The Artes and the Ars moriendi in late renaissance Venice: the professions in Fabio Glissenti's 'Discorsi morali contra il dispiacer del morire, detto Athanatophilia' (1596).

In 1596 the physician Fabio Glissenti published a voluminous treatise on the psychology of death set in his contemporary Venice. As a persuasion to the acceptance of death, the Moral Discourses Against the Displeasure of Dying was rooted not only in the Platonic tradition but also in the more recent traditions of the ars moriendi and the danse macabre.(1) Running to nearly 600 folios, Glissenti's book is almost certainly the longest lay treatise on death to come out of Renaissance Italy.(2) And though important in itself as a major humanistic treatment of death in the vernacular, the Discorsi morali has an unusual significance that lies not so much in its patent purpose - to recommend death - but rather in its countervailing undercurrent - to probe the psychology of work. In describing the revolt against the prospect of death that permeates virtually all of society, Glissenti presents dialogues among interlocutors drawn from the gamut of professional types in Venice, including among others a Philosopher, Courtier, Captain, Farmer, Butcher, Servant, Beggar, Lawyer, Gondolier, and Actress. Interspersed with novellas, these discussions often depict the universal flight from death (the Athanatophilia) and the persistent neglect of the true "art of living and dying" as owing to a too-avid investment in work and the artes of making a living. In detailed testimonials of professional art or pride (even of beggars), in defiant assertions of professional joys (even of servants), in spirited exchanges concerning professional morality, and in Dantesque catalogues of punishments for professional sins, the Discorsi is suffused with a professional ethos that can teach us much about moral and psychological attitudes toward work in early modern culture.

This pervasive professional theme suggests that the Discorsi must be viewed in the context of another tradition: the Renaissance debate on work. Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century with Petrarch's and Boccaccio's attacks on law and medicine (in light of their own choice of letters), this discussion was taken up by Coluccio Salutati in his De nobilitate legum et medicine and expanded in the next century with numerous writings assessing the professions from various intellectual, moral, and social viewpoints.(3) This Trecento and Quattrocento debate, largely waged in Latin, continued into the Cinquecento in the vernacular - a transformation signaling not merely Latin's yielding to the volgare but also the democratizing of the rhetoric of vocation. Appraisals of the professions of high culture were increasingly joined by assessments of the professions of middle and low culture as well.

With its vibrant press, Venice not surprisingly emerged as the Italian center for this sixteenth-century literature on profession, which culminated in Tomaso Garzoni's La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (1585).(4) A 958-page encyclopedia of 155 categories of professions high and low, this collection surveyed the likes of kings and courtiers, philosophers and poets, clerics and theologians, lawyers and physicians, merchants and artisans, servants and grave-diggers, procurers and thieves. And whether as promotional propaganda for the arts or as expose - because the treatise both praised and castigated the professions - the Piazza universale was enormously popular. By the mid-1590s Garzoni's book was in its seventh Venetian edition, and its impact on Glissenti's Discorsi morali is unmistakable. Indeed, it is a measure of the professional mentalite of late Renaissance culture that the rhetoric of profession would intrude so fully into the realm of death.

Little is known of Fabio Glissenti. Born in Vestone in Brescia, he followed his father into the medical profession, establishing a successful practice in Venice.(5) He published at least eighteen works, many of which were vernacular "moral fables" similar to the novellas found in the Discorsi morali. Like many physicians of his time Glissenti had philosophical training and interests attending his medical studies, and consequently he also published Latin commentaries on Aristotle, Porphyry, and Gilbert of Poitiers.(6) Pitched to a middlebrow audience, the Discorsi reflects a blending of learned and volgare traditions, not only drawing upon such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Ficino, and Pico, but also abounding with the verse of Dante, Petrarch, Boiardo, Tasso, and Ariosto.(7) With his grounding in both of the cultural idioms of his day and with his career in a public profession (presumably exposing him to patients both schooled and unschooled), Glissenti was well-situated as an intermediary between high and low culture.

A response to his sister's request for a literary piece, the Discorsi appears to be Glissenti's first foray into the world of letters. A potpourri of dialogues and morality tales, the treatise aims to be an improving and entertaining conduct book "in which it is shown how reasonably death ought to be desired and how naturally it tends to be red,"(8) more broadly offering guidance in the "practice of living well and dying well."(9) With his focus on the acceptance of death, Glissenti implicitly promises the reader a regimen akin to that of Socrates, whose discourse in the Phaedo was the most thorough and influential classical treatment of death.(10) More immediately, however, Glissenti is indebted to the latter-day tradition of the ars moriendi, a genre that emerged in the fifteenth century, most likely growing out of the De scientia mortis of the Parisian theologian Jean Gerson. An illustrated Ars moriendi (c. 1450) and a longer, also anonymous Tractatus de arte et scientia bene moriendi offered a regimen for the dying in the last hours, warning of spiritual temptations (e.g., to faithlessness, despair, impatience) and prescribing remedies and prayers.(11) In Italy printed versions of the Ars moriendi began to appear in the later fifteenth century,(12) and ensuing clerical elaborations of the genre from Pietro Barozzi, Savonarola, and Pietro da Lucca were joined by lay works such as Bartolomeo Arnigio's Discorso intorno al disprezzo della morte (Padua, 1575) and Giulio Claro's Ammaestramenti sopra il ben vivere e il ben morire (Florence, 1582).(13) Glissenti's Discorsi was in the general tradition of such treatments of death, and in fact its title may well have been inspired by Arnigio's Paduan work.(14) And though ending with an actual "Della pratica del ben morire,"(15) Glissenti's work is in fact a much broader and more secular treatment of the psychology of death - one which, moreover, truly fulfills its promise to treat the ars vivendi as well as the ars moriendi.(16)

Glissenti's book must also be seen in the tradition of the more forbidding danse macabre, an artistic and literary motif that flowered throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Traced to the thirteenth-century Italian i tre vivi e i tre morti, the danse depicted Death's encounter with individuals of various walks of life, pairing images of Death's harvest with brief verse exchanges between Death and his victims. Guyot Marchant's editions of the mid-1480s gave currency to the term "danse macabre," his 1485 Danse depicting thirty "types" divided almost equally between clerical and lay figures) and an expanded edition in 1486 surveying seventy-four types (including those in an accompanying Danse macabre des femmes).(17) The verse exchanges in Marchant's Danse tend to underscore the futility of high position, wealth, and fame - and in some cases, the futility of craft (as the doctor his lore, and the astrologer his predictions). In 1538 in Lyon, the Trechsel press first published a full edition of the most famous danse in Les simulachres et historiees faces de la Mort, which featured woodcuts following Holbein's designs (1523-26). This work included not only biblical passages with verse elaborations accompanying the forty-one images of death, but also several spiritual and consolatory pieces on the preparation for death.(18) In the following decade Italian and Latin versions of this work appeared in Venice with newly designed woodcuts after Holbein, twenty-six of which were later to be found among the cycle of 117 plates adorning Glissenti's Discorsi.(19) And while it is likely that the publisher Domenico Farri oversaw the production of the plates in the Discorsi, Glissenti himself may also have been indebted to these mid-century Venetian editions of Holbein's Danse.

It is particularly relevant that Holbein's version of the Danse influenced the Discorsi's illustrators and possibly Glissenti himself. In Holbein's cycle the emphasis has shifted from the processional "dance" of Death to a depiction of Death as it intrudes more explicitly into the lives of individuals in their everyday world, becoming an interloper into the professional worlds of a Pope, King, Doctor, Lawyer, Soldier, Farmer, Peddler, and others.(20) Perhaps as a result, the accompanying biblical passages and textual elaborations develop somewhat more than Marchant's Danse the theme of professional sin, a theme Glissenti would develop fully.(21) In both a discrete danse macabre (the fourteenth novella) and throughout the work, Glissenti's text and its engravers greatly develop this motif of grounding Death in the realm of professional experience (see figs. 1 and 2). There is, however, one striking difference between the professional schemes in Holbein's Danse and the Discorsi morali. Whereas Holbein generally followed Marchant's traditional scheme of an almost even mix of clerical and lay archetypes, Glissenti almost completely laicized this program. Not only is the clerical profession confined to minimal treatment,(22) but the laic categories are expanded to embrace a broader segment of the urban third estate of Renaissance Venice, with the addition of philosophers, poets, actresses, servants, gondoliers, and an array of artisans. Glissenti was likely inspired in this by Garzoni's Piazza universale, which itself confined the clergy to but one of 155 professional categories and concomitantly expanded the cultural parameters of the lay professional world.(23) Not only, then, did the Discorsi greatly laicize and further refine the professional theme in the danse, but also, as we shall see, it infused the ars moriendi with a singular professional content.(24)

Organizing his treatise into five days of discussions featuring a "Filosofo" and a "Cortigiano," Glissenti structures his scheme around the five human senses, each signifying a different type of human response toward death. Thus, in the first book - symbolized by "sight," the noblest of senses - the Filosofo and Cortigiano alone discuss death at a lofty philosophical level. The second book - associated with "taste," the most corporeal of senses - finds these two discussing death with laborers, lower artisans, and beggars, figures who, because they are most enslaved to the appetitive, embrace life at any cost and at the most carnal level. In the third book - devoted to "hearing," a sense that imparts reasoning but is potentially deceptive - the two principals engage the more skilled artisans and a Captain, while the fourth book's devotion to "smell," also a potentially unreliable sense, portrays an actress proclaiming her revulsion at death and defending the practice of her craft. In the fifth book and its devotion to "touch," the least deceptive sense, the Philosopher and Courtier speak with a well-educated man on his deathbed, seeing him through to a tranquil end.(25) As dramatist, Glissenti then recasts his five books, complete with Hellenized titles, in a wholly literary scheme, as parts of a tragedy with "noble beginning, festive middle, but unhappy completion and end," in which "Reason, which first speaks to man, constitutes the first act of this human tragedy; Sense, which persuades man, the second; Will, which is inclined to the senses, the third; Human Opinion, which has freely exercised its will, the fourth; and Truth, which is discovered at last in the death of miserable man, the fifth."(26) Rather than merely universalizing Everyman's attitude toward death in this tragedy, however, the Discorsi attempts to particularize varying responses by isolating archetypes from numerous professions, from diverse intellectual and social backgrounds, and from both genders.

More than anything else, professional identity is at the epistemological, psychological, and moral center of this work. At the level of genre, the Discorsi frequently plays upon the analogy between the philosophical or spiritual ars vivendi et moriendi and the practical artes or professions of human society. Glissenti aspires for his treatise to provide "una certa practica di ben vivere, e di ben morire," and whether using the term "practica," "arte" (most commonly), "professione," "essercitio," or "mestiere," he fully explores the tension between philosophical ars and professional artes.(27) There were, of course, some classical and medieval precedents for such language of the philosophical "practice" or moral "art of living and dying." In the Phaedo 67e Socrates urged that philosophers "practice (??) dying," using a term that elsewhere in the Platonic corpus was applied to practice for or training in such arts as building, farming, or carpentry.(28) Roman moral thought enshrined the ideal of an ars vivendi bene et feliciter, and Seneca referred to the "vivendi ac moriendi scientia" (De brevitate vitae 19.2). When the ars moriendi proper emerged in the fifteenth century, its immediate frame of reference could have been the liberal arts of the school curriculum, but perhaps more likely was the applied, practical pursuits of such as the ars dictaminis, ars notaria, and ars praedicandi. With Glissenti, the analogue between the philosophical ars bene vivendi et bene moriendi and the professional artes is brought to its fullest conclusion, one that exhibits perhaps the hitherto most dramatic intrusion of professional culture into this moral realm.(29)

Throughout the treatise Glissenti laments that the art of living and dying well has been eclipsed by the arts of making a living. In the second book, after speaking at length with a Servitor, the Filosofo moves the discussion of servitude from the professional to the moral plane, bewailing the "servitude" to worldliness he finds in all levels of society. He castigates fathers for being preoccupied with the professional rather than moral training of their sons.(30) As soon as their children learn to read, fathers push them into learning an art or science "with which they would be able to acquire riches and worldly goods" (137). Arts are pursued not for themselves, but rather for profit. What is patently true for the mechanical arts is even truer for the liberal ones, where it is difficult to find someone who pursues Law, Medicine, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, or Grammar "virtuously without evil end" (137v).(31) The paternal obsession with training children in the arts for worldly gain has distracted parents from their true responsibility: namely that "fathers ought to teach their children how to live well in order to be able to die well, and not to apply themselves so much to thievish arts or wicked sciences in order to acquire material things or worldly comforts" (137v). Glissenti not only bewails the perversion of the artes themselves by materialism but also laments that this preoccupation has diverted attention from the true art of living and dying well. In fact, the circular implication is that the cultivation of such a philosophical art would teach the dangers of pursuing the traditional arts purely for gain. The further implication of this chapter - that fathers should teach this art of living and dying as they teach their children a trade - is to endow Glissenti's philosophical ars with some of the social properties of the professional artes.(32)

Beyond its genre, the Discorsi's narrative structure and specific thematic content also reflect the tension between philosophical and professional arts. Vocational identity largely determines psychological and epistemological reality in Glissenti's fictive representation of Venetian society. The Filosofo, an archetypal Socratic sage, has complete and sole mastery over the proper attitude toward death. But even he has the philosopher's naivete concerning the nature of his fellow humans, a naivete at times exposed by his constant companion, the cosmopolitan Cortigiano,(33) who mediates between the Philosopher and the real world as the two of them speak with Venetians of all classes and professions. Following their private discussion of the fear of death in Book One, the two venture out of the confines of high culture and begin to encounter representatives of the lower orders.(34) And here, especially in Book Two, Glissenti presents a stunning portrait of the interaction between high and low culture and, in doing so, can lay some claim as a commentator on popular culture.

Traversing the piazzas and the canals, the Filosofo and Cortigiano engage the "baser" sort who, relishing the sensual and the appetitive, cannot be persuaded by Reason (the Filosofo) to renounce Sense.(35) In large part their worldly attachment to life is due to the "satisfactions that beggars, laborers, and other lowly artisans find in their arts and professions" (H6). In colloquies with a Beggar, Servant, Butcher, Fortune-teller, and Gondolier, the Filosofo learns of the many hidden joys and "tricks of the trade" in the professional culture of the lower orders. When he and the Cortigiano meet up with a Beggar who laments his fifteen-year illness and tells of his five children at home, the sympathetic Filosofo flips him a Marcello and asks him whether he would not welcome death. When the "pitiful" Beggar says yes, the Filosofo rejoices to have found a sensible man. But all is not what it seems, and the Cortigiano - a shrewd intermediary in this encounter between high and low culture - derides the Filosofo for knowing more about books than about men, and alerts him to the lying, fraudulent ways of beggars.(36) Forced to confess that he does not want to die immediately, the Beggar launches into a lengthy praise of his profession, detailing the craft and happiness of beggars.(37) Immune to the inconveniences of war, revolution, and taxes, he is a success in his work and lives "a most happy life full of joys and comforts" (81); though unlettered, his guile allows him to trick even the learned. When the stupefied Filosofo comments on his dreadful appearance and complexion, professional pride prompts the Beggar to give up his trade secrets, as he explains how he makes his voice rough, simulates a sickly pallor with make-up, sometimes feigns dropsy or blindness, and sometimes disguises himself as a hermit, pilgrim, or Vergognoso.(38) Changing disguises, the "Protean"(39) Beggar makes numerous passes through the city, after which he meets with other beggars at a secret tavern where they change into civilian clothes and celebrate. His take from these ventures, so he boasts, allows him to eat and live better than the upper classes; no wonder, then, that he does not welcome death. Once the Beggar has explained how he labors "with such shrewdness in this marvelous craft, which well can be called a divine metier," the Filosofo acknowledges that it is indeed a "bellissima arte," which he "never would have thought to have so many ins and outs."(40) Surprised that the Beggar is not what he seemed, and realizing now the truth of the proverb that "Non ti conosco, se non ti maneggio,"(41) the Filosofo is thus enlightened of the "divine," "most beautiful," and intricate craft of beggars.

In this encounter the ironist Glissenti shows how the Filosofo is ignorant of the artes of living, just as his uneducated discussants are ignorant of the ars of dying. In part, then, Glissenti reveals the potential chasm between high and low culture and the challenge involved in the former's truly coming to know something of the latter. As the Philosopher unsuccessfully tries to convey his art in such discussions, the professionals successfully proclaim theirs in abundant detail. And though to a large extent this and other sarcastic praises of craft in Book Two are meant to be exposes of the machinations of the criminal and working class, nonetheless Glissenti also seems fascinated by the "art" or "professionalism" found in the lower orders. In this way he is also suggesting the unrecognized similarities between the learned and unlearned classes, via the common culture of profession. In the case of beggars, Glissenti's discussion in part draws upon the sixteenth-century literature on profession. Garzoni before him devoted a chapter to beggars in the Piazza universale, exposing some of these same tricks of the trade in a manner suggesting direct influence on Glissenti.(42) Garzoni, in turn, was likely inspired by earlier treatments of begging, notably those found in Agrippa von Nettesheim's De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (1526), translated into Italian by Ludovico Domenichi and published in Venice in 1547. In its Faustian portrait of the abuse of the arts, this work treats the likes of beggars, prostitutes, procurers, and ruffians. Agrippa's treatise, which Garzoni plagiarized in places, not only may thus have been an important source for his and Glissenti's "professional" treatment of the criminal class, but also its theme of the hubris of craft may have influenced Glissenti's work at an even broader level.(43)

Glissenti also extends his exploration of the professional craft of the lower orders to more legitimate pursuits in Venetian society. In an exchange with a Servitore, the Filosofo customarily attempts to move the discussion from the practical to the philosophical plane, arguing the elusiveness of both temporal and spiritual freedom in the saeculum. The Servant responds with a paean to the joys of the servant's life in Venice, comparing working conditions here to the "sordido essercitio" undertaken by servants on the mainland (130). Venetian servants by contrast enjoy enormous freedom and exercise an insolent latitude in their behavior, freely quitting a disagreeable padrone at a moment's notice. How, the Filosofo wonders, can they continue to find employers? Because, the Servitore tells him, they are "experts (Dottori) in the art" and realize that, with only five thousand working servants in a city that needs twenty thousand, they are in great demand and can play one padrone off against another with the help of agents who sing their praises. When engaged, the Servant boasts, he is ever free to fob chores off onto others, raid the kitchen, and dally with ladies and friends. When the Filosofo asks how it is that he does not get caught at such antics, the Servant responds with a proverb mocking masters' knowledge of household matters: "Le facende di casa real si sanno,/ E se pur, quando sia, vengan a luce/ Ultimi li padron contezza n'hanno" (131v).(44) Just as the Filosofo and Cortigiano often in the Discorsi cite lines from the likes of Terence, Dante, and Petrarch, so here the Servitore weighs in with the wisdom of oral culture, offering a proverb pertinent to and perhaps even emanating from the professional culture of servants. In a moment resonant with professional mythologizing, the Servant says he could wax at length on "the fables of Servants and our wiles (accortezze)" (130).

Finally, the discovery of the nitty-gritty of "low" work by "high" culture is most elaborately illustrated by the Philosopher's encounter with a Gondolier. Weary from their walk, the aged Filosofo enlists a gondola for himself and his friend, and as they course along the Grand Canal under the Rialto Bridge, he engages the Gondolier in conversation. Impressed by the extraordinary skill of the Gondolier - who says he will accept any fee for the journey - the Filosofo thinks he has finally found a "huomo da bene," an honest man at his work.(45) Even upon learning of the Gondolier's low pay and long hours (including evenings and holidays), the Filosofo hails the Gondolier's life as an ideal one, admittedly requiring hard work and "honest sweat" but free from anxiety and sin (139v-140). At this romanticizing of the profession (in strains perhaps more typically reserved for idyllic praises of rural manual labor), the Gondolier rehearses the miseries of such a livelihood, which he would not wish upon his enemy. When the Filosofo asks why the Gondolier would not therefore embrace death as a welcome release from such travails, the latter confides that his profession also has many hidden "advantages"; indeed, just as he had enlightened the naive Philosopher of his craft's miseries, now he will disclose its secret joys and consolations. As in the case of beggars, servants, and others, the Gondolier reveals an underworld of scams employed by gondoliers to sweeten their lot. During holidays and bad weather they plead for bonuses; they can charge gullible foreigners practically anything; they demand a take when transporting grain, wine, or wood; they share in the repast when their clients eat during the ride; if their charges abuse them they can answer in kind with "parole sporche" and suffer no punishment because their number (10-12,000) makes them invisible to the authorities. The Courtier now derisively asks the Philosopher if he still believes this is a "buono, e santo essercitio" (143). The search for good and holy work again foiled, the crowning touch comes in the Gondolier's explanation of the profits he and others receive by acting as procurers for foreign suitors, receiving a cut of the prostitutes' pay. The Filosofo, now scandalized and disembarking posthaste, has once again received an education in the arcana of popular profession, learning first of hardships to which his romanticizing eyes were blind, and now of subterfuges and unimagined sidelines truly beyond his ken.(46)

As in the case of the beggars, so also in the culture of gondoliers is Glissenti partly indebted to Garzoni's Piazza universale, though he adds much more detail.(47) Most importantly, in each of these encounters with the Beggar, Servant, and Gondolier the Filosofo learns something new of the professional pride, satisfaction, and "craft" of the lower professions. Glissenti reinforces this bold affirmation of common work as "profession" with a calculated sprinkling of phrases that bespeak high or full professional status for such pursuits - thus, the beggars vaunting their "stupendissima professione," "sottilissima arte," "meraviglioso essercitio" as a "mestier di Dio" (83(r-v)), and the servants proclaiming themselves truly "Dottori" in their art. And although Glissenti certainly often intends such sublime characterizations to be ironic praises of the dishonest craft of the proletariat, by describing not only the Gondolier's scams but also his skill and hardships, he perhaps also reveals an interest in understanding and depicting the whole experiential reality of work in the lower orders.(48)

Such a sympathetic interest in popular culture is even more evident in positive appraisals of work to be found in two other encounters in this book. When the Filosofo meets a Castaldo di Villa (who has come into the city for provisions) and rehearses for him the hardships of farm life, the Castaldo responds with a praise of profession that is not merely a sensualist praise of his life - as often the case in other professional praises in this book - but a moral encomium of the country life's freedom from ambition and from the "strepiti della Corte" (89v). A more creative probing of the work of the lower artisans comes in a conversation with a Butcher, speaking for a mass of workers including such figures as chimney sweeps, woodworkers, trash collectors, canal cleaners, and masons - figures who, lacking their own shops, come to a portico on the Piazza San Marco near the Ducal Palace, offering their services to the public.(49) When the Filosofo makes dismissive comments concerning the group, the Cortigiano defends them by saying that "not all of these who live by their labor are vile people, it being possible to find among them some who, noble in mind, have fallen on hard times and, in order not to fall further, have had to live by their sweat" (101). When the Filosofo quizzes the Macellaio why he willingly endures such a life of hardship and demeaning labor,(50) the Butcher reveals some of the unrecognized virtues of such lowly work: unlike those pursuing the "noble arts," he and his cohort can learn their craft in one day; their equipment is simple and portable; lacking a shop and any property to protect from theft, they enjoy an enviable freedom. Thus even this lowliest of urban artisans suggests that he and his ilk have freely chosen their work - "a queste arti vili ci accommodamo piu volontieri" (102) - thereby implicitly revising the Courtier's estimate that such figures were often forced to such labor as a last resort. Glissenti thus has juxtaposed the Filosofo's (highbrow) contempt for such labor first with the Cortigiano's (middlebrow) defense that necessity sometimes forces "noble minds" into such pursuits, and then with the Butcher's (lowbrow) revelation that such work is voluntarily chosen.(51) Here, as in the case of farming, Glissenti's praise of pedestrian work is perhaps not merely a facetious commentary on the anti-intellectualism of the working class but also perhaps partly an attempt to find some plausible psychological ground for the lower professions. Like the dialogues themselves, Glissenti's work thus speaks in many voices, and while the Philosopher's is the most sublime it is also the most naive, while other voices - sensual, yes, but also more commonsensical - proclaim the craft, joy, pride, guile, and pleasure of mean work. In such a strong culture of work, the Filosofo's call for a philosophical ars vivendi et moriendi faces insurmountable odds.

If Book Two deals largely with the lowly pleasures and abuses of work, Book Three considers its higher pleasures and abuses. Treating a relatively more "cerebral" slice of society, this book examines the willful misuse of free will to choose the sensual over the rational and the worldly over the spiritual. The interlocutors range from higher artisans to a Captain, the topics from professional malfeasance to professional happiness. Once again, whether the colloquies concern sin and death or success and happiness, professional identity and behavior are Glissenti's principal frame for discussing spiritual and psychological experience. For instance, in an early chapter the Filosofo discusses the "end for which man is born" (162) with various "artigiani" (e.g., cobblers, tailors, notaries, pharmacists), arguing the theological point that those who live ungrateful to their maker deserve to die. When some of the "artisans" reply that if they do not intend to persevere in a state of sinful ingratitude, then they may reasonably want to continue to live, the Filosofo suggests that they are guilty of sin (and therefore of ingratitude) even where they least expect it: namely, in the practice of their professions. He asks "who is there among you who exercises his art with total sincerity, purity, goodness, diligence, and duty? Is it not true that many of you are able to err, some through ignorance, some through impotence, some through malice, some through necessity, some through defect, some through other means?" (164). Acknowledging that professional perfection is impossible, they admit that they sometimes unknowingly conspire in malfeasance as they must rely on others' (possibly flawed) work in their own endeavors, but they proclaim themselves each to be a "huomo da bene nella sua professione" (164). Eager to equate error with fraud, the Filosofo presses on, rehearsing the seriousness of professional error in the Notary's impoverishing a family through the slip of a pen, the Pharmacist's supplying the wrong drug, the Surgeon's puncturing a nerve, and the Doctor's prescribing the wrong remedy. Yet despite the pervasiveness and consequence of fraud and error,(52) all artisans (and other professionals) want to continue in their crafts and pass them on to their sons, thus willingly perpetuating professional error and thereby knowingly persevering in sin and ingratitude to God (164v-165). And as error or deception is practically inevitable and universal - and is passed from father to son - professional malfeasance almost takes on the proportions of original sin. Certainly, Glissenti's Philosopher has dramatically moralized and spiritualized work, which now is the chief conduit for unremitting sin.

The Filosofo has now stumped the Artisans who still refuse to welcome death and yet have admitted to persevering in lives of sinful work. Coming to their defense is a lawyer (Causidico) who, against the judgmental strains of the Filosofo, proclaims the worth of the Artisans' work: in the public sphere their labors benefit the city; in the private realm their "just gains" provide comfort and security (in old age) for themselves and their families.(53) Once again, then, Glissenti's debate on work juxtaposes voices from differing levels of society. The Filosofo's austere moralizing of work is countered by the Causidico's commonsensical defense of the legitimate social and economic function of these arts. Just as the Cortigiano at one point defended the lower artisans in Book Two, now it is the Causidico who defends these higher artisans and professionals against the undue intellectualism and high-mindedness of the Filosofo. Glissenti once again seems to want to have it both ways, condemning worldly work from the perch of high culture and also defending and elucidating it from the vantage points of middle and low culture. It is one of the strengths of Glissenti's treatise that the battle is not obviously won by the intellectual, so plausible are the arguments advanced by the defenders of worldly profession, so tenacious is the ethos of work.

Glissenti ratchets the argument up yet a further notch in Book Three when the Filosofo engages in conversation a military Captain, a figure representative of a high profession. When the Filosofo asks the aging soldier why he continues to enter the lists, the latter suggests two reasons: "first, in order to obey my Prince and Lord; and then in order to gain riches and to acquire honors and fame" (255v256). With this exchange Glissenti thus broaches a central question inherent to the higher callings: namely, the tension between moral duty and worldly advantage. When the Filosofo asks the Capitano why he pursues the worldly goals of fame and fortune and the latter replies that these lead to happiness, the two then discuss the nature of happiness, exploring the Peripatetic paradigm of the goods of body, mind, and fortune. At one point, happiness is defined as that to which one applies oneself most assiduously (or desires most fully). Thus, in society there are as many forms of happiness as there are professions:(54) "health will be the supreme end of the Doctor, victory the Captain, the house the Architect, and so on. Whence as many are the number of human professions, so many the ends [of mortals], and so many the types of imagined happiness" (268v). Glissenti here echoes the Ethics 1.7 (1097a), in which by analogy to the "end of pursuits" of medicine, warfare, and architecture Aristotle proposes to search for the "end of man." Glissenti, however, transforms Aristotle's teleological notion of the function of profession into his own theory concerning the psychology of professionals, suggesting that human happiness itself is often sought through professional means. Where Aristotle alluded to professions by way of analogy Glissenti sees professions as the very vehicles for the sole (and therefore misguided) end of man himself. In examining the many classical theories of happiness (alluding to Varro's tally of 288), the Filosofo seems to suggest that happiness is multivalent because it is wholly rooted in the diversity of professional pursuits and identities. And while Glissenti argues that health, victory, and building may "content man as a practitioner in the end of profession" (as Doctor, Soldier, or Architect), they do not content an individual qua "Huomo semplicemente" (269). Moreover, if the Captain returns to battle not solely out of a sense of duty to gain victory but for an ulterior motive to achieve a false happiness through "riches, honor, or fame," then he not only has betrayed his profession but also has misdirected his search for happiness as man, which cannot be found in the professional arena. While mortals may legitimately locate their happiness as professionals in the "end" of their professions, they falsely locate their happiness as mortals in the pursuit of professional fame or fortune (f. 269). Both professional happiness and human happiness will elude mortals if they are not properly distinguished and properly pursued apart from each other.(55) For Glissenti, it is the misguided conflation of professional happiness with spiritual happiness that leads the likes of the Captain astray. So much has professional identity and professional experience ensnared the soul of secular man.

If happiness is not to be found in the fruits of work, where then is it to be found? Glissenti's answer begins with a Peripatetic formulation that "human happiness resides in virtuous operations rooted in the goods of the mind,"(56) and it ends in a retreat into Platonic otherworldliness and Christian fideism.(57) But even in this attempt to remove happiness from the snares of worldly professionalism to the otherworldly plane, Glissenti's dialogue contains a compelling counterpoint. Earlier, when discussing the arena for "virtuous operations," the Capitano reasonably asks if the realm of professional duty cannot be the forum for virtue: "'Oh,' says the Captain, 'do I not work virtuously if going into war I order the soldiers, teach them to fight, kill the enemy, pillage the dead, and perform similar undertakings pursuant to my office?' 'If all these things,' replied the Philosopher, 'you do to ensure victory as Captain, you have acted admirably, but if you have done them to acquire riches, honors, promotions, fame, as you have said, you have acted badly. Living virtuously avails you more as a Man, than as a Captain'" (271v).

Despite the Filosofo's final comment in this passage that virtue is located more in the "human" than in the "professional" realm, nonetheless this exchange otherwise does suggest the natural desire and the moral possibility of achieving virtue through the proper practice of profession - a sentiment the Filosofo concedes later.(58) Thus, just as vocation dishonored is condemned as a betrayal of profession for superficial worldly ends, so also vocation honored is recognized as a possible expression of virtuous operation leading to human happiness. Having issued so many warnings concerning the false allures of hollow work, Glissenti nonetheless also gives some quarter to the possibility of holy work in the saeculum. Once again the idealism, spiritualism, and intellectualism of the Filosofo is forced to yield some ground to the professionalism of his culture.

Where are the women in Glissenti's world? Principally in Book Four, which might well be called the Book of Women.(59) It is a measure of the professional prism of Glissenti's world view that the principal female interlocutor in this book is not, as tradition might have dictated, a mother, wife, sister, daughter, or nun, but rather a professional actress. Encountering "una Donna Comica, Scenica, o Recitante," the Cortigiano and Filosofo discuss the contemporary theater,(60) and here, as with the Captain, the colloquy in large part addresses the dichotomy between honorable and dishonorable work. Condemning the modern theater for pandering to the crowd - playing for laughs, laying on of buffoons - the Filosofo tries to shame the Actress by invoking the noble ends of classical drama which sought "not to delight, but to teach, to goad, and reprove" (341v).(61)

The Actress defends her profession by saying that "we have many ends, one to gain profit, the other to win praise, both of which we acquire by pleasing and delighting others" (341v-342). Thus, like the Captain, she confesses the ulterior motives of fame and fortune underlying the practice of her craft - a craft that thrives, she argues, more by entertaining than by edifying. To the Filosofo's moral insistence that she should stop this pandering in such an "infame professione," and should rather embrace death than continue to sin through the improper practice of craft, the Actress intimates that abandoning profession is almost unnatural, that "it is ordinary that each of us practices her profession until death" (342v). But beyond this defense that profession is virtually synonymous with life and integral to individual identity, the Actress also engages the Filosofo on the higher plane and ventures to defend her vocation in the moral sense of the term. First, she proclaims that there is social utility in her art, which benefits others through its charms (342v). And secondly, to the Filosofo's insistence that debased drama should be abandoned for improving drama, the Actress eventually addresses the issue of theater's potentially moral face. Conceding that performing the role of prostitute hews more to vice than virtue, what if, she argues, she performs the part of "chaste Lucretia, an eloquent Cornelia . . . or a religious Antigonen: is this not virtuous? Not to be trumped, the Filosofo says no, because "virtue consists in doing and truly practicing virtuous operations, and not in [merely] representing them"; moreover, in the ensuing debate on the morality of performing he explains that the Actress representing virtue is not virtuous because her motives are to delight (a vain end) and to win praise (an ambitious one) - both of which vitiate any moral content of her work (362v-363v). As in his insistence on the Captain's ideal pursuit of military duty (over careerism), the absolutist Filosofo once again holds work to an uncompromising moral standard: its purpose must be untainted by self-interest. Yet while Glissenti thus explicitly intensifies the Filosofo's Idealism, he also further clarifies the professional Pragmatism of others, who cling to work and life with a mixture of motives moral and expedient.(62)

Whether Beggars, Servants, Gondoliers, Butchers, Captains, or Actresses, the champions of worldly work span a range of professionals high and low. Of course, despite all their protestations Everyman must finally confront death and judgment. Glissenti's own version of the Dance of Death in the fourteenth novella (in Book Three), not only radically laicizes the traditional scheme found in Marchant or Holbein, but also pitches the encounter between Death and his victims in a markedly professional framework. In the traditional danse, these exchanges often alluded to status or profession,(63) but in Glissenti's Dance this professional dimension is given even greater depth and specificity. Death musters Captains for military review, summons Judges for sentencing, calls Lawyers before the tribunal, sends for Doctors to make a diagnosis, beckons Teachers to school and Notaries to the supreme chancery. When called, these professionals in some cases plead for time, defiantly hoping somehow to delay Death through their arts: thus, the Lawyer wants more time to prepare a defense, the Doctor more time (and money) to examine the illness, and the Notary more time to draw up documents so that he not die intestate.(64) It is a measure of the hubris of professionals that they would presume to stave off death and its consequences through their work - and here Glissenti is perhaps resonating Agrippa's theme concerning the "vanity" of the arts. Moreover, the manner of death sometimes also befits these professionals in a Dantesque fashion. For their evil rhetoric Lawyers receive a blow to the face; Doctors must now take their medicine; Teachers, who brag of esoteric lessons, are told to translate this Latin, "Morrete cacando" (305); Philosophers will now learn of death not through intellectual demonstration but through induction (i.e., experience); and Artisans, who had struggled to eke out a life through their arduous labors, will now die in their "mestieri."(65)

This Dantesque theme becomes even more explicit in the following section that catalogues the eternal judgments meted out to humankind. Here Glissenti stages a tribunal where the "Parche" read the summary of the future sins of professional (and other) groups, and "Giustitia" tells "Morte" where to lead their souls.(66) When applied to the array of professional types, this motif suggests the inevitability of professional sin. Thus, the Lawyers are indicted for their future unjust or lengthy litigations, Doctors for prescribing cures for ills about which they know nothing, Teachers for corrupting their charges with a bad example, Philosophers for questioning the immortality of the soul, Poets for praising the unworthy, Merchants for engaging in dubious business practices, the Religious for being slothful in their offices and vengeful in their persecutions, and Artisans for defrauding and deceiving their customers. The last group, the Artigiani, resonate an earlier theme by lamenting that it seemed to avail them little their being "huomini da bene" (311),(67) so inveterate are the sins of work that Glissenti's Artisans would see such behavior as consistent with the "honest man" in their world.(68)

Novella fourteen is clearly a fusion of the danse macabre and Dante's Inferno. Yet in the refiguring of the latter a dramatic transformation has occurred. Dante rooted his scheme of sin and contrappasso largely in categories adapted from Aristotle's Ethics (or so he claimed in Inferno 11) and in the medieval paradigm of the seven deadly sins, and he made only occasional references to profession. While Glissenti's schemes of Morte's harvest and Giustitia's judgment included a coda of sin-based archetypes, in both cases the predominant organizing principle was profession.(69) And though the traditional Danse macabre was the inspiration for this largely professional paradigm, Glissenti greatly intensified the professional scheme as a causal factor in the drama of death and damnation. Owing to Everyman's vocational hubris, Death at times pointedly beckons in the very idiom of profession. Owing to Everyman's inevitable sins of work, divine Justice metes out eternal punishment - such, implicitly, are the wages of professional sin.

What of the potential professional conflict Glissenti the physician faces in composing the Discorsi? How can the lifelong practitioner of the art of healing recommend so avidly the art of dying? In some way, Glissenti mirrors in his own person the treatise's larger tension between professional artes and philosophical ars. In a section on medical care toward the end of the Discorsi, Glissenti most fully addresses his own profession, discussing the many fraudulent remedies often offered the sick by doctors and spelling out means for selecting "il buon Medico."(70) And later comparing the doctor to various other professionals who violate their vocations with grave consequences, Glissenti portrays medicine as an ars that, like every other, is subject to standards of professional competence and vocational duty.(71) The explicit tension between professional and philosophical ars in the Discorsi's principal text is thus paralleled by an implicit tension (in the secondary text) between true and false work.

These parallel tensions to some degree intersect in a coda that Glissenti appends to the Discorsi, a treatise entitled Brevissimo trattato nel qual discorre moralmente, qual sia la Pietra di Filosofia. This work offers a moral interpretation of the alchemist's elusive Stone of the Philosopher, the magical element that can be used to transform base into higher metals, to make glass and precious stones, and to produce "medicine" for metals and human bodies. Alchemy is an ideal symbol for Glissenti's thematic purposes, because it is a dramatic illustration of the potential for false art. Despite its noble origins in antiquity and despite its erstwhile practice for scientific and medical ends, alchemy, Glissenti argues, is commonly turned to mercenary ends. Moreover, besides using it to contrast the true and false ends of worldly art, Glissenti also uses alchemy to elucidate again the Discorsi's larger theme concerning the opposition between philosophical and professional ars. He completely allegorizes the Pietra dei Filosofi as a force that can transmute the worldly into the otherworldly. The alchemist's Stone (which itself drew down the philosophical to the worldly) is fully spiritualized by Glissenti as the literally "quintessential" metaphysical truth. Identifying Christ as the "peritissimo artefice" who teaches mortals how to fabricate the most noble Pietra of Reason (590), Glissenti thus completely appropriates the language of a worldly art (alchemy) to posit the vision of spiritual deliverance from the realm of sense to the realm of reason. The philosophical ars vivendi et moriendi and the professional artes, which elsewhere in the Discorsi had been so separated by the chasm of metaphor are now conflated through the agency of metaphor in the philosophical refiguring of the alchemist's Stone of the Philosophers - so completely has Glissenti adapted the imagery of the artisanal world to the higher reaches of moral philosophy.

The final chapter of the appended treatise on the Stone of the Philosophers contains one final parade of professionals in a Dantesque moral fable. The setting is the "Fair of Human Life," where all mortals come for a time until they are forced to leave. Unable to take their goods with them to their home countries, the departing settle their accounts with a public Banker (Death), who makes out letters of exchange (to Charon) based upon their moral worth or mettle. The Banker literally tests their metal by using a Pietra da paragone (touchstone), which distinguishes true from false metal.(72) Thus, for instance, the metal of a "gran Signor" tests to be a useless alloy; that of a "professor di religione," an alloy that appears true but is dyed; that of Lawyers with "unstable operations," quicksilver; that of Artisans who have exhausted their arts for gain, a worn copper with a green hue; that of dissembling Merchants, a brass with the appearance of gold. False craft thus will out as false metal in this final reckoning of the touchstone. Moreover, the Banker's letters of exchange to Charon indicate appropriate dispositions for these false souls. In some cases, these fates are nightmarish parodies of craft itself. Thus Doctors, always eager for patients and a lucrative practice, will forever treat the incurable pains of the damned; Soldiers, whose metal was "iron rusted by their violent and impious works" (594v), end up guarding Hell's garbage dump; Merchants, as experts in turning money and accounts, will turn Sisyphus's rock; Lawyers, who insist on a hearing, are to be distilled into a precipitate useful for "unclogging the hardened [excretory] tracts of the litigious so that they purge better"; and Artisans, who stubbornly "weary and stretch their arts for greater gain," will be made into cauldrons for boiling the obstinate (594(r-v)).(73) Professions that are vehicles for vain or corrupt endeavor in life are transformed into infernal crafts or products mocking worldly work. This fable thus joins the theme of true and false metal - integral to the art of alchemy - to the theme of true and false work.

Glissenti's Discorsi morali is sui generis. A combination of Platonic dialogue, ars moriendi, danse macabre, five-act tragedy, and picaresque comedy, it is not fully any one of these genres and something more than the sum of their parts. By venturing to probe in such detail the psychology of death at every level of his society, Glissenti breaks new ground. Whereas Socrates's calming reassurances concerning death in the Phaedo were addressed to his fellow intellectuals, Glissenti's Filosofo speaks to the entire range of social and professional types. As a result, unlike Socrates who never relinquishes control of the argument, the Filosofo at times does seem to lose his grip, exposing his naivete in the professional ways of the woad. Even in its narrative structure Glissenti's work is a rather complex reconstruction of social reality through the competing multiple lenses of an idealistic intellectual, worldly professionals, and a mediating courtier. If, then, the treatise is no pure Phaedo wholly pitched at the philosophical level, neither is it pure ars moriendi pitched solely at the spiritual level. The treatise's actual "pratica del ben morire" with its traditional battery of spiritual temptations and remedies puts in relief the remaining bulk of colloquies and novellas that explore principally the psychological attitudes toward death. And even here, despite the resonance of the danse macabre, the psychological tenor is set not so much by the menacing spectre of Death as by the vibrant affirmations of Life through work. Glissenti was perhaps correct to suggest that the treatise could best be situated in the genre of drama in which Everyman encounters Reason, Sense, Will, Opinion, Truth. Such a theatrical frame perhaps partly explains the sometimes surprising and "festive" autonomy of interlocutors who so forcefully counter the didactic message of the Filosofo.(74) Perhaps mirroring structural aspects of both the humanist dialogue and the classical drama, the Discorsi portrays a life-like contest between competing truths. Most fundamentally, it depicts the timely agon between the otherworldly culture of death (rooted in philosophical idealism and Christian spirituality), and a this-worldly culture of work (rooted in the growing rhetorical claims of professional identity and experience).

Glissenti's awareness of this agon is clearly evident in his repeated attempts to clarify the inimical opposition between the philosophical ars of dying and the professional artes of the workaday world. The contemporary obsession with worldly work - as a source of personal identity and pride, a conduit of sensual and psychological happiness, an expression of familial tradition, and a vehicle for social duty - has overshadowed the art of philosophical and spiritual reflection. Certainly, one influence came from the danse macabre, whose icons and passages on death introduced this professional paradigm. But Glissenti greatly expanded this theme, moving it beyond the motif of the danse proper to detailed discussions of work that pervade the treatise, discussions in which the practitioners of worldly work educate the Filosofo in the arts of living as much as he educates them in the art of dying. In exploring this theme, Glissenti was informed by the Renaissance debate on work that had been evolving since the mid-fourteenth century. The formal praise and rebuke of professions - found in Latin writings of the Trecento and Quattrocento and recently popularized in Venice by Garzoni's volgare encyclopedia - clearly shaped Glissenti's own discussions. But even here Glissenti does not merely rehearse prior moral discussions of the virtues and vices of profession, but adds another dimension that seeks to probe the psychological ground of profession. This, after all, explains the inordinate attachment to life that drives the obdurate "displeasure of dying."

The most dramatic revelations intentionally come in the realm of popular culture and the low professions. Here, presumably seeking to correct upper-class assumptions concerning the abject misery of the lower orders, Glissenti has servants, beggars, butchers, and gondoliers expound the many secret joys of their work. Also seeking to redress upper-class naivete concerning proletariat guile, he has them detail the specialized professional arcana of their crafts, often revealing how they deceive and exploit their masters and clients. As a symbol of high culture, the Filosofo is thus often forced to recognize the hidden professionalism in these lower arts. While this concession is meant to be a grudging and ironic one, these encounters in the Discorsi perhaps also represent at times an attempt to truly plumb the mentalite of the lower professions. Thus, the Butcher explains the sense of freedom that comes with carrying the tools of his trade with him, not burdened with the worries of a bottega; thus, when the Servant describes the texture of his life, he incorporates proverbs from popular culture that are likely intended as a counterpoint to the Philosopher's and Courtier's citations from establishment culture.(75) In thereby staging a debate on work that crosses class lines between high and low culture, Glissenti's treatise, with its mixed motives, perhaps represents an attempt not only to expose but also to elucidate popular culture.

The expose on profession, however, is by no means limited to the lower orders. Through the Captain, grouped with the Physician and the Architect,(76) Glissenti explores the psychology of work most fully in the terms of moral philosophy, exposing the Captain's mixed motivations of duty and worldly advantage in the pursuit of craft. And whereas the former can lead to a "professional happiness" - the true fulfillment of one's vocational "end" - the latter misleads mortals to a false sense of "human happiness" - the misguided quest to practice profession for fortune and fame. Typifying higher professionals of his day, the Captain has blurred these two realms and illustrates to what degree happiness is bound up with professional identity and experience. Through the Filosofo Glissenti draws new lines demarcating "professional" from "human" happiness. Nonetheless, even here Glissenti does make important moral and psychological concessions to profession, formulating and legitimating a notion of professional happiness, and even acknowledging that, yes, the performance of work as duty can, as a "virtuous operation of mind," even partially foster the more sublime happiness of humans qua humans.

Even while criticizing the obsession with work in his culture, Glissenti thus makes concessions to its inexorability and, in some ways, to its psychological and moral plausibility. The otherworldly culture of death cannot fully vanquish the this-worldly culture of work. As a result, the didactic function of the treatise sometimes operates completely on the secular plane, as Glissenti discusses the distinction between the true and false work of the world. Time and again, at every professional level, Glissenti explores the theme of vocation honored and vocation betrayed. The Gondolier's machinations as procurer, the Artisan's manufacture of a defective product, the Captain's soldiering for ambition, the Actress's performance as prostitute, the Alchemist's experiments for gain all represent violations of craft. Glissenti fully moralizes work by suggesting that each art has its proper and improper practice. In fact, a fundamental part of the proper ars vivendi would seem to be the pure practice of craft by the deft Gondolier, the Artisan (truly a "huomo da bene"), the dutiful Captain, the moralizing Actress, and the medical Alchemist.

This moralizing of life-work is most dramatically reified by Glissenti's portrait of the death and afterlife of professionals. Here the author reveals his rather bleak assumptions concerning the professional artes. When Death metes out the letter of exchange for those departing the Fair of Life, the test of the touchstone often reveals the debased metal of debased profession. When the Fates announce the inevitable sins of Everyman, they often pointedly detail professional sins. In both cases the contrappasso of Hell reflects these sins of work, as Glissenti adapts Dante's scheme to a predominantly professional paradigm. The Danse macabre of Marchant and Holbein began this process of subordinating sins to professions in the iconography of death,(77) but Glissenti brings this process to a conclusion, fully exploring the literary possibilities of this theme in his fables, in which profession is a dominant factor in the drama of life and death, human free will and divine judgment. The result, moreover, is a dramatic laicizing of the vocational landscape, as the relative paucity of lay professions in Dante's Commedia has been replaced with a plethora of arts in Glissenti's Discorsi,(78) and the number of religious professions - even since Holbein's Danse - has been greatly reduced.

The language and mentalite of work almost hijack the Discorsi morali. Despite the pleadings of the Filosofo that the philosophical ars moriendi should take precedence over the professional artes of life, the argot and assumptions of the latter permeate the structure and metaphors of the treatise. Though Socrates hinted at a figurative notion of the philosopher's "practice" of dying, this was little more than a simple analogy, as the content of the Phaedo clearly dealt with the queries of the philosophers, not the revolt of the professionals. And though initially the late medieval genre of the ars moriendi simply connoted the practical function of such a manual for a religious death, Glissenti infuses it with the psychological assumptions of the triumph of profession in late Renaissance culture. This ars of death must now contend with all the other arrogant arts of society. Platonic philosophy and Christian spirituality must vie with Profession for cultural and psychological primacy. Daring to assess the psychology of death throughout society, Glissenti's treatise gives moral instructions on life and death in many idioms: to the farmer, in a metaphor of natural death; to the servant, in one of spiritual servitude; to the soldier, in one of spiritual battle.(79) To every professional Death gives notice in the language of profession. That some would attempt to delay or prepare for death through the practice of their craft is a commentary on the hubris of work; thus adapting a theme sounded by Agrippa earlier in the century, Glissenti dramatizes the Faustian "vanity" of the arts at the moment of death. Garzoni's Universal Piazza of all the Professions of the World has been transferred to Glissenti's vivid portrait of the canals, bridges, and piazzas of a Venice brimming with the vitality and confidence of death-despising professionals. Who is the victor in this agon of Death and Work? Does the otherworldly voice of the contemptus mundi fully silence these stubborn worldly proponents of a contemptus morris? Certainly, the ascetic strains of the danse macabre and the ars moriendi have found a hearty rival in the Renaissance culture of work.

Research support for this project was provided by the Bankhead Fund of the University of Alabama's Department of History. I would like to thank Renaissance Quarterly's anonymous readers for their helpful criticisms and suggestions, and I am grateful to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence for permission to reprint plates from its 1596 edition of the Discorsi.

1 I shall cite the 1596 edition published in Venice by Domenico Farri. There are notices of a 1599 reissue of this edition, and the treatise was also published by Bartolomeo Alberti in Venice in 1600 and 1609 (NUC, 202:353; Passano, 1:367; Mortimer, 309).

2 It is therefore all the more unfortunate that the Discorsi escaped the attention of Alberto Tenenti in his pioneering II senso della morte e l'amore della vita nel Rinascimento (1957). On the mentalite of death, also see Aries; McManamon; Tetel; McClure, 1991 (which comments on the Discorsi in the context of the consolatory tradition at 277, n. 27); Cohn; Strocchia; and King.

3 For Petrarch's attack on law, see Familiares 20.4 (Petrarch, 1933-42, 4:13-22) and his "Letter to Posterity" (Seniles 18.1) (Petrarch, 1992, 2:672-79); for his polemic against medicine, see Invective contra medicum (Petrarch, 1975; and McClure, 1985). For Boccaccio's criticism of civil law and his rejection of canon law as a career, see Genealogia deorum gentilium 14.4 and 15.10 (Boccaccio, 1930); and the chapter "In Leguleos imperitos" in his De casibus virorum illustrium 3 (Boccaccio, 1962). For Salutati's treatise, see Garin's edition and introduction in Salutati. For fifteenth-century treatises on the professions by figures such as Poggio Bracciolini and the physicians Giovanni Baldi, Giovanni d'Arezzo, and Antonio de' Ferrariis (Galateo), see Garin; and Thorndike. On discussions of "vocation," see Douglas. On work and professions also see Vickers; Fiorato; and JMRS 25 (Winter, 1995).

4 Between 1585 and 1683 there were twenty-five Venetian editions of the Piazza universale (Garzoni, 1993, 24; also see Cherchi, 41-42, which discusses references to an unconfirmed earlier 1584 edition). Another popular work (which Garzoni plagiarized) was the physician Leonardo Fioravanti's Dello specchio di scientia universale, first published in Venice in 1564 and reprinted there in nine further editions by 1679 (see Giorio; Passano, 1:302-05). Other works, which categorized the arts in the context of the mnemonic tradition and which also influenced Garzoni, included Giulio Camillo (Delminio)'s L'idea del theatro (Venice, 1552); and his student Alessandro Citolini's derivative La tipocosmia (Venice, 1561) (see Yates, esp. 129-72, 238-39). Aside from being merely the publishing center for this literature on profession (on the Cinquecento Venetian press, see Grendler, 1977), Venice sometimes also served as its setting or partial subject. Citolini's treatise is set in Venice, and references to Venetian professionals or professions can be found in the Specchio of Fioravanti (who practiced for a time in Venice); and the Piazza of Garzoni (who dated his work from nearby Treviso). Fioravanti began his praise of professionals in various Italian cities with a survey of Venice and in his later chapters on lawyers and notaries cited Venetian practitioners (including one notary based in the Piazza San Marco at the campanile) (Fioravanti, A7-[A8.sup.v], 117, [118.sup.v]). Venetian professions mentioned in Garzoni's Piazza ranged (among many others) from Murano glassmaking to the Venetian publishing industry itself, and from the street culture of the Piazza San Marco, to the academic culture at the library of San Marco (Garzoni, 1589, 16, 540, 748, 834, 958). As the latter two examples (and Fioravanti's notary) suggest, Venice was a city that in terms of its urban topography and social institutions was characterized by sometimes striking juxtapositions of learned and popular professions - its canals undoubtedly occasioning an even denser than usual professional culture in the piazzas (as at San Marco), its Scuole Grandi sometimes clustering professionals high and low (on San Marco, cf. Romano, 80-81; and Muir, 209-11; on the Scuole Grandi, see Pullan, esp. 94-98). Perhaps such juxtapositions partly inspired the composition of and interest in professional literature in Renaissance Venice.

5 According to a seventeenth-century biographer, his medical reputation won him not only great respect but also a flourishing practice yielding an estate of 80,000 scudi (Ghilini, 2:74).

6 Peroni, 2:127-29; on medical learning, see Siraisi, 1981 and 1987. As for the vernacular works, many of the "favole morali" were five-act dramas in verse (in contrast to the prose "novelle" in the Discorsi), and at least one of these works was an excerpt from the Discorsi (see n. 24 below); also see Neri. Glissenti (and the Discorsi) rated a mention in one of the catalogues of "Scrittori Veneti" in the Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare originally of Francesco Sansovino (1581) and later updated by Giovanni Stringa (1604) and Giustiniano Martinioni (1663) (see Sansovino, 637).

7 Despite the prevalence of Petrarch's poetry in the work, I find no evidence that Glissenti knew his Latin works, either those bearing on death (e.g., the Secretum or the De remediis utriusque fortune, bk. 2, 117-32) or those bearing on professions (De vita solitaria or the Invective contra medicum).

8 This is the description found on the title page.

9 See the "L'autore a discreti lettori."

10 For his comparison of himself to Socrates, see ibid.

11 Though the shorter Ars and the Tractatus (appearing under various titles and often lacking the cycle of woodcuts) devoted more attention to resisting spiritual temptation than to assuaging psychological fear, some of the derivative works in the genre did amplify the consolatory content, as exemplified by Josse Clichtove's De doctrina moriendi. For an edition of Gerson's De scientia mortis, see Gerson, 1521, 2: 176v-177; for the original French version, see Gerson, 1960-73, 10:404-07. For an edition of the Ars moriendi, see Tenenti, 1952, 97-120; for an English edition of the Tractatus, see Horstmann, 2:406-20. On the genre of the Ars moriendi, see O'Connor; Tenenti, 1957, 62-120; Beaty; McClure, 1991, 65-68.

12 Between 1475 and 1480 Latin versions of the Tractatus appeared in Bologna, Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice, Verona, and Milan (Tenenti, 1957, 75, 82-83); also in the late 1470s vernacular versions of the Tractatus began to appear in Florence, Venice, and Verona (Hain, 2:28-29; Coppinger, 2:76).

13 On Barozzi's De modo bene moriendi (c. 1480; pub. Venice, 1531), Savonarola's Predica dell'arte del ben morire (Florence, 1496), and Pietro da Lucca's Doctrina del ben morire (Venice, 1515) and on these later lay works (and others), see Tenenti, 1957, 94-97, 308-18, 328; on Savonarola's Predica, also see Weinstein in Tetel, 88-104; and on Claro's Ammaestramenti, see also Massetto, 362-64, 369. For another treatment of death from the late sixteenth-century Veneto, see Giuseppe Policretti's Morte pretiosa: Discorso in lode della morte (Treviso, 1590).

14 Arnigio's brief (24-folio) work discusses the fear of death on the part of three types of mortals: those dreading the loss of sensuality and pleasure, those lamenting death's conquest of the truer goods of body and soul (including the natural desire to survive and flourish), and those fearing divine justice. As for the possible influence of Arnigio's Discorso on the content of Glissenti's treatise, see ms. 25, 35, and 72 below.

15 See Bk. 5, chaps. 31-34 (540v-551v).

16 That this coupling was common to the tradition can be seen, for example, in the title of Guyot Marchant's version of the Tractatus entitled Tractatus de arte bene vivendi beneque moriendi (Paris, 1497).

17 In the 1485 edition there were thirteen religious figures (from pope to curate) and sixteen lay ones (from kings to laborers), and one infant (on this edition and its English variants, see Warren and Beatrice White's "Introduction" in Warren, xviii, xxiv-xxv). For a facsimile edition of the 1486 La danse macabre nouvelle and La danse macabre des femmes, see Marchant. On the danse, also see Tenenti, 1957, 410ff.

18 For a facsimile edition, translation and discussion of editions, see Green; also see Davis; and Douce.

19 In 1545 (and again in 1551) V. Valgrisi published a Simolachri historie e figure de la morte and in 1546 an Imagines mortis (reproducing the Latin translation issued in Lyon by the Frellon house the preceding year); in 1549 the Frellon house responded with its own Italian edition, dismissing Valgrisi's claims that his edition had better engravings than the original set (Mortimer, 309, 337; and on Valgrisi's 1545 edition see Grendler, 1977, 166). On the presence of some of Valgrisi's Holbein plates in the Discorsi and on the Holbein series' influence on the remaining plates in the cycle, see Mortimer, ibid.; Passano, 366-71. On the danse in Italy generally, also see Vigo.

20 Tenenti, 1957, 441-47 argues that this change begins in the sixteenth century with the Danse of Niklaus Manuel (1517-19) and is continued in Holbein's "Little Dance" (the Alphabet of Death of 1524) and the more famous "Great Dance," the focus of our attention here. The latter, Tenenti argues, shows how Holbein "arriva ad esprimere iconograficamente la compenetrazione della morte nella vita, la sua inafferrabile presenza, volutamente ignorata ma di cui si avverte sempre il possibile manifestarsi" (446) (on which also cf. Images, 52). Holbein's interest in portraying the professional world in somewhat greater detail could have been partly inspired by the earlier designs he made for the 1515 edition of Erasmus's Praise of Folly, which included satirical portraits of such figures as kings, natural philosophers, tutors, and clerics, a motif in turn inspired partly by Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff of 1494 (cf. Tenenti, 1957, 444; for editions, see Erasmus; and Brant).

21 See edition in Green.

22 In the section in the twenty-ninth novella, where Death reaps its harvest, there is only one category for the clergy; and in the adjoining section on the judgment of souls, there is but one religious type, a hermit (one of only two types not damned).

23 Though he does have related categories of canon lawyers (chap. 19), theologians (chap. 25), exorcists (chap. 34), and inquisitors (chap. 63), Garzoni groups the clergy per se in chap. 3 ("De religiosi in genere"), which includes all manner of secular and regular clergy (Garzoni, 1589, 57-86).

24 Another tradition that may have influenced Glissenti was the Petrarchan motif of the Triumph of Death (see Petrarch, 1951), one of Petrarch's Trionfi of the mid-fourteenth century, and a work that inspired artistic representations in the second half of the fifteenth and the sixteenth century in Italy and in the north, culminating in Bruegel's Triumph of Death (c. 1562) (see Tenenti, 1957, 450-58 and plates 31, 3941). Glissenti cites Petrarch's Trionfo della morte at, e.g., f. 23 and, in fact, he devotes an entire chapter (Bk. 1.9) to Petrarch's attitude toward death (the only writer ancient or modern to warrant an entire chapter in the Discorsi). Clearly this motif informed the title of an excerpt later spun off from the Discorsi, the Teatro dei viventi, e trionfo della morte (Venice, after 1605) (British Library, 405).

25 For a motif involving three of the senses, cf. Arnigio, 23v.

26 A2v. He also mentions the possibility of casting the work as a comedy with a necessarily different dramatic structure (A, A2v).

27 For uses of "arte" in this context see for example 137v, 170v, and 183v. For "mestiere," see 140v where the Filosofo tells a Gondolier that death is the "mestier" he should want.

28 See Laws 1 (643b-c) and n. 31 below.

29 This theme of the tension between the spiritual "art of living and dying" and the professional arts is adumbrated in Jacob di Juterbog's Tractatus de arte bene moriendi (before 1465), concerning which Tenenti comments: "Sul terreno stesso dell'ars moriendi sorge quindi l'ars vivendi che Jacob di Juterbog contrappone a tutte le altre scienze; assai poco, invero, giovera apprendere l'arte di morire sul letto dell'agonia dopo una vita trascorsa 'in scholis iuristarum aut artistarum'" (Tenenti, 1957, 91); also cf. Pietro da Lucca at sig. 2v.

30 This chapter is entitled "Che la piu dannosa servitu e quella, che si fa al Mondo. Che al di d'hoggi l'arti, e le scienze s'imparano solo a fin mondano. E di molti abusi di i padri di famiglia intorno alle dottrine, che fanno imparar a lor figliuoli" (135v).

31 On this theme Glissenti is perhaps particularly indebted to Plato, who generally opposes the higher "arts" of statecraft, virtue, and happiness to the lower practical arts and, in terms of the latter, frequently berates the pursuit of wealth (see for example Republic 2, 8, and 9 and Laws 1 [643-44], 5 [743d-e], 8 [846-47]).

32 Beyond contrasting the worldly arts and his philosophical ars, Glissenti also treats their epistemological relationship in terms of both appearances and reality. In a chapter in Book Three after discussing death with the higher artisans, the Cortigiano praises such artisans whose craft shows "giudicio e senno," suggesting that if they cannot appreciate the Filosofo's art then who can? The Courtier, who as a foil to the Philosopher generally represents middlebrow perspectives in the treatise, thus reveals the assumption that knowledge in an art or craft should yield knowledge in this higher ars. (The germ of this sentiment can be found in the Apology [22d-e] where Socrates discusses the hubris of craftsmen, but the highly professional setting of Glissenti's work suggests an even clearer sense of the epistemological claims of profession and craft in his day.) While acknowledging that artisans have "maggior sapere, quanti alle mondane sottigliezze" than non-artisans such as the rich or noble, the Filosofo suggests that his ars should ideally be available to all and that, in reality, artisans and other professionals may in fact be even less likely to grasp this ars because they are "preoccupied with practicing arts for the end of gain" (170v) - a theme he embellishes with a quotation from Plato's Laws 8 (831c-e). Thus, not only does the practice of craft not promote the perception of higher truth, it can even hinder it. Glissenti is attempting to deflate professional hubris by posing and then deposing this epistemological argument of the Cortigiano.

33 The Cortigiano details his varied travels and courtly experiences at the beginning of the treatise (5v-6).

34 If somewhat naive about the ways of the world, the Filosofo is not, however, meant to be a paradigm of the purely theorizing philosopher. In Bk. 5, Chap. 2, Glissenti's Filosofo presents a praise of "practica" over "speculativa" philosophy, placing the highest value in that branch of the former devoted to moral philosophy (235(r-v)). Vigorously praising "goodness" over "intellect" and the practical over the speculative, Glissenti's Filosofo does actively "practice" the philosophical craft, as he strives to instruct all of his fellow Venetians in the art of living and dying. As a physician dabbling in moral philosophy, Glissenti offers a stark contrast to Petrarch's portrait of the scholastic doctor (in his Invective contra medicum) and Salutati's identification of medicine with speculative thought (in his De nobilitate legum et medicine) (cf. n. 3 above). Like the Milanese doctor Gerolamo Cardano, Glissenti shows the tremendous inroads humanist culture has made into the medical world by the late Renaissance (on Cardano, see McClure, 1991, 161-63; also cf. Siraisi, 1987, 256-62).

35 For the theme of mortals fearing death for the loss of sensual pleasures, see Arnigio, 2-7v.

36 "Tu non conosci bene questa sorte d'huomini, come conosco io; e par bene, che tu tenghi piu prattica de libri, che de gli huomini. Io ti so dire di questi tali, che soho per lo piu huomini bugiardi, infinghieri, hippocriti, insidiosi, e fraudolenti" (80).

37 This speech consumes an entire chapter entitled: "Delle astutie de'Mendicanti, Pitocchi, e Forfanti, e come soho scaltriti nell'essercitio loro, e come simulando vanno ingannando il mondo" (81).

38 On the number of beggars in sixteenth-century Venice, on the state's attempt to regulate begging and prosecute frauds, and on the founding of a charitable Fraternity of the Poveri Vergognosi in 1537, see Pullan, 296-309, 372-74.

39 This the Beggar's word illustrates a lapse in Glissenti's re-creation of the speech of the uneducated.

40 "[A]ttendendo con ogni accortezza a questo meraviglioso essercitio, che ben si puo chiamare mestier di Dio. Questa per certo, disse il Filosofo, e una bellissima arte, e non m'havrei mai pensato, ch'ella havesse tanti capi, e tanti termini" (83v).

41 Emblematic of Glissenti's frequent juxtaposition of high and low, this proverb is paired with a parallel locus from Cicero (84). This is but one of the many Italian proverbs Glissenti includes in his work, some of which - e.g., "Che entro nel Mulino/ S'imbianca di farina" (136) - perhaps bear study as sources illustrative of popular culture (on which in France, cf. Davis, 1975).

42 Cf. passages in Garzoni's chapter 72 "De' guidoni, or furfanti, or calchi" at 1589, 582 and Glissenti's comments at 82 on beggars' disguises.

43 On Garzoni's plagiarism cf., e.g., Garzoni, 1589, 521-22 to the 1547 Venetian edition of Agrippa at 25v. On Agrippa, see Nauert. On the general culture of beggars and thieves, see Burke, 46-47. As for other dubious professions in bk. 2 of the Discorsi, Glissenti also exposes the tricks of a fortune-teller (palmist).

44 And cf. two other proverbs cited by the Servitore at 131.

45 As for the common phrase "huomo da bene" found throughout the Discorsi, a contemporary Florentine writer, Francesco Bocchi, would soon devote a brief treatise to explicating the term, the Ragionamento sopra l'huomo da bene (Florence, 1600). Bocchi elucidates the term as a popular locution denoting "virtu" and morally preferable to such upper-class designations as "nobile," "eccellente," and "illustre." Also see n. 67 below.

46 And once again the Cortigiano tweaks the Filosofo: "Che ti parve amico. E<'> egli un mestier cotesto da huomo da bene? par bene, che piu de libri che de gli huomini habbi prattica" (143v).

47 Both speak of their use of "parole sporche" (Garzoni, 1589, 869; Glissenti, 142) and on gondoliers' friendship with courtesans cf. passages in Garzoni, 1589, 870; and Glissenti, 143.

48 Just as his estimates of the population of servants and gondoliers suggests a more than casual interest in the social realities of Venetian labor.

49 The chapter is entitled: "Tenta il Filosofo un Macellaio, & altri di vile essercitio lodandogli la Morte; Eglino prontamente rispondono rifiutando il morire, e si contentano del vivere, e dell'arte sue, nelle quail trovano di molti alleviamenti" (100v). Though Glissenti would thus assign butchers a lowly status here, they seem to have enjoyed a higher status in late medieval and Renaissance Florence as one of the arti medie.

50 "Posto, disse il Filosofo, che per viver v'affatichiate, non vedete voi pero, che cosi vivendo menate una vita ignobile, lorda, di molta fatica, e di poco utile? di molto carico, e di poca sodisfattione? e delle feccia dell'arti mechaniche la piu vile?" (102).

51 Glissenti ends this encounter with the Butcher by having the Cortigiano suggest that, if these vilest of artisans cling to work and life so ardently, then how much more will those in more reputable arts such as Potters, Greengrocers, Tavern Keepers, and others? (103)

52 The "Artigiani" concede the potential inevitability of "defect": "Confessarono unitamente tutti gli Artigiani, che ogn'arte ha il suo inganno, o almeno qualche diffetto" (164v).

53 Although he concedes the legitimacy of these economic motives, the Filosofo suggests these goals are more desired than fulfilled, and a discussion ensues concerning the hard times of artisans and professionals (who recently have fared poorly as grain prices have risen, though the state has provided grain in times of need) (166(r-v)).

54 The theme in this section is well characterized by the chapter title: "Che la felicita non consiste semplicemente ne i beni dell'animo. E di molte opinioni intorno l'esser suo. E che ogni professione possede nel suo fine la felicita" (267v, emphasis added).

55 "A quanto voi dite, replico il Capitano, ne come capitano, se non attendo alla pura vittoria, conseguiro il supremo fine, ne come huomo, andando con si fatti mezi d'acquisto di robba, di honori, e di fama potro la humana felicita conseguire; onde si come mi trovo ingannato, ne i mezi, cosi ingannerommi nel fine" (269). On the misuse of profession for worldly ends, cf. Benedetto Varchi's 1547 address to the Florentine Academy, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti e qual sia piu nobile, la scultura o la pittura (pub. in Florence in 1549), in which, also drawing on the Ethics 1, he discusses the ends of professions (medicine) or professionals (the captain) to distinguish between the proper and improper pursuit of profession, commenting that "sa ciascuno che 'l vacate alle buone arti o l'insegnarle e cosa per se medesima nobilissima, ma, esercitata per danari o ad alcuno cattivo fine, diviene vilissima" (Trattati 1:13; cf. Scritti 1:133, 1125-26).

56 See title of chap. 33 (269v); cf. Ethics 1. 7-9.

57 As for Platonism, at one point the Filosofo suggests that all classical opinions on happiness are false "fuori che, (per mio giuditio) quella di Platone" (270). As for the general spiritual regimen detailed, Glissenti tellingly adapts the metaphor of warfare (from the Captain's profession), pitting spiritual arms (e.g., sacraments) against the supreme general (sin) and his vanguard (original sin) and seven squadrons (deadly sins).

58 In chap. 35, the Filosofo suggests the dichotomy between dutiful and self-serving work: "Percio, Signor Capitano, se put desiderate ritornare alia guerra, sia il vostro ufficio, come Capitano, l'impiegar il vostro valore, e studio per vincere il nimico, o di restarvi motto nella battaglia, combattendo per la Fede, e per la patria da valoroso guerriero; the questa sara illustre morte, la quale condurravvi alle celesti felicita. E non deve esser il fine vostro d'acquistarvi ricchezze, od'altri beni di Fortuna..." (282v). He does say, however, that such human happiness is found with difficulty and only temporally in this mortal world, with "Christian happiness" being a safer bet.

59 Appropriately, this book of the Discorsi was dedicated to a woman of high station, a "Signora Camilla Soranzo Illustrissima Podesterella di Crema." As for women elsewhere in the treatise, there is an encounter with a palmist in Bk. 2, Chap. 15.

60 On the recent appearance of women on the Italian stage (for which there is certain evidence by the 1560s), see Richards and Richards, 39, 52, 73-76, 223-25.

61 For a critique of sixteenth-century comedy and buffoons, cf. Garzoni, 1589, 738-39, 816-17; Richards and Richards, 69-71.

62 At this point, the discussion in this Book of Women rambles off into more banal and traditional topics concerning the preoccupation with beauty and the lore of beauty secrets (on which cf. Fioravanti).

63 On Marchant, see following note. And in the Simulachres, where there are no such exchanges, Biblical passages (and adjoining glosses) that accompany the Holbein images often relate (though sometimes loosely) to the depicted professions.

64 This tone of professional defiance sets Glissenti's Danse off from the traditional Danse. That is, in Marchant's Danse, when the Advocate is summoned to plead his case, he proclaims the futility of his craft to find a defense against death; likewise, the Doctor despairs of a medical remedy, the Astrologer proclaims the futility of his lore, and the Constable the insufficiency of his might (see Marchant; Warren).

65 Possibly adapting a theme concerning the farmer's embrace of hard labor in the Danse (cf. Marchant, b2; or Warren, 93; Tenenti 1957, 141), Glissenti applies this locus to the person of the urban artisan in the Discorsi. He has the Artigiani say that they are willing to persevere in their labor: "E nelle vostre fatiche, replico la Morte, tutti moritevi, e secondo diversi vostri mestieri donovi differenti morti. Ahi, meschini noi, dissero gli Artigiani, che ci ha giovato lo stentar sempre, per morirsi poi?" (306v). Others who suffer from occupational hazards include Poets, who because of their lives of penury die of hunger; and the religious (the sole clerical category), whose ascetic practices make them all the more vulnerable to death (305v, 307).

66 Dante's influence is most explicit in a statement referring to a "Bolgia dell'Inferno" (310; cf. Dante's eighth circle, Inferno 18-31).

67 Cf. 164. On evil's masquerading under the title of the good (as in the case of the "huomo da bene"), cf. Pietro Nelli (Andrea da Bergamo)'s "Del mal del bene, al signor Pietro Aretino" in Bk. 2.13 of his Satire alia Carlona (Venice, 1548), esp. 62v.

68 Only two figures (a religious hermit and a poor, devout peasant woman) are spared damnation in this portrayal of the Judgment Day - the fate of everyone else, Giustitia proclaims, a warning to others to perform "virtuous works" (312).

69 On the professionalizing of Dante's motif of contrappasso, Glissenti had a notable Cinquecento predecessor (and possible influence) in Anton Francesco Doni, whose I mondi e gli inferni depicted a seven-part Inferno, five sections of which were devoted to professional categories detailing retribution for scholars and pedants (Doni, 230-31), prostitutes and procurers (276-77), lawyers, physicians, and theologians (321-22), poets (346-47), and soldiers (368-69) (on which see Grendler, 1969, 60- 61, 93-94).

70 See Bk. 5, Chap. 23 entitled: "Di molti impertinenti rimedii, che si fanno da Medici intorno al moribondo infermo, & a quai segni si possa conoscere il buon Medico" (514).

71 See Bk. 5, Chap. 29, 531-32.

72 The testing of "mettle" is implied but not linguistically explicit in Glissenti's use of "metallo" (though the Italian word, like the Middle English "metel," would likewise develop a figurative meaning). For a metallurgical motif, cf. Arnigio, 23v.

73 Only the last group (the barefoot, poor, and sick) tested to have metal of unalloyed gold, and the Banker gives letters of exchange assigning them to the Elysian Fields (596).

74 See above at n. 26.

75 There are cases, however, when the Cortigiano and Filosofo themselves cite proverbs - but even here Glissenti is perhaps trying to unite high and low culture (on which in Rabelais, see Bakhtin; and Burke, 62, 68-69).

76 Cf. Ethics 1.7 (1097a) and discussion above.

77 The sins were not eliminated but generally appended to the greater number of professional categories.

78 Though devoting considerable attention to the clergy (whose failings are treated in Inferno 7 and 19; Purgatorio 32; Paradiso 11, 12, 27, 30), among lay pursuits, excepting criminal activity (e.g., thieves, counterfeiters, procurers), Dante treats only usury, divination, alchemy, and the failures of kingship.

79 See 89v-90 and nn. 30 and 57 above.

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