Il Libro del Cortegiano

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Cortegiano , 1549

Baldassare Castiglione's Il Libro del Cortegiano , dt. The Hofmann's book , is a literary work of the early 16th century in which the ideal of the courtier is developed through fictional dialogues. It was in Europe for general reference work of court society , is next to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Machiavelli's Il Principe of the most important achievements of Italian literature of the Renaissance . The work was created between 1508 and 1516 and was printed in 1528.

investment

In a fictional, narrative dialogue, Castiglione lets the friends Pietro Bembo , Ludovico da Canossa , Bernardo da Bibbiena , Gasparo Pallavicino and many other important Italian personalities of the early 16th century on four consecutive evenings - and accordingly in four books - about the qualities of the the ideal courtier ( cortegiano ) and the consummate woman of honor ( donna di palazzo ). Two women, Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471–1526) and her sister-in-law Emilia Pia, take the chair, with Emilia Pia having the task of moderating the discussions. In his work, Castiglione staged the ideal court society, its forms of conversation and etiquette, and thus set a literary monument to the court of Urbino .

Content

Grazia ( grace ), misura (balance), ingenio (spirit) and arte (art) are key terms that keep appearing. As a leitmotif, the following characteristics of the ideal courtier are required:

  • Sprezzatura , with which one can cope with one's tasks without visible effort,
  • a humorous disposition and quick-witted conversation,
  • an elegant, urban lifestyle,
  • unconditional sincerity in the conversation with the prince,
  • Dexterity with women and education in the fine arts.

Castigliones Hofmann is universally educated and has a wide range of skills. The Hofmann Castigliones should be harmonious and balanced. Martial skills and cultural education are required at the same time, courtly grace and quick-wittedness, boldness and noble disposition are required in the cortegiano. The courtier finds his focus in the golden mean, the positively understood mediocrità . In principle, these virtues also apply to women, which, however, have to be supplemented by typical feminine qualities such as sociability and kindness of heart. This is in accordance with the views of Giuliano di Lorenzo de 'Medici .

role models

The form and content of the text are based on works by ancient authors such as Cicero's De oratore and Plato's Politeia . As the Cortegiano reflects on the potential of human beings and demands universality as a high moral obligation, their thoughts are taken up. For the Stoic philosophers, a pure power state and the pure power man was limited to the level of his animal nature.

Printing and reception

When it was published in 1528 by the printers Aldo Romano and Andrea d'Asolo in Venice, the book about the Hofmann was a public success. It was translated into Spanish, French, Latin and German in the 16th century. Sir Thomas Hoby (1530–1566) succeeded Castigliones Cortegiano in writing the treatise on The Courtyer (1561) and Łukasz Górnicki (1527–1603) described the ideal of the Polish courtier in Dworzanin polski (1566).

In his main work Il Principe (1513), Niccolò Machiavelli , contrary to Cortegiano Castigliones, finds his greatness precisely in the ignoring of ethical and moral implications. Both figurations - Machiavelli's Prince and Castigliones Hofmann - ultimately represent two sides of the same coin, with Castiglione on the one hand formulating the possibilities of the perfect sophistication of the Italian courts as an ideal and, at the same time, Machiavelli taking a cynical view of the perversion and moral licentiousness of the Italian courts Courtyards and the power man of the Renaissance unfolded.

Castiglione's ideal was taken up above all in the powerful culture of the Renaissance in Italy by the cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt (1860). The rediscovery of ancient authors as well as “the discovery of the world and of man”, as Burckhardt put it in reference to Jules Michelet , led to an ideal type of man: the universally educated and constantly perfecting uomo universale , the “ universal man ”. Burckhardt questioned whether the Cortegiano meant the courtier and his perfect education at court, or whether he would rather set up courtly people as a binding ideal for all contemporaries: “All well considered, you couldn't need such a person at any court because he had talent himself and appearance of a perfect prince and because his calm and unaffected virtuosity in all external and spiritual things presupposes a being too independent. "

German language edition

  • Baldassare Castiglione: The Hofmann. Way of life in the Renaissance. Translated from the Italian by Albert Wesselski. With a foreword by Andreas Beyer . Wagenbach, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8031-2357-7 .
  • Baldassare Castiglione: The ideal palace lady (approx. 1518), in: Nicolette Mout: The culture of humanism . Munich, 1998, pp. 178-183, ISBN 3-4064-3397-9 .
  • The courtier of Count Baldesar Castiglione. Translated, introduced and explained by Albert Wesselski . 2 volumes. Müller, Munich and Leipzig 1907 digitized

literature

  • Jacob Burckhardt : The culture of the Renaissance in Italy. One try. 11th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-520-05311-X .
  • Peter Burke : The fate of the Hofmann. On the effect of a Renaissance breviary on appropriate behavior. Wagenbach, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8031-3587-7 .
  • Edoardo Costadura: The nobleman at the desk. On the self-image of aristocratic writers between the Renaissance and the Revolution. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-484-55046-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicolette Mout (ed.): The culture of humanism . Speeches, letters, treatises, conversations from Petrarch to Kepler. Munich 1998, p. 191 .

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