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  • Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance by Anthony F. D’Elia
  • Costanza Gislon Dopfel
Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance. By Anthony F. D’Elia. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2016. Pp. xii, 355. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-674-08851-1.)

A boon for period scholars and anyone interested in Malatesta history, Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance offers a structured approach to the works of the humanists at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta as well as a comprehensive and impartial representation of a crucial intellectual period. Through Anthony D’Elia’s extensive research, friends, enemies, poets, and artists appear on the court stage—not simply in terms of their functions in relation to Malatesta but on their own terms, as individual scholars. Sigismondo surfaces as the unabashed champion of a resurrected classicism imbued with neo-Platonic philosophy in the burgeoning style of other contemporary intellectual circles, including that of Cosimo de’ Medici. The result was a surprisingly sophisticated environment that pushed the boundaries of philosophy and theology ahead of its time, offering an outstanding target for Pope Pius II’s indignation with an intellectual trend that possibly threatened the Christian faith. Condemned to eternal damnation by Pius in what D’Elia calls a “reverse canonization” (p. 1), Sigismondo’s downfall was made an example for a whole world to behold.

The title is indicative of the underlying question: was Sigismondo truly a pagan, or was he a devout Christian whose faith was simply cloaked in classical equivalents? D’Elia integrates an analysis of the notorious artwork of the Tempio Malatestiano with a thorough inquiry of the lesser known court literature, which sheds new light on the purpose of both. With comparisons to Odysseus and Achilles, Sigismondo assumes a superhuman character in the works of his poets Porcellio and Basinio, whereas Valturio, the chronicler Broglio, and even the friar de’ Cocchi depict a man immersed in pagan thought and religion, who loved to discuss platonic philosophy and the nature of the soul.

Famous for his daring courage, handsome looks, and intellectual curiosity, the real Sigismondo was indeed a larger-than-life character, who could inspire both terror and worship. The move from man to god, or at least to extraordinary fiend, was therefore not out of reach, and Pius’s reaction can be understood, if not explained. As D’Elia concedes, Pius II was right in the sense that “much of the literature at Sigismondo’s court was so contaminated with paganism and implicated in his military exploits that it could be deemed heretical” (p. 183).

The authority allowed by a pagan morality, which validates all actions for the sake of immortal fame, justifies Sigismondo in ways impossible within a Christian [End Page 604] viewpoint. In this context, the violent heroes of the battlefield and the reckless pursuers of knowledge are equally destined for the Elysian Fields and Apollo’s wreath—and Sigismondo doubly so, as he represents both virtues. Indeed, behind the pagan image cultivated by court poets lurks a progressive political idea: Sigismondo is the ante litteram figure of the Prince: terrible, grand, and godlike in his divine task to save Italy from foreign invaders. As D’Elia explains, “Basinio’s Hesperis is outlandishly nationalistic. Its very name, Hesperis, is an ancient word for Italy” (p. 117).

Paganism also justifies the relationship between Sigismondo and the young Isotta, whose beauty was celebrated in medals and poems even while Sigismondo’s second wife was still living. The poems by Basinio and Porcellio elevate the girl to goddess through the device of an imaginary death, which should, but does not, lessen the sexually charged character of the relationship. Her very tomb, D’Elia notes, was inscribed with the date of the consummation of their affair.

Rooted in the foundation of humanistic paideia, Sigismondo emerges as the mind behind the cultural plan that brought together a revival of classical art, poetry, and philosophy. But although the contamination of Christian ideas allowed a pagan culture to flourish, the agents of such transformation did not necessarily view themselves as pagans. And yet...

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