profession, are not bound by the laws." Cellini had
committed a murder. He committed several others, to say nothing of minor
crimes. After he escaped from St. Angelo, he was in the hands and under
the protection of Cardinal Cornaro. The pope, Clement VII, wanted to get
possession of him and Cornaro wanted a bishopric for a friend, so the
pope and cardinal made a bargain and Cellini was surrendered.[2253]
"Italian society admired the bravo almost as much as imperial Rome
admired the gladiator. It also assumed that genius combined with force
of character released men from the shackles of ordinary morality."[2254]
Cellini was a specimen man of his age. He kept religion and morality far
separated from each other.[2255] Varchi wrote a sonnet on him which is
false in fact and in form, and displays the technical and conventional
insincerity of the age.[2256] The augmentative form of the name
Lorenzaccio expresses the notion that he was great, awful, and
wicked.[2257] His biographer says that he was a "mattoid."[2258] He
missed success because his antagonists were stronger than he, but his
career was typical of the age. He was in part a victim of the classical
suggestion. He expected to be glorified as a tyrannicide. This taste for
the imaginative element was an important feature in the Italian
Renaissance and helped to make it theatrical and untrue. "In gratifying
his thirst for vengeance [the Italian] was never contented with mere
murder. To obtain a personal triumph at the expense of his enemy by the
display of superior cunning, by rendering him ridiculous, by exposing
him to mental as well as physical anguish, by wounding him through his
affections or his sense of honor, was the end which he pursued."[2259]
"However profligate the people might have been, they were not contented
with grossness unless seasoned with wit. The same excitement of the
fancy rendered the exercise of ingenuity, or the avoidance of peril, an
enhancement of pleasure to the Italians. This is perhaps the reason why
all the imaginative compositions of the Renaissance, especially the
_novellae_, turn upon adultery."[2260] The false standards, aims, codes,
and doctrines required this play of the fantasy to make them seem worth
while. The fantastic element gave all the zest. When the mediaeval
imaginative element failed the classical learning furnished a new one
with suggestions, examples for imitation, and unlimited maxims and
doctrines. Hence the passions b