THE HUMANIST'S LIBRARY
Edited by Lewis Einstein
VIII
GALATEO
OF MANNERS AND
BEHAVIOURS
A
RENAISSANCE
COURTESY-BOOK
GALATEO
OF MANNERS & BEHAVIOURS
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
LONDON
Copyright, 1914, by D. B. Updike
A TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Introduction | ix |
| The Dedication | 3 |
| Commendatory Verses | 6 |
| The Treatise of Master Jhon Della Casa | 13 |
| Bibliographical Note | 121 |
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
One day, in Rome, about the middle of thesixteenth century, the Bishop of Sessa suggestedto the Archbishop of Beneventothat he write a treatise on good manners. Manybooks had touched the subject on one or moreof its sides, but no single book had attemptedto formulate the whole code of refined conductfor their time and indeed for all time. And whocould deal with the subject more exquisitelythan the Archbishop of Benevento? As a scionof two distinguished Florentine families (his motherwas a Tornabuoni), as an eminent prelateand diplomatist, an accomplished poet and orator,a master of Tuscan prose, a frequenter of all thefashionable circles of his day, the author of licentiouscapitoli, and more especially as one whosemorals were distinctly not above reproach, heseemed eminently fitted for the office of arbiterelegantiarum.
So it was that some years later, in disfavour withthe new Pope, and in the retirement of his townhouse in Venice and his villa in the Marca Trivigiana,with a gallant company of gentlemenand ladies to share his enforced but charmingleisure, the Archbishop composed the little bookxthat had been suggested by the Bishop of Sessa,and that, as a compliment to its "only begetter,"bears as a title his poetic or academic name.
There have been modern scholars who havewondered that so eminent a prela