusing episodes guaranteed its popularity among the masses, while its subtle discussion of the distinction between reality and illusion has intrigued more sophisticated readers.
CESALPINO, ANDREA
(1525-1603). Italian physician and botanist, born at Arezzo and educated at Pisa, where he studied both anatomy and botany. In 1565 he became director of the botanical garden at Pisa, and in 1569 he was appointed professor of medicine. He moved to Rome in 1592 as professor of medicine and personal physician to Pope Clement VIII. His medical publications show him to be a confirmed supporter of the traditional authority of Aristotle, but also to be eager to discover new ways to apply Aristotelian principles to scientific problems. His most original work was in botany. His De plan-tis libri XVI/Sixteen Books on Botany (1583) followed the classification principles of Aristotle and his disciple Theophrastus. Surprisingly for the work of a physician, this botanical book provided no illustrations and rarely discussed medicinal applications. He seems to have coined the phrase "circulation of the blood," and his discussion of that topic vaguely foreshadows the subsequent work of William Harvey.
CHAMBERS OF RHETORIC
Literary societies formed in many cities of France and the Netherlands in the 15 th and 16th centuries by middle-class citizens who wanted to encourage the growth of poetry and drama. Few of them were innovative, but they organized public celebrations and encouraged development of both drama and poetry. In the Netherlands, they fostered the growth of a national vernacular literature.
CHAPMAN, GEORGE
(1560-1634). English poet, dramatist, and translator. His comedies All Fools (1605) and The Widow’s Tears (1612) were successful on the London stage, and his classical education (probably at Oxford) is reflected in his tragedy Bussy d’Ambois (1607), which shows the influence of the Roman dramatist Seneca, though it also reflects his interest in the recent history of France. He is most widely known as a translator of classical literature; his translation of Homer was long regarded as the best English text of the Homeric poems.
CHARRON, PIERRE
(1541-1603). French philosopher. Educated in both humanist and scholastic subjects at Paris, and then in law at Orléans, Bourges, and Montpellier, and ordained as a priest, he settled in southwestern France and became chaplain to Margaret of Navarre and a close friend of Michel de Montaigne. He sought to encourage an end to the French Wars of Religion by drawing a distinction between the realm of faith and the realm of reason. His book Les trois veritez / The Three Truths (1593) discussed the basic truths of Christianity, while his De la sagesse / On Wisdom (1601) discussed the theme of human reason as something distinct from religion though subordinate to it. De la sagesse was an influential work of Neostoic moral philosophy. It was usually interpreted as defining a secular moral code distinct from religion, though that was not Char-ron’s intention.
