PRELIMINARY NOTES
Baldesar Castiglione was born on his father's estate of Casatico in the Mantuan territory, 6 December 1478. Michelangelo was his senior by four years; Leo X by three years; Titian by one year; Giorgione and Cesare Borgia were born in the year of his birth, while his friend Raphael and also Luther were his juniors by five years.
His surname is said to be derived from the little town at which Bonaparte defeated the Austrians near Mantua in 1796, and which is by some supposed to have taken its name from Castrum Stiliconis, Camp of Stilico, a Roman general of the 4th century. One Tealdo Castiglione was Archbishop of Milan as early as 1074, from which time the family is often and honourably mentioned in the annals of northern Italy.
Baldesar's parents were Count Cristoforo Castiglione, a soldier-courtier, and Luigia Gonzaga, a near kinswoman of the Marquess of Mantua. The boy studied at Milan,— learning Latin from Giorgio Merula and Greek from Demetrios Chalcondylas, an erudite Athenian who had fled from Byzantium about 1447, and of whom another pupil wrote: "It seems to me that in him are figured all the wisdom, the civility and the elegance of those ancients who are so famous and so illustrious. Merely seeing him, you fancy you are looking on Plato; far more when you hear him speak."
Having spent some time at the splendid court of Ludovico Sforza at Milan, Castiglione lost his father in 1499, and (the Sforzas being expelled the same year) he returned to Mantua and entered the service of his natural lord, the Marquess Gianfrancesco Gonzaga; he accompanied this prince to Milan to witness the entry of Louis XII of France, and afterwards on an expedition to aid the French in their vain effort to hold the kingdom of Naples against the Aragonese. When Gonzaga abandoned the French cause (after being defeated by Ferdinand the Catholic's "Great Captain," Consalvo de Cordova, near the Garigliano in 1503), Castiglione obtained leave to go to Rome, and there met Duke Guidobaldo di Montefeltro, who had come to pay homage to the newly elected Pope Julius II. He entered the duke's service, and soon became one of the brightest ornaments of that brilliant company of statesmen, prelates, scholars, poets, wits and ladies, known as the Court of Urbino.
In 1504 he took part, under Duke Guidobaldo, in the papal siege of Cesena against the Venetians. The next year he attended the duke on a diplomatic visit to Rome. In 1506 he was sent to the court of Henry VII of England to receive the insignia of the Order of the Garter on the duke's behalf. As appears from a letter to his mother, he returned to Urbino as early as 5 March 1507, notwithstanding his mention of himself in The Courtier as still absent in England at the date (8-11 March) of the dialogues he professes to report at second hand. In the same year he was sent on a mission to Louis XII at Milan. On Guidobaldo's death in 1508, Castiglione continued in the service of the new duke, Francesco Maria della Rovere ("my lord Prefect" of The Courtier), who appointed him governor of Gubbio. In the following year he served in his master's campaign against the Venetians, and contracted a dangerous illness, during which he was tenderly nursed by the dowager duchess, Elisabetta Gonzaga. In 1511 he accompanied the duke to Rome on the occasion of the latter's trial for the murder of Cardinal Alidosi, and was active in Francesco Maria's successful defence. In 1513 the duke created him Count of Novillara and gave him an estate of that name, which however he soon lost through the Medici usurpation of the duchy, and never regained. At the death of Julius II, Castiglione was ambassador to the sacred college, and continued in that office during nearly the whole of Leo X's pontificate. His numerous letters show the variety and importance of the diplomatic business in which he was engaged.
Several plans for his marriage came to nothing, and on one occasion, when the lady's father hesitated, the suitor broke off negotiations, saying: "The wife that I am to take, be she who she may, I desire that she should be given to me with as good will as I take her withal,— yea, if she were the daughter of a king."
Pope Leo having in 1516 basely deprived Francesco Maria of the Duchy of Urbino, Castiglione accepted an invitation to Mantua and there married Ippolita, daughter of Count Guido Torello di Montechiarugolo and Francesca Bentivoglio, a daughter of the former ruler of Bologna. This union proved exceptionally happy and was blessed by three children: a son Camillo, a 'daughter Anna, and a second daughter Ippolita, at whose birth the young mother lost her life in 1520. His son attained the age of eighty years, and is said to have been the true embodiment of the qualities described in The Courtier.
Castiglione resided alternately at Mantua and at Rome, where he served as Mantuan ambassador, and where his learning, wit, taste, gentle disposition and integrity earned for him an almost unique eminence at the papal court. In 1524 he was sent by Pope Clement VII as ambassador to the Emperor Charles V (who was waging war against the French in Italy), but while his counsel and high qualities were appreciated, he was too honest a man to cope with the tortuous politics of the time, and proved unable to avert the capture and sack of Rome (1527) or the imprisonment of the pope. These catastrophes, together with a malicious and easily disproved charge of treason brought against him, preyed upon his health, and despite the many honours conferred upon him by Charles, he failed to rally, and finally died at Toledo, 7 February 1529, without again seeing his native land. His body was afterwards brought to Italy and buried in the church of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua, where his tomb was erected from designs by his young friend Giulio Romano.
Besides The Courtier, his writings comprise: Tirsi, an eclogue of fifty-five stanzas in ottava rima, written and recited at the court of Urbino for the carnival of 1506; a prologue and epilogue for his friend Bibbiena's Calandra; a few Italian lyrics of moderate merit; and some better Latin elegies and
epigrams; nearly all composed during his embassy at Rome. A large number of his letters also have been preserved.
His fine character is reflected in that of his Courtier, who (as Symonds says) "is, with one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as all men of education at the present day would wish to be." It may perhaps aid the reader to realize the time in which the author lived, to recall that when Castiglione was born, printing had been practised in Italy for thirteen years, that the earliest Greek grammar had been printed two years, that America was discovered when he was a boy, that the Reformation began when he was in the prime of life, and that the Lutherans were first called Protestants in the year of his death.
The first (Aldine) edition of The Courtier was issued thirteen years after the death of Teobaldo Manucci, the illustrious founder of the press that continued to bear his name, and consisted of one thousand and thirty-one copies, of which thirty were on large paper and one on vellum. It is a small folio of one hundred and twenty-two leaves, the type-page measuring almost precisely nine and one-quarter inches by five and one-eighth inches. In its ordinary form the book can hardly be called rare, as in 1895 the present translator secured a good copy from Leipsic for forty-five francs.
The earliest Spanish translator, Boscan, (born at Barcelona about 1493; died in France about 1542), was of gentle birth. Early becoming a soldier, he served with credit in Charles V's Italian campaigns, and thus acquired familiarity with the language and literature of Italy. He is said to have known Castiglione personally. Having been for some time tutor to the young prince who was later known as the Duke of Alva, he married and devoted the rest of his short life to letters. As a writer he is best known as the founder of the Italian poetical school in Spain. Ticknor says that Boscan's version of The Courtier hardly professes to be literal, but that perhaps nothing in Castilian prose of an earlier date is written in so classical and finished a style. It has been often reprinted (as recently as 1873), and was found useful by the present translator in doubtful passages.
The earliest French translator, Colin, (died 1547), was a native of Auxerre and enjoyed the favour of Francis I, whom he served as reader and almoner, and who bestowed upon him the abbotship of St. Ambrose at Tours, as well as other ecclesiastical offices. In his prosperity he showed much kindness to his less fortunate brother authors, but he was too free of speech to be permanently successful as a courtier, and lost his preferments. His translation of The Courtier, which some writers erroneously ascribe to Jean Chaperon, is little esteemed, was soon issued with corrections by another hand, and then followed by another French version. He translated also parts of Homer and Ovid, and composed original verse in Latin and French. For an account of Castiglione's influence upon French literature and of his many French imitators, consult Pietro Toldo's "Le Courtisan dans la littérature française et ses rapports avec l'œuvre du Castiglione," (Archiv fur das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, C. iv, pp. 75 and 313, and C. v, p. 60). The earliest English translator, Hoby, (born 1530; died 1566), was the son of William and Katherine (Forden) Hoby of Herefordshire. Having studied at Cambridge, he visited France, Italy and other foreign countries. In 1565-6 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and sent as ambassador to France, where he soon died, leaving several children and a widow. This lady was the third of Sir Anthony Cooke's five learned daughters, of whom the eldest married Sir William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh), while the second became the mother of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Interesting details of Hoby's life and of the manners of the time are given in his unpublished diary, preserved in the British Museum. His version of The Courtier was carefully made, and although rough to our ears and occasionally obscure, it became very popular and was several times republished. A beautiful reprint of the original edition has recently been issued (1900), in a scholarly introduction to which Professor Walter Raleigh traces the influence of the book upon Elizabethan writers. The Courtier, and especially Hoby's translation of it, are the subject of a very interesting study by Mary Augusta Scott, Ph.D., printed in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xvi (1901), no. 4. In 1570 Roger Ascham wrote in his "Schoolmaster:" "To join learning with comely exercises, Count Baldesar Castiglione in his book Cortegiano doth trimly teach: which book, advisedly read and diligently followed but one year at home in England, would do a young gentleman more good, I wis, than three years' travel abroad in Italy. And I marvel this book is not more read in the Court than it is, seeing it is so well translated into English by a worthy gentleman, Sir Thomas Hobbie, who was many ways well furnished with learning, and very expert in knowledge of divers tongues."
Of the first German translator, Lorenz Kratzer, little more is known than that he was an officer of customs at Burckhausen, in Bavaria, from 1565 to 1588, and that he speaks of having devoted to letters the ample leisure which his duties permitted. Although said to be meritorious, his work can hardly have gained wide currency, as both Noyse (whose German translation of The Courtier was published at Dilingen in 1593) and a third German translator (whose version was issued at Frankfort in 1684 under the initials "J. C. L. L. J.") seem to have regarded themselves each as the earliest in the field.
The first Latin translator, Turler, (born 1550; died 1602), was a Doctor Juris, and became burgomaster of his native town of Lössnitz, near Leipsic. Besides The Courtier, he translated several of Machiavelli's works into Latin.