“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639ably exaggerated the danger in 1654, to present himself as an embattled Protes-
tant threatened by the hated Jesuits rather than as a traveler reveling in the de-
lights of the place.
But there may have been something in it, given that other English Protestants in
this period reported concerns for their personal safety in Rome,^58 and that Milton
was often less than prudent in airing his religious views. Milton himself had experi-
enced some uneasiness and restriction in Naples because of his overt religious testi-
mony: Manso reportedly told him regretfully that he “wished to show me many
more attentions, [but] he could not do so in that city, since I was unwilling to be
circumspect in regard to religion” (CPW IV.1, 618). Some years later the Dutch
philologist and poet Nicolaas Heinsius, who traveled extensively in Italy, com-
mented on the enemies Milton made there:
That Englishman [Milton] was hated by the Italians, among whom he lived a long
time, on account of his over-strict morals, because he both disputed freely about
religion, and on any occasion whatever prated very bitterly against the Roman Pon-
tiff.^59If Milton exaggerated the threat to him from the English Jesuits so as to present
himself as a defender of the faith in the very bastions of the enemy, he took obvious
pride in returning and facing down hostility, and perhaps danger, with appropriate
courage:
I nevertheless returned to Rome. What I was, if any man inquired, I concealed from no
one. For almost two more months, in the very stronghold of the Pope, if anyone attacked
the orthodox religion, I openly, as before, defended it. Thus, by the will of God, I
returned again in safety to Florence. (CPW IV.1, 619)^60
Milton evidently did not believe his danger to be very great, since he remained
in Rome for another two months (January–February, 1639). He was there during
Carnival (eleven days before the beginning of Lent), when entertainments of all
sorts were staged: Commedia dell’Arte masks, comedies, melodrammas, musical per-
formances, and street theater. A high point of this visit was his meeting with Lukas
Holste, arranged by Alessandro Cherubini, another erudite young scholar (espe-
cially of Plato), but already suffering from the illness that would cause his death at
age 28.^61 Holste, a native of Hamburg who had studied at Oxford, was a distin-
guished scholar and editor of Greek manuscripts, secretary and librarian to Cardinal
Francesco Barberini, and librarian of the Vatican collections. In a letter to Holste
from Florence (March 19/29, 1639) Milton expresses profound gratitude for the
extraordinary favors Holste had extended to him, instancing expecially a tour through
the Vatican library, the opportunity to examine Holste’s own notes on some Greek
manuscripts, and the access to Cardinal Barberini arranged by him: