the third time a woman of Lombard birth, Laura Magiolini. To all his three wives, in spite of numerous infidelities, he seems to have been warmly attached; and this is perhaps the best trait in a character otherwise more remarkable for arrogance and heat than for any amiable qualities.
On the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, Filelfo, after a short hesitation, transferred his allegiance to Francesco Sforza, the new duke of Milan; and in order to curry favour with this parvenu, he began his ponderous epic, the Sforziad, of which 12,800 lines were written, but which was never published. When Francesco Sforza died, Filelfo turned his thoughts towards Rome. He was now an old man of seventy-seven years, honoured with the friendship of princes, recognized as the most distinguished of Italian humanists, courted by pontiffs, and decorated with the laurel wreath and the order of knighthood by kings. Crossing the Apennines and passing through Florence, he reached Rome in the second week of 1475. The terrible Sixtus IV. now ruled in the Vatican; and from this pope Filelfo had received an invitation to occupy the chair of rhetoric with good emoluments. At first he was vastly pleased with the city and court of Rome; but his satisfaction ere long turned to discontent, and he gave vent to his ill-humour in a venomous satire on the pope’s treasurer, Milliardo Cicala. Sixtus himself soon fell under the ban of his displeasure; and when a year had passed he left Rome never to return. Filelfo reached Milan to find that his wife had died of the plague in his absence, and was already buried. His own death followed speedily. For some time past he had been desirous of displaying his abilities and adding to his fame in Florence. Years had healed the breach between him and the Medicean family; and on the occasion of the Pazzi conspiracy against the life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he had sent violent letters of abuse to his papal patron Sixtus, denouncing his participation in a plot so dangerous to the security of Italy. Lorenzo now invited him to profess Greek at Florence, and thither Filelfo journeyed in 1481. But two weeks after his arrival he succumbed to dysentery, and was buried at the age of eighty-three in the church of the Annunziata.
Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. His erudition was large but ill-digested; his knowledge of the ancient authors, if extensive, was superficial; his style was vulgar; he had no brilliancy of imagination, no pungency of epigram, no grandeur of rhetoric. Therefore he has left nothing to posterity which the world would not very willingly let die. But in his own days he did excellent service to learning by his untiring activity, and by the facility with which he used his stores of knowledge. It was an age of accumulation and preparation, when the world was still amassing and cataloguing the fragments rescued from the wrecks of Greece and Rome. Men had to receive the very rudiments of culture before they could appreciate its niceties. And in this work of collection and instruction Filelfo excelled, passing rapidly from place to place, stirring up the zeal for learning by the passion of his own enthusiastic temperament, and acting as a pioneer for men like Poliziano and Erasmus.
All that is worth knowing about Filelfo is contained in Carlo de’ Rosmini’s admirable Vita di Filelfo (Milan, 1808); see also W. Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Vespasiano’s Vite di uomini illustri, and J. A. Symonds’s Renaissance in Italy (1877). (J. A. S.)
A complete edition of Filelfo’s Greek letters (based on the Codex Trevulzianus) was published for the first time, with French translation, notes and commentaries, by E. Legrand in 1892 at Paris (C. xii. of Publications de l’école des lang. orient.). For further references, especially to monographs, &c., on Filelfo’s life and work, see Ulysse Chevalier, Répertoire des sources hist., bio-bibliographie (Paris, 1905), s.v. Philelphe, François.
FILEY, a seaside resort in the Buckrose parliamentary
division of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, 912 m. S.E. of
Scarborough by a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of
urban district (1901) 3003. It stands upon the slope and
summit of the cliffs above Filey Bay, which is fringed by a fine
sandy beach. The northern horn of the bay is formed by Filey
Brigg, a narrow and abrupt promontory, continued seaward by
dangerous reefs. The coast-line sweeps hence south-eastward to
the finer promontory of Flamborough Head, beyond which is the
watering-place of Bridlington. The church of St Oswald at
Filey is a fine cruciform building with central tower, Transitional
Norman and Early English in date. There are pleasant
promenades and good golf links, also a small spa which has fallen
into disuse. Filey is in favour with visitors who desire a quiet
resort without the accompaniment of entertainment common to
the larger watering-places. Roman remains have been discovered
on the cliff north of the town; the site was probably
important, but nothing is certainly known about it.
FILIBUSTER, a name originally given to the buccaneers
(q.v.). The term is derived most probably from the Dutch vry
buiter, Ger. Freibeuter, Eng. freebooter, the word changing first into
fribustier, and then into Fr. flibustier, Span. filibustero. Flibustier
has passed into the French language, and filibustero into
the Spanish language, as a general name for a pirate. The term
“filibuster” was revived in America to designate those
adventurers who, after the termination of the war between
Mexico and the United States, organized expeditions within the
United States to take part in West Indian and Central American
revolutions. From this has sprung the modern use of the word
to imply one who engages in private, unauthorized and irregular
warfare against any state. In the United States it is colloquially
applied to legislators who practise obstruction.
FILICAJA, VINCENZO DA (1642–1707), Italian poet, sprung
from an ancient and noble family of Florence, was born in that
city on the 30th of December 1642. From an incidental notice
in one of his letters, stating the amount of house rent paid during
his childhood, his parents must have been in easy circumstances,
and the supposition is confirmed by the fact that he enjoyed all
the advantages of a liberal education, first under the Jesuits of
Florence, and then in the university of Pisa.
At Pisa his mind became stored, not only with the results of patient study in various branches of letters, but with the great historical associations linked with the former glory of the Pisan republic, and with one remarkable institution of which Pisa was the seat. To the tourist who now visits Pisa the banners and emblems of the order of St Stephen are mere matter of curiosity, but they had a serious significance two hundred years ago to the young Tuscan, who knew that these naval crusaders formed the main defence of his country and commerce against the Turkish, Algerine and Tunisian corsairs. After a five years’ residence in Pisa he returned to Florence, where he married Anna, daughter of the senator and marquis Scipione Capponi, and withdrew to a small villa at Figline, not far from the city. Abjuring the thought of writing amatory poetry in consequence of the premature death of a young lady to whom he had been attached, he occupied himself chiefly with literary pursuits, above all the composition of Italian and Latin poetry. His own literary eminence, the opportunities enjoyed by him as a member of the celebrated Academy Della Crusca for making known his critical taste and classical knowledge, and the social relations within the reach of a noble Florentine so closely allied with the great house of Capponi, sufficiently explain the intimate terms on which he stood with such eminent men of letters as Magalotti, Menzini, Gori and Redi. The last-named, the author of Bacchus in Tuscany, was not only one of the most brilliant poets of his time, and a safe literary adviser; he was the court physician, and his court influence was employed with zeal and effect in his friend’s favour. Filicaja’s rural seclusion was owing even more to his straitened means than to his rural tastes. If he ceased at length to pine in obscurity, the change was owing not merely to the fact that his poetical genius, fired by the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks in 1683, poured forth the right strains at the right time, but also to the influence of Redi, who not only laid Filicaja’s verses before his own sovereign, but had them transmitted with the least possible delay to the foreign princes whose noble deeds they sung. The first recompense came, however, not from those princes, but from Christina, the ex-queen of Sweden, who, from her circle of savants and
