CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARRE. – Man of letters, born at Casatico near Mantua on 6 December 1478 to Cristoforo and Luigia Gonzaga. He served at the court of Ludovico il Moro from 1494 to 1499, at Mantua from 1499 to 1503, at Urbino from 1503 to 1516, and again at Mantua from 1516 to 1524. He was ambassador in Rome for the duke of Urbino from 1513 to 1516, and for the marquis of Mantua from 1519 to 1524. In 1524 Clement VII sent him as ambassador to Spain to Charles V. A supporter of peace between the pope and the emperor, he was unable either to avert or to foresee the horrors of the sack of Rome in 1527, and had to clear himself of responsibility before the Pope. He died at Toledo on 2 February 1529. It is related that Charles V said: “One of the finest gentlemen in the world has died.”
Works: Il Cortegiano, Risposta a Valdés, Tirsi (eclogue), Rime, Carmina. Il Cortegiano is his major work, in four books, in the form of dialogues purportedly held at the court of Urbino in 1506, concerning the “conditions and particular qualities required” in a perfect courtier. Psychological insight, calmness of judgment, exquisite taste, and elegance of language and style make it one of the finest books of the sixteenth century. It is also a precious document of the customs
and ideas of the ruling classes in that century. With no other premises than natural law, the sense of honour, and the desire to please the prince and one’s equals, it constructs for the courtier a model of conduct that is humanly upright and complete, estimable and lovable in every respect. Measure must be observed and affectation avoided in everything. Loyalty to the prince does not imply the duty to obey him if he commands a crime. The courtier should use the favour he has gained with him in order to make him a counsellor of good government. Love is permitted only with the rightful end of marriage, or in the form of Platonic love. The examples are drawn from the experience of the interlocutors. Classical reminiscences and citations are abandoned. Christian doctrine and Holy Scripture are cited only three times, and each time the interlocutors feel them to be foreign to the customary tenor of their conversation. He says that piety toward God is owed by all, and above all by princes, relying on the authority of Xenophon. But he does not fail to propose the Crusade against the Turk as a worthy aim for the greatest princes.
The work was placed on the Index by decree of 3 July 1618.
This was certainly due to the fact that in those pages of exquisite male and female pedagogy, an accommodating morality predominates, one readily open to alluring compromises with the passions, especially concerning Platonic and sensual love and the gallantries that encourage them. “I consider sensual love to be evil at every age, although in the young it deserves excuse and perhaps is in some way permissible” (IV, 54; cf. also concerning women: III, 56-75). Nor are lascivious and piquant faces and episodes lacking, reminiscent of the Decamerone. The Venetian edition of 1584 is not on the Index.
In another writing, the Risposta a Valdés, he defended the Pope and the clergy of Rome with great vehemence against the calumnies by which the secretary of Charles V had attempted to justify the sack of Rome. His letters too show that C. was a sincere believer, although in the somewhat superficial manner of gentlemen in that century.
BHL.: Editions: Opere volgari e latine del conte B. C., collected, corrected, and illustrated by Giov. Antonio and Gaetano Volpi, Padua 1733; Lettere di B. C., ibid. 1769–71; Il Cortegiano, edited by V. CAINAN, 4th ed., Florence 1947. Studies: V. CAINAN, B. C., in Nuova Ant., 1929, iv, pp. 409–23; id., ibid., 1929, v, pp. 3–18; G. Salvadori, Il Cortegiano di B. C., in Liriche e saggi, edited by C. Calcaterra, III, Milan 1933, pp. 357–84; E. Bianco di San Secondo, B. C. nella vita e negli scritti, Verona 1941; V. CAINAN, Nel mondo di B. C. Documenti illustrati, in Arch. st. tomb., new series, 7 (1942), pp. 3–97; id., La lingua di B. C., Florence 1942; M. Rossi, B. C. La sua personalità. La sua prosa, Bari 1946.
Giulio Augusto Levi