The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy 9781442681071

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THE C U L T U R E OF P R O F E S S I O N IN LATE R E N A I S S A N C E ITALY

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

George W. McClure

U N I V E R S I T Y OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2004 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8970-4

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication McClure, George W., 1951The culture of profession in late Renaissance Italy / George W. McClure. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-8970-4 1. Professions - Italy - History - 16th century. 2. Occupations Italy - History - 16th century. 3. Popular culture - Italy - History - 16th century. 4. Renaissance - Italy. 5. Italy-Social life and customs-16th century. I. Title. DG445.M32 2004

945'.07

C2004-900281-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

To my parents, George and Martha

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Contents

Figures

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Preface xi

Chapter 1 Humanist and Theological Backgrounds 3 Chapter 2 Professions at Play: Jokes, Carnevale Songs, and Parlour Games

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Chapter 3 Shuffling the Deck: Tomaso Garzoni's Universal Piazza of All the Professions of the World 70 Chapter 4 Learned Cooks and Culinary Lawyers: High, Middle, and Low Profession in the Universal Piazza 90 Chapter 5 Professions on Display: Dress and Ritual in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice 141 Chapter 6 The Arts and the 'Art of Dying' in Venice: Vocation in a Renaissance Death Book 177

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Contents Chapter 7 Conclusion 203

Notes

111

Bibliography Index

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363

Figures

1 Game of the Merchant. From Innocenzio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali, et d'ingegno (Venice, 1553), f. 155v 59 2 Dress of the Gondoliers. From Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice, 1590), f. 122 149 3 Dress of the Facchini (A: Illustration, B: Description). From Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice, 1590 150-1 4 Procession of the Bucintoro and the Bergantini of the Arts in the 1597 Coronation of the Dogaressa Morosina Grimani. From Giacomo Franco, Habiti d'huomeni et donne venetiane con la processione della Serenissima Signoria et altri particolari doe Trionfi feste e ceremonie e publiche della nobilissima citta di Venetia (Venice, 1610), Plate 19 165 5 Death and the Servant. From Fabio Glissenti, Discorsi morali ... contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia (Venice, 1596), f. 129v 185 6 Death and the Gondolier. From Fabio Glissenti, Discorsi morali ... contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia (Venice, 1596),f. 135v 187 7 Death and the Captain. From Fabio Glissenti, Discorsi morali ... contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia (Venice, 1596), f. 245 192 8 Death and the Actress. From Fabio Glissenti, Discorsi morali ... contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia (Venice, 1596), f. 341 194

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Preface

From Latin humanists in the mid-fourteenth century to popular writers in the later sixteenth, Renaissance intellectual and literary culture spawned a lively debate on vocational choice and the nature of profession. This literature reveals much about professional identity in a period when the moral boundaries of Vocation' were expanding from the religious to the secular realm, and the social boundaries of professional status were becoming somewhat more fluid. In the early Renaissance the most urgent treatment of this theme came at the hands of humanists, defining their own vocation against the clerical model and proclaiming their status against the prestige of the physicians and lawyers. Petrarch, with considerable panache, sparked the humanist rhetoric of profession as he assailed the law, derided medicine, and simultaneously defended and complained about his own vocation as a scholar and poet. Subsequent humanists continued his legacy in both autobiographical and theoretical treatments of the vocations. This humanist discourse on the 'dispute of the arts,' as Eugenio Garin famously framed it, was surrounded by other learned - and sometimes long-standing - treatments of the intellectual, moral, and social appraisal of the professions. Since the rise of universities, academics had been squabbling over the competing claims of various disciplines for supremacy; scholastic theologians as well had long been scrutinizing occupations from the vantage point of moral theology and canon law; and legal writers in this period increasingly assessed the claims of various professions to nobility. From the later fifteenth century on, however, the learned treatment of secular profession increasingly came to be complemented with a more popular praise and rebuke of profession that encompassed more fully merchant, artisan, and service occupations as well as elite ones. In the realm of jokes, Carnevale songs, parlour games, memory books, encyclopedias, dress books,

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death books, and even in mottoes in civic rituals, less learned genres engaged profession as a topic, and less learned vocations made their voice heard. The aim of this study is to assess the resonance of professional themes in these popular settings. My goals are threefold: to elucidate the democratized ethos of profession in later fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy; to chart the emergence of new forms of vernacular and public culture in this period; and to examine the historical interaction between these two phenomena. How does this popular praise and rebuke of profession compare with the learned rhetoric of the arts that preceded and partly informed it? What - at least in the Italian setting - does it tell us about early modern views of vocation generally and occupations specifically? To what degree and in what way do themes concerning professional identity, status, and practice preoccupy the cultural realms of humour, festive play, civic ritual, and death? How do the terms of the Italian cultural debate on profession shift between the trecento and the cinquecento, in part mirroring the shift from the emergence of high humanist culture in the fourteenth century to the flowering of popular culture in the sixteenth? A considerable portion of this study treats the comic and festive traditions that seized upon profession as a cultural topic. In both the working-class joke collection of the Florentine buffoon Piovano Arlotto and the more upperclass one of Ludovico Domenichi, jokes concerning professional practice and status abound. In the often bawdy realm of Carnevale, profession also began to have a dominant voice when Lorenzo de' Medici shifted the motif of Florentine carnival songs from gender disguises to occupational ones. The collection of such songs by Antonfrancesco Grazzini in 1559 reveals that Lorenzo's innovation caught on not only among the elite but also among others - such as the 'retailer' Guglielmo — whose songs commonly offered a sexualized (but also sometimes serious) praise of commercial and artisan professions as a rhetorical trope for mock seduction. Playful professional themes were also to be found in carnival-evening parlour games collected in 1563 by Girolamo Bargagli on behalf of the lively Sienese Academy of the Intronati. Even the more educational parlour-game collection (for women) compiled earlier in Bologna by Innocenzio Ringhieri contains an array of games of the 'merchant,' the 'mechanical arts,' the 'physician,' and so on. Moreover, Ringhieri's game book reflected (and possibly prompted) more serious oral traditions. His games were frequently accompanied by debate topics involving the praise and rebuke of particular arts and the interpretation of professional proverbs. The pivotal figure in the study is Tomaso Garzoni, a free-thinking monk whose popular encyclopedia of professions, the Universal Piazza of All the Professions of the World, was published in Venice in 1585 and reappeared in

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twenty-eight further Venetian reprintings or editions before the end of the following century. A funnel for earlier traditions and an influence on later ones, his massive compendium treated over 150 categories of profession from philosophers, poets, and teachers to porters, chimneysweeps, and prostitutes. Although himself quite learned, Garzoni had a decided taste for the comic and for street culture, and his work thus mediated between the highculture traditions of humanists and theologians, and the low-culture traditions of buffoons and charlatans. Now hailing cooks as 'philosophers' and mocking lawyers as 'pig-gelders,' Garzoni's rhetoric of description often defies traditional hierarchies. In fact, by treating the range of learned and lowly professions in largely random order, his treatise reflects the cultural levelling of profession - or aristocratic anxieties over such levelling - in late Renaissance culture. The particularly Venetian roots and currency of Garzoni's treatise invite an examination of other Venetian representations of profession in the popular realms of dress, ritual, and moral literature. In 1590 (by which time the Piazza had appeared in five Venetian editions) Cesare Vecellio published a dress book with illustrations of costumes accompanied by commentary. Venetian archetypes dominate this book, and among those are many professionals, including porters, gondoliers, maids, and shopkeepers, whose duties or even personal fame are publicized in this commentary. Vecellio's fascination with the public presence of profession had an analogue in the accounts by various chroniclers regarding civic rituals. One Venetian celebration - the Coronation of the dogaressa - traditionally involved the homage of the lower arts in Venice. In the 1597 reenactment of this ritual, chroniclers recorded the professional mottoes accompanying the artisans' displays in the Ducal Palace. Such mottoes - in Latin and likely supplied by learned colleagues and official iconographers of the ritual - offer explicit or implicit rhetorical claims on behalf of artisans and their humbler colleagues (including barbers, mirror makers, armourers, and rag dealers). The full symbolic triumph of professionalism in late sixteenth-century Venetian culture comes in the enormous death book published by the physician Fabio Glissenti in 1596. This work, the Moral Discourses on the Displeasure of Dying, is replete with dialogues between a Philosopher, a Courtier, and numerous professionals (such as a Servant, a Gondolier, and an Actress) about attitudes toward death, life, and vocation. Clearly influenced by Garzoni's Piazza, this treatise is hijacked by the mentalite of profession and offers a surprisingly detailed view of the psychology of work in an adaptation of the Ars moriendi tradition. In terms of approach, one goal in this study is to offer a model for exploring

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connections between new types of high popular culture in the late Renaissance. The book shows how jokes, carnival songs and masks, games, encyclopedias, emblems, and civic mottoes constantly cross-fertilized each other. These genres are 'popular' in an expansive sense of that term, though defined somewhat more against the backdrop of learned high culture than that of oral low culture. They range from patrician burlesques in a popular idiom, to middlebrow popularizations of learned culture, to popular satirical works, to artisan writings, to the lowbrow culture of plebeian jokesters and the buffoons of the commedia dell'arte. The last category in particular - together with the assembling of parlour games and popular proverbs - represents a sampling of oral culture, whether at the level of polite society or that of the lower orders. The majority of these sources - which mostly are in the vernacular - were compiled and/or published in the last half of the sixteenth century, and thus this study is weighted toward the late Renaissance, with particular attention to Venice. Because, however, the earliest sources — namely, certain jokes of the Florentine Piovano Arlotto - date from ca. 1450, the book ranges roughly from the mid-fifteenth to the late sixteenth century. Obviously, this study is selective and does not promise a comprehensive treatment of all popular representations of the professions in the late Renaissance. Instead, focusing on certain genres that are culturally innovative or on certain works that enjoyed particular popularity, it offers a comparative analysis of various forms of comic, festive, and popular print culture. Individually these genres will be examined in relation to each other in the later Renaissance, and collectively they will be measured against currents in high culture in the early Renaissance. Readers will find relatively little attention paid here to the culture of the artist, as this realm has received so much attention, but instead I shall consider the widest possible range of professions (as found in the organizational schemes of memory books and encyclopedias) and particularly the neglected, less visible occupations. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. I would like to express my gratitude to the helpful staffs of the Biblioteca Nazionale and the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence; the Biblioteca Marciana and the Biblioteca del Museo Correr in Venice; the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington; and the Department of Rare Books of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. For research support for this project I am indebted to the University of Alabama (for University Research Grants in the fall of 1993 and the summer of 1997, and for a Bankhead Grant in the fall of 1993) and to the National Endowment for the Humanities (for a summer stipend in 1997). A version of chapter 6 appeared in the Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (1998), and I am grateful to

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the Quarterly's anonymous readers for their helpful comments concerning this piece, and to the Quarterly itself for permission to reprint much of it here. I would also like to thank Diane Owen Hughes and Anthony Grafton for helpful suggestions at earlier stages of this project and Thomas Tentler for advice in the later phase. I am also indebted to the anonymous readers of the University of Toronto Press, who offered many useful criticisms. For their many efforts, I wish to thank as well others connected with the Press, including Suzanne Rancourt, Barb Porter, and James Leahy. I am especially grateful to my wife Jennifer, who has offered numerous provocative comments on issues of substance and many provoking ones on matters of style. Though finding a bit too much humour in the Domenichi joke concerning the newly widowed woman who vowed she would never again marry an academic (see below), she has been ever-helpful and forgiving throughout the many years of this project. Our children Rosie and David have been energetic and good-natured travelling companions in our sojourns in Florence and Venice, even letting me play soccer with them on the neighbourhood field of Venice's Sant'Elena. Finally, for their example and their support, I wish to thank my parents George and Martha, to whom this book is dedicated. Tuscaloosa, 2003

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T H E C U L T U R E O F P R O F E S S I O N I N LATE R E N A I S S A N C E ITALY

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Chapter 1

Humanist and Theological Backgrounds

This study focuses on the popular rhetoric of profession emanating from the second half of the Italian Renaissance. Because many of the genres commanding our attention are defined as 'popular' relative to traditions of learned Latin culture, these traditions - especially as they emerged and developed in the first half of the Renaissance - need to be generally sketched for purposes of cultural contrast and historical context. My purpose is not to examine these learned traditions thoroughly - an area that, having received considerable attention, could bear even more study - but there are several reasons for defining them in the broadest terms. First, popular rhetoric sometimes literally and metaphorically translated high culture and Latin treatments to a vernacular key. Second, sometimes 'middlebrow' and 'high popular' genres were a conscious rejection of or counter to elite traditions. Third, popular traditions were sometimes simply different - especially when they emanated more truly from below - and in this case it is important to understand popular views against the backdrop of learned ones. Two Latin traditions - that of the humanists and that of the late scholastic theologians — yield a considerable literature appraising vocational choice, occupational status, and professional practice from a variety of intellectual, moral, social, and even political perspectives. As for the humanists, what were the terms of the debate on vocation in the revolution in high culture in the first century of humanism? Adapting Christian views of vocation and classical views of occupational status, how did they struggle to synthesize the predominantly spiritual and moral demands of the former with the predominantly intellectual and social perspectives of the latter in terms of defining their own niche? As for the theologians, what were the traditions within canon law and confessional practice that prompted assessments of the meaning of work and the specific spiritual dangers of particular professions? How

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

did the social and economic realities of Renaissance Italy prompt in late scholasticism a yet more refined appraisal of occupations? How would both of these learned traditions inform - or serve as foils to - middlebrow and festive appraisals of profession? Petrarch and the Humanist Rhetoric of Vocation Intent on making public his personal vocational crisis, Petrarch sparked a vibrant debate on profession. He moved the discussion from the realm of purely academic squabbles - largely confined to university faculties where the liberal arts vied for supremacy among themselves, and especially the advanced disciplines of medicine, law, and theology competed for primacy to a broader cultural context that transcended the academy. Personalizing the issue of vocational choice, he injected it with an autobiographical intensity that rivalled that of Augustine in his Confessions. In the process he launched several sometimes overlapping genres dealing with profession: a rhetoric of vocational choice, a rhetoric of advice, and a rhetoric of attack and ridicule. His and subsequent humanists' creation of a formal Renaissance rhetoric of vocation is not surprising, given the centrality of rhetoric in the humanist curriculum and the need for humanists to define and defend themselves culturally and professionally to their contemporaries. Petrarch's rhetorical treatment of lifestyle and profession emerged at both the theoretical level (of the contemplative vs. the active life) and at the specific level (as he defined his own vocation vis-a-vis the options of the monastery, the priesthood, law, and medicine). As for the former, his manifesto of the contemplative life in the De vita solitaria of 1346 praises literary or spiritual retreat over all forms of the active life — a life generally dismissed as being hostage to the distressing and corrupting world of secular urban experience.3 His contemplative vision fused the classical philosophical ideal of retreat with the monastic institutionalization of otium,4 a tradition he treated in the following year in his De otio religiose addressed to his brother Gherardo, who a few years earlier (in 1343) had entered a Carthusian monastery. And although the otium Petrarch idealized in both treatises was of course not that of sloth but that of freedom from worldly involvement and distraction - and in fact in the De vita solitaria was an otium that involved a negotium of literary creativity5 - still, all other forms of negotium were clearly relegated to inferior status.6 In his Familiares 10.5 (1352) he wrote to his brother of the three types of life mortals pursue: the pleasurable, the active, and the contemplative. The first two, served by the 'mechanical arts,' are the most pedestrian and commonly pursued; the last (that of theology, the seven liberal arts, philosophy,

Humanist and Theological Backgrounds

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and poetry) is the most sublime and yet neglected (save, by implication, by Petrarch and Gherardo in their own respective ways). As the partially autobiographical dimension of the De vita solitaria became more pronounced in other writings, Petrarch indeed launched the Renaissance rhetorical genre of the narrative of vocational choice or struggle. His famous 'Letter to Posterity' (Seniles 18.1) recounts how, after seven years of legal study in Montpellier and Bologna (and following the death of his parents), Petrarch rejected the law, which, though dignified for its classical Roman roots, had become morally compromised in contemporary practice: But I abandoned that subject altogether as soon as my parents abandoned me. Not that I did not like the dignity of the law, which is doubtless great and replete with Roman antiquity which delights me, but that practicing it is perverted by men's wickedness. It therefore irked me to master something I did not want to use dishonestly, and could scarcely use honestly; and had I wanted to, my good intentions would have been ascribed to inexperience.8 Petrarch injected a clear moral criterion into the issue of vocational choice, even against the wishes of his father, who - like Augustine's father in the Confessions - was the agent of his son's vocational 'secularism.' In fact, in a lesser-known narrative (in Seniles 16.1) written the year of his death, Petrarch describes how during his years as a law student his collection of Cicero's writings and his volumes of poetry were thrown into the fire (presumably by his father, though it is not explicitly stated) as 'enemies of lucrative studies' and even thereby as 'heretical books.' When his father saw his distress, he rescued two books, holding in his right hand a volume of Virgil for his enrichment and in his left a volume of the Ps.-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium for his legal studies.11 That Petrarch's moral rejection of the law was complemented by a spiritual embrace of literary vocation is suggested by his language. Not only does his story assign legal rhetorical studies to the sinister left hand, but also letters - representing a 'heretical' choice to the orthodoxy of practical career - assume an almost religious significance. Indeed, Petrarch refigures the narrative of spiritual vocation in the Confessions, in which Augustine recounts his choosing Christianity and a religious life over his father's desire that he pursue a career as a rhetoric teacher. For Petrarch, the drama concerns his rejection of the law for a 'holier' vocation of letters. The further irony of this adaptation of Augustine's vocational narrative is that for Petrarch a traditional clerical career - a cura animarum and/or high ecclesiastical preferment - held little spiritual vocational meaning or appeal.12 Like the law, it was simply a pragmatic career option. As is well known, after

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Petrarch left the law and returned to Avignon to begin his life as a love poet and, eventually, as a classical scholar, he supported himself with minor church benefices, for which he qualified likely by taking minor orders. It is revealing that in his 'Letter to Posterity' his first assuming such benefices (or taking minor orders) plays no part in the chronological narrative of his career - and receives a comment only toward the end of the incomplete autobiography that once he settled in Padua his Carraran patron bestowed upon him a canonry 'knowing that I had led a clerical life since childhood.' 14 Like the secular law, clerical position was a coerced occupation of youth or necessity, certainly not a vocation. The literary vocation that Petrarch did embrace obviously was a preoccupation in his corpus. In both negative and positive ways, Augustine was again the touchstone for his vocational self-assessment. On the negative side, in Petrarch's autobiographical dialogue, the Secretum, it was the figure of 'Augustine' who in his spiritual analysis of Petrarch warned him that it was the love for Laura (in his poetry) and his quest for fame (in the Africa) 2 that were the two great secular chains weighing him down and preventing his contemplation of death and the eternal.1 On the positive side, however, Augustine's conversion narrative in the Confessions (and especially Book 8) was clearly a model for his own conversion scene in his famous 'Ascent of Mt Ventoux' (Familiares 4-1). In this allegorical climb with his brother Gherardo as a companion, Petrarch takes a meandering route to the summit in contrast to his (monastic) brother's steeper but more direct path. 16 At the top, Petrarch reflects on his life's course since leaving Bologna a decade before (1326), and, while he confesses to having recently been freed from the inordinate attachment to love (Laura), he still has yet to free himself completely from worldliness. Then, opening his copy of the Confessions to a passage (in 10.8) urging a reflection not upon nature but upon one's soul, Petrarch suggests that he has an epiphany not unlike that of Augustine himself, who elsewhere in the Confessions recounted how his reading a passage from Paul completed his conversion to Christianity. Clearly, he has adapted Augustine's conversion story to his own conversion to moral philosophy,18 that part of his humanist vocation most compatible with Augustinian spirituality, and that part, he suggests in his 'Letter to Posterity,' to which he gravitated at the expense of poetry. 19 Thus, by implicitly linking his own conversion to moral philosophy to 20 Augustine's conversion to Christianity, Petrarch reveals how humanist views of vocation in part represented a historical reversal vis-a-vis early Christian views. Whereas Augustine rejected secular classical rhetoric to embrace clerical vocation, Petrarch rejects high clerical estate (as too

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worldly) to embrace ultimately classical rhetoric and moral philosophy as a higher calling. In doing so, he links himself to his monastic brother, tying Gherardo's 'otio religiose' to his own Vita solitaria' - and perhaps it is no coincidence that he associates fasting with piety and with scholarly life (Seniles 12.2) and confesses that he does not conform to the more austere standards of philosophical dress (Familaries 21.13).21 If not using the word Vocatio,' Petrarch has certainly laboured to legitimate his humanist calling with religious urgency, elevating it above the secularizing temptations of ecclesiastical preferment and the corrupt practice of the law. Aside from his many genres depicting his own vocational choice, Petrarch also cultivated a rhetoric of vocational advice, applying to others' situations some of the same evaluative categories he had applied to his own life. Thus, for instance, Familiares 20.4 to Marco Genovese, purportedly intended to bolster him in his decision to pursue the law, actually becomes a withering assault on the decline of the law from a pursuit closely tied to eloquence, to one tied to civil law, to one perverted to the mercenary business of23 contracts 23 and wills and akin to the 'mechanical arts' in its concern for profit.22 3The last point reveals Petrarch's contempt for both the 'mechanical arts' and any linkage of labour to profit - a typical classical perspective but one also tinged with hypocrisy in Petrarch's case, as he of course relied on patronage for his literary lifestyle and complained even so of the instability and penury of that life.24 In his writings on his own and others' career choice, Petrarch was often quite high-minded, arguing the case for a moral vocation, defending the freedom of vocational choice from parental interference and consistently urging that one's nature or talent should be the first criterion. But he could also be rather low-minded and even petty. This was particularly the case in his ongoing clash with the physicians of his day, a clash that elicited his laboured and vitriolic rhetorical treatment of professions, the four-book Invective contra medzcum.26 Growing out of a letter (Familiaries2 5.19) Petrarch wrote in 1352 to Pope Clement VI warning him to beware of the crowd of pompous doctors at his deathbed, Petrarch's battle with a physician at the Papal court elevated professional polemics to a more literary level and a broader cultural context.2 At the most elemental level, Petrarch took offence at physicians who, waxing eloquent at the sickbed, were poaching on his territorial domain as a rhetorician.28 Physicians, in their university training, frequented the realms of dialectic and natural philosophy - fields against which Petrarch, outside the 29 university, defined his own vision of moral rhetoric and moral philosophy. The intellectual/educational chasm between humanists and physicians made even more outrageous the transgression of professional boundaries that doctors' vain attempts at healing eloquence represented. But, as became clear

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with his ensuing polemic with the unknown papal physician and in numerous letters to medical acquaintances, Petrarch's resentment of physicians extended also to their incompetence, pomposity, greed, and even dress. Particularly this last issue - the physicians' donning of the lavish robes of the nobility - reveals how Petrarch's critique of the profession was animated by a social dimension. In a lengthy letter to Boccaccio (Seniles 5.3) he complains that if these 'mechanics' dare to wear the purple 'because of the mere exercise of a plebeian skill, why should farmers, weavers, and other practitioners of like arts not dare to the same, except that no craftsman would have such audacity? 312They flaunt equestrian regalia, and soon, he comically muses, perhaps they will even stage triumphal processions like those of victorious Roman generals - especially given the numbers they have killed in their practice. Petrarch's attack here shows that the developing sensitivity to the possibilities of social mobility via profession has blossomed into a topos in professional polemics. Not only does Petrarch deny physicians entry into noble ranks, but he consistently aspires to demote them to the 'plebeian' realm of the manual arts. Despite the physicians' claim to a wider learning, Petrarch contemptuously lumps them with the practitioners of the mechanical arts. This is a dominant theme in the Contra medicum perhaps chiefly because Petrarch's disputant contended that rhetoric is subservient to medicine. Revealing the intensity surrounding the relative ranking of the arts, Petrarch calls it an 'unheard-of sacrilege' to thus subordinate a liberal to a mechanical art. In fact, drawing upon (and perhaps partially manipulating) Hugh of St Victor's scheme of the arts in the Didascalicon, Petrarch identifies medicine as the 'penultimate' and 'dregs' of the seven mechanical arts (ranking above only theatre).34 Time and ,35 5 again he insults this doctor as a 'mechanicus, 3 4who would so reverse the proper order of liberal over mechanical arts, who surrounded by his urine samples presumes to write books, who lays claim to the title of philosopher, who has the cheek to attack Petrarch's literary solitary life. To the doctor's pretension to eloquence, Petrarch answers with Virgil's characterization of medicine as a 'silent art,,36 alluding to the passage in the Aeneid that refers to lapyx, who 'preferred to know the power of herbs and the practice of healing and, inglorius, to engage in the silent arts' (12.396-7) - a locus, moreover, that suggests that a practitioner of such a silent art would be without glory. Such a distinction between the glorious verbal and inglorious manual arts - if not expressly stated by Petrarch - is likely at the heart of his ranking of the arts. In his lengthy Seniles 12.2, in which he attempts to persuade Giovanni Dondi to leave medicine, Petrarch does address the issue of glory and labour. When Dondi argues that physicians work hard, Petrarch responds that,

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although all glory proceeds from work, not all work leads to glory - as evidenced by comparing the sailor or farmer to the general or philosopher.37 Petrarch has clearly absorbed classical intellectuals' relative contempt for the pedestrian arts.38 Whether it be their manual nature, their inglorious silence, or their mercenary intent, such arts have a depressed status in such a heroic, verbal, 'shame-culture' tradition. Petrarch epitomizes his own view on this subject toward the end of the fourth book of his Contra medicum. Here, defending his own solitary life from his disputant's attack, he contrasts the 'honest pleasure' of literary retreat with the unrest of the city, whose inhabitants include the likes of libertines, thieves, and 'mechanic/, among all of whom there is but one purpose: to deceive and to profit.'3 9 If the rhetoric of vocational choice for Petrarch largely turned on moral and even Augustinian themes, the rhetoric of professional rivalry turned more on cultural and social issues of disciplinary boundaries and occupational status. His quarrel with the physicians - and especially the very compilation of the four-book Invectives against a Physician as a formal literary work reveals how fully professional definition and standing had become a subject 4 for substantive debate.40 And while the duel is certainly a serious one in substance, it is not always so in style, at least on Petrarch's part. That is, one feature of Petrarch's rhetoric of professional attack is his use of comic tropes, a satirical tenor revealing that these are not simply theoretical or arid academic debates. His comments to Boccaccio (Seniles 5.3) concerning physicians' qualification for triumphal processions (owing to their many victims) is but one instance. Sometimes, his satire sinks to a fairly base level, as evidenced by his many references to physicians' necessary truck with indelicate chores, such as their frequenting 'the latrines of the wealthy,' and their linspect[ing] the urine of the sick and contemplat[ing] gold.,41 At other times, it is more cerebral. For instance, in his answer to the papal physician's claim that medicine subsumes rhetoric, Petrarch concedes three instances in which the physician does indeed make legitmate use of rhetoric: to accuse the patient (who has just died in his charge), to excuse himself (from blame), and to console others (the survivors of the departed patient) — all of these representing ironic inversions of Cicero's masterful rhetoric as he accused malefactors (such as Catiline or Antony), excused or defended others (such as Plancius or Milo), and consoled himself (for the death of his daughter). Whether crude or clever, such satire signals in yet another way how professional rivalry, like vocational choice, had achieved in Petrarch a considerable cultural stature and social intensity as a rhetorical motif. In the course of the next century of humanism, Petrarch's multifaceted rhetoric of vocation blossomed in several genres, including narratives of voca-

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tional choice, treatises on the ideal (professional) life, and systematic comparisons of the intellectual, moral, operational, and social stature of the arts. Petrarch's famous colleague Boccaccio incorporated the genre of the vocational autobiography in his Genealogia deorum gentilium 15.10, in which he charts his father's pressuring him first into a career in business and then - his academic bent becoming evident - into a 'lucrative' career in canon law, until 43 Boccaccio eventually prevailed to pursue a literary life. And, whereas Petrarch only hinted at the concept of a literary 'vocation,' Boccaccio reified the topos in this chapter of the Genealogia where he describes his embrace of a poetic vocatio. In succeeding generations less famous humanists would also cultivate the genre of vocational autobiography, in some cases adapting the argument for humanist vocation from the loftier peaks of the literary hero to the more workaday realm of pedagogy. Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna is a case in point. A student of Petrarch's acquaintance Donate Albanzani, Conversini led an itinerant life as a teacher and university professor (of grammar and rhetoric) with stints outside the academy as notary, courtier, and chancellor.4 Author of the lengthiest humanist autobiography of the early Renaissance, the Rationarium vite, Conversini charted his vocational journey with an Augustinian intensity. In fact, like Petrarch, he adapted Augustine's trope of conversion to his own rejection of the law for literary study and teaching. He even ties his conversion experience to a reading of 'a volume of Cicero' - replacing the Hortensius, hailed in Confessions 3.4, probably with the Ps.-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium - as he desribes an Easter-time epiphany that inspired him to resist the more pragmatic study of the law, which he attacks, for the moral vocation of letters. Thus, like Petrarch, Conversini attempts to laicize Augustine's conversion experience, applying the moral urgency of vocation to 48 a choice not of clerical or monastic life but of literary life. Especially from the vantage point of his Paduan chancellorship, which he held when he composed the Rationarium vite, Conversini idealized and pined for the higher moral calling of teaching. A few years later, having left the Paduan post to return to teaching in Venice, he was more concerned to appraise teaching from the point of view of its lowly social standing. In a treatise on life choice, the Dragmalogia de eligibili vite genere (1404), Conversini offers a dialogue between a Paduan (Conversini) and a Venetian, who discuss various options of courtly vs. non-courtly life, princely vs. republican regimes, rural vs. urban life, and secular vs. clerical vocation. One notable concern of the 'Paduan' in this dialogue is his concern to upgrade the status of the teacher, a position Conversini had bewailed as 'sordida' elsewhere.50 When the 'Venetian' asks why Conversini would have left his exalted posi-

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tion in the Paduan court for the lowly position of teacher or magister, a term ,5 also used by 'workmen and barbers,' 1 Conversini responds by attacking the unwarranted status of dominus (afforded by circumstance) over that of magister (earned 'by ability and intellectual excellence')- He argues that the magister instils virtue, teaches the arts of living, and improves others with his words as a smith improves metal with his craft. Here Conversini invokes a rare positive view of manual labour to emphasize that the work of a teacher should prevail over the mere title of lord,53 and thus promotes professional function over social status. Clearly, Conversini's rhetoric of vocation here attempts to counteract a social bias he himself reveals elsewhere in his own writings: namely, a contempt for (and embarrassment over) schoolteaching's baseness, a quality it shares with the manual arts. Conversini's life of vocational indecision and vacillation in large measure epitomizes the humanist struggle to fuse an Augustinian model of spiritual and moral vocation with a Ciceronian model of respectability and honestas (which, despite its moral component, in the De officiis also bore the imprint of the classical social bias against the manual arts and remunerative work). The humanist failure to successfully incorporate these realms would again later be dramatically illustrated in Leon Battista Alberti's De commodis litterarum atque incommodis (ca. 55 1431 ). 5 This grim treatise evaluates learned professions (letters, law, medicine, and the notarial art) according to their vulnerability to fortune and servitude, their moral practice, and their social standing. Ultimately Albert! finds a complete disjuncture between learned pursuits and tangible economic or social reward and argues that the value of such endeavours must be only intrinsic. y ' Aside from autobiographical and moral writings on vocational choice, Petrarch's example also inspired more formal or theoretical treatments comparing the professions. His conflict with the physicians - and especially the Contra medicum - undoubtedly inspired Coluccio Salutati's extensive De nobilitate legum et medicine (1399), written in response to a Florentine physician's assertion of medicine's superiority over the law. Less ad hominem than Petrarch's exchange with the papal physician, Salutati's treatise systematically assesses the two fields according to such criteria as their origin, subject, end, certainty, utility, and necessity - in all cases favouring the claims of the law. And while this may be partly owing to Salutati's own background in the associated notarial art, it also reflects his larger moral and social sensibilities. In response to his adversary's association of medicine with the higher 'speculative' life, Salutati claims that the law's tie to the active and social realm is in fact a worthier attribute, reflecting his own predilection for the 'will' over the 58 'intellect' and for the 'active' over the 'contemplative' life. As Eugenio

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Garin has shown, other humanists (such as Poggio Bracciolini), physicians, and others would soon add to the literature of this 'dispute of the arts.' A brief for the humanists themselves in this contest appeared in Filippo Beroaldo the Elder's Declamatio an orator sit philosopho et medico anteponendus (1497), which depicts three sons (one an orator, one a philosopher, one a physician) each defending his particular profession to win the estate of their father, whose will named as heir the son who 'would be most useful to the state.'60 As the most eloquent pleader of his case (and alter ego of the author), the orator wins.61 Paralleling the intellectual debate concerning the 'nobility' of the arts was one that considered this criterion also in moral, social, and political contexts. As Conversini's Dragrnalogia showed, the humanist stress on virtue could have 62 an impact on social and political assumptions concerning nobility. One important ramification of Italian humanist moral thought was the correction of conventional views of the 'nobility of blood' (or wealth) with a 'nobility of talent' (or virtue). Various treatises - such as Poggio's De nobilitate (1440) and responses it provoked from Leonardo da Chios and Lauro Quirini, as well as Cristoforo Landino's De vera nobilitate - addressed the true criteria for nobility, at times reviewing the claims of merchants or others for such a distinction. In some cases, such moral discussions — as well as the humanist literature of professional polemic - were appropriated by legal theorists in their appraisals of nobility and status, a tradition that in turn would be incorporated by the popular cinquecento encyclopedist Tomaso Garzoni. Finally, in the tradition especially of Plato's Republic humanists at times also assessed professions from the point of view of their relevance to the state. Particularly notable in this regard is Francesco Patrizi, the Bishop of Gaeta. Between the mid-1460s and mid-1480s Patrizi wrote two humanistic treatises: the first, the De institutions reipublicae (addressed to the Sienese), dealt with republics; the second, the De regno et regis institutione, with kingship.66 The former, especially important because it would be cited time and again in Garzoni's Pia^a universal, includes discrete chapters on the status and role of various manual and learned professions in the ideal republic. The context for these chapters in Book 1 is a consideration of who should be admitted to public office - 'On the Equality of Citizens among Themselves and on Things That Promote Concord' (1.6) - which is followed by discussions on farmers (1.7), artisans and merchants (1.8), architects (1.9), and artists (1.10). The overall thrust of each of these chapters is to validate such professionals, defend them from critics, and affirm their claims to honour or even public office. The most dramatic of these treatments, entitled 'In What Way Artisans

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and Merchants Must Be Accepted into the Republic' (1.8), opens with a powerful condemnation of sloth (otium), including the custom of the Indian Gymnosophists, who, hating segnitia and torpor animi, excluded individuals from dinner until they had evidenced some industry for the day. Patrizi also cites the industry of bees and ants and Draco's levying the death penalty for sloth, identifies the slothful as poison to the state, and concludes that 'nothing is worse than otium and nothing more praiseworthy than industry. ,69 The preoccupation with sloth is also to be found in his earlier chapter 1.6 on civic equality and concord, where he affirms that 'there is no place in the republic for the otiose' and in fact even excludes them from public office 'because they are not able to rule properly and refuse to serve and obey.' The rebuke of sloth and the praise of industry that open the chapter on artisans and merchants serve to validate their manual labour and to prepare for Patrizi's attempt to partially challenge the classical contempt for manual and commercial pursuits that he records: namely, Cicero's argument in De officiis 1.150 that 'there is nothing noble [ingenuus] in the workshop' and the opinion of 'Socrates' (cf. Lau-s 8.846d and 11.918d-921d) and Aristotle (Politics 3.5) that artisans and merchants should not be admitted to public office (or citizen status). As a counter to Cicero's contempt for artisans, Patrizi argues that they 'not only should be tolerated but counted among honest citizens.' And in contrast to Cicero's blanket condemnation of a generic class of 'opifices omnes,' he validates a host of specific crafts, including some artistic ones an association furthered in the following century by Patrizi's Florentine translator Giovanni Fabrini, who appends a reference to the 'miraculous Michelangelo' in particular/" And to Plato's and Aristotle's exclusion of artisans and merchants from office-holding, Patrizi answers with a cautious revisionism of such formidable authorities by favouring a more tolerant path that admits honest practitioners of both groups to public office, a policy he deems 73 both just and essential to civic concord. 3 It is a measure of the shift in emphasis since Petrarch - who valued only literary labour not manual - that Patrizi validates such labour so fully that he transforms, and almost inverts, the classical philosophers' criterion for full citizenship. That is, whereas Plato and Aristotle excluded the nonlearned manual class from political offices, Patrizi would exclude the nonworking otiose element. He thereby censures sloth above all else as politically and socially destructive, whereas classical intellectuals (and a figure such as Petrarch) censured as 'sordid' or menial the manual class, who through their labour were least associated with this vice. 75 In doing so, Patrizi reflects in part the development by the mid-quattrocento of the merchant praise of industry so famously voiced by Leon Battista Alberti in his Delia /amiglin.75 In any case, as we shall see in chapter 3 below, Tomaso

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Garzoni absorbs Patrizi's rebuke of sloth and applies it to a defence of his own literary 'fatica' in the prologue to his Pia^a universale. Aside from the praise of the manual arts' role in the ideal republic, Patrizi's treatise in Book 2 also affirms the importance of the liberal arts and learned professions (including grammar, the quadrivium, medicine, eloquence, 7 poetry, and philosophy). Patrizi's treatise thus offers a rhetoric of praise for professions (or groups of professions), which are explicitly honoured for their contribution to the polity77 and implicitly elevated by the assignment of dis78 crete chapters in such a political treatise. Moreover, Patrizi shows the degree to which, by the second half of the fifteenth century, a humanist author was interested in offering theoretical support to the actual political and social ascent of the middle- and lower-middle-class professions in Italian urban life. He legitimates their rightful claim to public honours - and in doing so even challenges classical authorities and assumptions - and he argues for political equality as well as asserting the possibility of both downward and upward mobility in assessing the status of noblility. In all these points, Patrizi reveals a distance from Petrarch's general contempt for mechanical and commercial arts and is a harbinger of, and influence on, the further elevation of such arts in the literature of the following century. Sant'Antonino and the Late Scholastic Theology of Work Not long before Patrizi composed his De institutione reipublicae, Florence's foremost cleric, Archbishop Antonino (Pierozzi), offered his own assessment of the arts in his Summa tkeologica (completed ca. 1455).80 Whereas trecento and quattrocento humanists appraised professions in a rhetorically selfconscious manner — whether intent on intellectual, moral, social, or political validations of lay vocation — Antonino obviously did so in a less studied style and with the more straightforward institutional viewpoints of canon law (with its prescriptions concerning proper and improper priestly pursuits and its regulation of economic life) and confessional practice. And if not overtly 'rhetorical' in the humanist sense of that word, Antonino's treatment nonetheless certainly provides 'praise' and 'rebuke' of occupations from a theological perspective that claimed a powerful hold on both high and low culture. One among countless ecclesiastical writers of the late scholastic period, Antonino is our focus here for two reasons. First, in his Summa he advanced the specific practical analysis of professions far beyond the major authorities he cited, no doubt largely owing to his position of archbishop in commercially vibrant quattrocento Florence. Second, his unusual treatment of professions was taken up in the following century by Tomaso Garzoni, who would

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translate and transform it to a more popular key. Of particular interest to us as to Garzoni later - is the third section of Antonino's massive treatise, where he discusses various social categories: from spouses and widows, to professional types, to temporal lords and clerics. Here, tucked between a treatment of soldiers and judges, are four sections, 'On Teachers and Students,' 'On the State of Advocates and Procurators,' 'On the State of Physicians,' and 'On the State of Merchants and Artisans.'82 Within these sections Antonino offers both a theoretical statement concerning the nature of learned and manual professions and practical observations that could potentially be of use to 83 preachers or confessors. First, a word about the general structure of Antonino's analysis of the arts as an organizational category. Like Aquinas, Antonino examined professional issues in a scattershot fashion throughout various parts of his Summa: for instance, in sections on negligence, fraud, theft, avarice, and excommunication. Where he significantly differs is in revisiting profession as a discrete category - and one not so fully grounded in the organizational categories of sin and censure. In tact, Antonino's section on various 'states' has only a rough analogue in a section of Aquinas's Summa theologiae in which the active and contemplative lives and the clerical 'state' are examined. Aside from passing comments on teaching, however, Aquinas's discussion offers no specific treatment of secular occupations. In Antonino's Summa the secular professional states coalesce among the other 'states' (of the married, the widowed, the dying, the clerical, etc.), and thereby in its very structure the treatise shows a far clearer professional consciousness. Thus, as Patrizi would lift the arts out as discrete chapters in his De institutione reipublicae, so Antonino prominently did so in his Summa theologica - and this is likely the reason both authors attracted the attention of later writers, such as Chasseneuz and Garzoni, who treated the professions. As for the general divisions and critiques of the arts, Antonino clearly reflects the intellectual assumptions of the late medieval university setting and the moral and ecclesiastical perspectives of canon law. The university structure is clearly reflected in the section 'On Teachers and Students,' which incorporates not only the traditional liberal arts but also the major advanced fields of theology, philosophy, law, and medicine. And even though practising lawyers and doctors have their discrete treatment in the following sections, their disciplines are also briefly discussed in this section: for instance, where Antonino addresses the question of whether medicine or law is nobler, 87 or where he discusses the issuing of teaching licences in such fields. By linking these disciplines via a university curriculum, he assures their relative comparability as learned disciplines - and thus he offers a counterbalance to his own

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earlier mention of medicine as a mechanical art (following Hugh of St Victor)88 and Petrarch's decidedly extramural attempt to so demote medicine to this status. Just as medicine's status as an advanced discipline in the scholastic university scheme made it a target for Petrarch, from Antonino's point of view it perhaps generally protected it, and this possibly accounts for the relatively positive depiction of it in his section 'On the State of Physicians.' As would be expected, however, an even more important lens for Antonino's appraisal of the arts was the expressly clerical perspective inherent to canon law. From learned professions to manual trades, Antonino's survey of professional life frequently cites canonists who adjudge whether involvement with a particular occupation is appropriate for a cleric or religious. For instance, he discusses prohibitions against priests or monks publicly studying law or medicine, engaging in trade, or acting.90 In one sense, such restrictions were meant simply to affirm the exclusivity of religious vocation. But in another, they point up how clerical writings on secular profession often start from fundamentally negative assumptions concerning the corrupting power of lay pursuits on religious life. For Antonino, as for Aquinas and other high and late medieval scholastic theologians, the challenge was to gradually legitimate realms of economic and professional activity against the innately 91 suspicious perspectives of religious vocation itself. Even in the case of an unequivocally legitimate profession such as teaching, canon law had to make careful rules concerning clerical involvement with 'professionalism.' The dominance of the church and the clergy in education (via cathedral schools) led to clear rules as to whether teachers could receive payment from their students. If the teacher held 'some prebend' or 'sufficient public salary,' he could not; if not, he could.92 Tellingly, violations of such a rule were framed in terms of simony - the selling of a spiritual office. And likewise the defence of charging fees was rooted in the distinction that a teacher was not selling 'science, which cannot be sold because it is a spiritual thing, but for his labour he was promised a premium or salary.'93 This 'spiritualizing' of science - perhaps due to the 'clericalizing' of education - lends a religious perspective to the practice of other learned professions as well. When Antonino discusses the issue of salary in later sections on lawyers and physicians, he repeats this defence against simony: 'Nor from this, because the physician accepts and seeks a fee, is he said to sell science or health, which are spiritual things, but he contracts his works, and for his labour expended then or earlier studying, he seeks compensation.'94 Learned lay professionals then, like clerics, must be exonerated from the charge that receiving fees for their services could be construed as akin to a cleric's selling his spiritual services. The equation of 'science' and 'spiritual things' illustrates how closely the

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learned professions of theology, law, and medicine were linked in the writings of the canonists. By validating such professions with the force of holy office, theologians must then exonerate them in terms of remuneration. The solution was to argue that when teachers, priests, advocates, and physicians receive payment, they are being compensated for their (temporal) labour, not their (spiritual) science. Moreover, the theological challenge of validating worldly professionalism and in particular the acceptance of salary or fees - can also be seen in Antonino's (and his theological predecessors') creative use of biblical loci. In defending both learned professionals' fees and the wages of manual labourers, Antonino somewhat ironically turns to scriptural passages that initially referred to religious vocations rather than secular occupations. In his discussion of physicians' fees — and later in his general treatment of manual labour's rewards and his specific defence of merchants' moderate gains and blacksmiths' pay - he cites Luke 10:7 that 'the labourer deserves his wages.' The context of this passage, however, is Jesus' charge to his seventy-two disciples in which he affirms that they should be supported in their spiritual labours as they harvest souls, advising them to accept boarding in the houses they visit, 'eating and drinking what they have, for the labourer deserves his wages.' Where Jesus had turned an image of secular work to spiritual use, Antonino (following Augustine and Gratian) turns the image inside out, using Jesus' advice on spiritual just deserts for a defence of the rewards of secular labour. A biblical defence of secular professionalism is thus to be had only by inverting a scriptural defence of religious vocation. In the use of this passage on behalf of merchants, Antonino wittingly or unwittingly alters the locus, transforming 'Dignus est enim operarius mercede sua' into 'Dignus est autem mercenarius mercede sua,' further reifying the commercial nature of profession in this instance.916A second biblical passage Antonino converts to his purpose is 1 Corinthians 9:7, in which Paul discusses his work as an Apostle, claiming that his spiritual efforts merit worldly support - to wit, a livelihood - as he asks 'What soldier ever serves at his own expense?' Antonino invokes this rhetorical question when defending bankers' right to charge fees in their letters of exchange (because of the 'labour, expenses, and dangers' involved) and also in his argument that retailers merit compensation. Once again, the biblical defence of clerical vocation is adapted to a scholastic defence of worldly profession. The ironic use of these biblical adaptations, like the equation of 'learned sciences' with 'spiritual offices,' reveals the degree to which scholastic theologians viewed secular occupations through the specific lens of clerical vocation.98 And not surprisingly, in a related way, many of the particular warnings

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concerning professional practice derive from a perspective that views worldly work as an interference with institutional religious life and the office of the cure of souls. Thus, a common criticism of artisans is that they work on holidays or miss Mass because of their labours: for instance, tavernkeepers when they open up on the morning of religious holidays or tailors when they work on holiday nights and go to the homes of clients on holiday mornings.9 9 Among the learned occupations, physicians sin when they offer remedies counter to spiritual health and when they fail to summon a priest for a dying 0 course, a major preoccupation concerns the violations of canon patient.11 0 Of law's considerable regulation of economic life through provisions concerning just price, fraud, and usury. Such violations, together with a general moral oversight of professional life, dominate Antonino's treatment of the 'defects' or 'vices' of various learned or manual professions. Here he has a considerable literature to draw upon, such as Alvaro Pelayo's De planctu ecclesiae (133040), which includes lengthy lists of the foibles of lawyers, judges, merchants, and others.101 Antonino's analysis is also informed by the tradition and specific literature on penance and confession. His discussion draws frequently on Gratian's trea102 tise De poenitentia, which constitutes part of the Decretals,102 and he cites such authorities as Raymond of Penaforte, whose Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio (or Raymundina) (ca. 1220-45) launched the tradition of the summa for confessors.103 He himself wrote a confessor's manual, the CConfessionaleDefecerunt, which appeared in both Latin and vernacular versions and which perhaps was incorporated into - rather than extracted from - the Summa theoiogzca.104 Certainly, the practical confessional advice that can be found at times in the treatment of professions in the Summa confirms Antonino's stated intention that he wants his treatise to be of use to preachers and confessors in their cure of souls. As for his appraisal of particular professions, Antonino seeks to lay out both the virtues and vices of various occupations such that his comments include not merely the censorious perspectives of the canonist or confessor but also at times (though more rarely) the theologian's validation of an art's necessity or even divine stature. When treating the two learned professions of law and medicine in their discrete chapters, he elevates them both with biblical imagery and loci, which is not surprising given his association of both with theology and spiritual 'science' in his earlier section 'On Teachers and Students.' Especially in his treatment of lawyers and notaries, Antonino's Summa also shows the encyclopedist's interest in describing professional practice. Drawing especially on Guillaume Durand's Speculum iudiciale, he discusses such issues as the proper dress for lawyers, the treatment of opposing counsel,

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10 5 behaviour before the judge, and the setting of fees.105 The rhetorical structure of his chapter 'On the State of Advocates and Procurators' - like that of all the chapters in this section - is a tripartite gloss on a passage from a Psalm (in this case 2:8). And though he begins the gloss with the analogy of Christ as an advocate (citing 1 John 2:1), 1 0 when discussing the 'exercitatio advocatorum' Antonino shows himself eager to rebuke lawyers with satire. He illustrates the disaster of ineffective counsel by citing a comic attack on troublemakers in a letter (Epistulaee 5.7) of Sidonius Apollonaris, a fifth-century literary figure and Bishop of Auvergne. Antonino rather loosely quotes and claims that Sidonius's comments applied to 'bad advocates,' identified as 'beasts in questioning, stony in understanding, wooden in judging ... foxes in deceiving, bulls in being proud, minotaurs in consuming, who delay, increase, and impede causes' and who were equipped with the 'claws of Sphinxes, the perjuries of Laodemon, the subtlety of Ulysses, the deceits of Sinon' and so on. ' Moreover, in this same section, in which Antonino argues that advocates sin if they exercise their practice corruptly, he includes a few other lawyer jokes. One is drawn from a tragedy Antonino attributes to Seneca, in which the shade of Nero, languishing in boiling gold in the baths of the underworld, tells some approaching lawyers - whom he hails as the 'venal 8 other gibes also kind of mortals' -- that he has saved a place for them. 1 0 Two exploit the motif of contrappasso: one concerns an advocate who, 'because he often pled superfluous things in causes,' received no quarter when he pled 'truce, truce' on his deathbed; another an advocate who, when warned 'by his intimates concerning confession' and other matters, was recalcitrant and 'said: "I appeal," and thus he expired going to the supernal judge to whom he 9 notable contrast to the treatment of lawyers in a was not able to appeal.' 1 0 In section on unjust counsel in Aquinas's Summa theologiae 2.2.71, on which he draws,1 1 0Antonino shows a keen interest in satirizing lawyers - a somewhat surprising motif for a theological summa and one that perhaps suggests that the rising intensity of professional identity and rivalry found in humanist culture has also intruded upon theological culture.1 1 1And as Garzoni's Piazza universale of the following century shows, Antonino's comic themes would find the ir way into the popular encylopedia. As for physicians, Antonino is generally far more respectful. Most noteworthy is his thoroughgoing spiritualizing of healing, both in terms of theological images and clerical analogies. As part of his gloss on the passage (Psalm 87 [88]:11) framing the discussion of physicians, he shows how the 'effects' of medicine 'must be admired,' and here he examines three types of doctors: the 'supernatural,' the 'spiritual,' and the 'corporeal.' The supernatural medicus is Christ, whose healing encompasses both the soul and body and whose cura-

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tive power is the source of the worldly physician's. And not only is the efficacy of the corporeal medicus linked to divine agency, but also his office is linked to that of the spiritual medicus, the priest, whose medicine is 'penance and the other sacraments.'112 Through his spiritual ministrations, moreover, the priestly healer of souls can not only heal the sick but even restore those who are 'dead' to sin (though he, like the physician, heals 'not by himself, but by the virtue of God').113 The parallel between the restorative powers of the physician and the priest has more than a symbolic function in Antonino's discussion, as he stresses the necessary practical connection between their offices. That is, he emphasizes the need for the physician to see to it that the 11 sick also summon a priest to ensure the health of both body and soul. 14 Finally, in discussing the remedies of both types of healing, Antonino explicitly links medical cures to theological ones: thus, the physician's medicine 'dispositiva ad curam' (i.e., syrup) is identified with the 'word of God'; the 'purgativa' with penance; the 'conservative' with the eucharist. 1 1 5Not surprisingly, such medical language was to be found in one version of the title of one of the vernacular confessor's manuals appearing under Antonino's name, the 11 Medicina dell' anz'ma.116 All such priestly analogies obviously spiritualized the medical profession, and Antonino's comparison of the doctor's craft to the healing agency of Christ, the priest, and the sacraments is a far cry from Petrarch's derision of them as 'mechanics' inspecting urine samples. 1 1 7 Having presented this rather flattering portrait of the physician's role, Antonino does also - as he did in the case of lawyers - discuss their 'vices.' These include the deficiencies of 'ignorance,' 'negligence,' and 'malice.' In one example of the last - namely, their allowing a pharmacist to profit by using old or ineffective drugs - Antonino cites no sources, suggesting that his comments may be drawn from personal observation or confessional experi118 ence.11 Aside from these purely professional faults, the vices of physicians also include spiritual transgressions. Given the doctor's analogous role to the priest as a healer, Antonino may have been particularly concerned with potential conflicts of interest: namely, instances in which medical treatment could threaten the health of the soul, such as the recommendation that the sick break fasts, eat meat on forbidden days, get drunk, or seek extramarital affairs. 1 1 The physician must weigh the patient's physical and spiritual needs - including the need to summon a priest at the necessary time. Such concerns in Antonino's discussion further reveal that, more than having a symbolic or metaphorical link as healers, physicians and priests most commonly and critically converge in their vocations in the case of the sick and dying. No wonder, then, that Antonino's treatment of physicians has such spiritual depth in its praise, and such practical detail in its rebuke.

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Antonino complemented his chapters on learned professions with a treatment of all manner of manual ones in his 'On the State of Merchants and Artisans,' a chapter Garzoni would draw upon in some notable instances. Indeed, Antonino's detailed descriptions of and prescriptions for commercial and artisan trades show less reliance on previous authorities and represent an important contribution to the theology of the lower arts.120 Certainly, his treatment reveals his setting to be a major industrial and commercial centre. And unlike those humanists who would readily dismiss the mechanical arts, Antonino as casuist has more need to precisely define and pragmatically critique (and even regulate) them. Although Antonino had argued that the religious and learned vocations warranted pay for their expenditures of labour, he saved his general discussion of labour for the opening section of this chapter, entitled 'On the Practice of Artisans.' 121 Here Antonino's gloss text is Psalm 103 [104]:23 ('Man goes forth to his work and labours until evening'), concerning which he offers two views of the philosophy and theology of labour — one Aristotelian and prelapsarian, the other penitential and postlapsarian. In the former, positive view of work, Antonino cites Aristotle's Ethics 1[.7] and 10[.7] for the view that the 'highest happiness of man consists in his operation for the best,' and he complements this philosophical perspective with the biblical view of man's Edenic state in which 'God placed him in the paradise of delight, so that he might work (Genesis 2[:15]).' And though mankind's truest work was to be spiritual 'meditating and contemplating the divine' - mortals in this state also pursued corporeal work 'not indeed for necessity, but for mental delight, for experiencing the power of nature, and then more so for investigating things themselves and the Creator in them.' " This benign view even of corporeal work in Eden ended, however, with the Fall, and it is this penitential view that Antonino expressly ties to his gloss text: 'but,' he continues, 'expelled from paradise because of sin he was necessitated to work the land and it was said to him: "In the sweat of your brow you will eat bread" (Gen. 3:19); so that you may maintain yourself in life, it is necessary to work while you live, and procure food for yourself until you return to dust. And thus "man goes forth to his work and labours until evening," that is, until death.'1L 2 3In this fallen state, moreover, mankind's necessary corporeal work of survival detracts from his true work, which should be the work 'of knowing, loving, and enjoying God.'124 Antonino unquestionably identifies manual labour more with a penitential state than a sublime one, and this generally negative view of manual professions thus contrasts to the holier, sacerdotal view of learned professions. Thus, the manual labour that was for the most part socially 'sordid' for Petrarch, was spiritually punitive for Antonino.

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Interestingly, a different theology of labour was to be found visually represented in Florence's religious centre, where the lower level of Giotto's Campanile, adjoining the Duomo, contains sculpted reliefs (mostly by Andrea Pisano and his workshop) of various arts - such as agriculture, smithery, trade, weaving, navigation, medicine, sculpting, and painting. The cycle opens with depictions of God's creation of Adam and then Eve, but rather than including as the next scene the Fall and Expulsion, it moves immediately to a scene of the Labour of Adam (farming) and Eve (spinning). The implication is clear. God's sublime creation of man is reinforced and replicated by man's sublime cultivation of the arts, and the penitential context for labour and the arts is omitted.11 2 5Such an iconography - not surprising in a guild-run state in the midst of an artistic revival — throws into relief Antonino's more dour view. Antonino's relegation of manual labour to a largely penitential status does not, however, mean that such labour lacks gradations in moral standing. In his tripartite gloss (of Psalm 103 [104]:23) on the nature of manual work, he argues that such labour should be characterized by 'good conscience,' 'due appropriateness,' and 'due permanence.' In terms of the first of these, he argues that external work be pursued according to the rule of good conscience, and thus the regula (procedure) of proper practice is equated with the regula of morality.1122 6In terms of the second, he urges work that is appropriate not only to one's temperament but also to larger spiritual and moral standards. In the latter regard, he employs a paradigm that distinguishes between arts inspired by 'necessity' (e.g., agriculture, textiles, tanning, architecture, smithery), 'cupidity' (trade), and 'vanity' (e.g., silk industry, cosmetics).127 Given the rather austere tone of these last two categories, how does the fifteenth-century Archbishop of Florence appraise the arts of commercial transaction and industry? Not surprisingly, Antonino devotes considerable attention to commercial contracts. He theoretically classifies trade as the principal art driven by cupidity, and he cites Aristotle's censure of trade for the sole sake of profit (cf. Politics 1.9—11) and identifies it as an 'operation ... full of dangers and frauds and sometimes mixed with usuries.' But, like Aquinas, he is also quick to qualify that 'even if it is base in itself, nevertheless it can be dignified by some good end and made licit; for instance, for the maintenance of one's family or support of the poor from moderate and just gain.'128 This epitomizes Antonino's challenge in his treatment of merchants and contracts: to counterbalance fundamental suspicious theological assumptions concerning trade with positive or exculpatory descriptions of legitimate practice. For instance, when Antonino turns to a specific treatment of types of merchants and forms of trade, he opens this section by saying 'Therefore, to begin with the works of

Humanist and Theological Backgrounds

23

trade, which is regarded as more honourable in human society among the mechanical arts.'1 9 And he proceeds to offer a nuanced discussion of types of trade - money to money, merchandise to merchandise, mechandise to money - replete with scenarios illustrating various types of currency exchanges, letters of credit, and insurance policies, all distinguished as either legitimate or illegitimate according to the canon law on usury.1 3 0Thus, for instance, when discussing a credit transfer between Florence and Rome, he defends the right of the broker to profit from handling the letter of credit because 'reasonably serving the utility of men ... he may profit by reason of the labour and expense and dangers,' and, invoking Paul's 1 Corinthians 9:7, which asks, 'Who fights at his own expense,' he even indirectly (though perhaps unwittingly) elevates the banker's claim to reward to that of the Apostle in his holy work. 1 3 Certainly, however, while his theological appraisals further reify and validate some practices in the contemporary economic sphere, they are very precise in condemning others. Here Antonino shows himself to be aware not only of sophisticated credit transactions but also of more pedestrian malpractices of his day. In some sections, he is quite specific in exposing various scams, and in doing so he exemplifies how the theologian could offer a precise code of professional ethics for even the lowliest of arts. For instance, among the merchants, in a section on second-hand dealers, he specifies that, when they sell an item on behalf of someone else for more than the client requested 2 and pocket the profit, they commit theft.1 3 Among innkeepers he decries the practice of diluting wine with water, selling to drunken customers, dodging payment of gabelles, and opening up on holiday mornings. He chides butchers for offering 'carnes pecudinas' as mutton, selling old or bad meat, and falsi1 3 fying weights.1 Antonino's discerning eye for workaday fraud is also evident in his treatment of artisans. In fact, the professional analysis in this segment of Antonino's Summa is perhaps most significant for its discussion of artisan life. In the chapter 'On Diverse Types of Artisans, and on Goldsmiths with Their Assistants, and Many Other Artisans, and Finally on Farmers' Antonino examines approximately thirty trades from goldsmiths and wool entrepreneurs; to pharmacists, barbers, smiths, tailors, and middlemen; to painters, musicians, and actors.134 Often he opens his appraisal of an art with an affirmation of its utility and sometimes its biblical origin,1 3 5in some cases even cautiously validating as potentially 'honourable' an art such as the silk indus136 try that he acknowledges is often turned to the service of'vanity.'13 But even more noteworthy is the level of descriptive detail regarding the structure and practices of certain trades. The wool industry is treated not only at the level of the lanauioli with their credit arrangements for buying and selling wool or

24

The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

their investments in a societas, but also at the level of sottoposti such as the wool carders, the factors (who farm out the wool to spinners), the spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, stretchers, and retailers (literally, the 're-cutters'). 1 3 Antonino's assessment of the professional divisions of the industry is more refined than the twenty-one-guild system itself, which - save for the brief period following the Ciompi revolt of 1378 - did not recognize the lower divisions with guild status. Moreover, he is concerned with setting trade standards at these lowest reaches of the industry. Thus, if fullers, dyers, and stretchers damage wool in their processing of it, they cannot complain of monetary penalty from lanauioli. As for more wilful acts, 'stretchers, when they stretch beyond the norm according to the custom of the art so that they profit from 8 as for menders, though 'it is greater quantity, are not secure from sin.' 1 3 And possible to question the legitimacy of such a specialty when they aim to deceive,' nonetheless when the consumer knows of the defect their efforts are i • • legitimate. 139 In some instances, Antonino provides a detailed description of manufactured items in order to distinguish between licit and illicit products or the legitimate and illegitimate consumers of products. In the case of smiths, after discussing how their role as blacksmiths (producing horseshoes) often leads to 0 horse dealers ('commonly called co^ini'), he that of horse veterinarians11 4 and turns to other types of products, beginning with armour (helmets, breastplates) and weapons (lances, arrows, catapults, cannons). The manufacture of all such military equipment is legitimate when used for a just war, but illegitimate when sold for use in an unjust war (though the offensive weapons are more so than the defensive ones, which can even be 'excused' when the war's cause is of ambiguous justice).141 Antonino then enumerates all manner of agricultural equipment (plowshares, hoes, sickles), cooking utensils (pans, pots, cauldrons), and carpenters' tools (hammers, anvils, tongs).142 The necessity of enumerating licit and illicit products affords a theologian such as Antonino the opportunity to fully describe - and to more fully recognize and culturally reify from the vantage point of learned sssociety - the material realities and accomplishments of artisan culture.1 4 Likewise, he shows a fine eye for the sins of artisan practice. This is particularly well illustrated by his catalogue of the six Vices' of tailors. They overcharge; they keep a sizeable portion of the cloth without the client's knowledge; they knowingly promise a job before they can deliver it; they compromise quality for speed; they work on holidays (and force their assistants to do likewise) to supply clothes in great demand on such days; and they go to clients' homes on holiday mornings to fit their clothes (thereby missing Mass). This section - one in which Antonino cites no authorities - likely

Humanist and Theological Backgrounds

25

reflects his own observation of tailors as a confessor (and possibly as a consumer). Certainly, in his Confessionale-Defecerunt he cites versions of the sec ond and fifth of these vices as interrogations appropriate for priests hearing 4 we shall see in the following chapter, the joke the confession of tailors. 1 4 As collection of Antonino's comical clerical counterpart Piovano Arlotto includes a story based upon a tailor's confession of pinching material from a client. 1 4 5In any case, moving beyond (or below) the canonists' preoccupation with usurious credit practices, Antonino's review of merchant and artisan life reveals a more searching understanding of all aspects of professional practice. And whereas a predecessor such as Alvaro Pelayo might list the ninety-two vices of judges, the twenty-five of lawyers, or even the fifteen of merchants,1 4 6Antonino now offers as well the six vices of tailors. Antonino also isolated for careful analysis occupations perhaps heretofore not fully reified by learned culture as discrete professional types. Notable is his treatment 'De proxenetis seu sensalibus,' in which he examines the services of middlemen or brokers, especially in arranging marriages or serving as intermediaries in commercial exchange (whether of merchandise, property, or Monte shares). In the case of marriage brokers, Antonino holds that they can be justly paid for their labour by the parties involved unless they misrepresent matches - characterizing an impecunious match as wealthy, or a 'dissolute' one as 'modest or good.' 1 4 7In mediating in, for instance, Monte shares (the Florentine public debt), Antonino appraises the broker's effort via his client's aims: if the shares are obtained solely for reselling or investment the enterprise is illicit; if for necessary support of himself or his family, then licit. 148 At the level of both learned and nonlearned occupations, Antonino's treatment of professional types in his Summa theologica (as in his Confessio ale—Defecerunt) undoubtedly reflects his own institutional experience and social observations. His time as auditor general in the Rota at the Papal Curia in the 1430s prepared him for questions concerning the duties and salaries of notaries and procurators, just as his role as episcopal mediator and 'counselor'1 5L 0later in Florence likely exposed him to all manner of litigation that may have honed his understanding of the commercial and industrial realm. The thoroughgoing intrusion of professional types into the 'states of men' treated in his Summa - especially in comparison with the comparable discussion in Aquinas's Summa theologica of two centuries before - reveals how far professional mentalite had come to affect the structure of the late scholastic theological summa. Both his touches of humour concerning the lawyers and his casuistic attention to the practices of smiths, tailors, and middlemen would seem to represent creative contributions to the scholastic critique of

26

The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

the professions - contributions that would all be noticed in the following century by Tomaso Garzoni, who would transpose them to a more popular key. The learned traditions of both humanism and late scholastic theology in trecento and quattrocento Italy reveal the urgency of professional identity and behaviour as subjects of debate and critique. The formal humanist rhetoric - often weighted toward a defence of literary and academic vocation dealt primarily with intellectual, moral, social, and political assessments of lay vocations against the backdrop of the medieval predilection for religious (over lay) vocation and the classical predilection for the liberal (over the mechanical) arts. The institutional rhetoric of the scholastic summa - though occasionally tapping similar veins — principally concerned the moral validation and regulation of professional behaviour from a spiritual and sometimes even clerical point of view. As Antonino's Summa especially signalled, however, the late scholastic contribution to critiques of professional life was a more searching appraisal of lower professions, which, aside from Patrizi's mild defence of their political place in his De institutione reipublicae, had not been a pressing concern for humanist writers. How would more popular literary genres and cultural idioms of the later quattrocento and cinquecento critique profession relative to these learned traditions?

Chapter 2

Professions at Play: Jokes, Carnevale Songs, and Parlour Games

The learned genres and limited audiences of humanist and theological critiques of profession increasingly came to have more popular counterparts in the second half of the quattrocento and cinquecento. In some cases - as in the joke collection of the humble contado priest Piovano Arlotto or certain of the Florentine carnival songs assembled by Antonfrancesco Grazzini - these sources reflect the experience and interests of the lower orders of society. In other cases they reflect a high popular or 'middlebrow' transition from high culture, a transition accelerated by the spread of printing and - especially by the sixteenth century - by the steady expansion of the vernacular as a literary medium. The convergence of these last two developments naturally created a market for a new type of commercial publication (the mass-market book), and a new type of commercial writer/translator/editor (denoted by some scholars as the 'polygrapher')- A press such as the Giolito publishing house (1 536-1606) in Venice is illustrative of this commercialization of culture and the professionalization of writing, translating, and editing for a popular audience." Several figures who will appear in this study — Aretino, Nicolo Franco, Ludovico Domenichi, Antonfrancesco Doni, Tomaso Porcacchi, Ortensio Lando, Francesco Sansovino - can be classed with this group of poligrafi. And the canon Tomaso Garzoni, though not professionally a polygrapher and though critical of certain of these figures, is nonetheless heir to their tradition. 4 Such writers cultivated various new genres of middlebrow and popular culture. Ludovico Domenichi, for instance, whose endeavours as translator, author, compiler, and editor will surface time and again below, was a versatile popularizer. He published Italian translations of classical and Renaissance texts, such as Pliny's Natural History and Agrippa von Nettesheim's De incertitudine ei vanitate scientiarum. He wrote a vernacular dialogue on emblems

28

The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

explaining the method of creating insignias and mottoes, and he himself designed emblems for others. He compiled various joke books in the vernacular. He ushered into print Giulio Camillo's Lidea del Theatro, an important memory book influential to Alessandro Citolini's own memory book, which in turn helped to shape the cinquecento encyclopedist tradition.5 Whereas Domenichi was principally interested in transposing high-culture sources to a more popular key, other polygraphers reveal as well an interest in harvesting and publicizing more truly popular sources. In 1550 Antonfrancesco Doni published at the Venetian Giolito press the first part of his La libraria del Doni Florentine, which catalogued works in the volgare - a project he complemented with a Seconda libraria published the next year, which listed other unpublished vernacular works he had supposedly seen. This survey included references to figures such as the humble jokester Piovano Arlotto (on whom more below) and the barber-poet Burchiello (Domenico di Giovanni), whose poems he later published with commentary in 1553. Doni explains in his Libraria that the repast of culture must contain 'every type of meat in order to nourish lords, gentlemen, ladies, workers, farmers, and porters' and that his work must necessarily aim for a 'certain general discourse, because every sort of person reads. Our case is not like that of a Jurist who has only to satisfy the scholars of that profession alone, or that of a Logician, a Mathematician, a Grammarian, and similar figures; we are of the league of Preachers (so as not to class ourselves in the flock of quacks) who are heard by ,888 all the arts and our pages are read by all the professions.'8 Doni aims to write for an audience as professionally and socially diverse as that addressed by a preacher. And while of course his audience does differ by encompassing only the literate, nonetheless he wants to appeal to the widest possible range of that constituency, given that 'every sort of person reads.'9 Certainly, his 'library' of vernacular sources, which includes both translations of classical works as well as the works of Arlotto, Pietro Nelli, and Burchiello, is a manifesto of the popular press by mid-sixteenth century. And himself having commented upon Burchiello's highly colloquial poetry that is full of'nonsense,'11 he reveals an interest in adapting to a slightly higher, more accessible key the very 'low' popular culture of the barber-poet. To some degree the interest in cultivating the volgare, and in some cases vulgar culture, could represent a correction or even reaction to the loftiness of humanist culture, and here the interests and activities of the cinquecento academies may play a significiant role. The entire third book of Doni's complete Libraria deals with the academies in various Italian cities (for instance, the Infiammati in Padua, the Umidi in Florence, the Intronati in Siena, the Ortolani in Piacenza, and the Pellegrini in Venice) and records the vernacu-

Professions at Play

29

lar works produced by such groups. Despite ongoing Latin and Greek pursuits, the interest in cultivating and promoting the vernacular in cinquecento academies seems to have been particulary acute in some instances. One of the bylaws of the Florentine Umidi - which was founded in 1540 under the leadership of Giovanni Mazzuoli (who assumed the academy sobriquet of 'Stradino') and included as a charter member Antonfrancesco Grazzini (who took as his nickname 'II Lasca') - refers to the regular practice of reading and commenting upon 'the sonnets or other compositions of Petrarch or of some other 1 3 praiseworthy Tuscan author.'1 Members of the Accademia dei Pellegrini (1550-95) - which though based in Venice had members far flung - wrote lives of Sannazzaro (in Naples), of Ariosto (in Ferrara), and of Bembo, Vittoria Colonna, and Aretino (in Venice). Doni, who was one of the founders of the Pellegrini, refers to Academy members in his I mondi e gli in/erra,15 and in his commentary on Burchiello's poetry he identifies himself by an academy nickname, 'il Negligente Academico Pellegrino.' 1 6That such academies at times overtly cultivated base themes is evident in the Accademia degli Ortolani of Piacenza, with which Doni was involved prior to his association with the Pellegrini. This academy had a priapic emblem and apparently enjoyed such a dubious reputation that a year after its founding in 1543 critics hastened its dissolution when Doni and its other leading member Domenichi fled to Venice. 1 ' And as we shall see, Girolamo Bargagli's parlour game book records the ludic, expressly nonpedantic, and nonprofessional vernacular ethos of the Sienese Academy of the Intronati. The vernacular and sometimes bawdy culture of such academies, together with the commercial efforts of the polygraphers and an expanding audience of book buyers, all intersected to create a burst in middlebrow and high popular culture by the mid-sixteenth century. That such literature, as Doni suggested, would be read by all manner of professionals not only necessitated a 'discorso generate, > l b but also may have inspired a fuller exploration of professional types and issues within such popular genres, whether in a serious or comic

vein As was clear in Petrarch's bout with the physicians and Sant'Antonino's derision of lawyers, there were glimmers of professional parody even within the more sober Latin genres of professional literature. And in the volgare in the trecento, there was as well an appreciable degree of professional humour or satire in the genres of epic poetry and the prose novella. Dante's Comedy attacked especially violations of religious vocation and rebuked selected lay professions-21 Boccaccio's Decameron included stories depicting such types as naive horse traders, uneducated judges, pretentiously dressed physicians,

t30

TheCulturee of Professssion in Larte

resourceful bakers, and clever wool merchants22 - though again the dominant vocation mocked was the clergy, variously derided as hypocritical, lecherous, gullible, or fraudulent.23 Boccaccio's successor in the fourteenth-century novella, Franco Sacchetti, developed lay professional themes even more explicitly. In some cases, his tales in the Trecentonovelle are grouped according to professions (ambassadors in Tales 30-1, , 24 or physicians in Tales 155-6 and 25 167-8),25 and at times stories specifically turn on issues of professional definition and boundaries,26 or on the deceits of the marketplace.27 Focusing on less formally 'literary' vernacular traditions that will coalesce in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this chapter will examine the more broadly based and sometimes oral culture of jokes, carnival songs, and parlour games. These three traditions tellingly reflect the resonance of professional identity, rivalry, and curiosity in varying middlebrow or even popular contexts. These genres — especially as they flower in anthologies published in the second half of the sixteenth century - reveal how serious themes of professional status, experience, malpractice, and fraud also surfaced in comic and convivial settings. In addition, carnival songs and parlour games show how a largely male world of profession intersected with the female world - whether in the sexual context of Carnevale and bawdy games or in the more cerebral context of intellectual and 'liberal' games. How did these three traditions - which sometimes cross-fertilized - provide a setting for the satirical praise and rebuke of profession? How did they occasion an opportunity for education in the arcana of profession, and for exchanges of lore between high and low culture and between male and female experience? How did they at times reflect or promote an oral (as opposed to an exclusively literary) rhetoric of profession? Finally, how did this jocular and ludic realm inform the world of the late Renaissance professional encyclopedia that culminates in Garzoni? Jokes Numerous joke collections appeared in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The earliest influential compilation came in Poggio Bracciolini's 273 Latin Facetiae, assembled between 1438 and 1452 from stories exchanged (from 1403 on) among Poggio and his fellow secretaries in the 'Bugiale' (Fib Room) at the Papal Curia. Not surprisingly, the tales include a predominant number of clerical jokes (after Boccaccio) as well as several concerning ambassadors and the secretaries' own ilk, the notaries, though there are, however, also jokes on a wide array of social types from prostitutes (who are witty) and cooks (who are saucy) to physicians and lawyers (who are quacks

Professions at Play

31

l or incompetents).331 Our concern, however, is to examine the resonance of professional themes in vernacular collections (which at times do incorporate some of Poggio's jokes) with an eye to establishing a cultural setting for comic themes in the volgare literature of profession. Two popular and representative collections are those of 'piovano' Arlotto da Mainardi and Ludovico Domenichi. Arlotto (d. 1484) was a Tuscan cleric whose collection (spanning the period roughly from the 1450s to the 1480s) first appeared in print in the second decade of the sixteenth century, and was later supplemented by jokes of the buffoons Gonnella and Barlacchia (and later, others) in an anthology initially published in 1565 under the title Facezie, motti, buffonerie, et burk, del Piovano Arlotto, del Gonnella, & del Barlacchia.33 Garzoni would ironically identify himself with Arlotto and cite jokes attributed to Gonnella and another buffoon Carafulla (or their personas), and thus this buffoon tradition was an important precedent for the comic face of his characterization of certain professions. The popularizer Ludovico Domenichi, likewise familiar to Garzoni (in both acknowledged and unacknowledged ways), compiled joke collections in 1548, 1562, and 1564, the last collection being supplemented by his friend Tomaso Porcacchi in 1565.361 While both the Arlotto and Domenichi collections are in the volgare and even share some jokes, they generally represent somewhat different 'classes' of humour, with Arlotto representing the more popular realm and Domenichi more fully reflecting the humour of the elite (including jokes from Poggio, Pontano, and Poliziano). As a result, the targets of their jokes differ somewhat, with lower- and middle-class professions more evident in Arlotto and learned ones more prominent in Domenichi/Porcacchi. Taken together, then, these two collections offer a view of the range of professionoriented humour current in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy.38 Our interest lies not in jokes or stories that simply use professionals as characters, but rather in those that have as the principal purpose some ironic or pointed comment concerning professions or professionals themselves. Arlotto's anthology contains several jokes that deal with tangible issues of professional practice, working conditions, and malpractice - particularly in tht realm of the artisan and merchant classes. His identification with the lower classes is apparent throughout his collection. An anonymous biography preceding the early editions of the collection identifies Arlotto as a 'plebano della plebe,'39 the son of a Florentine notary who abandoned a career in the wool industry to be a priest in a poor church in the contado (Santo Cresci a Maciuoli). Various stories place him on merchant voyages as ship chaplain, and thus he apparently was also directly tied to the commercial world. Pursuing his 'ministry* often in the tavern, Arlotto was the epitome of the jocu-

32

The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

lar, fun-loving priest - so fun-loving that a couple of his stories focus on Archbishop Antonino's chastising of him.41 Arlotto, in fact, is in some way a lower-class counterpart to, or alter ego of, Antonino, and his comic critiques and defences of the lower professions serve as a popular counterpoint to assessments found in the Archbishop'ss Summa.42 At the most elemental level, some of Arlotto's jokes concern the physical attributes or working conditions of certain professions. One joke involves the 4 debate as to 'which artisans are the cleanest,'43 arguably a lower-order analogue to the debate waged among humanists and learned professionals as to which is the noblest and most intellectual profession. Arlotto ironically proposes the (filthy) kiln workers and responds to the subsequent derision of his friends with the argument that these figures 'who always live amidst soil, bricks, and lime are the cleanest artisans, because they never defecate without first washing their hands.'44 The theme of the 'clean' professions was, as we shall see, a staple of carnival songs. In fact, in Domenichi's collection the riddle of the cleanest professions is listed as one of two 'giuochi carnascialeschi,' and there the riddle is posed to a male friend by a female embroiderer, who perhaps expecting him to name her art receives the now doubly ironic reply 4 of 'fornaciai.'45 In both versions, the joke turns on the presumption that, for the manual arts, cleanliness undoubtedly was a prominent criterion for professional and social standing. Working conditions also were pivotal for a joke on the determination of prices in various professions. Challenging a price requested by a perfumer, Arlotto argues that, given the consolations of pleasant aromas he enjoys, the perfumer should charge less than tanners, butchers, and shoemakers, who must endure terrible odours in their crafts. The joke then turns lewd, incorporating a story from Poggio's collection concerning a physician who admits that he was indeed well compensated (sexually) for setting the leg of an allur46 ing female patient.4 Especially in its more serious comment concerning the unpleasant odours attendant upon certain crafts, this joke bespeaks an interest in observing and remarking upon the professional experience of the artisan class. Such an interest in the working class is also apparent in a story on the nature and pace of physical work among some woodcutters (tagliatori), 4 who grunt and supposedly lose time with every chop.47 Finally, workers' attitudes toward their masters provide the basis for a joke in which various 'artefici'48 debate who is the best and worst master, presumably a popular topic among apprentices and garzoni of the artisan class. Making a pun that draws upon the technical procedures of two manual crafts, Arlotto argues 'that the most evil masters were the coopers and the hoopmakers, because from a 'diritto' [right or straight], they make a 'torto' [wrong or curved].'49

Professions at Play

33

Such a witticism simultaneously draws on a likely serious rhetorical theme in popular oral culture (the good/bad master) while it absurdly alludes to the actual practices of certain artisan professions. Like the Summa of his better, Archbishop Antonino, Arlotto's jokes also dealt with issues of honest and dishonest (or incompetent) practice. One story concerning a tailor even draws upon Arlotto's role as priest, for whom professional sin could be a concern of the confessional. A Florentine tailor and friend of Arlotto, characterized as one who 'had the reputation of being a good master of his art but also the sad renown of being a thief and evil/ for fifty years routinely cheated customers by cutting more material than necessary for his projects. Suffering a three-month illness, he resisted Arlotto's offers of confession until he had a dream of a figure appearing with a flag of many colours. When confessing him, Arlotto told him the colours of the flag symbolized all the times he had stolen material from his clients and that hereafter, to remind him to be honest, he should instruct his assistant to call out 'Master, that flag. 1 This safeguard worked until once, when faced with a particularly luxurious piece of fabric, he ignored the garzone's warning of 'that flag' by saying 'this colour was not on it' and pinching a yard. Theologically, Arlotto's story of his confession and attempted correction of a sinful professional casts Antonino's more theoretical prescriptive comments in a more immediate, popular, and comic vein. This tale of dishonest practice not only illustrates or warns of the potential vice of one particular trade but also suggests something of the stubbornness of human nature to change. This story of Arlotto's censure of an unreconstructed dishonest practitioner has its inverse in an earlier tale of his defence of an ever-honest artisan, unfairly charged with malfeasance. Another friend of Arlotto, a Florentine spicer named Francesco di Manetto, 'reputato molto uomo da bene,' was commissioned by the Florentine Consuls of the Sea (stationed in Pisa) to construct a funeral mask for a prominent mercenary captain who had died while in the service of the Florentines and Pisans. Unfortunately, this mask overheated in the church and burst, and Francesco's enemies accused him of having 'falsified the mask' 52 - a charge he was unable to disprove, with the result that he was charged with paying the original cost of the mask as well as a fine. When Arlotto asked a despondent Francesco about the case, the latter protested his professional integrity: 'Certainly I have not erred, nor have I ever cheated anyone or done anything false. Who knows me better than you? 03 Arlotto took the case back before the Consuls, defending the spicer's fifty-year reputation for never having 'committed any malignity or falsity' and arguing that 'he has always practised and exercised his art with faith and without blemish,' 54 Unlike the wicked tailor, Francesco was clearly one

34

The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

whose career was marked by consistent honesty, and Arlotto ascribed the charges against him to the wickedness of his accusers. The 'joke' of the story comes in Arlotto's attempt to show that, in fact, there was truly no falsity in the broken mask, which turned out to be a better or truer product than the Consuls could possibly have expected, for at the funeral where there were no tears for the deceased - sympathetic figures being absent, and those present only hoping to gain something from his death - the mask 'wept' for the unmourned captain. For an analogy Arlotto cites the case of a sausage maker who, although he sometimes mixes in ass and horse meat in his inferior sausage, nonetheless is at least inserting something better than the entrails he took out. Thus, the spicer's weeping mask was actually a better product than the impassive mask the Consuls had commissioned. Aside from offering a commentary on the hypocrisy of funeral obsequies, this joke perhaps intends to make a distinction between wilful malpractice or malfeasance and a mere mishap. For Arlotto, the real defence of Francesco was that a career of honest practice and intention should not be vitiated by one aberrant incident. To cite a fraudulent sausage maker is indeed an ironic defence of the honest spicer, but the joke does point up in both cases tangible professional and legal issues of true and false products and practices. Taken together with the story about the wicked tailor, this one about the good spicer suggests a belief in the tendency of practitioners to be consistently either dishonest or honest in their professions. Arlotto also includes jokes concerning the world of commerce and banking. One is an instructive story on the vagaries of value. A priest who was a relative of Arlotto rashly bought five barrels of balls (used and discarded in a popular game in Flanders) to sell in Florence, but quickly found that with less than half a barrel he had supplied all the stores for years. When he complained to Arlotto of his loss, the latter told him the story of a Genoese merchant who, visiting a distant island, received more than 200,000 ducats worth of gold, silver, and jewels from a king to whom he gave twenty-two pairs of cats that cured the land's mouse problem. Another merchant hoping likewise to profit in trade with this king gave him 13,000 ducats worth of valuable items, and the king, searching how best to respond to such munificence, decided to give him not a mere 200,000 ducats but something he prized much more: two cats.57 Clearly indicating an understanding of the relative nature of market value, this joke had a didactic purpose. Thus, from the meanest manual pursuits, to skilled crafts, to this example of small-scale commerce, the profession-oriented jokes in Arlotto's collection focus particularly on questions of the nature of practice (working conditions, masters, fees, market strategies) and the defence of honest practice and rebuke of malpractice. And

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35

even where the jokes are not didactic but purely comic, they often reveal an observant interest in the tangible realities of professional experience, especially among the lower arts. As mentioned earlier, Arlotto's collection came to be linked with the buffoon tradition of Gonnella and Barlacchia in its condensed, censored version that began to appear in 1565. Gonnella, a buffoon associated with the court of Ferrara, had a presence in comic literature dating back to Sacchetti's fourteenth-century Trecentonovelle and extending to Poggio's fifteenth-century Facetiae and to Domenichi's collections of the 1560s. In a 1506 verse collection he first achieved his own discrete 'collection' status, and in the 1565 anthology with Arlotto he did so in prose. The Gonnella tradition at times dealt with professional issues, especially those concerning the dangers of the marketplace, the threat of fraud, and the prevalence of unlicensed practice. In several of Sacchetti's stories, Gonnella defrauds others, and in two he does so while disguised as a physician. *~ In a story in the Gonnella portion of the 1565 anthology he turns the tables and, instead of perpetrating medical fraud himself, reveals the wider social pattern of unlicensed medical practice throughout society. One morning at the table of Duke Borso, there arose a discussion as to which arts or professions were most numerous in Ferrara. Opinions differed, and when Gonnella offered that it was medicine, the Duke countered that there were only two or three physicians in the city. Disguising himself and feigning a toothache, Gonnella gathered medical advice from 300 people - including the Duke - and then showed him the list of 300 'physicians' with the Duke's own name on it. Aside from what it reveals about folk-medicine, this joke signals a sensitivity to the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate (or licensed and unlicensed) practitioners of a profession. Whether in his guise as scam artist and popular impersonator of higherorder types or here in his exposing of popular medicine, Gonnella - like his anthology companion Arlotto - represented a humour closer to the popular order (even when presented at the court of the elite). As will be shown later, in his Piazza universale Tomaso Garzoni simultaneously attacked the triumph of buffoon culture and yet at times incorporated it into his survey of professional culture. 61 That buffoon culture continued to have a popular resonance is evident in certain annotations Garzoni added in his second edition, in which Gonnella (or his archetype) is cited for a characterization of the pro62 fession of the dyer and chimneysweepp and the buffoon Carafulla (or his 63 archetype) for that of the cobbler. The Domenichi/Porcacchi collection - which includes some stories found in the Arlotto/Gonnella/et al. anthology - also has its share of jokes pertaining to middle- and working-class professions. Several entries treat mer-

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

chant vices of dishonesty, hypocrisy, greed, or vanity, and as for the artisan and service professions, there are jokes dealing with questions of competency or honest practice. In some cases, jokes on the lower orders were framed in the context of a tension or contest between the upper and lower classes, as in the case of a clever rejoinder from a 'sofistico servitore' to his knightly lord, who, inviting a paradox, asks him to answer 'truthfully' if he is 'false. ,68Two such jokes involve cooks wisecracking to employers or in reference to noble guests. In one, as a maid is preparing an egg dish called 'maritato,' Bartolomeo Ammannati asks her why she was 'marrying' the egg better than she had married her poorly placed daughter; she responds that he can better judge when she has served him the dish. In such jokes professions serve as social categories that allow the lower class to trump the upper. 70 But where the Domenichi/Porcacchi collection departs from the Arlotto/ Gonnella anthology is in its inclusion of numerous jokes pertaining to the learned professions and to issues concerning not merely practice but also status. Physicians and lawyers are both mocked, the one primarily for incompetence and the other for venality. Clustering several physician jokes in a row, 71 Domenichi's collection - like Poggio's before it and Sacchetti's tales before that — reveals how professional jokes achieved something of a discrete niche as a Renaissance humour genre. In some cases physicians are lampooned in relation to other professions: in one a physician, criticizing a painter for a small matter, invokes the wrath of the artist, who lashes out at the medical profession. The physician wins the debate (but loses the contest of professionalism) by saying that, whereas painters' errors are always apparent, physicians bury theirs. Tensions concerning professional wealth (or poverty) also surface: Porcacchi includes an exchange between a physician and a philosopher who engage in a duel armed with two lines from Petrarch's Rime sparse 1. When the doctor ridicules the philosopher's poverty with the 'crowd's' comment that 'poor and naked you go, Philosophy,' the philosopher replies with Petrarch's attendant line that it is the 'crowd' that seeks Vile gain. ,74 Thus, albeit through this adaptation of his poetry, Petrarch's trecento contest with the doctors has its counterpart in a cinquecento joke book. So also does his contempt for the jurists. In one story a poor woman, learning of the professional catch phrase that it is necessary to 'grease the hands [ungere le mani] ,75 of advocates and judges (so that the former will defend a case and the latter will mete out justice), rubbed butter into the hands of a judge. 76 Some of Domenichi's jokes deal with the question of changing or defining professional status. One story concerning someone's upward mobility from pharmacist to doctor laments that, while excellent as the former, he was only mediocre as the latter - like an ant that, useful in its proper setting, is useless

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when it sprouts wings. Such a joke is simultaneously a reflection of the ethos of professional mobility and a warning of its potential danger. Immediately preceding this joke is another that treats the theme of unsuccessful status change. When the plague claimed his servant in 1528, the organist at Venice's San Marco recruited a Bergamese porter to be his new assistant (to work the bellows). When the servant returned home in clothes different from those of the facchino and the townspeople asked him about his new persona, he said that 'not being able to endure the vile occupation of porter he applied himself [sera data alle virtu]' 78 and took up organ playing. When asked to demonstrate this, however, the porter foolishly revealed that he thought organ playing was working the bellows rather than playing the keys, prompting Domenichi's condescending conclusion, 'what else can one expect from a , facchino7. 79 Both of these jokes - whose grouping is perhaps not coincidental - suggest the folly and implausibility of upward mobility at the level of both lower- and middle-class professions. As for the learned professions, one story concerns the professional identity of a jurist (Giorgio Fistello), who, newly knighted by the Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Basel, did not know whether to be classed with the doctors of law or the knights. Choosing the latter, he was derided by the emperor, who said that 'in one day I could make 1000 knights but in 1000 years not one doctor.' Domenichi, who often commented on the moral of the jokes he cited, remarked that 'Cedant arma togae l [De consulatu suo frag.], 80 havrebbe detto Cicerone,' reinforcing the humanist conviction of nobility of learning over that of lineage. 82 The Domenichi/Porcacchi collection also takes aim at intellectuals - this not surprising, given the compilers' own literary interests and associations. The reifying of 'humanists' as professionals is evident in a joke concerning Sebastiano Corrado, a Bolognese 'lettore d'humanita,' who, regretting a row with a disruptive but important student, went to this individual's home and obsequiously reconciled with him via a learned mot - 'Saepe ex maximis inimicitiis maximas ortas esse amicitias testatur Cicero' (As Cicero attests, often from the greatest enmities arise the greatest friendships) 83 - and embraced and kissed this 'Cavalierino, who was one of the finest sons of Bologna.' 84 Domenichi's commentary on this story - 'Passa il vitio peculiare d'alcuni humanisti' (Thus transpires the peculiar vice of some humanists) - presumably refers to humanists' craven subservience to their clients. Aside from a willingness to make compromises to ensure the good will of those who supported them, humanists could also brutally turn their tongues or pens against those who annoyed them. Domenichi illustrates this point with a story concerning the infamous Francesco Filelfo (d. 1481), who, when pestered to write an epitaph for a deceased sixteen-year-old, composed a mordant pun. Domen-

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

ichi's gloss to this joke suggests that such behaviour is a dangerous occupational trait of literati, who best not be so provoked: 'Poets annoyed in this manner are accustomed to fiercely sting and bite others. A similar tale of literary bile appears in regard to Jacopo Sannazzaro (d. 1530), who, when asked by a pedant what he thought of an epithalamium the aspirant had composed in one night, replied that he was indeed not surprised that it was the product of one evening.87 If too potent in verbal matters, intellectuals were apparently too impotent in sexual ones. One story involves a woman who, recently deprived of her scholarly husband, is encouraged by her family to marry another academic. Her answer is that 'dottori' have all their vigour in the head and little in the other members, as she has learned from experience. 88 Whether then as deferential teachers, sharp-tongued literati, or impotent scholars, intellectuals clearly achieve a comic satirical status in Domenichi's collection.89 Though many of Domenichi's jokes came from other collections,90 he says some of them came directly to him or Porcacchi from acquaintances. This is quite evident in a couple of stories from Porcacchi's addition. One, entitled the 'Testamento del Porco,' is set in Bologna at the home of Galeazzo Bovio and his sons Achille (to whom Porcacchi dedicated his edition of the collection), Furio Camillo, and a Doctor of Laws, Lattantio Pampini da Prato. When two farmers bring them a roasted pig, Furio Camillo suggests that the pig make a testament, which he does, bequeathing various items to family members: his bristle to the shoemaker, his head to the stubborn (pig-headed), his ears to the deaf, his tongue to the lawyers and gossips.92 His 'witnesses' include liverwurst, bologna, and sausage. This parody of the legal instrument — and particularly the bequest of the tongue to the lawyers - suggests how professional practices and archetypes could be grist for a clever parlour game, an amusement presumably inspired in part by the presence of a jurist at the gathering. The Bovio family was also a source for a story deriding a teacher. A 'professor di grammatica, so as not to call him a pedante,' who had recently been hired by some gentlemen in Bologna, was ridiculed by Bovio for not knowing ,9 This story not after ten years whether 'Enea was masculine or feminine. only mocks the incompetence of this teacher but also shows the pretentiousness of some academics who would lay claim to the title of grammar specialist rather than schoolteacher.9 4 As is evident, the Domenichi/Porcacchi collection though containing some jokes on the manual or lowly professions is weighted more toward the learned ones. Whereas Arlotto's anthology dealt more with the world of kiln workers, woodcutters, spice dealers, perfumers, coopers, and ball peddlers, this compilation incorporated jokes on humanists, poets, physicians, lawyers, and

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pedants. And although themes of malpractice and incompetence (whether of the maskmaker, barber, painter, or physician) overlapped in these joke books, the collections reflected largely different contexts for professional humour. Arlotto emphasized more tactile, artisanal, and commercial issues of working conditions (e.g., the filthiness of the kiln or the stench endured by tanners, butchers, and shoemakers), productivity, evil masters, product liability, and market value. The Domenichi/Porcacchi collection prominently featured liabilities or foibles somewhat more peculiar to the learned professions: venality (of the humanist or lawyer), status consciousness (of the pharmacist as physician manque, or the jurist as knight), pretentiousness (of the pedant), and prickliness (of literati). These two collections show the degree to which professional imagery and issues have come to be incorporated into the culture of both the buffoons and the intelligentsia by the quattrocento and cinquecento. In some cases this comic rhetoric of profession is evaluative, exposing incompetence, corruption, fraud, 9 5or hypocrisy — and even drawing upon such an idiom as 'ungere le mani.' In some cases this rhetoric is largely descriptive, relying on professions for a source of puns (the cook's 'uovo maritato,' the 'pupilla' treated by the physician), but even these often refer to some aspect of professional practice. One noteworthy aspect of these humour collections is the paucity and/or necessary elimination of clerical jokes. Of course, Arlotto was himself a priest and, though some of his jokes do turn on his own foibles,97 only a relatively few (in comparison to the Decameron) mock monks or clerics in general. 98 Perhaps this reticence was owing in part to a sense of loyalty, or perhaps to the fact that he was a cleric looking in on lay society - in contrast to Boccaccio, who as a layman was particularly keen on dissecting clerical society. In the case of Domenichi, there are many more clerical jokes to be found in his first edition, but these — like the few in Arlotto's early edition - disappear in later editions of the collection, presumably as a result of the growing pressure of the Counter Reformation." His first (1548) edition includes not only the jokes drawn from a collection given him by Giovanni Mazzuoli (Stradino), but also those supposedly assembled by Domenichi himself. Among this latter group are numerous jokes with titles such as 'D'un Prete ignorante' (sig. H4v), 'D'un Prete usuraio' (sigg. H4v-H5), 'D'un prete concubinario' (sig. I), 'D'un certo abbate lascivo' (sigg. I2v-I3), 'Delia confessione di tre [errant] monache' (sig. I5v), and 'D'un prete ladro' (Sig. K3v). Not only do clerical jokes dominate,100 but there are few on lay professions. 1 0 By the time of Domenichi's collections of the 1560s, the balance has reversed, as there are now virtually no jokes on clerics or the religious, whereas those concerning lay occupations abound. If the Counter Reformation inhibited religious

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

humour (which would be expected), did it thereby indirectly promote a transference of vocational humour to the lay sphere? If so, it may have ironically enlivened the cultural presence of secular profession in cinquecento literature, with the result of the marginalizing of religious profession as a focus of critical but also positive attention.102 In any case, the printed presence of such collections helped to reify a shift in matters of vocational integrity and, concomitantly, in satires of vocational violations - from the clerical to the lay sphere in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Thus, in such a context one could contrast Ser Ciappelletto's fraudulent and blasphemous last confession in the first tale of the Decameron (a violation of last rites and priestly gullibility) to the parlour-game story in Porcacchi's ludicrous Testament of the Pig (a parody of last rights and legal instruments). Finally, both of these joke collections also reveal how the professional idiom has intruded upon the realm of sexual humour. For instance, both contain the story of the philandering merchant who, after a night of frequenting prostitutes, is met by his wife, who exposes herself, saying that with 'tanta mercanzia a casa' he need not trouble himself with searching for it elsewhere.1 0 Sexuality could be identified not only with merchandise but also with aspects of professional practice. Thus, one of Domenichi's stories depicts the liaison between a young woman and a surgeon/dentist, whose dalliance (extracting a long 'tooth' from her body) was seen by the woman's daughter.104 Likewise, Arlotto's joke about occupational benefits (i.e., the pleasant aromas of the perfumer) includes a story, drawn from Poggio, of the physician who, in straightening the leg of a young woman, refused her payment saying, 's'io vi ho diritta la vostra gamba, voi n'avete piu volte diritta una a me.'105 This link between profession and sexuality — only an occasional motif in these two joke collections — will be a major theme in the poetry of carnival songs. Florentine Carnival Songs Certainly by the sixteenth century, Carnevale was a major occasion for professional disguise - so much so that the encyclopedist Tomaso Garzoni would complain of inapposite professional inversions in his 1585 Piazza universale.1 0 But beyond the masks themselves there had also emerged, at least in Florence, an accompanying rhetoric. In 1559 the burlesque poet and comic writer Antonfrancesco Grazzini (nicknamed 'II Lasca')107 published a major collection of this new genre in his Tutti i trionfi, carri, mascherate 6 canti carnascialeschi andati per Firenze, dal tempo dal Magnifico Lorenzo vecchio deMedici; quando egli hebbero prima cominciamento, per infino a questo anno presente 1559

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(All the Triumphs, Floats, Masquerades, or Carnival Songs Occurring in Florence from the Time of the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici the Elder, When They First Began, until This Present Year 1559).108 According to Grazzini he is in fact charting the birth of a new literary and musical genre. In his dedicatory letter to Francesco de' Medici (d. 1587), the son of Grand Duke Cosimo I, he praises 'masquerades and carnival songs' as constituting a 'marvellous and beautiful festival' superior to soccer and jousting. More importantly, he credits Lorenzo de' Medici with changing the nature of carnival masks and songs. Whereas the custom had been that of men dressing up as women and singing ballads, Lorenzo thought this boring and thus sought out a different style of song: 'and the first Song or Masquerade that he sang in this guise was that of men who sold Berricuocolai and Confortini [honey pastries],'1 0 9a work conventionally dated to the 1470s, but recently (and more convincingly) assigned to the second half of the 1480s. 1 0 Grazzini thus implicitly attributes to Lorenzo a momentous shift in emphasis in the celebration of the Florentine Carnevale in which sexual disguises yielded to professional ones. And of the fifteen carnival pieces Grazzini attributes to Lorenzo in his collection eight deal with male professional masks (including - aside from the pastry vendors - spinners of gold thread, muleteers, shoemakers, retailers, oil vendors, latrine cleaners, and pastry-cone makers) and one with a female professional mask (greengrocers from nearby Acetri). Only three of these nine professional songs (those of the pastry vendors, the pastry-cone makers, and the greengrocers) are deemed authentic by Lorenzo's twentieth-century editors, who instead include four other such songs not included by Grazzini: namely, those of male bakers, tree grafters, perfumers, and civet vendors.1 1 Lorenzo - especially with but even without his impersonator(s), hereafter cited as Ps.-Lorenzo - has then redefined the nature of the 'other' in carnival disguise or inversion, largely replacing gender with profession.1 1 As Rinaldo Bracci (Grazzini's eighteenth-century editor/successor) suggests, Lorenzo's new genre was taken up by the elite, as evidenced by the composition of such songs by Bernardo Rucellai (d. 1514), Machiavelli, Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, Benedetto Varchi, and Grazzini himself, who closed the anthology with thirty of his own songs. Many of the songs, however, had a more popular provenance. One of the two biggest collections (forty-nine songs) came from a Guglielmo, called 'II Giuggiola' (the Jujube or Trifle), who is identified by one copyist of the collection as a retailer. 1 1 Apparently, there were contributors as well from the artisan class: namely, a Baccio Talani, who is described as a draper (tessitore di drappi), and a figure identified as II Massa Legnaiuolo (carpenter). The largest collection of songs (over fifty) comes from a civic functionary, Giovambattista dell'Ottonaio,

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The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy

identified as the 'Araldo della Signoria di Firenze. ,,1111 Finally, seventy of the nearly 300 songs in Grazzini's 1559 collection were anonymous. Thus, the contributors range from the elite, to a ceremonial official, to artisans and a retailer, to unknown authors.11 1 5Moreover, Grazzini argues that the anthology was difficult to compile because there were not many collections and 6 evidently the colmany of the works were written 'alia mercantile.'1 1 1Thus, lection truly reflects (or attempts to reflect) the popular idiom.117 And that such songs were apparently at times actually performed (with anywhere from three to fifteen voices accompanied by instruments) suggests that these songs were not simply literary by-products of a festive tradition but were a real part of it.118 Although the songs of Lorenzo and his successors11 1 sometimes treated traditional themes (e.g., trionfi or canti on Love and Jealousy, the Four Complexions, the Three Fates, the Four Seasons, Prudence, Widows, Enamoured Nymphs), many spoke in the voice of professionals. And, as Lorenzo's collection initially signalled - and as Ps.-Lorenzo's exemplified - particularly common were professional types that could have some relevance to women, whether merchants or artisans selling pastries, perfume, shoes, or mirrors, or those in service professions offering their aid as muleteers or chimneysweeps. Such disguises give men a 'plausible' excuse (in terms of ritual) to approach women - perhaps as the previous custom of female disguise gave them a cover 0 in offering goods or services they translate to the bourgeois to do so.11 °2 And stage the gallant behaviour of chivalric culture. The vestiges of the latter culture can be seen, for instance, in Grazzini's own 'Song of the Knights Errant';121 its translation to another social class being the anonymous 'Song of the Assistant Shoemakers,' in which the apprentices announce that they are 'all prepared to serve' and that 'each is so gallant / that he has no equals [Ognun'e tanto galante, / Che non trova paragoni].'1 2 2In general, how do these carnival songs transpose chivalric themes of Platonic love and knightly service to the plane of sexual love and commercial, artisanal, and manual service? How does this festive tradition generate a tradition of a mock rhetoric of praise of the professions? How does it reflect the actual rhetoric of the marketplace and genuine concerns of professional status or authentic aspects of professional practice? Customarily these professional carnival songs identify the profession (or mask) and describe and praise its attributes. Typical is the 'Song of the Coopers' of Maestro Jacopo da Bientina: 'Ladies, we are coopers / in the art agile and dextrous [destri] / in mending and making barrels good masters [maestri]. / The art is beautiful and one of talent.'123 A 'Song of the Fruiterers' of Filippo Cambi has the fruit vendors explain their art (which entails an understanding

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of when to harvest fruit and when to bring it to market), survey their variety, and issue this invitation: Now, ladies, we have in part as you have heard cold you of our art; now if you would deign to come sometime to find us at the market [mercato], for you it will he sweet and pleasant [grato] because there inside our stall [stanza nostra] we will he able to make for you a much more beautiful show [bella mostra].124

Here, the carnival song emulates an elaborately worked invitation to enter the vendor's stall - to mask an invitation to the reveller's private room. In some cases the songs replicate the rhetoric of solicitation, the patter of the marketplace in which products are hailed as distinctive or one's own craftsmanship and services proclaimed as unique. For instance, Ps.-Lorenzo's 'Song of the Shoemakers' opens with the exhortation 'To these beautiful shoes, to these slippers [pianelle], / come to buy, ladies and damsels [Don^elie]' and depicts shoemakers advertising their infinite choice of style and size and urging women to stroke the samples, assuring them that they will find what they want and be satisfied.11 2 5This rhetoric of adverstisement - particularly that of competitive advertisement - is especially finely honed in the collection of Guglielmo the 'retailer,' whose songs include many in the voice of merchants (e.g., women who sell verjuice, merchants of Cordovan leather, the Lanzi cutlers, the jewel merchants, women who sell apples) or artisans (e.g., wool carders, woodcutters, drillers, puppet- and toymakers).1 2 6 The 'Song of the Cordovan Leather Merchants,' making a detailed case for the softness and yet durability of Cordovan leather and its utility to the shoemaker over less expensive competitors (264-5), seems much less a bawdy carnival song and 7 more a true sales pitch.1 2 Likewise, there are details within various of these songs that show considerable familiarity with and concern for commercial reality: the cutlers praise their Florentine knives over those of nearby Scarperia (known for its cutlery); the jewel merchants enumerate all manner of precious stones and warn of purveyors of false jewels; the toymakers refer to their shop 'near the Mercate Vecchie.', 1 2Moreover, Guglielmo's highly idiomatic songs often make use of repeating couplets that would seem to parrot the likely patter of the marketplace, as in the case of the cutlers, who stanza after stanza beckon 'e pero se fuoi comprare, / fatte inanzi Florentine' (if then you wish to buy, come forward Florentine).1 2 9

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Time and again in the songs, the praise of products or instruments involves the theme of 'pulitaa and netta? ('clean' and 'neat'). This coupling describes the 0 gold of the spinners of gold thread and the tubs of the latrine cleaners, 1 3 as well as the instruments of miners, the barrels of the coopers, or the food of cooks.131 This expression or a variant such as 'pulite e belle' (in reference to kitchenware) 132 perhaps was a familiar expression in the rhetoric of advertisement. Or perhaps it was a common criterion for assessing the dignity of a particular profession - especially a manual or nonlearned one. 1 3 3It may also, however, have had a sexual connotation in the mock bid for carnival seduction. Undoubtedly, this was the case in the 'Song of the Muleteers' in which the mule drivers preen that they have clubs that are 'ben pulito, grosso, e bello,' or in the 'Canto de' Votacessi' in which the latrine cleaners promise 4 that 'Ha ciascuno il suo piombino, / Grande, e grosso, e benentrante.', 1 3 As these images make evident, the principal tenor of these carnival songs is quite lewd, and numerous songs in Grazzini's collection explore the many possibilities of relating professional practices, products, or instruments to sexual experience: whether it be the chisel of the miners, 1 3 5 the keys and locks of the locksmiths, 1 3 6the saws of the sawyers (who work in pairs, one above and 138 133 7 the other below),1 the barrel taps of the coopers,1 or the equipment of the grain thrashers. 1 3 The solicitations of the merchants and artisans are thus coopted by these fictive carnival seducers proposing a sexual type of commerce and service (whether heterosexual or homosexual).140 The result is a conflation of the rhetoric of commercial and sexual proposition, such as is evident in the 'Canto degli Spazzacamini,' in which the chimneysweeps beckon 'Orsu vien, Madonna ardita, / Se tu vuoi spazzar cammin' (Well, come on, bold Lady, if you want your chimney swept). 1 4 Bawdy and ironic though it was, such poetry perhaps occasioned a reflection on the nature of hitherto culturally silent or invisible professions. Though some songs dealt with higher professions (e.g., poets, scholars, notaries, physicians, surgeons),142 the majority concerned the lower ones. If Carnevale is the ritual art of the 'other,' it is not surprising that elite culture would commonly choose the mask and voice of the low, as Lorenzo generally did in his songs. The impersonation of socially removed professionals prompted in these songs an attempt to reconstruct the terms of others' professional experience and outlook. In some cases this involved romanticizing or facetious affirmations of the contentment, pride, and expertise of the very lowliest pursuits, as in the case of Ps.-Lorenzo's mulattieri, who say 'we are mule drivers naturally and willingly,'1 4 3or his latrine cleaners, who describe their art with some brio.144 In Grazzini's own 'Song of the Grain Thrashers' he discusses their various instruments and argues that, whereas it takes more

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brawn than brain to use the shovel or the pitchfork, those who work the rake need 'ingegno e discrezione' since so few know how to use it without mishap. ^ Such a poem indicates an interest in reconstructing certain distinctions in practice and the use of equipment in the manual arts. In some cases, the carnival songs play upon the theme of trade secrets. A common motif is the offer to teach women a particular art. In Grazzini's 'Song of the Venetian Fishermen,' the maskers - who boast that their fishmarket is preeminent and who claim to be unique in fishing year round in every weather 14 4 6 offer to teach their craft. 1 Sometimes, as in this case of fishing or in another one concerning sawing,1 4 7this offer constitutes training in a manual art. But sometimes it connotes the arcana of more specialized craft, as is well illustrated by two songs on mirror making. In the 'Song of the Masters of Mirror Making' of Giovambattista Gelli (d. 1563), mirror makers commend the variety of their mirrors and their usefulness to people of all conditions and ages, and then offer to teach women their art. Instructing that 'you want the glass to be clear [hen pulito], / front and back the lead pure and neat [netto]; / because the one and the other well joined / renders the mirror better and more perfect,' the mirror makers then offer to teach this art 'in a place more secret,' arguing that 'the method is easy, and if everyone / knew it, it would not be valued; / to show you here in the presence of everybody, / ladies, would be a 8 great madness.'1 4 Gelli's song thus speaks to the notion of the market value of trade secrets and implicitly equates such professional secrets with sexual intimacyGrazzini himself wrote a 'Song of the Mirror Makers,' and, claiming that the art requires 'experience and dexterity,' he explicitly refers to a particular 'secret' of the craft. 144 9Moreover, his mirror makers take pains to distinguish their craft from 'sphere' making, 'such an easy metier that in a short time anyone can learn to do it.' The spere are so sturdy that their manufacturers can deliver heavy blows in one section without damage elsewhere, whereas specchi are so delicate 'that he who does not know how to proceed properly shatters many of them.' 150 Also praising the utility of mirrors for all manner of person, the song ends by urging women not to trust too much in spere but always to have a specchio at hand. Grazzini's song thus explicitly develops the theme of a trade secret and reveals how the carnival rhetoric of seduction appropriated the rhetoric of professional rivalry and specialization. This motif of advocating one product or artisan over a competing one occurs in other contexts in the carnival songs. Grazzini develops it again himself in his 'Canto di maestri di far mantici,' in which Flemish bellows makers argue that their products - rather than the inferior 'awkward and weak' blow pipes (soffioni) 'made without industry or art' 1 5 1- are best for fanning the

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fire.152 This song, like Grazzini's 'Song of the Hot-Bath Operators,' which speaks directly of the 'foco d'amor,'1 5 3perhaps plays upon the notion of fiery passion, but even here Grazzini develops the motif in terms of artisanal rivalry.154 He does this likewise in a 'Song of the Masters of Making Birdcages' in which these craftsmen recommend their cages over those inferior ones made by smiths (in which the birds do not stay healthy). As for the construction of the 'perfect cages' made by the true specialists, namely themselves, He who wants to do this art well, ladies, industry and talent it suits him to have, and to know well the linden and be acquainted with the ways of wood, and also to have design and to know how to handle those tools that it is necessary to use.155 Such poems suggest that carnival songs were not merely playing on the physical attributes of being 'young' and 'vigorous' (like sawyers) or having impressive 'equipment' or 'instruments' (like muleteers or miners), but also particularly by the later poems of Grazzini - exploiting the notion of specialized skill and arcana. In this sense, the songs implicitly linked professional prowess with sexual prowess. And if the agenda here was a bawdy one, nonetheless it is still a revealing measure of the degree to which professional mentalite has intruded even into 'vulgar' culture. The rhetoric of expertise in the artisanal crafts has a counterpart in the rhetoric of competence in the more learned field of medicine. In a 'Canto di medici cerusici' Grazzini's surgeons open by enumerating their equipment (for drilling, cutting, scalping, probing, trepanning), their learning (anatomy), and their therapies (treatment of gangrene, mending of broken bones). They even guarantee to women confidentiality, promising that 'siam segreti come Confessori.'11 5 6Having set out the terms of competence, they then warn of frauds: Great knowledge and great experience then are necessary to whoever wants to practise this art well as we practise it; but it seems to us a serious matter that certain individuals wish to treat

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who have never opened a book:

7 rather butchers. pig gelders [castraporcelli] 1 5or Above all else never put your trust in ignorant people; always chase away women and men who heal with spells, since all ot these are true quacks, and in the end kill and maim people. ISH

Reflecting so thoroughly a professional self-consciousness and possible insecurity among surgeons, Grazzini's poem illustrates how the carnival songs could replicate very real concerns certain professions might have in guaranteeing professional standards, exposing imposters, and correcting public perceptions. 1 5 When Lorenzo de' Medici inaugurated the genre, he focused largely on 'plausible' professions that supplied delicacies or luxury goods to women.1 6 As the tradition developed, writers explored other trades far removed from the female world, such as those of sawyers, coopers, miners, or masons. And though the point was generally to find a sexual image in such manual pursuits, and though the setting was a mock one, the result also was the fairly detailed exploration of methods or tools of the culturally invisible arts. In his 'Song of the Masons' Jacopo da Bientina's builders describe in detail the need 'to have a straight measure' and not wall 'fuor di squadra,' how 'to use well the trowel \cazzuola] with the mason's hammer [martellina],' and how to properly secure rocks with mortar and plug fissures. They warn of the danger of building with brick, stress the need for 'good and neat mortar and good slaked lime [grasse/io],' and even describe their assistants (manovali) and their equipment, the chisel (subbia), the handspike (manovella), and stake (palo). 1 6 1In its detail, ^ such a song goes beyond the mere search for sexual puns, and despite its comic setting perhaps represents a more honest attempt to characterize a manual art in positive terms, endowing it with a rudimentary professional voice and literature. Moreover, as the tradition evolves, the songs seem to incorporate more searching issues of professionalism other than those of solicitation and service. Thus, the confiding of 'trade secrets' is conflated with the festive search for sexual intimacy. Issues of professional rivalry surface in the fictive songs of mirror makers jockeying for position over sphere makers, or bellows makers vying with the blowpipe makers. Issues of competency, reputation, and fraud

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underlie the surgeons' attack on the imposters practising their craft. There also emerge more general defences of professional functionality and legitimacy or grievances concerning working conditions. Two songs proclaim the plight of artisans. A 'Canto degli artefici' by Michele da Prato163 reminds the ladies that 'without the arts Florence would be poor, as you know,' and describes their travails. Something of a worker song, 1 6 it4 laments that There are too many enemies of the Artisans, who make them work. But the just and good lord wishes that the poor may profit. Now humbly we ask, you noble Citizens, that the great may not eat the small. Ladies, if you have pity for poor miserable Artisans, see to it that your husbands be not unusually avaricious.1

5

Urging that women intercede with husbands on their behalf, the artisans do not thus advertise services but plead for respect and economic rights. A similar case is made by Giovambattista deH'Ottonaio in a 'Song of the Artisans who Reprove the Monopolizers.' Written by the 'Herald of the 1 6 6Signoria' — an official who was both state buffoon and master of ceremonies this song depicts artisans pleading that they not be frozen to death by the monopolizers of wood and coal. Acknowledging that, whereas the presence of plenty is often a disincentive for their diligence, still they should not be destroyed by privation. The Herald, though recognizing one of the foibles of the artisans (sloth), is thus arguing the case for protecting them from want. Echoing Michele da Prato's song, the artisans in this one remind citizens of their function: 'Therefore [may there be] not so many avaricious / always against us, / and worse off than peasants you would be / if there were not artisans in the land.' Going beyond the attempt to voice likely perspectives of the working class, such songs perhaps use the festive genre to offer more serious appreciations of the artisans as a class and caveats concerning their treatment.168 Giovambattista dell'Ottonaio's defence of artisans has a powerful counterpart in his praise of international merchants. In his 'Song of the Merchants Returned to Florence Wealthy' the Florentine Herald presents probably the heartiest affirmation of vocation to be found in this carnival collection.

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Another song on a related theme, an anonymous 'Canto de mercatanti Fiorentini che tornano alia patria,' has merchants speaking of their far-flung journeys and their harvest of varied products and posing their bawdy offer to show their goods 'fuor del mercatar.' 1 6 9But Giovambattista's merchant song has a far more substantive agenda, as it attempts to portray the very ethos of the international merchant in the voice of those who 'wish to show / what a 0 worthy thing it is to be a merchant.' 1 7Avoiding sloth, idle amusements, and other temptations, the merchants are 'justly enriched through toil and merchandise.' ' Beyond their work ethic, they also proclaim the satisfactions of travel, profit, broadened horizons, and philanthropy: What could be more satisfying than to see the world and to profit? What greater pleasure than to know more things to speak of, to reach home and to aid the poor?

Moreover, merchants enjoy 'favour and honour,' 'most of all we who are the flower of faith and talent among so many.' The international merchants also set their endeavours apart from those who are 'tied to the bottega,' and distinguish themselves from those given to 'drunkenness, games, vile women, vices, 3 song ends with an exhortation to the all things of worthless men.' 1 7 The Florentines to send their sons off to seek wealth and fame: O noble Florentines, o lofty talents, who with your counsels have saved so many princes and kingdoms from danger, send off your sons to make them more experienced, richer, and more famous, because gold and virtue 1 77 4 give more status and favour than man could want.1

This paean to merchant life thus closes by equating wealth and virtue as the twin attributes of such a profession. Even if partly meant as a caricature of merchant pride (or braggadocio), this song nonetheless uses the festive setting to proclaim real and perceived virtues of the international merchant. And whereas such profession-oriented carnival songs often were opportunities for sexual punning, simulated solicitation/advertisement, and mock seduction, this one seems bent on presenting a truer praise of profession for all its various intellectual, moral, and social qualities. It is perhaps no accident

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that it is the 'Herald of the Signoria' who defends first artisans and now merchants in these poems. Did such an official - who aside from his comic role as entertainer also had a serious function in the city's ceremonial life - hope to speak of these professions from the more collective vantage point of how such occupations serve the state? That such poems could often have been sung at Carnevale further reinforces their role as a ritual affirmation of lower- and middle-class professions. The lewd rhetoric of carnival seduction has thus been transformed into a more serious civic rhetoric of profession. As Lorenzo de' Medici's inaugural songs illustrate, this tradition at its start was marked by the burlesque descent of the elite to the realm of the lowly. 1 7 And though this characterizes many of the songs of the subsequent tradition, this was not the sole ritual dynamic at work. Sometimes it was more of a lateral impersonation, as can be seen in the case of Baccio Talani the Draper, who composed a song impersonating the 'masters of the making of drinking glasses.' 1 7 6 And sometimes, as in the case of Guglielmo the 'retailer,' it may have been not so much an impersonation of others' professions as a festive presentation of one's own. And here at times Guglielmo seems to reclaim the carnival song from a function of ritual parody to one of ritual advertisement of, for instance, Cordovan leather. In Giovambattista dell'Ottonaio's collection this Herald of the Signoria at times uses the genre to voice more didactic warnings or praises that possibly are meant to reflect larger civic interests. Thus, on the one hand championing artisans and glorifying international merchants, on the other he presents songs of gamblers (who, on leave from 7 of astrologers (who in their miseraHell, warn of their dissolute ways) 1 7 and ble countenances reveal the just deserts of their illegitimate profession). 1 7 Carnival songs thus could provide a setting for a rhetoric of rebuke or a rhetoric of warning concerning professional fraud. Grazzini, who himself commented on the comprehensive character of the carnival masquerade as a total civic experience,179 touched on almost every class of profession in his songs, from knights errant, poets, surgeons, and notaries;180 to merchants181 and various artisans; and to the Zanni and Magnifici (the buffoons who figured prominently in the nascent commedia dell'arte). 1 7 8As for particularly noteworthy professional themes, Grazzini's songs reveal how the tradition spawned an increasing interest in issues of artisan expertise and secrets (of mirror makers, of bellows makers) and competency and fraud as they applied to more learned professions (i.e., surgery). Thus, the festive setting and literary tradition of the carnival song offered opportunity for both comic and more serious explorations of profession at almost every level of society. And even where the burlesque impersonation of low profession was bawdy or facetious, it also marked an interest in exploring this realm of professional experience and giving it a

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voice that was perhaps not always simply ironic. Such a tradition reveals that the evaluative categories of high profession (e.g., intellectual subtlety, a body of knowledge, social prestige) have their counterparts in middle and low professions: namely, the attributes of 'clean and neat,' the arcana of equipment and manual expertise, the lore of 'secrets,' the distinction between authentic and spurious wares. In praising the arts, describing the arts, teaching the arts, and seducing with the arts, the carnival songs give voice to the masks of the professional other in the festive setting. Certainly, the genre continued Lorenzo's bawdy motif of equating professional commerce and service with sexual commerce and service. But from its incipience and throughout, it also reflected in some detail certain current professional practices (the patter of hawking wares, the advertisement of services) and increasingly echoed cultural interests in professional identity, practice, and status. In this sense, the carnival songs more seriously distilled an oral popular rhetorical tradition of the praise and defence of profession. Finally, because many of the carnival disguises in Grazzini's enormous collection entailed professional males — whether maestri or younger garzoni — addressing females, the poems commonly simulated a mock gallant exchange between women and their suitors, the terms being generally shifted from the chivalric setting to the bourgeois one, and from the sublime realm of platonic love to the bawdy realm of sexual love.183 In pretending to educate women in the arts and thereby seduce them, the songs bespeak an interaction between women and male profession in the realm of festive culture. The themes of profession-oriented education and seduction in the canti carnascialeschi together with the motif of profession-oriented impersonation - will be taken up in another festive or convivial setting, namely that of the parlour game, itself sometimes a diversion for carnival evenings. Bolognese and Sienese Parlour Games Aside from their presence in jokes and carnival songs, professional themes also resonated strongly in the middlebrow culture of parlour games. As vernacular humour had a prominent compiler in Domenichi and carnival poetry a champion in Grazzini, parlour games also had two important advocates in the sixteenth century, the Bolognese poet Innocenzio Ringhieri and the Sienese future lawyer Girolamo Bargagli. In 1551 Ringhieri published his Cento giuochi liberali, et de'ingegno (One Hundred Games of Learning and Wit), which he dedicated to Catherine de' Medici, wife of the French king Henry II. 184 Billing them on the title page as 'newly invented' (nuovamente

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ritrovati), Ringhieri suggests in his preface that these hundred games are meant for the moral edification and pleasure of women. 1 8 5 Accompanying a description of each of the games is a set of ten (or more) 'dubbi,' discussion topics generally linked to the theme of the particular game and intended to provide opportunities for participants to 'acquire immortality.' 1 8 6Many of these 'dubbi' seem to reflect popular issues concerning, for instance, the professions, and in several cases they challenge participants to interpret the meaning of certain proverbs or popular expressions. In this sense, Ringhieri's work not only invents new parlour games but also reflects currents in contemporary polite culture. And where the topics and proverbs in these 'dubbi' have a bearing on professions, they thus likely provide a view of prevailing perceptions and controversies concerning the arts and certainly propose debates on such matters as suitable rhetorical topoi for convivial edification and diversion. A rhetoric of profession is thus to be found in Ringhieri's game book on two levels: in the characterization of the arts in the description of certain games, and in the accompanying proposed rhetorical topics that possibly reflect as well attempts to generate further the oral culture of profession. Twelve years after the appearance of Ringhieri's game book in Bologna, Girolamo Bargagli composed in Siena (in 1563) his Dialogo de'giuochi che nelle vegghie sanest si usano di fare del Materiale Intronato (Dialogue of the Intronato 'Materiale' Concerning the Games Customarily Played at Sienese Soirees), 7 member of the Sienese Academy of the Intronati,188 published in 1572. 1 8 A Bargagli - whose assumed name in the society was 'II Materiale' - suggests that his collection of 130 games reflects the efforts of his fun-loving academy to devise a better cut of games (than those 'base and vile' ones of their 1 89 youth),1 suitable for Carnevale evenings. Not meant, however, for edification, as so many of Ringhieri's are, these Sienese Vigils' or soirees are fully in the festive mode and are intended for mixed company rather than women alone. Much more a theorist than Ringhieri, Bargagli comments extensively on the history and the social and cultural function of games, and is in fact generally quite laconic in his description of the games themselves. Nonetheless, the dialogue does identify game themes and in some cases offers details that allow for a reconstruction of the purpose and tenor of carnivalesque parlour games. Not surprisingly, these games touch on many of the same themes found in Grazzini's anthology of carnival songs, though now women are not merely a passive audience but active participants. In both Ringhieri's and Bargagli's sets of games, women are often called upon to engage the realm of profession in tangible terms. How do such convivial games link professions and professional themes to the education and amusement of women? How are occupations categorized and characterized in this nonacademic realm of

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polite culture? How do parlour games provide a new cultural setting for the praise and rebuke of professions? And how do they provide a social ritual for professional impersonation that has both educational and burlesque ends? Meant to be improving and instructing as well as entertaining, Ringhieri's game book deals with practically every aspect of the natural, social, and cultural world. Romantic or sexual themes abound in the collection, as evidenced in such games as those on Love, the Lover and Beloved, the Husband and Wife, Jealousy, and Chastity. But there are also games on such wideranging topics as Metals, Trees and Birds, Gardens, Flowers, Rivers, Cities, the Human Body, Money, Virtues, Angels, Numbers, the Liberal Arts, the Mechanical Arts, and Death. It appears to aspire in part to be a popular encyclopedia providing information and activities for a general education appropriate for refined, though not necessarily scholarly, women. In this context, profession-oriented games are simply part of a very diverse whole and do not dominate the collection. Still, it is instructive to examine how and in what detail Ringhieri tries to accommodate the professional world to the intellectual and social experience of women. That this accommodation sometimes reveals as much about the perception ot women as it does about that of professions is particularly evident in the Game of the Liberal and Noble Arts. Ringhieri introduces this game by saying that this is difficult material and that he at first feared some might think him ill-advised to potentially embarrass women with such a scholarly topic. But he reconsiders women's potential and briefly chronicles the achievements of notable women in the classical and modern world.1 9 0The leader of the game, the 'Signor,' NI assigns arts to individuals who, when called upon, must offer some description or arcana of their designated art (if 'the astronomer, things ot astronomy; the physician, medical matters; the jurist, legal ones'), and ideally who 'many times called would respond always with new things to show themselves with no little praise to be eloquent [copiosi] and ingenious in their art' (49v~-50). Thus, he suggests, the deputed 'poet' might offer some nuance concerning poetic rules, discuss the theory of divine fury, consider how poetry is harmful or useful to the state, or pursue some other pertinent matters. Having presented her professional arcana, the player then would call forth another academic or professional impersonator, and so the game continues. The 'liberal and noble arts' in this game include both the traditional battery of academic and literary arts (e.g., grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, theology, philosophy, and arithmetic) and various applied arts (including law, medicine, trade, agriculture, and the military). For each of these twenty-six arts Ringhieri appends one question for further discussion, " and these reveal the

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type of evaluative questions being applied to various professions. Some are intellectual ('Whether Medicine is a faculty, art, or science, and what would be its subject and its end' or 'Whether Painting is worthier than Sculpture, depicting things that cannot be sculpted in marble')- Some are more social and historical ('When Poets are worthy of being hated and expelled' or 'Why the Merchant is miserable, whence trade was invented, and why it was banished in Plato's Republic'). Some are laudatory ('What delights are derived from Agriculture') and some sceptical ('Whether any stone that converts metals into gold can be found in nature, and whether through the art of the Alchemists it is possible to do it' or 'In how many things Anatomy is necessary, why among Christians it is permitted, and if those who practise it can be said to be inhuman') (50r-v). Such topics address questions of the intellectual nature, social status, and professional legitimacy of the higher arts. This game thus challenges women to impersonate all manner of learned, prestigious, or controversial professionals and to debate a wide range of topics concerning such arts. Especially in the twenty-six topoi or 'quesiti' that Ringhieri appends to this game, he reveals the range of intellectual and social issues surrounding the professions and how such subjects might be appropriate for polite, female debate. If Ringhieri thought the Game of the Liberal and Noble Arts might be seen by some as too elevated for women, he defends the following Game of the Mechanical Arts from the opposite charge: namely, that it is beneath women and that it may be considered 'too vile a gift' to propose to them a 'game of vulgar and mechanical arts' (50v). But whereas in the previous chapter his agenda was to elevate women to the level of the liberal arts, here it is to elevate the mechanical arts to the level of women. Ringhieri praises the mechanical arts by associating them with the female handicrafts of spinning and weaving (pursuits dignified by Athena and Arachne) and 'sculpting, working in gold, giving form and polish to marble, painting, writing, illuminating' (51). But aside from praising the impressive products of the 'artful hands of women' he also cites the example of the Greek sophist Hippias, who took less pride in his learning than in his having made by hand everything he possessed (51). Clearly Ringhieri wants to enhance the stature of the manual arts generally. In Ringhieri's game, the 'King' parcels out to players sixteen manual arts, each art accompanied by two 'instruments' vital to the profession: a notary with a pen and inkstand, a smith with an anvil and hammer, a woolworker with a comb and wool, a moneychanger with a purse and currency, a barber with a razor and basin, a butcher with a knife and ax, a carpenter with a saw and square, and so on. And though some of these manual arts (e.g., those of the

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perfumer, the woolworker, the weaver, the painter)193 relate to potentially female pursuits - such as those mentioned earlier in the game's introduction others are obviously far afield from that realm (e.g., the arts of the butcher, carpenter, mason, and customs official). The game begins with an individual (who has not been assigned a profession) summoning certain workers and inquiring about their instruments. Twice the beckoned artisans claim they do not have the tools of their particular trade, and then a third figure replies that he does have them and proceeds to show the individual 'two or three times a procedure appropriate to the work that the artisan employs.'194 They then switch places and the game continues. Ringhieri also insists that 'one respond always with the same names of the Instruments of the Art that are intended, without transposing them or in any way changing them.'195 This rigidity stands in contrast to the challenge in the game of the liberal arts to always add something new each time a participant is called upon - or indeed in contrast to so many of the games that emphasize transposing phrases or changing details. Perhaps Ringhieri's game of the mechanical arts thus implicitly reinforces the unchanging, one-dimensional, equipment-bound nature of the manual arts. But even if imputing such a procedural quality - which arguably is essential to competency in a manual craft - he still goes far in trying to rescue the manual arts from contempt, as his apologetic introduction affirms the worthiness of the mechanical arts, and the game itself reifies and simulates the tangible realities of such professions. Moreover, the debate topics that accompany the game are weighted toward flattering appraisals. Though there is one question calling for a conventional rhetorical praise and rebuke of 'Which is the most harmful and which the most useful of the Mechanical Arts,' several others are more fully positive reflections on their antiquity ('How the Mechanical Arts were discovered in ancient times'), their lustre ('How the Arts have acquired much perfection'), their necessity ('What would be the greatest harms to a world lacking the Mechanical Arts' or 'Why the Art of the Lutanist is pleasing to the prince and necessary to the citizen'), or their consolatory potential ('Whether Art, 6 balance, this game and its attendant as it is said, is a port in miseries').11 9 On topoi here would suggest that the manual arts are not so deserving of our disdain. Thus, at least from the vantage point of gender, there is a degree of cultural levelling at work in Ringhieri's games in terms of the general divisions of the arts, as the higher liberal arts are made accessible to women and the lower mechanical ones made worthy of them. What of individual occupations among the games? Of the one hundred games, nineteen deal with particular professions: from legitimate ones (physicians, merchants, perfumers), to questionable ones (fortunetellers, necroman-

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cers), to scandalous ones (courtesans, bawds, thieves).197 Though such games may simulate professional encounters - for instance, a woman buying perfume (39-40) or travellers searching for a suitable inn (98-9) - at times they simply use professions as metaphors for amatory play. Thus Ringhieri justifies the games of the Town Crier and the Servant - which he allows may seem lowly or inapposite for such a refined audience - by stressing their function as allegories for love: the town crier proclaims the 'laws of love' (103-5), and the opening trope in the game of the servant and several of the dubbi deal with the theme of the 'servant of love.'1 9 8In some cases the professional and amatory - or rather sexual - themes explicitly intersect as in the games of the Courtesan (which depicts this wicked archetype as an anti-model for moral women)199 and the Bawd (which turns on the key of the procuress, the love letter). But even where the games didactically or playfully exploit amatory or romantic themes, the accompanying debate topics often include pointed questions concerning professional status, the nature of professional experience, or the meaning of profession-oriented proverbs. Thus, the questions attending the game of Bawds poses such technical questions as 'Whether she who serves without pay is worthy of the name Bawd' or 'How Bawds have to be paid or retained with money' or conversely 'For what reason it is true that one is not able to pay a good Bawd' (102).2 0 0Appended to the game of Innkeepers (whose poor reputation Ringhieri discusses in his introductory comments)201 are several questions on the experience or outlook of 'hosti': for instance, 'Whether the life of Innkeepers can be called miserable or happy,' or one pondering 'Che si dicano i commodi, & gli incommodi dell'hoste' (99), a topos that, resonant of Alberti's De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, illustrates how Latin rhetorical appraisals of learned professions would come to have their volgare counterparts for service trades. Two topics reveal the currency of the occupation in the oral culture of proverbs. One invites a speculation as to 'What is meant by the proverb "neither the friendship of an Innkeeper nor of a Courtesan,'" presumably a saw for 'one who cannot even buy a friend.' Another asks 'What is meant by "the promises of an Innkeeper, and the praises of a flatterer,'" undoubtedly an idiom for 'hollowness' (99). The fusion of the amatory and the professional is especially noteworthy in the games of the Physician and Merchant. In the Game of the Physician, Ringhieri opens with a praise of the medical tradition (citing the gods Apollo and Asclepius and figures such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna) and argues that women should be likewise hailed as natural healers who do not cure through medicine 'but with sweetness, gentle life, and incredible beauty ... restore to bodies their principal temperament, every trouble dispelled,' and themselves 'Mediche eccellentissime' they are thus logical recipients of such a

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game (107). One of the games in the collection presupposing mixed company, this one entails a group of men and women choosing among twenty different maladies and their respective remedies. A chosen physician examines each individual, asking of the ailment, taking a pulse, and prescribing a remedy, and then - as a memory test - players are quizzed as to the individual's particular ailment and appropriate cure. The maladies are not so technically medical but often are generalized problems (e.g., 'excessive fatigue' remedied by 'suitable repose') or, in one case, a love affliction (namely, 'amorous hunger' remedied by 'sated appetite') (107r-v). Not only did the amatory thus intrude upon the game itself, but also it was present in the debate topics, one of which included the consideration 'Whether love can be called the most excellent Physician' (108). Despite the romantic currents in the premise, the playing, and discussion topics of this game, there are, however, some genuine professional issues posed in the dubbi. Aside from one that again considers 'Whether Medicine is an art or a science,' there are a couple that deal with professional training or expertise: 'Whether it is better in medical matters to be well experienced or a good theorist' and 'All that is sought after 2 in a Physician in order that he be agreeable to the sick' (108).2 0 Once again, Riiighieri's games join the recreational and amatory diversions with more substantive and truly professional debates. The professional motif takes over even more powerfully in Ringhieri's Game of the Merchant. This game opens with a threefold affirmation of merchant life, which, significantly, Ringhieri had earlier included among the 'liberal and noble arts' (49v). First, he praises merchants indirectly by complimenting similar attributes in women, opening the description of his game by addressing his audience: Diligent and industrious Ladies, you who are born intelligent and subtle, shrewd and talented in all affairs and in all skills, it has seemed to me that there is no reason to leave behind the Game of the Merchant, a thing very necessary and not much unsuitable for or dissimilar to your state. (155) He argues that the world of the merchant travelling abroad 'selling, buying, exchanging, bringing precious goods from elsewhere to the city' would be appealing and familiar to women who 'know with a small act, with a word, with a loving glance, to buy, to gain so many hearts, so much esteem and precious things.' Secondly, he turns to the argument (similar to that found in the game of the Mechanical Arts) that 'without trade your comely bodies gracefully made by nature would lack the richest clothes, the most expensive jew3 els, and so many eastern and western delicacies' and so on (155).2 03 Finally,

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he characterizes his book of games itself as a form of merchandise profiting both parties: the ladies gaining 'praise and glory' from it, and he their goodwill and affection (155r-v).204 He thus hails the world of trade for its allure and objectives, its results, and its relevance even to literary transaction. Even more telling, however, is the structure of this game itself. Ringhieri divides the players into three rows, each consisting of eight terms denoting some aspect of the instruments, mechanisms, and vicissitudes of trade: cash, management, sales, interest, exchange, money, loans, trade, credit, gain, unfortunate incidents, collections, loss, merchandise, news (contanze), transportation, purchases, debts, risks, labours, assets, companies, accounts, and bankruptcies (see Figure 1). A leader asks the first person of the first row 'how the noble exercise of Trade is done,' and this figure (whose term is 'contanto') will say 'with cash,' then the second figure of the second row will say 'with change,' and the third figure of the third 'with credit' (I55v). Next, the second person of the first row will begin and he will be followed by the third person of the second row, and the fourth person of the third. Exhausting this format in terms of the first row, players then start with the first person of the third row and proceed diagonally in reverse (thus 'with sales,' 'with change,' and 'with loans'). This completed, players next begin with the first player of the middle row, followed by the second figure of each of the rows to his left and right (thus 'with management,' 'with interest,' and 'with money'). The result is a constantly changing matrix of procedures and factors that recombine in different ways. Though Ringhieri's games elsewhere call for such 'rounds' of participants varying some sequence or aspect of assigned parts or lines,2 0 5this particular one might have some meaning beyond the mere sport or challenge of alteration. With its permutations, the game perhaps in part intentionally models the diversification and vicissitudes of commercial enterprise. The game thus simultaneously teaches players not only the terminology but also the potentially varied nature of mercantile pursuits. Moreover, the debate topics for this game lay out themes that show considerable interest in the nature of commerce and the life of the merchant. As in the Game of the Physician, there are romantic currents in these dubbi (especially the last one on 'Why women are a precious and rich merchandise [mercatantia] of love'), but the professional theme is even more specific and prominent in the topics here. Some treat the psychological aspects of merchant life: 'Whether there is more to fear from or hope for in commercial pursuits [mercatantie]'206orr 'Whether the life of the wealthiest merchants can be called calm [quieta] or agitated [inquieta].' Some treat the tangible realities or qualities that affect business: 'Which of the two would be more necessary to the merchant: traffic or loyalty' and 'Whether industry or good fortune is of

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Figure 1. Game of the Merchant. From Innocenzio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali, el d'ingegno (Venice, 1553), f. 155v. (Courtesy of the Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice)

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more use in commercial pursuits.' Some pose traditional rhetorical topoi assessing the virtues and shortcomings of the profession: 'When the art of trade is blameworthy and when it is praiseworthy' or 'The harms and benefits that are drawn from commerce 2 0 7and 'What would be the most beautiful and praiseworthy of all commodities' (156).2 0 8Finally, as in other sets of dubbi, Ringhieri includes in this one a debate topic on a profession-oriented proverb: 'When women "fanno orecchie da Mercantante" [turn a deaf ear], and what the proverb means' (156). Though it grounds the proverb in an amatory motif, this topic does call for an analysis that would perhaps trace a popular saying back to its professional origin (possibly that of merchants 'not hearing' customers' requests or questions). Thus, in the games of both the Physician and the Merchant, Ringhieri blends the amatory and the professional. And as the romantic may serve as a pretext to relate women (and polite society) to profession, the result is at times a more serious consideration of professional status or experience - particularly in the Game of the Merchant, which proposes a thoroughgoing simulation of and reflection on the nature of commerce and the life of the merchant. Ringhieri's games reveal how the interest in professional practice and status resonated in the recreational setting of refined society. At times Ringhieri offers individual rhetorical assessments of professions, as he, for instance, seeks to elevate the mechanical arts and trade in the introductory apologias to these respective games. But his game book also more passively serves as a compendium of occupation-oriented proverbs and debates alive in elite and middlebrow culture. Especially in such idioms as the 'ears of the merchant,' or the 'promises of the innkeeper,' or the 'friendship of an innkeeper or a courtesan,' Ringhieri records and publicizes the popular, oral rhet9 whether it be the payment of the bawd, the tools of oric of profession. 2 0 And the mechanical arts, or the commercial instruments of the merchant, the games themselves together with the debate topics give a tangible presence to professions in the literary rhetoric of the game book and the prescribed oral rhetoric of parlour games and polite debates. In contrast to Ringhieri's mostly educational games largely directed to women, Girolamo Bargagli's games for Sienese soirees are exclusively intended for entertainment and always presuppose mixed company. In fact, Bargagli specifies that among these gatherings there should be a 'scintilla d'onesto ardore' among the men and women, and he defines his parlour games as a festive action of a merry and amorous party, where, a pleasant and clever proposal being made by someone as author and guide of the action, all the others do

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or say something different one from the other, and this to the end of delight and entertainment. (69) Intended for carnival-night revels, some of the games expressly deal with the motif of 'transformation' (#15), 'metamorphosis' (#15), or 'impersonation' 210 1 0and many, as we shall see, entail role-playing of various profes(#101 ),2 sional or social types.211 In fact, Bargagli's dialogue at one point virtually conflates parlour games with the ritual of masquerade. In a discussion of the social theory of games, one interlocutor frets that all participants might not be of the same social status. 'Sodo' (Marcantonio Piccolomini) answers this concern by suggesting that in the world of such games status is temporarily suspended, much as in the masquerade, when the prince willingly becomes a 'persona ordinaria' subject to others' bidding or even punishment: 'And as in the masquerade it is well known that the Prince is in disguise, and nonetheless one pretends not to know and treats him like the other maskers; thus, when a Lord is found at the evening party, as if hidden by the mask of the game, in that setting [atto] he is not recognized as a Lord.'212 Such suspensions of status are crucial, and they even add to the fun as the games create new leaders, rectors, princes, and judges, and demote the duly authorized (who become subject to the new leaders). As a theorist of game culture, Bargagli articulates what modem anthropologists and historians have speculated about the meaning of status inversion in social ritual."2 1 3But rather than being a reversal merely of 'high' and 'low,' lord and subject, male and female, Bargagli's games encourage also more lateral professional or social inversions. It would seem that the key is to impersonate at night the 'other' of what one is during the day. In setting out general rules for dress2 1 4 and behaviour at his soirees, Bargagli urges that people speak of things pleasing to the group and resist the temptation some will have to speak only of war; others, of their Cicero studies; others, of philosophical questions; others, of trade; others, of court; others, of their maids and children (147). In short, one should not talk shop unless, perhaps, as many of the games would prescribe - it is talk of others' shop. Far more even than Ringhieri's game book, Bargagli's stresses the potential 5 some cases these games turn to proof professions to offer game motifs. 21 1 In fessions in an open-ended generic sense, as in the Game of the Arts, 'where each participant pretends to pursue an art and then is accused by a spy of practising it badly' (73). Somewhat similar to Ringhieri's Game of the Mechanical Arts, this game, however, delves into the theme of incompetent practice of an art, calling for 'the spy with jokes and with dissimulation to aggravate the error' and for the exposed practitioner to defend him- or herself

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with some amusing comment (73). Such a game not only tests how well players know the arts, but it also resonates (albeit playfully) the theme of malpractice. Another such game generically based in the arts is the Game of Hawking (gridare) an Art, a diversion classed among the 'games of chatter' and presumably a parlour version of the solicitations of the arts simulated in many of the carnival songs. 2 1 6 7 Aside from these broadly based profession-oriented games,2 1 Bargagli also turns to particular arts for game themes. In fact, he argues that 'the professions ... the arts and ... the diverse qualities of men' together constitute the dominant category of the three principal sources for game topics. 2 1 8For instance, a specific variation of the Game of Hawking an Art comes in a Game of the Market Women (treccole), which calls for players to attempt to impersonate 'those women who usually sell such herbs, representing in that fashion their manners and words' (76—7). Given the amatory nature of his evening gatherings, it is not surprising that, when Bargagli turns to specific examples of such games, he often exploits professions for humorous or sexually charged encounters between the sexes. For instance, from the 'art of sailing' he proposes the Game of the Ship in which a woman, asea in a tempest, needs to lighten the load and must choose (stating her reasons!) which of two male companions she will keep aboard and which she will throw overboard (104). In some cases, however, these games mirror more specific aspects of the marketplace. A Game of Innkeepers romantically plays upon commercial solicitation and consumer choice by having a male traveller choose between the invitations of two hostesses after interviewing them concerning their accommodations - and the game is then reversed with female travellers deciding among male innkeepers (106). Similarly, a Game of Maids and Servants has the game director in the role of broker, who brings before a man a prospective maid whom he interviews and, conversely, before a female a prospective male servant (105). Such a game in mixed company obviously turns upon the actual function of the broker (especially for acquiring servants or 9 adapts it to that of matchmaker in the game setting. An even spouses)) 2 1 and more explicit link between employment contracts and sexual ones occurs in a Game of Sharecroppers and Farm Workers, which likewise concerns the acquisition of workers. In this case, a manpower shortage (owing to war) prompts landowners to recall farmers with the promise of 'commodita' and 'prestanze di denari' (121). But the game implicitly hinges more on an amatory circumstance crossing class lines, as a 'bel giovane, ma povera'220 is brought before a 'matrona molto ricca' and is praised as being so young and robust that ten women 'would willingly allow him to work their farms, but there is only one thing that he will need for you to give him: un poco di

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prestanze' (122) - punning on 'prestanza,' which can mean not only 'loan' but also 'comeliness.'2 2l Thus, in the cases of servants and farm workers, Bargagli's games transpose aspects of the working world (with its contracts) to the sexual world (with its contracts), and, in this, his game book resonates with the chords of the carnival songs. Furthermore, like the carnival songs, even those profession-oriented parlour games that had an amatory undercurrent could test one's ability to sustain professional impersonation or encounter with some verisimilitude. In the Game of the Physician everyone declares an ailment, which in the case of men will be cured by women, and in the case of women by men. This game's description calls for an aping of a medical visit (the physician's interview of the patient, the taking of the pulse, the prescription of a remedy), and it cites the case of one of their number (Virgilio Graziani) whose parody once of a bedside manner 'with shrill voice, with that sad expression [bocca], and with those kind words of his made us die laughing' (154). Thus, Petrarch's send-up of medical eloquence had an echo in cinquecento parlour games. In his comment on this game the interlocutor Marcantonio Piccolomini insists 'that it is necessary to remain in the metaphor of the art and what is appropriate to the art.' "" He and another interlocutor illustrate this point by describing two other instances of the playing of this game: one in which a woman is chastised by another as being a 'cattivo medico' for advising that a nerve be cut to cure her male patient;2 2 3another in which a woman responds to her doctor that she knows her malady and will yet refuse any medicine (154). Here, as elsewhere, Bargagli's instructions emphasize the importance of remaining in the professional metafora as long as possible, a guideline that suggests that his carnivalesque parlour games were indeed further reifying and even staging (in game form) professional impersonations, carnival masks, and carnival songs. That Bargagli took such forays into professional guises somewhat seriously is suggested by his recognition that a role such as that of the 'spy' in the Game of the Arts could require a particular degree of ingenuity.2 2 The point here is that professional themes in Bargagli's collection perhaps have not merely a bawdy intent but also at times the more cerebral purpose of challenging players to know of and impersonate the professional other. In one case, professional and parlour-game 'roles' fully intersect. A Game of Comedy draws upon the recent emergence of the itinerant improvisational troupes, the commedia dell'one, that had begun to flourish at mid-century.225 The game entails the assignment of players to various acting roles (maid, matron, parasite, and lover) and turns on a key feature of the operation of these troupes: namely, the division of gate receipts according to the 'perfection of the actors' in the company. In the game players will audition for their

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particular part in order to determine who should get the greater share of the proceeds. The light-hearted professional role-playing in the commedia dell'am is virtually conflated with the amateur play in the parlour, and it would seem that Bargagli's Game of Comedy - and indeed his games in general - could be mirroring the lively amatory culture of street comedy.2 2 Whether feigning practice of an art, hawking an art, or auditioning for an art, Bargagli's games reveal the resonance of professional themes in middlebrow mentalite. In some cases these games have principally a bawdy, amorous function - as in contracting servants or field workers - but in others there would seem to be a more serious effort to reenact or appraise professional practice or expertise, a knack that, in the case of the spy of the arts, can require some subtlety. Challenging players to sustain the 'metaphor' of an art as long as possible, the games encourage forays into the occupational realm of others. Leaving behind the daytime world of vocational identity - and resisting the temptation to speak only of one's own world — was, it seems, one of the principal purposes of these carnival-night games. But beyond the disguises of the carnival setting, was the Academy of the Intronati also attempting more generally to pursue the cultural 'other' relative to high culture and professionalism? 2 2 Bargagli's dialogue expressly links his Academy's interests in parlour games to the revival of a festive and game culture that existed in the classical world (e.g., in New Year's Eve games in Rome or the Lupercalia) but subsequently disappeared. More precisely, it ties the fortunes of popular game culture in Renaissance Italy to the fortunes of the vernacular. Suggesting that some rudimentary games were adumbrated in the Decameron, the interlocutor Marcantonio Piccolomini argues that following the decline of volgare literature after Petrarch and Boccaccio, games also degenerated as well, only now to flourish again with the literary resurgence of Italian.228 Thus, despite grounding the history of games in classical culture, Bargagli's dialogue also implicitly dismisses the classical Renaissance. Spokesmen here of a more popular middlebrow vernacular culture, the Intronati revive game culture as an analogue to the volgare's ascendance vis-a-vis Latin. The revolt against pedantry can at times be seen in the theory of the games' format. Arguing that a proper game should have the same structure as a good heroic poem or comedy, the speaker Piccolomini suggests that a short introduction is proper - such as Boccaccio used in introducing his stories. The counter-example that prompted this advice came from another interlocutor, who told of a young man who at the previous Carnevale had introduced his Game of Animals (which had a Pythagorean dimension) with a long and tedious disputation on ancient philosophy.2 2 The parlour game, then, should emulate not the stuffy culture of

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classical scholars but the more pleasing and accessible culture of the Decameron.230 The cultural agenda of the Academy of the Intronati may have sought to counter not only the pedantry of high culture but also the strictures of professionalism - or the strictures of prescribed professionalism. Book 2 of the Dialogo opens with Bargagli's lengthy defence of the Intronati (and other like academies) against the charge that they are culturally subversive institutions, seducing sober minds from serious studies and professions to frivolous literary or amorous pursuits.2 31 Thus, 'rigorous censors' condemned certain members of the Intronati well-embarked in law or philosophy, who 'enticed by this siren and ensnared and almost enchanted with the song of poetry and amorous diversions, changed their studies, leaving their initial professions' (134). Interestingly, Bargagli engages this criticism of those who abandoned their original professions. He isolates the case of famous figures who left the law, arguing that two figures - Boccaccio and Ariosto — who did so were not members of academies/ ~ But more importantly he generally addresses the issue of individuals who change their professional course, defending those who rebel against remaining in occupations forced upon them by parents. Citing a passage from Dante's Paradise (8:142-8) on the dangers of forcing people into walks of life unsuited to them, Bargagli argues that individuals have often excelled by following their 'vocazione,' refusing to remain in a pursuit 'counter to their nature' (al genio loro era repugnante) in which, had they languished, 'they would have been mediocre and without any name' (136). His signal example here is Petrarch, who, had he remained trapped with his first profession (the law), would have done a great disservice to the Italian language and to himself." Bargagli then pleads that academies should not be condemned if they encourage individuals to change directions to pursue a truer or worthier course: Therefore may they [critics] cease to speak ill of Academies and may they no longer blame those who, abandoning the end of their professions, give themselves to other studies, because examining the opportunity of the times and considering their instinct, perhaps such people should be considered more worthy of praise than ot rebuke, and even more so when they consider studies according to nobility and not according to gain, as is done. (136)

Academies perhaps can help young people reconsider or truly choose their path outside the strictures of family or economic pressures. This choice, however, will not always ultimately be one of letters over law, as Bargagli's own experience reveals. Entering the Intronati in 1557 as a twenty-year-old, soon

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after the composition of the Dialogo in 1563 Bargagli left the literary life for law.234 But clearly he saw the academy as an institution that beneficially promoted vocational freedom and choice. Can this liberation from social expectation afforded by the Academy of the Intronati be linked to the liberation from professional identity facilitated by the structure of the parlour games themselves? Both in the rules for general demeanour (where it is made clear one should not talk shop) and in the motif of so many games (where professional impersonation is often the sport) the Intronati's game culture facilitated professional 'otherness.' Did such experimentation with professional escape and disguise on some level reinforce Bargagli's passionate defence of freedom in occupational choice? In both cases, the culture of such an academy provided a space for a dynamic fluidity in matters of professional identity.235 Taken together with the implicit revolt against high classicism, the revolt against restrictive professional roles or expectations imbued the Intronati with a culturally revisionist or potentially subversive character.2 3 The involvement of women further tilted the Academy in the direction of a less elite social culture. In all of these ways, an academy such as the Intronati signalled a decisive move toward a more middlebrow salon culture, one that would inform the mentalite of a vernacular encyclopedist such as Tomaso Garzoni, himself a witness to and participant in the academy culture of the cinquecento.2 3 7Moreover, as the case of the Intronati suggests, one possible feature of such academies was the suspension of sexual, professional, and intellectual boundaries in both the social composition and the very structure of the society's parlour games. But even as a festive space of nonprofessionalism, Bargagli's games reveal the prominence of professionalism as a major theme of social interaction and intellectual challenge. Here, however, profession is the stuff of play, not of work. The culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century jokes, carnival songs, and parlour games reveals that professional themes enjoyed a vibrant presence in festive experience at various levels (from high- to middle- to lowbrow) and among both men and women. In fact, it was an indication of profession's strength as a cultural marker that Lorenzo de' Medici replaced 'gender' with 'profession' as the ritual 'other' in carnival songs. Similarly, themes of occupational experience (the quality of working conditions or masters), practice (honest or dishonest), and status (legal vs. cultural nobility) find a notable place in the emerging Renaissance genre of the joke book. Whether in Arlotto's predominantly lower-order tales of tailors, merchants, and spicers or in Domenichi's predominantly higher-order tales of lawyers, humanists, and poets, the contours of the professional joke are starting to take shape - a fact

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reinforced by the occasional grouping of, for instance, ambassador jokes (in Poggio) or physician jokes (in Domenichi). Moreover, the knowledge or impersonation of professions figured as a prominent theme in the emergence of sixteenth-century parlour-games books. And in the case of the debate topics accompanying Ringhieri's games, the rhetorical praise and rebuke of profession was prescribed as a pastime for middlebrow parlour culture. Across these comic and convivial genres one finds an appreciation of the artfulness and arcana of all professions: whether it be the understanding of market value (in Arlotto's story of the ball seller), a knowledge of equipment (in Ringhieri's Game of the Mechanical Arts), or an eye to sustain the metaphor of an art (in so many of the Florentine carnival songs and various of Bargagli's games). And though especially Domenichi's jokes expose the flaws of elite professions, this comic and festive tradition is also a window onto the professionalism of the lower and middling orders (even if often through the filter of upper-class perceptions). In fact, even though they often have an ironic or lewd intent, the carnival songs are in fact a forum of professional eulogies, a simulated rhetoric of praise for the grain thrashers' skill, the sawyers' technique, or, perhaps more seriously, the international merchants' ethos of industry, cosmopolitanism, and philanthropy. The theme of professionalism is especially apparent in the motif of 'trade secrets' that 'artisans' offer to teach to the intended female audience of their carnival songs: like the heroism of the chivalric knight, the arcana of the artisan becomes a valuable commodity for winning the affection of women. Florentine carnival songs, moreover, at times reflect the specific rhetoric of the marketplace, in that the contest for female attention is adapted to the contest for customers. Thus, the rhetoric of solicitation (gridando) becomes a principal model of the carnival song - and, not surprisingly, becomes also the motif for one of Bargagli's carnival-night parlour games. This rhetoric of the marketplace sometimes addresses professional issues of concern: whether the quality of merchant goods (as in the case of the 'Song of the Cordovan Leather Merchants'), or the distinction between genuine and inferior artisan crafts (as in the mirror makers' warning concerning the lesser 'spheres,' or the bellows makers' warning of the lesser blow pipes), or the crucial difference between competent and fraudulent practitioners (as in the case of surgeons). In the case of carnival songs, what began with Lorenzo de' Medici as an exclusively lewd and facetious tradition of praising low professions may have evolved into a somewhat more substantive forum for professional rhetoric. In the songs of the retailer Guglielmo, the rhetoric of advertisement seems to move from the comic to the more earnest. More importantly, in the songs of Giovambattista dell'Ottonaio, the Florentine Herald of the Signoria, carnival

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songs became at times didactic civic assessments of the professions (or, at least, telling caricatures of the civic perception or self-concept of the arts): whether it be warnings against the frauds of astrologers, or defences of artisans, or praises of international merchants. In this sense, the carnival song, like the parlour game and even at times the joke, could become a springboard for a more searching reflection on the nature and practice of all manner of occupations. Despite such serious subtexts, however, the predominantly bawdy context for profession-oriented humour - as for much of Renaissance humour generally - is undeniable. In fact, sexual or amatory humour is a common denominator linking all these genres of jokes, carnival songs, and parlour games. The degree to which professional self-consciousness has penetrated mentalite is evidenced by its very incorporation into the sexual and romantic realm. And here the clerical and chivalric models for such imagery have been overtaken by bourgeois models drawn from myriad lay, urban professions.2 3 This is particularly well illustrated in a comparison between the machinations of errant priests or monks in the trecento Decameron and the solicitations of 'artisans' in quattrocento and cinquecento carnival songs. Boccaccio's abbot who submits to women as to vigils (1.4), his monk who teaches a young woman to put the devil into hell (3.10), his friar who connives intimate visitations of the Archangel Gabriel (4.2) all reveal the perversion of religious offices or mysteries to sexual ends. In carnival songs, however, religious mysteries or ceremonies yield to trade secrets or procedures, which become the vehicle for seduction. In general, clerical or religious targets recede in the satiric genres certainly by the second half of the sixteenth century, when the impact of the Counter Reformation seems to be in evidence. Thus, Domenichi excised the religious jokes in his 1548 collection from those of the 1560s. And when Bargagli describes five games dealing with religious themes (three of which concern nuns and monks), his interlocutors express disapproval of such potentially irreverent diversions2 3 — obviously a ploy to enable him simultaneously to include the games and appease censors. But such nervousness about religious themes only led to greater attention being given to lay professions, which perhaps now could be examined with the same critical zeal that had exposed vocational violations of lusty, greedy, or hypocritical religious figures. If the Counter Reformation protected clergy from satire, it also unwittingly marginalized it in the sixteenth-century cultural contest over vocational identity and experience. Finally, the play of Carnevale informs all of these comic or carnival traditions: as the very occasion for carnival songs, as the setting for Bargagli's

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evening games, even twice (under the rubric of 'giuochi carnascialeschi') as a source for jokes or riddles in Domenichi's collection. The carnival ritual of disguise facilitated two important developments in regard to profession. First, the burlesque impersonation of the social and professional 'other' certainly spawned a new cultural forum for exploring, describing, and, yes, mocking, but perhaps also appreciating professions less rhetorically noted. And, whereas earlier humanist appraisals of the learned professions focused on categories of 'intellectual vs. moral,' 'contemplative vs. active,' 'eloquent vs. mute,' or 'honest vs. dishonest,' the comic and festive assessments of lower professions allowed for the articulation of other categories of assessment: 'clean vs. dirty,' 'skilled vs. nonskilled,' 'shrewd vs. naive,' or 'authentic vs. fake.' And in some categories - 'competent vs. incompetent,' 'honest vs. dishonest,' 'authentic vs. fake' - comic and carnival rhetoric jointly appraised the character of both high and low professions. Second, the carnival imitation of the professional 'other' required a temporary suspension of traditional hierarchy in which all professions were potentially accessible and worthy of description and parody. Such impersonations necessitated an understanding of other arts, and such displays created a forum for publicizing the arcana of all manner of pursuits. The ritual levelling of professions occasioned by carnival songs and games would have its counterpart in the vernacular encyclopedia of Tomaso Gar:oni.

Chapter 3

Shuffling the Deck: Tomaso Garzoni's

Universal Piazza of All the Professions of the World

In 1585 Tomaso Garzoni, a Ravennan canon regular, published in Venice the most comprehensive survey of professional culture to emerge from Renaissance Italy. Nearly 1000 pages in length, the ambitious La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo clearly struck a chord in Garzoni's world, as it appeared in twenty-nine Venetian editions between 1585 and 1683. Examining over 150 categories of professions from high, middle, and low culture, this encyclopedia juxtaposed the worlds of princes and poets, priests and theologians, lawyers and physicians, merchants and artisans, teachers and printers, cooks and chimneysweeps, prostitutes and procurers. Certainly, the work's popularity was partly owing to its being an entertaining and accessible encyclopedia of knowledge and the state of the arts. But there were perhaps also more purely professional factors at work as well. So much was this compendium perceived as an important reification of professional identity and standing that this treatise - which included even latrine-cleaners - provoked the wounded pride of university professors. Following the first edition, criticism from academic acquaintances prompted Garzoni to add another chapter, 'Degli umanisti,' in a revised edition of the work. Presumably others likewise scoured the Piazza for notices of their profession, some perhaps hoping for generic or personal recognition, some possibly looking for tips. Others may have searched the Piazza for news of other professions, schooling themselves in others' scams to become wiser consumers or trolling for material to arm themselves for battle against professional rivals (lawyers looking for doctor jokes, doctors looking for lawyer jokes). Offering classicizing histories of a craft, surveying its representation in literature, recording its tools (or texts) and arcana, defining professional standards, meting out praise and rebuke of its practice, exposing tricks of the trade, the Piazza universak strives to encapsulate the total culture of profes-

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sion. Assembling (and often plagiarizing) material from professional manuals, encyclopedias, memory books, theological critiques, political and legal treatises, and literary satires, Garzoni's treatise is a synthesis of and guide to the many genres defining, defending, and critiquing the arts in the sixteenth century. It thus incorporates - or, more truly, amalgamates - both Latin writings of humanists, theologians, and jurists as well as vernacular sources that range from the high popular to the low. What does the Piazza reveal of the variegated debate on work, and - as a treatise dated from Treviso - how does it perhaps reflect particularly the social and cultural realities of Venice and the Veneto? Becoming the standard work on profession for nearly a century, how does it represent an influential rhetorical statement of professional life at a particular moment in late Renaissance culture? How does it harvest and transform linguistically inaccessible or socially hierarchical treatments of the 'arts' and 'sciences' into a more inclusive and fluid compendium of 'professions'? In particular, how does Garzoni further shift the analysis of professionalism from the customary preserves of high culture to the neglected regions of low culture? This chapter will focus particularly on the sixteenth-century context of the Piazza, Garzoni's thematic intentions as revealed in his prefatory sections, and the organizational scheme of the treatise. In the following chapter I shall examine Garzoni's treatment of certain professions themselves, relative both to earlier treatments and to appraisals of other professions within the Piazza itself. Openly and sometimes secretly Garzoni synthesized an expansive range of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century writings on profession, from the sober to the comic. Though he often drew on specialized accounts of professional lore,3 our interest lies more in collective assessments or compilations of the arts that informed and anticipated the Piazza either in explicit commentary or in their structural scheme. From the fifteenth century two oft-cited discussions are the casuistic treatment of profession in Antonino's Summa and the political analysis in Patrizi's De mstitutione reipublicae (the latter, generally second-hand).4 And like both of his forebears here, Garzoni often includes critiques of the moral 'ditetti' of professions and at times cites defences of their social function - topics that by Garzoni's time, as we have seen, had even crept into the culture of parlour games. Moreover, Patrizi's political analysis of the standing of the arts (like the humanist assessment of the intellectual and moral nobility of certain pursuits) had a counterpart in the writings of jurists who examined the noble status of certain professions as a legal issue. The culmination of such assessments, offered in trecento and quattrocento Italy by such scholars as Baldo degli Ubaldi or Bartolomeo Cipolla, would come in the compilations of sixteenth-century French jurists Barthelemey de Chasseneuz (in his

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Catalogus gloriae mundi of 1529) and Andre Tiraqueau (in his De nobilitate of 1549) - the former of whom was particularly influential on Garzoni. Chasseneuz's Catalogus is an encyclopedia of the symbols of and criteria for honour and nobility. Following a hierarchical scheme, it assesses the clerical realm and then the royal, judicial, noble, military, academic, artisan, and finally even the natural realms. In his preface, Chasseneuz suggests that his book could serve the practical purpose of helping to determine questions of honour, rank, nobility, and seating order in various gatherings, and this social/political function of the work is evinced by the first book, which discusses tangible honorific symbols such as insignia, diadems, arms, images, and clothing. But the work also offers an assemblage of praiseworthy assessments of professional types, and it draws upon Italian jurists (including Baldo and Cipolla) and the writings of various Italian humanists, including Poggios De nobilitate, Filippo Beroaldo's Declamatio an orator sit phihsopho et medico anteponendus,i01 and especially Francesco Patrizi's De institutione reipublicae.^ Garzoni draws considerably on this compendium of professional praise and in some instances completes the circle by which the Latin writings of Italian authors, taken up by a French jurist, return to Italy (though now in Italian form). Garzoni, of course, was heir not only to the influence of such contextualized theological, social, and legal assessments but also to somewhat less pointed educational encyclopedias of the arts and sciences. A notable such work influential to Garzoni was Polydore Vergil's De rerum inventoribus, first published in Venice in 1499. Drawing at times on Pliny's Natural History perhaps its truest model - this treatise surveys the origins of the liberal arts and medicine; legal and political institutions; agricultural, artisanal, and commercial pursuits; finally, the remaining and dominant portion of the work examines religious institutions. From Polydore Vergil (whose focus Garzoni dramatically laicizes)12 and from Pliny (whose Natural History had recently appeared again in a new annotated translation by Ludovico Domenichi), 1 Garzoni drew his interest in presenting the history of arts, which along with literary loci constituted a major segment of each chapter in the Piazza. Sixteenth-century encyclopedias of 'secrets' were also a spur to and source for Garzoni. Eclectic compendia of the mysteries of nature and God - sometimes moving from the scientific and medical to the occult - issued from the likes of Agrippa von Nettesheim (De occulta philosophia), Johann Jacob Wecker (De secretis libri xvii), and, closer to home, the Italian physicians Gerolamo Cardano and Leonardo Fioravanti. In some cases, the influence of such scientific writers is readily apparent and acknowledged, but in other cases, as in that of Leonardo Fioravanti and Agrippa - both of whom figure prominently in the composition of the Piazza - it is somewhat disguised or ironic.

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In 1564 Fioravanti, who brought his medical practice to Venice in the late 1550s, published there a general encyclopedia of learning and the arts entitled Dello Specchio di scientia universale, a popular work that would appear again in nine more Venetian printings by 1679.16 Though appending some of his own medical inventions, this work went beyond the 'secrets' tradition and, aspiring to provide a comprehensive mirror of 'universal' learning, inspired the Piazza universale perhaps so much that Garzoni continued to generally conceal Fioravanti's influence even in the chapter Annotations which he later included (under pressure?) in the revised edition of the work.1 Beginning with an array of over fifty practical arts in the first book (leading off with agriculture, animal husbandry, and medicine), Fioravanti moves on in Book 2 to more intellectual 'sciences,' theology, and general moral and social questions and, in Book 3, to a defence of medicine and surgery and a catalogue of his various medical inventions and cosmetic secrets. Fioravanti's Specchio is significant because beyond being an encyclopedic mirror of knowledge, 19 ir had a partially professional purpose. In his prefatory statements Fioravanti praises the active, useful life and suggests that his manual will be helpful to practitioners of whatever 'professione,' whether those wishing to learn of their own craft (the farmer of farming) or of related professions (the physician of the cognate arts of surgery and pharmacy), or those who may need to know something of all professions (the preacher in search of truer analogies)/ 1 The Specchio is also important for its glorifying individual professionals of various stripes, especially in the revised edition of the work. The prefatory 'Ragiomento' in the 1583 edition includes praises of notables of various cities, beginning with Venice, where Fioravanti names various prelates, a medical scholar, a press proofreader, a lawyer, a painter/astrologer, a miniaturist, a sculptor, a pharmacist, and an instrument maker.211That he is clearly expanding the traditional bounds of glory to a wider range of the professionally accomplished" becomes even more evident in his lists of (chiefly Venetian) practitioners in chapters, for instance, on tailors (28v), pharmacists (43r-v), goldsmiths (67), printers (70v-71), barbers (73v-74), Murano glassmakers (77), shopkeepers (109r-v), and notaries (118v) - a note Garzoni likewise will sound in similar lists in his Piazza- 24 4 The rhetoric of profession in the Specchio also worked on a subtler level. Perhaps partly because of his own vantage point as a practising physician, Fioravanti opens his treatise with the practical arts and then turns to the purely intellectual or literary ones - this in contrast to more humanistic and legal schemes that generally privilege intellectual disciplines, as can be seen roughly in Polydore Vergil's treatment and clearly in Chasseneuz's Catalogus."^ In some cases, as in the treatment of the merchant's craft, which he

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calls an 'art of the greatest memory and intellect, he clearly aspires to intellectualize underappreciated arts - a theme likewise taken up by Garzoni.2 7 And if Fioravanti's surgical background possibly informed his greater respect for manual arts, it perhaps also inspired his attack on his professional rivals, the lawyers. Indeed, in a chapter 'On the Art of the Shopkeeper and Its Subtleties' he argues that 'to become an adequate shopkeeper is much more difficult than to become a Doctor of Law, because if the Doctor encounters difficulties in diverse points of law, the shopkeeper encounters diversity in a million products.'28 Even more judgmental, part of Fioravanti's appraisal in his treatise includes a discussion of 'good' and 'bad' science, and in the latter category he places magic, astrology, and law. His often humorous attack on law, lawyers, and litigants22 9proves that the Specchio should be viewed also in the context of professional polemics, and in this capacity as well it was an inspiration to Garzoni's praise and rebuke of profession. If the practical scientific side of the 'secrets' tradition yielded up to Garzoni a generally positive model in Fioravanti, the occult side of that tradition ultimately yielded up an anti-model in Agrippa. It did so, however, by indirection. Initially a devotee of the mystical tradition in the Renaissance, Agrippa synthesized his interests in Platonic, Hermetic, and Cabalist studies in his De occulta philosophia (1510). But as much as this treatise might reveal him to be a paragon of the relentless urge to plumb divine secrets, another one cast him as the age's apostate.31 In 1526 Agrippa wrote his De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, a work which, whether earnestly or playfully, not only assailed the hubris of esoteric Renaissance learning but also condemned wholesale all the arts of mankind.3 2 An unusual type of anti-encomium, Agrippa's diatribe damns the arts where so many others had attempted to praise them individually or collectively. An Italian translation of the treatise by Ludovico Domenichi appeared in Venice in 1547, and it was this version that served as Garzoni's hidden source both to implicitly rebut on a thematic level and to shamelessly pilfer for professional lore. Renouncing even his own earlier efforts in the De occulta philosophia^ Agrippa sets out in the treatise to show the arrogance or corruption innate to approximately 100 disciplines, institutions, and professions of both high and low culture. Denying the divine origins of the arts, he argues that they are all creations of man and that the lust to pick from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was indeed humankind's original sin. In the face of all the presumption and fraud of human learning and craft, Agrippa's solution is a fideistic retreat to God. Despite this pious anti-intellectualism Agrippa was nonetheless also brutal on institutional religion, satirizing religious ceremonies, images, clerics, monks, and inquisitors in sometimes graphic detail - presumably a major reason the

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treatise won theologians' condemnation and Agrippa the epithet 'sacrilege' from Garzoni.34 Aside from its general importance as a model for the rhetoric of professional rebuke, Agrippa's treatise also made a specific contribution to the literature of the underworld professions. Chapters on prostitutes, procurers, and beggars laid out in detail the intricate art of such pursuits in a manner that not only illustrated the corruptible depths of human craft but also reified and popularized the subtle, even 'professional' character of 'low' culture, a theme Garzoni would incorporate in his compendium.3 5 Agrippa's condemnation of the hubris of the esoteric and occult lore of Renaissance culture included not only realms of magic, divination, and chiromancy but also those of Lullism and the art of memory. The fascination with the latter intellectual system continued to flower in the sixteenth century, and, in fact, the mnemonist tradition was a paramount inspiration for Garzoni's project in more than one way. Discussing the structure of his Piazza in his 'Prologo nuovo,' Garzoni makes reference to two mnemonists, Giulio Camillo (Delminio) and Alessandro Citolini. In 1550 Camillo published the outline for his memory theatre, L'idea del theatro.3 8Drawing on Hermetic and Cabalist thought, Camillo organized the natural and human world into seven levels corresponding to seven celestial bodies, various levels containing images of classical gods with associated arts both 'nobili ed ignobili' often in unusual juxtapositions. Camillo's student Citolini pilfered and expanded his scheme in his La tipocosmia (1561), a dialogue set in Venice over seven days.4 0 Most important to our purposes, Citolini's mnemonic organization of the universe completed and crystallized Camillo's jumbling of the arts. For Citolini, however, the mythological references are replaced by a purely naturalistic scheme and the arts are discussed according to man's endeavours in relation to the celestial world (e.g., astronomy, astrology, almanacs), the terrestial world (gardening, wine growing), and so on in the mineral, plant, animal, and human worlds. Citolini poses an anthropology of culture that organizes arts and crafts in a cosmic and natural context rather than an intellectual or social context.41 Perhaps the most startling ramification of this scheme comes in the sixth book in which the human body itself is examined and broken into component parts. In discussing the eyes, for instance, Citolini cites theatre, painting, tinting, dyeing, and mirror making - juxtaposing arts from literary and material culture that all have a visual relevance. In discussing the mouth, he unites the disparate oral worlds of eating (bread, cooking, pasta) and speaking (grammar, logic, oratory, poetry, printing).4 2 The result of such combinations is a decidedly nonhierarchical scheme of the arts. Summarizing his scheme in his seventh book, Citolini explains how his reshuffling scrambles the traditional ancient scheme, which he describes

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as dividing the sciences into the speculative (within which fall the 'real' and the 'rational') and the practical (within which fall the 'active' and the 'use' fill')- Calling this classical scheme too limited, he vaunts his as a more capacious 'architettura' providing the needed 'alberghi' for 'such a great number of sciences, both speculative and practical.' But not only is his scheme more accommodating to the multiplicity of arts, but also it wittingly or unwittingly dethrones the traditional hierarchy of arts that descends from the intellectual and abstract to the manual and practical. Thus, whereas in the ancient scheme the mechanical arts all fall under the final and lowest category of the 'useful,' in Citolini's scheme they keep company variously with higher arts: thus gardening and navigation are in the same section as astronomy; cooking is joined with ambassadorship,44 grammar, and rhetoric; dyeing and mirror making with theatre and tragedy. Extending Camillo's scheme, Citolini's system shifts the organization of the arts from an intellectual plane to a fully naturalistic one, and in so doing effectively dismantles the traditional ranking of the arts. As an encyclopedist Garzoni competes with the mnemonists to provide a comprehensive scheme of arts and learning — though the printing press, vitiating the urgency of memory,44 5naturally accelerated the shift from memory system to encyclopedic book. Equally important, Garzoni was perhaps inspired by the mnemonists' new arts schemes to experiment with proposing his own.46 Garzoni was thus heir to many rhetorics of profession in Renaissance culture. In most cases — that of polemic and that of theological, political, or legal appraisal — there is an apparent praise and rebuke of craft. In others — Fioravanti's encyclopedia and the mnemonists' systems — there is an implicit structural rhetoric of organization and classification. Weaving these many traditions together, Garzoni assembles the consummate sixteenth-century encylopedia of profession, one that in its detail transmits overt appraisals of work and in its general structure reflects covert assumptions as well. In both his acknowledged and unacknowledged borrowings, Garzoni is more compiler than author, and while this is a constant threat to the treatise's originality it is also an assurance of its universality as a mirror of its age. And though the process of the treatise's compilation is inevitably itself an editorial statement, the very multiplicity of traditions on which Garzoni draws precludes the dominance of any one intellectual or professional voice. Garzoni's relative detachment for undertaking this project is perhaps borne out by the treatment of his own profession, the clergy. Of 155 categories examined in the Piazza, only one deals with the 'religious' per se.47 Moreover, Garzoni did not write the work in any capacity as a cleric (a status not indicated on the title page) but dedicated it to Alfonso II, the duke of Ferrara

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(1559-97), as a humble 'Garzone' (servant) to his 'Signore'48 - hoping to offer insight to a prince who, responsible for 'seeing to so many people in so many things,' would profit from a work that would enable him to comprehend 'with little effort the good and the evil that all the professionals (professori) of the world are able to do.'49 In fact, anticipating criticism from the religious quarter, Garzoni suggests in his prefatory discussions that some might accuse him of being more a 'pagan among theologians' than a 'theologian among pagans,' a charge he refutes with only limited effectiveness.50 What, in fact, was Garzoni's true vocation? Born in Bagnacavallo (near Ravenna), Garzoni studied law at Ferrara and Siena but abandoned that for a religious life at sixteen, entering an order of the Lateran Canons Regular in Ravenna in 1566. Afforded the leisure to pursue philosophy, theology, history, poetry, and other areas, Garzoni produced numerous works, and if it was unclear whether he was a pagan among theologians it would seem that he was more truly writer than monk. In fact, whereas the treatment of canons and monks in the Piazza's chapter on 'Religiosi in genere' (chapter 3) is dominated by a lengthy catalogue of orders rather than a substantive discussion of the monastic ideal," Garzoni's chapter on 'Compositori de' libri' (chapter 33) offers a more insightful treatment of the motives, standards, benefits, and compromises of hook writers.55 3Between the two, it is clear where Garzoni's real vocational identity lay. It the Piazza universal?, then, is the work more of an eclectic literate than of a religious, does it therefore reflect the traditional intellectual bias that privileges the 'learned' professions at the expense of the manual ones? And beyond this, what are the general assumptions underlying the purpose and structure of Garzoni's treatise' Answers are to be found in the book's frontmatter, which is simultaneously Garzoni's advertisement and apologia for his project. Aside from a dedicatory letter and poem to Alfonso II, celebratory epigrams (from the likes of Tasso) praising the Pia^a, and an apologia to orthodoxy,1" Garzoni's prefatory material includes a series of theoretical and literary pieces defining and defending the work. He lays out the conceptual basis of the treatise in a 'L'Auttore a' spettatori' and a 'Discorso universale in lode delle scienze e delParti liberali e mecaniche in commune.' Though brief, the former encapsulates well the genre and purpose of the Piazza. Here Garzoni sets out the grandeur of his architectural feat, the construction of his 'universal piazza,' to prospective 'viewers.'5 7 The architectural imagery is important tor several reasons. First, it resonates the architectural motif of the mnemonic school. The impact of Camillo's memory theatre on Garzoni could be seen earlier in his first work, the Theatre de' vari e diversi cervelli monaani (1583), a study of psychological types. Here, as in the Pia^a and many of

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his writings, Garzoni uses architectural metaphors as the basis for literary genre. That his various encyclopedias grew out of the memory tradition becomes even more apparent in his discussion of the memory places ('luoghi') cited by the mnemonist Cosimo Rosselli, whose 1579 Theasaurus anificiosae memoriae includes such memory 'loca' as the Forum (Piazza), the Theatre, and the Hospital5599- all of which would have their counterpart in Garzoni's works.6 0And just as Citolini boasted of his capacious 'architecture' in his Tipocosmia, so does Garzoni brag of his own feat of literary architecture. Garzoni is, however, perhaps transforming here the notion of memory system into that of personal memorial, as he compares his design with edifices of great architects worthy of'perpetua memoria e sempiterna ricordanza., 6 1Citing the monuments of such 'artefici antichi' as Chares of Lindus (the Colossus of Rhodes), Sostratus of Cnidus (the Pharos of Alexandria), or Apollodorus of Damascus (Trajan's Forum) - figures appearing again in his chapter on 'Architetti in universale, 6 2- Garzoni vaunts his 'Piazza' as a comparably 'glo,63 rioso spettacolo. In comparing himself to these ancients, he not only elevates himself personally but in some sense equates the 'mechanical' work of the architect/artisan with the literary work of the writer, a theme he recasts in the following 'Discorso universale.' But these ancient architectural comparisons may also serve another important purpose for Garzoni, namely by introducing the issue of social space. In his address to the 'spettatori' of his Piazza, Garzoni suggests that some intellectuals — such as his high-minded forebear Ludovico Ricchieri 'with the opinion of Plato' — will think he has stooped too low by incorporating so many 'most vile metiers' into his work. Garzoni defends his treatment of low culture by citing as his 'procurator! e avocati'65 classical writers who likewise had humble topics: e.g., Apuleius (the ass), Plutarch (the cricket), Lucian (the fly). His Piazza is a complete social world of high and low: 'I shall form a Piazza of people noble and plebeian who - by another reckoning even more than these lowly subjects - are manifestly full not so much of baseness as the greatest vileness. Here, then, is the Piazza Universale of all the professions of the world, both honoured and neglected.1 , 6 7 Then, once again referring to various colossal classical monuments, he boasts of the scale of his structure and suggests that in its scope it surpasses the bounds of ancient piazzas. He exhorts his viewers to marvel how great a population \gente] it brings together and, from the frequenting of the people \popolo], to be stupefied at what may perhaps be the rarest and most celebrated Piazza in the world. I would not say that the piazza of Athens was not proud by virtue of the honoured concourse of so many grave philoso-

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phers of that past era; I would not say that those ancient fora of Rome were not celebrated by every stripe of equestrians, soldiers, and notables; I would not say that the Theban camps were not, for every quality of outstanding men, truly magnificent and stupendous. But 1 would say that our Piazza (and all the glory would belong to the Maker of the universe) would have a grand image of these glorious ancient ones, and that in its fullness at least and its capacity surpasses all those ot past times.'*

Although he is not explicit here, is Garzoni intimating that, whereas the classical piazzas were prominent for the likes of philosophers, soldiers, and other notables, his Piazza is more capacious because of its wider embrace of all levels of the social order - including the plebeian and even the most vile? In fact, does the social reality and urban geography of Garzoni's world particularly foster such a perspective?' Dating the Piazza (and various other works) from Treviso, Garzoni was clearly an intimate of the culture of the Veneto. Several references to the Piazza San Marco specifically, and numerous ones to Venice generally, are to be found in the Piazza-' As Italy's consummate piazza, San Marco (and the Piazzetta) might well have been to some degree a social model for Garzoni's literary Piazza."" Uniting the realms of church (the basilica of San Marco), state (Palazzo Ducale), currency (Zecca), learning (Biblioteca Marciana), commerce (botteghe in the arcades), and street culture in one such dense urban space, it certainly represented an extraordinary encapsulation of Venetian society - and, by extension, a microcosm of human society as a whole. Significantly, San Marco warrants first mention in a discussion of the ideal piazza, where Garzoni simulates the buffoons' critique of his Piazza in another prefatory section. Here, chiding the author for his lack of verisimilitude, the buffoons argue that 'if he wished to make a beautiful Piazza, he ought to have made it like that of San Marco in Venice, or truly like that of Chiocciola in Siena, and not to have made it like that of the Asinelli in Bologna, as he has done.' If it were a proper piazza, they argue, it would have capons, parsnips, apples, melons, cape venders, Gambarin the belt vendor, Menega the fritter woman, Matthia the madman; it would be clear when it was market day, where the goods came from, where the gabelle is paid. In having the buffoons enumerate all these features of a true piazza, Garzoni is, of course, indirectly revealing what he indeed knows to be the social texture of a real piazza — and, in fact, the Piazza does in part treat the street culture of the Italian piazza.7 6 Certainly, given its size, ritual density, professional diversity, and its recent redesign by Jacopo Sansovino, San Marco, more than any other sixteenthcentury piazza, may have spurred Garzoni to transfer the architectural meta-

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phor of the mnemonists to a more literal plane. Venturing beyond the necessarily more confined architecture of the memory theatre (his first project), and expanding what he perhaps believes to be the somewhat privileged arena of the classical square, Garzoni seeks to replicate the wide social expanse of the Renaissance piazza. Thus, though the comparisons to ancient architects and spaces unquestionably are, at one level, a function of Garzoni's attempt at literary self-promotion, at another they may also be symbolic of the more important social aims of the Piazza universale. This interest in democratizing the literary treatment of profession is more explicit in the following 'Universal Discourse in Praise of the Sciences and the Liberal and Mechanical Arts in Common.' A veiled response to Agrippa's renunciation of Renaissance learning in the De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, Garzoni's 'Universal Discourse' is a reaffirmation of it. He opens by saying that, of all the worthy attributes of this elevated microcosm of man, the 'glorious possession of sciences and arts' is the chief one cultivated by a 'heroic mind in itself splendid and singular. Then attacking some of the same enemies of learning that Agrippa praised, Garzoni praises learning as the perfection of humankind, arguing that 'the sciences make ... man similar to his maker God, full of infinite wisdom and intelligence. 7 9He pinches lengthy discussions from Chasseneuz's Catalogus gloriae mundi that cull classical and biblical loci affirming this truth - including even the serpent's temptation that Eve and Adam be 'like gods, knowing good and evil' (Gen. 3:5).8 0 In opposition to Agrippa's position that succumbing to the original sin of inquisitiveness occasioned the Fall, Garzoni (via Chasseneuz) hails mankind's quest for knowledge as a divine attribute. He supplements the material from the Catalogus with, among other things, Italian verses praising the wisdom of two sixteenth-century preachers, and perhaps especially in this he rebuts the fideistic anti-intellectualism of Agrippa. Garzoni would thus convert original sin to primal virtue. Even at the level of its secret sources — namely, the Agrippa to which it responds and the Chasseneuz which it pilfers - Garzoni's 'Universal Discourse' here evinces a dialectic between the 'vanity' (Agrippa) and the 'glory' (Chasseneuz) of Renaissance triumphalism. 82 But this discourse not only is a veiled response to Agrippa's wholesale condemnation of all human learning and endeavour, but also is a partial defence of the lower arts from their detractors. After praising the higher sciences and the liberal arts, Garzoni turns to the mechanical arts, 'many of which are honourable and deemed worthy by the world, and others are manifestly contemned as most vile by everyone.'84 As if doubting that even the 'honourable' mechanical arts do enjoy their rightful place - and certainly knowing the general classical preference of the intellectual over the manual — he presents

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arguments to upgrade these lower arts. Citing as insufficient Posidonius's dismissive division of the lower arts into the Vulgar,' the 'playful,' and the 'puerile' (cited by Seneca in Ad Lucilium 88.21-3),85 Garzoni counters with a decidedly revisionist brief on the manual arts in which he again turns to Chasseneuz - who, in turn, in his own treatment of the manual arts in Book 11 of his Catalogus was in places strongly influenced by Patrizi's revisionist position in his De mstitutione reipublicae 1.8. In particular, Garzoni draws on the Catalogus 11.33 (which discusses claims for and against the nobility of the mechanical arts),8 '7though, as we shall see, Garzoni further sharpens the argument found there for the lower arts by stacking the evidence somewhat. From Catalogus 11.33 Garzoni draws a negative appraisal of the lower arts found in Guillaume Bude's treatise on currency and economies (the De asse, et partibus ems),8 8 which is countered with several positive assessments, including the De officiis 2.15 (in which Cicero casts the lower arts in a more favourable light than he does in 1.150, where he is most contemptuous of the manual art of day labourers, retailers, handcraftsmen, cooks, etc.) and a locus from the Venetian historian Marcantonio Sabellico that it is 'beautiful to excel in every kind of art.'8' Garzoni also cites Plato's affirmation that the mechanical arts 'are the first and most necessary' - this despite the clear hierarchy in the Republic and the Laws privileging the intellectual over the manual9[ 1 and he argues that the ancients even deified the inventors of the arts and that Virgil assigned the contributors in the arts the reward of the Elysian Fields (in Aeneid 6.633). He includes exemplars of literati and intellectuals who have been associated with the lowly arts: for instance, Plautus (milling), Cleanthes (well-working), Callias (ropemaking), and Epictetus (servitude).9 3Most prominently, from the modern world Garzoni cites the case of his dedicatee Alfonso II's grandfather, Alfonso I (1505-34), who had experience in the foundry: 'Did not the most prudent Alfonso Duke of Ferrara cast artillery himself?'94 Also from the sixteenth century Garzoni cites (second-hand) 9 ^ Thomas Mores idealization of agriculture in the Utopia - a treatise that indeed was a powerful affirmation of work against the leisure of the aristocracy and monks.96 Garzoni closes his brief on behalf of the manual arts with a rather manipulative use of biblical authority and Chasseneuz. Led to Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sirach) 38 by the latter, he suggests that this Scriptural locus properly accords 'farmers, architects, smiths, potters, and other practitioners of metiers now reviled by the world' the worthy status they do not now enjoy.9 7 And although the manual pursuits are given some due for the skill they require and their usefulness to the city (38: 35-6), the larger context of this biblical passage suggests that they are far less noble than the learned professions of the

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scholar. In fact, Garzoni was very aware of this, as Chasseneuz in the same chapter 11.33 from which Garzoni had drawn the earlier passage also includes this negative counterpoint. That is, Chasseneuz's (more ambivalent) chapter in one section includes the argument that 'artisans must be excluded from many honours' due to their being 'deemed ignoble' and he cites the continuation of Ecclesiasticus 38 (verses 37-9), which makes clear that artisans are excluded from political and judicial honours. Garzoni omits this other passage from - and the larger context of- Ecclesiasticus 38 to affirm the dignity of the manual arts. In terms of both classical and biblical tradition, then, Garzoni forces the evidence somewhat, citing more the exceptions than the rule and even lifting passages out of context - so great was the weight of tradition against the ennobling of the mechanical arts. This, then, is the cultural context and importance of Garzoni's praise of the mechanical arts in the same breath as the liberal arts and advanced sciences. Certainly, the association of such arts with Alfonso's grandfather was simultaneously compelling motivation and ammunition for his argument. As for the truly disreputable lower arts - such as, presumably, the endeavours of prostitutes, procurers, and thieves - Garzoni justifies their inclusion by saying that their Vergogna' highlights by contrast the splendour of the nobler 0 rather facile explanation may have been added to satisfy professions.11 0 This censors and highbrows, but in fact Garzoni probably had a more concrete agenda. In part, he hopes to embrace the complete universe of 'work,' professionalizing all human pursuits in the total social reality he seeks to replicate. And here, inspired particularly by Agrippa, who depicted certain of the underworld professions as graphic illustrations of the perverted ends of human craft, Garzoni likewise accords these arts the status of studied art and craft.101 Garzoni's discussion of the 'mechanical arts' in the 'Discorso universale' thus implies an important distinction between the truly unworthy lower arts and the unfairly underappreciated ones. In praising the latter alongside the higher arts and sciences, he perhaps reveals that one of his chief rhetorical goals in the Piazza is to partially level the professions. In the prefatory 'Author to the Viewers' he claims that he will provide a survey of 'all the professions of the world, both honoured and neglected,''102 implying that those professions heretofore overlooked will now be given their due or scrutiny. In his original edition, the title promised a piazza of 'all professions of the world, both noble and ignoble,'103 but that tag was subsequently dropped. Why? Could the reason be that it emphasized too strongly - especially for a title - the powerful social and legal biases concerning 'noble' and 'ignoble' profession? Certainly, these terms remained throughout the text and Garzoni did not radically overturn traditional views, but for some reason he dropped these

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terms from his revised title.104 Did he indeed consciously decide on a less judgmental (and less class-bound) title? In fact, the tag 'honoured and neglected' in the letter to 'Viewers' does suggest in more neutral language the realm of social perception at work in such distinctions, and gives to Garzoni's book the tone of a revisionist work. In some cases, the 'neglected' professions - for instance, those of the engineer or smith - are not unfamiliar but more undervalued. But in other cases, they include far more truly invisible professions - stable boys, seat bearers - to which Garzoni's Piazza assigns professional status. And finally, in some instances, they include the criminal class. Especially in the last two categories, even where it emulates or plagiarizes Agrippa's treatise on the arts, the Piazza constitutes an important (because less controversial) compendium of the professional culture of the lower orders. And even where it seeks to expose rather than flatter, it represents a substantive attempt on the part of high culture to penetrate the lore of low. Finally, in the revised edition, the prefatory material of the Pia^a would come to include another significant affirmation of the rising mechanical arts. In 1585 Garzoni had already conferred personal honour on such arts by the reference in the 'Universal Discourse' to Alfonso I's firsthand experience in casting artillery. In the 1587 revision of the book, however, he added a poem and letter both addressed to Alfonso I I's chief engineer, Abramo Colorni, whom Garzoni praises at length for his skill in the 'onorata scienza delle mecaniche.' 115 In being recognized in this way, Colorni joined the dramatist Luigi Groto (mentioned in Garzoni's 1585 dedicatory letter to Alfonso) and Garzoni himself as one of the three figures associated with Alfonso via the Piazza.. Orchestrating such a convergence of engineer, poet, and encyclopedist, Garzoni thus again elevates the mechanical realm by linking it to the literary realm. His letter to Colorni was simultaneously a praise of him and an attempt to convert him from Judaism to Christianity. Given the occasionally risque tenor of the Piazza, this effort at proselytizing might have been partly motivated by a desire on Garzoni's part to shore up the rather questionable religious credentials of the Pia^a.1 0 6But whatever its motive, not only did this letter prominently praise the engineering and scientific expertise of Colorni - whose accomplishments are further privileged by virtue of their prefacing a compendium of all the professions of the world - but also it used the imagery of the mechanical arts in a rather perverse rhetoric of religious persuasion. Thus, he argues, if Colorni is so well versed in mechanical sciences that yield inventions such as bridges (to storm moats), dinghies, ladders, and trenches, should not he want to approach that 'mirabile Ingegnero, e Mecanico stupendo' who 'has fabricated a unique bridge to the world ... who has fabricated the barge of the Holy Church ... who has fabricated the ladder of

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Jacob ... who himself has fabricated an eternal trench against the enemies of hell'?107 Garzoni further asks Colorni, a smith who has invented an harquebus that can shoot four or five pellets at a time, when will he enter the forge of that fabro who shot five bloody emissions from the 'pierced barrel of his most holy body'?108 Or when will he become a true 'mastro d'orologi' and know 'the hour of [his] vocation'?109 However contrived these analogies are, they certainly elevate the mechanical arts in proclaiming God a 'remarkable engineer and stupendous mechanic' and Christ a 'smith.' And it is a testimony to the professional mentalite of the late sixteenth century that a monk would so readily use such a rhetoric of the mechanical sciences in forging a rhetoric of religious entreaty. The partial democratizing of profession implicit in the 'Author to the Viewers,' the 'Universal Discourse,' and the 'Letter to Colorni' is reinforced by the language and structure of the Piazza as a whole. In choosing the term 'professione,' Garzoni is not fully reflecting the modern sense of that term either as a principal 'vocation/occupation' or as 'remunerative work" - for some chapters do not fall into either category: for instance, those on nobility (chapter 19), joke telling (chapter 109), slander (chapter 88), and even sloth (chapter 117).110 As his alphabetical table of 'professioni e mestieri'1 1 and many of his chapter titles make clear, the term derives specifically from 'professori' (as in Trofessori de' secreti' [chapter 22]), just as 'mestieri' derives from 'maestri' (as in 'Maestri d'orologi' [chapter 80]). Yet, in choosing 'profession!' as his umbrella term, Garzoni works to further linguistically unite (and partially equalize) pursuits that heretofore had often been separated by the varied terminology of 'scienze,' 'arti liberali,' 'arti mecaniche,' and 'mestieri.'112 Fioravanti's Specchio di scientia universal provided a recent precedent for use of a single term, but that there were perhaps limiting, or at least ambiguous, connotations with 'science' is evident in his treatise.113 Largely treating practical 'arts' in Book 1 of the Specchio and intellectual 'sciences' in Book 2, Fioravanti confusingly discusses law and medicine in both categories.1 1 In his title, Garzoni encompasses all pursuits under the one, even more elastic, category of 'professione,' a word that, whatever currency it already had, 1 1 undoubtedly gained a major boost with the appearance of Garzoni's oft-printed Piazza. Moreover, the structure of Garzoni's work bespeaks a certain levelling of professional categories. Although the first half of the Pia^a deals relatively more with learned pursuits and the second half more with manual ones,116 the treatise's explicitly random order stubbornly defies a clear hierarchical organization of the professions. It is true that, giving pride of place to the elite, a chapter on princes opens the treatise, but one on poets - also from

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high culture - closes it in the original edition.117 And despite frequent clusterings of like professions, one can also find throughout sometimes startling juxtapositions of very disparate professions: for instance, contiguous chapters on butchers and physicians (chapters 16 and 17), 1 1 8on musicians and gravediggers (chapters 42 and 43), on potters and linguists (chapters 47 and 48). A sequence on hunters, mnemonists, dyers, and courtiers (chapters 59, 60, 61, and 62) shows a fluctuation between high and low, physical and intellectual, artisanal and courtly. Unlike Polydore Vergil (who roughly grounded his discussion of secular arts into books descending from the intellectual to the pedestrian) or Fioravanti (who roughly grouped his volgare treatment into books examining first the practical and then the intellectual arts), Garzoni clearly wants to avoid coherent groupings into books.119 Like Agrippa, he simply has chapters, and in fact he seems at times to want to overtly scramble the professions. " Citolini had dismantled the intellectual classical scheme in his naturalistic reordering of the arts, and Garzoni sought to go one better and shuffle the arts without any coherent order.1 2 That Garzoni was possibly competing with Citolini for controversy is apparent in a tictive 'trial' of his Piazza in the prefatory sections. Preceding the 'Author to the Viewers' and 'Universal Discourse' is a 'Prologo nuovo' consisting ot a divine tribunal in which Garzoni's project is appraised by both human and divine figures. Here, the classical god Momo (a figure found, for instance, in Lucian's Council of the Gods) attacks Garzoni before the 'coro degli dei,' Minerva rises to his defence, and the chorus rules in favour of Garzoni, who is then assailed by mortal foes (the 'maldicenti,' the pedants, and 2 first and most important criticism comes from the god the buffoons). 1 2 The Momo, who assails Garzoni on several intellectual and literary fronts. One of his charges is that Garzoni has attempted to be iconoclastic in his random organization of the professions, refusing 'also to give some order according to the person considered in so many metiers, as it seems Citolini does in his Tipocosmia or as Giulio Camillo intended to do in his Theatre, departing from that common alphabetical path in order to gain, at least in this way, praise for 3 a judicious and unique intellect.'1 2 Clearly, Garzoni was announcing that his random scheme rivalled those of the mnemonists, rejecting the culturally neutral scheme of the alphabet. And if like Citolini he wanted to reshuffle the traditional classical scheme, unlike him, Garzoni wanted his scheme to have no organizing principle. And though in his defence he claims only an artist's aesthetic licence to arrange his work as he pleases,124 perhaps there may also be a social dimension partly underlying this randomness. In another of his criticisms, Momo assails Garzoni for having made 'a game of aggravating with his words all the conditions of people without regard more of this one

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than of that ... having decreed to submerge with his tongue the whole universe.'125 Clearly Garzoni sees his work as being perceived as no respecter of hierarchy. And while this statement may refer to its universal scope of praising and rebuking all professions, perhaps the book's random organization implicitly reinforced this refusal to honour social privilege in its treatment of individual professions. The 'disorder' of the professions is not the only unusual or controversial aspect of the Piazza Garzoni defends in the 'Novel Prologue.' Among the other charges Momo brings before the 'chorus of the gods' is that Garzoni details the 'defects' of the professions to the neglect of their 'praises.'1 2 6In this, of course, Garzoni was drawing not only on the humanistic rhetorical tradition that praised and rebuked the professions (including Agrippa's wholesale condemnation), but also on, for one, Antonino's theological analysis of the 'exercise' and 'defects' of professions. The impact of Agrippa's controversial work becomes apparent in 'Minerva's' defence of Garzoni that his treatment of professional defects should not be seen in the negative context of an Agrippa, an Aretino, or a pasquinade. Rather, Agrippa's nihilistic 'petulant spirit' is replaced with the moral and pragmatic aims of exposing and correcting professional defect. Minerva says that Garzoni 'uncovers the defects of this and that profession in order to exclude vice, and to aid people with an awareness of evil prudently exposed to all.'1 2 7Garzoni's purpose would seem to be to improve professional culture for practitioners and to expose professional foibles for consumers. And for all of those professionals who may have resented criticisms of their particular craft, as consumers they must have appreciated knowing the 'tricks of the trade.' In a 1647 biographical sketch of Garzoni, Girolamo Ghilini remarked that the Piazza revealed 'with such great accuracy and grace the virtues and the vices that result from [the arti], to the great amazement and embarrassment of the same Artigiani, whose deceits are manifested in that Piazza, even in plain view of the whole world.'128 Garzoni's disclosure of professional 'defects' thus could be simultaneously a source of shame (for one's own craft) and of fascination (with others'). Truly, then, the Pia^a was a book that had a different rhetorical meaning for each of the myriad professionals who might read it. Memo's charges, however, extend well beyond the issues of the treatise's eccentric structure and its indiscreet concern with professional failings. In fact, Garzoni uses the fictive tribunal to make a broad literary assessment of his treatise that itself represents a self-referential praise and rebuke of his own 'product' and his own professional role as writer.11 2 9As the most important critic and likely symbol of the attacks of fellow writers, 'Momo' is a motif Garzoni may have drawn not only from Lucian but also more immediately from

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Agrippa, who predicted that poets would attack his De incertitudine in the 0 name of Momus.1 3 Garzoni's Momo appropriately offers a comprehensive critique. Beyond those flaws already mentioned, he condemns Garzoni for a range of faults: for instance, that he dares to feign the universal knowledge of a Pliny or a Paracelsus with his citation of so many authors (and in fact Garzoni's 'table of authors cited' includes over 1200 names!);131 that he is a plagiarist; that he violates his religious vocation (being a 'pagan among theologians'); that he fails to provide a theoretical discussion of the sciences examined; that his style is inadequate relative to the standards of a Bembo; that his treatise lacks the 'scholastic method' of an Alexander of Hales, the linguistic range of a Pico, the comprehensive knowledge of a Raymond Lull, the 'elevated spirit' of a Ficino; that he offers instead only the lowly banter of a Piovano Arlotto. " As several of these intellectual and literary criticisms suggest, Garzoni especially wants to defend his popularizing work against the contemptuous keepers of high intellectual culture, who would doubtless see his work as being too solicitous of the 'popular praises of the crowd.'1 3 Though the allusion to the jokester Arlotto would seem to be cast here as an unwarranted criticism from the snobs, it is nonetheless the case that Garzoni's treatise does contain some material drawn from buffoons,1 3 4just as it assembles the lore of philosophers. With this allusion to popular culture (to which his treatise stoops), as with the preceding allusions to high culture (of which it falls short), Garzoni is perhaps ironically surveying the cultural range of his treatise. In the end, hoping to ward off his highbrow critics by stating their criticisms for them, he clearly sees his book as a work for the middlebrow. As Garzoni makes clear in his chapter 'On Writers of Books,' authors should use words neither 'troppo antichi' nor 'troppo volgare,' and they should avoid the hairsplitting of the 'filosofi de' nostri tempi.'135 He certainly aims to produce a book somewhat of the cultural middle, and in fact the Piazza, abutting the worlds of both Pico and Piovano Arlotto, is a work that mediates between the extremes of high and low culture. Aside from justifying the Plata's structure and style, Garzoni also uses the divine tribunal to discuss his treatise on the most generic level of work itself. 6 'chorus of After 'Minerva' defends Garzoni from Memo's many charges,1133 the gods' rules in Garzoni's favour. Their verdict is a powerful affirmation of human labour as a worthy reflection of the divine. Momo had tried to suggest that Garzoni was encroaching on the province of the gods, who were the inventors of all the arts from rhetoric to poetry down to gravedigging and sewage detail. 137 Whereas Agrippa suggested that all human science was an affront to God and thereby detached the arts from divine origin, Garzoni boldly reasserts the classical polytheism of the divinity of human work. The

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chorus of gods commends Garzoni for having 'toiled over so many things, because our divinity is manifested in the universality of his ingenuity,' and, more importantly, castigating time wasters and do-nothings, they approve of his 'spending his time virtuously, and not sleeping the [fifty-seven-year] sleep 8 chorus of Epimenides like so many of his rivals ... so idle are they.' 1 3 The approves of Garzoni's compendium completed with 'tanta fatica,' 'because we have always liked the custom of the [Hindu] Gymnosophists, among whom an individual went to bed without supper who did not carry to the Gazophy9 language of 'fatlacium some surplus that he had produced that day.' 1 3 The ica' and the condemnation of sloth in this section resonates a theme of an entire chapter, 'On the Otiose of the Piazza, or on the Metier of Michelazzo,' in which he presents a philosophical, theological, and literary condemnation of sloth - including the point about the Indian Gymnosophists, which he credits to Patrizi's De institutions reipubiicoe.140 Here he suggests that the Church Doctors argued that the only place for the otiose is Hell - Paradise being a reward for the active; the land being Adam's workplace; the world as a whole being an arena for productive endeavour; Purgatory being for those who have shown some merit.1 4 1Thus, those who are without work face the ultimate condemnation of belonging nowhere in the worldly or otherworldly spheres except Hell. Condemning Garzoni's idle rivals - perhaps especially significant given his monastic status and the religious otium his vocation 142- the chorus of gods boldly validates the 'fatica' of Garzoni's would validate14 ambitious and highly worldly Piazza, a compendium that, moreover, itself implicitly celebrates the dominance of secular over religious profession. In short, implicitly renouncing Agrippa's renunciation of the Edenic quest for knowledge, Garzoni hails the triumph of Renaissance learning and the ethic of work. Having conferred upon himself the gods' blessing for his Piazza in this divine trial, Garzoni then stages a more earthly exchange, involving a worldly attack on his book that is more pedestrian and more 'professional' in nature. 'Zoilo' (after the cynic Zoilus, Homer's ancient critic) speaks on behalf of the 'Convento de' Maldicenti' and represents the prototype of the carping literary critic. Then the 'pedants' complain that Garzoni has brashly directed his 'satirical speech' against their august company - and this despite his own failings in the niceties of orthography, elocution, and esoteric speech. Finally, the 'buffoons and ignorant,' disavowing any claims to 'Latinity,' present their own critique of the Pia^a from another vantage point, that of realism. As seen above, they argue that if it were indeed a piazza, such as that at San Marco, it would have all manner of goods, street vendors, and characters and would depict an array of essential economic details. Clearly, they argue, this is a

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Piazza manque, constructed by an unwitting buffoon for the amusement of the whole world. In simulating the attacks from these three groups (all of whom are treated in their own chapters in the treatise),1 4 Garzoni is once again spinning out a theme suggested by Agrippa, who predicted that his De incertitudine would pique attacks from all professions in the coin of their trade.144 In a 'Letter to the Supreme Chorus of Gods' Garzoni responds to this hostile trio of sniping critics, overeducated pedants, and undereducated buffoons - eternal foes of those who publish (so we all think!). He associates literary slanderers with the dangerous likes of Aretino and Nicolo Franco, dismisses the pedants as pedantic, and charges the ignorant buffoons (whose proper realm is the kitchen or countryside) with presumptuously invading the realm of letters. Garzoni thus simulates reactions from his own ranks - malicious literati - and from 'high' pedants and 'low' buffoons, symbolizing perhaps the responses his Piazza may elicit from all quarters of society. That the pretentious pedants may view his work as too informal and the vulgar buffoons may view it as too unrealistic suggests that the Piazza is truly a work of the cultural middle. More importantly, these two groups exemplify the range of professionals who will find fault with the treatise, and the pedants especially illustrate the work's potential for lese majeste. On a more general level, Garzoni by definition uniformly violates professional boundaries, as in some way he encroaches upon, simplifies, delimits, diminishes, or even overtly rebukes every profession he catalogues, truly daring 'to submerge with his tongue the whole universe.'1144 5In the Renaissance contest among the arts, it would seem that the palm goes to the encyclopedic writer, who alone brings every profession under his own. Making accessible even the highest of pursuits, scrambling the traditional order of professions, praising and rebuking all professions, the Piazza represents a powerfully destabilizing moment in the culture of profession.

Chapter 4

Learned Cooks and Culinary Lawyers; High, Middle, and Low Profession in the Universal Piazza

Garzoni's rhetoric of profession can be read not only at the organizational level in the Piazza but also, of course, in the 155 discourses themselves. Here the descriptions of almost all of the pursuits share certain rhetorical patterns: a history of the occupation, usually rooted in the classical and/or biblical periods and sometimes including an etymology of the trade name; a literary survey of loci referring to the profession in either literal or figurative terms; a description of standard textbooks and/or standard tools for the practice of the trade; a catalogue of proper professional arcana (the doctor's remedies, the merchant's lore); a catalogue of professional foibles (the doctor's quackery, the merchant's dishonesty). By identifying such common categories of analysis for pursuits both learned and manual, Garzoni's discourses implicitly work to narrow distinctions between high and low professions and, once again, to partially level professional hierarchies. The result is often a surprising reassessment of the arts, with the 'high' pursuits in one context brought low and 'low' pursuits in another raised high. Thus, virtually no lofty profession is immune to a catalogue of its defects, just as many mean ones are reevaluated as repositories of skilled and even 'intellectual' lore. The pattern of praising the 'true' practice of profession and of rebuking the 'false' is made clear in the opening chapter 'On Lords or Princes, and on Tyrants.' Here - as in the chapter on poets, which closed the first edition of the treatise - Garzoni shows that even the highest reaches of culture and profession can have their ideal forms (in the wise prince and the divinely inspired poet) and their perverted ones (in the tyrant and the Aretinesque Tasquino'). Garzoni's encapsulations of professions often reflect recent literature and inevitably his own views as he selectively incorporates (and plagiarizes) these sources or as he develops and transforms them. When converting Latin sources to the volgare, he acts - in the manner of Ludovico Domenichi - as an

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agent of middlebrow culture, transferring high culture to a more accessible realm. In fact, of course, at times Domenichi is Garzoni's shortcut to this process as he draws upon his translation of Pliny and surreptitiously pilfers from his translation of Agrippa's controversial De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum.3 But arguably a somewhat different type of cultural agent, Garzoni is not merely a literal 'translator' to the middlebrow realm but a metaphorical one as well, as his chapters at times creatively work a strange alchemy, converting even serious motifs from Latin sources to new comic vernacular ends.4 In any case, his chapters are a window onto the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury social and moral debates on work and onto the disparate rhetorics of professions from both serious and satirical sources. An analysis of selected chapters on 'high,' 'middle,' and 'low' professions affords a view of the crossfertilization of language and evaluative categories that sometimes ironically and sometimes iconoclastically link elite and popular culture. As the ensuing discussion will show, the analysis of the rhetoric of profession in Garzoni's chapters can be undertaken at three levels. First, the Pia^a serves as a guide to the discrete literatures on profession and thus is a starting point for examining appraisals found elsewhere (especially during the cinquecento). At a second level, these chapters themselves constitute a particular synthesis and transformation ot diverse sources, a process that is obviously an act of rhetorical selection and composition. At a third level, the printed book itself includes further rhetorical markers: especially in the marginalia, for instance, indicating classical authorities on cooks, identifying modern writers on pyrotechnics or mirrors, or noting discussions of the 'instruments' or 'actions' of printers or goldbeaters.^ For all of these reasons - compounded with the singular printing history of the oft-published Piazza — Garzoni's treatise is likely the single most significant voice of profession in late Renaissance Italy. Of special interest to us is the relationship between high and low profession that emerges in the Piazza.- Though often reinforcing social hierarchy in his characterizations of the professions, Garzoni also at times subverts it. As seen in the previous chapter, his overall organizational scheme to some extent bespeaks the uneasy fluidity of the arts. The content of his particular chapters whether plagiarizing others' views or voicing his own - at times does this as well. Now impugning the lawyer as a lowly pig gelder and now hailing the procurer as a lofty rhetorician, Garzoni's treatments sometimes offer startling inversions of the proper social order. His rhetorical approach in this regard needs to be placed within the larger context of comic and festive culture, both the higher comedy of formal literary satire and the more popular banter of Carnevale, buffoons, and the commedia dell'arte. As for higher satire, though Garzoni refused to acknowledge the influence of the controversial Agrippa

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and Aretino, he does acknowledge his connection with Luigi Groto (Cieco d'Adria), whom he approvingly cites in his dedication to Alfonso II. In some cases, Groto developed professional themes in his satires, as can be seen for instance in his treatment of the sophisticated craft of the bawd in his Thesoro.7 At times sixteenth-century satire was organized completely around the exaggerated and ironic praises or attacks of professions - a comic test of rhetorical powers. One such author was Pietro Nelli (Andrea del Bergamo), whose Satire alia carlona contains paeans to the porter and the thief and a condemnation of the miller, themes which all seem to have had an impact on Garzoni. Garzoni was far less sanguine about the lower comedy of his day, and his attitude toward it can only be characterized as conflicted. He suggests in his 'Novel Prologue' that he will be accused by some of being as flippant as a Piovano Arlotto, and in a chapter on buffoons he assails the triumph of the likes of a Gonnella or Carafulla and stock buffoons of the commedia dell'arte such as Grazian da Bologna or Mastro Grillo, and yet he repeats some of their jokes and routines in the Pia^a.11 0Aside from the literary and oral culture of the buffoons, festive culture was also a source of professional commentary and satire, as evident in Florentine carnival songs and Bargagli's Sienese carnivalnight games. Garzoni's knowledge of the latter is evident in his chapter on games, in which he lists the many game topics in Bargagli's book.11 His knowledge of Grazzini's collection is far less certain, but the legacy of such profession-based impersonations for Carnevale seduction can be glimpsed in the Piazza. At the close of his chapter 'On Procurers and Bawds,' Garzoni comments that during 'Carnevale young men sometimes dress up as chimneysweeps, shouting "Belle madonne chi vuol spazzar camino?"' or, alternatively they impersonate gypsies, despoiled soldiers, peasants, hunters, pilgrims, or Zanni or Magnifico (buffoons of the commedia dell'arte), approaching and seducing women 'under the metaphor' of their masks. The chimneysweeps' solicitation almost exactly recalls a line from the anonymous 'Song of the Chimneysweeps' in Grazzini's collection ('Orsu vien, Madonna ardita, / Se tu vuoi spazzar cammin') - and several of these other masks are to be found represented in Grazzini's anthology.1 3 But for Garzoni the dangers of Carnevale went far beyond the machinations of the procurers. In the chapter 'On Masqueraders and on Masks' Garzoni launches an assault on masquerades, which he deems to be a source of great disorder and decadence in his day. In fact, in his opening comments he identifies the first masquerader to be the black angel, who by assuming the appearance of the serpent, orchestrated humankind's fall. This Original Dissembler has spawned hypocrites, has taught women to wear a beautiful, false face, has

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encouraged fraud among tradesmen of all stripes, leaving 'each metier so depraved and corrupt that there remains nothing true and real but only that which is feigned and concealed so exceptionally well.'14 Not only a source for literally false guises, the masquerade is thus cause for metaphorically false ones as well, even in the professional world. In fact, the professional analogue to the festive masquerade is the fraud, a figure frequently exposed in Garzoni's chapters. In one case, Garzoni even expressly characterizes his own efforts in the Piazza in the context of the masquerade. In his lengthy chapter 'On Astronomers and Astrologers' Garzoni concedes that he must be wary in dealing with this suspect science, and though he may seem at first blush to be a charlatan holding 'the mask to the eyes as an astrologer,' in discussing this realm he in tact wishes to 'unmask' those fools who truly are.1116 For Garzoni the masquerade is not merely a metaphor for fraud but also a disturbing threat at the ritual level. Citing various literary examples of Ovid's transformations in the Metamorphoses and the case of Proteus in the Fasti 1.373-4, 1 he argues: 'But what more beautiful, diverse, unusual, and new transformations are able to be seen than those which in our times masks create in the days of C.arnevale, the demon having taught stranger Metamorphoses today than he ever taught in the time of the ancients?'18 He then attacks a defence of masquerades voiced earlier in the century by the Ferrarese Apostolic Protonotary and Estensi court historian Celio Calcagnino, one of the sixteenth-century humanists Garzoni frequently cites in the Pia^a.19 In 1526 Galcagnino wrote from Ferrara an Apologus, cui titulus personati, in which he defended his prince (presumably Alfonso I, the duke of Ferrara) from criticism for allowing public masquerades. Reporting his observations in the 'temple of Volupia' (goddess of delight), in which devotees appear 'disguised and with inverted forms''' - and whose rites spill out from the temple to the city Galcagnino depicts an exchange between a grumpy 'Chronius,' who attacks such behaviour, and a light-hearted 'Aphrodisius,' who defends the joy and 'liberty' of masks. The latter figure (obviously a surrogate for Calcagnino) argues that, whether involving disguises of age, gender, appearance, or profession/" these masquerades are 'most holy mysteries of the goddess Volupia intended tor the invigoration of souls and the renewal of humankind.', 2 Summarizing Galcagnino's argument, Garzoni suggests that his piece may have been meant largely to prove his intellect. 244The dedicatory letter does, however, refer to a specific controversy in Ferrara, and Garzoni himself cites Ferrara, presumably alluding to the festival in question. 2 5And though he does acknowledge one benefit of the social licence afforded by the masquerade - namely, that it allows princes to see unalloyed their subjects' attitudes toward them (for both good and ill) and to correct problems - Garzoni

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details the disorder occasioned by such festivals. Particularly noteworthy is his condemnation of the unsettling social and professional reversals that occur: If one notes every action of those masqueraders, he will see nothing but the most express vanity among them. The acts are vain, the gestures ridiculous, the slogans mocking, the words stupid, the smiles silly, the inventions deranged, the discourses worthless, all mental bearings strange and mad. One sees a gentleman of gravity dressed as a Pedrolino [stock buffoon] to do a thousand senseless things: what could be more vain than this? A Signore dresses as a Burattino [buffoon] and mounts the bench [thus, literally the mountebank] as a charlatan: what is more unbecoming than this? An excellent professor removes his robe and shoulders a sack and makes a thousand wisecracks as a buffoon: what is more troublesome than this? What does the moon have to do with crayfish, crabs with snails ... ? Where is custom? Where the purpose? Where the measure? Where the order7. Where the symmetry? What does a Villan Pavano [buffoon] have to do with a legal scholar? A Grazian da Bologna [buffoon] with a philosopher or poet? A chimneysweep with a ladies' man? An innkeeper with a physician? A cobbler with a captain? A gypsy with a knight? A Zanni [buffoon] with a Lucchese? A Magnifico [buffoon] with a Florentine? What type of propriety is this? What sort of accord? What kind of affinity? 27

For Garzoni these professional inversions between high and low offend all sense of the appropriate, violating traditional boundaries. Among the social and aesthetic offences of the masquerade was the violation of 'modo,' 'misura,' and 'ordine,' criteria discussed by Garzoni in his assessment of the literary canons of a proper book in his chapter 'On Writers of Books.'29 By applying literary standards to Carnevale, Garzoni is wittingly or unwittingly suggesting the possible similarity between a proper social ritual and a proper text. And if Camevale violates the former, Garzoni's Piazza arguably violates the latter. Garzoni himself perhaps raises this issue in the 'Novel Prologue,' where one of 'Memo's' literary criticisms of the Piazza was that it did not give 'qualch'ordine ancora, da persona considerata, a tanti suoi mestieri. Following upon his earlier complaint that Garzoni had 'made a game of aggravating with his words all conditions of persons without regard more of this one than of that,' 'Memo's' comments suggest that an intentional degree of social disorder, a conscious destabilizing of hierarchy, was at work in the structure of Garzoni's treatise. While condemning the social chaos of Camevale, Garzoni quite possibly is in some way replicating it in his Piazza. This is evident not merely in the relative disorder of the treatise's structure but also in the con-

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tent of the chapters themselves. Time and again, Garzoni characterizes a profession in the language of other professions either above or below it — sometimes as mock praise of low profession or satirical critique of holy or high vocation. In some cases, he does this in the framework of unholy or perverse 'transformations' or 'metamorphoses' such as he condemned in masquerades. One such case comes early in the chapter 'On the Religious in General,' in which, detailing the failures of the clergy, Garzoni speaks of the idle, wandering prelate prone 'to frequent the stable, the gate, the kitchen; to wander through the piazzas; to scour the markets; to negotiate with the world; to traffic with the secular realm,' who cannot possibly command respect when he remains all day on horseback to trade packhorses and beasts; when he turns the Church into a stable, the sacristry into a dispensary, the oratory into a kitchen; when on the piazza he becomes a herring vendor, when at the market he becomes a poulterer, in the fish-market becomes a frog merchant, in the butcher shop becomes a tripe seller, and in each place degrades himself and loses all the gravity of the monastery.32 The violation of religious vocation is thus identified here in terms of the perverse transformations into the various professions of the marketplace (three of which mentioned here also appear later in the treatise in the chapter 'De' lardaruoli overo pizzigaruoli, e salsicciari e pollaruoli'). As we shall see, this metamorphosis from religious to worldly profession is matched by various per verse or ironic transformations between high and low profession in the secular world itself. At another level, of course, Garzoni the writer himself exemplifies a type of transformation - in fact, even a literary type of the secularized cleric he condemns above - as he suggests that some would charge that rather than being a 'theologian' among 'pagans,' he is a 'pagan' among 'theologians.' And though claiming to be distressed by the professional and social transformations encouraged by the chaos of Carnevale, Garzoni nonetheless at times seems to draw upon the ritual of masquerade as a model for depicting not only the failures of high culture but also the triumphs of low. He may as well have been drawing upon the related model of parlour games, especially as that genre was developed by Bargagli, who, assembling his parlour-game collection for the purpose of carnival-evening entertainment, included not only various games of professional impersonation but also games expressly on the theme of metamorphosis (such as the 'Game of Transformations' and the explicitly Ovidian 'Game of Metamorphosis')-34 Moreover, the poetic and visual presence of such a theme had recently been heightened with the publication in 1584 (the year before the first edition of

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the Piazza) in Venice of a new Italian translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara with accompanying plates by Giacomo Franco. Citations of both Bargagli's game book and Anguillara's Ovid appear in Garzoni's Piazza,35 and given the currency of the themes of'trasformazione' and 'metamorfosi' in his treatise, it is plausible that Garzoni may have been turning this theme to his own ludic use. In fact, in the earlier comment by 'Momo' cited above, this fictive critic of the Piazza declares (indeed, on the second page of the book)36 that the author has 'made a game of aggravating with his words all conditions of persons.' Garzoni's use - especially in such a prominent passage - of an idiom ('s'ha preso gioco di') that incorporates the word 'gioco' suggests that Garzoni's entire book may have something of a gamelike quality. Was the Piazza at some level a literary parlour game? Certainly, such a possibility - like the ironic likelihood of Garzoni's literary emulation of carnival masquerades that he condemns - should be considered when examining the Piazza's depictions especially of high and low profession. Literati and Intellectuals Because Garzoni is a writer, and the Pia^a a book, the literary and academic world is the obvious starting point for examining Garzoni's treatment of professional identity, standards, and responsibilities. Clearly identifying with this professional realm, Garzoni inevitably draws from it both his intellectual aspiration to compile a serious encyclopedia and his literary ambition to offer a satirical commentary as well. In both goals he mirrors his own praise and rebuke of the virtues and vices of the literary profession. As a polymath and encyclopedist, Garzoni of course devotes discrete chapters to the practitioners of all the learned disciplines, such as grammarians (chapter 4), geometers (24), philosophers (26), orators (27), logicians (31), rhetoricians (32), geographers (37), historians (38), and including even the more recent Lullists (21) and mnemonists (22). Like Ortensio Lando, moreover, Garzoni offers catalogues not only of classical notables in these fields but also of modern ones as well, citing such figures as Celio Calcagnino (rhetoric); Gerolamo Cardano ('secrets'); Cosma Rosselli (art of memory); and Flavio Biondo, Marcantonio Sabellico, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini (history). Of particular interest to us is his treatment of 'book writers' (chapter 33) and poets (chapter 154), for these discussions offer his most searching analysis of professional motives, standards, and violations among the literary set. Having admitted in the Prologue his fear of being reputed a 'pagan among theologians' for writing the Piazza, Garzoni takes some pains to spiritualize and moralize the office of book writing. Drawing upon Augustine, he makes a

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distinction between literary efforts motivated by love of God and neighbour (e.g., works on theology or the arts) and those motivated by love of self (trifles aimed solely at acquiring fame and fortune).38 He enumerates those qualities of 'purity of mind, wholesomeness of a purged spirit, together with a diligent toil or toilsome diligence' that will enable the writer to accomplish his task. Writing books can furthermore even be a vehicle for personal piety and service to others. Uncharacteristically slipping into a second-person voice (that reveals a first-person experience), Garzoni testifies that with a composition you are everywhere, because in one stroke you scour the piazza, you go to the country ... you chat with all, smile with all, give words to all, lend pleasure to all, express yourself to all, nourish the learned, stimulate the coarse, spoon-feed children, teach the young, incite the aged, awaken the lifeless, stir up the vile, sustain the good, thrash the wicked, and the whole world receives benefit from you.440 Such spiritual and social goals are not, however, the lone benefits that Garzoni seems to validate, as he also talks of the instant renown book writing allows and - interesting for a monk - speaks in some detail of compositions as serving an emotional and psychological function similar to that of children.4 1 Thus, although opening with an Augustinian paradigm suggesting the polarization between the Cities of God and Man, his chapter works to blend these two realms in ways that might have surprised Augustine - just as Garzoni himself no doubt surprised his fellow canons. Garzoni himself had two personas in his publications, identifying himself as a canon and/or preacher in the titles of his three religious works,42 but merely as Garzoni 'da Bagnacavallo' in his secular ones. Moreover, that in the latter persona he was familiar with the social and economic forces affecting book writing is evidenced by his closing catalogue of the vices of writers. Aside from the penchant for self-praise and criticism of others, these include 'seeking only the applause of the populace (plebe)i honour from the crowd (vulgo), profit from printers, reward from Maecenases, gain from lords, favours from ladies, courtesies from every quarter., 4 3Furthermore, writers are wont to mischaracterize their writings and shamelessly curry favour in dedications in which 'they make a blockhead [buffalo] into a professor, a plebeian by nature into a noble, a simple gentleman into a count or marquis, a private lord into a prince. All these observations of the book business assume more than academic significance when one reads Garzoni's own dedicatory letter to Alfonso II (from the 'servitor umilissimo' of 'Vostra Altezza Serenissima'),45 the promotional epigrams (or blurbs) preceding the treatise, and Garzoni's self-promotion and defence of the work in

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his prefatory pieces. Not solely a canon, Garzoni is even more a freelance writer floating his book in the marketplace. As for professional standards, Garzoni lays out literary ideals and shortcomings, as well as exemplars of worthy (e.g., Galen and Augustine) and unworthy writers. As for literary canons, Garzoni argues that the proper mix between 'giocondita' and 'utilita' is essential for any effective book, and he specifies as well the criteria of confined breadth (this from the author of the capacious Piazzal), proper linguistic style - somewhere between the 'troppo antichi' and the 'troppo volgari' (perhaps, that is, at the middlebrow) - 'modo e misura,' and 'ordine,' among others.44 6In identifying authors' shortcomings Garzoni includes not only problems of obscurity, length, and omission, but also, in particular, questionable subject matter. He dwells upon those who have violated literary vocations through the baseness of their topics or style, such as Pythagoras (who supposedly wrote a book on onions), the jesters Piovano Arlotto and Gonnella, the macaronic poet Teofilo Folengo,4 7 the obscene and slanderous Pietro Aretino and his crony Nicolo Franco, Ortensio Lando (for his disconcerting Paradoxes),48 Agrippa von Nettesheim of the De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, heretics, romance writers, and street poetasters such as that 'one who celebrated the chamber pot (zangola) in verses in the Piazza San Marco.'49 Garzoni would repeat or supplement this rogues gallery of sixteenth-century satire in various places in the Piazza. Aretino and Franco were apparently of particular concern to him, as he also attacks them as exemplars of slanderous poets (in chapter 154) and abusive calumniators and detractors (in chapter 88).51 Aretino - a Venetian resident and luminary for the last thirty years of his life - was known not only for his lascivious writings such as the RagLonamenti (1536),52 but also for his merciless attacks against the highly placed that won him the epithet 'flagello de' prencipi.' Especially with the emergence of the sixteenth-century 'pasquinade,' it was increasingly clear how much letters could be turned into a socially and politically potent weapon. In comparison with the literary controversies of Petrarch's day, when letters were merely secular and spiritually dangerous, now they are scandalous and socially dangerous. But Garzoni's concerns with the perversion of literary profession went beyond the scandalous and the slanderous to include the seemingly less menacing comic realm in general. Not only does he condemn humorists such as Arlotto and Gonnella and the macaronic Folengo, but in discrete chapters on buffoons (119) and comedians (103) he has much to say as well about the culture of low comedy, condemning it in the same way he condemns masquerades. Buffoons, he complains, have completely saturated the culture of the court:

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Now in modern times buffoonery has risen in stature, so that lordly tables are more flooded with buffoons than any kind of virtuous types, and that court appears diminished and half-empty where one does not hear or see a Carafulla, a Gonnella, a Boccafresca in the chair, who with fables, jokes, pleasantries, trifles, and faces entertains to the honoured audience that sits inside. Here the buffoon ... narrates the adulteries that the physician's wife commits the night of Camevale ... discusses the law like a Grazian da Bologna, talks of medicine like a Mastro Grillo, speaks as a pedant like a Fidenzio Glotocrisio.5 3 Not only do these buffoons thus parody the law, medicine, and teaching in their railleries, but they have as well practically usurped the social place of the practitioners of high culture, for they live happily at the expense of gentlemen and lords, and triumph at the meals of princes, while the learned poet, the eloquent orator, and the acute philosopher make their home in the lowliest servants' hall ... In this time the buffoons sit honoured in seats ot dignity, very elevated, and meanwhile the learned languish, seeing that the time of Gonnella has returned, and that poor philosophy goes away bare and dispersed as a thing savage among the common folk [gente popolare], because the world embraces these inept buffoons or parasites like so many idols, trampling virtue underfoot and abusing honoured persons with every sort of strangeness imaginable.54 Garzoni sees a world become topsy-turvy, with the elevation of the buffoon and the submergence of the learned. With the recent emergence of comedy troupes, which Garzoni details in chapter 103, the province of low comic culture had obviously extended beyond the court jester to the professional companies of the commedia dell am based in various cities ('the Signora is in Parma, the Magnifico is in Venice, the Ruffiano in Padua, the Zanni in Bergamo, the Graziano in Bologna').5 6 Though praising certain outstanding comedians and comediennes of his day, Garzoni contemns those 'profane comics who pervert the ancient art, introducing into comedies only dishonesty and scandalous things,' castigating companies that, for their ill effects, must buy licences to perform 'because all people are infected by this vile rabble that stirs up every disorder and spreads around a thousand scandals wherever they go.' For Garzoni, then, such vulgar practitioners of the comic art are agents not only of scandal but also of 'disordine,' recalling his critique of violations of'ordine' in masquerades and 'Memo's' critique of the Piazza. In his survey of the perversion of book writing, comedy, and poetry, Garzoni depicts a flowering of sixteenth-century satire, pasquinade, and buffoon-

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ery. Clearly a funnel for his view of much of the low comic and festive culture of his day was the university underground. In the chapter 'On Schoolmasters and Students, and on Professors and University Students' he waxes at length concerning the debaucheries of university students. Whereas the vices of grammar school pupils are confined to such antics as 'feeding pasta to the frogs rather than studying,, 5 8university students are prone to much more venal pursuits. Saying that Antonino's critique of student life (in his Summa) only scratches the surface,59 Garzoni claims that his own first-hand observations allow him to truly plumb the depths of the depravity of modern student life. Awash in the lewd writings of Aretino, Francesco Berni, Francesco Maria Molza, Burchiello, Franco ('the idol of students'), and the more scandalous of Boccaccio's tales, university students are woefully lacking in real knowledge.61 They deride their teachers, consort with prostitutes and procurers, taunt the police, pawn their books in order 'to make a parade to Cockaigne,, 6 3and seek 'continuously to stage a Carnevcde.' The reference to Carnevale is perhaps not merely a metaphorical lament, for at the end of his chapter Garzoni decries the festive energies students can uncork. Noting that little attention is paid those individuals who have the capacity to turn to good use the genres of 'comedy, tragedy, song, music, rhetoric, poetry, and civic spectacles,' he complains that it is the debauchers of culture who take centre stage. He warns that university officials should take precautions in the event that these unleashed devils come merrily into the piazza, because with their antics the crowd expects from them a ridiculous festival and an amusement marvellous to behold, urging that the Burattini, the Graziani, the Magnifici, the Zanni and all manner of buffoons are not lacking to light up the piazza to make a pleasant show. Meanwhile, each prepares his place, because all must see the maddest of trionfi that has ever been seen, because through this [kind of] 'fraternal correction' Carnevale will never cease among them.63

Instigating depraved 'civic spectacles' and summoning forth buffoons in spontaneous carnivals in the piazza, students are agents of festive chaos. With their indulgence in the pasquinade (initially a student genre), the land of Cockaigne, the letters of Aretino and Franco, the temptations of prostitutes and procurers, they are a subversive force harvesting many of the features of the cultural and social underground. Undoubtedly drawing at least in part upon his own student days (and possibly on experiences he may have had as a teacher), Garzoni seems all too familiar with the perversion of high culture to low ends in university life - and likely it was this setting that introduced

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him to some of the more controversial and popular currents of comic and festive culture in his day. Whatever the circumstances of his exposure to such a counterculture, as in the case of masquerades Garzoni decidedly emulates what he condemns in the current perversion of literary culture and comedy. The comic and slanderous side of cinquecento culture will undoubtedly be a filter through which he will view many of the professions of the world. His discomfort with overly privileged buffoons' parody of high profession, his unease with the unnatural metamorphoses of high and low types at Camevale, his dismay at the perverse power of the satirical slanderer over those in power, will all result in an ironic, comic, and iconoclastic tone that will pervade his own book. As a 'book writer' what kind of author was Garzoni: more Augustine or Arlotto? He offers some clues in his 'Novel Prologue.' Here 'Momo' accuses him of frivolities akin to those ot a Piovano Arlotto and thinly veiled critiques worthy of winning him the reputation of an 'Aretino among the magnates and tyrants of the world.'" And not only were Arlotto and Aretino to be found in his list of unworthy 'book writers,' but so also were Pythagoras and others for writing on lowly topics. In his prefatory 'Letter to Viewers,' however, Garzoni defends his treatment of lowly professions by citing ancient forebears who wrote of comically low themes - including among them Pythagoras for his work on onions.68 The very tradition Garzoni condemns in his chapter 'On Writers of Books' he cites in his support in his preface. The quasi-comical and satirical nature of this tradition alerts us that Garzoni's treatment of low profession might be not completely a straightforward survey but also partly a satirical one. Garzoni is part Arlotto, part Aretino, part 'Pythagoras,' part Agrippa (whom he covertly draws heavily upon), and perhaps even part the nameless street poet ot San Marco composing praises of the chamber pot.69 As a 'book writer' especially in the Piazza - Garzoni reveals himself to be an author whose Augustinian voice (writing on theology for the love of God and writing on the arts for the love of fellow man) must certainly compete with the comic voice (writing on trifles for fame, fortune, and love of self). Despite this comic face, however, the Piazza was by no means without its serious side as an arbiter of professional standards and status. That it served such a function for literary and academic professions can be seen in its closing two chapters on poets and humanists. A chapter on the former closed the first (1585) edition of the Piazza.10 Like so many of Garzoni's professions, poetry was capable of both sublime practice and base perversion. Charting the ancient and modern poetic practice of invoking the muses (a custom he feigns to emulate now for his prose effort in this chapter), Garzoni surveys the poet's heritage as a priest, a theologian, and one possessed with divine fury -

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citing, albeit often through intermediaries, requisite authorities such as Plato, Varro, Augustine, and Boccaccio.71 But the survey of poetry's virtues and the list of its truest exemplars are also accompanied by condemnations of poets' scandalous productionsaand their truck with 'so many transformations, so many monstrosities.,73 Garzoni also meted praise and rebuke to poets in assessing their social power - a power that itself is ironically one of praise and rebuke, as poets have the capacity to capriciously lionize some individuals (especially via the epitaph) and humiliate others (via the pasquinade). In the latter case, although the poetic lampoon always had a frightful power — such that ancient Romans were said to ban poets as 'public assassins - the literal 'pasquinade' was in fact a product of the sixteenth century and apparently enjoyed then a considerable currency and potency. Identifying Aretino by his famous sobriquet as the 'scourge of princes' and calling the (apocryphal) 'Pasquino' 'an enemy of princes and lords of the world,' Garzoni reflects the social anxiety concerning the force of slander.74 The 'profession' of poetry had not only its own ignoble and noble practitioners, but also its own internal rivalries and debates over professional standards. Garzoni closes his chapter with what he calls a literary 'duel' or 'notable dispute' - as often occurs among the literary — involving a Latin epigram, Ad viatorem elegt'a, written by the Venetian notable Lorenzo Massa, a jurist, physician, and chancellor of the Venetian state.7 7 Garzoni prints Massa's poem, laudatory epigrams from several figures — including the Venetian humanities professor Fabio Paolini — a critique of Massa's poem by the Paduan humanities professor Antonio Riccobono, and an anonymous rejoinder to the latter (probably written by Paolini). Summoning Greek and Roman precedents for the epigram, Riccobono faults Massa's poem on numerous counts and even condescendingly rewrites the thirty-two-line poem into a condensed twelve-line one (the upper limit of a 'proper' epigram). The lengthy reply to Riccobono's critique likewise turns to Greek and Latin precedents in defending Massa's style. Thus, an erudite humanistic contest (complete with Greek and Latin quotations) more appropriate to the university is aired in a vernacular setting in a popular encyclopedia. And though this 'duel' is partly one between Venice and Padua - each state's most prominent humanist taking the field for the honour of the patria - the contest is also one concerning professional boundaries. Clearly to Riccobono, Massa has strayed into his professional territory - legitimate Latin poetry - and needs to be apprised of the proper professional canons of the guild. The anonymous 'Response to the Opposition of Riccobono' in fact even alludes (though in a positive way) to Massa's poaching by saying that all Venetians 'with a taste for

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Latin poetry' were impressed with Massa's capacity to possess, beyond his many other areas of strength, 'the charms and faculties of poetic things, which others, for whom poetry is their particular and proper profession, pursue at great effort.' When Venice's most illustrious amateur poet is embarrassed by the circulation of Riccobono's critique - especially weighty because the latter 'holds the first chair of humanities at Padua'82 - Venetian literati offer their rejoinders, which, however, Massa suppresses. The anonymous author of the 'Response,' identifying himself as 'I who love the honour of Massa and am friend of Riccobono,' will thus mediate with a polite defence of Venice's chancellor, exhaustively mining classical precedents to prove that Massa's poem does indeed meet poetic standards. Garzoni thus ended his original edition of the Piazza with an unfolding professional debate on the art of poetry. The immediacy of this debate is evident in the date of Riccobono's letter - 4 October 1585 - certainly a late inclusion in a work whose dedicatory letter is dated 5 December 1585, and likely the reason this chapter came at the end of the treatise and even lacked pagination in the closing section taken up by the literary debate. As a mirror of issues involving professional turf and professional standards, Garzoni's poetry chapter shows the seriousness of professional identity as a topic animating academic circles. Furthermore, by giving this dispute an airing in a popular encylopedia Garzoni may have piqued an even more dramatic statement of academic professionalism. In the 1 587 revision of the Pia^a he adds not only Annotations to the end of each chapter - the penance of a plagiarist? - but also a 155th chapter, 'Degli umanisti.' Garzoni opens this chapter by admitting that the addition came as a result of criticism that his Pia^a was incomplete: I had thought to have embraced and included in my book all the professions, and especially the most illustrious ones. But some literati have advised me that I have excluded the humanist, the profession among others noblest and most honoured. I had thought, however, to have included it partly under the grammarians, partly under the rhetors, partly also under the historians, finally - if there still remained anything - under the category of the poets. But they tell me that the humanist is something more or, to put it better, a composite of all these disciplines, which are the foundations of that profession of humanism.86

Garzoni then summarizes a lecture by Fabio Paolino, 'who teaches today in Venice and who, at the start of study this year [1596] recited in the library of San Marco an oration De perfecto doctore humanitatis.', 8 7Paolini's lecture, which itself was published in 1588,88 laid out the intellectual and linguistic

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range of the humanist, who should be schooled not only in the four disciplines to which Garzoni refers but also in moral philosophy, mathematics, and other areas; who should be able to write in Greek, Latin, and Italian; and who 89 should be able to compose in both prose and verse. Did the contest over Massa's poem do more than stir rivalry between Venetian and Paduan literati and elicit a self-conscious concern from academic humanists (or at least from one) to proclaim their discrete and even privileged place in the professional world? Paolini opened his oration with a complaint concerning humanist imposters, an argument Garzoni cites at the close of his chapter, which targets the grammar school teachers who 'arrogate this name and wish to be called humanists, profaning with their presumption this honoured name, also with their blemishes and vices giving to the world which does not distinguish the true from the simulated humanists - many occasions to speak or think ill of this name.'90 Part of Paolini's purpose in his oration, presented at the start of an academic term, was to assure the proper social status and professional reputation of the humanist scholar/lecturer. Did Garzoni's poetry debate and the appearance of the first edition of the Piazza in 1585 prompt Paolini's 1586 profile of the true humanist in this lecture in the Marciana?91 This is most likely, especially given Paolini's concern to clarify the intellectual gradations in the academic profession. Aside from inheriting the contempt of schoolteachers found in a Petrarch or a Conversini, he would have been further distressed by negative comments on pedants in Garzoni's 'Novel Prologue,', 9 2in chapter 4, 'On Grammarians and Pedants,' and in chapter 101, 'On Schoolmasters and Students and on Professors and University Students' (the latter of which, despite assigning higher status and responsibilites to professors, nonetheless does lump them with grammar school teachers in the same chapter). Paolini's sensitivity, moreover, was likely heightened as well by the nature of his own academic position in Venice. Because Padua hosted the local university where Riccobono held the 'first humanities chair,' Paolini had to settle for humanities appointments in various sestiere schools in Venice (including those in the districts of Santa Croce, San Polo, and San Marco). There was a growing degree of academic ambiguity in these schools in which recently (1567) the state had mandated that the humanist salaries be lowered and the grammarian salaries raised, bringing the two academic ranks into closer proximity. Perhaps it was this setting in which more advanced humanists taught alongside grammarians in non-university schools that piqued Paolini's concern to delineate professional identity in his De doctore humanitatis. In any case, it seems that Paolini's oration represented more than just a school-year inaugural lecture, and may well have been a defensive academic

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response to the appearance of Garzoni's Piazza. And just as it was probably Paolini himself who wrote the 'Response to Riccobono,' it was very likely Paolino who urged Garzoni to include an additional chapter on humanists in the revised edition of the Piazza. Aside from the fact that Garzoni's added chapter openly draws from Paolini's lecture, this likelihood is further strengthened by the fact that Paolini, a 'public reader' among the Venetian press censors during this period, could well have reviewed the Piazza for publication.96 Certainly, both Paolini's lecture and Garzoni's added chapter suggest that the academic humanists - the Italian Renaissance's particular creation - set their own professional standards and demanded their own professional niche like that of the 154 other professions recognized in the Piazza. ' And given the decline in the humanists' fortunes by the late sixteenth century, this affirmation of professional identity may have assumed an even greater urgency. At the middle range of the literary world (as a popular author), Garzoni abutted both the world of high letters (poets and humanists) and low (buffoons and purveyors of the pasquinade). Though intent on praising the former and rebuking the latter, he in fact popularizes and emulates both. With some of the intellectual ideals of the scholar, some of the popular aims of the commercial writer, and some of the comic irony of the buffoon, Garzoni himself is well situated as a cultural middleman for the literary profession. Thus poised between high and low culture, he is likewise well situated to appraise 'all the professions of the world.' AO

Lawyers and Physicians Garzoni's treatment of law and medicine reveals that the rivalry between these two highly visible professions continued to enjoy a considerable vitality. In his chapter 17, 'On Physicians,' he alludes to the debate over whether medicine should take precedence over law, citing a 'witty but caustic joke' (pinched from Agrippa) that would argue that thieves (lawyers) traditionally precede executioners (physicians) en route to the gallows, though himself siding with medicine in this agon. 9c 9And his awareness that his own treatment of these professions could itself fuel this rivalry is evident at the end of his chapter 5, 'On Doctors of Civil Law or Jurists or Lawyers,' where, closing with some comic remarks about the legal practice, Garzoni says he will not belabour the parody lest 'the Messrs. Physicians explode with laughter (that being 0 a malady that has no remedy).'1 0 Clearly Garzoni assumed that the penchant for mutual ridicule between these two professions - commented upon by 1 01 Antonino in the previous century1 - might well send doctors to his Pta^a

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in search of lawyer jokes. In fact, the ferment of this rivalry in the sixteenth century - and, more generally, the effort to rehabilitate medicine from its critics - animates Garzoni's pages. The power and prestige of the lawyers are evident in Garzoni's somewhat cautious and apologetic opening at the start of the first of his two chapters on them. In the 'On Doctors of Civil Law' he acknowledges that the 'grave dottori of the long robes' will take umbrage at his discussion of them, because of some insulting comments he includes, but he will balance such criticisms with 'a sea of praises' and a 'thousand honours ... to show the just affection that I hold toward a discipline so distinguished that formerly in study at Ferrara and Siena under most learned teachers I followed and embraced it with singular toil.'102 And though as a one-time law student he hates to sound like a detractor, he cannot ignore flagrant 'abuses' so obvious that 'without glasses on one's nose they can be seen stared at with the eyes themselves.'1 0 He will, however, place these defects of the law at the end in order 'to seem (as I am) more prone [to sing] its praises than disposed and inflamed [soltefato] to censure it.'104 Garzoni's solicitous approach to the law could be genuine, but just as likely it is a facetious commentary on the danger of offending — and the need for pacifying - such a powerful profession (why else immediately draw attention to criticisms to come later?). Garzoni certainly does give the jurists their due, citing ancient and modern loci on the origin, purpose, and importance of the laws (from Plato and Cicero to Ficino); presenting a paean to laws as the bulwark against chaos and crime and the protector of orphans and widows; and reviewing the law's branches and texts (e.g., the Digest, Institutes). Garzoni also includes a section particularly resonant of the polemical literature on professional standing, citing appraisals of the law's dignity and nobility via its 'end,' 'effect' (wealth, respect, and power), 'object,' and 'subject.' And among these categories of nobility is that pertaining to dress, and here Garzoni draws upon Barthelemey de Chasseneuz's Catalogus gloriae mundi to show how jurists' apparel could represent a precise set of cultural signs: 'Moreover, the lawyers are noble through the insignias of the Doctorate conceded to them, which is the beret of the Doctor (with which Lucco di Penna remarks that even the Admiral of the Kingdom of Sicily adorns himself); the ring on the finger signalling [in segno che] that he is truly linked to science; the golden girdle signalling that he is encircled with perfection; the manly toga signalling that he wishes to live justly as a man of respose.1 0 Garzoni's adaptation and popularization of Chasseneuz's semiology of learned profession reveals a sensitivity to the literal signs of dress as cultural markers in professional identity, a sensitivity visually and rhetorically further reified, as we shall see, in dress

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books that began to proliferate in Italy in the second half of the cinquecento. (And though the specific codes of clothing may have become a subject of particular fascination in the later Renaissance, the generic issue of dress requirements had a longer history in professional literature.) Returning to the issue of dress in his later chapter, 'On Procurators and Advocates,' Garzoni quotes a section from Antonino's Summa (in turn drawn from Guillaume Durand's Speculum iudiciale) that included a cynical Latin verse stating that, whereas a well-dressed 'idiota' is respected by everyone, a poorly dressed expert receives no honour - this grudging acceptance of social reality prefacing advice that lawyers dress properly.11 0 Garzoni completes his praise of the law in chapter 5 with a list of outstanding jurists (including, e.g., Cino da Pistoia, Bartolus da Sassoferato, Baldo degli Ubaldi, Alciato, and Tiraqueau) and praises here particularly Lorenzo Massa, Venice's chancellor and 'first jurist' and author of the poem that is the subject of a literary duel at the close of the Piazza. The figure of the highly placed Massa illustrates the particular social hazards Garzoni faces in closing his chapter with a treatment of lawyers' failings. Still, he braves this territory, sometimes drawing on hostile and derisive sources. As for frauds, Garzoni argues that, despite the many outstanding lawyers he has named (and many more he could name), these worthy practitioners are far outnumbered by the worthless ones ('dottorelli da dozena'), who never stay in the same house two nights, lodging always at the bottom because of their ignorance and insufficiency, and who are incapable of preparing two paragraphs in broth or placing four glosses in brine, so much they are full \digesti = the Digest.'.] of nonsense, which is proper to them as drawling is to Gra11 0 zian da Bologna.1 '

This last reference to Grazian da Bologna, the oft-mentioned legal buffoon, suggests that the rather odd statements concerning 'two paragraphs in broth' and 'four glosses in brine' may derive from the banter of the buffoon. Elsewhere in the Piazza - in the chapter 'On Schoolteachers' - Garzoni parodies the pretentious pedant who 'with four syllables in saffron, with three authorities treated in verjuice, with two discoveries placed in broth, with a distich crushed in the garlic press, wishes to stink immediately like a philosopher, and even like a theologian.'1 0 It seems that a fitting parody of the pretentious scholar is that he serves up his verbal fare with culinary embellishment or relish, perhaps hoping to make an innately bland or mediocre offering more exotic and palatable. This application of food imagery to the lawyer and to the pedant - whether on the part of buffoons or Garzoni emulating buffoons -

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is one example of the mocking of high culture with low: in this case, the profaning of the intellectual with the sensual and material.109 But Garzoni's critique of law makes use of other low professions as well. To satirize lawyers who exploit their clients he cites the profession of the gelder (a profession that merits its own discussion in chapter 132):1 1 'Moreover, they practise well enough the metier of Gelder because if by chance a fat peasant gives himself into their hands, they manage to castrate him better than would Pig gelders themselves.'111 This rather vulgar allusion to the manual arts is complemented by a subtler one referring to lawyers' forced manipulations of words: 'I will not mention the defences that they make with texts and with glosses of the law, they who stretch their words more than Cobblers their leather.'11 1 Garzoni lifted this allusion from the physician Fioravanti, who in his Specchio di scientia universale laid out this analogy with somewhat more artisanal detail: But in these times of ours the common laws with the jurists are like the leather of the cobblers, that when they cut the pieces and the leather falls short, the master stretches it so much with the teeth that he makes it come to where he wishes it to be, and similarly the Doctors of law, where the justice comes up short there they stretch so many authorities and so many glosses that they accommodate reason to their liking.113

As seen in the last chapter, Fioravanti's attack on the law was a thoroughgoing one that reflected not merely the vitriol of the doctor-lawyer rivalry but also the more generalized promotion of manual pursuits against the traditionally privileged postion of the intellectual ones. Besides comparing jurists to cobblers (in Bk. 2.6) in an earlier attack on lawyers in 'DelParte de gli Avvocati, e de i successi delle liti' (Bk. 1.46) Fioravanti presents a lengthy analogy between the art of the advocate and that of the sailor (marinaro or barcaruoli). Like the sailor who, though promising you a pleasant, inexpensive, and speedy trip, in reality delays your departure, launches you on a stormy voyage, and maroons you somewhere for a month, so also do advocates 'with their chatter embark the poor litigants on the ship of lawsuits' and then deliver nothing but delay and frustration, especially since lawyers receive their gain from protracted suits.1 1 The cobbler and sailor analogies certainly are partly intended to explain and deride high profession in familiar and comic imagery for a popular readership. But in thus demystifying high profession and defining its arcana in artisanal or manual terms, Fioravanti may as well be reinforcing his larger interest in the treatise to partially equalize and even conflate the 'lower' arts and 'higher' sciences. Garzoni thus in his ending to chapter 5

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similarly derides the law, adding to Fioravanti's cobbler image a gelder image — and preceding both with a cooking image likely drawn from the popular culture of the buffoon. In culinary and artisanal imagery the formidable high law is brought low. Lawyers are also humbled in this closing section by mention of their necessary professional associations. Just as physicians are traditionally derided by their rivals for such indelicate tasks as urinalysis,1 1 so lawyers can be similarly embarrassed with reminders of their unavoidable truck with undesirable types or lowly institutions (policemen, executioners, pillories, gallows).1 1 The social dimension of professional practice - the net of association that brings lawyers together with hangmen - appears elsewhere in Garzoni and can be a cause for either debasement or elevation. For instance, as lawyers are debased by association with policemen, so in a chapter on policemen does Garzoni suggest that policemen are not only joined at the hip with the executioner117 but also often corrupted by their commerce with the criminal element. Contrariwise, lowly professions can be assigned unsuspected (or ironic) dignity by their associations 'upward': thus stableboys are elevated by the contact with 'most noble animals' (namely, horses) and by their handling these majestic animals as the lords themselves do.1 1 As for the social place of lawyers, Garzoni has shown that despite the lofty position signalled by their august apparel, there is a 'vile' dimension to their professional associations and experiences. With this reminder - together with the lampoon of incompetent lawyers marinating texts, castrating their clients, and stretching their points - Garzoni ends his chapter 'On Doctors of Civil Law,' reluctant to continue his send-up lest physicians die laughing. He does, however, include far more criticism and satire concerning the law in his related chapter 12, 'On Procurators or Advocates and on Protectors, Solicitors, and Litigants.'1 1 Though citing authorities and texts comparing lawyers' potential similarity to priests,1 2 Garzoni spends far more time in this chapter detailing their actual moral failures, once again arguing that unworthy practitioners far outnumber worthy ones. Opening his survey of 'vices' with a discussion of legal fees, by way of the Chasseneuz's Catalogus, he cites Francesco Patrizi's discussion of the ancient Roman Lex Cincia (forbidding fees) and its amendment (allowing gifts of a certain amount) and laments that lawyers not only demand compensation for pleading in excess of the 'statutes and Pragmatica' but also extort clients for their silence. 121 By way of Antonino's Summa he draws on Alvaro Pelayo's serious list of lawyers' foibles (in De planctu ecclesiae)122 - though secularizing and satirically embellishing them - and Sidonius Appollinaris's humorous characterization of troublemakers (in Epist. 5.7) who are 'beasts in

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questioning ... foxes in deceiving, bulls in being proud, minotaurs in consuming,' and so on.1 2 Garzoni also extends his legal critique to the 'miseries of litigants,' a theme the physician Fioravanti develops in his chapter 'On the Art of Advocates and the Successes of Lawsuits' in his Specchio. Undoubtedly testing the censors to the limit, Fioravanti compares the sufferings of litigants to the persecutions of the early Christian martyrs.124 Moreover, facetiously rebutting the argument that litigants are great sinners, he shows to the contrary how they could never be accused of Pride (because they debase themselves), Avarice (because they exhaust their funds), Accidia (because they are ever wakeful and striving), and so on - though they truly can be accused of Anger or Envy (over others' speedier settlements).125 Though stopping short of including the analogy concerning the Church martyrs, the canon Garzoni incorporates Fioravanti's parody of the seven deadly sins as well as his comic comparison of the plagues of litigants to the ten biblical plagues of the Egyptians.126 His willingness to include such material making facetious use of religious categories is somewhat more surprising than the physician Fioravanti's doing so. Obviously Garzoni shows considerable latitude in assimilating the satirical rhetoric of profession found among lay predecessors in the cinquecento. Thus, despite his protestations of respect for the law as his erstwhile vocation, Garzoni certainly absorbed much of the physician Fioravanti's contempt for the law (as well as Antonino's sometime derision of it). And if Garzoni was flirting with lese majeste of the legal elite of his day, in those sections of the Piazza concerning physicians he perhaps had the opposite intention: namely, to defend the much-maligned. This motive is evident in the opening sentence of Garzoni's chapter 17, 'On Physicians': Many moved by madness and transported by blind fury have irrationally sharpened their tongues and teeth against the most learned school of doctors, it seeming to them that the ignorance of some and the blind bestiality of particular individuals ought to incite scorn and vituperation of the whole art and all its practitioners, without any regard of so noble and worthy a discipline and of so many honoured intellects, who with all means have made themselves illustrious and have made their profession in the world distinguished, celebrated, and divine.127

Dismissing classical condemnations of doctors (e.g., in Plato, Herodotus, Seneca, and Pliny),1 2 Garzoni is intent on affirming medicine's dignity. He cites the praise of the doctor in Ecclesiasticus 38.-1-4129 and classical theories crediting medicine's invention to Apollo and his son Aesculapius or to the cen-

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taur Chiron. More surprising is Garzoni's defence of medicine's supremacy over all other sciences based on the primacy of physical health as a precondition for all happiness.130 Perhaps departing from more conventional moral and theological assumptions, he grants credibility to Cyrenaic and Epicurean philosophy and ponders how, 'if the happiness of Epicurus ... had its seat in the pleasure of the mind and the body ... how could those who lie sick not be wholly unhappy and unfortunate?'1 3 It would seem that part of Garzoni's defence of medicine depends on an embrace of the pleasurable over the ascetic, a rather iconoclastic perspective for a monk and a view that partially deposes the primacy of the purely intellectual and moral (the traditional preserve of the law) to the advantage of the physical and psychological. And as for the latter, in marked contrast to Petrarch's proscriptions against physicians' encroaching on the realm of psychology, Garzoni would grant the doctor an expansive role, arguing 'is this [medicine] not the golden discipline that gives hope and consolation to the sick? That expels tedium, weariness, and disturbance of mind? That mitigates grief? That checks distress? That removes despair? That expels sorrow?' and so on. 132 Finally, Garzoni also elevates medicine by associating it with an array of liberal and higher arts: Besides, Medicine is founded on Logic (through reasonable discourse), on Rhetoric (which reveals the sweet persuasiveness of the doctor to potions naturally hated and abhorred), on Arithmetic (with counting the hours and moments of fevers that beset the sick), on Music (it being that Theophrastus writes that sciatica is cured with music and Marcus Varro says that podagra is cured with the same), on Geometry (measuring the pulse of the sick as all doctors do), on Astrology (taking into account the moons and good and bad times to bleed and to give medicine), and with Theology itself it also has some familiarity (because the physician is obligated to remind the sick that he should unite with God).11 3

This review of the higher arts is a feature elsewhere in the Piazza, particularl ddd with the liberal arts. in cases in which manual or lowly arts are associated And if in some cases (such as cooking or procuring)1 3 the association is ironic, in the case of medicine it is serious and reveals Garzoni's concern to elevate medicine to the higher ranks. Garzoni's sympathies for medicine were undoubtedly influenced by Fioravanti, who in his Specchio not only debunked law but also promoted medicine, devoting a considerable portion of his third book to a defence of medicine, a history of medicine and surgery, and a review of his own medical inventions. 135 It is perhaps especially owing to Fioravanti that Garzoni

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assigns surgery its particular placement in the Piazza. That is, despite surgery's long subservience as the manual step-child to medicine, Garzoni may have some iconoclastic intentions in including his discussion of surgeons (in chapter 7) before that of physicians (chapter 12), a pattern not followed in the somewhat analogous case of the lesser 'procurators and advocates,' who appear after their superiors, the 'doctors of law.'136 Surgery's manual character, moreover, was not downplayed but even advertised, as Garzoni cites the fact that 'chirurgia' is etymologically derived from the Greek for 'manual operation.'137 And though graphically describing the distasteful physical chores of the surgeons, Garzoni also praises illustrious practitioners, including 'il glorioso Fioravanti,' and he ends his chapter by affirming that the craft's glory was assured by Ariosto's flattering portrayal of surgery in Orlando furioso 19.21 (in a stanza that he cites in full dealing with Angelica's treatment of Medoro).1 3 Just as Garzoni's 'random' placement of the chapter on surgeons prior to that on physicians may have had a symbolic intention - namely, to suggest that a manual craft should not necessarily follow a more cerebral one - his placement, in turn, of the chapter on physicians after one on butchers likewise may not be wholly accidental. Garzoni is likely varying a theme from Fioravanti, who followed his chapter 'On the Art of Anatomy and Its Effects' with 'On the Art of the Butcher and Its Effects,' remarking on the manual similarity between the two.1 3 Likewise, at the start of his chapter on butchers (chapter 16), Garzoni comments on their relationship to anatomists, the difference being that one dismembers animal bodies and the other human ones. And though Garzoni will include his own chapter on anatomists much later (chapter 36), he does imply a possible connection between the medical arts and the butchers' craft by juxtaposing the butchers (chapter 16) and the physicians (chapter 17). The point of this pairing may not be to mock medicine (as one might at first think) but to elevate the manual arts or to suggest unsuspected similarities between such seemingly disparate arts. And as Fioravanti may generally have wished to promote the dignity of the manual arts relative to the intellectual ones, so Garzoni likewise may be using his 'random' organizational scheme to do likewise - not only levelling the butchers relative to the physicians, but also the surgeons to the physicians, and all of these to the lawyers and literati. Though relatively a defender of medicine, Garzoni nonetheless also details its failings as well. And if the law is graced more by dishonest practitioners, medicine is discredited by imposters: How many doctors are there (reserving the honour of the art and that of the virtuous ones) who do not know what they are doing and to whom it suffices that

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the toga and ring would bring honour, although they do not know how to arrange three pills in a bag ...? How many act as Galen on the piazzas who do not understand even the Matthiolo, and the digests of the pharmacists? ... Is it not true that sometimes mere barbers become Surgeons? Herbalists become Master Physicians? And from the pharmacy of Mastro Grille they spring with the toga in the countryside like so many excellent and famous Fallopios [the anatomist Gabriello Fallopio, d. 1562]. 140 This passage reveals how much the citadel of medicine, probably more than any other profession, faced persistent invasion by pretenders or quacks from various quarters - whether barbers, herbalists, or complete charlatans. And even where medicine legitimately is served by ancillary arts, such as that of the herbalists (chapter 23) or pharmacists (chapter 89), there are even here many possibilities for fraud. In his chapter on the latter, in which he opens with a biblical praise of pharmacists (in conjunction with that of physicians) (Ecclesiasticus 38:7-8),141 he also warns of the 'molte fraudi e inganni' of some druggists who absurdly parade empty drug boxes advertising with huge letters myriad remedies, 'as do the boxes of Mastro Grillo da Conigliano,'142 and others - even more dangerous — who peddle one drug for another, who mix in spoiled ingredients, and who knowingly ignore the possibility that they have purchased goods that are tainted, inferior, counterfeit, waterdamaged, or aged. And though these critiques concerning bastardized drugs and improper mixtures are largely drawn from Agrippa,143 Garzoni develops the motif of dangerous 'mixtures' or substitutions somewhat further on his own, 144 and in doing so broaches a theme of material corruption found elsewhere in the Piazza - whether in the inferior groceries obtained by pennypinching factors or the garbled dishes offered up by hostel cooks.1 4 All such fears of material fraud, in turn, parallel larger social and professional concerns regarding masquerade and fraudulent identity. His concern with exposing such medical frauds certainly reflected a larger preoccupation of his day, especially voiced by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, who in his commentary (1544-8) on Dioscorides' classical pharmacy book (the Materia medico) devoted considerable attention to contemporary snake-oil salesmen.146 Garzoni draws considerably on Mattioli in his chapter 104 'On Creators of Performances in General and on Charlatans and Quacks,' his most detailed treatment of modern street culture. Although describing street actors, buffoons, sleight-of-hand artists, stuntmen, and animal trainers from all corners of the (literal) piazza, he begins with a detailed discussion of medical charlatans staging false exhibitions of their remedies and potions, citing Mattioli's recent commentary. Medical quacks are thus at the centre of his

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assault on the ascent of mountebanks in modern street life. Just as he wanted to strip off the masks of frauds in the chapter on astronomers and astrologers, so here he wants to expose in detail the ruses of medical fakes for the welfare of the public.147 That the reputation of legitimate pharmacists and doctors was generally vulnerable to compromise by the fraud of imposters is evident in comic popular culture as well. The medical buffoon Mastro Grille appears in several of Garzoni's chapters (twice in the one on physicians), often described in terms of his dubious medicine chest or fraudulent credentials.148 The inclusion of this medical stock character, like that of the legal buffoon Grazian da Bologna, reveals that Garzoni is incorporating material from 'low' culture in his rebuke of high profession. In fact, not surprisingly the impact of popular culture on Garzoni's treatment was perhaps greater in the case of medicine than in that of law - probably because physicians had a more expansive professional presence among the lower orders than did lawyers. Garzoni ends his chapter on physicians by citing what appear to be folk nicknames for disreputable doctors: a 'Mastro Raguso,' who knows more about astrology, mathematics, and herbs than anything else; a 'Mastro Graziano,' who delays his visit until it is too late; a 'Mastro Simon,' who extends the treatment to fill his purse.149 If Mastro Grille was the principal popular embodiment of the quack doctor in the commedia dell'arte, these other personas are perhaps his companions in even wider reaches of oral culture. Though ending his chapter on physicians with such figures, Garzoni does not, however, want to overwhelm praise with rebuke. Proclaiming his regard for the worthy practitioners of medicine, those life-saving heroes who should be 'companions of Apollo, the favourites of Aesculapius,' he laments their disgrace by such lesser figures.1 5 And whereas he broke off his ridicule of lawyers in chapter 5 partly so that doctors would not laugh themselves to death, he ends his closing critique of physicians here for an ostensibly more respectful reason, the last word being: 'But finally with peace and reverence of such virtuous ones [doctors], I impose a silence to the blemishes of many executioners.'151 And, in general, by attacking medicine's attackers, by assigning relatively more weight to its noble origins and purpose, and by affirming its ties to the liberal arts, Garzoni seems to champion medicine somewhat at the expense of law. In raising the former and lowering the latter, Garzoni was likely inspired somewhat by the physician Fioravanti, whose attack on the law was unquestionably fuelled by the animus of professional rivalry. And in repeating and extending Fioravanti's critique of learned law in terms of manual pursuits (of the sailor, the cobbler, and the gelder), Garzoni shows the same interest not only in describing and mocking elite profession in familiar

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terms, but also in humbling high profession in the imagery of low. And, finally, Fioravanti may have influenced Garzoni's reordering of the professions in another way. In placing his chapter on lowly surgeons (chapter 7) prior to that on physicians (chapter 17), and in placing the chapter on butchers (chapter 16) immediately prior to that on physicians, Garzoni intensifies the tendency toward professional levelling hinted at in Fioravanti. Merchants and Artisans In the chapters on the middle- and lower-middle-class world of commerce and industry, the Piazza reflects the lively Renaissance debate concerning merchants and the new literature on the status of the mechanical/artisan world.1 5 As for merchants, bankers, and retailers, the praise and rebuke meted out in chapter 65 shows the polarities in both classical and modern opinions on commercial life. Opening with affirmations of the utility of trade to states and cities, Garzoni (via a chapter in Chasseneuz's Cataiogus)1 5 cites validations found in Plato (cf. Republic 2.370e—371d) and Cicero's famous statement in De ofjiciis 1.151 that 'trade, if small, must be considered sordid; if grand and copious, and carrying many things from everywhere and imparting them to many people without vanity, it must not at all be scorned.' But from Chasseneuz Garzoni also includes material from the quattrocento discussion on the legitimacy and social place of trade, including Flavio Biondo's comments on the role of trade in the ancient Roman world in his De Roma triumphante (1459), Francesco Patrizi's guardedly positive appraisal in the De institution? reipublicae 1.8, and the debate on nobility of merchants in Veronese jurist Bartolomeo Cipolla's De imperatore militum deligendo.^ The latter treatise, written in 1453—4 1 5 and published in Lyon in 1543, cited the fact that in Venice those in the Great Council — and thus of senatorial and noble status - are indeed able to engage in trade. And though revealing that this is a contested issue among jurists and others, Garzoni here implicitly favours Cipolla's position that trade need not always disqualify one from noble status. 1 6 Cipolla, however, seems to have adopted the Ciceronian distinction that the threat to noble status depends on whether the trade is grand or minor, a distinction perhaps rooted in Cicero's 'shame culture' assumptions concerning social rank. That Garzoni is moving away from such perspectives is evident at the end of the chapter, where he writes of the small-scale merchants, the 'merciari,' who he argues 'are not different from the Merchants except that the Merchants trade in bulk, and these a little more humbly and meagrely.' 1 ^' Garzoni may be mirroring here a revisionist position to be found in the Ferrarese humanist Celio Calcagnino, whose commentary on Cicero's

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De officiis rejects Cicero's predominantly social distinction on the scale of trade and focuses instead on Aristotle's moral distinction concerning its motive and end (cf. Politics 1.8-10).158 In fact, Garzoni's principal criterion for the praise and rebuke of merchants would seem to be grounded not so much in the social realm of respectability (or lack thereof) as in the strictly professional realms of expertise on the one hand, and dishonesty on the other. Here, again, the 'practical' perspectives of the physician Fioravanti intrude, as Garzoni pinches from him a lengthy praise of merchant lore. Opening with the comment that 'this profession, then, is a profession crafty, shrewd, subtle, ingenious, toilsome, and one that requires the greatest memory, intellect, and knowledge of various and diverse things,' this three-page paean rehearses in detail Fioravanti's arcana concerning currencies, international markets (from England to the Levant), and the 6 quality of goods.11 5 Fioravanti's discussion, in turn, should be placed within a larger context of such discussions. Just prior to the latter's praise of merchants in the 1564 Specchio, Giovan Maria Memmo published in Venice his Dialogo nel quale dopo alcune philosophice dispute, si forma un perfetto Prencipe, e una perfetta Republica, e parimente un Senators, un Cittadino, un Soldato, e un mercatante (1563). Its first two books a cinquecento reformulation of Patrizi's two quattrocento treatises, the De institutione reipublicae and De regno et regis in tutions (recently published in Italian translation in Venice in 1545 and 1553 respectively), Memmo's third book is a gloss on Plato's scheme of governor, guardian, and merchants in the Republic.160 This latter section presents a powerful affirmation of merchant life by Giovanni Grimani, who recounts the sentiments of his grandfather Antonio Grimani, erstwhile merchant who became Doge in the early 1520s. Refuting those who would disdain merchants, 'Grimani' presents his ancestor's assertion that the profession develops 'ingegno' and 'intelletto' and provides the 'vera scientia' of 'la esperienza e la pratica' - deemed far more valuable than book knowledge - and is an ideal preparation for the highest political office. 1 6 The revision of the intellectual belittling of merchant life by classical thinkers, tentatively begun by Patrizi, is carried a step further in Memmo's dialogue. Fioravanti's praise — and thus Garzoni's - similarly elevates and carefully details the specific knowledge required by the merchant.1 6 Having praised merchant life, Garzoni then - as customary - rebukes it, focusing on the pervasiveness of dishonesty, which includes crimes both of commission (persuasive deceptions concerning products) and of omission (silence concerning defects). Drawing at length upon Agrippa, he enumerates merchants' faults and strategems, and recites various classical restrictions on their practice and privilege, including Aristotle's position (Politics 3.5) that,

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though merchants are necessary, they should not be accorded full citizenship status.1 6 Fioravanti similarly had qualified his praise of merchant lore with the warning that merchants should trade honestly, and yet he also affirmed that 'when trade is undertaken justly and without deceit and falsity, it is pleasing to God and of great profit to the world.'164 Fioravanti's validation of merchants is perhaps partly echoed by Garzoni's closing to his treatment of large-scale merchants, which, even after the attack on merchants' deceits, cites 'some famous merchants of our age ... enjoying [portando] a very good name in their merchandise [mercantan^ie].',11 6 And whereas Garzoni customarily includes exemplary figures after the praise of a profession, here he does so after the rebuke, perhaps in order to close his discussion (as he opened it) on a positive note. Splicing loci on merchants from Latin culture (e.g., the jurists, the historians, and humanists cited in Chasseneuz), middlebrow culture (Domenichi's translation of Agrippa), and vernacular culture (the physician Fioravanti and even the poetess Vittoria Colonna),1 6 Garzoni presents a varied portrait of merchant life that, sensitive to the debates on merchant status and nobility, achieves a careful balance. But whether marvelling at merchant arcana or warning ot merchant fraud, Garzoni's categories deal more with the professional criteria of proper and improper practice than with the social criteria of respectability. And where he does cite (second-hand) Cicero's comment in De officiis 1.151 distinguishing between praiseworthy large-scale trade and sordid minor trade, he does so in a context in which the emphasis perhaps is directed more at praising the former rather than at disparaging the latter. And, in fact, at the end of his chapter he almost equates in theoretical terms the 'merciari' with the 'mercanti,' claiming their difference to be simply one of volume. ' Possibly, Garzoni was influenced here by Celio Calcagnino, who rejected Cicero's distinction on the quantity (vs. the quality) of trade.1 6 Or he followed the lead of Fioravanti, who in a chapter 'On the Art of the Shopkeeper and Its Subtleties' praised the 'talent and cleverness' of the retailer and asserted his art to be more 'difficult' than even that of the jurist-15 66 In any case, whether reflecting Fioravanti's more practical perspectives or Calcagnino's more theoretical ones, Garzoni moves the discussion of merchants away from the social realm to a purely professional realm dealing with the canons of expertise and honesty. The non-elitist respect for the merchant's practice that Garzoni drew especially from the physician Fioravanti would also animate his regard for the artisan's craft. As his prefatory 'Universal Discourse in Praise of the Sciences and of the Liberal and Mechanical Arts in Common' made clear, Garzoni had a somewhat revisionist agenda in defending the mechanical arts from their

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intellectual critics. He reified this sentiment in the revised edition of the Piazza by adding a laudatory poem and letter to Abramo Colorni, Alfonso IPs 0 the 'ingegnero' and specialist in the 'onorata scienza della mecaniche.', 1 7To list of poets, physicians, lawyers, and scholars whose epigrams hailing the Piazza adorn the book's frontmatter, Garzoni thus added his own epigram and letter to an engineer.1 7 The elevation of the mechanical arts is seen throughout the Piazza in various ways. The category of 'mechanics in common or engineers' appears as one of the associated professions in chapter 107, 'On Architects in General.'1 7 2Here architects and architectural theorists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Sansovino, and Palladio rub shoulders with engineers and mechanics, the latter designation of 'mecanico' being hailed a 'vocabolo onoratissimo. 1 7 3Citing architectural wonders of the ancient world, Garzoni echoes the grandiose architectural motif in his 'Letter to Viewers' in which he compares the construction of his 'Piazza' to the monuments of the greatest architects. And with the relatively recent reconstruction of San Marco by Sansovino and others, the architectural image for the Piazza may indeed have been something more than a mere metaphor, as the writer competes with the architect. Moreover, the conflation of engineer and artist in the likes of a Leonardo and Michelangelo - and the broader Renaissance shift of the painter and sculptor from artisan to artist - must have worked in part to elevate the manual arts to a new status.1 7 4Garzoni's identification with the architect and his praise of the manual arts obviously reflect this general development in Renaissance culture. Furthermore, sixteenth-century technical literature as well made an impression on Garzoni, as can be seen in the resonance in the Piazza of such works as Vannoccio Biringucci's Pirotechnia (1540),1 7 or, on a smaller scale, Rafael Mirami's Compendiosa introduttione all prima pane della 1 76 specularia, doe della scienza de gli specchi.1 This last work, recently published in Ferrara (1582) and dedicated to the secretary of Duke Alfonso II, attempts to rescue mirrors from their vain 'lascivious use'1 7 and sets forth their higher scientific, moral, and practical uses. And in explicating the latter, Mirami drew upon a treatise by 'Abram Colorni Hebreo, ingegnosissimo ingegnero del Sereniss. Duca di Ferrara,'1 7 to which Garzoni as well refers in his letter to Colorni in the revised edition of the Piazza.1 7 Mirami's treatise - and Garzoni's recapitulation of it in his chapter 145 on mirror making - unites loci (from the likes of Horace, Dante, and Petrarch) on the potential moral function of mirrors with tangible lore on types of mirrors, a practical dimension Garzoni expands with references to other technical lore (e.g., from Fioravanti and Agrippa).1 8 In such discussions Mirami and Garzoni reify the conflation of the moral and theoretical with the artisanal, illustrating in yet another

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manner how the manual arts were being elevated in cinquecento rhetorical representation. 1 R 1 Whether due to his reading of technical literature or his familiarity with Colorni,182 Garzoni reveals a keen awareness of the artisan world. To take but one example, his chapter on smiths (chapter 46) reveals how much professional specialization - at least in terms of occupational designations — has occurred since Antonino's treatment of smiths (which Garzoni twice briefly cites).183 Whereas Antonino's treatment in the Summa briefly describes the pursuits of smiths in the production of horseshoes, weapons, farming equipment, cooking utensils, and construction tools, 1 8 Garzoni's Piazza enumerates eighteen subcategories of smiths, including coppersmiths, locksmiths, knife sharpeners, and lantern makers.1 5 Moreover, drawing especially on Biringucci's Pirotechnia and technical material found in Citolini's Tipocosmia, he presents detailed descriptions on the operations and equipment of particular smiths.1 8 He as well comments on the filthiness of the coppersmiths and tinsmiths (which rivals that of the chimneysweeps), the criminal activities of locksmiths, the tinsmiths 'gridando' their services through the streets, attracting a train of children who imitate their solicitations. That Garzoni's own eye is often at work here is suggested by comments on Treviso (whence he dated the Piazza), praising it for its 'bellissima mostra' of lanterns (in his treatment of lanternan and lucernari) and identifying it as a centre for the production of stirrups and spurs (in his discussion of morsari).187 Aside from his treatment of smiths, Garzoni's interest in the artisan world is evident in various other chapters on miners, metallurgists, and casters (chapter 70); minters (chapter 142); and goldbeaters (chapter 149). From such figures as Birmgucci (cited in all three of these chapters), Fioravanti, and Citolini, Garzoni draws great detail on the industrial crafts - often lifting from Citolini lists of artisan 'instruments' and 'actions,'188 a tangible arcana rivalling the texts and themes of the literary arts. An earlier period's intellectual contempt for the manual arts is vitiated by the sheer mass of technical lore Garzoni includes in the Piazza. Though his sources range over both Latin and volgare writings, it is perhaps especially from his vernacular Venetian predecessors that Garzoni takes his cue: from the physician and surgeon Fioravanti he has absorbed a respect for industrial and commercial lore (as against the questionable intellectual lore of the lawyers); from the mnemonist Citolini a levelling 'naturalistic' regard for the practical arts as well as the theoretical ones. He has as well observed the power of industrial art that sixteenth-century manuals and encyclopedias both reflect and fuel. In fact, the transformative power of the mechanical arts may have been for Garzoni a positive material

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counterpart to the dangerous social power of festive transformations. In his 'Letter' to the engineer Colorni, Garzoni praises at length Colorni's inventiveness, including his adapting daggers, which with new metamorphoses become now a sword, now a spindle, now a crossbow; the presses that now serve the purpose of a chandelier, now that of a harquebus, now that of a kitchen spit; the staffs that, as if by enchantment, now become military lances, now the strongest swords, now in the tightest space the most perfect spindle.189

The engineer (and the artisan in general) thus has a magical capacity for effecting material metamorphosis that affirms the power of the manual arts. Such a surging protean power, even while praiseworthy, perhaps also potentially threatened the stability of Garzoni's material world, just as the metamorphoses of masquerades endangered that of his social world. Porters, Factors, and Cooks Given the presence of highly 'respectable' professions in the Piazza, Garzoni knew that it would be a matter of some controversy to include the 'most vile and infamous' arts,1 9 but he did so anyway - under the pretexts that esteemed classical writers treated low themes and that shameful arts further ennoble reputable ones by contrast. Though the second excuse is rather contrived, the first one is probably true: Garzoni did have sometimes a comic or purely rhetorical aim in treating the 'low' in an ostensibly serious literary genre. But as in the case of the Florentine carnival songs, what began as comic praise occasionally led to more serious probes of low profession. Garzoni's interest in this realm included both the legitimate realm of menial service and the illegitimate realm of criminal activity. Given that his surname was derived from garzone (servant, houseboy),1 9 he may have been particularly interested in service occupations. In any case, his treatments of porters, factors, and cooks illustrate the ambiguous blend of the comic and the serious in the cinquecento appraisal of the lowly arts. Garzoni had an important sixteenth-century model for the satirical praise of humble or disreputable professions. In his Satire alia carfora, published in Venice in 1548, Pietro Nelli (Andrea del Bergamo) not only demoted high profession in lampoons of lawyers and litigants, but also elevated lowly ones in 'praises' of policemen, porters, and even thieves. For Nelli, whose comic model, in turn, included Piovano Arlotto,1 9 2this was a (comic) rhetorical challenge to praise occupations normally held in low esteem,193 and yet it

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could lead to detailed observations of the lower orders. For instance, in his 'La Buona Crianza, amorevolezza, e cortesia de Facchini' Nelli debates with friends as to who are the most courteous and social types in Venice. Rejecting his colleagues' suggestions that it be gentlemen, women, innkeepers, or others, Nelli argues that porters - whose very name 'facchini' he cleverly derives from 'il far inchini' (bowing) 1 9 4- should win the title. He reviews various types of porters in Venice (whether at the Arsenale, the Rialto, San Marco, the Pescaria, etc.) and describes their unalloyed eagerness to serve, their decorum in moving through crowds, and their willingness completely to sacrifice body and appearance. Whereas others have a hidden agenda in their courtesy - for instance, shopkeepers who hope to persuade a buyer — porters are completely guileless in their subservience. But in fact Nelli's is a rather cynical satire of a group that displays total social submission because of its total economic powerlessness. Courtesy is perhaps all that a porter has to recommend himself to prospective clients, and the degree of that subjugation is evident in Nelli's observations that the flour porter 'shows his courtesy' by being covered in white, or the coal porter by being begrimed with soot.195 And yet even in its harsh ridicule of society's humblest, even in its satirical conversion of involuntary courtesy into voluntary, Nelli's satire does depict this lowly group with a degree of descriptive nuance. Like Nelli, Garzoni aspires to the similar rhetorical challenge of impressing his readers with his ability to praise the lowly. For dramatic effect, he does this in the case of stableboys, a profession 'which almost everybody considers entirely vile' but which he seeks to ennoble (via their handling of'the most noble animals') on the theory that there 'is much greater grandeur in exalting lowly things innately base and vile than in enlarging the grand.', 1 9 Perhaps somewhat more seriously, Garzoni also does this in the case of seat bearers. Although normally thought to be base (except in Naples),1 9 7these figures, he argues, in fact perform a function carried out by soldiers in the triumphs of captains, by academics at the installation of a new rector, by scholars at the burial of a fellow doctor of law or medicine, by nobles and others in the ritual in which the outgoing podesta is borne home on the occasion of the naming of his successor. In this last case - 'which I have seen with my own eyes many times in the city of Treviso (and which is seen in many cities of the Venetian state)' 198 - it would appear that personal observations of civic ritual may well have piqued Garzoni's interest in such a lowly profession and may have shaped his reevaluanon of it. The conjunction of ironic praise and astute observation also seems to characterize Garzoni's treatment of porters. Acknowledging that they are considered 'lowly and vile' figures from the hills of Bergamo who serve the world as

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'asses and mules,' Garzoni says that the satirist Andrea da Bergamo (Nelli), praises 'all porters in general so that they not appear inferior to others in their metier and profession.'199 Garzoni then says he will elaborate upon this praise: These reasons will be adopted and expanded by me, in order to give honour to the worthy porter work of the whole world, as proof demonstrates every day openly and clearly.'200 His decision to expand upon - rather than simply plagiarize - Nelli's satire was at least partly one of necessity since Nelli's piece was in verse, but his adaptation represents yet another type of literary transformation Garzoni effects in the creation of a text that sometimes transforms high Latin into middlebrow Italian or, in this case, satirical poetry into more serious prose. And in content what Garzoni presents in his prose treatment is perhaps a less purely ironic praise and a more genuine appreciation of the comportment and helpfulness of porters. Like this 'praise' of porters, moreover, Garzoni's accompanying 'rebuke' of them - offering one of the most dramatic contrasts in the Piazza - reveals a close observation of such an invisible profession. Although citing the more traditional etymology of 'facchino' as one 'who does his chores bent and stooped [fa chino, e abbassato I'opere sue],' Garzoni includes the Bergamese - that is, Andrea da Bergamo's (Nelli's) - 'subtle' derivation from one 'who makes reverence and a bow [fa riverenza e inch/no],)201 and he elaborates on Nelli's discussion of their courtesy. But here he adds texture (albeit with some romanticizing) in regards to their discharge of their duties. For instance, he describes how they eagerly approach a customer en masse, as a troop, as if they were going to a wedding. In a flash they take two sacks, a barrel, a bag, and arrange them in a wheelbarrow; then quick as cats they jump into the boat, throw ashore to you the boxes, parcels, loads, bales ... and at the end with a soup and crust of cheese, two black olives, or three coins they depart singing and joking such that it is a sweet thing to see and watch them.202

Or he points out that they can offer you excellent guidance as to the best places to buy wine, because being experienced [prattici] in all the canteens of all the gentlemen and cittadini they know where is the sour, where the sweet, where the sharp, where the large, where the small, where the white, where the dark, where the old, where the new; and with three sips of a glass they courteously sample for you, they tell you if it is good or not, they make the deal for you like brokers, and carry it home in a flash at the smallest cost to you and minimal profit to them.203

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This last comment suggests that Garzoni went beyond a condescending view of their simpleness or a mocking review of their obsequiousness to a more genuine and presumably first-hand observation of their usefulness and their interchange with their employers. That Garzoni meant his discussion of porters' courtesy to be more serious than facetious is evident when he turns to consider their unbecoming traits, and argues that their positive traits indeed have much to overcome to render them worthy of praise overall He presents brutal observations of their personal characteristics: l the[ir] gesture is cowardly, bearing coarse, movement asinine, action ignorant, procedure baboonish.', 2 0Their speech is so crude, he argues, that the buffoons of the comedy troupes have adapted it for humorous effect/15 In fact, it is probably no coincidence that the emergence of profession-based archetypes such as the servant in the commedia dell'arte roughly coincided with a greater attention to professional types in formal satire and in encyclopedias. This intersection of popular theatre and vernacular appraisals of profession would in turn be complemented by dress books that gave visual form to professional types. Thus, just as the commedia dell'arte may have inspired Garzoni to more fully describe the characteristics of porters, so it also and Garzoni in turn - may have prompted Cesare Vecellio to depict them in both narrative and visual form in his costume book of 1590.2 0 Aside from the resonance of the comedy troupes, Garzoni seems to have observed porters in festive and street culture. He remarks that at Carnevale in Bologna and Ferrara students stage the game of the 'wild boar and the armed facchini1 in which porters outfitted in helmet with a closed visor must try to slay their quarry." 1 ' Obviously, this is a humiliating counterpoint to the more respectful ties between porters and their betters that Garzoni had described in the search for good wine. Their desperate economic conditions are evident by the loaf ot bread ... which they stretch a whole year in Milan, in Venice, in Rome, in Naples, in Ferrara, in Mantua, and in a thousand places in Italy, nibbling like hermits on greens and apples only, or a bunch of of radishes and four heads of stalk in order to carry back to the wife what little surplus they make with their great efforts and so many torments of their bodies.208 Aside from their coarse demeanour, their parody in comedy, their humiliation in Carnevale., and their poverty, their worst quality, however, is that many of them are procurers prized not for their ability 'to reason or negotiate' but only because of their discretion. Garzoni closes by saying that their one form of

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'worldly cleverness' is that they willingly serve women in order to win hugs and to act as bearers of messages or love letters to them.2 0 Garzoni's appraisal of porters converts Nelli's satirical praise of the 'courteous porter' into a more serious consideration entailing both a praise of the 'honour' and rebuke of the indignities of this low profession. The facetious theme of the unctuous beast of burden becomes a more genuine observation of the diligence, sanguinity, and even expertise (in matters of wine) of the porter, and of the depravity of theirssocial bearing and treatment, their indigence, and their frequent procuring.2 1 Whether vividly describing the nature of their manual labour or their uncouth speech, he offers something more than a sarcastic treatment of low profession for comic effect. As an observer of popular profession and popular culture, he tries to give a somewhat balanced picture and in doing so can truly find a degree of civility, industry, and competence in this meekest of service professions. In his closing argument Garzoni remarks that even in this most socially unrefined lot there is an irrepressible capacity for 'subtly' making the most of their promise and circumstance: 'In sum also the porters are rogues, although nature has stamped them with a crude form, and even these sharpen their wits to have a good time with what little undeveloped talent they have, employing it subtly when necessary.'211 Garzoni has transformed Nelli's ironic praise of the abject into a more serious rhetoric of praise and rebuke that explores the professional experience and the social and economic conditions of this lowliest of occupations. And rather than accepting popular opinion that they are only beasts of burden, he credits them with having a greater resourcefulness than is commonly thought. If Garzoni's revisionism concerning porters hewed to praise, his revisionism concerning their betters in the service world, the factors, decidedly declaimed rebuke. In fact, his treatment of factors in chapter 67 may be the most abusive in all of the Piazza- Though an honest factor is praised for 'faith, diligence, solicitude, training, prudence, experience, shrewdness, charity, goodness, [and] courtesy,' he claims that the majority 'transformed [trasmutati] into asses as [in] Apuleius, give perpetual banishment to good works, and fully glory in being called slackers, ignoramuses, and arch-asses in all their actions.'212 Once again, then, Garzoni taps the metaphor of metamorphosis (from Apuleius's Metamorphoses [or Golden Ass]), though this time to explain the thorough perversion of vocation into its mirror opposite. The remainder of this chapter is largely a relentless assault on factors for their incompetent bookkeeping, buying of inferior products, dilatory shopping habits, skimming the best food for themselves, diverting their padrone's stores to support prostitutes and procurers, freely giving handouts to panhandlers, and manipulating expenditures in the daybook to hide their excesses. Drolly employing the clas-

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sical rhetorical technique of praeteritio, Garzoni spends considerable time (not) detailing their penny-pinching provisioning of the house that results in shocking (but comic) metamorphoses of household fare: I will nor mention the Florentine omelettes thinner than Murano glass, the Anabaptist soup (watery?] ... the fritters in which the Cremonan beans grieve so much of being averse to Parmesan cheese, of ravioli that lament having lost the name of pastry and being transformed [trasmutarsi] without real effect into different species, of macaroni that one can shoot with crossbows at the owls, and so on for several more lines.2 1 The transformation of ravioli - and all these dishes - recalls the transformation mentioned earlier of the factor from honest to dishonest practitioner. In fact, vocational metamorphosis in this case causes the material one. With such an impalatable menu Garzoni thus gives professional fraud a very tangible face. But if he vividly appeals to the visceral, Garzoni also draws upon 'higher' imagery in his attack on factors. When discussing their expert (mis)handling of the daybook, he facetiously likens them to serious students of high literature and to a crafty notary: 1 will not speak of the study they put there into the price list, as if this is the Homer that Alexander kept at his bedside, the Aeneid of Virgil that Augustus studied, ... the Tertullian in the hand of Cyprian every hour, ... the Pythagorean Philolaus of such relish to Plato, the Speusippus that Aristotle prized so much, the Cornelius Tacitus in which the Emperor Tacitus engrossed himself for sweetness: and these [factors] die of delight computing the soldi, distinguishing the gazette, dividing the ducats, and subtracting the zecchini in turn. H Factors thus display their own type of scholarly concentration in tending to the issues of household budget - price lists and coins replacing books as the objects of careful scrutiny and delight. Moreover, these factors show considerable initiative and expertise in their malfeasance, crafting in their ledger a document as corrupt as the worst notarial document: Here one sees how much diligence reigns in them, how much solicitude to retreat in order to put an end to explanations, how much industry in completing these accounts, how much practice in emending these bills, how much experience in squaring credits with debts, how much sagacity in hiding mix-ups, how much skill in assigning expenses, how much knavery in forming a daybook by a method little different from the instruments of [the buffoon?] Nodar Mainardo.2 1

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Garzoni thus shows how the factor's craft has intellectual intensity and technical sophistication, albeit turned to corrupt ends. He further intellectualizes the wickedness of factors in a comic addition to this chapter in the Annotations of the revised edition. Here he provides a mock explication of how 'wicked factors sin in all ten categories [predicamenti]': In 'substance,' because this is first what is stolen and dissipated by them. In 'quantity,' because they never allow to be known precisely how much income the padrone has and how much they spend daily on themselves ... In 'site,' because their perpetual residence is between the pantry and the kitchen ... In 'time,' because a price list and daybook take away from them all thoughts of day or night

and so on through all of the ten logical categories associated with Aristotle.2 1 As Garzoni had earlier plagiarized Fioravanti's mock application of the seven deadly sins to litigants, so here he fashions his own comic analysis of the factor as the consummate sinner in all philosophical rubrics. Thus, in all, wicked factors have the intellectual intensity of serious scholars, the guile of the most corrupt notary, a comprehensive capacity for sin worthy of a logician, and even, he argues at one point, the venality of a simoniacal cleric.2 1 7And while these categories from high culture are applied sarcastically to the factor's craft, they nonetheless help to elucidate the invisible artfulness and potentially thorough perversion of this low profession. Because their schemes are successful, Garzoni argues that these companions of mere cooks and garzoni are able to dupe their padroni into according them privileges and banquets and 'honour them like Tullies [Ciceros] with an endowed chair, [and] pay court to 2181 them as if they were Duke Borso [d'Este].'2 Their skilful transformation of their craft from an honest to a dishonest art affords them a transformation from low to high station - another unsettling metamorphosis. The satirical motif of elevating lowly service profession to the heights of intellectual, social, and political station culminates in Garzoni's treatment of the factors' humble companions, the cooks.2 1 Here Garzoni has considerable precedent from the classical world, as he cites works such as Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae (Banquet Sophists), a major piece of symposium literature that culled comic characterizations of the ideal cook as one versed in higher fields (philosophy, medicine, music, astrology, architecture, nature, strategy) and that mentioned the comic Greek poet Euphron's enshrinement of seven famous cooks as analogues to the Seven Sages of Greek tradition.220 Elaborating on Athenaeus's motif of the learned cook, Garzoni praises those 'in the Academy of dishes' who profess 'to be at one and the same time padroni and

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lords of all the sciences, because they show themselves to be Rhetoricians exalting proudly the royal banquets that sometimes are made; Poets in describing the pastas of the lords with hyperboles and suitable and apt emphases; Arithmeticians enumerating the multitude of dishes brought to the table,' and so on, satirically hailing them as Geometers, Musicians, Logicians, Philosophers, Jurists, Physicians, and Astrologers.221 They are, moreover, expertential experts in all of the ten logical categories of, for instance, 'quantity,' ('eating like wolves'), or 'action' ('roasting, frying, turning the spit, heating the pot, licking, bar-hopping, and filling the stomach'), or 'passion' ('suffering smoke in the eyes, burns to the hand, singes to the mustache, drunkenness to the head, vomit to the stomach made the refuge and sink of all the base deeds of gluttony')/""" If conflating the cook with the scholar had a precedent in classical banquet literature, the juxtaposing of the cook and the orator also had a recent example in Citolini's Tipocosmia, which united the culinary and verbal realms as related professions of the mouth. And though Garzoni's tone is predominantly satirical in this chapter, there is as well a transition into a more serious treatment (mostly drawn from Citolini) in the elaborate enumeration of the varied 'actions' of the cook, the thirty-nine types of pasta (!), and the description of the cook as being 'dottissimi' in knowing all manner of dishes and seasoning and in using 'with diligence and study all the instuments of the metier,' more than fifty of which are listed.2 2 The satirical approach of Athenaeus is thus joined to the more straightforward discussion of Citolini, who, like Garzoni after him, sometimes iconoclastically juxtaposed professions in startling ways. And not only is the cook potentially a 'scholar' in his own experiential way, but he is in his particular setting a formidable authority figure as well. Citing (via Athenaeus) 224 analogies from the Greek comic poets Posidippus and Sosipater that compare the cook to a military commander and cooking to the military art, Garzoni updates these with his praise of the 'Knights of the Round Table' (paladini dalla tavola rotonda).2 2 And he expands upon cooks' domestic realm of power by naming them 'Prelates' of the scullery crew and all manner of Turkish functionaries ruling over their own domestic domain: Rais (naval captains) in charge of the servants, Eunuchs of the house commanding respect, Pashas in control of the wine, Janizaries in charge of all the keys, Viziers entrusted with securing the house, 'they are in sum so many Bellerbei (governors) in being held and regarded above all the others.'2 2 As if intending a crescendo in which servants almost threaten to overthrow masters - as low professions in general threaten to overtake high in the Pia^a Garzoni ends the chapter with a set of images that would make the cook a figure of undisputed dignity in the realm of food, in the land of Cockaigne (a

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popular motif that reached its literary apex in Italy in the sixteenth century): 227 Therefore the most illustrious gluttons \panigoni\ of Cockaigne go about their business proud and haughty, because they are the capi of the pantries, padroni of the canteens, overseers of the kitchens, regents of salami, jailers of prosciutto, captains of grease, master executioners of rissole to whom necessarily is owed every respect and honour because otherwise the soup will be a la philosopher [too dull? too thick?], the stew a la Anabaptist [too watery?], the plates a la chimneysweep [dirty], the pastry a la greengrocer [too healthy?], the stuffing a la herbalist [too spicy?], and everything done inside out. May everyone then take off his hat to the cook, because his majesty among other things has dealings with the Emperor Suleiman and ... it is necessary to stroke him, so that he not sometimes mix the vases with the kitchen pots.228

The cook, it would seem, is the the king of Cockaigne, reigning supreme in the hierarchy of a peasant, material world in which food was the centrepiece and the land of plenty a dominant Utopian motif. Onto the classical tradition of the erudite cook, Garzoni grafts the popular tradition of the land of Cockaigne, an image that in his discussion of student debauchery in chapter 101 connotes the same chaotic phenomenon as does Carnevale.229 Here, however, Garzoni does not damn the chaos but satirically promotes the elevated status of the cook, who can acquire a nearly imperial stature. The triumph of factors and buffoons that he laments elsewhere is paralleled by the triumph of the cook, whose status in Garzoni's Pia^a seems assured by the combined forces of both learned and popular tradition. Reversals in Carnevale that Garzoni condemns elsewhere he comically countenances here - and, as in the case of Carnevale, what he condemns he emulates, promoting the status of the cook. The reason for respecting the cook has a material basis, for the chef who suffers lese majeste can distort the fare, creating 'anti-dishes' that recall the unseemly metamorphoses of food occasioned by the purchases of pennypinching factors and by innkeepers in their culinary efforts.230 Is it possible that in his recurring interest in material metamorphosis Garzoni is incorporating some of the popular materialism that led not only to the motif of Cockaigne but also to the views of Carlo Ginzburg's miller Menocchio, who perceived cosmic generation as analogous to the material generation of 2 3Thus, to the literary metamorphoses of Ovid or cheese and worms? Apuleius, and to the ritual metamorphoses of Carnevale, Garzoni's Piazza joins the material metamorphoses of popular culture. In any case, the triumph of the material world certainly would bolster the triumph of the cook -

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described in this passage in terms of varied positions of authority - who can wreak havoc on everyone's world. Moreover, it is telling that in four of the five cases Garzoni's anti-dishes are described in terms of other professionals, again reflecting the possibilities of fluid boundaries between professions not only when the cook is good (and acts as Rhetorician or Philosopher) but also when he is bad (and produces a 'minestra ... da filosofo' or a 'torta da ortolano'). This fluidity not only reinforces the larger tendency toward an implicit levelling of professions in the Piazza, but also it comically floats the possibility for an explicit revolt of lowly professionals claiming their due respect on threat of concocting garbled dishes. In fact, Garzoni describes something akin to 'Philosopher soup' in his chapter on schoolteachers, in which he recounts a story involving a clever servant girl. Ordered by her employer (a pretentious pedant) to prepare an 'elegant soup,' with the aid of a philsopher friend she prepares a soup replete with diced texts of Cicero, Quintilian, Sallust, and Demosthenes together with cheese and eggs. When the soup had been served and the pedant called it sordid, she ardently responded, 'What sordidness is in this? Indeed all the elegance in the world is found in this soup, which you ordered.' Because of this incident his friends laughed hard and at the end of the banquet among themselves they praised the invention of the servant girl, who had with a most beautiful and ingenious device mocked the glorious Rhetoric of the padrone.2 3 Certainly, this is a case of a low professional trumping a high professional with her cleverness, and in such a way as to subordinate the high culture of texts to the low culture of food.2233 3In the same way, the chapter on cooks proclaims 3 and the reign of cooks. In the triumph of the belly (as the 'God of men')2234 doing so, Garzoni certainly draws on Agrippa's more explicitly censorious survey of the excesses born of the art of cooking.22 3 But in also presenting a praise of cooks themselves, in detailing the arcana of their art, and in elaborating upon the extent of their 'military' and 'political' power in the domestic world, Garzoni goes much further to wryly depict the cook - certainly the 'professional' king of Cockaigne - as a service professional with a nearly imperial bearing. Beggars, Prostitutes, and Procurers Aside from the legitimate occupations of service culture, Garzoni's interest in 'low' profession also extended to the illegitimate pursuits of underground culture. Drawing on the sixteenth-century literary tradition from Agrippa

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(1520s), to Aretino (1530s-l550s), to his contemporary, the dramatist Luigi Groto (1580s), Garzoni describes beggars, prostitutes, and procurers in such detail as to reify their professional methods even while condemning their scurrilous ends. Garzoni's model for including such figures in an encyclopedia was Agrippa, who in fact treated these three arts serially in chapters 63-5 of his De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum. And just as Garzoni may have used a quasi-random organizational structure to make an implicit point about the near parity of professions, Agrippa likewise at times used organization to make explicit satirical points concerning various pursuits. In the case of Agrippa, his chapters on disreputable arts immediately follow seven chapters on religion, the Church, and the clergy. The transition from monks (chapter 62) to prostitutes (chapter 63) he sardonically accomplishes by suggesting that brothels are often to be found near monasteries or are convents in disguise, and that prostitutes are sometimes secreted under cowl in monasteries. Moreover, in his discussion of procurers Agrippa devotes considerable time to exposing priests, monks, nuns, bishops, and even popes as panderers; and his chapter on begging waxes on about priests and mendicants who extort payments or alms from a naive populace. If for Agrippa treating these scandalous acts was largely a vehicle for criticism of the clergy (in 1526, a theme obviously energized by the attacks of Erasmus and burgeoning Protestantism), for Garzoni it served as an opportunity to warn in great detail of the corrupt elements within popular lay society. Although Garzoni's beggars in fact exercise an antiprofession by 'abandoning arts and sciences and refusing to practise an art or work in a metier as gallant men do,'2 3 nonetheless his description of their intricate secret language and manifold disguises implicitly credits even this criminal pursuit with an impressive professional lore. Whereas Agrippa's comparable chapter pays only limited attention to beggars' use of make-up (to feign disease),237 Garzoni's chapter 72, 'De' guidoni o furfanti or calchi,' amplifies this survey of fake beggars in great detail. Beggars simulate all manner of the ill, the dropsical, the blind, the crippled, the paralyzed, the ulcerated, the leprous, the demonically possessed,, the deranged, as well as the 'despoiled soldier' and the religious pil23 grim. Beyond this, Garzoni also cites those frauds who pose as elites, impersonating 'under false dress' princes, counts, or cardinals to win power, hospitality, or money, or to sell false titles of nobility. Making references to particular beggars or imposters in cities such as Treviso, Venice, and Ferrara (all within his orbit),2 3 Garzoni may well be drawing on first-hand observations. And by including a lexicon of their secret language and by describing their artful240 disguises with such thoroughness, he is certainly attuned to the specialized arcana of this craft.

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Whereas Agrippa placed more emphasis on the religious - and did so in such a way as to criticize the Church and mendicancy - Garzoni focuses exclusively on various lay beggars and imposters, hoping to show how 'the roguish profession of those consists of nothing but tricking the world and with hidden intent revelling and triumphing at others' expense. 2 4 Thus, if Agrippa was particularly interested in exposing hypocritical clergy exploiting a naive laity, Garzoni is more intent on exposing the fraudulent lay underclass of imposters exploiting the 'legitimate' professionals of the universal piazza. Although it is not surprising that Garzoni would excise Agrippa's references to the clergy (given Garzoni's monastic status), it is nonetheless interesting how he partially laicizes Agrippa's preoccupation with religious hypocrisy by dwelling so thoroughly on its counterpart, lay fraud. For Garzoni and his audience, the latter was arguably the more pressing concern. Garzoni's interest in the artfulness and deceptiveness of disreputable professions reaches its peak in his treatment of prostitutes and especially procurers, discussed, as in Agrippa, in consecutive and linked chapters. And though he steals much from Agrippa's chapters (all without attribution), Garzoni also makes some noteworthy elaborations. In his chapter on prostitutes Agrippa largely provides a historical survey of famous prostitutes and clients, devoting minimal attention to the actual arcana of their craft.2 4 Reflecting the wider subsequent literature on prostitution, Garzoni details at length their use of alluring pseudonyms; the settings of their seductions (at balls, games, festivals, and banquets);" their luxurious furnishings; their beckoning gestures; their missives; their make-up, perfume, jewellery, and silk gloves; their many simulations of illness or grief to lure visitors and consolers. This last category and other characterizations of prostitutes' 'simulazioni ... fraudi e finzioni' and their 'ippocrisie 2 4 - recalls the theme of simulation and fraud found in his expose on beggars. And as in the case of various low professions,2 4 Garzoni also characterizes their capacity for 'astuzia' and 'accortezza.'2 4 In sum, far more than Agrippa, he conveys a sense of the professional strategies and accoutrements of the occupation. And here Garzoni can draw on the likes of Aretino, whose (Mpricciosi ragionamenti of 1534 and Piacevoli ragionamenti of 1536 detail the arts of prostitution and procuring in scandalous detail.2 4 In the first of these two sets of dialogues, Nanna, a former nun, wife, and courtesan, muses (with Antonia) on the merits of these three walks of life as she considers the best course for her sixteen-year-old daughter Pippa. Choosing prostitution for its vocational authenticity (as against the hypocrisy of the errant nun or straying wife), she instructs her daughter in this art at the start of the second set of dialogues, training her in proper speech, cosmetics, demeanour, fees, 248 and so on. Identifying her lessons as 'Epistles and Gospels'

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that can teach how to best men from all ranks,249 Nanna prompts a receptive Pippa to marvel that 'being a courtesan entails even more than being a dottore.2 5 Excising the sexually graphic features of Aretino's expose, which was written to shock and amuse, Garzoni delves into the arcana of the prostitute ostensibly to warn and educate. By devoting so much attention to prostitutes who rate four more pages in the 1589 edition than do canon lawyers - Garzoni even so professionally reifies and thereby implicitly elevates what he so carefully describes. Once again then, as in other areas of popular culture, Garzoni simultaneously glorifies what he condemns. Like the reign of buffoons and like masquerades, the culture of prostitution threatens the legitimate realms of culture. The muses are driven out - 'Apollo hides the lyre, Euterpe goes for a walk' — whereas 'Pasquino triumphs in the middle of the piazzas.'2 5 Rehearsing the decadence and crimes arising from prostitution, Garzoni says that 'Pasquino' - here as elsewhere a symbol of destructive culture that threatens to overpower establishment culture — details the reign of each of the seven deadly sins, serially recalling Nanna's boastful catalogue of the whore's sins in Aretino's Capricciosi ragionamenti.2 5 Because of Aretino's associations with the pasquinade (and Garzoni's inclusion of Aretino and 'Pasquino' in the same group of undesirables in the chapter on poets),2 5 3it would seem likely that Garzoni, though not indicating it, is drawing on his dialogue. And even though he is condemning the sinful culture of the prostitute whereas Aretino's character gloried in it - Garzoni is nonetheless in fact resurrecting the culture of Aretino that he persistently castigates. The triumph of disreputable profession culminates in Garzoni's following chapter on prostitutes' colleagues, the procurers and bawds ('De' ruffiani e delle ruffiane'). Though again never citing him, Garzoni takes his principal cue from Agrippa, whose chapter on panderers credits them with far more guile than prostitutes. A master manipulator, Agrippa's go-between (whether male or female) potentially turns almost all the liberal and mechanical arts to the unholy end of seducing and managing the prostitute. Literary techniques or cultural inducements for seduction can be gleaned from, to name a few, Grammar, lascivious Poetry, romantic History, provocative Music and Painting. Contraception, aphrodisiacs, and make-up can be drawn from Medicine. Contact with young women can be had from textile sales, laundering, and religious office. In part, Agrippa's chapter aims to show how the procurer would be a master of all the arts - in effect, this figure is intended as an unholy or burlesque archetype of the uomo universal^, perhaps the king of the anti-Renaissance.254 But Agrippa is also attempting to satirically prove that every art and calling - and here again he features religion and the clergy prominently - can be turned to a wicked end.

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Aside from Agippa there were other sixteenth-century sources for the motif of the subtle and versatile go-between. In his Piacevole ragionamenti Aretino depicts a midwife instructing a wetnurse in the art of being a bawd. Like Agrippa, Aretino at times characterizes the procuress in terms of other professions: as one whose knowledge rivals that of the 'maestri de gli studenti';2 5 as one whose practice rivals that of the physician;256 as one whose 25 false promises resemble those of the tailor and innkeeper. By gossiping with all manner of people the bawd becomes expert in everything and can thereby give appropriate professional praise or advice to the knight-errant, the policeman, the tavernkeeper, the factor, the tailor, the baker, the soldier, the servant, the tyrant, the monk. 2 5 Just as Fioravanti's preacher could learn of all the metiers of his congregation by reading the Specchio, Aretino's bawd could glean a comprehensive professional lore through street gossip. In both cases comprehensive professional knowledge of all fields becomes a professional desideratum in one's own field. Not only did Garzoni know of Aretino's bawd, but he almost surely also knew of Luigi Groto's in the comedy II Thesoro, published in Venice in 1580 and dedicated to Alfonso II, to whom Garzoni also dedicated the Piazza.2^9 As Garzoni reveals in the dedication of his Piazza, Groto (whom he identifies as 'dear to me') had also in 1580 dedicated to Alfonso II his revision of another play, a pastoral entitled La Calisto (1583), and Garzoni seemed to view his urban Piazza as a complementary offering to Alfonso. 2 6 Groto, whose writings Garzoni includes among the suggested reading for procur26 ers, also wrote a comedy La Emilia (performed during Carnevale in Adria in 1 579) that included a procurer among its cast, and a La Alteria that included a procuress." But ir is the depiction of the bawd in the Thesoro that is striking. When approached by a servant to be a go-between for his master, the 'Roffiana' Donnola requires an interview, as a doctor would a patient or a lawyer would a client/' And she boasts that whereas these two professionals use only one art to despoil others of their goods or life, she uses many (seven liberal and seven mechanical arts) to restore one's 'heart, life, and soul.'2 54 She then rehearses her appropriation of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and so on through the trivium and quadrivium, adding as well natural philosophy, law, and medicine.22656 Later, when her client does not have the money to pay her, he has a lengthy instrument drawn up by a notary.2 6 Thus, in the commissioning of the bawd, in the review of her expertise, in the elaborately notarized promise of payment, Groto satirically professionalizes the services of his bawd. Garzoni's chapter 'On Procurers and Procuresses' represents a culmination of this cinquecento motif of the learned and triumphant panderer. And

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though stealing from Agrippa, Garzoni also expands upon him. For instance, in setting out the procurer's use of the liberal arts, Garzoni reorders the sequence and in some cases gives far more development to the theme of the learned seducer. Where Agrippa gives a scant sentence to oratory's role,2 6 Garzoni leads with Rhetoric and explains its use in elaborate detail: The Rhetorician does not know one iota more concerning persuasion than a procurer who praises excellently, exaggerates wonderfully, counsels shrewdly, and dissuades marvellously; he adorns his speech, circumscribes his things, colours his reasons, magnifies his thoughts, confutes contrary reasons, vilifies other opinions, extols his maxims; and with words, stories, witticisms, jokes, and diverse inventions he convinces as much as he likes. He frightens young girls with fear of bullies, gladdens them with bad news and cheers them with good, makes them weep for others' griefs, hate those who love them, and be cruel to those who die and long for them. He composes words ornately, accentuates them with gesture, gives them credibility with gravity, dresses them with colours, acquires for them with Hypocrisy a singular devotion. Whence it happens that he becomes Lord of the soul, patron of the mind, and King of the life of each, because hearing the mode of speech, the grace of pronunciation, the figures of speech, the invention of things, the taken method, the employed means, and the desired end, each person remains his slave and through mere choice a follower and entirely a dependent.268

This remarkable passage not only is a powerful affirmation (via parody) of humanist rhetoric, the triumphant art of Renaissance Italian culture; it also speaks to the theme elsewhere in Garzoni of the triumph of disreputable or low culture over high. The passage opens by elevating the pimp over the Rhetorician in his rhetorical skill; it closes by elevating him over all women whom he enslaves and conquers as psychological 'Lord,' 'patron,' and 'King.' More even than Agrippa, Garzoni details the procurer as the uomo universale and expands also upon his use of Logic and his capacity as a Poet - in the latter case replacing Agrippa's citations of classical poets with a catalogue of Renaissance poets such as Petrarch, Jacopo Sannazzaro, Pietro Bembo, Annibale Caro, Lodovico Dolce, Torquato Tasso, Luigi Groto, and Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara (recent translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses with Giacomo Franco's plates).2 9 Garzoni would thus assign to the procurer the most fashionable poetic culture of his day, and the purely burlesque effect of simulating the learned eloquence or logic of the seducer yields to a more serious survey of the au courant culture of his day. In some sense Garzoni's procurer is the consummate cultivated figure, a comic completion of Agrippa's motif and

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one made even more ironic by the fact that Garzoni omitted 'humanists' - the best professional candidates for this title - from the original edition of his PiazzaWhy did Garzoni give his panderer such a dramatic cultural presence? Partly it was to crown the satirical motif of the lowlife steeped in highbrow culture, as in the case of the cook. But did it also speak to his larger theme of the growing fluidity among professional boundaries? Certainly the theme of metamorphosis again has a marked presence in this chapter. And whereas in his discussion of procurers' use of various of the literary or liberal traditions Agrippa is content to catalogue lascivious material or exempla, Garzoni is more interested in detailing the procurer as Rhetorician, as Poet, as Logician. The theme of transformation becomes even more explicit when Garzoni proclaims the pimp to he the ultimate professional Proteus: And in sum a procurer is so subtle in his affairs, so astute in his inventions, so shrewd in his observations, so malicious and voracious in his every consideration that he imitates the metier of everyone and according to the art of all transforms himself like a Proteus; he changes like a chameleon in order to obtain his aim with each kind ot servitude."2 7 He then describes how he plays the advocate, 'becomes' the philosopher or the physician, or 'dresses also ... in the habit of the astrologer and diviner.' 271 The possibilities and the dangers of carnival transformation undoubtedly colour Garzoni's view of the procurer's protean power of professional metamorphosis. In fact, Camevale has an explicit presence toward the end of the chapter. Here, like Agrippa, Garzoni discusses how the procurer adapts not only the liberal and learned arts to his designs but the 'mechanical' ones as well. To Agrippa's brief catalogue of such lowly arts (which included vendors of female finery, laundresses, female beggars, and Venetian gondoliers),2 7 2Garzoni adds others who serve in the transaction of liaisons: namely, maids, midwives, porters, and chimneysweeps. And that Garzoni here may be an observer of his society is suggested particularly by his comments concerning the porters (whose pimping he also mentions in his chapter on facchini) 2 7 and chimneysweeps (to whom he devotes his brief chapter 134). In the latter chapter he does not mention chimneysweeps as procurers, but in the chapter on procurers he does, adding 'For this reason at Carnevale young boys sometimes dress as chimneysweeps, crying "Beautiful ladies, who would like her chimney swept?'" 274 and following this instance of disguise with several others that youth don at Carnevale: namely, the gypsy, the despoiled soldier, the peasant,

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the hunter, the pilgrim, and the buffoon (Zanni and Magnifico) - poses all used to seduce women.275 Like Agrippa's comparable chapter in his De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, Garzoni's chapter on the procurer is very much a microcosm of his entire treatise, selectively embracing as it does the gamut of professions.276 And its rather systematic movement from high culture to low notably more orderly than Agrippa's - suggests by contrast how the more random structure of the Piazza as a whole was likely an intentional statement of the fluidity of modern profession. That fluidity is, moreover, ideally symbolized by the procurer himself. Whereas Agrippa's panderer is a paragon of the uomo universale who can draw evil from all of the arts of mankind, Garzoni's is more the paragon of the protean professional masquerader who can potentially become every professional in the practice of his art. Thus, in this chapter the literary topos of metamorphosis found elsewhere in the Piazza intersects with the ritual reality of metamorphosis at Carnevale. And, thus, the comic motif of the lowly pimp or bawd as lofty rhetorician (etc.) and the more serious critique of the dangers of seductive carnival disguise perhaps converge as well. The procurer and bawd ideally symbolize the professional fluidity of Garzoni's day a fluidity heightened by the (legitimate) rising status of manual arts and the (illegitimate) rising status of popular culture; a fluidity exaggerated by the reversals of Carnevale; a fluidity ironically reinforced by popular professional encyclopedias such as Garzoni's own Piazza, which would make all the professions the intellectual property of all the literate and curious. Garzoni is a cultural leveller bringing the lore of both high and low culture to one audience at one time. In doing so he synthesizes and completes culturally revisionistic efforts of various encyclopedic forebears in the cinquecento: Fioravanti, who challenged the 'intellectual' with the 'manual' arts; Citolini, who dethroned classical hierarchy with a new, more naturalistic one; Agrippa, who employed a rather random and even scandalous order (e.g., clustering monks with prostitutes). Garzoni's book illustrates how the popularizing of professional knowledge (in encyclopedias, memory books, and professional manuals) and the ascent of popular culture (the commedia dell'arte, Carnevale, the pasquinade) nearly reigned supreme in later-sixteenth-century Italian culture. As monk, scholar, and former law student, Garzoni is himself tied to establishment and high culture, but as a vernacular popularizer, latter-day Arlotto, and closet Agrippa he is also part subverter of traditionalist culture. To some degree, what the pasquinade is to epic poetry, what the commedia dell'arte is to high comedy, and what Carnevale is to dignified ritual, Garzoni's popularizing and marketable book is to high scholarship. Thus, despite its various condem-

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nations of low culture, the Piazza itself mirrors the degree to which middlebrow and popular culture came to challenge high culture in the sixteenth century. And the simultaneous reflection of professional fluidity and social instability in the Piazza is an indication of the cultural tension resulting from that challenge. As for the professional fluidity and partial levelling in the Piazza, vernacular encyclopedias inherently promoted a blurring of occupational boundaries. Fioravanti expressly did so, as he argued that one purpose of his Specchio was to enable professionals in one field to learn what is pertinent in related fields (e.g., physicians and pharmacists), or one figure such as a preacher to know something of every field/ Encyclopedias could thereby broaden professional expertise, but they could also generally demystify high profession to the literate middle class and educate (or warn) the upper and middle classes in the professional ways of the lower. The Piazza fosters professional curiosity and facilitates a constant interaction or mutual eavesdropping among professionals at different levels. The book's random order reinforces the inevitability of anomalous occupational interactions that occur on a daily basis. And by recognizing the rising status of some professions (e.g., engineers, mirror makers) and by detailing the hidden or unrecognized lore of others (e.g., porters), Garzoni's book promotes a fluidity in the professional realm. As the Piazza makes evident time and again, there is art and rigour in even the lowliest of professions - thus the factor pores over price lists as intently as scholars pore over their Cicero. And though some of the comparisons across class lines and all of the facetious intellectualizing of lowly pursuits have a satirical tone, they may also have more serious purposes. In cautioning readers of the wiles of beggars and procurers Garzoni betrays a grudging respect for mean professions."' His slipping from the comic to the earnest can be seen in the case of porters. If Pietro Nelli's praise was wholly satirical, Garzoni's brief extension of that praise of their courtesy - in describing their behaviour and in acclaiming their knowledge of the best wine venues - was perhaps not so satirical. Mock praise becomes genuine praise. Likewise, the expose of disreputable professions even if coloured by condemnation and motivated by desire for self-protection from the lower orders - necessitates an exploration of the intricacies of craft in popular culture. The growing parity between and levelling of professions has as its flip side a certain fear of instability in the social order. Paradoxically, Garzoni thus simultaneously can facilitate professional fluidity and reflect the accompanying concern over the destabilizing of the traditional order. Perhaps this unease explains his aversion to the professional reversals at Camevale, in which the Scholar plays a Buffoon, the Innkeeper a Physician, the Cobbler a

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Captain. And yet Garzoni has reinforced such inversions in his book (whether via plagiarism, embellishment, or his own invention) making the Lawyer a Gelder, the Cook a Philosopher, the Procurer a Rhetorician, the Poet a Thief.279 It is as if Garzoni wanted to reinforce the ritual chaos of Carnevale in a literary context. By condemning that chaos he overtly places himself on the side of the conservative orders (and he does, after all, dedicate the Piazza to Alfonso II of Ferrara). And yet, by replicating that chaos he reflects the powerful presence of the festive and comic culture of his day and, on a more serious level, reflects a partial dethroning of high professions from their place of unquestioned privilege. By enabling all (who were literate) to know the secrets of others, cinquecento encyclopedias of professional lore unwittingly promoted the levelling or exchange of professions unleashed at Carnevale. In fact, Garzoni suggests at the start of his chapter on astrologers that he will don the mask of astrologer to relate that art. Likewise, he thus dons as many masks as there are chapters in the Piazza (except for those on the 'religious' or on writers, his own proper realms), as do his readers as they learn of the worlds of professional 'others.' A 'pagan' among 'theologians,' Garzoni is like that cleric (condemned in his chapter 3 on the religious) who becomes all manner of worldly professionals (horse trader, herring vendor, poulterer, frog merchant, tripe seller) as he frequents the piazzas, markets, and shops of the secular world2 8 - and in this he resembles Piovano Arlotto. As a writer of a professional encyclopedia, the canon Garzoni himself in some way undergoes such inapposite or unholy transformations — particularly as he shows familiarity not only with herring vendors but also with procurers. Rehearsing the lore and experience of such professionals is akin to the chaos of Carnevale, whether this involves singing carnival songs in the voice of others or donning the masks of other professionals. Carnevale and the vernacular encyclopedia facilitate the possibility of professional exchange and impersonation. They are ritual and literary expressions of the same phenomenon: namely, the fluid yet destabilizing juxtaposition of learned and popular culture. This explains the paradox of Garzoni's being simultaneously repelled and inspired by Carnevale. There is, however, one further reason Garzoni is preoccupied with Carnevale. As he observes in his chapter on masquerades, the art of masking had its counterpart in the professional sphere in the form of fraud. Whether practised by ignorant pedants, quack doctors, incompetent lawyers, unreliable factors, dishonest merchants, or fake beggars, fraud emerges as a consistent, major criterion for rebuke. Certainly by the late sixteenth century, the Renaissance appraisal of professions thus has shifted somewhat in emphasis from domination by traditional categories of intellectual depth or social standing to the

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standard of honest practice - a category that potentially evaluates all professions on equal terms. With every profession having its hidden lore of both true and fraudulent practice, it is important for each individual to know something of the professions of all. As ritual masquerade recklessly and inappropriately disguises social identities, so does fraud dangerously disguise professional malfeasance. The unmasking of fraud - explicitly referred to in Garzoni's critique of astrologers281 - is a key to his whole book, much of which is a rhetoric of exposing and unmasking fraud. 282 To recognize false practice, one must appreciate the nuances of true practice, at whatever point on the continuum from learned to manual art. Thus, we must all know the business of everyone else. Garzoni's book then is not just an outline for the proper practice of one's own profession, but a guide to the improper practice of all other professions - and in this sense it is a manual not only for professionals but also for consumers. And because the guile of the lowliest professionals can be as subtle as that of the highest, all occupations are equalized in their potential for fraud. The intricacy of craft, however, particularly enhances the capacity for fraud. Thus, the very specialized knowledge of international goods required of merchants is proportional to the potential for deceiving and dissembling. Knowledge and shrewdness cut both ways. A rising recognition of and respect for professional arcana leads to a rising concern for fraud: thus, as Garzoni elevates physicians he is proportionately concerned about quacks in chapters on physicians, pharmacists, and charlatans. Such a preoccupation with fraud also signals a shift in focus concerning the moral analysis of vocation, a shift from an emphasis on hypocrisy as the principal violation of religious calling, to an emphasis on fraud as the principal violation of lay callings.2 8 Such a shift parallels the general dominance of secular professions over clerical ones in the Piazza- It also explains in part2 8 the contrasting treatments of beggars in Agrippa's 1526 De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum and Garzoni's 1585 Piazza. Whereas the former stressed the hypocrisy of religious begging, the latter emphasized more the fraudulent disguises of the lay beggar. In short, the moral critique of religious hypocrisy is coming to be crowded out by the practical concern over lay fraud. Finally, the imagery Garzoni used to characterize fraud and its cousin malpractice reveals how his assessment of professions incorporated not just intellectual, moral, and social perspectives of elite and clerical culture, but also the more practical and material pespectives of artisan and peasant culture. Once again, the imagery of metamorphosis surfaces, this time, however, applied not in a literary Ovidian context or ritual carnival context, but in a material context. Thus, in describing the inferior larder stocked by the imprudent factor or the corrupt dishes of the angered cook and competent hostel

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chef, Garzoni makes use of palpable imagery of a corruption or metamorphosis of food. To some degree the imagery of physical transformation could be influenced in a positive way by the plastic inventive transformations of artisans and engineers - as in the case of his praise of Abramo Colorni's 'nuove metamorphosi' in his mechanical adaptations.2 8 But it is probably more rooted in peasant materialism focused on food, whether in a Utopian context (the land of Cockaigne) or a dystopian one (cooks who serve up the 'torta da ortolano').2 6 In some cases the material world absorbs the higher intellectual one, as can be seen in the lampooning of the pedant who asked for an 'elegant soup' or in the ridicule of the disreputable lawyer with his glosses in brine. And, in general, references to the land of Cockaigne in the triumphant world of the cook and in the debauchery of university students (whose taste for licentious festival is grouped with the march to Cockaigne) suggest the mentalite of a 'peasant materialism' not unlike that of Ginzburg's heretical miller.2 8 In this case, however, the materialism intrudes not upon cosmogony or theology, but upon the social and professional order. In any case, Garzoni reflects the material perspectives of both artisan and peasant culture. He thus shows himself not only to be an encyclopedist whose compendium of professions embraces all the professions of the world, but also at times to be a protean figure who replicates the voices and values of all professionals of his world - taking on the masks of high and low culture in a century of fluid and uncertain professional boundaries.

Chapter 5

Professions on Display: Dress and Ritual in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice

The publication and frequent reprinting in Venice of the Piazza universale beginning in 1585 undoubtedly energized the cultural and social interest in profession. The local impact of the work was evidenced by the complaint of humanists concerning their exclusion in the first edition. But the Pia^a also may well have attracted the attention of a broader range of professionals and aroused interest in a wider range of pursuits - including especially the 'silent' lower arts. In this regard, Garzoni's encyclopedia needs to be seen in concert with other developments in Venetian print culture and ritual life. Intersecting with the Piazza was an already emerging literature charting the culture of dress and ritual. In his Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare published in 1581, Francesco Sansovino briefly characterized general features of Venetian dress and in considerable detail described certain 'feste,' culminating in a lengthy account of the coronation of the Dogaressa Zilia Dandola in 1557, a ritual in which the arts played a particularly important role. Sansovino's account of the 1557 ritual likely inspired even more detailed accounts of the similar ritual in 1597 commemorating the crowning of the Dogaressa Morosina Grimani. Aside from two accounts of this later celebration by Giovanni Rota and Dario Tutio, Sansovino's successor Giovanni Stringa complemented Sansovino's account of the 1557 ritual with a record of the 1597 ritual (largely based on Rota) in his additions to the Venetia citta nobilissima. Moreover, Sansovino's description of both Venetian dress and civic life may have partly inspired Cesare Vecellio in his dress book De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diversi parti del mondo, first published in Venice in 1590. Touching on ritual life in addition to its focus on costume, Vecellio's book provides both visual form and literary commentary to civic celebrations and dress - an interest taken up as well by Giacomo Franco, who produced plates of the 1597 coronation as well as illustrations of the 'habiti d'huomini et donne venetiane.'1

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Looming large in the literary accounts and visual records of these writers and illustrators was an attention to professional archetypes, a sensibility that would also be powerfully present - via both dialogues and plates - in a massive death book published in Venice in 1596, the Discorsi morali contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia, written by the Venetian physician Fabio Glissenti, himself later a dedicatee of one of Franco's dress books. This and the following chapter will examine the broader connections among these figures' works - especially in the larger context of the dominant presence of Garzoni's Pia^a - to assess the triumph of professional consciousness in the visual, ritual, and literary culture of Venice particularly in the 1590s. As Petrarch long before revealed in his complaint (in Seniles 5.3) about trecento physicians' pretentious robes and triumph-like displays, the social significance of dress and ritual could be a matter of keen interest and even controversy. This chapter will consider the degree to which the related realms of dress and ritual had by the sixteenth century increasingly become arenas for the definition and representation of profession in the social sphere. What role did profession play in the organization and commentary of dress books in late Renaissance Venice? What presence and voice did the arts have in the city's ritual life — particularly in the display of mottoes? How did the genres of the costume book and the ritual account in part complement Garzoni's depiction of the 'invisible' professions in his encyclopedia? As we have seen, Garzoni himself at times touched upon ritual and dress in his assessment of the arts, but other authors or illustrators would examine these realms in their own right, and in so doing they in turn tangentially provided yet another, more social appraisal of the arts. In his Venetia citta nobzlissima of 1581 Francesco Sansovino - the son of Jacopo Sansovino, architect of Piazza San Marco's redesign begun earlier in the century - not only was a witness to the physical splendours of the city, but also was something of a pioneer in cultivating a social and anthropological type of urban history. Going beyond the genres of the catalogue of illustrious citizens (as in Filippo Villani's Liber de origine civitatis Florentie et de eiusdem famosis civibus) or the praise of civic monuments and political institutions (as in Leonardo Bruni's Laudatio Florentinae urbis), Sansovino's treatise also considered briefly dress culture and attempted to capture the rhythms of ritual life in a section 'De gli habiti, costumi, et usi della citta.'2 Though the section on 'Habiti' is very brief,3 his survey of 'Feste' traces the history of various Venetian celebrations for military victories, marriages, and political installations and discusses the creation of the Compagnia della Calza, an organization of noble youth that periodically staged festivals. For his earliest eyewitness record of a civic festival he trans-

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lates Petrarch's 1364 Latin account (in Seniles 43) of a celebration commemorating Venice's recapture of Crete that culminated in two equestrian events in the Piazza San Marco ('that Piazza,' he quotes Petrarch as saying, 'of which I do not know if in all the world there is an equal'). 5 As we shall see below, approximately one-half of his overview of Venetian festivals is devoted to an account of the coronation of the Dogaressa Zilia Dandola. For now, suffice it to say that Sansovino seems to have prompted greater interest in both dress and ceremonial culture. The influence of the Venetia can first be seen in Cesare Vecellio's On the Ancient and Modern Dress of Diverse Parts of the World. A relative and associate of Titian and a painter himself, Vecellio was a likely figure to provide a visual record of dress. And yet his treatise initially offered much more than illustrations - for which some recent dress books offered a precedent7 - and in many ways Vecellio was a successor to Sansovino. Though a later edition dropped much of the commentary and expanded the number of illustrations (the 1598 edition containing 503, and the 1590 only 415), this initial edition offers more detail on the topography, government, and ritual of Venice as well as more commentary on the illustrations (which is reduced to brief statements in Italian and Latin in the later edition). And though the book does aspire to be international in its scope, the focus clearly is on Venice and the Veneto, which commands 144 of 499 folios and 119 of 415 plates. To Vecellio's mind, Venice and the world were almost synonymous, as he justifiably characterized Venice as a gathering place for all variety of Italians and foreigners alike. Sometimes drawing on Sansovino's literary descriptions of Venetian dress, Vecellio offers a comprehensive visual catalogue of male and female dress, accompanied by commentaries that provide yet another forum for a social assessment of the arts. Vecellio's appraisals here reveal how dress could be sometimes a social and political equalizer of professions, sometimes a legal divider, sometimes a marker for distinction or function within an art, and sometimes a vehicle for deceptive professional disguise. In exploring the general world of Venetian dress, Vecellio may have in part been fleshing out Sansovino's brief treatment of'Habiti' in the Venetia. But in plumbing more deeply the specific realm of professional garb, he may also have hoped in part to complement Garzoni's portraits in his Piazza, which by the time of Vecellio's first edition of 1590 had already appeared in five Venetian editions between 1585 and 1589.11 In his chapter 'On Tailors' Garzoni revealed his understanding of the social meaning of dress. The subtle challenge for tailors is that they must know which garments befit the 'persona grave,' which the peasant, which the merchant, which the widow, and so on.1" But though he reviewed virtually every other aspect of the arts in his

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Piazza, Garzoni dealt little with dress. In illustrating the dress of certain professionals and in commenting upon the social codes of costume and upon the nature of certain pursuits, Vecellio filled gaps in the cinquecento exploration of occupational identity and representation. In his depiction of the dress of 'ancient' and 'modern' Venetians, Vecellio proved to be an imaginative researcher and careful observer. Where Sansovino resorted to political history (dress legislation) 1 or literary accounts (Petrarch) to recover the earlier history of Venetian dress or ritual, Vecellio studied mosaics (42), sculpture (82v), and painting (86) to reconstruct earlier costumes. For modern costumes obviously he could rely on his own eye, and here, not surprisingly, his observations often revolved around ritual life. Whether it be the coronation of the doge and dogaressa, the election of a university rector, a marriage ceremony, the accompaniment of the condemned to execution, or the bearing of the dead for burial, the larger view of urban space and activity also provided a framework for Vecellio's observations. In fact, largely framing his section on Venice are three 'Perspectives of the Piazza San Marco,' each drawn from a different angle of the Piazza and each depicting a different ritual: a 1554 festival orchestrated by the Compagnia della Calza, a political procession of the doge and Signoria into the Church of San Marco, and a funeral procession for a doge. Accompanying these views are accounts detailing the history, architecture,11 5and civic function of the Piazza. Especially revealing is the account adjoining the third view, which discusses the rituals and festivals staged in the Piazza: the installations of the doge, the processions of the Scuole Grandi, funerals of dignitaries, Carnevale celebrations. It also records that the Piazza was the site of a 'mercato generale' every Saturday and a special fifteen-day market at Ascension, in which goldsmiths and other metal workers set up stalls. As for the ongoing economic life of the Piazza, Vecellio adds that the portico of the recently rebuilt Procuratie Vecchie was home to 'bottegas for the use of merchandise' (152v) and that Vincenzo Scamazzo's design for the Procuratie Nuove (a project he suggests was begun in 1584) also called for a portico with forty-five arches 'with shops facing the Piazza in imitation of the ancients' (154v). With such comments on the ritual and economic life of Piazza San Marco, in conjunction with the remark (in the account accompanying the second view) that the Piazza is home to people 'in gran quantita di ogni natione del mondo' (120), Vecellio depicts San Marco as a type of 'piazza universale.' And if the connection between the actual Piazza San Marco and the metaphorical Piazza Universale of professions was only implicit in Garzoni, in Vecellio the link between San Marco and the Venetian world of dress and ritual was far more explicit.18 Though not as comprehensive as Garzoni's Piazza universale, Vecellio's cat-

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alogue nonetheless covered a range of social types from high to low. But because dress rather than profession was his focus, in some cases his catalogue reveals how several occupations might be socially clustered by sharing a common costume, a point illustrated by the commentary accompanying the plate depicting the 'Ordinary Dress Common to all the Venetian Nobility.' Vecellio argues that this costume, a descendant of the Roman toga, has a universal acceptance among the male nobility and is 'not a small cause of the harmony and concord by which this most ample Republic is governed' (106).19 Following a description of the gown, Vecellio moreover argues that the use of the garment extends beyond the nobility to a wider segment of Venetian society: 'And this is the dress used not only by the nobility but also by the cittadini [a legally recognized office-holding middle class], and by anyone who wishes to wear it, as do almost all Physicians, Lawyers, and Merchants, who all wear it gladly, because being the habit proper to the nobility it enjoys great reputation among others as well' (106). Unlike Petrarch, who resented physicians (or other craftsmen) usurping noble dress, Vecellio rather uncritically reports this type of social climbing as a plausible form of social compression among differ220 ent classes - a compression he would see as beneficial for such a republic/ Though there were cases of overlap or sameness of dress, obviously Vecellio would have had no need for a catalogue if there had not also been considerable and meaningful distinctiveness. What differences did centre around professional types and how did Vecellio's commentaries provide an opportunity for rhetorical assessments of certain occupations? Our interest is not in his treatment ot 'ancient' costumes of Venice,21 but rather in those 'modern' ones in which personal observation and perception offer a timely view of the Venetian social and economic world. There is no systematic order in his survey of modern Venice, though roughly he moves from political figures and nobles, to the commercial and artisan elite (e.g., merchants and Admirals and Protomasters of the Arsenal), to women,2 2 to learned professions (scholars, lawyers, bureaucrats), to soldiers, to the lower orders (e.g., gravediggers, beggars, porters), to farmers who have come to market at Venice. In his treatment ot types from the third estate Vecellio in some cases uses the accompanying descriptions to single out individual professionals for praise or to identify the symbolic import of dress as an indication of status. In the account adjoining his illustration of the 'Merchants and Shopkeepers of the Merciaria and of the rest of the City of Venice,' Vecellio not only discusses their dress," but also cites some illustrious merchants: In which garment Idescribed in detail in the preceding section] I have seen in every weather to shine more honourably and becomingly Messer Paolo dallo

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Struzzo, a virtuous young man and gifted in every rare quality, who possesses a most beautiful talent, and who in the profession of Speciaria [Pharmacist and Spice dealer] yields to no one in having select goods and in making theriac. I shall not omit either Messer Bernardino Pillotto, who also at his most famous shop is a man of the highest goodness and courtesy, and delights in many virtues; both of these individuals have a great abundance of pictures and many other ornaments. (116v)

Such a testimony not of the highest level of international merchant but of pharmacists and shopkeepers suggests that Vecellio resembles Fioravanti and Garzoni - and is possibly influenced by either or both of them - in conferring fame to the bourgeoisie of the bottega. In this passage hailing two merchants Vecellio links the splendour of the gown, the skill of the professional, the fame of the shop, and the honour of the shopkeeper. Certainly, Vecellio's commentary is a forceful affirmation of the expertise and honour of the petty bourgeoisie.2 5 The link between lofty dress and worthy profession is more precisely identified two and three sections hence, where Vecellio examines the prominent figures in Venice's leading industry, shipbuilding. Calling the Venetian Arsenal the eighth wonder of the world — and (under)estimating that it regularly employs 400 men - Vecellio depicts both the Prod, who are 'the first in talent and prowess among all the others of their profession [professione]' (120) and 'are the heads of the diverse arts that are practised there* (118v), and in turn the chief of the Prott, the Admiral, who must be a 'man of the greatest experience in the shipping arts and ... is then revered by everyone and draws a greater provision than the other heads, who obey him' (118v). In describing the Admiral's dress, which includes the 'same beret worn by nobles,' Vecellio closes by saying, 'this attire is a pretty sight and also represents a not minor gravity' (119). Thus, for the industrial elite as for the lower bourgeoisie, Vecellio's catalogue both visually and verbally delineates professional distinctiveness and stature. As for the learned professions, Vecellio includes a series on scholars, lawyers, bureaucrats, and physicians. An illustration of the 'University Rector of the Studio of Scholars of Padua' is accompanied by a discussion of the custom of scholars electing a head 'who is very esteemed and respected by scholars and others' (157). He describes how such a figure - in this case a Paduan rector of either the arts or legal faculties - is honoured 'in luogo di Cavaliero, e Nobile Venetiano' and is feted by a knighting ceremony in Venice and wears a black velvet beret 'like that of a priest' (157). As in other cases, it is the ritual moment that focuses Vecellio's attention on a professional type - in this

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instance, revealing how an academic potentially has the stature of both knight and priest. The commentary attending the following portrait of 'Doctors of Law Outside of Venice, and throughout Lombardy' reveals that the dress of Lombard doctors of law or medicine is the long toga, which 'habit serves them in ruling, in embassies, and in tribunals by showing them to be grave individuals and of mature judgment' (158). He observes that Venetian dottori, however, dress 'simili a i Nobili' (and cites at some length the exemplar of the Eccellentissimo il Signer Annibale Cremona), and thereby perhaps implies that what the Lombard scholars' dress connoted in terms of gravity, their Venetian counterparts' attire matched through imitation of the nobility. In the third of this series, Vecellio depicts a portrait of a 'Vicar, or Doctor, and Assessors, and Lawyers [Curiali] in the Terra Ferma of the Venetian State.' Here, he cites as exemplars Cremona's brother Alessandro (whom he praises at some length) and two other figures: 'I have also seen the person of the Excellent Doctor Signer Bernardino Barceloni to accompany his rare qualities with this toga ... and also, most famous in medicine, Signer Rhotilio Doglione' (159). By explaining how dress could signal 'mature judgment' and 'rare qualities' and affect noble and even priestly status, Vecellio carefully decodes clothing's relevance to professional identity and stature.2 Though his dress book hews to the higher classes, Vecellio did not completely overlook the lower orders, and this in fact may be one of the most significant aspects of his catalogue. Immediately following his 'Second Perspective of the Piazza San Marco' - and as if expanding his view of the topographical and experiential realities of Venetian life - Vecellio includes a portrait of gondoliers at work (see Figure 2), accompanied by a praise of boats, entitled 'De gli habiti de' barcaruoli, e della commodita delle barche' ('Of the Dress of Boatmen, and of the Comforts of Boats'). Seeing boat life as one of Venice's marvels," Vecellio praises both the inexpensive public transportation of the traghetto - which makes a trip across the Grand Canal affordable even for the poor - as well as the private gondola maintained by the wealthy with salaried workers. He presents testimony of times that he 'enjoyed the sweetness and comfort of the boat,' and composes a paean to the pleasures of the gondola, in which one can be restored from the travails of overland travel, take in the air, be with friends, eat, enjoy music, traverse the city (122v—123). This praise of gondolas considerably expands similar but brief comments on their 'commodita' found in Garzoni's chapter on boatmen in the Pia^a. ]° Whereas, however, Garzoni largely savaged the character of gondoliers - denouncing them as lowlifes and procurers - Vecellio makes no such assessments positive or negative, but instead explains the subdivisions within their craft and comments on their varying duties:

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The nobles ... of Venice, other Cittadini, and wealthy and comfortable individuals are accustomed for the most part to maintain boats or gondolas with different servants, one of whom, in control of the whole boat, is called the Fante di poppa [the 'stern' servant] and the other the Fante di mezo [the 'middle' servant]: the latter occupying himself often in other services of the Padrone; and the former having sole care of keeping the boat neat, arranged, and ready when and however often it is needed, having charge of keeping clean the delfini (which are the irons of the stern and prow which for their cleanliness appear silvery) and of raising and placing on the boat the Feke (which is a covering of wool cloth or of serge black in colour) and doing similar things also regarding the benches for sitting, which are customarily wooden although many might line them with some padding in the form of cushions. (123) And so on Vecellio proceeds to discuss the design of the Felce and festive furnishings, thereby describing the 'dress' of the gondola but never that of the gondolier. Nonetheless, his account does add professional details on the types of gondoliers and their responsibilities, arcana certainly not found in Garzoni's description. Moreover, the very title of this commentary 'On the Dress of the Boatmen and the Convenience of Boats' - as well as its enthusiastic praise of the Venetian boat as an institution - at least implies a positive view of the gondolier. In any case, by providing an illustration of gondoliers and an explanation of their titles and duties, Vecellio sheds further light on one of the invisible professions only touched upon by Garzoni and possibly helps lay the groundwork for a major treatment of this craft (complete with illustrations) in Fabio Glissenti's Discorsi morali, published seven years later. A second group among the servant class that Vecellio examines is the porters, whom he divides into the all-purpose 'Facchini, or Bastagi of the City of Venice' and the more specialized 'Cestarioli Who Attend at the Meat Market and at the Fish Market' (176v-178). As seen in chapter 4 above, Garzoni had elaborated upon Pietro Nelli's satirical praise of the facchino to include his own more serious comments on their loyalty and experience. In his discussion of the first group (see Figures 3A and 3B), Vecellio identifies their function ('those who for gain load and unload ships and boats and carry goods from one place to another'), their Bergamese background, their dress, and their liability to 'certain public exactions, such as dousing fires, unloading salt, and working some days in the Arsenal for most of the day' (177). Especially this last comment suggests an acknowledgment of their communal service or exploitation. Even more explicitly positive is the portrait of the cestarioli, 'who in the city of Venice stand in certain places and corners of the fish market of San Marco, in that of the Rialto, and equally at the meat market,

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Figure 2. Dress of the Gondoliers. From Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et modemi di diverse parti del mondo (Venice, 1590), f. 122. (Courtesy of the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice)

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Figure 3A. Dress of the Facchini (illustration). From Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et modemi di diverse parti del mondo (Venice, 1590), f. 176v. (Courtesy of the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice)

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Figure 3B. Dress of the Facchmi (description). From Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderm di diverse parti del mondo (Venice, 1590), f. 177. (Courtesy of the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice)

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who are very experienced [molto prattici] in the city and very faithful' (178). This last remark recalls Garzoni's treatment of porters (which combined facchini and cestarioli), in which, elaborating on Pietro Nelli's facetious treatment of the courtesy of facchini, he more seriously comments on their 'love of their padroni' and their being a source of good advice on wine 'because they are experienced [prattici] regarding the wine cellars of all the gentlemen and cittodini.'31 In his sizeable section on female dress Vecellio also examines the service class of women. Accompanying an illustration of a maid is a discussion of 'Serve, et fanteschi, 6 massare di Venetia' that outlines a clear hierarchy of female servants with 'distinct duties,' whose standing in the household varies 'accordingly as more or less worthy tasks are allotted' (150). Wet nurses, 'very respected and cherished,' enjoy the highest status, followed by those who keep the keys to the larder, chambermaids, and those engaged in cooking, sweeping, and such tasks. As for matters of character and marital status, Vecellio reveals that those who are companions to the mistress of the house are expected to be 'honeste e senza malitia' and are usually maidens (donzelle); others are woTnen who have been married or are abandoned (dismesse}. In one respect, Vecellio's description reveals how dress varies according to duties: those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who are responsible for menial tasks, have a costume somewhat different from the generic dress he presents - 'they wear over their gown overalls of white or violet linen of more utility than fineness and the shirt is of coloured serge' (150). As was the case in his identification of two types of gondolier, Vecellio is thus sensitive to recognize and record the gradations in the servant class. Finally, Vecellio's catalogue in some measure deals with the realm of illegitimate profession in its depiction of prostitution, which he condemns as an 'infame professione' (138). At the higher level of the courtesan, in a description of 'Cortigiane fuor di casa,' he explains how such figures in order 'to acquire credit by means of finta honesta,' often affect the dress of legitimate women such as widows, married women, brides, or, especially in the past, maidens - all types Vecellio illustrates in his thorough treatment of female dress. More than once he refers to the laws prohibiting courtesans from wearing pearls, and he explains how they skirt this restriction by, for instance, keeping a paramour to give them cover of legitimacy33 or wearing strings of imitation pearl. Sometimes they simply defy the law and their pearls are part of a larger behaviour of display, deception, and entrapment: they wear skirts with greater ornaments than other women. To these it is forbidden to wear perle per casa, and nonetheless they wear them (so it is said) with

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bracelets and earrings of great value, and they remain continuously at the window to woo this or that one according to their custom, and, with astute arrogance, it tor some time they have dealings with a noble Venetian they usurp the cognomen of his family, which then is the reason many foreigners are deceived and believe them to be Venetian ladies. (142v) In his chapter on prostititutes in the Piazza Garzoni had publicized their many 'astuzie,' 'simulazioni,' 'fraudi,' and 'finzioni,' and in his descriptions Vecellio reifies this in the particular context of their appropriating - for the purposes of a 'feigned honesty' - the dress of legitimate women, donning spendicl colours and forbidden pearls, and usurping legitimate titles. Once again, then - and now particularly from the vantage 3 6point of material culture - the tricks of the trade are explained and exposed. Whereas an observer's identification of courtesans depends upon piercing their disguises, the recognition of public prostitutes is a straightforward matter of reading their 'signs.' In his commentary on 'Prostitutes of Public Places,' Vecellio acknowledges that their dress varies according to their 'inequalities of fortune1 but adheres to a basic style that can be dressed up according to means. He ends his description by speaking of the clear markers that identify them: 'Many of them, like men, wear trousers of ermine or other fabric, and by these signs [.segni] and others such as silver tondini and bracelets they are easily recognized' { 146v). Unlike courtesans 'they are not seen at the windows, frequenting sooner the door and the street in order to draw into their net the birds that pass. Here they entertain, singing amorous songs but with little grace and consonant with their lowly condition, almost all making themselves beard with a hoarse voice' (146v). In their clear 'signs' of dress and in their obvious behaviour, public prostitutes are a study in contrast to their professional counterparts, the courtesans, who rely more on disguise and impersonation in their solicitations. As he did in the case of gondoliers and servants, now in that of prostitutes Vecellio reifies distinctions (whether of duty, clothing, or technique) within certain lowly or questionable professions. To what degree is the Venetian portion of Vecellio's dress book a complete picture of the social universe of the city? What assumptions and perspectives concerning professional distinctions does it bear? As for the first question, Vecellio clearly scans the social and professional gradations from the top to the bottom, but there are notable omissions. Of sixty-five descriptions of 'modern' Venetians, 1 ' only one concerns the religious sphere, that being the pizzocchere, the poor religious women (typically widows) who were authorized to beg and who performed various pious acts. Missing are any illustrations or descriptions of ecclesiastical dignitaries, parish priests, monks, or nuns -

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despite the prominence of clerical luminaries in the ritual life of the city. Possibly this is due to the assumption that clerical vestments in the West were so familiar or standardized as not to require illustration - indeed, those in the East are depicted in his catalogue.39 Or possibly this is due to the association of dress with worldliness and vanity - and in fact the 'vanity' of dress culture, which in Venice and elsewhere prompted sumptuary legislation, may explain the prominence of female types who command twenty'four of the sixty-five descriptions of modern Venice - and thus Vecellio may have feared that religious figures would have taken such portraits amiss. But whatever the reason for the virtual absence of religious types in Vecellio's survey (and the total absence in Franco's small collections as well), this void would visually reinforce the minimal presence of religious types in Garzoni's Piazza- Also absent in Vecellio's catalogue of Venice was any depiction of an artisan per se. Though he describes the directors of the Arsenal - the Admiral and the Protomasters - he does not include lower-order artisans of this or any other industry (such as Murano glassmaking, to which he refers in his introductory 'Brief Description of the City of Venice' [37v-38]).42 Vecellio does, however, notice in considerable detail the service orders, delineating distinctions within the ranks of gondoliers, servants, and porters. To these Vecellio gives a visual tangibility and legitimacy. And because his descriptive comments are either neutral or even positive - as in his praise of the 'experience' and 'faithfulness' of the market boys, his reference to the arduous public services of the porters, or his linking a portrait of the dress of gondoliers with a praise of the 'commodity' of Venice's boat life — he places such lowly professions alongside magistrates, nobles, merchants, and soldiers as part of the lifeblood of a flourishing and industrious state. To some degree Vecellio is bringing to this new arena of the systematic study of material culture an appreciation of heretofore invisible professions. A comparison of his section on 'ancient' Venetian dress (from the earliest period to 1550) with that on the modern era (to which he has been an observer) is instructive in this regard. The historical section, which relies on mosaics, sculpture, and paintings, contains no specific types from the service or manual professions, but rather only figures from the political and social elite and from the military. Vecellio's own eyewitness survey brings several such figures to the forefront. This explains the number of types he describes in terms of a ritual function or setting: gravediggers who dress and bear a body, farmers who come to Saturday market, university rectors who are elected and knighted. As for the lower occupations per se, given some similarities in identifying and describing certain arts, it is quite possible that Garzoni's Piazza may have influenced Vecellio's treatment of specific professions44 - just as its metaphor-

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ical theme of the universal piazza may have inspired him to frame his own catalogue of Venice with three views of Piazza San Marco. Like Fioravanti and Garzoni, moreover, Vecellio at times glorifies traditionally unheralded pursuits - those outside the realm of 'fame' — by identify' ing illustrious practitioners. That is, he complements the predictable praise of learned lawyers or bureaucrats with the eulogy of the well-stocked, talented pharmacist. And all these professions high and low from the third estate (whether jurists, merchants, protomasters of the Arsenal, porters, or gondoliers) - depicted amidst illustrations and descriptions of the Venetian state and Piazza San Marco compose Vecellio's view of the economic and professional underpinning of the state. What in the previous century Francesco Patrizi had broached in a Latin humanist treatise On the Institution of a Republic, Vecellio now does in a vernacular dress book - adding new visibility and further stature to the lower orders. Finally, like Garzoni, Vecellio sometimes overtly meted out praise and rebuke in some of his descriptions of professions. Thus, his commentary on the 'Modern Foot Soldier in Time of War' begins with a praise of soldiers in a recent battle against the Turks in 1569, but an account of their dubious counterpart, the mercenary strongman or 'Bravo,' condemns the latter for his life of scandal and violence. Among women, as seen above, prostitutes were the target of his greatest criticism. And here, aside from condemning them, not only does he record the straightforward signs of public prostitutes, but also he complements the treatment of Agrippa and Garzoni in showing courtesans' capacity for deception, as they appropriate the dress and pearls of 'honest and reputable women.'48 In systematically charting Venetian dress, Vecellio's catalogue not only provides a visual survey of urban ritual, economic, and political life, but also explains and reinforces the function of dress as a social and even legal code. That nobles, attadmi, lawyers, physicians, and merchants often shared a similar costume reveals a high degree of social compression among the upper and middle classes - a compression that Vecellio, like Sansovino before him, saw as an indication of the stability of the Republic. And even where Vecellio discusses costumes distinctive to certain professions of the third estate, elements of dress here as well were sometimes related to those of the first or second estates. Thus, that Paduan university rectors would wear a beret similar to that of the priest and would be knighted in Venice upon their election suggests the elevation of the scholar to both religious and noble status. Likewise, the Admiral of the Arsenal wore a beret similar to that of the nobility. In such comments Vecellio approvingly reveals the incorporation of commercial, industrial, and academic professions among the aristocratic and holy ranks.

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Conversely, dress could also be a sign that attempted to exclude certain professions from legitimate status. Thus, several times Vecellio mentions the courtesans' legal restriction from the wearing of pearls, and he exposes their efforts to circumvent such laws. Dress laws also legally defined the ranks of the legitimate beggar. Vecellio's commentary on the 'Dress of the Poveri Vergognosi, Who Seek Alms through the Love of God in the Churches and on the Street Corners of Venice' reveals that these figures - who 'ordinarily have been rich and mostly are cittadini who through some mishap or misfortune have fallen into indigency' - are given the exclusive right to dress in this habit (176).49 Aside from such treatments of the social and legal status of costume, Vecellio's catalogue also in some cases describes the professional /unction of dress and accoutrements, especially among the lower orders: the overalls of the menial house servants, the sacks and ropes of the porters, the baskets (cesti) of the cestarioli (178), the protective overcoat of the galley conscript. In detailing such aspects of the material culture of the proletariat and in defining nuances of the titles and duties of gondoliers, servants, and porters, Vecellio's book complements Garzoni's elucidation of the invisible arts. Despite its coverage of both high and low culture, Vecellio's survey of contemporary Venetian dress and ritual oddly lacks a treatment of artisan professions. Within seven years of the publication of his Habiti, the coronation of a new dogaressa would create an opportunity for a powerful affirmation of artisan culture in a ritual setting. Both the ceremonial mottoes prepared for the celebration itself and the published narrative accounts of this ritual provided settings for composing and publicizing a rhetoric of professional identity for the skilled trades. The Coronation of the Dogaressa Morosina Grimani (4-6 May 1597) Whether centred on religious festivals, political inaugurations, diplomatic receptions, military victories, or commemorations of Venetian history and empire, Venice had a rich ritual tradition that intensified in the course of the sixteenth century. Aside from celebrations responding to immediate political or military events, there were approximately sixteen yearly major (ducal) processions by the later cinquecento. In some cases, even rituals tied to traditional religious moments were turned to specifically Venetian ends - as in the case of the 'marriage of the sea' ceremony at Ascension, in which the doge sailed out to the mouth of the lagoon and, dropping a gold ring in the Adriatic, married Venice to the sea. If this latter ritual, symbolizing Venice's identity and claims as a commercial empire, thus spoke to a fundamental aspect of its economic essence, did other rituals - either in their purpose or structure -

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significantly reveal other apects of its mercantile or industrial nature? Certainly, civic celebrations at times incorporated merchant displays, as evident in the fifteen-day market at Ascension that Vecellio described in which goldsmiths set up booths in Piazza San Marco. Such a practice had its Florentine counterpart in the Feast of St John the Baptist, in which guilds displayed their wares.14 Moreover, 5 5 representatives of the arts on occasion had some place in processions, 1 along with magistrates and clerics (athough professional distinctions may have been at the same time obscured by the ritual presence as well of members of the Scuole Grandi, major confraternities that clustered different/ professions). But to what degree were Venetian rituals expressly structured around occupational roles? In the case of the coronation of the doge, there was some ritual specificity - and presumably symbolism - in having the doge carried on the shoulders of Arsenal workers into Piazza San Marco, where he would throw gold coins to the crowd. Such a ceremony, more than drawing upon the literal strength of this, the state's largest workforce, presumably also implicitly commemorated the centrality of this leading industry to the state. Rut of all Venetian rituals, only one systematically focused on the art> and their relationship to the polity and its leaders: the coronation ot a new dogaressa.11 In a description ot festivals in the section 'On the Dress, Customs, and Habits ot the City' in his Yenetia, Sansovino seeks to provide a record for posterity ot this r i t u a l , which, he argues, had lapsed for a century but was resurrected in his lifetime in the 1557 crowning of Zilia Dandola, wife of Lorenzo Pruili. 1 ' Because ot the hiatus in the ceremony, Sansovino argues, the details of the r i t u a l were obscure, but the general understanding from the past was 'that the pnncipessa and the doge should at their elevation have a banquet with the arts, who were obliged in this event to show their happiness with various demonstrations' (410). The resulting ceremony in 1557 proved to be more than a ritual ot mutual courtesy between artisans (as a class) and the ducal family. Instead, it was a rite that not only isolated individual arts but also symbolically reified the interpenetration of the arts and the Venetian state. Before the significance of the elaborate 1597 ceremony can be understood, the precedent of this 1557 enactment must be briefly sketched. The three-day celebration began in the evening at 8:00 (on 18 September 1557) when the Signoria 58 together with sixty senators, who had been convened in the Sala del Principe in the Ducal Palace, proceeded to the Campanile and then to the Beccaria (the meat market) in the Piazzetta. There appropriately the butchers had made an elaborate arch - decorated with images of 'two great butcher knives as an insignia' and 'with the arms of the doge and dogaressa50 9 and a wooden bridge from the Molo to the Bucintoro,

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the ducal ceremonial boat. Boarding the Bucintoro, this delegation sailed to the home of the doge's brother (who was also a procurator of San Marco), where they were met by the dogaressa, who presented token bags of gold to the counsellors and to the grand chancellor. All the while, the Grand Canal was the site of a regatta as well as a parade of 'armed palaschermi on which danced to the sound of fifes all the arts that were there, among which was the palaschermo of the goldsmiths that had with it fourteen gondolas covered with crimson damask.'60 Then the boats of the arts arrived at the Molo, where the castaldi (stewards) of the arts and their companions walked under the butchers' trimphal arch and throughout the Piazza, followed by a procession of 'each art in order, with unfurled standards to the sound of trumpets, drums, and other musical instruments, with mace-bearers in front, and with the oldest men two by two dressed in long velvet, damask, and satin.6 1 Following this procession of 'all the arts,' a modified version of a ducal procession began with the return of the Bucintoro with the dogaressa and her party: heralds and squires of the doge, 235 'young ladies' (gentildonne giovani), 21 matrons (including the wife of one of the procurators of San Marco), secretaries and the grand chancellor, relatives of the doge, the dogaressa flanked by two counsellors and followed by her brother and a procurator, senators, and relatives of the dogaressa. Presumably so as not to detract from the dogaressa on her occasion, the doge at this point was absent, as were many of the political officials routinely included in ducal processions - their place being taken, appropriately enough, by the dogaressa's many female companions.6 2 When this procession reached the basilica of San Marco, there was a ceremony inside in which the dogaressa gave to the canons of the Church a purse of 100 ducats, her tribute to the Church to match her earlier tribute to the State (presented to the counsellors at her brother's house). Exiting the church, the dogaressa's party then climbed the Scala Foscara,63 and thereupon began a series of encounters with representatives of the arts who had been assigned particular offices in the Ducal Palace. More than the appearance of the artisan ships in the Grand Canal, more than the procession of the arts in the Piazza, it is this phase of the ceremony held inside the government offices of the Palace that symbolized the full political integration of the Venetian arts and the Venetian state. Office after office had been assigned to one or more of the arts to decorate in honour of the dogaressa, and these displays included confections and wine that had earlier been supplied to the arts by the doge. The dogaressa first encountered the castaldo of the barbers and his companions, who invited her to partake of the refreshments in their display, but she declined, saying that she had others to visit. She exchanged the same courtesies with the castaldo

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and companions of the nearby goldsmiths. And so on, the dogaressa encountered the tailors in the Office of Petition; the shoemakers in the Office of the Examiner; the drapers in the Office of Foreign Holdings (del Forestiero); the furriers in the passage between that office and the Office of Small Claims (del Mobile); the coppersmiths in the latter office; the armourers in the Office of the Procurator; the painters in the passage between that office and the Office of the New Auditors; the dyers in the Office of Hidden or Unclaimed Assets (de i Cathaveri); the weavers in the Office of the 'Signori di Notte al Criminale' (a lower-level judicial magistracy); the carpenters, smiths, masons, and stonecutters together in the Sala del Piovego (usurious or improper contracts); the bombardiers in the Office of the Newest Auditors; the furriers in the Office 'del Proprio' (dowries, wills, etc.); the bakers near the Office of Crops; and the glassmakers at the foot of the stairs leading to the Great Council Hall. In enumerating this itinerary, Sansovino obviously is on one level simply charting the course of the ritual, but at another level is also perhaps conveying how the ritual reifies the bureaucracy of the state and symbolically connects individual artisan constituents with that bureaucracy. Sansovino's decision to enumerate this less dramatic (because less visible) part of the ceremony was not an obvious one. In 1597, probably inspired by that year's enactment of a dogaressa coronation (and the attendant published accounts), Cregono Marcello's account of the 1557 ritual was belatedly published. And although Marcello chose to enumerate the order of the arts in the earlier procession through the Piazza, he did not describe in detail the dogaressa's progress through the offices of the Palazzo. Sansovino's more thorough account of this part of the ceremony has rhetorical significance and likely inspired the similarly detailed accounts forty years later in the case of the 1597 ritual. Finally, the evening celebration culminated in the Grand Council Hall, where high political officials as well as the young ladies had gathered. Here, after parading through the Corte of the Palace and through the Piazza, 360 of the 'huommi piu nobili dell'arti' bearing confections on silver trays returned to serve their refreshments. This was followed by dancing, a banquet, and ther more dancing until daybreak. The following days saw bull hunts staged by the butchers in the Palace courtyard, dancing in the Palace loggias, various regattas, and parades 'of all the arts armed with insignia and unfurled standards parading through the Piazza, the Palace, and city many times.'70 On the last day the doge walked through the Palace and thanked the castaldi of the arts for their efforts. In a host of ways, this ritual honouring the dogaressa is also one celebrating the lower arts. True, the recognition of these arts in the coronation of the

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dogaressa rather than the doge suggests a secondary status relative to the learned arts. Still, the staging and description of this ritual allowed for various public displays of professional grandeur. This was true in the show of the artisans' boats on the Grand Canal, in their triumphal procession under the butchers' arch and throughout Piazza San Marco on the first day (and in their repeated parades the subsequent two days), and in their decoration of the offices of state. Moreover, these occasions offered an opportunity for the display of insignia or other symbols of public representation. Thus, the butchers graced their ducal triumphal arch with images of butcher knives alongside the arms of the doge and dogaressa. Though often only generically mentioning the arts' displays of their insignia, flags, or arms, in some cases Sansovino is specific. In his descripton of the arts' decoration of various offices, he at times mentions identifying religious symbols or patron saints: the furriers' Paschal Lamb, the dyers' Saint Joseph, the bombardiers' Saint Barbara. In most instances, the decorations of the office included lavish tapestries (depicting such figures) or objects of gold and silver. In some cases the tapestries bespoke the products of particular artisans (e.g., the drapers, dyers, silk weavers), and in one case the precious-metal decoration was explicitly identified by Sansovino as an artisan emblem: in the display of the goldsmiths, which included 'una ricca credenza d'argenti per insegna.7 2 In some displays, decorations also included other specific artisan products or tools: the room of the coppersmiths included 'two gimlets of engraved copper, and one ... in gold' and that of the armourers an exhibit of 'various arms'; the room of the carpenters, smiths, masons, and stonecutters was described as 'decorated with costly tools.7 3 Thus, aside from their function as welcoming decorations in honour of the dogaressa's coronation, such displays at times also proclaimed the attributes of the arts themselves. Whatever had been the exact nature of the celebration of this ritual in earlier Venetian history, by the mid-sixteenth century it had certainly become an opportunity for artisan pomp, whether in the Grand Canal, Piazza San Marco, or the Palazzo Ducale. In the last setting — in the political offices - the ceremony intimates the role of these arts in providing for and beautifying the state. Forty years later, this implicit 'ritual rhetoric' of the lower arts' identity and function would be complemented as well by an explicit emblem rhetoric of profession. When the dogaressa ritual was next staged in 1597,74 Sansovino's example seems to have assured that it too would have careful recorders. Within ten days of the three-day ceremony, Giovanni Rota published a lengthy (fiftyfive-page) Lettera nella quale si describe I'ingresso nel palazzo ducale della serenissima Morosina Morosini Grimani prencipessa di Vinetia.75 There also appeared that same year a shorter Online et modo tenuto mil'incoronatione della serenis-

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sima Moresina Grimani dogaressa di Venetia by Monsignor Dario Tutio.76 Thirdly, Giovanni Stringa, Sansovino's continuator in the Venetia, appended to Sansovino's description of the 1557 coronation an account of the 1597 ritual that is basically a condensation of Rota's treatment, of which he makes mention." Together these accounts reveal how in some ways Sansovino's account of 1557 did provide a template for a very similar ceremony in 1597. There were, however, some notable differences. In the first place some of the popular elements of the '57 celebration seem to have been eliminated. In their accounts both Sansovino and Gregorio Marcello describe bull hunts held in the courtyard of the Palace and in Piazza San Marco during the second and third days of the celebration. There is no mention of these hunts in the accounts of the '97 ritual, and even the dancing on the second day, in which 'in the presence of the principessa and her relatives and in the loggias all the arts danced,' seems to be confined in '97 to the dogaressa's party of 'Gentildonne' and 'Gentilhuomini' in the Great Council Hall. In the second place and perhaps of a piece with this partial depopularizing of the celebration the 1 597 ritual makes considerable use of Latin emblems and mottoes. In his description of Zilia Dandola's crowning, Sansovino mentions only one Latin inscription: namely in the displays of the painters, which contained a 'breve, che diceva Pictores.'80 All three of the accounts of the '97 ritual abound with Latin inscriptions punctuating various events or displays. There could be several explanations for this Latinizing of the ceremony. After the '57 coronation, which Sansovino claimed was something of a challenging revival of a vaguely remembered ritual, there may have been a concern to further regularize and elevate the ceremony as part of the majestic public life of the city. Perhaps as well, in this context, the more formal and elaborate ceremony was simply the natural development of a larger pattern of growing ritualism that characterized the sixteenth century. But the very formalizing of the ceremony may have had another motive as well. Both in Stringa's and Rota's accounts references are made to officials or individuals responsible for the celebration: whether the forty noble figures who are delegated to oversee the ceremony on behalf of the College (the body supervising rituals); or the master of ceremonies Salustio Gnechi (or Gnicchi);8 2 or figures cited as the iconographic designers of certain displays. Perhaps, then, the 1597 incarnation of the festival was partly an attempt to seize greater control over a ceremony potentially left too much in the hands of the arts themselves. But this intervention need not be seen completely as a blanket usurpation of the ceremony by the state elite, but in part as a collaboration between the learned and unlearned professions. The decoration of the butchers' triumphal arch is a case in point. In his account of the 1557 celebration Sansovino pre-

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sents only a brief description of this arch as having images of Saint Mark, two huge butcher knives, the arms of the doge and his wife, four virtues and four giants, and a heading reading 'Viva San Marco.'84 As described by Stringa, this arch is considerably classicized in the 1597 ritual with an elaborate iconography of Neptune, Ops ('depicted in the guise that the Ancients depicted her'), a rampant lion, Jove, Minerva, and the four virtues of Justice, Clemency, Equity, and Munificence, all accompanied with Latin inscriptions and a dedicatory statement indicating that the arch had been erected by the 'Societas Laniorum.'85 In his account Rota credits this display to a Bernardo Fogari 'a minatore publico' and, more importantly, to Athlio Facio, an 'advocate' who 'being a defender [difensore] of these butchers, and very expert in architecture and greatly versed in history, found most beautiful inventions of pictures, mottoes, and figures to adorn and beautify the arch.' Whether literally or only figuratively their 'defender,' this lawyer clearly is identified as an associate or patron of the butchers in particular. The displays in this ritual then should be seen as projects in which elite and popular professionals are linked, the former speaking (in Latin) for the latter, often attempting to portray the arts in the most classicizing, dignified light. Possibly, such interchange between high and low professions for events was partly fostered by the social and occupational juxtapositions occasioned by the Scuole Grandi. Aside from the encroachment of the state and the cooperation of the learned, the strongly Latinate character of the '97 ritual - and particularly the Latin mottoes associated with the arts — may also be partly a product of the sixteenth-century fascination with emblems. Though obviously having classical roots and a strong tradition in feudal heraldry, emblem culture seems to have proliferated in Italy beginning in the late quattrocento and cinquecento. Between 1555 and 1561 three treatises appeared on the subject from Paolo Giovio, Ludovico Domenichi (the joke collector, and translator of Agrippa and Pliny), and Gabriello Simeoni. Giovio suggests that it was the influence of the French (beginning with the invasions of Charles VIII and Louis XII) that spawned in Italy a rage for emblems among military figures.8 8 But from princely and military figures, the vogue quickly spread to a much wider population, including non-nobles as well as nobles, clerics as well as laymen, females as well as males, academies as well as individuals. Moreover, emblem themes ranged from military, amatory, and moral topics, to literary and even quasi-professional ones.90 When composed by an individual for himself, or composed by a learned acquaintance, mottoes were an important challenge for self-representation - in fact, in his treatise Simeoni argues that dress and emblems are the best way to assess an individual's character.92 In their terseness and ambiguity, mottoes could also be an exercise in sub-

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tlety. In his Ragionamento Domenichi discusses how they were sometimes drawn from classical loci (or, for instance, from a line of Petrarch) and sometimes invented, though he himself prefers the former challenge of appropriating the apt literary mot for the situation. 93 Whether borrowed or invented, mottoes for oneself or for others could be something of intellectual sport. In fact, they were the subject of one of the parlour games in Bargagli's Dialogo de' giuochi of the Sienese Academy of the Intronati, which itself, like other academies, had adopted a motto. Bargagli's Game of Emblems challenges players to devise a personal emblem (as for a joust or tournament) that is not too abstruse, nor yet so transparent that anyone could understand - an emblem, moreover, that cannot be understood solely by the image nor solely by the motto. Such rules indicate that creating subtle mottoes could be as much a challenge as interpreting them, a challenge illustrated by the speculative readings sometimes proffered in emblem treatises. This culture of emblems, initially arising in the context of ritual displays of personal identity, likely now was an influence in ritual displays of corporate identity in Venice's celebration of the dogaressa and the arts of the state. Given the Latinate character of the entire ritual and given the explicit references to ceremonial functionaries and iconographers in the accounts, it is most likely that these mottoes celebrating the arts were largely the product of noble or learned associates - even if there might have been some degree of collaboration with artisans themselves. Sometimes drawing on classical loci, sometimes crafting new Latin phrases, these mottoes at times displayed the terse ambiguity of the personal or institutional mottoes found in emblem books. In fact, the scripting of these mottoes for the lower arts may have drawn upon the same middlebrow cultural energies as those envisioned in Bargagli's Game of the Emblems. Now to the 1 5e)7 ritual itself. The general structure of the ceremony largely follows the pattern of 1557, though the accounts suggest there is a greater degree of explicit state orchestration: namely, in the issuing of an official resolution concerning the ritual; in the dogaressa's invitation of 400 female companions; in the doge's charge to the stewards of the arts that, as 'through ancient custom,' they are to decorate the Palazzo Ducale and to accompany the Bucintoro with their own bergantini ('medium-sized boats decorated in the guise of small galleys or ships'); in the appointment of forty 'nobles' to oversee the ceremony.' ' Moreover, in two accounts the doge's charge to the arts is met with a plea for exemption by the poorer arts.97 As the latter exemption illustrates, the 1 597 celebration drew more attention to distinctions among the arts themselves. Sansovino's account of '57 conveyed some degree of hierarchy in its mention of the palaschermo of the goldsmiths attended by fourteen

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gondolas, but accounts of the '97 procession on the Grand Canal (see Figure 4)98 reveal an even more specific sense of priority enjoyed by certain arts. Tutio suggests all the arts vied for the right of their own bergantino to carry the Fano (lantern) and that a drawing by lot gave this 'preeminence' to the silk weavers, goldsmiths, middlemen, and fustian cloth dealers. Rota's account also reports that the bergantini of these four arts preceded the Bucintoro while those of the other arts followed it, but he suggests that the ships of three of these arts (silk weavers, fustian cloth dealers, and middlemen) 'preceded the others, not so much for their beauty and grandeur, as because the arts that had them made had their o