ESTE, HOUSE OF
Princely dynasty which ruled the city of Ferrara from 1240 to 1598 and played an important part in Italian diplomacy and warfare. Originally ranked as marquises, they were made dukes of Modena and Reggio by an imperial grant of 1452 and in 1471 were elevated by the pope to the rank of dukes of Ferrara. The dynasty formed a brilliant and culturally attractive court. Under Borso (ruled 1450-1471) and Ercole I (1471-1505), the court was the center of a distinctive Ferrarese style of painting. Both Ercole I and his son Alfonso I (1505-1534) were lavish builders of palaces and churches. Borso collected an excellent library of classical and humanistic manuscripts, and the Este court became an active center of theatrical performances and public pageants.
In 1429 Duke Niccolò III persuaded the prominent schoolmaster Guarino Guarini to become tutor to his son Leonello, and the excellent court school thus created became famous throughout Italy, rivalled only by the other major court school conducted by Vittorino da Feltre for the marquis of Mantua. Both schools attracted aristocratic pupils from throughout Italy and even from abroad. The school at Ferrara became the foundation for a revived local university, with Guarino teaching the studia humanitatis, that is, the central academic subjects associated with Renaissance humanism.
ESTE, ISABELLA D’
(1474-1539). Marchioness of the Italian principality of Mantua and a noted a patron of arts and literature. Brought up as the daughter of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and given the rare privilege of sharing the humanistic education given in the court school founded by Guarino Guarini, she became famous for her learning. In 1490 she married Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua. She bore six children and carefully prepared the girls to become prominent princesses or nuns, and her sons to pursue careers as soldiers or clerics. She collected books and paintings by leading authors and artists of her time. During her husband’s frequent absences for military service, Isabella administered the state and gained a reputation for justice. She also ruled during the interval between Francesco’s death and the majority of their son Federico II. See also ESTE, HOUSE OF.
ESTIENNE FAMILY
French printers who created one of the most famous publishing firms of Renaissance Europe, noted for its publication of classical, biblical, and humanistic texts. The firm was founded at Paris by Henri I (ca. 1470-1520), whose publications embraced both medieval scholastic theology and humanism. His most famous humanistic author was Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples. When Henri died in 1520, his widow turned management over to her second husband, Simon de Colines. In 1526 Robert I (1503-1559), a son of Henri I, producing a total of about 500 titles. His editions included famous editions of the Bible in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In 1539 King Francis I appointed Robert as royal printer. The Paris theologians, however, found some of the notes in Estienne’s Bibles heretical, and in 1550 Robert moved to Geneva, where he continued to publish Bibles and became a major printer of Protestant theologians, especially John Calvin. When Robert moved to Geneva, the Paris operations came under the control of his brother.
At Geneva, Robert I was succeeded by his eldest son, Henri II (1528-1598), a scholar of immense erudition,who specialized even more than his predecessors in the printing of Greek texts. His major publication was Thesaurus linguae Graecae (5 vols., 1572), which still remains a reference work of value for Greek scholars. He produced important editions of classical Greek authors and also continued his father’s program of publishing Calvinist books. The Paris branch continued under the leadership of Robert II (1530-1571), who also succeeded to the title of royal printer. It continued under his widow and his son (Robert III) until 1631. The Geneva branch was headed by Paul (1566-1627) and then by Paul’s son Antoine (1592-1674), who converted to Catholicism and moved back to Paris. He became royal printer and continued publishing until 1664.
EUGENIUS IV
Pope from 1431 to 1447, during the final stage of a serious challenge to papal absolutism by supporters of the theory of Con-ciliarism. Born as Gabriele Condulmer at Venice about 1383, he pursued a career at the papal curia after his uncle Angelo Correr became a cardinal and then was elected pope as Gregory XII (1406-1415). Gabriele became bishop of Siena in 1407 and a cardinal the following year. He never studied at a university and showed little interest in the new humanist culture. At his election, he promised to lead the reform of the church "in head and members" and to continue the church council that had already begun its sessions at Basel.
Eugenius attempted to dissolve the Council of Basel at the end of 1431, but the repudiation of this action not only by the council itself but also by most of the major European rulers forced him to back down. His relations with the council remained troubled. He refused to accept conciliar decrees declaring the supremacy of a council over all other authorities in the church and empowering a council to enact reforms without papal approval. In the papal bull Doctoris gentium (1437) he reasserted the papacy’s claim to unlimited monarchical power over the church and ordered the council’s sessions transferred to Ferrara in Italy. The great majority of the council rejected this order and in June 1439 formally declared Eugenius deposed. The pope’s hand was strengthened by the agreement of the Greek Orthodox leaders to attend the council at Ferrara in order to reunify the eastern and western churches. The union proclaimed in 1439 ultimately fell through, but this apparent success helped Eugenius win the support of most of the major European rulers, especially since the decree of deposition and the election of a rival pope by the council made the council seem responsible for a new schism.
Eugenius solidified his power by negotiating a series of concordats (treaties) with individual governments, granting broad control of church appointments to the secular rulers in return for recognition of papal supremacy. Official support for the Council of Basel dwindled, though great numbers of clergy in northern Europe, especially the educated ones, continued to support the principles of Conciliarism. Eu-genius also faced great difficulty in maintaining control of the city of Rome, where some of the local nobility in 1434 staged a coup d’etat that forced the pope to flee to Florence, disguised as a monk. He did not return to Rome until 1443, an exile of nine years, two-thirds of which were spent in Florence.
EXECRABILIS
Papal bull issued by Pope Pius II on 18 January 1460, forbidding anyone to appeal from a decision of a pope to a future general council of the church. The end of the Great Schism of the Western church in 1417 had removed the crisis of disunity that had strengthened Conciliarism, the theory that a general council of the church, rather than the pope, was the supreme authority in the church. With the final disbanding of the Council of Basel in 1449, both the driving force behind Conciliarism and the political backing for any extreme action to enforce its theories had been weakened.
Nevertheless, much opinion among educated clergymen north of the Alps still held that the supremacy of councils over popes, formally adopted by the decree Haec sancta of the Council of Constance in 1415, was a permanent part of the law of the church. The popes had always opposed this doctrine, but they hesitated to revoke the decree openly since actions of the Council of Constance had been the basis for the end of the Schism and the election of Martin V as pope in 1417.
After the end of the Council of Basel, popes Nicholas V, Calixtus III, and Pius II found that disgruntled secular rulers and clergymen sometimes appealed from papal decisions to the meeting of the next general council (which would have occurred every 10 years if the popes had lived up to Martin V’s promise to the Council of Constance). Hence Pius II’s immediate goal in issuing Execrabilis was to stop the practice of appealing his decisions to a future general council. His long-term goal was even simpler: it was to weaken and ultimately destroy the foundation of the Conciliarist view of authority within the church and to reaffirm the view of the medieval popes that the pope’s authority rested entirely on his position as successor to St. Peter and hence was absolute and not answerable to any council or any other human agency. Pius II’s decree was resented in many places, and from time to time rulers still threatened to convene a council against the pope’s will and make him answerable to it. Other persons (Martin Luther in 1520, for example) still issued public appeals from an unwelcome decision of the pope to a future general council.
FALLOPPIO, GABRIELE
(1523-1562). Italian physician and anatomist, best known as discoverer of the Fallopian tubes, but also important for other anatomical discoveries concerning the female reproductive organs. In addition, he studied the anatomy of the brain and eyes, provided the earliest accurate description of the inner ear, and studied the larynx, respiration, and the action of muscles. A native of Modena, educated under Andreas Vesalius at Padua, he became professor of anatomy at Pisa in 1548 and in 1551 moved to the University of Padua.
FARNESE, HOUSE OF
Family of Italian nobility. Originally soldiers and landholders in southern Tuscany and the Papal States, the Farnese rose to princely status after Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope Paul III (1534-1549). Pope Paul was the first post-Reformation pope who seriously addressed the need for reform of the church, but he was also a scandalous nepotist, putting three of his own grandsons onto the college of cardinals and making another grandson prefect of the city of Rome. In 1537 he organized the new duchy of Castro in the papal domains and made his son Pier Luigi (1503-1547) its duke. In 1545 he again used the church’s lands to create the duchy of Parma and Piacenza with Pier Luigi as its first duke.
Pope Paul also used his influence to win brilliant marriage alliances with Italian princely families, as well as with illegitimate offspring of the Emperor. The most famous of this group of ambitious papal kin-folk was Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589), who received many lucrative appointments. Alessandro was a man of great ability, a skilled diplomat, a great collector of art, and a generous patron of writers and artists. The pope had begun construction of a magnificent palace in Rome even before his election, and Alessandro completed it. Alessandro also brought about the building of many churches at Rome.
In the branch of the family that ruled Parma, another Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592) was reared at the court of Spain and became a famous military leader, eventually serving as Spanish governor in the Netherlands during the Dutch war of independence. While he was unable to reconquer the seven northern provinces, which became the United Netherlands, he managed to consolidate the southern part of the region into a state that remained under Spanish rule until the 18 th century. This Alessandro eventually became duke of Parma (1586-1592). The Farnese dynasty continued to rule Parma until 1731, when the succession passed to the Spanish Bourbon dynasty through descent from a Farnese princess.
FEDELE, CASSANDRA
(1465-1558). Venetian author and one of the relatively few Renaissance women who were able to obtain a thorough humanistic education. Her father, Angelo, introduced her to Latin grammar and study of the Roman orators. He regarded her as a child prodigy and arranged for her to be tutored in Greek, philosophy, natural science, and logic. As a young woman she delivered public speeches to the University of Padua, the Venetian Senate, and the doge, and when she was only 22, her first book was printed, a collection of four letters with one of her orations (1487). As a woman, Fedele could not participate fully in the intellectual and academic life of her time, but she became a great letter-writer, corresponding on intellectual matters with humanist scholars at Padua and other places in Italy, including the chancellor of Florence, Bartolomeo Scala, and his daughter Alessandra. One of the most distinguished Florentine humanists of the late 15th century, Angelo Poliziano, described Fedele as second only to his friend Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in learning, and perhaps even his equal. Yet this high praise also underlines her uniqueness and implies that few women could ever be suited for study at such a high level. Fedele also corresponded with Italian and other European rulers. Her correspondence with Queen Isabella of Spain raised the possibility that Fedele might receive an academic appointment in Spain, but the Venetian Senate forbade her to emigrate. She married in 1498 and after the premature death of her husband in 1520 was left an impoverished and childless widow. For several decades both her city and the popes from whom she sought assistance ignored her. Eventually, when she was 82 years old, Pope Paul III interceded with the Venetian government, which appointed her prioress of an orphanage associated with a local church, and she lived the rest of her life there. In 1556, now remarkable for her great age as well as her erudition, she delivered a public oration welcoming the queen of Poland to Venice. This was her last public appearance. In addition to the small book she published in 1487, she left a collection of letters and orations which was posthumously published in 1636. Although she became the most famous learned woman of her time, she accepted the conventional belief that women are naturally inferior to men.
FERDINAND OF ARAGON
(1452-1516). King of Aragon as Ferdinand II (1479-1516). His marriage to Princess Isabella of Castile in 1469 made him king consort of Castile after she became queen of that country in 1474, and his inheritance of Aragon in 1479 was the decisive step that made Ferdinand and Isabella the first king and queen of a united Spain. For many purposes the two kingdoms remained separate, but the royal marriage ensured that their descendants would rule both kingdoms. The Spanish Inquisition, founded in Castile in 1478 and extended to Aragon in 1483, was the only institution (except for the persons of the king and queen) common to both kingdoms. After Isabella’s death in 1504, Ferdinand’s authority in Castile came to an end, and the crown passed to their daughter, Juana, and her husband Philip the Handsome of Burgundy, a member of the Habsburg dynasty. But Ferdinand soon regained control of Castile as regent because of the death of Philip in 1506 and the mental illness of Juana. Ferdinand acted as regent for the child, who grew up at the court of his Burgundian ancestors in the Netherlands while Ferdinand retained control of both Castile and Aragon.
Like his wife Isabella, Ferdinand was a ruler of great ability, though their interests were very different. While Isabella was deeply religious and gave great attention to issues of church reform and Castilian domestic policy, Ferdinand was a secular politician mainly interested in foreign policy and military affairs. He consolidated his control of Spain and in 1492 successfully completed the conquest of the last Islamic principality left in Spain, the kingdom of Granada. Aragon had long functioned as a Mediterranean power with special interests in Italy because its king had direct rule over Sicily and Sardinia and also because an illegitimate branch of its royal family ruled the kingdom of Naples. Ferdinand responded to the French invasion of Italy in 1494 by coming to the aid of his cousin King Alfonso in 1495 and forcing the French out of Naples. From that time until the definitive establishment of Spanish hegemony in Italy in 1559, Spain was the principal rival of France for control of the peninsula.
When the French throne passed in 1498 to King Louis XII, who had a hereditary claim to Milan as well as Naples, Ferdinand negotiated a secret treaty with Louis, agreeing to permit French seizure of Milan and to join the French in dethroning his cousin King Federico of Naples and dividing the kingdom between France and Spain. He then picked a quarrel with the French occupying force and in 1503 sent an army that crushed the French. This time Ferdinand kept the whole Neapolitan kingdom for himself. It remained under Spanish rule until the 18th century. In 1512 during another war with France,
Ferdinand conquered most of the small kingdom of Navarre, including all of the region lying south of the Pyrenees mountains. Thus Ferdinand showed himself a ruthless but effective expansionist, adding Granada and Navarre to the Castilian lands and annexing all of Naples in 1503. He became a major figure in European politics and won the grudging admiration of the Florentine political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Ferdinand shares some responsibility for the establishment of the Inquisition and its systematic use to destroy the large Jewish community in Spain, but this action was probably more the work of the queen, who dominated religious policy.
The enterprise of transatlantic exploration and the beginnings of Spanish colonialism in the Americas seem to have resulted from the initiative of Isabella rather than Ferdinand. Geography dictated that Castile would play the leading role in the new American colonies. In the long run, Ferdinand’s greatest accomplishment was his dynastic diplomacy, expressed not only in military action but also in the advantageous marriages he negotiated for his children.Naples, Burgundy, and the Netherlands and prepared the way for his election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519.
Although Ferdinand’s connection with Sicily and Naples made him aware of Renaissance art and humanistic learning and led him to become a patron of the artists and scholars who introduced the new culture into Spain, he is not a major figure in the emergence of the native Spanish Renaissance. His fame rests on his military, political, and dynastic exploits, not on his cultural policies.
FERRARA
City of north-central Italy, the capital of a duchy ruled from the 13th to the end of the 16th century by the princely house of Este. In theory the city was subject to the popes, and the papacy took direct control in 1598. The city grew and prospered during the Renaissance, reaching nearly 33,000 inhabitants in 1601. The Este dynasty conducted an ambitious program of building, not only of their own palaces but also of churches and charitable institutions. The rulers purchased or commissioned paintings by Italian masters and also by artists of the Flemish school such as Rogier van der Wey-den. In the middle of the 15 th century, a distinct Ferrarese school of painting developed, of which Cosme Tura (1430-1495) and Francesco della Cossa (ca. 1435-ca. 1477) were the most prominent.
Probably the outstanding achievement in the city’s cultural life was the creation of a famous school of humanistic studies at the ducal court by the renowned teacher Guarino Guarini under the patronage of Duke Niccolo III in 1429. This school attracted students from princely and wealthy mercantile families throughout Italy and even from north of the Alps. In the middle of the 15 th century, the school was further expanded into a university, though its original reputation rested largely on the teaching of Guarino.
FERRARA-FLORENCE, COUNCIL OF
General council of the Latin Church summoned by Pope Eugenius IV in 1437. It convened at Ferrara on 8 January 1438. The sessions were soon moved to Florence, where the city’s political leader, Cosimo de’ Medici, offered financial support. The primary (and only avowed) goal of the pope was to complete negotiations with the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus and the leaders of the Orthodox Church for a reunion of the Latin and Greek branches of the church, which had been divided since the 11th century. The second goal, not openly acknowledged, was to undermine the authority of the independent-minded Council of Basel, which had refused to let the pope transfer its sessions to Ferrara or any other place in Italy and which was reasserting the doctrines of Conciliarism, which taught that the supreme authority within the Catholic Church is not the pope but a general council.
The Byzantine emperor, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and a large delegation of other churchmen and scholars came from Constantinople to Florence. There were a number of theological and liturgical issues to be resolved. The most difficult of these was the Greeks’ refusal to acknowledge the superiority of the pope as bishop of Rome over all other bishops. The Greek Orthodox church held that supreme authority was shared by all bishops and especially by the bishops of the oldest dioceses, of whom the Roman bishop was only one. Eventually, the Byzantine delegation, which was desperate for Western political and military aid against the Ottoman Turks, yielded on these issues. On 6 July 1439 the conciliar decree Laetentur coeli / The Heavens Rejoice was proclaimed, theoretically ending the centuries-long separation of the Greek and Latin churches. In the east, the reunification proved abortive, because the majority of the people and clergy rejected the terms of the union. But the apparent success in ending the schism between east and west did much to weaken support for the Council of Basel and to solidify Pope Eugenius’ reassertion of the papacy’s claim to absolute sovereignty over the whole church. The council moved to Rome in 1442, as negotiations continued with a number of smaller separated eastern churches.
Far more lasting than the abortive reunion of churches were the cultural effects of the presence of the large Byzantine delegation. A revival of interest in ancient Greek language and literature had already taken hold in some parts of Italy (notably Florence and Venice) at the end of the 14th century, and the growing group of Western specialists in Greek found contact with the visiting Byzantines both inspiring and useful. Several of the visitors had been involved in efforts to deepen modern Greeks’ awareness of their own classical heritage. The most influential of these was Georgios Gemistos Pletho. A considerable number of Greek clerics who were deeply committed to the union with the Latin church remained in Italy. The most famous of these was the archbishop of Nicaea, Johannes Bessarion.
FICHET, GUILLAUME
(1433-after 1490). Paris theologian. He was born in Savoy and from an early age was attracted to the Latin works of Petrarch and to the ancient Roman poets. He studied at Avignon and then at Paris, where he received a doctorate in theology in 1468. At Paris he taught the traditional scholastic courses in logic and theology, but he also gave well-attended evening lectures on classical authors. A diplomatic mission to Milan in 1469-1470 gave him firsthand experience of the new humanistic culture of Italy. Largely because of his desire to spread interest in ancient literature, he joined with another theologian, the German Johann Heynlin von Stein, to bring German printers to Paris and establish the first press in France within the building of the Sorbonne. Fichet probably met Cardinal Johannes Bessarion while he was in Italy and certainly corresponded with him and introduced him to the university faculty when Bessarion came to Paris to preach a crusade to recapture Constantinople. Neither Fichet nor his collaborator Heynlin stayed in Paris.
Heynlin moved to the University of Basel, and in 1472 Fichet followed Bessarion back to Italy, where he was given a position in the papal curia at Rome. His introduction of the art of printing to France greatly helped him promote the study of classical Latin language and literature at Paris. The year of his death is unknown, but he was still living at Rome in 1490.
FICINO, MARSILIO
(1433-1499). Florentine translator and Neo-platonic philosopher, associated with the Medici family, who became his patrons. The son of a personal physician to Cosimo de’Medici, he received a medical rather than a humanistic education. Thus although the great philosophical influence on his intellectual development was the works of Plato and the Hellenistic Neo-platonists, he also had a firm grounding in the philosophy of Aristotle. His studies of late classical Platonists and of Christian Pla-tonists aroused his interest in the works of Plato himself, few of which had been translated into Latin. In order to study Plato and his disciples, Ficino took up the study of the Greek language and by the end of the 1450s and the early 1460s was able to make Latin translations for his own use. Cosimo de’Medici, who was interested in philosophy and literature, heard of Ficino’s reputation and in 1462 asked him to translate all of the works of Plato. Cosimo soon also asked him to translate a collection of short philosophical treatises attributed to a fictitious Greek sage known as Hermes Trismegistus, the so-called Hermetic literature. Ficino rapidly completed the translation of these brief texts, now known as the Corpus hermeticum. He also continued working on the arduous task of translating all of Plato into Latin. By 1468 he had completed rough drafts of all of the texts. In 1484 a revised text was printed, the first edition of Plato’s works ever to be printed in any language. This translation remained the standard text of Plato used by readers of Latin until the 18th century.
As he struggled with the translation of Plato, Ficino also struggled to reconcile his growing enthusiasm for the philosophy of this pagan philosopher with his Christian faith. His ultimate resolution of this problem was a conviction that Plato, with his emphasis on spiritual things and his belittling of the material world, was not only compatible with Christian faith but had been sent by divine providence to bring philosophers closer to the essential beliefs of Christian faith.
The symbolic act marking resolution of his own spiritual conflict was his decision to be ordained as a priest in 1473.
Ficino made his conviction of the harmony between Platonism and Christianity the foundation of his own philosophical works. His The-ologia Platonica de immortalitate animae (1474; published 1482) followed the structure of a medieval scholastic treatise but drew heavily on those whom he called "the ancient theologians." Its principal goal was to set forth convincing proofs of the immortality of the human soul. In 1474 he published concurrent Italian and Latin versions of another work dealing with his faith, De Christiana religione /On the Christian Religion. Other important works, all based on Platonic philosophy, were his commentary on the Symposium of Plato, called De amore / On Love (circulated in manuscript from 1469); De triplici vita / On Threefold Life (1489), which contained his attempt to reconstruct the dangerous subject of magic in a way that banished evil spirits and relied on spiritual preparation to release the powers of the human soul; and a large collection of Latin letters (1495) in which he applied his Platonic principles to various issues. Ficino continued his work as a translator of late Platonic (Neoplatonic) works, including the Enneades of Plotinus (1492), the most influential ancient Neoplatonic philosopher; a volume of translations from other representatives of ancient Neoplatonism such as Porphyry, Iamblichus, Synesius, Proclus, and Psellus (1497); and a new translation (1496) of the works of the Christian Neoplatonist known as Dionysius the Areopagite (now called pseudo-Dionysius). Ficino lectured on the works of these authors and on Plato himself to a select group of admirers, the "Platonic Academy of Florence" (which was not a formal educational institution), and his commentaries on Plato, cast in a dialogue form borrowed from the philosopher himself, were published in 1496.
Finally, though he is always remembered solely as a philosopher, Ficino was also a physician and published one influential medical treatise in Italian, Consiglio contro la pestilenza /Advice against the Plague (1479; published in 1481). His emphasis on the importance of spiritual rather than material reality made him as a physician especially interested in the relations between medicine and religion, and his philosophical works (especially De vita, with its potentially dangerous discussion of "spiritual magic") had implications for the treatment of depression and other psychological disorders. He was critical of the conventional and materialistic implications of the influential science of astrology and published an attack on judicial astrology, yet his own medical and philosophical doctrines take for granted the influence of the celestial world on earthly affairs.
Ficino believed in the concept of prisca theologia, the idea that God had made direct revelations of religious truth to all the ancient peoples, not just the Jews, and that the writings attributed to such shadowy ancient sages as the Persian Zoroaster, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Greek Pythagoras represented this "ancient theology" which extended back before the beginnings of recorded time. In his opinion, much of this ancient wisdom had culminated in the philosophy of Plato. Ficino’s interpretation of Plato was heavily influenced by his study of the so-called Hermes Trismegistus and by the genuine works of the Alexandrian Neoplatonist Plotinus. His brand of Neo-platonism is very different from the Platonism of Plato himself. Nevertheless, his achievement in translating not only Plato but also the principal ancient Neoplatonist philosophers into Latin, the universal language of scholars, was a major contribution to the assimilation of ancient culture into Renaissance culture.
