Book Notes – The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Chapters 6-9)

Chapter 6: In the Lie Factory

Rome had powerful families
Poggio wanted to be apostolic scriptor
Pope ruled many spiritually but had unstable physical kingdom
Lots of cases in the papal court (the Roman Curia)
He didn’t want to join the Church for fear of moral bankruptcy
Roman Curia was perilous
Lapo’s On the Excellence and Dignity of the Roman Court
- Commentary on bribery and corruption
- Wanted position in Curia
Poggio was papal secretary in 1430s
Poggio called the Cura the Lie Factory
- Lots of slander, gossip, backstabbing
He wrote a successful work called Facetiae
- A collection of stories and jokes
Intense compeition and backbiting
- Said all kinds of shit about each other, attacking skills, family, hygiene
Poggio hated the way things were. He wrote other works about the subject.
He wanted to change his life
- Some escapism provided by book-mania

Poggio worked under Baldassare Cossa, Pope John XXIII.
- From a family of pirates.
- Very skilled writer and politician, cunning
- Suspected of poisoning previous Pope
- Made money by throwing jubilees
Papal throne contested by two others
- How to reconcile?
- Way of Council, Constance, Germany
- Christians from all over came
Jan Hus humiliated and imprisoned
Jerome of Prague put on trial months later
- Poggio questions his crimes (heresy)
Cossa flees when things start to turn (he’s the fox)
Poggio decides to stay around and go book hunting
Without stability in his life, Poggio throws himself more deeply into humanities
He likened saving books with saving people, anthropomorphized books

You might call Lucretius’ idea atheist, but he may have believed in gods
- If gods exist, it doesn’t matter
Ideas
- Atoms
- Eternal atoms
- Infinite atoms of set shape and size
- Particles in motion in infinite void
- Creation comes as the result of a swerve
- Swerve is source of free will
- Universe not created for humans
- Humans not unique
- Human society began as primitive battle for survival
- The soul dies
- There is no afterlife
- Death is nothing
- All organized religions are superstitious delusions
- Religions are invariable curled
- No agen;s, demons, ghosts
- The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain
- The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion
- Understanding hte nature of things generates deep wonder
The work is also very poetic
Used Venus metaphore

Poggio waited years to get access to Niccolo’s copy of On the Nature of Things.
When the new pope was installed, many of his colleagues returned to Curia
Poggio went to work for the Bishop of Winchester.
He didn’t find any great works in the English monasteries.
He returned in 1422 to a new secretarial post.
He resumed his work in the Curia
Had many children with Lucia Pannelli his mistress
Accumulated money and collected antiquities
He married into the Buondelmonti familly, Vaggia di Gino Buondelmonti. “Should an Old man Marry?”
He worked for several other popes, 8 in total.
Served as chancelor of Florence for 5 years. Resigned and died 18 months later in 1459.