The prince's library
In the epistle to Henry VII King of England, written in 1508 the day after the death of the Duke of Urbino Guidubaldo di Montefeltro, and dedicated to his commemoration, a considerable portion of the text is dedicated to celebrating the remarkable culture of the dead man, and his special dedication to the study of Greek language and literature. From the point of view of Castiglione, the library of Guidubaldo, starting from his passionate predilection for classical authors, was as the library of a prince should be, a place dedicated to education and the exercise of spiritual and intellectual virtues.
The letter to the English sovereign contained a monographic development of Guidubaldo’s humanist culture, of which only a limited mention remains in Cortegiano: Guidubaldo is the “dottissimo nell’una e nell’altra lingua” (well versed in the one and the other language) prince, in Greek and Latin, and he affably and pleasantly dropped in to various moments of conversation, “la cognizione d’infinite cose” (the knowledge of infinite things) (B. Castiglione, Il Cortigiano, edited by A. Quondam, Milan 2002, I, 16). Castiglione is keen to demonstrate, in both cases, the political and civil utility of culture: the books and library were, from his point of view, the new weapons of the prince who privileged the road of diplomacy over that of war.
Guidubaldo represented for Castiglione the model of the ideal sovereign: inclined, as well as to the exercise of arms, to the assiduous reading of ancient writers. From his own books he gleans the strength of genius and the ideals that along with it must be pursued. Guidubaldo was a humanist prince, and his readings were those prescribed for every gentleman: Virgil and Homer, Cicero, the historians (Livy and Tacitus), Pliny, Plutarch and Lucian, Tolomeus and Strabone, and lastly, above all, Xenofont. To the prince and perfect courtier, therefore, are more suited not so much the tales of poets, that agitate and excite fantasy, but books of science and moral philosophy, useful for anyone called upon to take part in public affairs and the wellbeing of civil society.
