The author of a physiognomical treatise, Bartolommeo Cocle, who styled himself a 'metoposcopist,' and whose science, according to Giovio, seemed like one of the most respectable of the free arts, was not content with the prophecies which he made to the many people who daily consulted him, but wrote also a most serious 'catalogue of such whom great dangers to life were awaiting.' Giovio, although grown old in the free thought of Rome 'in hac luce romana'--is of opinion that the predictions contained therein had only too much truth in them We learn from the same source how the people aimed at in these and similar prophecies took vengeance on a seer.Giovanni Bentivoglio caused Lucas Gauricus to be five times swung to and fro against the wall, on a rope hanging from a lofty, winding staircase, because Lucas had foretold to him the loss of his authority.Ermes Bentivoglio sent an assassin after Cocle, because the unlucky metopOscopist had unwillingly prophesied to him that he would die an exile in battle.The murderer seems to have derided the dying man in his last moments, saying that Cocle himself had foretold him he would shortly commit an infamous murder.The reviver of chiromancy, Antioco Tiberto of Cesena, came by an equally miserable end at the hands of Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini, to whom he had prophesied the worst that a tyrant can imagine, namely, death in exile and in the most grievous poverty.Tiberto was a man of intelligence, who was supposed to give his answers less according to any methodical chiromancy than by means of his shrewd knowledge of mankind; and his high culture won for him the respect of those scholars who thought little of his divination.
Alchemy, in conclusion, which is not mentioned in antiquity till quite late under Diocletian, played only a very subordinate part at the best period of the Renaissance.Italy went through the disease earlier, when Petrarch in the fourteenth century confessed, in his polemic against it, that gold-making was a general practice.Since then that particular kind of faith, devotion, and isolation which the practice of alchemy required became more and more rare in Italy, just when Italian and other adepts began to make their full profit out of the great lords in the North.Under Leo X the few Italians who busied themselves with it were called 'ingenia curiosa,' and Aurelio Augurelli, who dedicated to Leo X, the great despiser of gold, his didactic poem on the making of the metal, is said to have received in return a beautiful but empty purse.The mystic science which besides gold sought for the omnipotent philosopher's stone, is a late northern growth, which had its rise in the theories of Paracelsus and others.
General Spirit of Doubt With these superstitions, as with ancient modes of thought generally, the decline in the belief of immortality stands in the closest connection.This questiOn has the widest and deepest relations with the whole development of the modern spirit.
One great source of doubt in immortality was the inward wish to be under no obligations to the hated Church.We have seen that the Church branded those who thus felt as Epicureans.In the hour of death many doubtless called for the sacraments, but multitudes during their whole lives, and especially during their most vigorous years, lived and acted on the negative supposition.That unbelief on this particular point must often have led to a general skepticism, is evident of itself, and is attested by abundant historical proof.These are the men of whom Ariosto says: 'Their faith goes no higher than the roof.' In Italy, and especially in Florence, it was possible to live as an open and notorious unbeliever, if a man only refrained from direct acts of hostility against the Church.The confessor, for instance, who was sent to prepare a political offender for death, began by inquiring whether the prisoner was a believer, 'for there was a false report that he had no belief at all.'
The unhappy transgressor here referred to--the same Pierpaolo Boscoli who has been already mentioned--who in 1513 took part in an attempt against the newly restored family of the Medici, is a faithful mirror of the religious confusion then prevalent.Beginning as a partisan of Savonarola, he became afterwards possessed with an enthusiasm for the ancient ideals of liberty, and for paganism in general; but when he was in prison his early friends regained the control of his mind, and secured for him what they considered a pious ending.The tender witness and narrator of his last hours is one of the artistic family of the Della Robbia, the learned philologist Luca.'Ah,' sighs Boscoli, 'get Brutus out of my head for me, that I may go my way as a Christian.' 'If you will,' answers Luca, 'the thing is not difficult; for you know that these deeds of the Romans are not handed down to us as they were, but idealized (con arte accresciute).' The penitent now forces his understanding to believe, and bewails his inability to believe voluntarily.If he could only live for a month with pious monks he would truly become spiritually minded.It comes out that these partisans of Savonarola knew their Bible very imperfectly; Boscoli can only say the Paternoster and Ave Maria, and earnestly begs Luca to exhort his friends to study the sacred writings, for only what a man has learned in life does he possess in death.Luca then reads and explains to him the story of the Passion according to the Gospel of St.
