Renaissance

THE MAN or THE RENAISSANCE--Ralph Roeder--Viking ($3.50).

History, defined politely as "the formal record of the past,'' is really organized gossip; but among the historians who retail it there are generally more bores than raconteurs. Historian Ralph Roeder is no bore. His crowded subject, the climax of the Italian Renaissance (1494-1530), could easily trip and entangle a pedestrian fact-plodder, but Author Roeder slips adroitly through its thickets, his eye always on one of his relay of four guides (Savonarola, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Aretino). Not a portrait of some composite Renaissance man but four overlapping biographies of typical men of the time, The Man of the Renaissance is one of the solidest choices yet made by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Readers will not get quite so many pages (540) for their money as they did for the gigantic Anthony Adverse (TIME, June 26), but they will get almost as much instructive entertainment and weight (2 1/2 lb.).

Girolamo Savonarola, whom Fra Bartolommeo's portrait shows as the most Italianate of all holy men, fled from an evil world into what he hoped would be the vital reality of a Dominican convent. He soon found monastic life a minor copy of the world outside. The corruption of the clergy became his battle-cry. At first Savonarola had little success among the Dominicans, a preaching order, for he was as forceless a speaker as the tyro Demosthenes. But one day amidst a crowd of blasphemous soldiers he lost his temper and found his tongue. Called to preach at Florence (after one dismal failure there) he startled a goggling congregation into enthusiasm, soon became the city's foremost preacher. The mighty Lorenzo de' Medici tried to domesticate him, but Savonarola had more spiritual fish to fry. He began to cast in the troubled waters of politics. When the French invasion came and the Medici were ousted from Florence, Savonarola practically bossed the town. But when he ran afoul of the Pope (ill-famed Alexander VI) his star quickly waned. Arrested, tried and convicted (after 14 applications of torture) of false prophecy, he was hanged and burned. Before the death-march to the gibbet from which he was to swing, the Bishop who was pronouncing the formula of degradation got his words mixed. Savonarola corrected him.

Niccolo Machiavelli, adroit but by no means omniscient diplomat of Florence, has really given himself an undeservedly bad name, says Author Roeder. In his famed book. The Prince, cynical guide to the arts of governing, Machiavelli "preached what he deplored, and professed what he could not practise." A hero worshipper, he set Caesar Borgia on a pedestal. When his hero proved to be no man of iron, Machiavelli's disillusionment was lifelong.

Baldassare Castiglione's only ambition and natural vocation was "being welcome in the world." A born courtier, he had few worries in his early life except his mother, who kept trying to get him married when he was having too good a time as a bachelor. He practiced worldliness "with an almost religious decorum," and discovering the perennial truth that the gentleman is an almost extinct species, wrote a manual of best behavior (The Courtier) which still makes later books of etiquette seem crude.

Last but not least of the four heroes is Pietro Aretino, the bastard guttersnipe whose effrontery and wit always kept him in high society and hot water, whose scurrilous lampoons lambasted everyone from the Pope down. One of his mildest japes: when unpopular Pope Adrian VI died, a wreath appeared on his doctor's door, inscribed: "To the Deliverer of his country, S. P. Q. R." Of the four, Aretino's end was happiest. After tremendous ups & downs he settled in Venice, waxed fat and urbane, survived a tragic love affair and went down wenching to the end.

Though his heroes usually take the centre of the stage, Author Roeder fills in his scene with many a background high-spot : the death of Pope Alexander VI, whose corrupt old Borgia body mortified with such appalling swiftness that it had to be hammered into the coffin; Isabella d'Este, first lady of her time; Julius II, hardbitten, bearded warrior Pope; Lucrezia Borgia, who "had four charms, not to mention a slight voluptuous cast in one eye. She was vapid, she was virtuous, she smelled of man, and she did not understand art." For graphic historical writing, Author Roeder's picture of the sack of Rome (1527) will stand with the best of them. And everywhere through the magnificent murk sound the great names, like bells: Borgia, Delia Rovere, Medici, Este. Gonzaga, Sforza.

The Author, a Manhattan intellectual and theatre enthusiast (he was one of the founders of the Washington Square Players), was graduated from Harvard in 1911 but cannot remember any of his classmates because he "never spoke to a living soul." Before the U. S. entered the War he volunteered, drove an ambulance with the Italian Army. After two post-War years in Paris as stage manager for Jacques Copeau and an abortive attempt to start a U. S. newspaper in Rome, he went back to Manhattan, got a job in Brentano's publishing house, married Fania Mindell, theatrical scene designer. Piqued by thoughts of Savonarola, Author Roeder wrote and published a book about him but was disappointed with it. He decided to write it over again; The Man of the Renaissance was the result. Fair, 43, with a cold intelligent eye, erect carriage and precise enunciation, Author Roeder lives bookishly but sociably in Manhattan. Between meals (he and his wife share the cooking) he works on his next book.

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