CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARRE. - Man of letters, b. at Casatico near Mantua on 6 Dec. 1478 to Cristoforo and Luigia Gonzaga. He served at the court of Ludovico il Moro from 1494 to 1499, of Mantua from 1499 to 1503, of Urbino from 1503 to 1516, and of Mantua again from 1516 to 1524. He was ambassador to Rome for the duke of Urbino from 1513 to 1516, and for the marquis of Mantua from 1519 to 1524. In 1524 he was sent by Clement VII as ambassador to Spain to Charles V. A promoter 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 blame before the Pope. He died at Toledo on 2 Feb. 1529. It is related that Charles V said: "One of the finest knights 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 which he feigns to have been held at the court of Urbino in 1506, concerning the "conditions and particular qualities that are required" in a perfect courtier. Psychological finesse, calmness of judgment, exquisiteness of taste, elegance of language and style make it one of the finest books of the 1500s. It is moreover a precious document of the customs and ideas of the ruling classes in that century. With no other presuppositions than the natural law, the sentiment of honor and the desire to please the prince and one's equals, it builds for the man of the court a model of conduct humanly upright and accomplished, estimable and amiable in every part. Measure must be observed and affectation shunned in everything. Fidelity to the prince does not imply the duty of obeying him if he commands a crime. The favor obtained with him the courtier should use to make himself a counselor of good government to him. Love is not permitted except with the rightful end of marriage, or else platonic love. The examples are drawn from the experience of the interlocutors. I set aside classical reminiscences and citations. Only three times are Christian doctrine and Holy Scripture cited, and always the interlocutors feel them to be foreign to the custom of their conversation. He says that piety toward God is owed by all, and most especially by princes, relying on the authority of Xenophon. But he does not fail to propose as a worthy end for the greatest princes the Crusade against the Turk.
The work was placed on the Index by decree of 3 July 1618.
This is certainly due to the fact that in those pages of exquisite male and female pedagogy there predominates an accommodating morality, easy to enticing compromises with the passions, especially as regards platonic love and sensual love and the gallantries that favor them. "I consider that sensual love is bad at every age, yet in the young it merits excuse and perhaps in some way is lawful" (IV, 54; cf. also for the woman: III, 56-75). Nor are there lacking faces and episodes that are salty and spicy, reminiscent of the Decameron. The Venetian edition of 1584 is not on the Index.
In another writing, the Risposta a Valdés, he defended with great vehemence the Pope and the clergy of Rome against the calumnies with which the secretary of Charles V had claimed to justify the sack of Rome. From his letters too it is seen that C. was a sincere believer, though in the somewhat superficial manner of the gentlemen of that century.
Bibliography9 works
Giulio Augusto Levi